The Millennial Reincarnations: A Novel

by Daniel Mark Harrison

  Men and women use the tool almost evenly and its reach extends beyond the U.S. Figures show that each day there are an estimated 9.7 million people who visit Tumblr.com, 5.4 million come from outside of the U.S. It’s also noteworthy that while 74% of users are Caucasian, the group with the second highest rate of use are Hispanics at an estimated 12%.

  Demographics aside, Tumblr’s ease of use is made for Millennial, by a Millennial. While there are many features that I enjoy about Tumblr, like the dashboard (think Twitter timeline), which allows me to see the activity from other blogs on a list that I can easily scan, there are three features that truly stand out for me: Tumblr is Mobile … Reblogging Saves Time … Tumblr [has] a Community Beyond a blogging platform …

  To borrow Descartes’ terminology, this is a completely different “mode” of intellectual expression to the one of Pepys’ mid-1600s account of London living.

  The writer of the above piece is clearly from a society that has its traditions firmly rooted in the grounds of scientific enquiry (which is why we don’t want to reverse the trend – not by a long shot. Instead, we want to turn scientific enquiry upon itself now, that’s all) All this is in complete contrast to Pepys’ emotional diaries of fear, helplessness and ultimately, hopeful reliance on the savior he is not even certain exists or not (at least not scientifically he isn’t – he can’t be).

  The blogger drills into current data to portray a very big picture outline of the society he inhabits: we get a basic and broad list of age-, gender- and racial-segregated categories, all specifically illustrating some sort of virtual social interactive habit that is particular to the relevant group – thereby revealing community-wide social preferences in a space which is largely opaque in terms of physical communication.

  In the traditional camp, thinking was in itself very much the same part of the process as was self-expression: to express a fear, a confoundedness, or a regular, ordinary notion that someone else might very well have confronted for themselves was, in a sense, to demonstrate evidence of thinking.

  That could not be further from the truth today, where it is insight, combined with unique experience that must be conveyed in a way that is comprehensible to the reader but nevertheless fresh. This measure of an idea’s uniqueness and even of the creator’s personal level of isolation is often required today to some degree by most modern, connected societies as proof that the narrator is actually demonstrating thinking activity is taking place. Few of us count speeches made at social occasions as manifest proof of genius.

  How often does one hear today, for instance, someone complain about how such-and-such an idea is a “rip-off” or “copy-cat” version of something else? Now recall Descartes assumption that the mode – that is, the idea – is wholly dependent on the attribute of thinking. This places the burden of emphasis on the activity of thinking, as if thinking itself is the prerequisite function out of which can only come the ideas that are contained somehow within the substance that enables it – the mind itself.

  To Descartes, pushing the boundaries of originality the way we do in modern times would have seemed excessively harsh and even, most likely, unnecessary too. Today, we are increasingly impatient with what we label as “excuses” for not pushing the limits of our imaginations or mental will power. “I am certain that I can have no knowledge except by means of the ideas I have within me” would seem a fairly low-grade and pathetic excuse in creative environments today. Indeed, for seriously uttering such ideas, in certain places one might be fired, or at least passed over for promotion nowadays.

  It is clear then that the activity of thinking is changing, that somehow we take for granted the knowledge that springs forth from the action – the ideas, or what Descartes referred to as the mode – and instead we are consequently seeking something higher in place of it.

  The problem is that our academic foundations are still grounded and weighted in the fundamental Descartesian paradigms, and as such it is not until children break free from the dogmatic academes where they are taught and venture into the world for themselves that they are able to envisage their full capacities.

  This is clear from the millennial and plural generations, whom are by and large educating themselves on a wide range of subjects much more quickly and profoundly (in the sense of arriving at original ideas on the subjects much earlier than their previous generational peers) as a result of this self-education, entirely enabled by access to the internet.

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  It is said by an increasing majority of more astute intellectual observers that the real work of science has for the past century been done by science fiction novelists. This is undoubtedly the case, especially when one considers the particularly banal and phony science that has manifest in the works of popular scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Bryan Green, to name just two of the academe’s most voracious fraudsters.

  In the case of Hawking, it is quite remarkable that the world still believes he even exists as a person at all, when there has been no physical evidence of him save for that provided by the occasional public appearance of a man bearing loose resemblance to the British one who most likely died in 1985 or thereabouts. (This is a long debate, and once again, it is a topic for another discussion, but plenty of evidence can be found attesting to the biologically – that is to say, factually – obvious differences between the Hawking figure of today and the one of the 1980s. Most incriminating of all is the fact that the teeth and shape of the skull of the two men belong to entirely different individuals; this is apparent by comparing photographs of Hawking photographed in the last two years versus Hawking photographed twenty years ago. As to the question of why anyone might want to perpetuate such a fraud, consider that the chief benefactor of the unlikely bestseller A Brief History of Time is a United States charitopoly and the real picture starts to come together immediately.)

