How not to die in a room full of omnipotent people.
During the early days of Rome, the city was ruled by kings. A king is basically a super chief. That is, the chief of a clan is the most prominent member of an extended family group with an identifiable ancestor a few generations back. A tribe is made of clans, and a tribe is an extended family unit descended from a long distant ancestor. A king is simply a ruler of a local area superior to tribal chiefs. Regardless of his clan or tribe, he is just the boss, basically because he has an army to ensure his reign. Rome was originally ruled by kings.
Under the influence of the Greeks, Rome became a republic. The people elected senators. There was the realization that the ultimate power comes from the people, who must consent to be ruled. The city still needed individuals with high levels of executive power, so they came to vest certain senators with temporary war powers and other additions to their senatorial roles in order to ensure that the state had all of the tools of leadership necessary to run the republic. Those were the proconsuls. That’s essentially the way Rome ran until Augustus Caesar. To explain what happened with him, I am going to have to introduce a Roman legal concept, and I will do so via a little tangent.
Germany is a country that is partially parliamentarian in its government. The center of government is a legislative body, a parliament or congress, the lower house of which is called the Bundestag (there is also a Bundesrad, but it is essentially like the British House of Lords and isn’t that relevant). The representatives of the Bundestag appoint a Prime Minister, which in German is called a Kanzler, to rule the country much as the US President does. In German, a Kanzel is a podium. Their name for the head honcho of congress is basically “the guy at the podium.”
From there, let’s take a look at a book called Lord of the Flies. In that book, a group of boys gets stranded on an island and has to invent a society for themselves. One of the first things they did is they got a conch, a large seashell, and they said that whoever had the seashell had the right to address everyone, and when he did, everybody else had to shut up and listen to what that boy had to say.
It would seem, then, that in a democratic society ruled by senators, the guy with the power was the guy who “has the conch” and the right to make proclamations and speak without anyone else challenging him. In a sense, the German Kanzler is the like guy with the conch at the podium. He is talking. He is laying down the law. You have to shut up and listen and respect what he says.
This all comes from the ancient Roman senate. The senators would do all their political stuff, introducing bills, compromising, rewriting, etc., and when everything was said and done, they would send one of the senators up to the podium. That senator would introduce the bill for voting, read it off, manage the vote, and if it passed, he would declare the bill to be the law of the land. He would then walk off the stage away from the podium. Before he walked up to the podium, he was just a regular senator. After he left the podium, he was just a normal senator. But while he was at that podium conducting that business, his power was absolute. Everyone else had to shut up and accept what he said. The bill was a law because that senator said so.
It was determined that while he was at the podium declaring the law, he had “imperium,” the power to establish law, but only while he was performing his duty at that podium.
Then there came the day of Augustus Caesar. General Augustus had just become a senator. When that happened, he marched into the senate with a contingent of troops and told the remaining senators that henceforth he had imperium all the time. That is, he would declare the laws, and everyone else must be quiet and accept what he says, but not just while he was at that podium. All the time. He then left the contingent of troops in the senate to ensure its obedience and went out to do his thing as Rome’s first emperor. In Latin, the term for an emperor is “imperator.” The guy with imperium all the time.
That situation persisted until Emperor Diocletian introduced the concept of “dominion” by which emperors basically became superkings. The definition of emperor essentially became “a king who cannot be challenged by any other king.”
Now that we have this concept of power and how it flows, let’s talk about ultimate power. The ultimate power a human can have is volition. Will. It is most clearly expressed in thought. When you think, you will something, and it happens. If I ask you to imagine a football, if you want to comply, you can just close your eyes and think of a football, and poof, there it is.
A human can think anything they want. Nobody can stop them except through brainwashing. But right there, in that moment, that human can think whatever he wants in accord with who he is, even if he is brainwashed. All other forms of power involve contention. You have to contend with the physical environment and other people to get things done, and there will always be limits to what you can do, and things often come out as you expect, but not always, and never exactly as you expect, and getting things done can be quite difficult in various situations. Thought doesn’t work like that, though.
