I accidently over 100 pages of Philosophical crap

[TEAM_DERRICK]

“
Consider light,” the old man said. “Our world appears
infused with light’s energy. But what is light?”
“It’s made of photons,” I said, thinking that was a start. By
then I should have known better. I think he ignored my answer.
“If you were in a spaceship racing a beam of light, and
you were moving at ninety-nine percent the speed of light,
how much faster would the light be?”
“About one percent of the speed of light, obviously. I
don’t know the miles per hour.”
“Not according to Einstein. He proved that the light
beam would be faster than your rocket ship by the speed of
light, no matter how fast you are traveling.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. But it sounds vaguely
familiar. Did he really say that?”
“Yes, and it is accepted as fact in the physics world.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “If I’m traveling ninety-nine
percent as fast as the light beam, in the same direction as the
light, the light beam can’t be faster than me by the same
speed as if I weren’t moving at all.”
“It’s ridiculous indeed. But scientists claim it is proven.”
“What if two rocket ships were racing the light beam
and one was ninety-nine percent as fast as light and the
other was fifty percent as fast? The light can’t be faster than
both of them by exactly the speed of light.”
“And yet it would be.”
“Okay, that’s just plain crazy,” I replied. “You see, the
light beam should be speeding away from the slower ship
faster than it would be pulling away from the fast ship.
That’s common sense.”
“It’s common and it’s wrong, according to scientific
tests,” he argued. “It turns out that time and motion and
the speed of light are different for all observers. We don’t
notice it in daily life because the difference is very slight for
slow-moving objects. But as you approach the speed of
light, the differences become evident.
“It is literally true that no two people share the same
reality. Einstein proved that reality is not one fixed state.
Instead, it is an infinite number of unique realities, depend-
ing on where you are and how fast you are moving.

“If I were a passenger in the slow rocket ship that you
used in your example, I would observe you pulling away
from me at high speed. But from the perspective of the light
beam, neither of us is moving at all. Both versions of reality
are verifiably true, yet they are absurd when considered
together.”
“So what the heck is light?” I asked.
“Light is the outer limit of what is possible. It is not a
physical thing; it is a boundary. Scientists agree that light
has no mass. By analogy, think of earth’s horizon. The hori-
zon is not a physical thing. It is a concept. If you tried to
put some horizon in a bucket, you couldn’t do it.
“Yet the horizon is observable and understandable. It
seems to be physical and it seems to have form and sub-
stance. But when you run toward the horizon, no matter
how fast you go, it seems to stay ahead of you by the same
distance. You can never reach the horizon, no matter how
fast you move.”
He continued. “Light is analogous to the horizon. It is
a boundary that gives the illusion of being a physical thing.
Like the horizon, it appears to move away from you at a
constant speed no matter how fast you are moving. We
observe things that we believe are light, like the searchlight
in the night sky, the cloud-red sunset. But those things are

not light; they are merely boundaries between different
probabilities.
“Consider two plants. One is in direct light and the
other is in perpetual shadow. The lighted plant experiences
more possibilities because it lives longer and grows bigger
and stronger. Eventually it will die, but not before it experi-
ences many more possibilities than its shaded counterpart.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’m having trouble imagining light as
not being a physical thing. How can it influence physical
things if it isn’t physical itself?”
“There are plenty of nonphysical things that affect the
world,” he said. “Gravity is not physical, and yet it seems to
keep you from floating off the Earth. Probability is not
physical, but it influences a coin toss anywhere in the uni-
verse. An idea is not physical and it can change civilization.”
“I don’t think ideas are an example of something non-
physical changing civilization. The brains of the people in-
volved are physical things, and they influence our bodies,
which are physical. I don’t see how ideas really enter into it,
except in the way we label things. Ideas don’t float around in
space by themselves. They’re always associated with some-
thing physical in our brains.”
“Suppose I write a hurtful insult on a piece of paper and
hand it to you,” he replied. “The note is physical, but when

you look at it, the information enters your mind over a
pathway of light. Remember that light has no mass. Like
magnetic fields, light exists in no physical form. When the
insult on the note travels across the light path from the note
to your eyes it is completely nonphysical for the duration of
the trip. The insult encoded in the light is no more real than
a horizon. It is a pure transfer of probability from me to
you. When the insult registers in your mind, physical things
start to happen. You might get angry and your neck and
forehead might get hot. You might even punch me. Light is
the messenger of probability, but neither the light nor the
message has mass.
“When we feel the warmth of sunlight, we are feeling
the effect of increased probabilities and, therefore, increased
activity of our skin cells, not the effect of photons striking
our skin. Photons have no mass, the scientists tell us. That
is another way to say they do not exist except as a concept.”
He continued. “You might have heard it said that light
is both a particle and a wave, sometimes behaving like one,
sometimes like the other, depending on the circumstance.
That is like saying sometimes your shadow is long and
sometimes it is short. Your shadow is not a physical thing; it
is an impression, a perception, left by physical things. It is a
boundary, not an object.

