Saccharomyces Abbey

Taking the next step. Is there a "where" since there is no "why"?

My goal is not to know. My being is learning. Once learned, twice forgotten.

I am not smarter than you. Smarts are only assembled facts, or sassy assessments.

Wise man say, "A rich man owns an expensive car. A wealthy man owns the car factory." A wise man stays off the road, altogether.

Can one reach the end of the learning path?

Wisdom.

What do I know? I'm just this simple man who had a vision when he was a boy and decided not to have children. Yet, I have been pushed along, propelled by others who could not see my vision, always toward their goals.

What is wisdom? Can I see it in a microscopic yeast cell? Yes, I can and I do. Does an abbot provide wisdom to his abbey? Maybe.

These words will never provide wisdom. Words are symbols even simpler than I am.

Was Newton wise? I cannot dispute or compute his contribution to the depth of human understanding. His brain connections would fascinate any neuroscientist. My reading of his life history teaches me that honesty and openness with self provides the clearest path to wisdom.

Do words inform or entertain? What will humans discover that is better than words to communicate? Will another 10,000 years pass before we get beyond a keyboard? Surely not.

We can observe brain electrical patterns now. Soon some will see that brain-to-brain communication will occur when we give up the educated belief in the strengths of words. Cries of heresy will drown out understanding for many years to come.

Eventually, when we figure out that the body is more than static words or pretty images, more than body movement, more than the function of organs or fluid systems, we will replicate not just RNA and DNA but total body communication.

The years between now and then, when we not only understand the connection between brain synapses but also the hormonal responses, the tactile responses, the scent glands and muscle memory...I wonder if history will repeat itself and the closer we get to total understanding the more the barbarians want to tear apart the vessel of learning and let the accumulated liquidity pour down the drain before bothering to understand what they've conquered.

Who are the next barbarians threatening to destroy the current cycle of civilization? Are we our own berserkers, poisoning ourselves with our trancelike healing potions?

We can read others now without special technical gear. That art came before the science. Science will level the playing field for the less attuned.

Even now, criminal scientists want to install fear detectors at transportation hubs. But not every criminal exudes fear. And not everyone who is afraid has committed a crime. But the scientists are on the right track.

As we invent better and better body and brain scanners, when do we say we finally know what one specific person is thinking without having to get a baseline scan of that person in the first place? Will DNA samples collected at birth give sufficient clues to a person's lifelong pattern of living? Will a scan of a newborn's body become the person's set of fingerprints, excluding severe trauma later in life that might have changed a person's chemical makeup?

When we go from technological devices that use metallic wires to ones that use biological pathways, can we implant new personalities that let us bypass our usual emotional responses so that our lying goes undetected during intense political/business negotiations? Would we then manufacture plausible deniability?

When we learn to read whole body responses, can we remotely write them? Look at how much we write or influence body responses already, through advertising, body painting, body odoring, wall painting, etc. We indirectly manipulate the input signals to human bodies. When do we bypass the semipermeable sense organs in our communications with each other?

I am not wise. I have nothing to offer you. I have only this middle-aged body for me to use. The electrochemical connections in one part of my body have grown more complex with age, only because I keep cycling and refreshing the connections. With each cycle, the certainty of fact decreases. What I believe is not necessarily what is or was real. My friend, I know that reality is only seven letters. However, if seven of us are told to observe a street number on a mailbox, should not seven of us repeat the same number when asked what it is?

Someone says "Piccadilly" and I think "Cafeteria" while you think and say "Circus" and my brain pattern changes to "Circle" while my mouth salivates for an unknown reason.

What do I know? I am who my friends are so ask them. Whatever they answer is who I am and what I know. I know the word Marmite (which is like Vegemite) but they know what it tastes like and whether it's available in Newton Abbott.

Can we reach the end of the learning path? The wisdom of my friends says no. Tonight, yes, that's all I know.