I am not you, and you are not me — Transcending the Limitation of “Universal One”

I am not you, and you are not me.  That is the way things are.  I like that.  As you ponder that, let me explain to you why I find tremendous value in that distinction.

Distinctions create boundaries.  Without distinctions, everything would be porous and absorbing this information or that information would generate confusion.  But that confusion is instantly absolved when we utilize distinctions.

There’s a tendency for people with whom I communicate to think that we have some connection, as-if they “know me”.  The way they communicate and the advice they give comes from the perspective of “I know this person in every dimension and in every aspect”.  But then I mention something that I have done that the person with porous distinctions has not done, like ran multiple marathons,  the person shirks back and immediately says “Oh, I couldn’t do that!”.  Instantly their slurring and blurring of our distinctions of you being me, and me being you –gets mutilated when an element of capacity enters the conversation.

You see, as you listen to this closely and intently you realize that intention should govern our behavior (and often it does when we are not being persuaded, manipulated, or under a hypnotic trance by the media), but  many times our perception of capacity limits our behavior.  When I mention to someone actions I have taken that they deem outside of their capacity (for example having written 4 books, or ran multiple marathons, or any other task of which people are incredibly capable of doing, but don’t believe they have that capacity to do so) who has a ruptured their perception of boundaries, what happens in their mind?  First they recoil.  They instantaneously have a thought process of “this person is not whom I thought they were and there exists a distinction in our capacity”.  Such distinctions are good.  Because in many ways, what makes you you, and me me, is our logical levels, which of course, include beliefs, identity, capabilities, and behavior.  If I am talking to you in person, we share the same environment.  That is it.  I’d say environment is roughly 3% of “who I am” and “who you are” at best.   Without logical levels, we are all practically identical twins because our only differences would be blemishes on our epidermal layer of our skin, hair coloration, simple, trivial distinctions bound into the same sequences of deoxyribonucleic acid.  So it’s truly our logical levels that spark this kind of Lamarakian

For awhile in my junior year in college I engaged this belief that we were all this spiritual, interconnected, “Universal One” person.  I enjoyed entertaining that belief because of many reasons.  Reasons for entertaining the “universal one” delusion:

1. It was a good remedy for loneliness (If you’re lonely, thinking that everyone is interconnected creates a delusion of togetherness).
2. I thought it would be helpful to creating a connection with people.  (After all if you are interconnected with people “as one” then it’s very easy to feel harmoniously connected with another human).
3. I felt the idea of a “universal one” would somehow bring success believing that people were “working with me on my specific goals”.
4. What sparked this belief?  Likely a reading of Whitman’s Song of Myself

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

–Whitman 1819-1892

Yep, taking a gander at the American poet and essayist’s verse was likely what sparked that delusional belief for me.  Now am putting forth a criticism of that belief that “we are all universally one” where I will detail how toxic it truly is.

First off, we must first acknowledge that yes, “we” humans are taxonomically very similar in that we share the same class (mammalia), order (primates), genus (homo), and our species of course, sapiens, are also identical.  But there are VAST differences beyond that species classification.  We have homo sapiens who can program themselves to run 26.2 miles in under 2 hours, 10 minutes.  We have homo sapiens, like Nikola Tesla, who create magnificent inventions like the wireless communications radio and polyphase power distribution. Tesla was fluent in 7 languages.  Few people even fathom learning a “second” language”!  Indeed, the person who thinks we have 6.8 billion identical people walking around the planet is in effort to be as uncolorful as possible, an idiot!  There exist 6.8 billion exact DNA copies, but each and everyone of those bundles of cells is simultaneously a bundle of beliefs and identities and what I refer to as “life program code”.  Our internal cognitive programming that creates addictions and creates discoveries and breakthroughs previously thought impossible are derivatives of our internal code.  It is our internal code that makes us distinct.  Going beyond the given cellular similarities, humans, because of the existence of the cerebrum, are each individual bundles of code.  As a species, I’m convinced our belief in capacity has slowly decreased since the late 19th century, the Einstein and Tesla era.  Sure we have, in regards to technology, expanded in the realm of software with personal computing platforms with inventors like Wozniak (Jobs and Gates were merely businessmen, mind you), and in physics with the utilization propulsion, aerodynamics, and the employment of the LOR method at NASA we were able to land on our neighboring natural satellite .  Although I am not an enormous fan of art and frequently denounce religion for its destructive mind-virus-like properties, it is undeniable that the intricacies of Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel or David or Da Vinci’s Vetruvian Man are creations that few people could honestly say they have the capacity to create.

