Life is a Fractal

Lately, I’ve been going through a great deal of suffering. Sometimes I blame God for it, but that’s actually an offhand way of blaming myself for it- after all, I believe that we (humans) are part of God’s consciousness, as well as his manifestation.

You could say I’m a gnostic atheist, because I don’t believe in God as a “person”. Or more specifically, I don’t think it’s possible for a person with Gods qualities to exist- simply because “infinite” and “perfect” both require that no standard exist by which to compare. For example, Christians naively compare God to Satan, not knowing that by doing so, they are committing blasphemy, as they have misrepresented their God as being imperfect in doing so.

It’s not that perfection and infinity do not exist, but that such qualities are incompatible with the identity. We can only understand anything because the world is imperfect. Even if God exists, we will never understand anything about him- any such efforts would be a futile waste of time.

My way of solving this, is that God is a pattern, and we are the manifestation of that pattern. I think that nature is the result of balance. It’s likely that the universe is sort of like a fractal, with evolution resulting from the accumulation of iterations. As the time goes on, the iterations become exponentially smaller, and this results in the slowing of evolution, and the refining of evolutionary traits.

Once these iterations became too small to be reflected in physical form, the “soul” was born. Thus, nature is the manifestation of God, and the consciousness is the result of iterations becoming so small that they could only be expressed spiritually. Going by this model of life, that would mean that life is becoming increasingly complex. However, if my beliefs about the Big Bang (at some point the complexity will hit a wall in being able to express itself, causing it to revert to increasingly simple states, inevitably repeating in another big bang.

If life is a fractal, then Plato’s Forms are the source- the original pattern. Following this line of thought, a person can better understand life by differentiating Forms from their products.

For example, Love and Hate are not Forms (note that by “Forms” I do not mean Plato’s Forms- Plato believed both of these to be Forms; as you might note if you have read a great deal of this blog, my “influences” [like Plato] are philosophers that I often cite for comparative reasons, but my own philosophy is usually not influenced- rather, I merely note my agreement, and build of their work, so that I might have a common base when communicating my thoughts).

My belief about Forms (which Plato held as well, but since he considered “Love” a Form, he must have had different ideas about Love than I do), is that Forms must be inherently independent, and having an existence superior to all but other Forms. Because Forms are infinite, we may never know what any of the Forms are, but as I learned recently, we “know” God, not by what qualities he has, but by what qualities he does not have. Thus, by definitely knowing which qualities are not of “God”, we are one step closer to him (the truth).

Love and Hate are not Forms because they are both products of a higher existence, namely: Love is the product of Passion, Commitment and Intimacy; Hate is the product of Fear, Chaos, and Doubt. These in turn are fueled by our basic instincts- fight, or flight. While it might seem that Wars are fueled by Hatred (and thus by Fear, Chaos, and Doubt) this is not the case. These are things that cause us to flee, hide, etc.

Rather, people attack, and kills others in the name of love. On the battlefield, one fights to protect oneself and ones comrades. Wars start, not to destroy that which is feared, but to protect ones pride, and ones ideals. While it’s true that racism (for example) is motivated by fear, chaos, and doubt, the expression of it is caused by love, not hate.

A while ago (while I was still going to church, a few months back) I realized that although “evil” is caused by hatred and the 3 elements upon which it’s built, it could only be manifested when motivated by love and the 3 elements upon which it’s built. My conclusion was not that “evil” is the result of love and hatred coexisting; rather, it was that neither good or evil could coexist without the intervention of its opposite- both in perception, and the manifested reality as well.

Furthermore, Love, which is the product of a “fight” response, is also founded in the decision to accept a certain  reality; Hatred, as well as the product of a “flight” response, is founded in the decision to reject a certain reality. I’ve found that accepting particular realities lead to greater happiness, and rejecting particular realities lead to greater happiness. This also agrees with the Epicurean philosophy which claims that pleasure is the intrinsic good, and suffering the intrinsic evil.

The problem with this lies in this: By rejecting one reality, a person accepts another; by accepting one reality, one rejects another. This is one of my universal premises (although I haven’t yet added it to my “premises” page- that page needs a lot of work, as it’s been “ignored” for quite some time). This problem, among other things (and a more thorough explanation of the nature of pleasure and suffering as well) in Pig in the Middle.