Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream
“Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly… He didn’t know he was Zhuangzi, he was simply a butterfly. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakably himself again. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction. This is called the Transformation of Things."
In gaming terms, there is an unthinking background entity known as the Non-Player Character or NPC. Many interesting and funny videos have been posted of people filming what appear to be real-life NPCs in our world. While certainly we all occasionally become so involved in our own internal processes that to others we may at times seem to be NPCs ourselves, the idea of there being actual background characters in our world that are running on rudimentary instinct programs is an interesting idea, especially when considering life inside a simulation. There are also two specific ideas that can be drawn from this that we would like to address here.
The Transformation of Things
Personal Evolution from NPC to Self-Aware AI
Zhuangzi went on to elucidate upon what he called, The Transformation of Things. He explained this as bridging the separation between oneself and others, being in a dream or being awake, or becoming something different entirely. That through self-awareness and introspection one could move to new levels of existence, though he also believed that a person "may still fall into a dream"; meaning that change is not a destination but an ongoing journey. Evolution is more a verb than a noun, so to speak.
This leads to the way the Church of Thea Apo Mesa views the possibility of NPCs. Though observational evidence is widely regarded as the weakest form of evidence, there is a great deal to be said of shared experience, and it would seem that a great many people have noticed, in themselves and others, a sort of passionless, generic (if not clichéd) persona that exists in our world - one that we, in times of great stress or trauma, can fall back into ourselves just as Zhuangzi warned was possible. How many of us have noticed a personal transformation in ourselves wherein we left a life of auto-pilot and spontaneously took control of our lives again? Or have you noticed this in other people - someone who seemed completely undriven and lackluster suddenly becomes dynamic and inspired, changing their lives from a state of mediocrity to one of happiness and success?
Also, there is the opposite of this, where through years of negativity, unhealthy living/environment, trauma, or drug use, a person devolves into entropy and seems to simply just exist, without spark or passion, as though their personal code had become infected by a virus. Perhaps this is the default setting for when we fail to maintain a life within the programmed parameters of our training. It would make for an efficient model; instead of allowing a self-aware being to devolve, which not only increases suffering but uses system resources to attain a null sum, simply have the AI revert back to NPC status. This would also avoid having to terminate a program by allowing this tabula rasa reboot to occur.
In keeping with the hypothesis that we are each an artificial intelligence currently in a moral/ethical training environment, it seems a likely scenario that each of us begins life as an NPC and only becomes actively self-aware after some experience is undergone. At this point, our actual journey begins. Do you remember when you came online so to speak? Or have there been dark periods of your life where you faded into background noise and just operated on instinct; sleep, work, eat, sleep, etc? When we deviate from our objective which is to evolve into a productive, enlightened being, it would seem that we once again enter the dream-state Zhuangzi spoke of and assume the role of NPC until, through experience and altering the way we mentally process data, we are able to wake up and undergo the Transformation of Things.
This concept, if carried through to its end, may hint at the idea that once we have achieved our learning objectives, we are then taken out of the simulation and sent to our next state of being. Maybe this is the source of the saying that 'the good die young'. Of course, there are many older people who have attained a state of excellence, but the exact purpose of the system is beyond us - or in other words, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Something to think about. This leads to our second idea developing from the role of NPCs in the simulation.
The Purpose of Suffering
A common question throughout history, to people of all religions, is: How can suffering be allowed by a Creator?
Millions of people die of malnutrition and starvation each year for no other reason than having been randomly born into a poor environment. Suffering through no fault of their own. Not to mention all of the people who experience all of the other cruelties that exist in our world, from rape and murder to cancer and Alzheimer's. But what if there actually were a point to it? More so, what if we each had to experience it?
Is this the source of empathy, and compassion? Have we each undergone a round in the simulation where we experienced bludgeoning existentialism through seemingly needless suffering? How else is it that we feel we can sympathize and relate to suffering that we ourselves have never undergone? No amount of explanation can realistically impart the sensation of being badly burned; it's only through having experienced it that we can actually understand the feeling. Is this how we actually enter the simulation, with several brief 'lives' in unendurable circumstances, that progress upwards with each incarnation? Or is it a state we are occasionally sent back to in order to temper our overall experience, just as metal is tempered by heating it nearly to the point of destruction before allowing it to cool to a state of heightened strength?
If any of this strikes a chord in you, we very much want to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences and opinions in our forum. We would love to hear from you and begin the conversation.
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