“Light can be thought of as zones of probability that
surround all things. A star, by virtue of its density, has high
probability that two of its God-dust particles will pop into
existence in the same location, forcing one of them to
adjust, creating a new and frantic probability. That activity,
the constant adjusting of location and probability, is what
we perceive as energy.
“The reason you cannot catch up to a light beam, no
matter how fast you travel, is that the zone of probability
moves with you like your shadow. Trying to race light is like
trying to run away from your own thoughts.
“The so-called speed of light is simply the limit to how
far a particle can pop into existence from its original loca-
tion. If a particle pops into existence a short distance from
its original position, the perceived speed of that particle will
be slow. If each new appearance is a great distance from the
starting point, the perceived speed will be much faster.
There is a practical limit to how far from its original distance
a particle is likely to appear. That limit is what gives light an
apparent top speed.”
“My brain hurts,” I said.

[TEAM_DERRICK]

“
Why do people have different religions?” I asked. “It
seems like the best one would win, eventually, and we’d all
believe the same thing.”
The old man paused and rocked. He tucked both hands
inside his red plaid blanket.
“Imagine that a group of curious bees lands on the out-
side of a church window. Each bee gazes upon the interior
through a different stained glass pane. To one bee, the
church’s interior is all red. To another it is all yellow, and so
on. The bees cannot experience the inside of the church
directly; they can only see it. They can never touch the inte-
rior or smell it or interact with it in any way. If bees could
talk they might argue over the color of the interior. Each
bee would stick to his version, not capable of understanding
that the other bees were looking through different pieces of

stained glass. Nor would they understand the purpose of the
church or how it got there or anything about it. The brain
of a bee is not capable of such things.
“But these are curious bees. When they don’t under-
stand something, they become unsettled and unhappy. In
the long run the bees would have to choose between per-
manent curiosity—an uncomfortable mental state—and
delusion. The bees don’t like those choices. They would
prefer to know the true color of the church’s interior and its
purpose, but bee brains are not designed for that level of
understanding. They must choose from what is possible,
either discomfort or self-deception. The bees that choose
discomfort will be unpleasant to be around and they will be
ostracized. The bees that choose self-deception will band
together to reinforce their vision of a red-based interior or
yellow-based interior and so on.”
“So you’re saying we’re like dumb bees?” I asked, try-
ing to lighten the mood.
“Worse. We are curious.”

[TEAM_DERRICK]

“
You’re very fit,” the old man observed.
“I work out four times a week.”
“When you see an overweight person, what do you
think of his willpower?”
“I think he doesn’t have much,” I said.
“Why do you think that?”
“How hard is it to skip that third bowl of ice cream? I’m
in good shape because I exercise and eat right. It’s not easy,
but I have the willpower. Some people don’t.”
“If you were starving, could you resist eating?”
“I doubt it. Not for long, anyway.”
“But if your belly were full you could resist easily, I assume.”
“Sure.”
“It sounds as if hunger determines your actions, not so-
called willpower.”

“No, you picked two extremes: starving and full,” I
said. “Most of the time I’m in the middle. I can eat a little
or eat a lot, but it’s up to me.”
“Have you ever been very hungry—not starving, just
very hungry—and found yourself eating until it hurt?”
“Yes, but on average I don’t eat too much. Sometimes
I’m busy and I forget to eat for half a day. It all averages
out.”
“I don’t see how willpower enters into your life,” he
said. “In one case you overeat and in the other case you sim-
ply forget to eat. I see no willpower at all.”
“I don’t overeat every time I eat. Most of the time I
have average hunger and I eat average amounts. I’d like to
eat more, but I don’t. That’s willpower.”
“And according to you, overweight people have less of
this thing you call willpower?” he asked.
“Obviously. Otherwise they’d eat less.”
“Isn’t it possible that overweight people have the same
amount of willpower as you but much greater hunger?”
“I think people have to take responsibility for their own
bodies,” I replied.
“Take responsibility? It sounds as if you’re trying to
replace the word willpower with two new words in the hope
that I will think it’s a new thought.”

I laughed. He nailed me.
“Okay, just give it to me,” I said, knowing there was a
more profound thought behind this line of questioning.
“We like to believe that other people have the same level
of urges as we do, despite all evidence to the contrary. We
convince ourselves that people differ only in their degree of
morality or willpower, or a combination of the two. But
urges are real, and they differ wildly for every individual.
Morality and willpower are illusions. For any human being,
the highest urge always wins and willpower never enters into
it. Willpower is a delusion.”
“Your interpretation is dangerous,” I said. “You’re say-
ing it’s okay to follow your urges, no matter what is right or
wrong, because you can’t help yourself anyway. We might as
well empty the prisons since people can’t stop themselves
from committing crimes. It’s not really their fault, accord-
ing to you.”
“It is useful to society that our urges are tempered by
shame and condemnation and the threat of punishment,”
he said. “It is a useful fiction to blame a thing called
willpower and pretend the individual is somehow capable of
overcoming urges with this magical and invisible force.
Without that fiction, there could be no blame, no indigna-
tion, and no universal agreement that some things should

be punished. And without those very real limiting forces,
our urges would be less contained and more disruptive than
they are. The delusion of willpower is a practical fiction.”
“I’ll never look at pie the same way,” I said. “But what
about people with slow metabolisms? They get fat no mat-
ter how little they eat.”
“Have you ever seen pictures of starving people?” he
asked.
“Yes.”
“How many of the starving people in those pictures
were fat?”
“None that I’ve seen. They’re always skin and bones.
But that’s different.”
“It’s very different but still, according to your theory,
some of those people should be starving to death while
remaining fat.”
I didn’t have an answer for that. I was happy when he
changed the subject.

