To the Planet of Safely Stupid Beings (and their dog bulbs)
“So, now what are you going to do?”
“I want to write a piece pointing out how humanity is currently safely stupid.”
“But you’ve been saying that the universe is a harsh and deadly place. How can anyone be ‘safe’ in it?”
“Low threat probabilities.”
“Explain.”
“The universe has ‘settled’ enough to have allowed life to evolve to the point of haphazardly producing us — meaning beings with higher consciousness. But the universe is not absolutely ‘safe’ yet. The vastness of space itself is a hazard to dispersal and continued resources. The odds of life-annihilating events are astronomically low, but they are not zero, and they are unpredictable; and our early-warning capabilities are still feeble to non-existent, so it would be insane to completely ignore cosmic threats, not to mention microscopic threats, all of which is what safely stupid beings do. As a gamble, the safely stupid play (are guided by) the wrong odds — happily drunk on the low odds of annihilation (however unpredictable) instead of soberly facing the equally-low odds of broader, long-range survival in this universe that we have just awakened to.”
“So you are going to write a romance/ adventure/ comedy/ sci-fi/ detective/ vampire/ fantasy/ self-help/ history-rewrite novel about it that features an alpha character who carries a concealed Glock in a story that uses all of the current pulp fiction writing tropes, and which lowlife mercenary publishers will love if they can make a quick buck on it?”
“Probably not, perhaps just a short story, or an exploratory philosophical dialog.”
“Ah! A dialog. The ancient Greek philosophers, especially Plato, loved dialogs. Are you copying them?”
“No. The dialog approach just came naturally, as they must have come natural to the ancient Greek philosophers.”
“So, in effect, you both came to the same solution.”
“Yes.”
“Explain your ‘safely stupid’ perspective a bit more.”
“My term for ‘perspective’ is ‘Potentially Useful Perspective’ for obvious (if you are a deep thinker) reasons.”
“Ok. ‘Potentially Useful Perspective’.”
“Consider the sun. On a scale where it has the diameter of a hula hoop (which is roughly your arm span, if you’ve never seen a hula hoop), then the next CLOSEST star would be roughly 24,000 miles away (or roughly 38,000 kilometers). That is about three diameters of earth (which itself is roughly 8,000 miles in diameter). Now you have these two hula hoop-sized stars three earth-diameters apart. That is a LOT of safe distance, where the chances of their interacting are near zero, and that is quite a ‘settled’ universe. Then consider our star, the sun. Its lifespan, unlike previous generations of stars and larger stars, has been long enough for us to have, by chance, developed into higher conscious beings (using my classification system) via ultra-slow evolution, and the sun gives the earth roughly eight hundred million more years before it turns the earth into a cinder (and I’m going on astro-geology and associated verified astrophysical knowledge). This natural evolution time assumes that we were not instantly plopped down here by alien overlords, of which there is no evidence (yet). Now consider a universe where stars are still in close proximity. That is a lot of energy churning, and a lot of gravity chaos. I suppose the key word is ‘chaos’, which, in a settled universe, has diminished in intensity as the energy gradient of the Big Bang (to go with that theory) disperses and entropy (a lack of activity) increases. Life in the universe seems to be in a ‘sweet spot’, with enough energy to exist comfortably, and yet not too much to be totally annihilated by it too frequently.”
“So humans, just to give an example, have never seen total annihilation, and so they wrongly think that they are totally safe, and thus they think that they can remain completely stupid.”
“That is the basic premise, yes.”
“And you can apply this to a nation, too.”
“Yes.”
“Where an isolated nation does not really know the horrible nature of all the other nations, and as a result becomes safely stupid, and all within a mental paradigm of continued universal cluelessness, just to note that.”
“Yes.”
“Which leads to naive beliefs a tad on the naively liberal side, like proposing unilateral disarmament, or ignorantly romanticizing about other cultures that are still unenlightened (humans being universally clueless, remember), and thus barbaric in all of it’s full color.”
“A tad.”
“Which goes against your adage, ‘Pursue peace, it is a noble endeavor, but be armed to the teeth just in case.”
“Yes.”
“So where do the dog bulbs fit in?”
“I don’t know yet, I thought it would add interest to the title. You see, the issue is important enough to draw people to the main point with big neon signs, the main point being the potentially useful perspective that I wanted to present.”
“That humans are currently safely stupid?”
“Yes.”
“So the ‘planet’ moniker in your title is there to tap people’s fascination with astronomy, astrophysics, and science fiction, merely to draw people in, so they will be exposed to, and perhaps ponder, your potentially-useful perspective?”
