Between [ and ] are placed the ascii translations of the hex codes, claimed by MLA to be data corruptions. Some fragments are taken from the real world, otherss only appear to be.

beginnings.txt (A4)

Straton of Stageira, On Beginnings (Fragment)

It is the grave error of many philosophers, not only of the Athenian schools but also of many others, that they begin not with observation of the cosmos as it surrounds us, but with a conclusion already in mind; and often that conclusion is that the world was created ideal, and mankind itself the greatest creation of the gods. Yet neither the world nor the gods owe mankind perfection; it is arrogance itself to presume so, and contrary to all the methods of philosophy. The honest philosopher seeks only the Truth, even if it bears no comfort; and he must begin by assuming, as Socrates said, that all he knows is that he knows nothing.

74 68 65 20 75 6E 65 78 61 6D 69 6E 65 64 20 6C 69 66 65 20 69 73 20 6E 6F 74 20 77 6F 72 74 68 20 6C 69 76 69 6E 67 [the unexamined life is not worth living]

Note. The figure of Straton of Stageira is aninvention by the game developers. The code is a famous dictum attributed by Plato to Socrates in his Apology.

contraries.txt (C4)

456E#6572.6779206973 [Energy is] F793] [BLAKE, W4574 6572 6E61 6C20#44656C6967 6874 [Eternal Delight]

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

[error]

Note. The text and the code are quotations from WIlliam Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93).

straton_of_stageira.wiki (Land B)

STRATON of Stageira (311 – 254 BC) was a Greek materialist philosopher associated with the Peripatetic school. An admirer of Aristotle, he was a proponent of empiricism and a fierce critic of philosophy that placed belief before observable truths. Though unpopular with many of his peers for his often acerbic personal manner, his commentaries on Aristotle were considered an important work. Much of his writing was lost in the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.

Note. The figure of Straton of Stageira is aninvention by the game developers.

cicero.txt (A6)

Shall the industrious husbandman, then, plant trees the fruit of which he shall never see? And shall not the great man found laws, institutions, and a republic? What does the procreation of children imply, and our care to continue our names, and our adoptions, and our scrupulous exactness in drawing up wills, and the inscriptions on monuments, and panegyrics, but that our thoughts run on futurity?

[cannot retrieve: Tusculan_Disputations 484-F5045]

What do you imagine that so many and such great men of our republic, who have sacrificed their lives for its good, expected? Do you believe that they thought that their names should not continue beyond their lives? None ever encountered death for their country but under a firm persuasion of immortality! Themistocles might have lived at his ease; so might Epaminondas; and, not to look abroad and among the ancients for instances, so might I myself. But, somehow or other there clings to our minds a certain presage of future ages; and this both exists most firmly, and appears most clearly, in men of the loftiest genius and greatest souls. Take away this, and who would be so mad as to spend his life amidst toils and dangers?

Note. Quotes taken from Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, as indicated by the text itself.

talos_principle.txt (A2)

[ARCHIVE: 260BCE-F12] [STRATON OF STAGEIRA]

Whether it is true that Daedalus constructed the giant Talos, or as others say he was the creation of Hephaestus, what we may be certain of is that he was made of bronze, and had but one vein, within which flowed a liquid substance like blood, which some claim was quicksilver, and others assert was ichor such as flows in the veins of the gods. The loss of that liquid caused him to die, as a man dies when he loses his blood.

May we not then say that Talos, though created as a machine or a toy, had all the essential properties of a man? He moved of his own volition. He spoke and could be spoken to, had wishes and desires. Indeed in the tale of the Argonauts, that was the cause of his downfall. If, then, a machine may have all the properties of a man, and act as a man while driven only by the ingenious plan of its construction and the interaction of its materials according to the principles of nature, then does it not follow that man may also be seen as a machine? This contradicts all the schools of metaphysics, yet even the most faithful philosopher cannot live without his blood.

Note. The figure of Straton of Stageira is aninvention by the game developers.

