Story: A Short Diversion to the Planet of Exceptional Writers
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“Isn’t that the Planet of Exceptional Writers?”
“Yes.”
“Can we take a short detour and visit it?”
“Sure. They are not enlightened yet, so it will not be a complete waste of our time.”
“OK! Let’s shuttle down…”
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“So what do we do first?”
“We read until we find a good book, and then try to find and interview the writer.”
“All the books on this planet are good books, so let’s begin with finding a willing writer, and then ask the writer about the writer’s body of work in general.”
“Sounds like a plan… here comes a denizen now…”
“Hello. Are you a writer?”
“Yes. Isn’t everybody on this planet?”
“No, some must be readers, otherwise, why write? It will be read by no one.”
“Good point, but we have that covered — our sister planet is the Planet of Voracious Readers.”
“Sounds like a good symbiotic-like relationship.”
“It has been.”
“But do you know what Cicero said on Earth many thousands of years ago?”
“No, what?”
“He said he feared for the future, because everyone was writing a book and no one was minding the children.”
“So, what happened in the future?”
“Dark Ages.”
“So his fears were well-founded.”
“Yes, but on your worlds someone must be minding the chlidren… right?”
“Hmmm…”
“Well, at any rate, the readers on the other planet are lucky that you are good writers.”
“I suppose they are, because they would resort to reading trash if that was all that was available, their appetite for reading being that ravenous.”
Do you have time to tell us about your writing?”
“Sure, let’s pause and rest at this pausing and resting establishment. I could use a little refreshment.”
“It is our lucky day, thanks.”
“So what would you like to know?”
“You, like everyone on this planet, have written very good books, and have woven very good stories, and have done very good world-building. What is your secret?”
“You do not know?”
“We are not from this planet.”
“Ah… what planet are you from?”
“I am from Earth, and my companions are from the Planet of Horrors.”
“Interesting… I see a potential story in that… at any rate, the secret is this: well-explored and well-explained ideas boost reader engagement.”
“That is great to know. Now… if you don’t mind, we would like to move this conversation into our realm, which is the real reason we are visiting your planet.”
“What realm is that?”
“Enlightenment.”
“OH NOOOO! Not ‘enlightenment’!”
“Don’t tell me you have been visited by frauds, knaves, and charlatans pushing make-believe enlightenment, sullying the paths that I must take, and ruining my chances of actually enlightening you…”
“If that’s what you call them, yes, and there have been far too many of those pretenders and fools to count, all with completely juvenile mindsets, if you ask me… So you claim that you are different, and that you have actual enlightenment to offer?”
“Yes.”
“I just might regurgitate my refreshments, give me a moment…”
“Do we look like your average pretenders, frauds, knaves, fools, or charlatans?”
“They come in all shapes and sizes.”
“Well, since we are here, give us a chance. You may be surprised.”
“OK, these are very good refreshments, and I want to enjoy them leisurely, even if it is with the probable deficient thoughts of present company. Go ahead, I think I can stomach more pretense and preposterousness, along with the outright obtuse attempts and manipulation an control.”
“Thanks, I hope you will not be too disappointed when you receive authentic enlightenment instead.”
“That would, indeed, be an unexpected outcome, and a pleasant one I imagine — I wouldn’t know, I’ve never encountered authentic enlightenment, because there is no authentic enlightenment anywhere, as everyone knows. We all just wing it individually.”
“Well, let’s begin. The first question, from the position of authentic enlightenment, would be, once you have obtained your reader’s engagement, what do you do with it then?”
“The ultimate aim is to keep the reader’s ongoing interest, in order to write and sell more books to all of those whom are hooked, I mean ‘engaged’.”
“Isn’t that great, and this will legitimately earn you more Galactic Credits?”
“Yes.”
“Which you will spend on… what?”
“Lots of things!”
“Things?”
“Yes.”
“And what will you do with all of those ‘things’?”
“Flaunt them! Especially in front of those who had little regard for my talent, which is one motivation, though petty. I will probably have my own logo on everything I own, maybe even my face, just to rub it in, and to become famous.”
