Aerik Arkadian

Guarantees are boring

Aerik Arkadian
2–3 minutes

Imagine for a moment that you are a god. You exist outside of the confines of time and space… you can do whatever you want. Create a universe? No problem. Watch a billion years of life evolve in front of your eyes? Done.

The thing is… within the realm of infinity, which has zero confines, even creating universes can get boring.

So you eventually get the urge to experience some of that life firsthand. You, as a god, decide to go to sleep one night to dream that you are just a mortal in one of your universes. The first night, you want to experience what it’s like to be a king… so you dream about that. The next night, you dream about falling in love and having a family. And the next night, you dream about being a sailor exploring the seas.

Those are all fun experiences, but remember… you have infinite time to have infinite dreams. Once you’ve dreamt them all, even that gets boring, too. During the roughest moments of the dreams, you still know that you’re in full control. There’s no real conflict, no true feeling of risk, no heart-stopping surprises — you always know the plot… and you’re going to wake up as a god regardless.

What’s left for entertainment?

Only one thing. You have to forget who you are.

The next night, you decide to dream again… except this time, the life you live will be random… and you won’t remember that you’re a god. For the purposes of the dream, you’ll actually think you’re a living, flesh and blood human… someone who can die, someone who experiences true fear and true joy, someone who can grow or fail or succeed or… you get the idea.

Does that sound like fun? It must be… because here you are now, still dreaming that dream.

Well… that’s an interesting thought at least. Maybe it isn’t so far from the truth.

It’s a bit like picking a character and playing through an RPG. Since we can all do that, I guess it makes everyone a god in their own right.

Risk is the point of everything. Guarantees are boring.

Daily writing prompt
What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.
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9 responses to “Guarantees are boring”

  1. michael branscáth Avatar
    michael branscáth

    Reminiscent of Alan Watts’ early speeches. If you aren’t familiar with him, you should check out some of his explorations into Hinduism. It’s been too long since I last listened to his speeches, so I can’t point to a specific session, but you may be interested in his approach.

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    1. Aerik Arkadian Avatar
      Aerik Arkadian

      Hmm. Actually, you know… I don’t think I am familiar. I kind of feel like I recognize the name, but I couldn’t tell you who he is; however, that doesn’t mean I haven’t repeated something that he said and someone else regurgitated! But now I’m going to have to check him out.

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      1. michael branscáth Avatar
        michael branscáth

        Here’s one about god getting bored. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckiNNgfMKcQ

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Aerik Arkadian Avatar
        Aerik Arkadian

        I haven’t heard that one before, but I have a thing with recognizing voices… and his does sound very familiar. I really like these kind of thought experiments.

        It’s all quite reminiscent of ACIM or even the writings of Don Miguel Ruiz, which I’m sure pulled from other sources that I may not be aware of.

        At the risk of rambling, I have my own worldview, which I developed years ago from more of a quasi-scientific or logical standpoint rather than a purely spiritual one. All of these explanations try to explain the “myth” of what we’re doing here… the same type of thing humans have been doing for thousands of years… telling stories to help us understand what we don’t understand. They’re all different stories to explain the same thing, yes, but you can kind of lay them on top of each other and see the pattern emerge.

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      3. michael branscáth Avatar
        michael branscáth

        Alan Watts did a lot with religion and spirituality and finally settled on Taoism as being where he settled in on. He was very popular when he was alive around the beat and Zen folks because he could reduce complex concepts into digestible chunks of thought experiments. His approach was the polar opposite of his contemporary who went by Wei Wu Wei, but who also had a valid approach towards his teaching style that forces you to accept that logic does not help you understand Zen better (very Rinzai).

        Ramble on!

        A bit of a Golden Bough approach informed by the current technology/science (e.g. string theory or quantum physics)?

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      4. Aerik Arkadian Avatar
        Aerik Arkadian

        You always inspire me to read more. At one point when I have downtime, I’m just going to go back through our comments and pick random philosophers and books you’ve mentioned to read or re-read.

        Alright man, do you have your tinfoil hat ready? I hope so.