[TEAM_DERRICK]

“
What makes a holy land holy?” he asked.
“Well, usually it’s because some important religious
event took place there.”
“What does it mean to say that something took place in
a particular location when we know that the earth is con-
stantly in motion, rotating on its axis and orbiting the sun?
And we’re in a moving galaxy that is part of an expanding
universe. Even if you had a spaceship and could fly anywhere,
you can never return to the location of a past event. There
would be no equivalent of the past location because location
depends on your distance from other objects, and all objects
in the universe would have moved considerably by then.”
“I see your point, but on Earth the holy places keep
their relationship to other things on Earth, and those things
don’t move much,” I said.

“Let’s say you dug up all the dirt and rocks and vegeta-
tion of a holy place and moved it someplace else, leaving
nothing but a hole that is one mile deep in the original loca-
tion. Would the holy land now be the new location where
you put the dirt and rocks and vegetation, or the old loca-
tion with the hole?”
“I think both would be considered holy,” I said, hedg-
ing my bets.
“Suppose you took only the very top layer of soil and
vegetation from the holy place, the newer stuff that blew in
or grew after the religious event occurred thousands of years
ago. Would the place you dumped the topsoil and vegeta-
tion be holy?”
“That’s a little trickier,” I said. “I’ll say the new location
isn’t holy because the topsoil that you moved there isn’t
itself holy, it was only in contact with holy land. If holy land
could turn anything that touched it into more holy land,
then the whole planet would be holy.”
The old man smiled. “The concept of location is a use-
ful delusion when applied to real estate ownership, or when
giving someone directions to the store. But when it is
viewed through the eyes of an omnipotent God, the con-
cept of location is absurd.
“While we speak, nations are arming themselves to fight
for control of lands they consider holy. They are trapped in
the delusion that locations are real things, not just fictions
of the mind. Many will die.”

[TEAM_DERRICK]

“
So what good is all this?” I asked. “Let’s say you con-
vinced me that probability is the best way to understand the
universe and that probability is the essence of God. How
does that help me? Should I pray to this God of yours? Do
I need to satisfy him in some way?”
“Probability is the expression of God’s will. It is in your
best interest to obey probability.”
“How do I obey probability?”
“God’s reassembly requires people—living, healthy people,”
he said. “When you buckle your seat belt, you increase your
chances of living. That is obeying probability. If you get drunk
and drive without a seat belt, you are fighting probability.”
“I don’t see how I’m helping God’s reassembly,” I said.
“I just deliver packages. I’m not designing the Internet or
anything.”

“Every economic activity helps. Whether you are pro-
gramming computers, or growing food, or raising children,
or cleaning garbage from the side of the road, you are con-
tributing to the realization of God’s consciousness. None of
those activities is more important than another.”
“What about good and evil? Do they exist in your
model?” I asked.
“Evil is any action that might damage people. Probabil-
ity generally punishes evildoers. Since most criminals are
captured and jailed, overall the people who hurt others tend
to pay. So evil does exist and, on average, it is punished.
“Life has a feel and flow to it. Usually you know instinc-
tively when you are working with probability on your side and
when you are fighting it. When you take your education seri-
ously, for example, you are greatly increasing your probability of
contributing to God’s reassembly. When you love and respect
others and procreate responsibly, you are living within the safety
cone of probability. You are, in a sense, fulfilling God’s will.”
“That sounds like karma,” I said. “When you do good
things, good things come back to you.”
“Yes, but good things do not return in a one-for-one
manner. Individual actions are not directly rewarded. It is
only on average that doing good improves the quality of life
for you and the people around you.”

“Does God forgive people, in a manner of speaking?”
“Yes, essentially, by exerting control over the averages of
human activity and not the individual acts. Every person has
the opportunity to improve his average contribution to soci-
ety regardless of what he has done in the past.”
“What about an afterlife? Where’s the payoff? What dif-
ference does it make to me whether I contribute to society
or not? I’ll die anyway, eventually. Why should I care if God
gets conscious or not?” I asked.
“God will become conscious whether you as an individ-
ual are in harmony with probability or not. God controls
the averages, not the individuals. Your short-term payoff for
contributing to God’s consciousness is fewer problems in
your daily life, less stress, and more happiness.
“Stress is the cause of all unhappiness and it comes in infi-
nite varieties, all with a common cause. Stress is a result of fight-
ing probability, and the friction between what you are doing and
what you know you should be doing to live within probability.”
“That sounds simplistic,” I said. “Sometimes stress just
happens to you because you’re in the wrong place at the
wrong time. Let’s say a family member dies of old age.
That’s stressful but there’s nothing you could do about it.”
“Stress cannot be eliminated from your life. But you can
reduce stress by being in harmony with probability. You can