“Yes.”
“So you will invent an alien race on an alien planet, with their dog bulbs, all of which really represent humans on earth, and… their pets?”
“Something like that.”
“But… now that we’ve completely blown your cover, this piece will fail.”
“In certain respects. I’ve already made my point in presenting my potentially useful perspective, that of being ‘safely stupid’, though it is not really ‘safe to be stupid’, and now we can go wherever we want to with the planet, and the alien race, and the dog bulbs.”
“Explain the ‘dog bulbs’.”
On another planet, you wouldn’t expect to find ‘dogs’ as we know them, so I must add a ‘twist’.”
“So… your twist is to have their dogs ‘pop out’ of bulbs?”
“Sort of, I suppose… there are endless possibilities…”
“Well, go ahead and explore — let’s see how powerful your spontaneous imagination is…”
“OK… ahem…
A SPONTANEOUS STUDY OF THE DOG BULBS ON PLANET TWILIGHT TAN”
“Wait. ‘Twilight Tan’? Where did THAT come from?”
“Pure spontaneity. It probably has some anime connection.”
“You’re an anime/manga fan?”
“No — my kids.”
“Oh. Continue with your dog bulbs…”
OK…
A CONTINUATION OF MY SPONTANEOUS STUDY OF THE DOG BULBS OF PLANET TWILIGHT TAN”
“Wait a minute! How can you associate ‘twilight’ with ‘tan’?”
“Um… well… the planet is orbiting a very large sun in a trinary star system with two smaller stars, which makes for a very odd orbital cycle, in which there is a ‘season’ where you can get a tan during twilight.”
“You made it sound simple.”
“It would be, in reality.”
“OK, continue with your dog bulbs…”
OK…
A FURTHER CONTINUATION OF MY SPONTANEOUS STUDY OF THE GOD BULBS OF PLANET TWILIGHT TAN”
“Don’t you mean ‘Dog Bulbs’? You typed God Bulbs.”
“God Bulbs?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmmm…. Now that would be an interesting imaginary avenue to explore… ‘god bulbs’… perhaps there is a connection to the origins of the universe in that…”
“Maybe — you’re the one with the powerful spontaneous imagination who can type 50 words a minute… so you figure it out. Continue…”
OK…
A FURTHER CONTINUATION OF THE FURTHER CONTINUATION OF MY SPONTANEOUS AND IMAGINATIVE STUDY OF THE DOG AND GOD BULBS OF PLANET TWILIGHT TAN…”
“Wait a minute!”
“If you keep interrupting me, my title will be longer than the piece itself!”
“Sorry. Continue, with your dog AND god bulbs… and let’s skip the title this time…”
“OK. Once upon a time there was a planet that had dog bulbs and god bulbs, which was inhabited by safely stupid beings…”
“That is quite a mix…”
“Yes, it is.”
“So what happens?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“OK, not ‘nothing’; but not much.”
“That makes for a very… short story… and it does not display a powerfully spontaneous imagination.”
“My bad. Blame the subject matter.”
“Come on! You can do better than that!”
“Maybe. It is a hit or miss prospect.”
“Well, TRY!”
“OK… what time is it?”
“2:29am.”
“Well, I don’t hit my peak until 3am, and I don’t think I’ll last that long — it is a hard work week at work this week, and you know I must rise at 4:45am…”
“Oh. What does your company do?”
“They make bullets.”
“”Oh, you must be very busy indeed.”
“Yes. People keep missing.”
“OK, I won’t push you so hard, but give it just a little more imaginative effort…”
“OK. So… you have this planet in an irregular orbit in a trinary star system, where, during part of the orbit, you can get a tan during twilight. Now, if this part of the orbit is to be really special, other things should ‘happen’ during it…”
“Such as the bulbs bursting open?”
“Yes…”
“and the dogs and gods bursting forth into the universe?”
“Um, yes.”
“And… and… the dogs become the gods’ best friends?”
“That would be natural…”
“And… they hold chariot races, with the dogs pulling the gods in the chariots?”
“Um… sure… why not…”
“And… and… and… and the dogs have crystal crimson diamond mind-reading collars, and the gods wear designer clothes?”
“I guess… maybe they are ghetto gods and ghetto dogs who go for that kind of stuff…”
“Ghetto dogs and gods!”
“Hush! You’ll expose them for what they are.”
“What is that?”
“Petty fools, if you ask me.”
