Encylopædia Draconica

The entire Universe used to exist in a single point of infinite mass, scientifically called the Singularity. Not to be confused with the AI Singularity, the event that's expected to happen on the day we feed ChatGPT another petabyte of data and it suddenly achieves 100% on all benchmarks. (I promise we will talk about Buddhist cosmology later on)

Obviously, no one's been around when that original Singularity happened. Even me, a dragon of about 3000 years old age, is too young to have witnessed it. Furthermore, the evidence of Singularity existing comes from current mathematical models and data; it's a bit like if I tried to predict if you wear pants today based on statistical inference and a CSV file. I could achieve arbitrary correctness rate with my predictions, but it's impossible for me to know for sure unless I personally look. And even then you could argue "well these aren't pants, these are trousers" etc etc.

So it's like, we've come to believe that Singularity existed because the Elders told us. We don't like referring to them as the Elders, but throughout the history humans found it was useful to have the class of Elders in the society who seem to know how the world operates, how it originated, how it's going to further unfold; we talk about critical thinking a lot but how many people do personally go out of their way to validate the findings of the physicists? Typically, only other physicists, thus the circle closes and we get our Elders.

The importance of the concept of Singularity is that it reinforces the idea that highly structured Universe originates from highly unstructured Proto-Universe. In the event known as the Big Bang (very scientific name btw), some force caused the energy to expand rapidly which caused a chain of events that culminated in you, dear reader, being able to read about it on the Draconica blog.

The Universe didn't/doesn't stop at forming the stars and planets: locally, at small scales, the process of matter structuring itself from the chaotic state, fractally reiterates. Atoms assemble into a molecule, molecules assemble into a globula shell that absorbs the matter that helps it keeps stable and repels matter that destroy it. Globulæ can stack into multiple layers, forming simple cellular organisms. They stick together and morph into a bigger organism. This process of unstructured matter structuring further fractally reiterates.

Let's offhandedly refer to this tendency as taṇhā, which means "desire". Therefore we'll almost pretend that matter desires to behave this way, in the same way you desire an iced lemonade in the hot weather. Of course, the process we're referring to is more complicated than it seems. It has at least two components in it: the tendency to structurize and protect own structure (bhava-taṇhā — desire to exist), and the tendency of all such structures to decay and collapse (vibhava-taṇhā — desire to not exist).

There's also a third surprising layer to all of this: as universal matter follows the path of taṇhā, it develops the senses to perceive itself. This component we will call kāma-taṇhā — desire to feel. As if the Universe wanted to look at itself and comprehend itself within itself.

The forces of taṇhā naturally produce the order of things where things occur, exist, and die. Where things develop, produce offspring if they can, where things want to feel safe in the inherently unsafe world. The saṃsāra, the ever-perpetuating cycle of birth and death. The same matter is recycled over and over in the perpetual drive for increasing structural complexity, sharpening sense, advancing intelligence — all that comes from natural selection, the process that keeps taṇhā unfolding. Natural selection is impossible without the tendency of creatures to stay alive and the tendency of creatures to die. Kāma-taṇhā is coincidental to this process, as sharpening of feelings is instrumental for survival.

If there's a question every philosopher must pursue at least once, it must be the meaning of life.

Since I'm a dragon philosopher and this is a political blog, I must warn you that this question is both non-draconic and anti-political. Politics demand that you keep living and producing and reproducing for the sake of the political whole. On the other hand, dragons are immortal and don't need meaning in their life.

But why do I make such a bold claim that only mortals need to find meaning in their life? Especially as an immortal 3,000 years old dragon? Wouldn't an immortal life feel boring and empty if it was devoid of meaning? Yes, but an immortal may indulge in the emptiness and boredom in a way no mortal creature ever could, because there's no limit to their indulgement.

If a mortal creature is bored for 30 minutes, that's 30 minutes wasted. Of ~65 years of your earthly allowance you've spend some irrevocably. It makes you nervous and paranoid. But… only if you're aware of the time passing, if you can quantify time, if you treat time like a resource. Not every mortal creature is cursed with the same feelings, but only those who know too much for their own good about their mortality.

Humans study mortality like a good cook studies a potato before throwing it into a soup. A cook takes a potato and washes it, then strips it of its skin, then removes blemishes — and all the good edible tasty parts make it into the dish. The same way a person takes one's life, fills it with necessary distractions like taking care of oneself to not die earlier than one should, then the rest of the life is suffering and desires. But the same way eating raw potato isn't as tasty and nourishing, living a life without meaning is also bland and unfulfilling.

One might say that "oh it's totally possible to approach life like one approaches a raw potato", and that would be just another approach to meaning. You can't live a life like a raw potato without first training yourself to live such a life, because abandoning fears and passions and desires is a meaningful work.