deal with the death of a loved one more easily if you have
done proper estate planning and are mentally prepared for
the inevitable. If you have been a good friend to many peo-
ple and stayed close to your family, the loss will be softened.
If you allow your mind to release the past instead of trying
to wish the deceased back to life, or wishing you had done
something different, then your stress will be less.”
“What about the afterlife? Are all the benefits here and
now or is there something later?” I asked.
“Over time, everything that is possible happens. That is
a fundamental quality of probability. If you flip a coin often
enough, eventually it will come up heads a thousand times
in a row. And everything possible will happen over and over
as long as God’s debris exists. The clump of debris that
comprises your body and mind will break down and disin-
tegrate someday, but a version of you will reappear in the
future, by chance.”
“Are you saying I’ll reincarnate?”
“Not exactly. I’m saying a replica of your mind and
body will exist in the distant future, by chance. And the
things you do now can either make life more pleasant or
more difficult for your replica.”
“Why would I care about a replica of me? That’s a dif-
ferent guy.”

“That distinction is an illusion. In your current life,
every cell in your body has died and been replaced many
times. There is nothing in your current body that you were
born with. You have no original equipment, just replace-
ment parts, so for all practical purposes, you are already a
replica of a prior version of you.”
“Yes, but my memories stay with me. The replica of me
in the distant future will have none of the memories and
feelings that comprise my life,” I said.
“There will be many replicas of you in the future, not
just one. Some will have lives similar to yours, with similar
memories and feelings. The replicas will be different from
you only in concept, not in practical terms.”
“The thing I like about your view of God is that it’s easy
to follow the rules. All I have to do is go with probability.”
“Sometimes it is easy,” he said. “Other times it will be
hard to sort out the right probabilities. Today, the news
reported that teens who publicly commit to avoiding sex
have more success in abstaining, compared to those who
don’t. What would you conclude about the probabilities in
that story?”
“Obviously it helps to make the public commitment.
That improves your odds.”
“Perhaps. Or maybe the teens who wanted to abstain
were the only ones who were willing to publicly commit. Or
maybe the teens who made the public commitments were
more likely to later lie about their rate of sex. Probability is
simple but it is not always obvious.”

[TEAM_DERRICK]

The old man rocked some more and smiled at me. “You’re
alone much of the time.”
He was right. I enjoyed being alone. I had friends, but
I was always happy to get back home.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Your pupils widen when I talk about ideas.”
“They do?”
“There are two types of people in the world, my young
friend. One type is people-oriented. When they make conver-
sation, it is about people—what people are doing, what some-
one said, how someone feels. The other group is
idea-oriented. When they make conversation, they talk about
ideas and concepts and objects.”
“I must be an idea person.”

“Yes. And it causes trouble in your personal life but you
don’t realize how.”
“That’s rather presumptuous of you. What makes you
think I have trouble in my personal life?” I had to admit he
was right. Everyone has an imperfect personal life, but for
me that imperfection was almost a defining principle.
He continued, “Idea people like you are boring, even to
other idea people.”
“Hey, I’m insulted,” I said, not really feeling so. “I will
admit I’m not the life of any party. Whenever I try to inject
something interesting into a conversation everyone gets
quiet until someone changes the topic. I think I’m pretty
interesting but no one else does. All of the popular people
seem to babble about nothing, but I usually have something
interesting to say. You’d think people would like that.”
“Actually, the popular people only seem to be babbling,” he
countered. “In fact, they talk about a topic that everyone cares
about; they talk about people. When a person talks about peo-
ple, it is personal to everyone who listens. You will automatically
relate the story to yourself, thinking how you would react in
that person’s situation, how your life has parallels. On the other
hand, if you tell a story about a new type of tool you found at
the hardware store, no one can relate to the tool on a personal
level. It is just an object, no matter how useful or novel.”

“Okay, so how do I become more interesting?”
“If I gave you advice, would you follow it?”
“Maybe. It depends on the advice.”
“No, you wouldn’t follow my advice. No one has ever
followed the advice of another person.”
“Now you’re just being disagreeable,” I said. “Obviously
people follow advice all the time. That’s not a delusion.”
“People think they follow advice but they don’t. Humans
are only capable of receiving information. They create their
own advice. If you seek to influence someone, don’t waste
time giving advice. You can change only what people know,
not what they do.”
“Okay then. Can you give me some information that
would help my personal life?”
“Perhaps,” he said, clenching his red plaid blanket
tighter around his tiny body. “What topic interests you
more than any other?”
“Myself, I guess,” I confessed.
“Yes, that is the essence of being human. Any person
you meet at a party will be interested in his own life above
all other topics. Your awkward silences can be solved by ask-
ing simple questions about the person’s life.”
“That would be totally phony,” I said. “First of all, it
would be like interrogating him. Secondly, I couldn’t possibly

pretend to be interested in the answers. If he turns out to
be some shoe salesman living with his mother in Albany, my
eyes will glaze over.”
“It would seem phony to you while you asked the ques-
tions, but it would not seem that way to the stranger. To
him it is an unexpected gift, an opportunity to enjoy one of
life’s greatest pleasures: talking about oneself. He would
become more animated and he would instantly begin to like
you. You would seem to be a brilliant and talented conver-
sationalist, even if your only contribution was asking ques-
tions and listening. And you would have solved the
stranger’s fear of an awkward silence. For that he will be
grateful.”
“That solves the stranger’s problem, but I have to listen
to this guy drone on about himself. The cure is worse than
the disease.”
“Your questions to the stranger are only the starting
points. From there you can steer him toward the thing you
care about most—yourself.”
“Wouldn’t he want to talk about himself instead of me?”
“When you find out how others deal with their situa-
tions it is automatically relevant to you,” he said. “There
will always be parallels in your life. Find out what you and
he have in common, then ask how he likes it, how he deals

