WEDNESDAY, MAR 9, 2022: NOTE TO FILE
The Exceptional Ones
Who Prosper Greatly (for a time)
The one true people
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: ONE-OFF PROSPERITY, FROM THE WIRES, DEATH LIFE DEATH
Abstract: In the long run, from the big view, good fortune can be bad as upslopes are followed by downslopes in non-evolvable, dissipative one-off growth systems.
COOS BAY (A-P) — A systems science fiction short considers one-off boom/bust events:
For 500 generations the Deep Sea Peoples, those living on a vast expanse of hadalic sediment, were able to get by as hunter-gatherers. They were empowered by Manna from Heaven, from bits of plankton and detritus from above, from the realm of Light empowered by Sol. Unlike the other sub-people scavengers, they had come to tell stories, stories of the One above who provided for their needs, who was to be thanked for each morsel that fell unto them.
Because they alone told stories, they came to tell of their exceptionalism, of how they were different in kind from all other hadalic life. They told stories of other lifeforms above that willingly sacrificed themselves to descend to the depths where the only People on the planet lived, so that the Exceptional Ones (EOs) could prosper as the millennia passed.
But then came the Great Event, the Great Gift from above, an event unknown to the Deep Sea Peoples' historians. It was the Whale Fall from Heaven. Praise be the One for giving Her People Her only begotten Son who died for them. Some Deep Sea Peoples told better stories that enthrall We the People who repeat them.
A black ooze came from within the Son to empower 12 generations of the Deep Sea Peoples whose growth and prosperity was unequaled in the annals of history. Great were their accomplishments and evermore numerous were the People. Some clever People were empowered to go forth and explore the vastness of the hadalic expanse. Some found osseous ruins. Some speculated they were the ruins of prior small whale falls. Some speculated that within the One True Whale Fall were bones that could last for millennia, but few listened to such mere speculations as current events were vastly of greater interest.
Some who studied the Deep Sea Peoples' trajectory wondered..., and then what? They detected bones within the Son that looked increasingly like those of outlying ruins (other than in scale). Perhaps whales come in different sizes. If the One True Whale was not different in kind from other whale-like falls, perhaps someday, in just another few generations, maybe 8 to 12, there will again be a vast expanse of sediment, differing only in the size of its osseous ruins. Such could be the condition that will come anyway. But no one on the upslope was willing to consider seeking out the condition now that will come anyway. All knew themselves to be different in kind from all other scavengers who could but hope to be like them.
But the True Son had also empowered the coming of information, the ability to foresee trajectories among some who could foresee a time when all information gained, and the writing that encoded it (and the literate), would be lost to the sediments of time. But some could foresee the possibility of preserving knowledge, even adding to it in the millennia of continence as forager-gardeners or even as hunter-gatherers of old whose organization could yet support learning and the preservation of love and understanding. They envisioned a future in which those who loved and understood the expanse of sediment they were products of, came to persist. If ever a whale, likely smaller, were to fall again, they would maximize empower by turning its energy into knowledge and understanding (information) of the highest transformity. Praise be the systems ecologists whose work enabled such understanding that alone could result in a different trajectory when cometh the next whale fall.
Such mere speculations were still of little interest to the Enthusiasts of the Son as such ideas were incompatible with Growth Everlasting. Unlike other scavengers of the Deep, the Pundit People were clever beyond belief. They would use the energy tove of the Son to develop alternative energy sources. On this they were certain, and the naysaying doomers were not. But some 'doomers' self-identified as extreme cornucopian optimists living on an abundant enough hadalic expanse (even without whale fall) able to support those who could actually love and understand it for eons to come as they evolved into endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful (until too hot the eye of heaven [Sol] shines on Gaia).
Of course there were actual doomers out there. Some were concerned that someday (in perhaps 500 million years), that ocean warming would raise the hadalic expanse to 5°C and all life (as we know it) will be over..., (so feast on the black ooze and be merry). This was a much more popular narrative than the systems ecologists could tell (that of seeking out the condition now that will come anyway while turning the Son into information rather than more and fatter, for a time, Deep Sea Peoples). That the energy of the Son would be dissipated was clear (to some). That some peoples of the Deep might rejoin their fellow scavengers someday, yet with information packages intact, was considered possible by some (if unlikely as Nature is unkind). The Deep Sea Peoples' growth culture will go extinct, perhaps not to be replaced by a viable one, especially as cultural extinction could involve species extinction. Whether information is conserved by those who may endeavor to auto-organize to form a viable ecolate civilization is not known or knowable at this time in our modern Deep Sea Peoples' trajectory.