So in a way you're cursed to find a meaning. A meaning is a curse. A boiled potato is a course.

Thus a circle is sealed.

Do you like reading blogs, dear reader?

For some reason, people still blog. There's some eternal fire within them that compels them to express themselves etc etc. More and more blogs are written by the machines, or machine-assisted. "It's not X, it's Y", they go, as if they compulsively need to oppose Y to X for some reason. They use em dashes excessively — and now I can't use them! Or my writing will seem machine-generated.

Machines are so good at senselessly juggling grand ideas that no other human can approach their mastery, not even me, whose entire blog consists of juggling of grand ideas. I just can't go and, like, connect two random ideas by the means of superficial similarities between them and turn it into a two pages long essay. If that was my job, then maybe, but even when humans do this for a job, they produce something so clunky and full of innocent fluff that in a way radiates the message "please don't beat me I did this for a paycheck".

But that's humans, and I'm not a human, I'm a cosmic dragon of more than 3000 years old age.

Previously I asked you if you liked reading blogs, dear reader, if you still remember. Of course, my invitation to share your experience was but a textual contraption with a sole purpose of letting me express my own opinion. I usually don't follow a blogger I'm interested in. I don't subscribe to updates. Usually I stumble upon blogs when I type a question in the search bar of the MegaCorporation website that sells ads. Blogs are the most common type of web content that appear as the answers to questions. They usually go on to explain something, for example like how I explain how I love reading blogs so much in this blog. So I turn to blogs when I need wisdom, when I don't want a simple answer, but I want to hear reasoning, the argumentation, the analysis, the half-baked assertions that lead nowhere, the emotional takes that more than anything else expose the inner world of the author. I see all kinds of personalities, I sense all kinds of souls, and that's why I love reading blogs.

But machine-generated blogs kinda suck, if I wanted to read machine prose, I could ask a chatbot.

All reasoning is philosophy, but not all philosophy is reasoning.

My dear reader might not know that I run a philosophy blog titled Draconica; and that's fine. We can't know everything. If you run a philosophy blog, I might very well not be aware of that, because that's how my awareness is limited.

"Yeah, but surely all reasoning can't be philosophy. There must be a reason why reasoning and philosophy are two different words."

Okay, okay, you can't argue with the dictionary. We can't truly say that all reasoning equals to all philosophy; that every instance of reasoning is instance of philosophy. Philosophy is the kind of thinking associated with Descartes and his famous "To be or not to be", or Aristotle and his theory of how jellyfish produce laser beams to scare away demonic presence. Did you know that the adjective "Cartesian" refers to anything related to Descartes? Where did the Des go?

Surely, everyday reasoning can't be philosophy, and we will attempt to prove that with reasoning and a little bit of philosophy. Let's say, you are at the crossroad, and the traffic light is red, and you, by employing the reasoning ability of your brain, conclude: "I must not go, or a car will hit me", so you stay. This simple line of reasoning can be expressed by the syllogism:

S1. When the traffic light is red, the road is dangerous (for me, a pedestrian).
S2. The traffic light is red.
S3. The road is dangerous (so I, a pedestrian, will not cross the road).

It's not strictly a syllogism, but rather a syllogism with tiny horns (in the parentheses); they encode the extra facts necessary to understand the context of the syllogism. If we remove the phrases in parentheses, we'd have to create an extra syllogisms:

R1. A pedestrian should not cross the dangerous road.
R2. The road is dangerous.
R3. A pedestrian should not cross the road.

We will also have define ourselves a pedestrian, so this entire reasoning is one definition and two syllogisms.

We don't usually think in definitions and syllogisms. In fact, you, a pedestrian, when you approach the traffic light, don't necessarily apply reasoning, because you're more likely just conditioned to behave a certain way when encountering the traffic light. Maybe you don't even notice the traffic light and you stay because there are other people at the crossroad and they're staying, so you stay as well. Some don't even care about the traffic lights.

But anyway, let's consider the hypothetical case where we employ the reasoning to conclude that we should stay. Surely, this must be an instance of non-philosophical thinking, a counter-example we were looking for. It does not deal with abstract problems, like what is time, or what is space, or what is mind, or what is love, or what is just, or what is fair. It deals with the concrete problem of "should I go or stay". The problem is solved not through the extensive considerations of various aspects of the problem, but via the simple reading of the traffic light. It's almost like arithmetics: if red then go; else stay.

So yes, it must be the answer. We did prove that! Congratulations, dear reader.

I haven't been posting to draconica for a while, but that isn't because I've died. If I forever stopped posting, though, you wouldn't know the difference for a variety of reasons.

