priorities and space-time

An excerpt from the TGU material (one of the 2004 black box sessions) that may be of interest:

Rita: Yes. It raises the question about whether human life is just a casual side-process, byproduct, of some other things that are going on, or is this the true purpose of the whole chain that you’re talking about.

Frank: Well – to us that’s a meaningless distinction. We don’t know what a by-process would be, as opposed to a primary result. Because, what is, is. You have a human – or I should say you have a space-time – tendency to say “this is important and that is unimportant,” or “this is primary and that is secondary,” or “this is trivial, you said, and this is essential.” And we can’t see things that way. The motion through time – going from one time-slice to another — tends to tempt you to prioritize moment by moment. That’s not the kind of temptation that we have. Prioritization implies saying “this is more important now than that,” but when “now” is out of the equation, it doesn’t mean anything to us. [pause] Now, it’s true that we can say “it doesn’t matter whether the leaf falls on that side of the fence or the other side of the fence,” but it’s more like you could say, the question of importance doesn’t arise. It’s not unimportant, and it’s not important. It’s not relevant. The question of importance isn’t relevant to a leaf falling. That’s a clearer distinction than we think we’ve made. Can you see what we’re saying? Or not? Because if not, we’ll keep working at it.

Rita: Well, I think I wasn’t asking about importance, so much as whether it was the main function or not.

Frank: But see, that’s the same thing. That’s exactly the same question.

Rita: Is it?

Frank: Sure. Sure, you’re saying is human life a by-product – meaning almost accidental – or meaning, something that happens but it isn’t the main aim, or is it the main aim? And to us that looks identical as saying, is it important or not important, is it primary or secondary, is it casual or is it causal? Now, we could continue with this; we’re willing to go wherever you want to go with it, but we don’t see the distinction in the way that you see it, at all.