with it, and if he has any clever solutions for it. Perhaps you
both have long commutes, or you both have mothers who
call too often or you both ski. Find that point of common
interest and you will both be talking about yourself to the
delight of the other.”
“What about sharing my opinions on important
things?” I asked. “I’m always getting into debates with peo-
ple. It seems like I always have a more thought-out view of
things and I feel like I have a responsibility to set people
straight. Sometimes, though, I wish I could just shut up.
But when you hear the crazy views that some people have—
actually, most people—how can you just let it slide?”
“Have you ever been in traffic behind someone who
doesn’t move when the light turns green, so you honk your
horn, then you realize the car is stalled and there is nothing
the driver could have done?”
“Yeah, I’ve honked. It’s embarrassing,” I said.
“Most disagreements are like my example. Two people
have different information, but they think the root of their
disagreement is that the other person has bad judgment or
bad manners or bad values. In fact, most people would share
your opinions if they had the same information. If you
spend your time arguing about the faultiness of other peo-
ple’s opinions, you waste your time and theirs. The only

thing than can be useful is examining the differences in your
assumptions and adding to each other’s information. Some-
times that is enough to make viewpoints converge over time.”
“Hey, if you can teach me to get along with women, I
could sure use that.”
“I can tell you some things.”
“I’ll take whatever help I can get.”
“Women believe that men are, in a sense, defective ver-
sions of women,” he began. “Men believe that women are
defective versions of men. Both genders are trapped in a
delusion that their personal viewpoints are universal. That
viewpoint—that each gender is a defective version of the
other—is the root of all misunderstandings.”
“How does that help me?” I asked.
“Women define themselves by their relationships and
men define themselves by whom they are helping. Women
believe value is created by sacrifice. If you are willing to give
up your favorite activities to be with her, she will trust you.
If being with her is too easy for you, she will not trust you.
You can accomplish your sacrifices symbolically at first, by
leaving work early to buy flowers, canceling your softball
game to make a date, that sort of thing.”
“Why does it seem like the rich and famous guys get all
the women?” I asked.

“Partly because the rich and famous are capable of mak-
ing larger sacrifices. The average man might be sacrificing a
night of television to be with a woman. The rich and famous
man could be sacrificing a week in Tahiti. There is much to
be said about the attraction of power and confidence exuded
by a rich and powerful man, but capacity for sacrifice is the
most important thing.”
“What do men value?” I asked.
“Men believe value is created by accomplishment, and
they have objectives for the women in their lives. If a
woman meets the objectives, he assumes she loves him. If
she fails to meet the objectives, he will assume she does not
love him. The man assumes that if the woman loved him she
would have tried harder and he always believes his objectives
for her are reasonable.”
“What objectives?”
“The objectives are different for each man. Men rarely
share these objectives because doing so is a recipe for disas-
ter. No woman would tolerate being given a set of goals.”
“So what should a guy do if the woman in his life
doesn’t meet these secret objectives? How can he get her to
change?”
“He can’t,” he replied. “People don’t change to meet
the objectives of other people. Men can be molded in small

ways—clothing and haircuts and manners—because those
things are not important to most men. Women can’t be
changed at all.”
“I’m not hearing anything helpful here.”
“The best you can hope for in a relationship is to find
someone whose flaws are the sort you don’t mind. It is
futile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someone
who is capable of significant change; that sort of person
exists only in our imaginations.”
“Let’s say I find the person whose flaws I don’t mind,”
I said. “The hard part is keeping her. I haven’t had much
luck in that department.”
“A woman needs to be told that you would sacrifice any-
thing for her. A man needs to be told he is being useful.
When the man or woman strays from that formula, the other
loses trust. When trust is lost, communication falls apart.”
“I don’t think you need to trust someone to communicate.
I can talk to someone I distrust as easily as someone I trust.”
“Without trust, you can communicate only trivial things.
If you try to communicate something important without a
foundation of trust, you will be suspected of having a secret
agenda. Your words will be analyzed for hidden meaning and
your simple message will be clouded by suspicions.”
“I guess I can see that. How can I be more trusted?”

