"So, what's the grandest vision you have for your life?" Zac asked. "What's the best version of yourself you can imagine?"
I stared out onto the harbor. "It's pretty big. Scary big, actually."
"C'mon. What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?"
I turned to Zac and smiled. "I'd create an upgraded operating system for human consciousness."
"What does that even mean?" he asked.
"Okay. Let me break down my thinking, so it makes logical sense. I first started with the question — 'What is the noblest pursuit I can imagine, given my value system?' The answer is, 'to alleviate human suffering.' So, what is suffering, and how can I alleviate it? Here's God's take on the issue…"
Suffering is an unnecessary aspect of the human experience. It is not only unnecessary, it is unwise, uncomfortable, and hazardous to your health.
Then why is there so much suffering? Why don’t You, if You are God, put an end to it if You dislike it so much?
I have put an end to it. You simply refuse to use the tools I have given you with which to realize that.
You see, suffering has nothing to do with events, but with one’s reaction to them.
What’s happening is merely what’s happening. How you feel about it is another matter.
I have given you the tools with which to respond and react to events in a way which reduces — in fact, eliminates — pain, but you have not used them.
Excuse me, but why not eliminate the events?
A very good suggestion. Unfortunately, I have no control over them.
You have no control over events?
Of course not. Events are occurrences in time and space which you produce out of choice — and I will never interfere with choices. To do so would be to obviate the very reason I created you. But I’ve explained all this before. Some events you produce willfully, and some events you draw to you — more or less unconsciously. Some events — major natural disasters are among those you toss into this category — are written off to “fate.” Yet even “fate” can be an acronym for “from all thoughts everywhere.” In other words, the consciousness of the planet.
The “collective consciousness.”
Precisely. Exactly.
There are those who say the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Our ecology is dying. Our planet is in for a major geophysical disaster. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. Maybe even a tilting of the Earth on its axis. And there are others who say collective consciousness can change all that; that we can save the Earth with our thoughts.
Thoughts put into action. If enough people everywhere believe something must be done to help the environment, you will save the Earth. But you must work fast. So much damage has already been done, for so long. This will take a major attitudinal shift.
Neale Donald Walsch
"As you can see, the root cause of all suffering is the Sponsoring Thought," I said.
"What's that, again?"
"God explains it like this…"
Every human thought, and every human action, is based in either love or fear. There is no other human motivation, and all other ideas are but derivatives of these two. They are simply different versions — different twists on the same theme.
Think on this deeply and you will see that it is true. This is what I have called the Sponsoring Thought. It is either a thought of love or fear. This is the thought behind the thought behind the thought. It is the first thought. It is prime force. It is the raw energy that drives the engine of human experience.
Neale Donald Walsch
"This brings me back to something I mentioned earlier in the night when we talked about money. Money is only as good as the person wielding the money. Money can be used to help others or hurt others, depending on the Sponsoring Thought of the person with the money — just like a hammer can be used to kill someone or construct a bed for a homeless person. The common denominator, then, is not the tool — it's the Sponsoring Thought of the person using the tool. Are you following?"
"Yep," Zac said.
"Good. Now, imagine I have a computer that's running an outdated, clunky, buggy, bloated operating system called Materialism OS. Whoever wrote the code for Materialism OS was lazy-as-fuck and put very little thought into its architecture. The very first line of code — the Sponsoring Thought — is a lie. It says 'the observer and the observed are separate things' — which we now know is utter fear-based bullshit. Therefore, from the first line of code onwards, everything goes off the rails.
Now let's install a whole bunch of apps on this computer. We'll install Science, Technology, Education, Economics, Environment, Law, Government, Business, Love & Relationships, Money, Philosophy, Religion, Race, Psychology, Medicine, Health & Fitness, Spirituality, Military — basically, every facet of the human experience is an app. These apps are all separate, and we've built them to run on Materialism OS, which is shit.
