Dimensions
I live in a six-dimensional space, a model inculcated and fixed in my mind; defined and reinforced with an acute sense of reality, a schematic that outlines what may in fact be a unique solipsism — a world of my own. Whether it’s a true representation of the human condition, or an oblique, personal, selfish philosophy, upon reading this essay, it is up to you to judge.
The first three I can easily express with my hands, the geometric width, length, and depth, the linear dimensions defining the physical and biological earth, measurements expandable to infinity, or according to physicists, along the curvature of space. Limited by a feeble mind, I can only attempt to embrace the actual dimensions of the earth and all living creatures inside; the flora, fauna, microscopic biome, and everything that my fellow humans have built, or more truthfully, destroyed. Elon Musk, the world’s richest human being, dreams of escaping the limited three-dimensional planet, lifting off on a rocket ship to Mars, establishing a colony, but on such a journey, his ship would end up drifting aimlessly through space, and the crew, like fish out of water, would end victims of the Fourth Dimension, then die an agonizing death. Perhaps he plans to end his life in the same dramatic fashion as he lives it. But what about the crew; are they unwitting partners in his ploy?
Friends have often accused me of being superficial, only appreciating the beauty alongside the elegant, and the pristine natural world, purposely and without empathy or compassion, turning away from the decrepit, poor, tawdry, stupid, and aged. Not true, I counter; I also eliminate the mass in the middle, the quotidian, the ordinary, the mediocre, the banal monotony of the American consumer lifestyles, all of which widens an empty gap, liberates my curious imagination, enables it to envisage the rare, sublime, and possibly widening the portal leading to opportunities beyond three dimensions.
Moving on to the Fourth Dimension, more ethereal, little understood, and to date, an enigma to scientists, but undeniably absolute as my body’s weight pressing down upon the floor. Science fiction writers call it the space-time continuum; to physicists it’s the electromagnetic field, an invisible, omnipresent force that dictates and controls the essential properties of mass, the pull of gravity, the speed, direction, and diffusion of light, the transmission and entropy of energy, even the dilations of time. The ancient Greeks called it the ether. They had this convoluted idea of a lattice-like web holding up the moon, sun, and stars — visible only to the Gods who possessed all the imperfect emotions of humans. They had no concept of an intangible, omnipotent, cosmic force that holds fast the expanding universe together.
Scientists and engineers have learned to exploit the properties of the Fourth Dimension, an expedient pathway to aid communication and navigation in satellite arrays. Elon Musk, that vocal oligarch wannabe, imagines himself as Helios ascending to space if only to reinforce his low-orbit Star Link satellite internet service. The GPS network that transmits global locations and navigational data through triangulation of thirty-two satellites in circular, non-geostationary orbit, 20,200 kilometers above the earth, is not only a scientific and engineering marvel, it eclipses both time and space, a phenomenon to which ground operators must constantly adjust.
The Fourth Dimension makes me feel small and inconsequential in the greater scheme of the grander universe, especially among my technocratic neighbors. But there is an undeniable equality about it; the electromagnetic field humbles even Elon Musk. The earth is but a small fish in a vast ocean, and people are little less than microbes. Still our egos drive us forward to irrational goals.
The Fifth-Dimension is an ongoing anthropological experiment, a wholly human-created abstraction embedded into our evolving culture: the various monetary systems and the workings of the free-market economy, jurisprudence, religion, philosophy, the arts, myths, values, morality, and politics. It all began during the distant Imperial Age, the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Mycenean, and Chinese, an epoch when rulers believed they were Gods. They not only demanded submissiveness and worship from their subjects, but sacrifice, tribute, and labor, thus the pyramids and other monumental stone edifices. Their time ended, as most empires do, leaving posterity a scant legacy, a few pictographs and hieroglyphics sculpted on stones—puzzles only recently deciphered. A couple of centuries later, the Greek poet Homer weaved tales about wars, warriors, glories, heroism, city states, and mythical monsters. The Hebrews looked back at the Bronze Age to concoct their own tales about the genesis of man, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, century long droughts, the great deluge, the separation of the Red Sea, the abandonment of vast cities; events all attributed to the wrath of God. The Bronze Age collapsed in and about the mid-twelfth century BCE, creating the vacuum for new Gods and eventually new empires.