Lie.”
“Now you’re kidding, right?” I asked.
“You should lie about your talents and accomplish-
ments, describing your victories in dismissive terms as if they
were the result of luck. And you should exaggerate your
flaws.”
“Why in the world would I want to tell people I was a
failure and an idiot? Isn’t it better to be honest?”
“Honesty is like food. Both are necessary, but too much
of either creates discomfort. When you downplay your
accomplishments, you make people feel better about their
own accomplishments. It is dishonest, but it is kind.”
“This is good stuff. What other tips do you have?”
“You think casual conversation is a waste of time.”
“Sure, unless I have something to say. I don’t know how
people can blab about nothing.”
“Your problem is that you view conversation as a way to
exchange information,” he said.
“That’s what it is,” I said, thinking I was pointing out
the obvious.
“Conversation is more than the sum of the words. It is
also a way of signaling the importance of another person by
showing your willingness to give that person your rarest
resource: time. It is a way of conveying respect. Conversation
reminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected in
some way that transcends duty or bloodline or commerce.
Conversation can be many things, but it can never be useless.”
For the next few hours the old man revealed more of his
ingredients for successful social living. Express gratitude.
Give more than is expected. Speak optimistically. Touch
people. Remember names. Don’t confuse flexibility with
weakness. Don’t judge people by their mistakes; rather,
judge them by how they respond to their mistakes. Remem-
ber that your physical appearance is for the benefit of oth-
ers. Attend to your own basic needs first; otherwise you will
not be useful to anyone else.
I didn’t know if I could incorporate his ingredients into
my life, but it seemed possible.

[TEAM_DERRICK]

“
I’ve heard of something called affirmations,” I said, taking
the opportunity to spelunk another tunnel in the old man’s
brain. “You write down your goals fifteen times a day and
then somehow they come true as if by magic. I know people
who swear by it. Does that really work?”
“The answer is complicated.”
“I have time,” I said.
“People who use affirmations know what they want and
are willing to work for it; otherwise they would not have the
enthusiasm to write down their goals fifteen times every day.
It should be no surprise that they have more success than the
average person.”
“Because they work harder?”
“Because they know what they want,” he said. “The

ability to work hard and make sacrifices comes naturally to
those who know exactly what they want.
“Most people believe they have goals when, in fact, they
only have wishes. They might tell you their goal is to get
rich without working hard, without making sacrifices or tak-
ing risks. That is not a goal, it is a fantasy. Such people are
unlikely to write affirmations daily because it would be too
much effort. And they are unlikely to be successful in any
big way.”
“So the affirmations are unnecessary?”
“They have a purpose. Writing your goals every day
gives you a higher level of focus. It tunes your mind to bet-
ter recognize opportunities in your environment.”
“What do you mean by tuning your mind?”
“Have you ever had the experience where you hear a
strange word for the first time, and then soon afterward you
hear the same word again?”
“That happens all the time,” I said. “It’s freaky. It’s as if
hearing a word for the first time makes it appear every-
where. Like fescue. I never heard of that word until I saw it
on a package of grass seed in the store last week. That night
I was at a party and some guy used the word. I’m fairly sure
I’ve never heard that word before in my entire life, then I
hear it twice in a matter of hours. What are the odds of that?

“And last night I was at my neighbor’s house down the
street, shooting some pool on his new table. I asked him if
he ever played a game called foosball. It’s that table game
where you use handles connected to little soccer players and
try to kick a wooden ball into the other guy’s goal.”
His face said that he didn’t need to know the details of
foosball table design.
“Anyway,” I continued, “we talked about foosball for
twenty minutes, how we both played it in college but hadn’t
seen a foosball table in years. I can’t remember the last time
I uttered the word foosball. Fifteen minutes later, I’m walk-
ing home and something catches my eye in an upstairs win-
dow of a neighbor’s house. I’ll be darned if it wasn’t a bunch
of kids playing foosball. I’ve gone past that house a thou-
sand times and never seen that foosball table in the window
before.”
“Your brain can only process a tiny portion of your envi-
ronment,” he said. “It risks being overwhelmed by the volume
of information that bombards you every waking moment.
Your brain compensates by filtering out the 99.9 percent of
your environment that doesn’t matter to you. When you
took notice of the word fescue for the first time and rolled it
around in your head, your mind tuned itself to the word.
That’s why you heard it again so soon.”

“It’s still a coincidence. I don’t think people are saying
fescue around me every day.”
“Yes, probability is still involved. But fescue and foosball
were only a few of the unusual words and ideas that you
tuned your brain to this week. The others didn’t cross your
path again so you took no notice of their absence. When
you consider all of the coincidences that are possible, it is
not surprising that you experience a few every day.
“A person who does affirmations takes mental tuning to
a higher level. The process of concentrating on the goal
every day greatly increases the likelihood of noticing an
opportunity in the environment. The coincidence will create
the illusion that writing down the goal causes the environ-
ment to produce opportunities. But in reality the only thing
that changes is the person’s ability to notice the opportuni-
ties. I don’t mean to minimize that advantage because the
ability to recognize opportunities is essential to success.”
“Well, maybe that’s part of it,” I said. “But I’ve heard
of some pretty amazing coincidences that happened for the
people doing affirmations. One of my friends was writing
affirmations to double his income and he got a phone call
out of the blue from a headhunter. Two weeks later he’s in
a new job at double his salary. How do you explain that?”
“Your friend had a clear goal and was willing to make

changes in his life to accomplish it,” he responded. “His
willingness to do affirmations was a good predictor of his
success, not necessarily a cause of it. The headhunter in your
example increased the pay of many people that month. Your
friend was one of them.
“People who do affirmations will have the sensation that
they are causing the environment to conform to their will.
This is an immensely enjoyable feeling because the illusion
of control is one of the best illusions you can have.”
He continued. “Another way to look at affirmations is as
a communication channel between your conscious and sub-
conscious mind. Your subconscious is often better than your
rational mind at predicting your future. If your subconscious
allows you to write ‘I will be a famous ballerina’ fifteen times
a day for a year, it’s telling you something. Your subcon-
scious is saying it likes your odds, that it will allow you to
make the sacrifices, that it will give you the satisfaction you
need to weather the hard work ahead. On the other hand, if
you try writing your affirmation for a few days and find it too
bothersome, your subconscious is giving you a clear message
that it doesn’t like your odds.”
“I don’t see why my subconscious would be better than
my conscious mind at predicting my future. I thought the
subconscious was irrational,” I said.