“And what will you do with that fame?”
“I will pick-out whatever mates I want, and however many I want! It is well known that beings kneel before the famous.”
“So you seek domination and the primitive personal security that comes with it. Considering your harem, what will you do with all of that progeny, whether such progeny takes your name and logo if you accept the legal responsibilities for raising them, or not, if you don’t?”
“I will train them to become just like me, training by example, of course, and I will thus earn their abject obedience and instant adoration!”
“So your goal is create well-explored and well-explained ideas to create good stories and universes in order to gain reader engagement in order to keep selling books in order to earn more credits in order to purchase things, in order to impress and select the most desirable mates in order to produce the most desirable and obedient and adoring offspring in order to be respected and adored by everyone in the community and the world… and in order to revel in all of that glory and success?”
“Sounds good to me!”
“Do you realize where your mind will be during all of this?”
“No. Where?”
“Up your ass.”
“WHAT?”
“I call them ‘imploded mindsets’. To explain, let’s go all the way back to reader engagement. There you are, exploring ideas, and working hard to explain them well, weaving them into engaging stories set in fascinating universes, with the goal of enhancing reader engagement, with the goal of keeping their interest and selling subsequent books, with the overall goal of gaining riches and fame and love and adoration, which is just a primitive drive for personal local/immediate security on an animal level, just to mention that; and it would all occur in an unenlightened world, meaning it need contain little actual depth and thus it will be easily swept away, duly forgotten, and just plain ruined by continued universal cluelessness.”
“Ruined by WHAT?”
“Continued cluelessness, near’universal, except for the nascent debt we’ve put in it. You see, cluelessness is blindly destructive; and I must emphasize ‘blindly’, meaning there is no influencing, controlling, or preventing it.”
“So when you say ‘unenlightened’, you are referring to cluelessness?”
“Yes, and it is the whole point of why we are here — not to learn the secrets of good writing, but to offer badly-needed enlightenment to a clueless galaxy. On your planet, when you succeed, you will be succeeding in a clueless world, which by definition is doomed. You are thus perpetuating a mentality of suicide and death. Now, won’t you be proud of yourself when you discover this, and it will be TOO LATE when you do, because a large part of being clueless is relying on a reactionary mode of existence, for example relying on ‘reaction’, whether proudly quick or otherwise, when faced with a dilemma not prepared for. If the dilemma is an instantaneous life-annihilating event, relying on reaction would be futile, and thus foolish since you now realize this in advance. So there you are, a futile fool, producing fantastic offspring who will be vaporized because of your broader blindness to ongoing threats to life in the universe, unless your offspring become enlightened in spite of you, whereby they will look back upon you as a product of a dark, unenlightened past, though conceding that you personalky developed in a culture which did not recognize or prioritize universal survival as the most important goal, and hence pursuit, of life, even on the level of minute daily tasks. They will concede that you lived in a phase of primitive development where the common mindset was more concerned with impressing other clueless beings in petty ways, such as in acquiring riches, fame, and the sexual conquest of beautiful beings, which, just to mention, can all also be taken to a pathological degree. Do you know where such mindsets are placed in the hierarchy of minds?”
“Where?”
“Halfway between lower animals and enlightened beings. It is, for example, where humans exist at this point in their development.”
“Don’t tell me I am no better than humans… I take that as an insult! No offense intended…”
“Compare your mentality with theirs — the resulting attitudes, the resulting actions — they are one and the same, both operating on the same primitive, and in many ways still animal, level of existence. Take your life-goals, for example.”
“What about my life-goals? Don’t tell me that they are ‘unenlightened’.”
“They are unenlightened. Your aim is to impress, and be accepted by, if not dominate, other clueless beings, and blindly perpetuate your own genetic line, like a lower animal, and as ridiculous as your genetic line may be. You do realize that you mayruin any line of beauty that comes your way. I’ll bet you never even thought of that, since you only think of yourself.”
“No, I didn’t… and who cares? And who says I’m not the physical cream of the crop? The point is to ‘win’… so you and your philosophy can take a hike.”