HIS1A_rome.html (land A)

[UA-HIS1A] Prof. Dr. Armin Hoolock, “The Fall of the Roman Empire: A Dialectical Approach”

\&$((? caption=”Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.” #*[ [I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.]

But, interesting as such perspectives of the decline and ultimate dissolution of the Roman Empire may be, they ultimately put too much emphasis on individual catastrophic events. The real question that must be asked is why the Roman Empire, which had dealt with so many threats and catastrophes over the years, was so incapable of responding to these later problems.

We must investigate the division of wealth, the structure of government, the location of power in Roman society. Had the Republic survived or been restored, would Rome still have fallen? What was the role of debt and slavery in creating the conditions for what we now call the Dark Ages? “Rome,” the saying goes, “was not built in a day.” It didn’t fall in a day, either.

To register for the class, please email &&&

Note. The book on the Fall of the Roman Empire is fictional. The Latin quote is from Publius Terentius Afer’s (c. 195/185 – c. 159 BC) play Heauton Timorumenos.

human_blood.txt (A8)

It is said by some that our blood is composed of infinite living agents which go up and down the highways and byways of our bodies as people in the streets of a city. &/Ecc1 41 6E 64 20 74 68 65 20 57 6F 72 64 [And the Word] One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. function(#7761 7320 6D61 6465 20 66 6C 65 73 68
) [was made flesh] And the sleep of the town, how life-like! with its change in the circulation.

[BUTLER, SAMUEL]

We are misled by considering any complicated machine as a single thing; in truth it is a city or society, each member of which was bred truly after its kind.

Note. The text is a quotation from Samuel Butler’s The Book of the Machines (caput 24). The code is a quotation from the Gospel of John.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. Gospel of John 1:14 (KJV)

error.log (A2)

CANNOT LOAD ARCHIVE [1667CE-F457] [MILTON, JOHN]

54 68 65 20 72 6F 61 64 20 6F 66 20 [The road of]
65 78 63 65 73 73 20 6C 65 61 64 73 [excess leads]
That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awaked, and found myself reposed
65 20 70 61 6C 61 63 65 20 6F 66 20 77 [e palace of w]
69 73 64 6F 6D 2E [isdom.]
Under a shade on flowers, much wondering where
And what I was, whence thither brought, and how.
20 74 6F 20 74 68 [to th]
ERROR: UNKNOWN ERROR

Note. The text is a quote from John MIlton’s Paradise Lost. The code is a quote from WIlliam Blake’s Proverbs of Hell.

the_human_machine.html (A2)

Topic #3:

One day you discover that you are not a human being, but a machine. Your life so far was real, no-one controlled you or programmed you to behave in some specific way; your physical and mental capacities are identical to those of an organic human being. But you were created in a lab.

No-one except you knows about this. Your family, your friends, they all think you are a regular human being like themselves. You could continue to live your life the way you have before and nothing would change.

How do you react?

Pay specific attention to these questions:
a) Does your concept of yourself change? Are you the same person you thought you were?
b) Does your understanding of the world itself change?
c) Do you reveal the information to others, or do you keep it to yourself? Why?

1500-2000 words. The 26th is the final deadline, no extensions will be granted. Submit via email or ##%66 61 63 65 62 6f 6f 6b 2e 63 6f 6d 2f 63 72 6f 74 65 61 6d [facebook.com/croteam]

a_simple_principle.html (A6)

<a href=”45 52 52 4F 52 3A 20 46 49 4C 45 53 20 4D 49 53 53 49 4E 47< [ERROR: FILES MISSING]

Though Straton himself never used the term, his remark about the inescapable materiality of life – that like the bronze giant Talos, “even the most faithful philosopher cannot live without his blood” – ultimately became known as the Talos Principle. What seemingly enraged many of his contemporaries and a significant number of later thinkers is the principle’s simplicity and unassailability, which (according to a fragment found in Miletus) “cut through their rhetorical webs, which sought to tangle the listener with fanciful words and thoughts of the heavens, like Alexander’s sword through the Gordian Knot.”

Diogenes Laertius makes mention of a dialogue by Anaximander of Chalcedon that expanded greatly on the Talos Principle, but that work remains lost.

