Without wishing to boast of my modest accomplishments, I expect you'll agree that the contents of my story up to this point are potentially revolutionary. The host model is itself a dramatic departure from strongly held beliefs about the nature of life on this planet, but when combined with the infinite regression, and its many devastating implications, the whole ensemble may give the reader the impression of high cosmic drama. Add to this the intrigue surrounding the names and birth dates of members of my family, and you may be questioning, as I have done many times over the last 40 years or so, is this the story of Christ's re-emergence among us?
In view of this important question I feel it is my solemn duty to address a long held feature of Christianity, one which is very sensitive to believers, and which I happen to have mixed feelings about, namely the nature of Christian love. The Christian church prides itself on its possession of this quality, it is one of its core values, and since Christianity professes the belief that God is love, in some important respects love is also the object of its worship. But love has a crucial ecological context in modern times, which is why I have such mixed feelings about it.
I don't regard myself as any particular authority when it comes to love, I'm actually a pretty solitary character, but I have been in love with a girl. I've experienced the complications of maintaining a successful relationship, and I know the heartbreak of having to pick up the broken pieces of failure, before a love will let you get on with your life. I lived in a de facto relationship for two years when I was in my early twenties; our breakup was particularly painful, and it wasn't long before I made up my mind that I never wanted to put myself in that position again.
I grew up in a Christian family; my family went to church every Sunday morning as I recall, going way back to my early childhood. I went to church on my own as a teenager but mostly to meet girls. I went to a segregated high school so I had few opportunities to mix with girls at that crucial time of my adolescence. I wasn't a particularly religious person then, and that remains the case even now in spite of the transformation of my religious beliefs as I grew older and became more experienced.
My experience with animals has shown me that love is an emotion which is far from unique to human families. On the contrary, I believe that love is universal. During the time I spent living on a cow farm I saw how bitterly the cows would grieve whenever the farmer took the young ones off to slaughter, and anyone who has adopted an animal into their family will know the love which animals feel for other members of the family.
It may sound somewhat unlikely to say that while I love girls, there is a love I feel which is deeper and even stronger. It is a love of the Earth, the background against which my fondest memories have been cast. It would, however, be vain of me to suggest that my love of Earth is in any way unique, but I may be one of few who profess a love of Earth which is stronger than their love of procreation. A sad reflection of the times in which we live is the ticking over of eight billion human inhabitants of planet Earth early in 2023, yet in spite of serious ecological consequences any suggestion of lowering the growth rate is met with a bristling hostility.
For a very long time it has been possible to idealise love, to worship it as the ideal state of the human soul, and to overlook the ecological context in which humans regenerate their kind. Love has always been the one precious human ideal rising above any consideration of practicality, and inspiring the expression of our goodness. But the time has come to recognise its growing antiquity, to embrace a new vision of ideal, and to see that procreation is now an urgent ecological problem.
Call me Antichrist if it makes you feel better about yourself, but I dedicate my life to the lowering of human numbers. If love is as universal as I suggest it is, then the ecological context in which we reproduce is no different from what it will be for any species who intends to populate to a point of extinction. Expect an element of your environment to rise up and challenge you.
As a socially constructive paradigm love has been both popular and useful for a very long time, but after two thousand years of Christians preaching the same message every weekend, everybody gets it, so that it is now a thoroughly banal cliché. Two thousand years ago love may have been a compelling social teaching, but a technological society has a more sophisticated understanding of the universe and our place in it, and in view of our problem with human numbers, perhaps it is time for something new.
Since the dominant culture tends to have an uncompromising and inflexible attitude to its most cherished value, I doubt that it would be possible to make a suggestion such as this without some dramatically new information. In spite of such a severe caveat however, I believe that the host model and its infinite regression, are together exactly what this is. God may remain an ever loving ancestor, but I believe that we will have to reshape much of our thinking about this being.
Without referencing much of human thinking about the nature of God I believe that the host model and its regression provide us with a new pair of eyes with which to view this important subject. With these eyes we can safely assume that our own bodies give us the best picture of the identity of this being, both as a model of His or Her physical geometry and milieu, but also as a vehicle with which to develop an understanding of our relationship with them. Indeed, the host model provides us with a way of grasping the unity which we share with this being, and it transcends any previous need for metaphor.
So, the narrative I want to tell you is about the mistake which people make by casting the two ends of time as adversaries, such as the God head and the Devil tail. It works in a limited sense, and is understandable considering the defensive nature of the physical body, but this doesn't make it any less short sighted and mistaken. In terms of the contrary, the dream body is able to appreciate the unity of the two ends of time, and make them work together in a productive relationship.
It may be a sensitive subject for you to consider, but I hope you don't need to think of your pelvic region as a great repository of evil, a dark lord who inspires malignant intentions, and tireless conflict. Sex is the ultimate origin of our sense of love, and may be unspeakably old from our point of view, but it is the most basic principle organising our lives. And in terms of casting the sex organs and the anus in an adversarial relationship, we see yet another axis of recursion consistent with the regression already established by the relationship between the body and the head.
The other troublesome misconception which the infinite regression can help us clear up concerns the belief that God is a being who has no foibles, who is perfect in every way, and who is ultimately invulnerable. There can be no doubt on the basis of the shape of Italy that the planet intends to be Almighty God to us, yet the infinite regression requires that each and every iteration of being shares a common identity, so that the planet has its limitations just as we do, and as does every creature we know of. I suspect that the idealisation of God was born of an age which had only a cursory grasp of the true nature of such things, which the infinite regression has subsequently enlightened.
But the inverse of this proposition puts us as humans in the same shoes as those we have put God into. The regression requires that each of us is God to those countless constituents of our bodies who will likely look up to us for divine inspiration and providence. It is therefore up to us as individuals to be just and respectful to those who make up our bodies, and to everything around us such as the little critters, the planets, and the stars and galaxies.
In spite of whatever your personal beliefs may be the Bible warns us of a day on which we will be accountable for our actions on this planet. The stark severity of the shape of Italy may make our present troubles look like the beginning of a fairly dramatic end to the world as we know it, so you may be rightly wondering how I could help divert the path we are presently set upon. How could the dreaming of a simultaneous multi-verse improve our chances for survival?