“Then you will choose a primitive existence of death and suicide. What a nice world to subject beautiful beings to, and I am being sarcastic. You will be subjecting them to your brand of a mental nightmare — you and your ‘winning’. Also know, every decision has consequences.”
“Yeah? Well, my consequences are looking pretty good.”
“‘Good as long as your planet remains clueless, meaning unenlightened, otherwise your goals are tragic.”
“Well, if being enlightened means my not succeeding, then screw enlightenment.”
“Your problem is your skewed notion of ‘succeeding’. It is weak, meaning suicidal, meaning you, in effect, embrace a philosophy of death, and if your actions are guided by that, and your actions affect others, then you will be deemed evil.”
“So what is so bad about being evil? It has worked quite well throughout the history of all planets in achieving personal success and glory.”
“Yes, and it is the history of pre-enlightenment, filled with clueless beings on blind, destructive courses of existence while remaining completely at the mercy of a harsh and deadly universe, in other words, 100% passive where it matters, and 100% suicidal concerning the continued existence of life and higher consciousness… which, if I must explain further (and I must), such a mindset is the equivalent of a Philosophy of Death. If you have any regard for continuing your own consciousness, then you will deem any form of a philosophy of death ‘evil’, which should be opposed by whatever measures and lengths are necessary, depending on your relative strength to theirs.”
“What do you mean ‘relative strength’?”
“The stronger you are in relation to your foe, the more you can afford to be merciful. This is why you witness the relatively weaker foe being merciless toward the stronger adversary, the weak cannot afford to be otherwise. This is why you see little versions of some species viciously attack larger versions for no apparent reason, with the larger versions looking on curiously, wondering what the big deal is. I’ve seen this in earth’s dog species, where the size differences are enormous.”
“So you are giving me a choice of your philosophy, or death?”
“It is the choice between life and death. My philosophy just happens to be on the side of life, and not just your life and my life, but universal life, with a priority on higher consciousness, since that is what all life strives for.”
“With your philosophy guiding it all, I presume.”
“Or its equivalent, but that is unlikely, mine being precise and definitive. If you can develop another philosophy that is at this level and for universal life, with a priority on higher consciousness, AND that is based on verified knowledge (otherwise it will not address survival to our optimum ability), then great, such philosophies will have no problem coexisting with one another, because they will have the same ultimate goal — securing higher consciousness in a harsh and deadly universe, and hopefully securing any life that has the potential of attaining higher consciousness, which means ALL of life, and all in a verified harsh and deadly universe.
Such ‘philosophies of life’ (rather than death) will thus be, by default, allies, and they will work together, coordinating their adherent’s actions at the very least, and at most spurring them to work closely together on the same projects (some of which will require the coordinated efforts of trillions of beings). I say ‘beings’ because it will not matter what the platform is for such higher consciousnesses — be they bio, like us, or alloy, like machines, or energy mists… they will ALL have the same goal — universal (broader) survival, which, they will know since they are enlightened, critically affects their individual survival. Why, you can see this cross-species cooperation at work already with enlightened beings, right here in front of you, with me and my horrors here.
So where does all of this leave your current mindset of gaining personal riches, fame, and adoration, and impressing other clueless beings with vain baubles?”
“Where?”
“In the toilet, where it belongs.”
“And you would personally pull the handle and flush it down?”
“Any enlightened being would, even you, once you are enlightened, just to get rid of the stench.”
“So you are saying that my mentality stinks?”
“Yes.”
“So I either change it, or I, and everything and everyone I’ve ever owned, will decay like a mound of shit, even within the paradigm of my mental nightmare, and be flushed down the toilet of history?”
“More or less, if your shit isn’t put on display in the Museum of Past Mental Folly, or vaporized first.”
“Vaporized by what?”
“By cluelessness, either directly, or indirectly, as in allowing a natural calamity annihilate you that you carelessly did not see coming, and which you, in your mental state of awareness-implosion and priority-skew, were not proactively prepared for in advance because you were fooling around with riches, fame, vanity, baubles, impressing other clueless beings, worrying about your social status or animal survival, and dominating others. Or you may be vaporized by enlightened beings tired of the smell of such mentalities. There is one possible good outcome for all of those ‘things’ that you purchased for yourself and which have your logos and your face on…”
“But they will be flushed down the toilet of history.”
