… an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.
Since we all create our habitual reality-tunnels, either consciously and intelligently or unconsciously and mechanically, I prefer to create for each hour the happiest, funniest and most romantic reality-tunnel consistent with the signals my brain apprehends. – Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger
Every computer consists of two aspects, known as hardware and software. (Software here includes information).
The software consists of programs that can exist in many forms, including the totally abstract. A program can be “in” the computer in the sense that it is recorded in the CPU or on a disk which is hitched up to the computer. A program can also exist on a piece of paper, if I invented it myself, or in a manual, if it is a standard program; in these cases, it is not “in” the computer but can be put “in” at any time. But a program can be even more tenuous than that; it can exist only in my head, if I have never written it down, or if I have used it once and erased it.
The hardware is more “real” than the software in that you can always locate it in space-time—if it’s not in the bedroom, somebody must have moved it to the study, etc. On the other hand, the software is more “real” in the sense that you can smash the hardware back to dust (“kill” the computer) and the software still exists, and can “materialize” or “manifest” again in a different computer.
(Any speculations about reincarnation at this point are the responsibility of the reader, not of the author.)
In speaking of the human brain as an electro-colloidal biocomputer, we all know where the hardware is: it is inside the human skull. The software, however, seems to be anywhere and everywhere. For instance, the software “in” my brain also exists outside my brain in such forms as, say, a book I read twenty years ago, which was an English translation of various signals transmitted by Plato 2400 years ago. Other parts of my software are made up of the software of Lao Tzu, Herman Hesse, my second-grade teacher, the Simpsons, the Beatles, my mother and father, George W. Bush, my various dogs and cats, Dr. Richard Dawkins, and anybody and (to some extent) any-thing that has ever impacted upon my brain. This may sound strange, but that’s the way software (or information) functions.
Of course, if consciousness consisted of nothing but this undifferentiated tapioca of timeless, traceless software, we would have no individuality, no center, no Self.
We want to know, then, how out of this universal software ocean a specific person emerges.
What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.
Because the human brain, like other animal brains, acts as an electro-colloidal computer, not a solid-state computer, it follows the same laws as other animal brains. That is, the programs get into the brain, as electro-chemical bonds, in discrete quantum stages.
- Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising.
The biosurvival winner: “I will live forever or die trying.”
The biosurvival loser: “I don’t know how to defend myself.”
The emotional-territorial winner: “I am free; you are free: we can have our separate trips or we can have the same trip.”
The emotional-territorial loser: “They all intimidate me.”
The semantic winner: “I am learning more about everything, including how to learn more.”
The semantic loser: “I can’t solve my problems.”
The sociosexual winner: “Love, and do what thou wilt.” (Anon. of Ibid)
The sociosexual loser: “Everything I like is illegal, immoral, or fattening.”
The neurosomatic winner: “How I feel depends on my neurological knowhow.”
The neurosomatic loser: “I can’t help the way I feel.”
The metaprogramming winner: “I make my own coincidences, synchronicities, luck, and Destiny.”
The metaprogramming loser: “Why do I have such lousy luck?”
The neurogenetic winner: “Future evolution depends on my decisions now.”
The neurogenetic loser: “Evolution is blind and impersonal.”
The neuro-atomic winner: “In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true, or becomes true within certain limits to be learned by experience and experiment.” (Dr. John Lilly)
The neuro-atomic loser: “I am not psychic, and I doubt anyone is.”
copyright Robert Anton Wilson