Most certainly, one could argue that it was not just Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin who individually “landed on the moon” first (Collins never set foot on the rock, but orbited in the Command Module) but rather the “universal one” of Mission Control, the past inventors who had paved the way for such launches and maneuvering to occur, as well as possibly a “sprinkling” of that “human spirit” universality.  But when it comes down to it….

ONE INDIVIDUAL DISTINCT person invented the polyphase power distribution system, Nikola Tesla.  Do you not think that Tesla’s fluency in 7 distinct languages was absolutely essential to his capacity to “think outside the box” and go beyond the capacity of so many of his scientific predecessors?  Linguistic definitive diversity is without a doubt an intrinsic component to scientific creativity and precision.

ONE INDIVIDUAL DISTINCT person outlined the paradigmatic ground-shattering breakthrough in physics known as special relativity, Albert Einstein.  But did you know that it was the photoelectric effect that won Einstein the Nobel Peace prize in 1921 and that it was his Annus Mirabillus papers written in 1905 that, although less known, had a larger impact on physics than any of his other work, including special relativity?  When Einstein first proposed the special theory of relativity on June 30 of 1905, his third paper that year, in “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” he referenced

One person surveyed, calculated, and documented the actual origination of our very biological species in 1859, Sir Charles Darwin.

Now I have been inductively drawn to the late 19th century….all of its inventions, ideas, fictions, and beliefs.

I have a penchant for late 1800s Scottish and British Authors!! I just inductively became aware of this pattern!

• 1859 British, Dickens, Tale of Two Cities (2 books)
• 1859, Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
• 1873, French Verne, (Around the World in 80 Days and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea)
• 1886, Scottish Stevenson,  (Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
• 1891 Scottish, Doyle, Adventures of Sherlock (2)
• 1897, Irish, Bram Stoker, Dracula (1 book)
• 1980s, British, Douglas Adams (10 books)
• 1950s, British, Roald Dahl,  (10 books)
• 2000, British, Mark Haddon
• 2000, British, Richard Dawkins
• 31 Books by British Authors!!!! Jolly good!

Young Eintein (1879-1955) was a mere toddler during the time most of those fictions were published.  But we are not focusing on Einstein, because there exists a greater capacity and a more greatly overlooked genius, of Nikola Tesla (1856- January 7, 1943).  Do you ever view a picture of a person and feel some kind of connection as-if you know them or can relate to them?  Such delusions are common and for the reasons I outlined above in the “Reasons for entertaining the universal one delusion”, appealing.  However, when Nikola Tesla invented the wireless communications radio in 1894, he did not accomplish this amazing feat by staring at a picture of english chemist Michael Faraday and  sottish physicist James Maxwell — the 18th century theorists of electromagnetic waves — and “willing the universal one” to enable him to craft a wireless communications radio!  If Tesla believed that “we are all a universal one working harmoniously together”, we would not have FM and AM radio as we know it today because Nikola would not have had the resources to design the wireless communications radio.  You are beginning to understand!  Believing in the “universal one” or any derivation thereof is “acceptable copping out”.  Saying, “Oh i could run a marathon or have a great scientific invention or accomplish this great feat…but I’ll just leave it up to the universal one” is a way of failing to achieve but stated in a way that it slips under the radar.  I can assure you that it is only the status quo who believes in “the universal oneness of things”.  Great achievers who accomplished very unique and highly specific feats — inventions, athletic achievements, great papers, paradigmatic mathematical formulae — did so out of acknowledging “Hey, I am unique in this area.  I have an attraction to xyz subject or field.  Few other people are focused on this.  I am going to pursue an interest in that.”  Most people are deluded by the obfuscating sludge that is religion, media, newspaper dribble that occupy the clarity of our mind, that hypnotizing us into thinking that “some universal one will take care of it”.  Let me assure you that one and only one person

Traversed 26.2 miles in Munich, Germany in 2 hours 12 minutes of the 1972 Olympics to win a gold medal, Frank Shorter.