Now, the existence of consciousness, and with that thought, preceded the existence of reality. The definition of reality is “that which appears.” The definition of truth is “that which corresponds to reality.” In other words, reality is that which is the case, and truth is that which is real. The two words are close to synonyms. If reality is that which appears, it has to appear to someone. Let’s take a look at that someone.
So the first conscious being to exist is just sitting there thinking. The first thing he remembers is thinking that he wants a world around him, and poof, there it is. Let’s say it’s some kind of cherry orchard or something. Then he gets an idea that starts off a bit weird, but he is forming a plan for something cool. He thinks that he wants a body so that he can be seen in the world and affect it through a standard set of capabilities. Poof, there he is, standing in his orchard with hands and feet and everything a body has. Now if he wants one of those cherry trees to be half size, he could just will it to be half size, but for some reason he would rather use his body to make an axe and cut it in half. Much less precise. Much more effort. Why would he do such a thing?
Well, and this is the real kicker, the next thing he does is want there to be other people like him. That’s why he chose to have a body and work with an axe. He wants a standard system for interacting with this world he has made, and he wants others in it with him. Poof! There are three other people standing there with him. Sally, Bob, and Rick. We have some serious developments with this creation. He said he wanted these other people to be just like him. Sally, Bob, and Rick here are basically omnipotent, just like him. Let’s hope everybody gets along. Have you seen those comic books where Superman, Supergirl, Superboy Prime, and an army of Daxians get into a bar room brawl? Well, those guys are pussies compared to these four. They can think anything they want inside their heads, but they can also think anything they want OUTSIDE their heads, just like Firstdude. So how are they going to get along? What happens when one of them wills another one not to exist? Someone is going to need imperium. Someone will need to set some limits. But more on that further below.
Strangely, these four being got along perfectly. “Love” is that which harmonizes elements of a system to the effect of the functioning of that system. These four guys are the elements of the system. The function of the system is for everyone to exist in maximum harmony and joy and capability. These four love each other, and so the fact that each one of them can will anything to happen wasn’t a problem, until one day it was.
Let’s say Sally and Rick are talking. They sky is grey in this world of the cherry orchard, and they want to spice things up. Sally wants the sky to be blue. Rick wants it to be white. They discuss and discuss but cannot come to an agreement. In the end, Rick disregards Sally (lack of love = hate) and wills the freaking sky to be white. Sally, disregarded, decides to disregard Rick and just will the sky to be blue. Poof! The sky is blue. Rick is the first person to ever hate anybody, and the first person to ever not get what he wanted.
These four have now encountered something that nobody had ever experienced before: hatred and impotence. So they set about to try to figure out the mechanism by which volition becomes reality, and how these disagreements are decided. They want to know why the sky turned blue and not white. Why didn’t Rick get what he wanted and Sally did?
Two perspectives emerge. I will say here that all philosophy and religion ultimately distills down to these two perspectives. Both perspectives assume as a basis that consciousness exists within infinity. However, from there, Rick’s perspective is that reality is a consensual perception. This notion is related to the idea of philosophical idealism, if you want to take a look at that. That is, reality is what we agree that it is, so if we both want the sky to be white, poof, it’s white, and since we see white, it’s white.
That’s all there is
Depeche Mode
Nothing more than you can feel now
That’s all there is
According to Rick, whoever has the strongest will manifests their will. So the sky turned blue because Sally’s will was just stronger than his, he’d say. And further, these guys did various experiments to see how everything worked, and it looked like will is cumulative. That is, if Rick wants the sky to be white, but Bob, Sally, and Firstdude want it to be blue, it’s going to turn blue unless Rick’s will is somehow stronger than the combined harmonized wills, of Sally, Bob, and Firstdude. So strength of individual will is important, but the number of wills working in concert is also important. The more people you have thinking more intensely that something is the case increases the likelihood that it will be the case.
However, as they conduct their experiments, they find that everything always turns out how Firstdude wants it to turn out. Even when all the other three will something utterly intensely, it only happens if Firstdude wants it. Rick would say that Firstdude’s will is stronger than all the others combined.