Note. The figure of Straton of Stageira is aninvention by the game developers. Diogenes Laertius en Anaximander of Chalcedon are, at the other hand, existing philosophers.

classical_philosophers.lz19 (A6)

THE COMPRESSED FILE CANNOT BE ACCESSED.

NAME: classical_philosophers.lz19 (EL-1)

DESC: An extensive collection of works by the ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome. Annotated.

ERROR: Compression algorithm LZ19 not available in system EL-0.

second_thesis.txt (B7)

In Man (as the only rational creature on Earth), those natural predispositions which are intended for the use of his reason, should be completely developed only in the species, not in the individual.

Reason in a creature is a faculty for extending the rules and purposes of the use of its powers far beyond natural instinct, and knows no limits in its designs. Yet it does not act according to instinct, but requires trials, practice and instruction, in order to progress from one degree of insight to the next.

Therefore each human would have to live excessively long in order to learn how he could make full use of his natural capacities; or, if Nature had given him only a short term of life (as she indeed has), so she would require a perhaps unpredictable series of generations, each passing its enlightenment to the next, to finally develop her seeds in our species to the degree that she considers appropriate.

And that point in time must be, at least as an idea, the goal of man’s efforts, for otherwise his natural capacities would have to be regarded as largely meaningless #&& [KANT, IMMANUEL]

Note. The quote is indeed of Kant, but I haven’t been able to find the exact source.

science_magic.html (B2)

Though the term ‘science’ has only meant what it does to us for around 600 years, its practice far predates the name. There is evidence pre-Aristotle which indicates soothsayers, mystics and the like may have employed basic scientific methods to predict the future and confound their benefactors.

One anecdote concerns a palm-reader who was exposed when two wealthy clients compared their readings and found them to be identical. In 1948 the tendency to discover deep personal meaning in vague descriptions delivered authoritatively was given a name: the ‘Forer effect’. Today it is recognised in all contemporary psychological theory.

justwar_excerpt.txt (B3)

‘Democrates Alter, Or, on the Just Causes for War Against the Indians’ by Juan Ginés De Sepulveda

Written in 1547 to justify the Spanish conquest of the Americas.

“…the Spanish have a perfect right to rule these barbarians of the New World, who in humanity are as inferior to the Spanish as children are to adults, or women are to men, for there exists between the two as great a difference as, I might even say, between apes and men.

Compare, then, these gifts with those possessed by these half-men, in whom you will barely find the vestiges of humanity, who not only do not possess any learning at all, but are not even literate, and eat human flesh?

Therefore, if you wish to reduce them, I do not say to our domination, but to a servitude a little less harsh, it will not be difficult for them to change their masters.”

Note. The book mentioned exists.

philosophy_of_teeth.html (C5)

Last night I had a simple but brilliant idea. Everyone who would like to write about philosophy or spirituality, especially to make some kind of grand statement about the nature of the body and the soul, should first experience a really bad tooth infection. I don’t just mean a slight toothache, I mean the kind of hardcore infection that happens when several incompetent dentists miss a cavity in one of your back teeth and the thing keeps growing and growing until the nerve itself is really badly infected.

I mean, the pain is unimaginable. It comes in waves, and these waves drown out everything else about you. You can’t talk, you can’t move, you can’t think, there’s just pain and absolutely nothing else. It’s like your brain just gets hijacked by it.

And then? You go to the dentist, and (assuming you get a decent one) they stick some chemicals in you, which make you go numb. Then they drill a hole in you, cut the nerve – snip snip – and it’s over. Just like that, like repairing a car or a watch. Your whole existence was crippled by this tiny, tiny nerve sending electrochemical signals into your brain, and this unimaginable pain, which nearly blotted out your very consciousness, can be stopped just by a little cut.

We should call this the Toothos Principle, but that’s incredibly stupid.

blake_archive_793.html (B8)

<img src=”plate11.png”>

The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive.

And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity.

Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav’d the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects; thus began Priesthood.

Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.

