Okay, so we all like to do this philosopho-theoretico-mumbo-jumbo song and dance. Thinking is good. Writing our thoughts down is good. Doing this internet back and forth is good… as far as it goes.
I don’t know about you, though, but I just can’t stand sitting down in front of this glowing screen for hours on end just to find some kind of intellectual stimulation.
Confession: I am people who needs people.
So what you gotta do is simple. Come out of the shadows and rid yourselves of your cloaks. Stand up and raise your hands and shout, “Hello… here I am!”
Hello, I am Dennis from Tampa. I am 30 years old and I like to be in the middle of deep philosophical conversations. In fact, I came up with my own metaphysical system given by the statement: Time-Identity transcends Space-Difference. Do you want to know what this means? Let’s talk it over, shall we? What about you? Do you have any theories of your own? If you do, then tell me how they work.
I can’t work with any of you guys if you don’t at least give me a clue that you’re real. Otherwise, I’ll have to go on assuming that you’re some AI experiment going on at MIT.
I mean, just what the hell is this internet thing? All of these infinitely shallow avatars wandering around, disembodied from everything substantial? What are you all so afraid of?
You want to know something totally off the wall about me? A few years back, I was in my “conspiratorial” phase. I was going all over the internet trying to fit together all of the pieces, just like Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. I wanted to know who was the man behind the man behind the man. I thought that I had things pretty well figured out, so I would make up large signs and hold them on the side of the road. I was holding up one sign about JFK just outside of the University of South Florida when a school reporter came up to me and started interviewing me.
A week or two later, I was on the campus of USF at the weekly flea market thing that they have, and I was talking to the guy at the athiest booth. Then, this other guy at the same booth asked me if my name was Dennis. I asked him how in the hell he could possibly know that. He told me that I sounded like that guy he read an article about, and he also said that I was his new “hero.” He was also into the conspiracy theory thing, and he thought that I could be in danger because of what I was saying. Everything about him was highly humorous, however, so I wasn’t exactly in fear.
Anyway, this guy was a worker at USF in his mid-late 50’s, and I was 27 at the time. He told me that he was a “South Italian” from Queens, and had converted to being a Sufi Muslim many years before. Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam. He invited me to a prayer and a meeting with some Muslim students on campus. Not having anything better to do with myself, I happily agreed. I then began to meet some of the other Muslims, and they took me to a mosque. As this was during the Ramadan season, the whole atmosphere at the moque was highly festive with everyone breaking their fasts.
I have to say that the experience I had praying with all of those guys was one of the most peaceful and calming things I had ever done. There were people of all ages and nationalities lined up shoulder to shoulder doing their prayer rituals. Everybody was always helping each other out. It was good stuff. In fact, I undertook their “conversion” ceremony where you repeat a whole bunch of things in Arabic back to the Imam in front of everyone else. Then, they all came up to hug me and call me their brother. I would tell them all of my conspiracy theories, and they would eat it up like candy.
That whole “Muslim” period of my life just lasted a few months, but it was an experience that I would never give back. The whole point here is that I am simple, idiotic human being that knows not what will come around the next corner. Whatever you got to say, I’m open to it. Whatever crazy thing you do, I might just want to give it a shot. I am almost completely unable to “categorize” at this point. In fact, my eyes sometimes barely even function any more. I don’t mean to say that I am in any way going blind, but that all I sometimes see are color splotches with no real context. Sometimes, life is a real trip for me.
So what do you say? Do you think maybe you can open the door maybe just a smidge here? Want to get something cool going on? Something outside of the painfully lame mainstream where you can see things coming from miles away? It may not end up being “Utopia,” but it will almost certainly be better than all of this noise.