Regression – Chapter twelve

Conrad’s feed was more preponderant than at first thought. We all know that it’s always a possibility, whenever we undertake the recording of some valuable information, to be fed back, but I would never have expected it to happen while I was already feeding something back. This is the first time I see a treble quantum entanglement, and there’s not much I can say about it, other than sharing with you my fascination. I’ve read about treble entanglements in theory, but no one has successfully done them in my time. I know for a fact that the entanglement began when Conrad inputted his knowledge on this matter. This means that my thoughts were only mine till then, but after that, everything I said in this recording was imbued with Conrad’s views. The previous chapter and this one are therefore a conjunction of my thinking and his, the same as if he were beside me, advising me, as I record this book. I can feel Conrad in my thoughts as I’m doing it. It’s an exhilarating feeling, similar to hearing a joke and repeating it or watching a film and then talking about it. 

Digression aside, let me start by emphasizing the fact that, since there’s no eternal good or evil, philosophers today don’t moralize; they just predict what the next good will be. Similar to Eastern thinkers before the first millennium, today’s philosophers always relate their theories to the source, connecting their thoughts to the essence of evolution, where the world is devoid of origin and creationist force. Hence, Conrad’s interest in this romantic story, which seems to reach the core of evolution and answer the question of the nature of life. 

Before going further into the story, I need to introduce you to you the paradox of paradise. This is a well-known paradox of our time, and it consists in the simple question: Why would we wish to live in paradise? There have been numerous reasons to wish for heaven, especially in your time, but they’ve gradually dwindled, till today we’re left mostly with one answer: eternal life. So for us, the question of paradise is a question of whether we want to live eternally or not and what this eternity should look like. Many argue that eternal life is by definition hell, since the definition of hell is: a state from which we can’t get out and in which we can’t move forward. So, many thinkers today obviate this paradox by proposing that: There’s no paradise, since perfection means stagnation and therefore hell. 

There are, nevertheless, some philosophers that argue for eternity. Their premise is that, if we are all eternal beings getting alternatively brought into and out of life, eternal life means simply the awareness of previous states of being, interrupted by states of dormant being. In that sense, we all have the capacity to become eternal, if only we could remember our previous lives. In this scenario, paradise is simply the awareness of our eternity and the relief that comes with it. The same as a gamer doesn’t get very sad when he loses a video game, because they know that they can play it again and better. This is the paradigmatic theory today: We’re on our way to reaching eternity thanks to our constant efforts toward total awareness. 

There is a third theory that, although it’s the least popular, it’s maybe the most interesting one, since it gives birth once again to the paradox of paradise. Some philosophers theorize that eternity cannot be interrupted by states of non-being or dormant being, but it must be a state of constant awareness. They explain that sleep is an attribute of mortal beings, since they need to regenerate and, in a way, reset themselves every night, reflecting in this way the mutable essence of their existence. However, eternal beings cannot alter their existence, that is, they cannot cease to exist, but they need to be in a state of constant being. Eternal humans would therefore never fall asleep and never die. They wouldn’t need regeneration, only meditative or contemplative states to arrange their thoughts and memories. Since they would be beyond death and sleep, it’s only logical that they would be able to decide when and which memories to erase, and they would even control their biological development, getting older or younger on demand. This theory is very smooth until we get to the question of paradise: what would paradise look like for these eternals? And here we bump again into the unavoidable paradox: If you can’t die or evolve out of this state of eternity in which you are, isn’t it just a convoluted version of hell? Granted, these eternals can choose to start all over again by growing younger till they become newborn babies and by erasing all their memory. The problem is that, since they are aware of this process of rejuvenation and blank slate memory, they will eventually lose interest in perpetuating it, the same as a gamer loses interest in playing a game after a while. Granted, they wouldn’t have any recollection of their previous lives, but they would feel the inanity of it all: the aimlessness of their existence. Thus, this third theory becomes just a fancy version of the first theory: only hell can be eternal. These eternal beings may have sparks of paradise, but their existence would be a hellish one since they’re trapped in a senseless state.

The paradise paradox is at the core of the existential question, and I may have bumped into a solution by mere chance, which thanks to Conrad’s input I’m now realizing. I don’t want to jump the gun on my conclusions, so I’ll follow the chain of events and the line of arguments that led to the dénouement of Valentin’s love story. This might sound vain, but it’s harder to make solid conclusions today than it is in your time, because we handle too much information and sometimes have to deal with intellectual interference, which is my case. On the one hand, Conrad’s input is like intellectual scaffolding which allows me to repair my cognitive building, but, on the other hand, it augments the incertitude of when to finish it. Because in your time, you follow a series of consecutive steps until you reach a conclusion, which you then present to society. If you go back on your steps, you do it after, as a correction or even retraction to your work. Today, we crowd-source our theories, which are corrected as we invent them. We need to be careful, however, not to skip one step of the logic path, because it may lead us to the wrong conclusion. I’m therefore a very important link in the intellectual chain, since Conrad’s knowledge is entangled with mine. Whatever conclusion I arrive at now, it will reflect on Conrad’s thoughts, since we’re now thinking in tandem. I may mislead Conrad in the same way as he may mislead me, and that’s the disadvantage of working in entanglement.

Right now, I know the conclusion I need to arrive at: that Valentin and Milena’s love story is an example of a paradoxical paradise, but I still don’t know how to arrive there. My first premise is that their romance is like paradise: a desirable state. The questions that arise from that premise are: are they free to get out of this state and can they move forward in it? And if they do, do they get out of paradise or remain in it? Can there be more than one paradise, or maybe paradise is a succession of desirable states? If that were the case, we could avoid the issue of the stagnation of paradise and maybe also the issue of freedom. 

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Read more: Chapter Thirteen

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soyjuanma86

I'm a writer born in Argentina, but currently living in Poland. I work as an English and French teacher, translator and copywriter.

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