Obit: The audacity of ego

Subject: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 09:20 AM

Forward


In a world where a multiverse is capable of creating itself in infinite different ways, there is a ever pervasive awareness of chaos pulling harmony apart ever so slowly or instantly in everything, as though everything is alive and aware in some way or another. This interplay of forces is aware in the hunted and prey… in the microscopic battle between phyto and photo plankton to the stalk of the lion of the wildebeest.

This struggle has been cast in every light there is. To the Greeks they called it a war between chaos and cosmos.
In Judaism, the interplay of good and evil is recognized within everyone. In every religion, the concept of love that lives to counteract chaos and hate can be found in theory if not in practice. In science and cosmology, the concept of love is like a reconstructive force that goes against the the current of space-time and entropy. In medicine this love is not just an art but the science of wooing nature to enhance the natural harmony of healing.

To Ned Needelmeyer, this knowledge was accidentally enhanced by a factor of 4 trillion, but he was as blind as everyone else to his power due to an average and active ego for years. Ned may have had such a powerful unconscious and innate knowledge of cosmic forces, laws and exceptions because of the way he came into this world.
Ned was an abortion that survived.

Ned's mother spent her entire childhood in the Great depression. A bright but defenseless young woman who grew up on her own and was largely ignored by her mother and step father. She became a teenage mother twice before Ned was seeking entry to a lifetime on Earth. She needed dental care but the state of the art of dentistry left her with all false teeth by the age of twenty, By thirty she had unnecessary surgery that included a "precautionary" hysterectomy. By 50 the hormone supplements to counter the loss of ovaries and left her with hardened arteries that led to her final cerebral stroke.


When she knew a third child was on the way, her desperation spilled over in the courage to fight back, learned from living with a sociopath husband who threatened her every Friday with knives and fists and sought forgiveness and dinner every Sunday.

Ned was the result of the comfort and passion from Al who was a kind young man who sympathized with Irene's situation and was upset by the well known abuse.

Irene soon discovered that there would be no Prince Valiant to save her. Instead she was told by her mother that she made her bed and she was going to have to sleep in it. There was no emotional support. There was no medical solution.

So during the 7th week, and seventh hour of pregnancy, she drank 6 ounces of turpentine.

Inside the placental sea a storm raged around Ned causing floods and damage to structures that was to one day become his mind in never before seen patterns that had never occurred, at least not on Earth. Delicate structures that filtered universal evolutional instinctive knowledge were damaged but not destroyed. I a way they were destroyed and decoded to see the cosmos with fresh new eyes.

Ned's urge to survive doubled and redoubled on a knife's edge for 6 days and on the seventh day he rested.
All that was to stand in the way of all the knowledge in this corner of the universe was Ned's normal healthy ego.


Ch1

What did Ned know and when did he know it?


(more?)

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 09:25 AM

I give up, what ?

Dave H

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 10:24 AM

I suspect that what Ned knew was novel. Maybe so much so, that he was not conscious of knowing it until it was no longer novel.

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 10:55 AM

I was really geting into the first 2 paragraphs
cuz i'm extremely wiskey drunk and up & open for metaphysical dialectics ...

but Ned ????? who the f..???

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 10:57 AM

I would pehaps continue to read it had you not chosen turpentine as the agent. Do you know what the ingestion of turpentine does to the host?


As to the question itself: What did Ned know and when did he know it-
I'll venture the guess that at the embryonic age of SEVEN WEEKS, he knew nothing. Nor did it have an ego.

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 10:59 AM

That is a great way of putting it Virginia.
It sounds like you have had the feeling of "knowing" things prior to their so called discovery.

I think this experience is not limited to people like Jules Verne, Tesla, Einstein or Witten but is in us all, depending upon the degree that ego obstructs the ability to "know" directly. Ego is not the only limiting factor. If one is unencumbered by the currently limited notions of time, information can be reconstructed with amazing facility.

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 11:12 AM

For purposes of sketching out this sci-fi metaphysical novel, I am open to any insight...