“The subconscious is an odds-calculating machine.
That’s what it does naturally, though not always to good
effect. If your subconscious notices that you lost money on
your last three business dealings with people who wear hats,
you’ll never trust people in hats again. Your subconscious
isn’t always right; it depends on the quality of the informa-
tion you feed into its odds-calculating engine. Luckily, the
topic your subconscious knows best is you, because it has
known you since you were in the womb. If your subcon-
scious allows you to spend ten minutes out of every busy
day writing, ‘I will double my income,’ your subconscious
likes your odds and it is qualified to make that prediction.”
“Couldn’t affirmations be more than that?” I asked.
“You made a big deal about saying things aren’t exactly
what they seem, but who’s to say that concentrating on
your goals doesn’t change probability?”
“Go on,” he said.
“Okay, imagine you’re a sea captain but you’re blind
and deaf. You shout orders to your crew, but you don’t
know for sure if they heard the orders or obeyed them. All
you know is that when you give an order to sail to a partic-
ular warm port, within a few days you are someplace warm.
You can never be sure if the crew obeyed you, or took you
to some other warm place, or if you went nowhere and the
weather improved. If, as you say, our minds are delusion
generators, then we’re all like blind and deaf sea captains
shouting orders into the universe and hoping it makes a dif-
ference. We have no way of knowing what really works and
what merely seems to work. So doesn’t it make sense to try
all the things that appear to work even if we can’t be sure?”
“You have potential,” he said.
I didn’t know what that meant.

[TEAM_DERRICK]

“
Who are you?” I asked. I didn’t know how to phrase the
question politely. The old man certainly wasn’t normal.
“I’m an Avatar.”
“Is that some sort of title? I thought it was your name.”
“It’s both.”
“Excuse me for asking this. I don’t really know how to
phrase it, so I’m just going to come out and say it—”
“You want to know if I’m human.”
“Yeah. I apologize if that sounds crazy. It’s just that . . .”
The old man waved off the end of my sentence.
“I understand. Yes, I am human. I’m a fifth-level
human; an Avatar.”
“Fifth level?”
“People exist at different levels of awareness. An Avatar
is one who lives at the fifth level.”

“Is awareness like intelligence?” I asked.
“No. Intelligence is a measure of how well you function
within your level of awareness. Your intelligence will stay
about the same over your life. Awareness is entirely differ-
ent from intelligence; awareness involves recognizing your
delusions for what they are. Most people’s awareness will
advance one or two levels in their lifetime.”
“What does it mean to recognize your delusions?”
“When you were a child, did your parents tell you that
Santa Claus brought presents on Christmas Day?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I believed in Santa until kindergarten,
when the other kids started talking. Then I realized Santa
couldn’t get to all those homes in one night.”
“Your intelligence did not change at the moment you real-
ized that Santa Claus was a harmless fantasy. Your math and
verbal skills stayed the same, but your awareness increased. You
were suddenly aware that stories from credible sources—in this
case your parents—could be completely made up. And from
the moment of that realization, you could never see the world
the same way because your awareness of reality changed.”
“I guess it did.”
“And in school, did you learn that the Native Americans
and the Pilgrims got together to celebrate what became
Thanksgiving in the United States?”

“Yeah.”
“You figured it must be true because it was written in a
book and because your teachers said it happened. You were
in school for the specific purpose of learning truth; it was
reasonable to believe you were getting it. But scholars now
tell us that a first Thanksgiving with Pilgrims and Native
Americans never happened. Like Santa Claus, much of what
we regard as history is simply made up.”
“In your examples, there’s always learning. That seems
like intelligence to me, not awareness.”
“Awareness is about unlearning. It is the recognition
that you don’t know as much as you thought you knew.”
He described what he called the five levels of awareness
and said that all humans experience the first level of awareness
at birth. That is when you first become aware that you exist.
In the second level of awareness you understand that
other people exist. You believe most of what you are told by
authority figures. You accept the belief system in which you
are raised.
At the third level of awareness you recognize that
humans are often wrong about the things they believe. You
feel that you might be wrong about some of your own
beliefs but you don’t know which ones. Despite your
doubts, you still find comfort in your beliefs.