Now, the other three, Firstdude, Bob, and Sally have a different explanation. According to them, infinity is alive, and superior to all else, even Firstdude. Whenever they disagree, infinity decides who gets their way. To boot, apparently, infinity has given Firstdude imperium. Apparently, infinity defined Firstdude in such away that Firstdude will always agree with infinity.
In order for a system to exist forever, it must be perfect. Given enough time, any flaw in the system will result in the failure of the system. A perfect system involving multiple conscious beings will require that all of those conscious beings be infinitely loving, with no hatred at all toward any living thing. Firstdude, Sally, and Bob are infinitely loving. They never really thought about Firstdude as ordering them around or subjugating their will. Everyone was doing exactly everything they wanted under Firstdude’s guidance, so nobody even knew anything about conflict, disagreement, imposition of will, or a lack of ability to affect the environment however they wanted. That is, until Rick couldn’t get on board with the sky.
So according to Firstdude et al, when he first said he wanted a world around him, he didn’t think about cherry trees. He just wanted a world. Something decided, “Firstdude wants a world around him. I’ll put him in a cherry tree orchard.” In order for Firstdude to know how to make a universe, he would have to have full understanding of everything in the universe. Every force. Every molecule. Everything. First dude wasn’t paying attention to that. And if anyone actually knew everything, they wouldn’t be able to experience anything new.
So basically, Firstdude and friends would say that infinity is alive, and he asked for a universe, so infinity gave him one and filled in all the details that weren’t on firstdude’s mind when he expressed his desire for a universe. Now in kabbalah, אין סוף (ein sof), the Hebrew word for infinity, is also a name for God. That’s what God is: living infinity of absolute love.
So that’s the two systems that underlie all religion. Rick thinks that there is no one and nothing above or around the four of them. If you want to call anything God, it’s just a kind of a force that conscious beings “use” to affect reality. Firstdude thinks that the living, loving infinity we call God determined that he, Firstdude, would by his nature, just by being and doing what he wants, express the will, nature, and desire of God.
In Hebrew, God’s name is יהוה (Yahweh), which means “he who causes to be.” Now I’m in California, and in California, issues of gender and sexuality are of paramount importance, and those issues cannot involve any glorification of the masculine, so I will talk about that translation “‘he’ who causes to be.” Why masculine? Well, Hebrew has no neuter gender. Other languages do, and there are many, Greek being one, a language with which I am familiar.
In every single language containing a neuter gender that I have ever even taken a look at, the concept of the neuter does not simply mean something neither male or female. Neuter words are associated with children, eunuchs, and those who are somehow missing their gender, who have either not yet taken on gender or who have been robbed of it, or things that are not even alive to be masculine or feminine. In Hebrew, words are either man or woman. In Greek and other languages of that type, words are either man, woman, or child.
Further, masculine and feminine are not simply two sides of a coin. It’s more like masculine is a base state, and feminine is a permutation of that base state. To borrow an illustration from linguistics, one could say the masculine is the nominative, and feminine is the oblique. So for those who have studied German, Russian, Latin, Greek, and other languages that inflect words to different forms depending on what they are doing in the sentence, masculine is the nominative, and feminine is the dative, genitive, accusative, instrumental, vocative, etc. So masculine is “the cup,” while feminine is “of the cup,” “for the cup,” “to the cup,” “by the cup,” etc.
So referring to God in the masculine, well, there is an incredibly rich symbolic and metaphoric tapestry that depends on the idea of this living, loving infinity being associated with masculine tropes such as king, father, husband, etc. But beyond that, the description of God with the masculine describes God as basic and central, and not something oriented around something else.
For the record, the Hebrew word רוח (spirit), such as is found in the term רוח הקודש (the Holy Spirit), which is equated very closely with, if not identified directly with God, is a feminine word. God is masculine, but his spirit, which he sends into the world so that his nature is present, is feminine. God is the base, his spirit is oriented around him. There is also another word, and the Christians hate this one because they see it as competing with the Holy Spirit, and it isn’t a biblical term, but rather from Jewish tradition, called שכינה (shekhina). This term speaks of the presence and appearance of God, a concept similar to the Holy Spirit. It is also feminine.
