The Art of Transcending

Semi-compatibilistic scale determinism. That would probably be the best way to describe my branch of determinism, one that I am proud to say I have arrived at on my own. I was a determinist even before I knew what determinism was, as my initial posts on this blog demonstrate. I base this belief solely on my own experiences after 29.5 years on the Earth, yet as I described earlier I’ve thankfully found that others have reached similar conclusions and that I am not a beautiful or unique snowflake. 

Rather I am a member of an exclusive breed/tribe of thinkers, who by their own means, driven by an ever-awake natural curiosity have all individually managed - sometimes by building on the works of their predecessors but I like to think mostly through pure observation in their own personal world - to rise above and go beyond the normal limits of all their respective paradigms, restrictive traditions and narrow mindedness to reach a new level of clarity where the mechanics of existence suddenly seem abundantly clearer and the patterns of the universal clockwork become visible. Obviously their individual paradigms and period in history restricted the knowledge available to them, yet they all managed to reach beyond the confines of what was available and go above and beyond. This description corresponds almost word for word to the definition of the word transcend, which is why henceforth these people should be termed: transcenders. Although the transcender tribe count among them such distinguished individuals and super-transcenders as Aristotle, Newton, Darwin, Einstein etc. does not mean that you have to alter the fate of the human race to be included in its ranks. I consider myself a member, just as I have met several others during my travels and while we have not (yet) altered the course of our race that does not make our journey any less significant. The next step is to try and guide others in the same direction, and give them the gentle push that might send them down their own path to transcendence. Because common to this tribe is the fact that transcenders look at the world from a different vantage point than most others. They have made it clear of the congestion and traffic jams, found their own route on the infinite freeway because they managed to switch off the radio, cell phones, GPS and other distractions inside their car, and are instead listening to their intuition, the gentle ticking of the universal clockwork and its patterns of recognition. Their curiosity makes them question everything, yet they are modest enough to also keep an open mind.

From this elevated position above the noise and smoke of the traffic jams, dealing with whatever life throws at you suddenly seems infinitely simpler because you have a heightened sense of context and scale, how everything fits. This gives transcenders a distinct advantage as they are not mired down by petty constrictions dictating how they have to think, act and live. Free your mind! Where you then go from there is where things start to get really interesting. Knowledge is power and with great power comes great responsibilities. I think that’s where my need to jot all this down comes from, I feel responsibility to make these thoughts available and thus maybe stimulate mental growth in others, transcenders or not. This recently (and often before) happened to me when a friend transcender gave me a link to another transcender blogger. This dude had so many similar conclusions to my own that the determinism irony was almost too much to bear. (It often is!) Not only did I read the entry in question the exact same day I wrote the infinite freeway entry to this blog, but he ended the entry by encouraging everyone reading it to arrive at their own conclusions and share them with the world, which was exactly what I had been doing that day. (I know, right?) Determinism, ladies and gentleman. If that’s not a sign, then I don’t know what is. (Actually, I might do but that’s a topic for a later entry!)

Similar to me, the transcender blogger also stresses that to fully become a transcender you have to base your findings on your own experiences, this is not something that can be taught, at least not if you truthfully want to believe it. His route to transcendence is signified by a step ladder covering the current level of our evolution. The bottom steps are shrouded in a thick fog, similar to a traffic jam on the infinite freeway and what I will also in a later post refer to as the dancefloor of existence, because it is a place that dulls the senses with darkness, strobe lights, smoke and of course loud thumping music that drowns out all other sounds, preventing people from experiencing clearly the mechanics of the clockwork. Through experiencing so called “whoa” moments, transcendence moments in my wording (will be addressed in the next post), one can reach and remain on step 3 where scale plays an important part to fully realize our individual and collective place and thus general insignificance in the universe. Beyond that are the levels of Einstein, Darwin, Newton etc., what I call super-transcenders, where their progressed thinking actually helps carry our species higher up the evolutionary scale. 

As much as I like his analogy I prefer to use metaphors in a more general manner to convey ideas and notions, not to mathematically slice existence into neat pieces. The blogger does however describe his staircase as a fluid environment where the fog can always creep back at any time. I partially agree with this. Vis-à-vis Flowers for Algernon, I do not believe you can fully regress to the dancefloor and see it in a similar manner, but it is easy to get caught up in the stress of modern society and occasionally lose sight of your hard learned important universal truths. Thankfully, these relapses are usually short lived though, this is when holidays become helpful to re-quiet the mind. But in fact, to be able to function optimally in modern life, being able to live and navigate the dancefloor that most other people inhabit, without becoming enveloped in it once more, is an absolute necessity. And most of the time this also applies in connection with having social interactions which leads me into an discussion in a later post about human relationships and their importance, or lack thereof.

Discovering like-minded people from across cultures that have arrived at the exact same conclusions as you individually is always refreshing. When they also use the same type of metaphors to describe these conclusions it is even more gratifying and deterministic, confirming that there are a lot of transcenders out there who think like you do and thus support your conclusions as well. This happened to me a couple of times recently. Firstly, reading the aforementioned fellow blogger’s post on the evolutionary step-ladder. Secondly, when a fellow transcender on a starlit beer fuelled night on a beach shooting astrolapses, starting comparing me and him to lone wolves (concept to be elaborated) and finally, even across time and history when I discovered this quote by the honorable super-transcender; Sir Isaac Newton.

“The universe is like a gigantic clock, wound up by God at the beginning of time, and ticking ever since according to His laws.”

Disregarding the obvious religious origin of the clockwork as a result of Newton’s paradigm of the time, this could be a very apt description of my universal clockwork. To find out that one of your idol super-transcenders not only arrived at a similar conclusion but also used a similar metaphor is not only a massive booster to keep writing these thoughts down, but somehow feels like a ghostly pad on the shoulder from a long dead yet somehow familiar mentor assuring me that I am not alone. Cheers, Sir Isaac!