  Just because an idea originates in the realm of fiction, that in and of itself does not make the idea false, or unworthy of inclusion in terms of considering what is fact. To suggest such a thing one would, in order to be consistent in one’s reasoning, have to also concede the opposite was the case: that anything that originated in the realm of fact – that is, the visual three-dimensional world that appears before our eyes and which we can touch and feel – cannot become a part of the realm of fiction, or that it is in some way excluded from inclusion in the fictional alternative. But if this was the case, fiction as we know it would be a very strange place, for almost everything that is fictional in more traditional works of literature in some way stems from the world of fact, which is the world in which the writer lives through his or her every day experiences before interpreting them in a way that is translated into a work of fiction. Thus empirically, if we consider that every equation must justify the means and ends of both its sides (or you have to “make both sides of the equation fit” in more everyday parlance), we find ourselves incapable of concluding that an idea or situation that is a part of fiction does not belong to factual comprehension.

  This was definitely not the world in which Descartes envisaged his thinking – the act of cogito – giving rise to his being – the manifestation apparent in ergo sum. In fact, it is a whole world away, since that world is, as he said it is, limited by the ideas that the act of thinking produces; the world in which fact and fiction are two sides of the same equation however, this one is unlimited in terms of the production of ideas that thinking can produce, since the fundamental reflexivity inherent in the equation means that ideas are constantly being reproduced or regenerated by the means by which existence is being observed in the first place.

  In other words: ideas are a fundamentally occurring part of nature, not something we are compelled to force out of the process of thinking.

  This change, however, is one that is still getting underway, and it is quite possible – likely, even – that there are large numbers of the population to which such logic may not apply. The implications of this cannot be understated; for in this case,
there is essentially a two-class system in place of human mentalities, one which is confined by the act of being to the limited purview of the external world by the act in accordance with belonging to it, and another, which is utilizing this world as the firmament upon which to establish a sense of being so that belonging is altogether referred elsewhere to a less tangential coordinate. In other words, there are inherently two species of humanity at work now, seems to be the conclusion: the species for which what you see is literally, what you get, and the other species for which what you see is merely a stool upon which you erect the newer abode you ultimately beget.

  It’s possible to put this less delicately, still, of course: that the current world is one composed of human beings in two forms, those who are mammals by psychological composition and those that are deities by psychological composition. The explanation, though controversial, helps to resolve a number of inconsistencies with regard to the trajectory of innovation, such as why it seems to propel some, who begin without social class or family breeding (which in pretty much all other times prior to the Industrial Revolution, was pretty much essential to the accumulation of wealth and power) are able to strike it so rich or simply able to push themselves up over the edge of a large number of others; it explains why a large number of individuals never travel outside their home towns or villages, while an (albeit increasing) minority of others do so frequently, even despite the regularity of commercial air transportation and presence of widespread logistics locomotives for a period of nearly two-and-a-half centuries now. The explanation that there is some sort of deity-consciousness in existence among a minority of the world certainly explains the reasons that some are able to envision the future, anticipate what at the time are quite illogical developments, causes, actions and reactions, and put themselves in the ideal spot to intercept and manage such changes.

  This idea also goes on to explain possibly why governments are so fastidious about intelligence gathering and spying, too, especially as the world of the imagination comes to resemble an increasing portion of the reality in which we find ourselves. For if it is true that there are only a limited number of intelligences are successfully making this leap from thinking participants confounded by the extent of their own ideas to participants without any upper limit on ideas, who are in some way masters of ideas so that those ideas become for them the firmament of their next set of ideas, in an unlimited upwards spiral, then these second sort of people are unlikely to be ones obsessed by political power. For politics is the abridger of law, and law, like science, is limited in essence to the rigid categorization of ideas: indeed, it depends on them being, in essence, simple and easy to compartmentalize (which is why many judges, and people in general, still fail to this day understand the more complex nuances within a case which might make a crime unworthy of punishment even when one is applied. For such people, one size must fit all, for one size is the only way in which rational thinking can occur – these people, just like Descartes, are “limited to the extent of the ideas within” themselves).