        First, let me map out the “dimensional levels” as I see them — or at least their rough equivalents…

        5th Dimension (or potentially higher) – outside the confines of time and space. This is our true point of existence.
        4th Dimension – outside the perceived confines of time, but still bound to space. This is more or less the summerlands and where the reincarnation cycle happens.
        3rd Dimension – confined by both space and time. This is where we *think* we are in the here and now.

        Essentially, “we” (or rather, a portion of us) got bored of our incorporeal existence in higher dimensions and decided to experience things as more individuated consciousnesses. Either for entertainment or for enlightenment, we developed technology to “digitize” ourselves in lower dimensions, perhaps just as simply as we might pick up a game controller here and play a game.

        The original plan was to play a few “levels” and then return to the 5th dimension, but the process of “boxing” our minds into three dimensions unexpectedly cut us off from our memory and we basically forgot why we came here and we also forgot how to unplug from the system.

        The rest of “us” who are still in the 5th dimension have tried to fix the problem, occasionally sending prophets and masters to try to remind us where we really are.. but… it’s a bit like trying to explain a sphere to a circle — there just aren’t words.

        There’s a bit more to it. I’ve seen it in my dreams and it makes sense to me, but I’m also aware of how it sounds.

        *removes tinfoil hat*

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      5. michael branscáth Avatar
        michael branscáth

        Sorry about not responding earlier, but my day got away from me yesterday and I didn’t want to just scan what you wrote and click a star.

        Not very tin foil hat, actually…

        You might be surprised (or not) to see that the essence of this is in Hindu beliefs. Different jargon, but the same theme. Life is a game that we play with ourselves to amuse ourselves. And, because it is no fun to play games where you know the outcome, we have made it part of the rules to “forget”. Think of chess: When it reaches a checkmate situation, even a few moves down the line but self-evident to everyone involved, we call it what it is (checkmate), clear the board and start again without bothering to play to the already-determined outcome.

        You description above follows some of the highly-refined theoretic structures of the Hindu belief systems (upon which core Theravāda Buddhism is based; Zen is kind of it’s own thing and might not be recognizable to some Buddhists — but I deviate from our conversation).

        I am very much out of “practice” with my understanding of Hindu belief system, but I would encourage you to read or listen to Alan Watts’ speeches on that — not because his explanation is the best, but it might be the most entertaining. I dug outside of his works and confirmed that, with a few minor liberties, he generally gets to the point nicely. For background, he started off as and Anglican priest (and did some interesting talks on Christianity) who then started chasing Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen and, by the time of his death, had decided that he was going to settle on being a Taoist because he felt he was a a Taoist all along and didn’t quite realize it.

        And, if you’d rather not go his route, it wouldn’t hurt to find some modern commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita. It can be a very convoluted text, so it helps to have someone to point out the interconnections.

        Of course, that’s only if you want to affirm something similar to your theory. I wish I could point to to more chapter and verse or give you a direct link, but it has been years since I investigated any of this material and I’ve got it all in a jumble as a result.

        Throw away the tin hat and rejoice that others basically share that theory (if maybe slightly different in concept in places).

        Liked by 1 person

      6. Aerik Arkadian Avatar
        Aerik Arkadian

        No worries there my friend. There are rarely days that don’t get away from me in some fashion.

        That’s all very interesting. I guess I’m pretty unfamiliar with Hindu beliefs — I know some concepts, but not the big picture. As soon as I finish this season of interviews and videos, I’ll have a bit more time to do some leisure reading. In the meantime, I’m sure I can find some more Alan Watts speeches on YouTube and put them on in the background. I’m totally fine listening to interpretations at the moment, but I’ll eventually want to investigate the source texts myself and draw my own conclusions.

        It’s honestly not something I talk about openly a lot, outside of maybe my wife and a few random “deep” conversations over the years, but it’s kind of cool to know that others might share the same beliefs! Thanks, Michael.

        Liked by 1 person

      7. michael branscáth Avatar
        michael branscáth

        Glad I could at least stir the pot.

        Have a great day, Aerik.

        Liked by 1 person

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