The fourth level is skepticism. You believe the scientific
method is the best measure of what is true and you believe
you have a good working grasp of truth, thanks to science,
your logic, and your senses. You are arrogant when it comes
to dealing with people in levels two and three.
The fifth level of awareness is the Avatar. The Avatar
understands that the mind is an illusion generator, not a
window to reality. The Avatar recognizes science as a belief
system, albeit a useful one. An Avatar is aware of God’s
power as expressed in probability and the inevitable recom-
bination of God consciousness.
“I think I’m a fourth-level,” I said, “at least according
to you.”
“Yes, you are a fourth,” he confirmed.
“But now that you’ve told me all your secrets from the fifth
level, maybe I get bumped up a level. Is that how it works?”
“No,” he said, “awareness does not come from receiv-
ing new information. It comes from rejecting old informa-
tion. You still cling to your fourth-level delusions.”
“I feel vaguely insulted,” I joked.
“You shouldn’t. There is no implied good or bad about
one’s level of awareness. No level is better or worse than any
other level. People enjoy happiness at every level and they
contribute to society at every level.”

“That sounds very charitable,” I said, “but I notice your
level has the highest number. That’s obviously the good
one. You must be feeling a little bit smug.”
“There is no good or bad in anything, just differences in
usefulness. People at all levels have the same potential for
being useful.”
“But you have to feel glad you’re not on one of the
other levels.”
“No. Happiness comes more easily at the other levels.
Awareness has its price. An Avatar can find happiness only
in serving.”
“How do you serve?”
“Sometimes society’s delusions get out of balance, and
when they conflict, emotions flame out of control. People
die. If enough people die, God’s recombination is jeopard-
ized. When that happens, the Avatar steps in.”
“How?”
“You can’t wake yourself from a dream. You need some-
one who is already awake to shake you gently, to whisper in
your ear. In a sense, that is what I do.”
“As usual, I’m not sure what you mean.”
He explained, “The great leaders in this world are
always the least rational among us. They exist at the second
level of awareness. Charismatic leaders have a natural ability

to bring people into their delusion. They convince people to
act against self-interest and pursue the leaders’ visions of the
greater good. Leaders make citizens go to war to seize land
they will never live on and to kill people who have different
religions.”
“Not all leaders are irrational,” I argued.
“The most effective ones are. You don’t often see math
geniuses or logic professors become great leaders. Logic is a
detriment to leadership.”
“Well, irrational leadership must work. The world seems
to be chugging along fairly well, overall.”
“It works because people’s delusions are, on average, in
balance. The Avatar keeps it so by occasionally introducing
new ideas when needed.”
“Do you think an idea can change the world that
much?” I asked.
“Ideas are the only things that can change the world.
The rest is details.”

[TEAM_DERRICK]

Time and need dissolved in the old man’s presence. We
talked for what could have been several days. I remember
one sunrise, but there might have been more. I never felt
tired in his presence. It was as if energy surrounded him like
an invisible field, feeding everything that was near. He was
amazing and confounding and, ultimately, beyond the
realm of words.
We talked more about life and energy and probability.
At times I lost the sense of belonging to my own body. It
was as if my consciousness expanded to include items in the
room. I stared at my hand as it rested on the arm of the
rocking chair and watched as the distinctions between wood
and air and hand disappeared. At times I felt like a kitten
lifted by the fold of skin on the back of my neck, helpless,
safe, transported.

I don’t remember leaving his house or walking to my
van, but I do remember how everything looked. The city
had bright edges. Sound was crisp. Colors were vivid.
Objects seemed more dimensional, as if I could see the sides
and backs from any angle. I heard a phone call being made
a block away and knew both sides of the conversation. I
could feel every variation in airflow.
I drove home by a route I wouldn’t normally take. I
glided through green lights without ever touching my
brakes. Pedestrians stayed on sidewalks and a policeman
waved me around an accident scene. I knew that all the peo-
ple involved were safe.
As my key entered the lock, I could see all the other
locks like mine and all the other keys that were coinciden-
tally the same. I could see the internal mechanism of the
lock as it turned, as though I were a tiny observer inside,
looking at industrial-sized equipment.
Everything in my apartment seemed three-quarters of
its original size. It was mildly claustrophobic.
I sat down at my kitchen table with the package that the
Avatar refused to accept and I stared at it for a while, won-
dering about its contents. I wanted to open it but didn’t
want anything to spoil a perfect mood. In time, however,
curiosity won.
A folded yellow note tumbled out of the box and into
my lap. I unfolded it and read its barely legible message. It
was just one sentence, but there was so much in the sen-
tence that I found myself reading it over and over. I stayed
up all that night, wrapped in the red plaid blanket that was
also in the package, reading the sentence.
“There is only one Avatar at a time.”

[TEAM_DERRICK]

“
I love that rocking chair,” the young man said to me.
How old is that thing? It looks like an antique.”
“I got it one year before the Religion War,” I said.
“I’m glad that war ended before I was born,” the young
man sighed. “I can’t imagine what it was like to be alive
then.”
“You are lucky to have missed it.”
“Were you in that war?”
“Everyone was in that war.”
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “Why do you
think the war ended? We learned in school that everyone
just stopped fighting. No one knows why. Although there
are all kinds of theories about secret pacts among world
leaders, no one really knows. You were there. Why do you
think everyone suddenly stopped fighting?”
Put another log on the fire and I’ll tell you.”
The young man looked at his watch and hesitated. He
had many more stops before lunch. Then he turned toward
the fireplace and chose a sturdy log.
“If you flip a coin,” I said, “how often does it come up
heads?”
THE END