  Thus, given that those working in political and military operations are likely to be the first sort of person – the ones with much more limited frames of reference – the world as it is today must seem a mighty unpredictable and uncertain battleground. Enemies really can – and do – appear from anywhere at any point in time, for the fact is that they have no intellectual compass upon which to see the grander scheme of things evolve. They have no creative intelligence in the way that those whose worlds are unlimited in terms of the number of ideas and intellectual resources do, and the world to them is simply a vast desert in which many unknowns occur in places they cannot see. If you engage in what it must be like to be confined to this mentality, you begin to see how fearsome the world must feel, for there is only, in essence, the unknown. Like Descartes and Pepys four hundred years before them, the world of those in military and political leadership positions is for most of these people at least, subject to the constant affirmation of the actions and results that lie in front of them, or else what takes place is literally, unimaginable, which is to say, mentally they cannot access or occupy it. No one likes to be shut out of somewhere: spying and intelligence gathering is then to such people merely the mechanism by which they attempt to gain access. The irony of course is that this is the least likely method of gaining access to the world of intellectual possibility that there is to be successful, since the other world, the one that is composed in the virtual universe of ideas (and which is rapidly coming to be translated by software and technology into a visual replica thereof which promises a multitude of lifestyle innovations) can only be accessed via the means of engaging in idea-formation. That is to say, it cannot be accessed merely via idea-adoption, or else you end up with the same net result as you started out with in the physical one: being bombarded with the product of everyone else’s ideas!

  The problem is that while the educational and social construct of society continues to maintain the traditional Descartesian line of “being” and “thinking” coming before the manifestation of great ideas, there is bound to be a series of electric shocks and one great short circuit every so often that throws the whole game out of control.

  There is something else notable about the Samuel Pepys diary that is not commonly found at all in non-fictional first-person narratives today – the revelation of a lucid dream (especially one about a sexual fantasy). As Pepys relays the dream about ravishing the young temptress – presumably the daughter of the Captain – he devotes a great deal of time and energy to the task, and seems in fact to be only snapped out of his reverie once confronted with the plagued masses dying impoverished and wounded on the side of the streets of London like mistreated animals.

  This chimes much more with pre-technology era literature (e.g. 1850-1930’s) but once again contrasts significantly with post-1960s writing and especially with millennial literature. With this in mind, you may consider Butterflies a part of the start of a new era of literature, in response to a new era with a whole fresh set of values that redefines the concept of what it is to be a thinking person.

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  Science has given us enormous possibilities, but not in the way that it is taught in schools today.

  Rather, in the way it is practiced in Silicon Valley, or at home on the laptops of kids who code in their spare time, or in the way that is manifest in the modeling of the conscious process here: this is the science that is fundamental to our future. This is the science which will carry us leaps and bounds, not just physically, but intellectually and thereby morally forward many, many years ahead of our rate of natural genetic acclimatization to conditions made for superhuman intelligence, so that we are faced with the zero-alternative reality of having to adapt at record speed, and thereby, multiply our intellectual enlightenment many-fold henceforth (and so forth: the equation is exponential like that, and does not discriminate either – so everyone is confronted with the identical reality. It’s that lack of discrimination which gives rise to Darwin’s theory of adaption, which, far from being the complete guide to biological progress, is only a freeze frame of two of the actual moving picture itself).

  The picture below of the process reveals why Descartes mistakenly assumed that his ability to think defined his sense of being. Thinking (T) has two functions – a physical activity function (which results in a fact occurring) and a virtual activity function (which results in a fiction occurring). The assimilation between fiction and fact so that fiction informs the reality in which it is being applied immediately (or maybe not, in which case, applied later on) and between fact and thinking (in order to generate ideas which result in increased learning capacity) can be called Surreal Intelligence.

  Thus, Surreal Intelligence (SIQ) can be understood to be the level of connectivity on the dashed lines. In Descartes’ time, where there was only a physical platform and no technologically-enabled virtual platform for thinking to correspond with, the only way of gaining any sort of SIQ was via simultaneously
connecting what might be termed as “spiritual” or “religious” thoughts with logical ones.

  This connection of course would not have resulted in a very efficient SIQ connection but it was enough to have at least sufficed so that he was in turn able to identify the type of innovative progress that was required within an academic context. Today, we have no need for such mysticism in and of itself in order to engage SIQ, since we have a virtual platform pre-installed in the form of the internet. Tomorrow we shall have virtual reality for real – visual virtual reality that appears to be in three dimensions, thus increasing SIQ from an earlier age on an even more engaged level.

  Thus, we see signs of this developing within the literary tradition, as you might expect, Millennial literature is very “in the moment” – it is constantly captivated not just by the present but also in fact by the immediate future. Whether it is fiction or non-fiction narrative journalism or even poetry, millennial literature more than any other in history is obsessed with action to the point of often being a transcription of a moving picture.

  There’s a hint there about where we are headed – into a land of pure virtual reality. If the horror of the real is going to be superimposed on the virtual then we don’t stand a chance of course. In a very serious way, that is the alarm bell I am sounding early in this book, before it’s too late. For if it becomes too late to do anything about, that will be a huge lost opportunity. That cannot be allowed to happen. We as a society must reassess our current ways of looking at things and divide with the old, industrialized notion of privilege over paucity, and wed the two into genuine mutual productivity. The stakes in a virtual world are higher than they ever were in the physical one, for this is the one we will mentally reside in, in there here and now. It’s worth making the very best of it.