Wrote the ground-shattering paper that completely revolutionized our perception of time, Albert Einstein in 1905.

Popularized the breakthrough discovery known as the copernican revolution, which made “the universal one” realize that our solar system is not geo-, but heliocentric!

Swam 100m butterfly in 50.77 seconds at the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia, beating his own 51.25 Athens record.  This ONE person was Michael Phelps.

Designed myriad inventions in at least 278 distinct patents in 26 countries that contributed incredible new technologies.  This ONE person was Nikola Tesla.  Out of all these distinct, individual achievers, I think it is Tesla whom accomplished the most and simultaneously received the least credit.

As you can see “the universal one” by DEFINITION is inherently outdated, obsolete, old-fashioned, and unadvanced!  It was the universal one that believed in geocentrism.  It was the universal one that believed that the sub-4-minute mile was humanly impossible.  It was the universal one whom believed transference of information without the usage of wires couldn’t be done.  It was those individuals, those people who acknowledged distinctions between them and other members of the same species (in regards to the above  three accomplishments respectively Copernicus, Roger Bannister, and Nikola Tesla) who proved the universal one wrong.  And for those who actually go around believing that their answers lie in the universal one are seriously setting themselves up for massive capability limitations!  All of the “I can’ts”, “That’s Impossibles”, “I can’t do thats” are components to the universal one.

As a conclusion, I present 5 of my current heroes all of whom exemplify the incredible capacity to neglect the condemning and restricting “universal one” and who rise above it, creating distinct and very constructively elucidating breakthroughs in music, logic, science & electricity, for our species.

Richard Dawkins.  1941-Present.  British Evolutionary biologist.

Nikola Tesla, 1856-1943.  Serbian-born scientific inventor who individually created roughly 300 patents for countless inventions that paved the way to the technology we see today.

Gustav Holst. 1874-1943, British Composer known for distinctly composing The Planets.

Sherlock Holmes, Fictional Detective crafted by Scottish Author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  1887, first appearance publication.

Derren Brown, 1971-Preset.  British illusionist, stage hypnotist, and mentalist.

Sherlock Holmes (A fictional creation can hold some invaluable lessons on the process of deduction) and Derren Brown (both masters of microcosmic observation).

Ludwig Van Beethoven, 1770-1827.  German composer who Distinctly assisted in the transition of classic to romantic music.

I encourage you to look at all those individuals and observe how by NO MEANS could they have crafted the magnificent creations that they authored, invented, composed, conjured, or observed with the assistance of the “universal one” concept.  They all focused their minds and bodies and genius to create authentic advancements for our species.  I encourage you to do the same!  Disown your relationship to “uiversal oneness”; honor your distinct individual genius be it in athletics (undoubtedly Michael Phelps and Frank Shorter both, unquestionable have cultivated a distinct genius in the fields of swimming and running), science, music, authoring, or whatever field you notice a distinct and unique pull.  This is a call to action that is much more demanding than embracing self-reliance or non-conformity.

I think it’s worthy of note that the above heroes of “Distinction” are personal predecessors to five heroes that brought me to the above five great individuals.  The previous ones are shown above.

The moment you realize your individuality and that you are a distinct network of electric neurological electrical firings directed and managed by a 8-pound nervous-system center containing two distinct hemispheres intersecting at a corpus callosum that controls endocrinological chemical mini-sub factories such as the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, thalamus, thyroid, adrenals, and testes/ovaries woven into 206 distinct sticks of calcium matrices, pulleyed together through over 600 distinct muscular strands, and sheathed in a kinesthetic epidermal layer, you realize that you are not a universal one.  You are you.  And I am me.  And that is the way things are.  And that is very, very good for the sake of advancing our species!

This work is licensed by John Thomas “Kooz” Kuczmarski and Validate Your Life under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: clarity 2.0, great one, Identity, inspiration_expansion, literature, music, Nerdom, precision, technology