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The Phoenician, Canaanite, Philistine, and Hebrew tribes took a sabbatical from warring and developed fanciful script-like writing, mostly for commercial reasons. Thus, the advent of the Fifth Dimension. Mystics, prophets, priests, and other spiritual leaders were its next practitioners. Monarchs, courtiers, scholars, and lawyers soon followed in their wake. The scripted word accelerated the development of written language; the printing press supercharged it; the computer standardized it; the Internet made it ubiquitous; AI threatens to disembody it; the irrationality of humanity may use AI, now called Superintelligence, to unleash global destruction that would end the Anthropocene.
The Fifth Dimension, a successful vocal group of the sixties best known for the hit, The Age of Aquarius, has nurtured the opposite of the song’s prophesy, an invasive species: capitalists, and they’re ravishing the very earth. The corporation is their lethal weapon, one of the Fifth Dimension’s unintended offspring, a black swan that took the form of a legal entity, a scheme that initially protected the English church and royalty by limiting their liability to stakeholders’ investment. Yes, the corporation began as an English innovation, coined first as the Joint Stock Company, the compact that funded the English Empire, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the colonization of half the world, including North America. Centuries later, the American courts decided in one of their distorted and perhaps most corrupted rulings, to alter the rules of the game; changing the Merriam Webster’s Dictionary definition of a legal entity, redefined a corporation as a human collective with equal civil rights. America, both investors, the public, and the government have since suffered grievously from this once disembodied law. Billionaires now take advantage of a jumble of corporate and tax rules to exploit the marketplace, and they do it with impunity. By default, they built an economic system designed for short-term profit, one destined to impoverish humanity and destroy the earth. The most successful board game in America, Monopoly, is based on it. It’s a zero-sum game.
Moving on to the outer limits of my imagination, the Sixth-Dimension, consciousness — a possible communication link to the human collective, even to a higher, numinous otherworld. Consciousness, once the exclusive domain of religious people, has now expanded to include the interests of psychologists, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and other learned professionals. The conscience is a subset of consciousness, that haunting voice reminding us of our altruistic imperatives. Elon Musk is contemplating transferring his consciousness to an android, which may allow him to travel to Mars, a journey that will allow him to withstand cosmic radiation, the atrophy of his biological body, and except for energy, the need for sustenance. Star Trek’s Borg is his model; but first he must assimilate the American people, destroy our souls, make us all humanoid slaves.
Consciousness differs from sentience, which is the ability to be self-aware, respond to a changing environment, to communicate with other members of the same species, and to demonstrate the ability to shift survival tactics in a changing ecosystem. Consciousness as positioned in this essay is both individual and collective, a dimension distinct and sometimes autonomous from our biological bodies and brains. And like the electromagnetic field, it’s invisible to the probing eyes of scientists.
Consciousness descended on me on one hot summer day in my fifth year, an epiphany that opened a new world to my senses. I resisted it, looked up to the sky, accused God of choosing the wrong child, and called on him to return me to my previous self. Consciousness came to me via a deus ex machina, a crane-like apparatus used in ancient Greek theater to produce godlike effects like flying. It transfixed my body. Afterwards, I awoke, not from a dream, but to a horrifying alterworld. Ever since that bright summer day on a grassy knoll outside my primary school, I felt like an alien on a distant planet. I’ve learned since that it is a common childhood experience.
Consciousness became my master, commanding me to disregard prudence, walk away from the sensible life of a five-year-old, explore the mysteries of the earth, not for sustenance or treasure, but for knowledge and sometimes pure adventure, even wickedness. It fell short of enhancing my mind and body or the social-economic circumstances of my birth. So, I still stumble along on the outside parameters of the human community.
Consciousness is the well-spring of inspiration and creativity, but comes short of controlling the levers. It’s incorporeal, has no hands to grasp, no feet to run, no brain to compute, no heart to fall in love, and no respect for money or authority. But beware, disobeying its commands can put your life in dire jeopardy. Consciousness is the closest thing we have to a spirit, or it may be the devil. I conclude this short essay on that note.
Emil B. Lester, Jr.