“Perhaps, if they are not first destroyed by continued universal cluelessness or by exasperate enlightened beings… I was thinking of seeing them displayed in that museum where future beings could laugh at the folly of such past mindsets, though enlightened beings would see more of the tragedy, misery, and just plain mental horror in such primitive, deficient mindframes, more than humor.”
“So it would be a museum of past mental tragedies.”
“Yes. Another word I use is ‘deficient mindsets’.”
“So what SHOULD I do with a reader’s engagement once I have worked so hard to gain it?”
“How about enlightening them? They need it.”
“Seems like a good idea, but I do not have an enlightened philosophy with which to enlighten them with.”
“You could use mine, it is already developed, and I’ve been working on it for five years now, or you could develop one on your own, and, in five years, assuming you can mentally focus, in depth, that long, then you could compare yours to mine, preferable in that order — develop your own, THEN see what mine says, and compare.”
“Why in that order?”
“I’d rather have you go through the development process like I have, working out the most important questions of life independently, and then working out their answers independently, and then developing an entire philosophical structure around the answers independently, and then comparing your questions and answers and philosophical structure to not only mine, but, like I did, compare such a new philosophy with all philosophies of the past (where you will find them all deficient, like I did); and then having you independently deal with the hardest test of it all…”
“What is that?”
“Attempting to communicate your enlightenment in an attempt to enlighten others.”
“How could that be so hard?”
“Hurdles.”
“Hurdles?”
“You will encounter many hurdles between your new thoughts and the minds of other beings that you will be endeavoring to reach.”
“Such as…?”
“Resistance of all kinds, mindless traditions, petty self-interests, habit, distractions, clueless popular mindsets, dark suspicions, mistrust, having been victimized by frauds, knaves, and charlatans beforehand, blind dismissal, blind skepticism, knee-jerk contrarianism, and outright spirited sarcasm. You can look at all of these hurdles as ‘tests’ of your new philosophy’s worthiness.”
“So… if my thoughts are worthy, they will overcome these hurdles?”
“Maybe, eventually, but not right away; it will test your will and your perceived value of your philosophy, but there are other hurdles that worthiness alone will not overcome.”
“What are they?”
“Contrived obstinance, belligerency, and outright depravity.”
“Contrived obstinance, belligerency, and outright depravity?”
“Yes, from beings who are heavily invested in cluelessness and who see enlightenment as a personal threat to their local/immediate security and livelihood, meaning animal-level security and depraved pursuits.”
“Though enlightenment is not really a threat to anyone but the depraved?”
“Correct; and you will have to face those depraved, to whom the worthiness of your thoughts will count for for nothing, the depraved having their own depraved agendas.”
“So I should dismiss such beings, or, if they refuse to be dismissed, then treat them as deadly opponents?”
“Yes, which will put you on your guard — since they will try to dismiss you, and failing that, they will treat you as a deadly opponent who is threatening to bring down their depraved empires, however petty they are.”
“Sounds like a pretty messy interim future — the interim between universal cluelessness and universal enlightenment. I can see widespread war and mass-slaughter and Inquisitions and unfortunate destruction and misery caused by the conflict between the newly-enlightened beings on one side, and the contrived obstinate, belligerent and depraved beings on the other side, and, tragically, the masses who follow them.”
“Yes, and, unfortunately, infinity renders actual universal enlightenment impossible, there will always be those outside of any sphere of enlightenment who may not be enlightened. So the best you can do is endeavor to increase the sphere of enlightenment. Outside of such a sphere, there may still exist the depraved, obstinate, and belligerent to the point of their using militarily aggression against you, so choose your side well.”
“Military aggression?”
