The vine breaks out of darkness imperceptibly, as if it were there all along. As a young vine, it is weak, and overly anxious to sprawl. It clings to a firm structure and starts branching toward the origin, using every crack, ledge, tree trunk, fence hole, and brick to inch its way closer to perfection.
In its fervent growth, multiplied by surface area and warmth, the infinite fractal blooms across its host like a delicate green lattice, asserting its presence with large solar-gobbling heart-like leaves. Inevitably, the once helpless tangle of a vine reaches the physical limits of its foundation. In the case of a large building, the vine billows along the edge of the roof, making its priority and intention perfectly clear. The vine and its host, whatever the host might be, go through the season together like so, both enduring the ravages of weather and time. The host crumbles away eventually, and the vine may wither away. But the roots remain tangled in the dark alchemy of the soil, awaiting a new host to take it ever closer to the origin of the light.
The important thing is that the vine (Life) clings to whatever it can. It's been clinging to this ball called Earth for a pretty long time apparently, but I don't think the vine originated within the Earth. If you pay close attention to the behavior of the vine, the way it branches out in all directions, but always toward the sun, and then think of everything else that branches upward--birds, ants, primates, electrical towers, city skylines (even our highways grow taller and branch out in complex patterns), as well as planes, rockets and space probes--somewhat of a common theme develops. These are all fine examples, but not all of them capture the essence of the vine. I'm more interested in the grand lunges toward Heaven, Beauty, Perfection, and the Cosmos in structures like St. Peter's Basilica, ancient Mayan and Aztec temples, the Egyptian pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, Christ the Redeemer Statue in Rio de Janeiro, and Hubble. These colossal structures represent our own inner vine, branching ambitiously toward the Sun, Heaven, God--the origin is all that matters--and each of us has his own branch along the surface of our host, sometimes concrete or wood or expensive rugs, sometimes dirt or straw. The entire human vine branches toward its origin (even in the face of rogue cells and incompatible or defunct sections of its anatomy) and the only real question is whether we'll reach it or not.
If the common vine clinging to a highway divider is any indicator or significator of the answer, then the answer would be no. Faced with the physical limits of nature, the vine may only reach so high. The Earth can only support so much life. It can only take so much abuse before a symbiotic relationship becomes a parasitic battle for survival, and it has only so many resources to be stripped of. But we humans, the stubborn idealistic creatures that we are, persist to reach ever higher guided by the faith that "anything is possible if you put your mind to it."
We've reached the roof of our current foundation, the United States of America, and it's having trouble supporting the massive weight and grip of the vine. It's foundation has been eroding steadily for decades, since the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., but the last 8 years has done the most damage to its core foundation and fundamental origin since the Civil War.
We are like the vine that billows greedily at the top of the edifice (and the Western edifice soars pretty high), causing it to buckle down below, but we've lost touch with our roots and so we perceive the buckling as the gentle swaying of the wind. The older branches closer to the soil are more aware of the gravity of the situation, but a message takes a long time to follow the pathways up to the highest ledge and disperse among the whole. In fact, it's an astronomically small chance that the message would ever reach the top, what with the infinite number of pathways and dead-ends that it must travel blindly. And even if such an urgent message were to reach the top, there's no assurance that it would be heard by the collective mass basking in its own grandeur.
Somehow, though, a message has gotten to the very top, a very important message of Hope, renewal, conservation and inclusion of humanity as a whole. It's a message that has echoed through time for millennia, but today it echoes through Barack Obama across a diverse globe of strife, famine, war, and genocide, and it's only possible because of how our vine is connected. Dissemination of information through technology is the catalyst and vessel of the message, and it has reached us at a time where we're beginning to see the bigger picture as individuals, some branching back down toward the roots, others merely passing the information along, but ironically the technology we cling to is acting as an amplifier for that timeless message of renewal and rebirth.
If you imagine this great skyscraper as the symbol of all humanity, adorned with history's "tick marks" of evolutionary growth like a colossal totem pole spanning time vertically, you can think of two points along the vertical axis of the building: one somewhere beneath its base (the center of the Earth) and the other somewhere above the spire (the Sun). These two points are attractors like the positive and negative charges of a magnet, and you get an image like this:
Two singularities separated by an infinitude of possible paths, but strongly attracted to each other. On the one hand, the foundation of the Past points to some moment of singularity or nothingness, and on the other end is the singular moment of death or physical transcendence into nothingness. At the middle is all possible paths manifested simultaneously--an infinite fractal of paths. I believe this is the present moment. Everything emerging and taking its own path and breaking the rules of the past in order to create ever more possibilities.
This model can be applied to history as we know it, or a simple choice between two flavors of ice cream (Note: Not always a simple choice). A decision begins with the singularity of the moment that brought the need for the choice, branching out the solutions and consequences of each possible outcome until the mind narrows them down and comes to a decision, thus reaching the singularity of the outcome.
Terence McKenna was a proponent of this dual-singularity concept, and he saw the future attractor as the "technological singularity"; the UFO at the end of time that haunts the past through its numerous sightings across nations and in dreams. It's the point at which human history ceases because our soul fuses with technology. Not just in the metaphysical sense, but the actual transformation of both humans and technology into one thing. Terence saw how close we are to achieving that singularity, but he also saw how easily we could just as well be wiped clean out of existence. Every year our computing power increases faster than the year before; our connectivity with each other grows like the fractal vine, feeding off the glow of the brightening technological sun. This all happens at the cost of our planet and fragile ecosystem.
Consilience, the unity of knowledge, also points toward this techno-singularity as well. Biology is fusing with nano-technology producing genetic engineering or "bioengineering". Chemistry is fusing with physics to produce unlimited energy. Computers are dissolving cultural and social boundaries through the internet, which by the way, is really where the birthplace of this singularity lies. The internet is so incredibly powerful that entire industries are buckling under the pressure to upgrade and keep up with the pace. All this knowledge and information swarms across the globe, bouncing like ping pong balls between satellites, computers, and phones, working toward a more efficient system, a more unified configuration.
And the truth is, there's absolutely nothing stopping humans from reaching this singularity--an evolutionary leap to send our species to other planets and become a galactic being--it is our collective dream expressed today almost incessantly through books, television, and movies, and nothing is keeping us from achieving this dream but ourselves. That, and blind destruction.
Whether we're dealing with a failing global economy, world-wide hunger and wars, or whether gays have the right to marry, humans have a fatal flaw in getting to the roots of their issues. Part of it is sheer complexity. The luxuries we've built for ourselves threaten our lagging intellect with utter incomprehension. This is the fundamental conflict in our lives; the incorporation of massive amounts of man-made objects, possessions, luxuries, friends, networks, hobbies, distractions, and information with our still primitive mind. There is a strong acceleration at work and we have to cling harder and harder to stay "in touch".