And at length they pronounced that the gods had orderd such things.

Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.

Note. The text is a quote from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

mutation.html (B1)

The role of mutation in evolution is particularly fascinating. Mutation is essentially an error in the organism’s central database: a variable gets changed, a piece of information is accidentally doubled or combined with another. Most of the time, the result is the equivalent of a bug, causing anything from minor problems to complete system shutdown (i.e. death). But sometimes the new information is functional, giving the organism an advantage against the challenges it faces, in which case it has a much higher chance of being passed to the next generation.

If you consider how unlikely a beneficial mutation is, and how long it takes for such a mutation to propagate, this process can give you an amazing insight into just how vast the genetic history of each living organism 4C494 ?(6452 OVERWRITE 0465 24 F4D204 5525 24F52 [LIFE FROM ERROR] Simultaneously, it is intriguing to consider what a major role random errors have played in the evolution of life itself. The same process that has killed so many of us, often in horrific ways, is also responsible for our very existence.

hippocratic_corpus.txt (B5)

[On the Sacred Disease][400 BCE] [&$&%

Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear, and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet, and what unsavory; some we discriminate by habit, and some we perceive by their utility. By this we distinguish objects of relish and disrelish, according to the seasons; and the same things do not always please us. And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail us, some by night, and some by day, and dreams and untimely wanderings, and cares that are not suitable, and ignorance of present circumstances, desuetude, and unskilfulness.

Note. Text is a quote from Hippocrates’ On the sacred disease.

chesterton_brain.txt (B5)

The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.

Note. The text is a quote from G.K. Chesterton’s Heretics (1905), more precisely from the 20th chapter ‘Concluding remarks on the importance of orthodoxy.

bronstein_brain.txt (B5)

[ARCHIVE: 1926CE-F5112] [BRONSTEIN, LEV DAVIDOVICH]

54 68 65 20 74 72 75 65 20 6D 65 74 68 6F 64 20 6F 66 20 6B 6E 6F 77 6C 65 64 67 65 [The true method of knowledge]

The human brain is a product of the development of matter, and at the same time is an instrument for the cognition of this matter; gradually it adjusts itself to its function, tries to overcome its limitations, creates ever new scientific methods, imagines ever more complex and exact instruments, checks its work again and yet again, step by step penetrates into previously unknown depths, changes our conception of matter, without, though, ever breaking away from this basis of all that exists.

69 73 20 65 78 70 65 72 69 6D 65 6E 74 2E [is experiment]

Note. The code is a quote from William Blake’s All religions are one (1788). Bronstein is an invention by the game developers.

neuroscience.txt (B5)

Physiological History: Volunteer suffered a blood clot during infancy which resulted in a left-hemisphere stroke.

Expected Result: In normal adults the left hemisphere is used for language and other cognitive functions. Extensive damage to this part of the brain usually results in severe cognitive deficiencies.

Observed Result: Volunteer is now 17 years old, and displays only very subtle cognitive deficiency. MRIs indicate little to no activity in the left hemisphere, suggesting its usual functions have been taken on by neuron sets in the right. Volunteer’s age at the time of the stroke may have helped the brain to adapt.

third_thesis.txt (C3)

[Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose]

It remains strange that the earlier generations seem to perform their toilsome labour only for the sake of the later ones; to construct for them a step from which they can raise higher the edifice that Nature intended; and only the latest of all generations have the luck to inhabit the edifice that a long line of their ancestors (unintentionally) constructed 45 56 4F 4C 55 54 49 4F 4E 20 54 48 52 4F 55 47 48 20 49 54 45 52 41 54 49 4F 4E 0D 0A 49 54 45 52 41 54 49 4F 4E 20 54 48 52 4F 55 47 48 20 50 4C 41 59 1784CE-F112] [Evoluition through iteration, iteration through play] [KANT, IMMANUEL]

As puzzling as this may be, it is equally necessary, if one assumes the following: a species of animal possesses Reason, and must develop this capacity to its perfection, being individually mortal, but immortal in the species.