“So the god and dog bulbs were a bust as far as adding to higher consciousnesses that consciously contribute to securing higher consciousness in a harsh and deadly universe, meaning they were a bust in adding to the number of enlightened, responsible beings in the universe?”
“More or less.”
“Meaning nothing of significance came from the bulbs.”
“Well, what do you expect from a planet inhabited by safely stupid beings?”
“I don’t know — just because a planet is inhabited by safely stupid beings doesn’t mean everything on the planet turns out stupid.”
“Well, it does in this universe.”
“What?!”
“It’s my universe, remember.”
“OK, you have me on that one. So you’re just going to ignore the physical laws of the Standard Model?”
“Sure — the model is incomplete anyway.”
“True, but it is our best model of the subatomic workings of physical reality.”
“And just beyond the edges of that model you will find the workings of my universe.”
“How so?”
“Fuzzy blue neutrons.”
“What?”
“In my universe, the strong nuclear force is actually the workings of fuzzy blue neutrons.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No — physicists have measured the force, and they can calculate with it, but they don’t really know the actual cause of it.”
“So there is still room for your ‘fuzzy blue neutrons’?”
“Yes.”
“Explain how they would work.”
“Like Velcro.”
“What!?”
“Well, how else do you explain how particles with no electrical charge find one another and clump together?”
“I don’t know — maybe they crash into each other, like asteroid bits, and meld, kind of like the Rosetta comet…
which, if you look at it, is really several large objects that look like they were tail-ended in a multi-asteroid pile-up traffic jam, which makes sense since they are pictured sitting on the LA freeway, then getting mashed together due to impact, where you do not need any ‘force’ to ‘hold them together’ — that force was spent in the collisions; you would only need a force to separate them again.”
“Perhaps. But breaking them apart would result in irregular subatomic particles, and, so far, each particle class seem to have uniform properties, in which case they would have to be ‘sticky’ instead, right?”
“Perhaps, the whole scientific field needs a lot more thought and investigation…”
“Well, I’m going with ‘stickiness’ here. Now, along with the fuzzy blue neutrons, you have the protons, all with positive electrical charges, and they would repel each other like the devil — since they are equivalent to the same poles of two magnets. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to push the same poles of two magnets together, but the closer they get, the stronger they repel one another. So ask, how do protons clump together to contribute to the nucleus of atoms? You would need something VERY sticky to hold them all together in spite of their repelling forces… hence my fuzzy blue neutrons.”
“Or a lot of high-speed impacts, such as what occurred during the Big Bang.”
“Yes, which does sound like a plausible hypothesis. But, in a sticky universe, the protons would have to be Velcro-like, too, in order to stick to the neutrons. I do have an alternate theory if you don’t like Velcro…”
“What is that?”
“Static electricity — where subatomic particles ‘cling’ to one another like cellophane.”
“Even the electrons?”
“Yes — which means the electrons are not actually ‘in orbit’ ‘around’ the proton/neutron nucleus, they are only positioned on the clump, and when they are jostled, they are dislodged then resettle on a different part of the clump — the fixed distances depending on the shape of the nucleus (explaining away quantum leaps), which depends on the number of protons and neutrons clumped together. Free electrons are those that are still kicked up, like grains of dust.”
“So the fixed distances around the nodes of the clumps that the nucleus is comprised of would explain quantum leaping, the quanta of energy, and electricity, and perhaps the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?”
“Yes — meaning there is no ‘magical quantum leap’ from one energy state, or orbit, or valence, to another by magically skipping the intervening space, it is merely the electron being dislodged from one point on the proton/neutron clump and settling at another point a fixed distance further or closer to the center of the clump, emitting, or absorbing, that specific, or ‘quantum’, amount of energy in the process, with a fixed number of positions available.”
“Very imaginative. Do you think it is an accurate description of reality?”
“Who knows. Reality has consistently surprised us on the frontiers of knowledge. My model may fail to explain quantum entanglement, or spins, or other observed phenomena, so it would not be a very good model of reality. For my imaginary universe, I’ll stick with my fuzzy blue neutrons, just to see where it goes.”
“So… wouldn’t it be interesting if you could tie-in your fuzzly blue neutrons with the god and dog blubs…”
“’Fuzzly’ and ‘blubs’?”
“It appears that you are not the only one who is weary in the middle of the night…”
“Sometimes such weariness serves imaginative efforts… now we have ‘fuzzly blue neutrons’ and ‘dog blubs’.”
“And god blubs?”
“And god blubs.”