Finally on this note, in a previous post I illustrated that the monogamous love relationship between man and woman symbolizes the relationship with God and those of humanity who love him. However, we can also talk about the picture of husband, wife, and child. In this metaphor, the husband is God, the child is the element of humanity that loves him, and the wife is Firstdude. God, daddy, is out in the field wrestling the wolves off the sheep. But mom, Firstdude, is in the home with little Johnny, instructing him and showing him daddy’s nature, will, and desire, which is exactly the same as her own. So all you moms out there, don’t forget that you are basically the messiah to your kids.
Why did I use the word “messiah”? In Hebrew, the term “messiah” (משיח) means “anointed one,” a term applied to kings, high priests, and other ultimate leaders operating under God’s sanction.
But afterward David reproached himself for cutting off the corner of Saul’s cloak. He said to his men, “The LORD forbid that I should do such a thing to my lord—the LORD’s messiah—that I should raise my hand against him; for he is the LORD’s messiah.”
1 Samuel 24:6-7
There I will make a horn sprout for David;
Psalm 132:17
I have prepared a lamp for My messiah.
Thus said the LORD to Cyrus, His messiah—
Isaiah 45:1
Whose right hand He has grasped,
Treading down nations before him,
Ungirding the loins of kings,
Opening doors before him
And letting no gate stay shut
“Do not touch My messiahs;
Psalms 105:15
do not harm My prophets.” Psalms 105:15
Whoever this Firstdude may be, whether the Archangel Michael, or Jesus Christ, or the Lubavitcher Rebbe, or the Rebbe Nachman, or Maitreya, or Kalki, or whoever the heck this guy is, he has been given imperium by the living, loving infinity we call God. He is the anointed one. There is no top dog over him.
Now, these two philosophies, whether infinity is alive, the living God, or whether infinity is just a force, they are absolute. With the knowledge we have now, each of these two philosophies are unimpeachable. That is, members of both perspectives can talk all day about how they are right, citing hundreds of examples. Furthermore, they can both talk about the other as being wrong, and they can both make incredibly convincing cases for why the other is wrong citing zillions of concepts and examples.
The thing is, when all of this is said and done, one of those philosophies, and those who devote themselves to it, will be gone. And further, those of whichever philosophy ends up being wrong will experience impotence and suffering on their way out the door as their error is demonstrated. In the end, those left will all be in perfect harmony with God. And they’ll be in harmony with Firstdude, who is in harmony with God. And with Sally and Bob, who are in harmony with Firstdude and with God.
Did God give Firstdude imperium? Or is it merely that his will and his will combined with others’ is the strongest? At some point, you may want to go looking around for Firstdude. Is he the archangel Michael? Jesus? The Lubavitcher Rebbe? Krishna? Whoever he is, he has to be infinitely powerful, infinitely loving, and infinitely wise. Has anybody like that ever graced us with his (or her) presence within the pages of history?
I span a tense connection between the worlds of Christianity and the religion of Judaism, and the specifics of the identity of the messiah, specifically this Firstdude messiah over and above all the others, is a serious point of contention that in many ways causes division before it gets a chance to do anything else. I don’t concentrate on it particularly much, though I dig into the New Testament a lot due to my past and experience and knowledge in Christianity, and I’ll throw a Lubavitcher Rebbe quote in here and there because of my experience with Chabadniks. However, looking around for folks who express divinity most fully is not a vain pursuit in the whole. Whoever he is, he has to be perfect. So look around and see if you can find anyone whose power, wisdom, and loving nature are absolutely the greatest.
So all of the above has been the discussion of power and imperium, and the fact that one being has to be a kind of anchor or common denominator for all the others to conform with in order to ensure harmony. I’ve tried to do this via the thought exercise about Firstdude and Rick, Sally, and Bob, and the discussion of the implications of multiple conscious beings being omnipotent but having to limit that in order to get along.
This rings true.