What does turpentine do to the host?


I was wondering about a super hero who had the ability of unlocking the super powers of everyone else. Ebbie I don't think 7 weeks is too early to change the direction of development. The earlier the more change can occur just like nudging a marble one small millmeter during its first meter of rolling on a frictionless surface... after a kilometer that 1 mm change of course will have become huge.

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 11:15 AM

nausea, incompacitation, paralysis, even death. A pregnancy might survive with the host, I suppose, but it would be the least of her problems.

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 11:23 AM

more? none for me, thanks. More cartoons would be great.

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 11:46 AM

cartoon of Treasury Secretary Gethner drawn like a nebbish rodent looking at his shadow... He looks up and says "It looks like another 7 years of recession".


Bill, I have noticed that my metaphysical/psychological themes are rather unpopular among extreme linear thinkers. Not that there is anything wrong with logical straight line thinkers ;D
Not only are people and economic behaviors irrational but the quantum Universe is "full of it".

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 01:01 PM

I'm not at all sure what your theme is, Don. Do you purport to show how a 'superbeing' got that way and when in its development?

If you were to continue this fantasy in what way would the superbeing show its powers?

I like sci fi but frankly I like futuristic musings rather than fantasy.

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 02:15 PM

not conscious of knowing [something] until it [is] no longer novel

I really hate it when that happens.

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 05:16 PM

Don...at a party after a Getaway few years ago, various bantering was going on, fueled by various beverages. Some of the Brits were impossible for me to follow as they darted from one thought to another with no (to me) discernible transition.
When I made some comment, Snuffy said to me, "I don't LIKE to think in a straight line!"
Well, neither do I at odd times, but I'm always drawn back to connections
   I guess most poetry is done by those who make strange jumps, while most science & philosophy is by us linear folks...(even when the straight line has a few kinks in it.)

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Slag
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 07:35 PM

Ned new, er..., Ned KNEW turp-itude!

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Slag
Date: 15 Mar 09 - 07:36 PM

Wasn't he that insurance salesman in "Groundhog Day"?

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Mar 09 - 10:13 AM

Bing! Ned the Head. Ned the life insurance salesman. Groundhog day "its a doozy" Bing

My idea is to develop a character who has none of the "normal filters" so he is always, largely unintentionally, speaking of future events and ancient information in non sequitorian and anachronistic words, metaphors and art.

Most of the allusions are not caught by other people until the "thing" happens. Usually the event occurs several minutes later but the bigger and most well known events come to him earlier ( as much as 5 years earlier).
The movie 'Next' does this in a serious way but treating this quasi phenomenon in a romantic comedy format or a science fictional way is what I would like to do.

Sometimes Ned seems so stupid that he is ostrasized. But when some people realize his inane comments are actually answers to questions that are not asked until minutes later, and other weird coincidences, do a small group of people benefit from Ned's "powers".

At the risk of creeping people out beyond the norm, what I hope to do is write a factual auto biography in this Woody Allenesque way to temper the actual events and pathos of "Ned's" life with laughs along the way.
At least I will be following rule number one which is write what you know.

Ned learns that one of the best ways he can use his talents is to become a hypnotist.

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Mar 09 - 10:33 AM

Bill one of my favorite books is Connections. How inventions occur.
The connections are never a straight line but borrowed from from different points in time.

My son has a linear mind. His attempts to make non geometric jumps in understanding or humor is getting better. I'm envious of his memory and math skills. His willingness to plaese and do whatever authority figures say will deliver rewards from the system...
if he doesn't get abducted and harmed by religious fanatics or military authorities first.

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 16 Mar 09 - 12:40 PM

largely unintentionally, speaking of future events Kind of like Mrs. Cake in the Discworld novels? Answers questions before they are asked or even thought of.

Subject: RE: Obit: The audacity of ego
From: Slag
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 03:32 AM

You could have Ned team up with the guy from "Momento". I am rolling on that one! What a kick!