“I don’t know — that is a bit too much imagination…”
“Yes, I agree — one must have a sense of ‘how much’ imagination a reader can digest at once.”
“So you’ll stick with the god and dog ‘bulbs’?”
“Yes, and I think I’ve beaten that topic to death now.”
“So that leaves the safely stupid beings on planet Twilight Tan.”
“Yes.”
“So… what do they do all day?”
“They spend all of their time preparing for the yearly Twilight Tan Festival.”
“It sounds utterly boring, and a bit insane.”
“It would be — to our enlightened sensibilities; but to the safely stupid, it is still thrilling and exhilarating.”
“Because their lives are otherwise utterly boring, and they have not yet properly assessed reality, and have not prioritized addressing broader survival — they leave broader survival to others, or to sheer dumb luck?”
“Yes.”
“So, in effect, they are a dead race already, unless they can become enlightened, which looks like a bleak prospect.”
“Looks like it.”
“So they’ll make little contribution toward securing higher consciousness in a harsh and deadly universe?”
“A little, in their blind, dumb way, like zoo animals, by simply existing and procreating.”
“And you’ve made a case for the dumb before?”
“Yes — there is always the chance that, given diversity, dispersal, and population (which are the three lower strategies of broader survival), it may be the dumb who survive the next cosmic calamity, out of sheer dumb luck.”
“So it would be wise to let the safely stupid remain safely stupid?”
“To a point, yes.”
“You mean it would be nice to have them enlightened, but not all of them, just for diversity’s sake?”
“Something like that. The preferred state is a state of constant flux and change, where you have no set plan, which means chaos.”
“Given the chaotic nature of the universe?”
“Yes.”
“So you are meeting chaos with chaos?”
“Yes.”
“And that gives us the best odds of survival?”
“Yes, until the Ultimate Being form is discovered.”
“And what would that be?”
“If I knew specifically, our survival in the universe would be guaranteed forever, but in general, it would be the platform for higher consciousness that can withstand anything the universe can throw at it.”
“Which we haven’t achieved or developed yet.”
“No.”
“Do the safely stupid beings even think about this?”
“No.”
“They are mentally wrapped-up in their yearly festivals instead?”
“Yes.”
“You have a funny look on your face… what are you thinking?”
“Well, I had considered another name for them…”
“What is that?”
“Primitive Zoo Beings.”
“Primitive ‘Zoo Beings’?”
“Yes.”
“Explain.”
“Being stupid, such beings would be no better than zoo animals that need taking care of, that, in effect, need a ‘guardian’ against a harsh and deadly universe, because the zoo beings consciously contribute nothing toward broader survival in it, except for blind continued existence, which does keep alive their potential of attaining higher consciousness, just to give them that.”
“So this ‘guardian’ would be an enlightened being, or beings, who is/are consciously addressing the issues of broader survival while the safely stupid run around to their festivals comparing their twilight tans?”
“Yes.”
“How do you address broader survival?”
“By addressing the Strategies of Broader Survival.”
“You mean the three strategies that microbes have used for billions of years now for their broader survival — Increasing Population Diversity, Increasing Population Dispersal, and Increased Population Numbers, and the additional strategies that higher consciousness has brought to the table: Extended Reason, Proactive Exploration, Discovery, Problem Solving and Implementation, and Higher Technology?
“Yes.”
“Well, if I were to write a synopsis of your story, it would be about seeing a lot of mental waste going on, and to its own peril, however astronomically low the odds are for total annihilation, which, being a very broad problem, should be addressed, and where instead you have gods and dogs issuing forth from bulbs and then engaging in trivial pursuits, and safely stupid beings who are wholly consumed with twilight tans and yearly festivals, in effect frivolously frittering away their time and energy, when they could instead be consciously contributing to broader survival, since they are among the few species that have that mental capacity, if not the only species, which would be even more tragic if they were not enlightened.”
“That is the underlying framework of the story. Very good. But there is my Pinwheel of Life to consider.”
“How so?”
“Well, if you did consciously engage the issue of broader survival, you would occasionally need Rest & Relaxation, and this would legitimize the Twilight Tan Festival.”
“As entertainment, because it would serve Rest & Relaxation, which we all need from time to time?”
“Yes.”
“It seems like we can end this rambling, spontaneous imaginative effort here, then.”
“Yes, somewhere around here — I should get a bit more sleep, tomorrow is another fourteen-hour work day, and I have to rise early.”
“Well, sweet dreams.”
“Thanks.”
“Couldn’t you have made them Cat Bulbs?”
“GOOD NIGHT!”