Note. The quote is taken from Immanuel Kant’s Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose (1784).

human_eye.txt (T8)

What is a man’s eye but a machine for the little creature that sits behind in his brain to look through? [ARCHIVE: 1872CE-F553] [BUTLER, SAMUEL] 65 76 65 72 79 74 68 69 6E 67 20 77 6F 75 6C 64 20 61 70 70 65 61 72 20 74 6F 20 6D 61 6E 20 61 73 20 69 74 20 69 73 [everything would appear to man as it is]

Is it man’s eyes, or is it the big seeing-engine which has revealed to us the existence of worlds beyond worlds into infinity? What has made man familiar with the scenery of the moon, the spots on the sun, or the geography of the planets? He is at the mercy of the seeing-engine for these things, and is powerless unless he tacks it on to his own identity, and make it part and parcel of himself.

Note. The text is a quotation from Samuel Butler’s The Book of the Machines (caput 24). The code is a quote from William Blake’s The marriage of heaven and hell.

human_evolution.txt (C1)

[ARCHIVE: 1872CE-F553] [BUTLER, SAMUEL]

Complex now, but how much simpler and more intelligibly organised may it not become in another hundred thousand years? Or in twenty thousand? For man at present believes that his interest lies in that direction; he spends an incalculable amount of labour and time and thought in making machines breed always better and better; he has already succeeded in effecting much that at one time appeared impossible, and there seem to be no limits to the results of accumulated improvements if they are allowed to descend with modification from generation to generation.

It must always be remembered that man’s body is what it is through having been moulded into its present shape by the chances and changes of many millions of years, but that his organisation never advanced with anything like the rapidity with which that of the machines is advancing.

Note. The text is a quotation from Samuel Butler’s The Book of the Machines (caput 24).

human_soul.txt (C6)

[ARCHIVE: 1872CE-F553] [BUTLER, SAMUEL]

If all machines were to be annihilated at one moment, so that not a knife nor lever nor rag of clothing nor anything whatsoever were left to man but his bare body alone that he was born with, and if all knowledge of mechanical laws were taken from him so that he could make no more machines, and all machine-made food destroyed so that the race of man should be left as it were naked upon a desert island, we should become extinct in six weeks.

A few miserable individuals might linger, but even these in a year or two would become worse than monkeys. Man’s very soul is due to the machines; it is a machine-made thing: he thinks as he thinks, and feels as he feels, through the work that machines have wrought upon him, and their existence is quite as much a sine quâ non for his, as his for theirs.

Note. The text is a quotation from Samuel Butler’s The Book of the Machines (caput 24).

hell.txt (Land C)

1793CE-F3922] [BLAKE, WILLIAM]

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell,

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite and holy whereas now it appears finite & corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

[BLAKE, WILLIAM] [COLLECTION: THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL] [DOCUMEN4F6E#6 52074686F7567
68742E2066696C6C7 320696D6D6 56E736974 792E() [One thought fills immensity.]

Note. The quote and the code are taken from William Blake’s The marrriage of heaven and hell, as it is identified in the text itself.

contraries.dat (T3)

54 6F 20 73 65 65 20 61 20 57 6F 72 6C 64 20 69 6E 20 61 20 47 72 61 69 [BLAKE, WILLIAM 6E 20 6F 66 20 53 61 6E 64 [To see a world in a grain of sand]

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason

Evil is the active springing from Energy.

48 6F 6C 64 20 49 6E 66 69 6E 69 74 79 20 69 6E 20 74 68 65 20 70 61 6C 6D 20 6F 66 20 79 6F 75 72 20 68 61 6E 64 [Hold infinity in the palm of your hand]

Note. The text ios a quote from Wiliam Blake’s The Marriage of heaven and hell, while the code is a quotation from Blake’s Auguries of innocence.

preservation.txt (C8)