As a result, the apps are all dysfunctional and buggy. They don't work properly because they are based on lies. The Sponsoring Thought — i.e. the thought behind the thought behind the thought — can be traced back to the first line of buggy code written in Materialism OS. So is it any wonder that our politics and government and education aren't functioning properly? We are trying to run our modern society on an operating system that was built by neanderthals. That's why these apps are so limited in what they can do. They can't even talk to each other because Materialism OS specifies that everything is separate and fragmented. There's no common language connecting everything together.
All of these problems result in excess human suffering. Most people try to alleviate this suffering by modifying the apps themselves — for example, increasing taxes on the rich to give to the poor. This doesn't always work too well because they aren't addressing the root cause of the problem. If you tax the rich to give to the poor in an attempt to alleviate poverty, the money will find its way back into the hands of the rich, and it has nothing to do with physical money. It's because, mathematically, money cannot stay in the hands of people with a poverty mindset. It creates too much surprise in the system, and the algorithm will generate events and circumstances to minimize that surprise. Therefore, no amount of income redistribution is going to solve that problem as long as policy-makers ignore the underlying mathematics that is creating the problem.
So how do we alleviate human suffering, then? The only viable option is to upgrade humanity's operating system. That's where Renegade OS comes in-"
"Renegade OS? That's what you're calling it?" Zac asked.
"Yeah," I grinned. "I just thought it sounded kinda fun. Renegade OS is sleek, modern, and minimal. It consists of one simple, recursive program — in stark contrast to the complex, bloated, dysfunctional codebase of lies that is Materialism OS. Furthermore, Renegade OS powers all kinds of apps and allows them to talk to each other. Everything is now one wholistic, intelligent, interconnected system instead of being fragmented and separate.
So that's the grandest vision I have for my life. There are billions of people on this planet, and I want to upgrade humanity's operating system to Renegade OS. It's the only way to solve the world's problems at their root cause, and create a permanent solution."
"So, you want to be more like Steve Jobs, who created the iOS platform?" Zac asked. "That platform then enabled millions of people to develop specialty apps on top of it."
"Exactly," I replied. "That's the most leveraged way to reduce human suffering. If I can create and distribute the underlying platform, love will become the Sponsoring Thought of all specialized apps running on that platform. I don't know the first thing about specific areas like medicine or economic policy or clean energy. Therefore, it would be inefficient for me to tackle all of those problems. Other people are much smarter than I am, and they can do a much better job. I just need to provide humanity with a new way of seeing and interacting with the world. If I can do that, we can all work together, step-by-step, to create a better society and alleviate suffering on an individual and collective basis.
I guess I see it like this: Renegade OS is the axle in the wheel, and all the other facets of the human experience lean on it as a source of power and strength. If the axle is weak, the entire wheel will collapse in on itself."
"It feels like that's already happening," Zac said. "Society's axle is crumbling."
"Yeah. I don't know about you, but I can feel the unrest bubbling beneath the surface. It's only a matter of time until something cracks. And we haven't even introduced AI into the system yet."
"AI?" Zac asked.
"Yeah. Artificial general intelligence is coming, and it is going to hit society like a freight train. It's already on our doorstep. AI will force us to rethink and rebuild everything about our world. Literally, everything — Science, Technology, Education, Economics, Environment, Law, Government, Business, Love & Relationships, Money, Philosophy, Religion, Race, Psychology, Medicine, Health & Fitness, Spirituality, Military-"
"So, you're saying we'll need a new axle anyway, because of AI?"
"Exactly," I grinned. "Do you think it's a coincidence that physics has been searching for their 'theory of everything' for a century, and now, at the dawn of the AI revolution — the biggest technological revolution to ever blitz this planet, where man plays God and creates herself — do you think it's a coincidence that these insights have popped into my head? Do you think it's a coincidence that I've somehow formulated a deductive proof that will be difficult for scientists to ignore? There are no coincidences in the universe, Zac. Science moves at an incremental snail's pace, partially because it uses an inductive process. Scientists spend decades fighting over which hypothesis is 'correct.' But the world doesn't have time for that shit right now. We need to move. We need to build. Humanity needs a new axle, and I'm going to create it."