“Yes. That is why I developed the maxim, ‘Pursue peace, it is a noble (and even more important, ‘critical’) endeavor, but be armed to the teeth, just in case…”
“So it comes down to which side I should choose…”
“Yes, and I would say choose the side that is growing, and which cannot be suppressed, dismissed, set aside, or ignored indefinitely, even by the most cleverly depraved, which, if you’ve noticed, is still a goal of many a clueless beings within their clueless societies…”
“So I should choose the side of enlightenment?”
“Yes, but on such an unenlightened planet as yours, you may have to bide your time and side with the depraved if they are truly dangerous, just to survive your local/immediate future, as sad as that measure would be…”
“It does sound sad, siding with the depraved, if not ultimately insane…”
“It would be ultimately insane… yet such a dire measure may be necessary if you cannot immediately enlighten the powers-that-be; and if you cannot, it would be a very sad phase of your planet’s history.”
“Such deadly, destructive conflict seems inevitable…”
“It may be inevitable, but since this is the first true enlightenment developed ever, anywhere, and enlightenment is so new to those who have attained it, no one knows, we can only see what happens…”
“Well, to a very quick and painless universal enlightenment, then!”
“To a quick and painless universal enlightenment, and in the meantime, once you are enlightened, keeping your reader’s engagement with well-explored and well-explained ideas, which will by necessity be based on my thoroughly worked-out philosophy. You must do this in stealth-mode, of course, will quicken the process, otherwise people will raise their barriers if you say the word ‘enlightenment’. You cannot let them know they are being enlightened, or their wayward social conditioning will activate, and they will reject you, and your book sales will subsequently suffer, and you will lose your leverage.”
“Have you sold any philosophical books?”
“Not one.”
“Not even with well-explored, well-explained ideas?”
“Not even with well-explored, well-explained ideas.”
“To well-explored and well-explained ideas, and enlightenment in stealth mode, then… but also to good book sales…”
“Here here. The well-explored and well-explained ideas have been your strategy all along. They were just inadequately guided and clueless.”
“So they have been… so they have been… book sales remains a problem, however…”
“Yes, and NOW you will view it with an enlightened mind — seeing them as creating ‘leverage’ — the ability to reach a large audience, rather than a vehicle for folly… so what will it be, my philosophy, or one that you struggle to develop over the next five years?”
“I’ll adopt yours, but with a continuous critical mind.”
“Perfect.”
“Why is that perfect?”
“Because my philosophy continuously reassesses itself against the continuous inflow of new verified knowledge, any of which may affect the philosophy’s assumptions, generalizations, and classifications, which determine the Ultimate Value, which determines the Ultimate Goal, which defines Good and Evil (their being goal-based), the ability of which facilitates worthwhile individual lives and relevant civilizations.”
“So I should be continuously critical with it by weighing it against new and old verified knowledge?”
“Correct, but remember, you can still use denial as a tool to survive among the still-depraved and clueless, in order to reach them later.”
“Like what Peter did with Jesus the night Jesus was arrested.”
“Yes, but in this case it would not be looked down upon.”
“Great. Leave me a copy of your book, and we’ll see what happens.”
“I have it online. You have free access to it.”
“Thanks. Good day, and good luck.”
“Thank you. Same to you.”
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“Well, that went rather well. Do you think your philosophy will take hold on that planet?”
“Yes, since the planet is a planet of writers with an established audience; the question is how quickly will the enlightenment occur, and how much conflict will that have to endure.”
“What about the Planet of Voracious Readers?”
“The writers have them covered… readers get their ideas and attitudes from writers…”
“So NOW we will go to the Planet of the Technologically Progressing Self-Lobotomized Beings…?”
“No, Earth is not on our schedule.”
“Very funny.”
“To the Planet of the Technologically Progressing Self-Lobotomized Beings, then.”
“To the Planet of the Technologically Progressing Self-Lobotomized Beings!”
“Don’t get so excited about it — it will be a nightmare…”
“Well, we are quite well-versed in nightmares, our being horrors ourselves…”
“I wouldn’t be so confident, there are nightmares out there worse than even horrors can imagine…”
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Copyright 2018 by Wayne P. Biro
aka Numi Who
All Rights Reserved by Wayne P. Biro
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