Space L Clottey

Reality belongs to you

If the universe existed but there was never anyone around to see it, would the universe exist?

Picture, if you can, a planet trillions and trillions out from where humanity or any other species will ever explore, for the rest of all of time.

Now imagine a chunk in Minecraft, millions of blocks out from where the player will ever go.

Imagine a seed to a world that no one will ever type in.

It’s a common phrase of existential dread that the universe is so big and scary and we lack importance, but I beg you to consider the response:

Consciousness provides value!

Without humans, the universe wouldn’t be the same!

We are the humans who apply value to things, who look to the moon and label it with feelings of awe, who look to the stars with longing and wonder, who chart the rules of math and physics as we explore the playground we’ve woken up into.

Math knows not that we do this, the stars know not, natural selection knows not, physics knows not, the moon knows not…

For they are all just rocks! We are the ones who prescribe value to things! We think therefore reality belongs to us!

Reality belongs to you!

The universe is neither with or against us, nothing is evil except that which we label as evil…

The universe is a playground! Just like Minecraft!

The Universe is a Playground

What links a forever unexplored Minecraft seed and a forever unexplored planet, lightyears away?

They don’t matter!

Things matter when they cross our field of awareness in any fashion, because consciousness maps meaning onto things.

Consciousness is the centre of the universe.

The entire universe is simulated in your brain, remember? Everything you interact with your brain makes a map of it in your head.

Be very careful in personifying things that need not personification. Personify natural selection too much and you may start to despise how it left us with parts we no longer need that are actively harmful to our goals. Personify your genes too much and you may despise them for steering you to things the conscious part of you cares not for.

Personify these things all you want, but keep in mind they’re just metaphors.

They are unconscious. They are identical to rocks, in that fashion. 

Would you despise a rock? 

No? 

Then don’t despise anything unconscious.

I’m alone, I’m all alone.

There’s nothing else we’ve found that cares about things as much as we do —  nothing else that cares at all, really.

We’re alone in caring and having plans for the sandbox we woke up in.

Alone together, with each other.

“The Universe” isn’t a replacement for God. Don’t use its name like it is, or you’ll forget its true state: less of an entity, and more of a playground.

What is a sandbox without something to play in it?

Not the same.

Consciousness is what the universe is implemented on. Not necessarily just humans — most likely not —  but humans for now is all we know.

We’re the only things that care.

We’re not fighting anything else. Not the gods, not the laws of physics, not “system 1” nor the stars or the “universe” — we’re alone in caring.

So we can do whatever we want, reality belongs to us!

Reality belongs to you!


Space L Clottey