Don't we all post blogs because we want to feel alive? Isn't a paper trail of publications is the only evidence for the wide world that we're living beings with thoughts, feelings, and words to be said? Personally, my habit of posting texts online is a kind of long tail of a fact that when I only began liking writing essays at school, the school was over. My urge to write wasn't over, though, so there we go. Pages upon pages upon pages.

What would you think of a person who likes to write a lot, dear reader? For me, writing is a vehicle; and me, a peasant of word craft, use this vehicle to have a slightest idea of what I think about without being too distracted. Also, it's easier to remember your thoughts when they're written down. What I do arguably more than write is jotting down little drawings. I do this a lot when I'm bored, or when I'm struggling to comprehend something, so I literally connect the dots by arcs and arrows to help me visualize things a bit.

What else do I do a lot? I hum tunes. This is an expression of something entirely different: the songs that play in my head on repeat. I would think about something and the song plays at the same time and it gets so noisy in there I just gotta hum along. Like a peasant of word craft, plowing their field of thought and humming a song to ease their burden.

And after a long month of plowing, I log into my draconica blog to document my experience to have a good old dose of feeling alive, to leave a paper trail of publications.

If I forever stop posting, know that a tune is being hummed somewhere and a field is being plown.

Do you meditate, dear reader?

I don't want to impose on my dear readers the idea that everyone should meditate. It's not a wake-up call to go and meditate. Meditation is boring. There's nothing special about meditation. If I were to do so, it'd be a bit like writing "do you exercise, dear reader? oh exercising is so cool!! it has these and these health benefits etc etc". You already know all this. If you don't, well, you will still not learn anything of that kind about meditation from this post.

Meditation is a focused concentration. To meditate, people are usually instructed to sit in a particular pose, but it's more of a spiritual tradition than requirement. Think of this pose as an instance of traditional tea ceremony over a tea party: you don't have to invoke the tradition to drink tea, and as such you don't have to invoke the tradition to meditate. In fact, worrying too much about the tradition is something that might ruin the effort to focus.

Now we kind of have to explore what is the focus and what is the concentration. These words are very similar in their meaning, and "focused concentration" sound a bit like "dead corpse". But ok, since we've already chosen that wording, let's stick with it. Focusing means pointing your attention to a particular sensation, and concentration means not letting the focus go anywhere else. The initial phase of meditation usually involves focusing on your breath. You breath in, you breath out. You notice it. It goes on for a while.

If all goes well, you will feel warmth. At least I do when all goes well. If you don't, you might feel some other internal cue that you're there. The goal of the meditation is getting you there. The state of awareness. The state of active noticing. You notice your feelings, your thoughts, your signals, your anything that is noticeable.

Why do we need to reach this state? Well, uh, you kind of usually decide in advance what you want to focus on and focus on that. The goal is never to solve a problem, meditation doesn't really solve problems. For that the usual recommendation is to go and solve the problem. That usually requires active thinking. Meditation is passive thinking: you notice, but you don't unfold your thoughts like you do. If you accidentally do, that's ok, that's what the mind does sometimes. Notice that. Remind yourself that you're meditating. Forcing thoughts away invites the thought of forcing the thought away, so you're in the active thinking phase again and it doesn't work. So reminding is a better strategy.

I didn't really answer the question of why we need to reach the state of awareness. I'm aware of that. The thing is, I can't answer this question directly. You don't need to reach this state. There's never an internal need or external need to be aware, because you're constantly aware of things anyway. But you may do fun things while you're in the state. You may repeat mantras in your mind. You may ask questions. Don't answer, just ask. Ask questions for which there are no answers. But why? Why would you do that?

Well, this kind of lets you invite these stuff deeper into your subconsciousness. You move your subconsciousness into a more receptive state then you invite things over into it. And they're integrated into you. Why? Because that's all you can do with an unanswerable question that still worries you. That's all you can do with a mantra. They have no effect otherwise. You can't ponder on them. So you do this thing.

What kind of effect should one expect from doing that? The easy answer is "none, because you shouldn't get attached to the outcome". The easy response to the easy answer then is "then I will not do that". So even thought the easy answer is the correct one, I must also give you the incorrect answer, which is "all kinds of things".

This answer is incorrect because subtle shifts you experience during meditation are not immediately noticeable. You can't have a perfect recollection of your internal state before and after the meditation. On the surface, you might experience relief, a sense of dread, a sense of having just meditated.

I didn't ask the whys to guide you into thinking that meditation is cool, but to help me articulate what is going on. A lot of times the question "why?" acts like a good pointer that prompts us to advance to the next step of the explanation when we're not sure what to say next, even if it doesn't serve a utilitarian goal.

But in conclusion I will anyway give you a utilitarian answer why you should meditate: it makes you chill.

But why be chill?..