`` As if - the explanation of Emergence

Blog 2026


A mind not to be changed by place or time. Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n - John Milton - Paradise Lost


Index


I thought that I'd better start putting out a blog page for 2026, mainly because I keep on coming up with extra thoughts on all kinds of things, and those thoughts need a home, somewhere.


12 April 2026 - Paradox and Comedy


Paradox is the most fundamental thing, it is also the essential element in comedy, it is present in the beginning of time and the beginning and end of life. It is present in every example of astrology, and I would guess in every quantum process, and certainly in every gravitational effect. Paradoxically, Jim Al Khalili’s book Paradox has very little to do with paradoxes, and more to do with scientific mysteries. .


When William the conqueror landed at Hastings he fell on the beach, but apocryphally seized two handfuls of sand claiming ‘I have already seized England’, presumably for it only to have paradoxically escaped between his fingers as sand does. .


I have explained many times how paradox causes Existence to exist by creating numbers. .


A joke only works because it brings together two or more disparate concepts and juxtaposes them such that in being together and apart they create humour. In fact comedy may be the truest and most scientific test of any complex human matter, far more scientific than any psychological test, because if they don’t laugh, it ain’t funny. .


At the beginning of life we apparently incarnate as souls, both innocent as the day we were born, it being the day we were born, yet destined for certain events in life, condemned some might say by fate, or others by inherited character and position, and I, as an astrologer and reincarnationist, would say encumbered by the accumulation of meaning from many past lives. .


At the end of life we die, but it seems, to those who believe it, death is not the end, and we are reborn into life everlasting. Well, that may be a bit OTT, but our facts are eternal, and so must continue, albeit without the dubious benefit of a decrepit body. Our brains generate conscious awareness of the world around us, our self, and of others, yet being facts that awareness is eternal, it is us, and so we are eternal. Untroubled by sensory data from the immediate environment, the facts of us are freed to be nowhere, except of course they have to remain associated with all the myriad facts that they are identical with. Hence we each of us, as the current whole fact of our present state, i.e. our conscious self, have a centre of our being, a metaphorical heart, the kind of heart that has a desire, rather than the blood pumper. That centre of being, the fact of our heart, our conscious self, will inevitably and inexorably be drawn to whatever similar facts it matches. So each of us necessarily has a home in the afterlife, quite how sweet it is, or how dysfunctional, is really up to us to create during our days here on Earth. .


Yet, because we have an accumulation of numerous facts, our awareness, our consciousness, our self, is never a static thing, yes there is a centre to our experience, but as in life, there is no limit to what we can be aware of, no restriction on what we can concentrate upon – even in the darkest circumstance we can, as Pinocchio was advised to do, give a little whistle, and look on the bright side of – whatever is appropriate. .


And if you haven’t yet noticed, our hearts are the greatest paradoxes going. We are complex cases of good and bad, juxtapositions of happy and sad, there is much for which we can be glad, and things to wish we’d never had. .


The Ancient Egyptians used to think that one’s heart would be weighed against a feather in the afterlife, which I suppose must be taken as a metaphor, one that exactly echoes what I am saying, only they never explained why, and I am giving you the full Monty on why. .


10 April 2026 - Poetry and Music


I was having thoughts about poetry and music and this is in the light of Zappa's lyric that ends love is not music, music is the best. Well I can kind of see a way in which that works, because the music is an embodiment of an abstraction of life, but I was thinking that music only really works if and when it is poetic. Poetry is usually applied to words that have metre, rhyme, and or footing. But the main thing is that poetry structures meaning, thereby tying the meanings together, just as the abstractions of melody, harmony, and rhythm tie the sounds together to give music its meaning. Meaning comes from the relationship of connection, and that is present in love too, because love exists when that connection exists that forms some kind of relationship. .


Poetry can imbue any walk of life, we can see poetic justice, a term 'first coined by drama critic Thomas Rymer in 1678, the concept was intended to ensure literature upheld moral principles and provided a more satisfying sense of order than the often random nature of real life.' - Wikipedia


The ironic nature of poetic justice comes from the apparent upholding of a natural and inherent morality in the triumph of Good over Evil, unaided by any laws or enforcement, but happeing just because of the way things are. A classic example is Claudius in Hamlet, who is killed by the very poison he prepared for someone else. .


Poetic justice occurs as if the gods were meting it out, but the gods are not independent of actions, they are the actions. So poetic justice is the triumph of natural order, which is really just things being as they should be. .


Poetry then should be applicable to any walk of life, but because it relies on a harmony of meaning, rather than just the bare harmony of music, poetry is often harder to spot. We'd have to first understand the meaning of a situation, and how it plays out, before we can even begin to see the rhyming of events. .


Perhaps the most obvious examples appear in comedy. We know of the importance of comic timing, but for a situation to be funny, even though it may be many other things including tragic, there has to be the structure tying together disparate ideas that then not only gain melody, but the harmonic trust and resolution of the punchline. .


Maybe this is why humour, even when it is black, or even corny, is the one thing that enables us to truly cope with the vagaries of life.


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