Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Alchemical Correspondance: Underworld Transit & Blackpills

 Curtly: to get out of the underworld, take the black pill. 

 If you're in the underworld, you're there because you need to learn something. It's specifically underworld knowledge, a black pill. You can't 'escape' that's not how the cosmos works. It's just. You can't get into the underworld if you're not supposed to be there - though admittedly trying to enter can be a sin that rightly condemns you to the underworld, and so you succeed. To get out, you have to be supposed to get out. 

 Sometimes the black pill is despair. If you're in the underworld and not in despair, you're in denial (and still in the underworld). Can someone in denial leave the underworld? Naturally not. The only way out is through. Plunge directly into the heart of the darkest despair. Exit be thataway. 

 Once Nature has busted out her teaching stick, she's not going to stop walloping you until you get it. The black pill might seem bitter, but the tree-trunk-to-the-dome pill is definitely worse. Just take the black pill. Don't make Nature bust out the volcanic-bomb-to-the-cranium pill. You will regret it. 


 If you stop trying to fight Reality, then Reality stops trying to fight you. Reality knows: Existence is a perfect tit-for-tat machine. 

 Even if the pill is truly black, you don't truly have a choice. You must take it, sooner or later. 


 I think the myths messed up a bit when they said the underworld is full of gold and jewels. I mean, yes, underground literally is. Overall the underworld seems poor as shit to me. They say they can't take it with you, and they're right. Consequently the shades have nothing of value. (And they fight each other viciously for the biggest heap of nothing. Oof. If they had brought anything it would have been ruined long ago.)

 Yet it seems there is great value, even critical vitality, in the underworld journey itself. Although visiting is incredibly dangerous, it can be even more dangerous to stay away when a journey is called for. Curious. I came with little, the shades have nothing, I don't take any of it, and yet my arms are so laden with priceless artifacts I can barely walk. Santa is real, and we call him Hades Agesilaos?

 

 If you're visiting the underworld, you can't back out. The underworld doesn't obey silly Euclidean geometric rules. You're committed whether you want to be or not: transit all the way through, or die trying.  Stopping is an option, but it won't do you any good. 

 There are no side passages. No shortcuts. No trick alleys you can stealth through. Those would be escapes, and "escape" has no meaning here. Nobody is coming to save you. Someone swooping in would only multiply the chances of someone dying. They can't see your opponent, it can't see them, nor can you see theirs. If you didn't want to face your demons alone, you should have figured out a way to stay out of the underworld. Atomization is its nature. It's too late now. 

 It's too late now. 

 The battle is already joined. Denying the peril serves only the peril.

 If you get out, if you win. You will see: it's not particularly subtle.


 Try it. Scientifically. Guzzle the crap out of that black pill. Yes, that one. The one you're already staring at. See if your life gets noticeably better. Accept the mythological structure, and live the branch of the story that sucks less.

6 comments:

rezzealaux said...

do you have an opinion on alchemy as described by FMA
specifically, the ban on / inability to create a human

Alrenous said...

Christian nonsense. "Only God can create life." Nope, the consciousness transceiver is just meat.

On the other hand, do remember how insanely primitive is medical technology. I literally don't even rate it as banging two rocks together. Although creating a consciousness transceiver is merely a technical problem, it is wildly, wildly beyond anything anyone alive can do. GATTACA isn't science fiction, it's pure fantasy, relative to current capabilities.

Later I have a post about how a human brain consumes a whopping 20 watts. Which I still think of as 1/5 of a light bulb. Compare the price of a computer capable of mimicking human powers and abilities, and how much power it would eat...

rezzealaux said...

receiver as in consciousness is like EM signals? as in if two receivers were built neither would decay the other and strength would depend on proximity to signal source?

Alrenous said...

Consciousness is not physical and doesn't have the property [distance].

rezzealaux said...

Does it have the property of only residing in one receiver?

Alrenous said...

How or why consciousness is localized to one brain is unknown.
There's no known reason you couldn't have one mind with two bodies, provided the transceivers were synced in the correct way. However, the only actual scholar of consciousness is me, and I can't be arsed to find out. It depends on the details of how the transceiver works. It would be incredibly laborious to figure that out without an expensive prototype.