I was thinking about why I have no problem giving up hardware and technologies, surrendering them to the sands of time without sentimentality. I had all kinds of computers before and I don’t care for them one bit. The same goes for cameras, lenses, film processes and emulsions. But they helped me make my favourite work. Why is it that I can give them up so easily?
I did give it some thought, and I came up with a very simple answer. I care for capability. If new technology can give me the same or better capability, I’m fine. Let’s take 35mm photography for example. Initially I shot negative film, then mostly slides, then Canon 5d digital, then Sony A7II digital, and currently Sony A7RV and A7CR digital. As you can see, what I’m preserving is the 35mm format. That’s the capability. I also want colours, dynamic range and resolution. That part is either staying the same or improving over generations of hardware. Every following generation of technology includes and exceeds the capability of the previous ones.
The colours of now.
Yes, film looked great when it was in its prime. Digital looks at least as good, if not better. You just need to know what you’re doing. Digital has greater resolution, less noise, and greater dynamic range, especially in the shadows. One of the greatest advantages of digital is in the deep tones with low light, and that’s something I do a lot.
So, the reason why I let go of film without hesitation when digital became good enough is because digital included and exceeded the capabilities of film to do what I wanted it to do. There’s no nostalgia because I don’t feel I lost capability. Whenever I felt I missed the aesthetics of a certain lens I used to own, I just bought it cheaply on ebay; I can mount it on the new camera via adapter and get the same look. There are, however, digital cameras and lenses I used to own, that produced great image quality, but I don’t feel the need to own them now; the Olympus four thirds system, for instance, or Sony R1. Why? Because I own parallel gear from Sony that makes the image with the same look. Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5, for instance, makes images that look almost identical to what my Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G makes. The modern Sony sensors produce magnificent colours. Getting older gear that would produce an inferior version of the same image style would merely waste money and increase clutter.
You can’t replace people. They are actually unique, and if someone was lost to you nostalgia is justified. Also, if technological capability was lost forever and you can’t get it again with modern gear, the feeling of loss and nostalgia are justified. But with computers and cameras? I certainly don’t miss computers being big, loud, slow and shit. I don’t miss the 1024×768 resolution, and I don’t miss having to burn CDs for video because hard drives were small. I don’t miss connecting to the BBS with a 14400 modem. I’m glad stuff got better. I don’t miss the car in which I had to hand-crank the windows down and manually lock all four doors, and I certainly don’t miss it having 54hp. Did I do important things with it? Yes. Was I very glad I had it at the time? Yes. But all my cars since have been better. I never lost capability. Even the fuel consumption, which was the strong side of my first car – 6.5 litres of diesel per 100 km – is exceeded by my current car; 6.2l of diesel per 100km. The new car, however, actually has an engine, and it has dual zone climate control, satnav, electric windows and door locks and so on. It’s also much safer. Literally zero capability was lost, therefore zero nostalgia. But if technology degraded and I could no longer get the capability I once had, that would be a shame and I would feel that.
I’ll mix together some thoughts and categories here; I’m not sure whether they will succeed in explaining the general perspective in which we are immersed. But it is what it is. : )
By definition, the material is equivalent to the transient, the impermanent. This world—this material reality—has its own characteristics; preprogrammed characteristics, established laws.
If we make use of the Aliens discussed somewhat earlier and their activities within the material realm, when they meddle with matter here, they automatically fall into the following corresponding category: namely, they must create concepts about the material environment—they must map the state of affairs they perceive, including the relationships and mutual relations they perceive as existing between material entities.
When they see something new, they need to form a new concept for this new “wonder” in front of them, and so on and on. So, they must have awareness and a mind.
Awareness and mind are not merely faculties of an individual being; they are operational instances—agencies—functioning at a more elementary level and making possible the emergence of the more complex properties that come to constitute an individual being within a hierarchy of increasing complexity.
These two are fundamental agencies through which a database of concepts can arise and grow within a being. Through continuous interaction with the surrounding world, newly perceived phenomena, objects, events, and relationships are mapped into new concepts, which are then added to that growing database. In this way, an Alien being can develop from a newborn—possessing relatively few acquired concepts—into an adult and eventually an old being whose mind has become loaded with a vast accumulation of concepts formed through its interaction with the world around it.
If the Aliens, as such, have not realized where all creation originates from—and of course I also mean creation outside the material “sub-world”—then they are meddling and becoming entangled within a labyrinth of the mind. This clearly means that they do not know the concept describing the relationship between awareness and mind, which Buddhism maps as the state in which the four elements have no footing.
What kind of beings, then, are we talking about when we speak of these Aliens? They are beings of samsara.
All these terms we throw around here are simply concepts—but not in the sense of inventions or fabrications, but rather in the sense of descriptions of actual phenomena and of the relationships among those phenomena.
We need meaningful tools for explaining the “world” of phenomena. Such entities are words: we use them to explain, describe, and name concepts so that we can present them verbally, communicate them to others, and reproduce or preserve the knowledge that arises from recognizing the existence of newly perceived phenomena. There are, therefore, three levels: a phenomenon is perceived → a concept arises → a word makes it possible for that concept to be expressed again and communicated.
There is, however, one problem that limits us in reaching a final understanding of what kind of beings these Aliens actually are. Namely, it is not entirely clear to us what exactly they are doing and for what purpose.
It is possible that they are technologically advanced but “samsarically” trapped beings, fumbling around and wandering through matter in a state of delusion. But there is also the possibility that these beings represent a kind of intervention that has taken over vehicles through which they have access to the material world, precisely so that they can intervene here.
What if they are investigating how this illusory world could be shut down, so that, if they succeed, they could one day simply switch off individual material bodies, allowing souls to no longer remain trapped here?
What if they are searching for a sufficiently effective collective off-switch for human “shells”?
This reflection is not really a direct analysis of Aliens or of information about the Aliens themselves, but rather a look at a more general problem concerning the illusion that keeps this world switched on.
Namely, how do you switch off the entire material world at a single moment if it is being continuously sustained in real time by numerous immersed spiritual beings?
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I gave that entire previous text to ChatGPT to read and asked it to summarize how it understood it.
Because it had only summarized the text superficially and had missed its essence and main point—which was intended to address a set of issues running through different layers of reality—I specifically drew its attention to the flaw in the conclusion it had reached regarding the text. After that, it stated the following (which, again, is not ideal, but at least it managed to assemble certain blocks of phenomenology). So, here is what ChatGPT laid out:
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a7997a0f2b48191ac384b22216bae38