I viewed, with a mixture of pity and horror, these beings training to be sold to slaughter, or be slaughtered, and fell into reflections on an old opinion of mine, that it is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of the Deity throughout the whole of Nature. Blossoms come forth only to be blighted; fish lay their spawn where it will be devoured; and what a large portion of the human race are born merely to be swept prematurely away! 156C(6966#6520 697 (3 206D6F72 6520 7468 616E 2061 2064 7265.616D [[negative-acknowledge character]life is more than a dream]: 1796CE-/$% [WOLLSTONECRAFT, MARY

Does not this waste of budding life emphatically assert that it is not men, but Man, whose preservation is so necessary to the completion of the grand plan of the universe? Children peep into existence, suffer, and die; men play like moths about a candle, and sink into the flame; war, and “the thousand ills which flesh is heir to,” mow them down in shoals; whilst the more cruel prejudices of society palsy existence, introducing not less sure though slower decay.

Note. The text is a quote from ‘Letter XXII’ by Mary Wollstonecraft.

einstein.html (C1)

Recent discussions have brought me back to an excellent 1949 article by Albert Einstein, in$%/

<BLOCKQUOTE>I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind #5355 #5256 #4956 #414C Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: “Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?”

I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days.</BLOCKQUOTE>

§&55/ bizarre, casual disregard for humanity, a kind of fashionable self-hatred, is prevalent or at least present in many strands of supposedly progressive %§$& “§$§

Nothing seems more important to me than that we reassert the value of humanity. Despite our flaws, we must not stop celebrating the beauty of human life and human achievement, par&$%

note. The text by Einstein quoted above is taken from: ‘Why socialism?’, Monthly review 1 (May 1949).

matter.txt (C5)

True, there are certain idealist books – not of a clerical character, but philosophical ones – wherein you can read that time and space are categories of our minds, that they result from the requirements of our thinking and that nothing actually corresponds to them in reality. But it is difficult to agree with this view. If any idealist philosopher, instead of arriving in time to catch the nine pm train, should turn up two minutes late, he would see the tail of the departing train and would be convinced by his own eyes that time and space are inseparable from material reality.

The task is to diminish this space, to overcome it, to economize time, to prolong human life, to register past time, to raise life to a higher level and enrich it. This is the reason for the struggle with space and time, at the basis of which lies the struggle to subject matter to man – matter, which constitutes the foundation not only of everything that really exists, but also of all imagination.

[BRONSTEIN, /&

Note. Bronstein is an invention by the game developers.

build_a_universe.txt (C5)

In his remarkable 1978 essay, “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later,” Philip K. Dick discusses the two themes that are most central to his work: “What is reality?” and “What is an authentic human being?”

His speculations and experiences will seem extraordinary to a reader unfamiliar with his work, yet despite what may seem like far-fetched ideas – “somehow the world of the Bible is a literally real but veiled landscape, never changing, hidden from our sight, but available to us by revelation,” or the notion that perhaps we all exist in the year 50 A.D. – Dick actually delivers one of the simplest, most elegant and most useful definitions of reality ever formulated:

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

Materialist philosophers have expressed similar ideas before (e.g. Straton of Stageira’s Talos Principle), but it’s particularly interesting to see such a thought expressed by a decidedly more mystical writer, wh#/&$

Note. The article by Philip Dick is an existing article, but the quotation on reality being unavoidable is taken from his I hope I shall arrive soon (1985). Straton of Stageira is an invention by the game developers.

boundary.txt (B7)

[ARCHIVE: 1759CE-F991] [JOHNSON, SAMUEL]

“What,” said he, “makes the difference between man and all the rest of the animal creation? Every beast that strays beside me has the same corporal necessities with myself: he is hungry, and crops the grass; he is thirsty, and drinks the stream; his thirst and hunger are appeased; he is satisfied, and sleeps; he rises again, and is hungry; he is again fed, and is at rest. I am hungry and thirsty, like him, but when thirst and hunger cease, I am not at rest.”

[segment 4]

Then raising his eyes to the mountain, “This,” said he, “is the fatal obstacle that hinders at once the enjoyment of pleasure and the exercise of virtue. How long is it that my hopes and wishes have flown beyond this boundary of my life, which yet I never have attempted to surmount?”

Note. The quotes are taken from Samuel Johnson’s The history of Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia (1759).

heaven.txt (Land C)

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

Note. The text is a quotation from John Milton’s Paradise lost.

evolution.html (B1)

<favorited by George Jameson>

One of the common misunderstandings about evolution, sometimes accidentally promoted by people who should know better, is that it’s an active process. Sometimes the term “evolve” is even applied to individual beings, as if some invisible force had driven them to suddenly change. But the truth is that individuals don’t evolve; the term “evolution” describes a long-term process that can be observed in an entire population across time due to #495445524 #15449 #4F4E& [iteration] example, in response to an external threat or challenge.

If an individual coincidentally has a trait that allows it to deal with that challenge more effectively than others, it is more likely to pass on that information to its descendants. That information gives them an advantage, so over time they become the dominant “model” of that species. The individuals experience no (significant) genetic change during their lifetimes, but each of them is part of the evolution of the species.

Note. I have not been able to find an out of game source for this particular text.

questioning_doubt_conf.txt (Land C)

Keynote Speech by N. Sarabhai, “Questioning Doubt”

They say “doubt everything,” but I disagree. Doubt is useful in small amounts, but too much of it leads to apathy and confusion. No, don’t doubt everything. QUESTION everything. That’s the real trick. Doubt is just a lack of certainty. If you doubt everything, you’ll doubt evolution, science, faith, morality, even reality itself – and you’ll end up with nothing, because doubt doesn’t give anything back. But questions have answers, you see. If you question everything, you’ll find that a lot of what we believe is untrue… but you might also discover that some things ARE true. You might discover what your own beliefs are. And then you’ll question them again, and again, eliminating flaws, discovering lies, until you get as close to the truth as you can.

Questioning is a lifelong process. That’s precisely what makes it so unlike doubt. Questioning engages with reality, interrogating all it sees. Questioning leads to a constant assault on the intellectual status quo, where doubt is far more likely to lead to resigned acceptance. After all, when the possibility of truth is doubtful (excuse the pun), why not simply play along with the most convenient lie?e #%&%§/$

Questioning is progress, but doubt is stagnation.

Note. The text is a quotation from Samuel Butler’s The Book of the Machines (caput 24).

human_reproduction.txt (T1)

Surely if a machine is able to reproduce another machine systematically, we may say that it has a reproductive system. [ARCHIVE: 1872CE-F553] And how few of the machines are there which have not been produced systematically by other machines? But it is man that makes them do so. Yes; but is it not insects that make many of the plants reproductive, and would not whole families of plants die out if their fertilisation was not effected by a class of agents utterly foreign to themselves? Each one of ourselves has sprung from minute animalcules whose entity was entirely distinct from our own, and which acted after their kind with no thought or heed of what we might think about it. /BU%E& These little creatures are part of our own reproductive system; then why not we part of that of the machines?

Note. The text is a quotation from Samuel Butler’s The Book of the Machines (caput 24).

invention_of_borders.html (C7)

Excerpt: The Invention of Borders, by Fatimah Nguyen

“What today’s nationalists and neosegregationists fail to understand,” Kwame said, “is that the basis of every human culture is, and always has been, synthesis. No civilization is authentic, monolithic, pure; the exact opposite is true. Look at your average Western nation: its numbers Arabic, its alphabet Latin, its religion Levantine, its philosophy Greek… need I continue? And each of these examples can itself be broken down further: the Romans got their alphabet from the Greeks, who created theirs by stealing from the Phoenicians, and so on. Our myths and religions, too, are syncretic – sharing, repeating and adapting a large variety of elements to suit their needs. Even the language of our creation, the DNA itself, is impure, defined by a history of amalgamation: not only between nations, but even between different human species!”

Tasks: 1) Discuss this excerpt in the context of Wolfgang Welsch’s theory of transculturality. 2) (4859425) the novel as/2494449 5459 [Hybridity]

Note. Fatimah Nguyen and her book are fictional. Wolfgang Welsch, however, is credited with the coining of the term ‘interculturality’.

Source: FoundTexts.dlg (game file)