Walking on thin ice

I am alone in a barren trackless landscape.

It is white.

A uniform electromagnetic phenomenon that I interpret as a color. That it is white and nothing else is an experience that exists only in my brain. White is the thing that I experience when all the colors that I can experience are all there together doing that collaborative thing that they do that I call ‘White’. The fact that I experience white is an indication that my brain is working. The fact that all colors are present, but I lack the processing capacity to detect or separate these out into their individual components is an indication of my degree of control over this thing.

This landscape has other characteristics. It is cold, a thermodynamic phenomenon that I am interpreting.

Excellent, this thing I call my brain is working the way that it is supposed to. It is receiving stimulus from my external world, and presenting them to me in a way that is uniform and consistent. Higher-level processes augment this low-level experience and give me an affirmation of my circumstances that is in accord with my senses and understanding.

It is cold and white because I’m standing in the middle of a frozen snowfield.

I know what bought me to this place, not only the familiar biomechanical processes attendant to locomotion, but also those internal processes attendant to thought that have no direct counterpart in the physical world, processes that exist as a property of my brain working the way that it does, and that unlike ‘white’ I have considerable control over.

That my actions and thoughts have led me to this place is inescapable. That this place is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is irrelevant. The place itself has no properties of this nature one way or another. It cares not whether I like it or not, whether it kills me or not, or whether it helps me or not.

The fact that it is trackless is as uniformly neutral; it just means that I am alone.

Super.

That I am alone in the middle of a frozen terrain is not the stuff of good nor bad, it’s what I think that make it so.

My actions are equally important. If I do nothing, I will die. This is equally true anywhere I find myself. That I will quickly freeze to death out here is just a fact of my circumstance. Were I to do nothing in other circumstances, I would just as surely die of thirst or starve.

Survival is a destination, and the instinct I have for self preservation, and the things that I need to do to preserve this thing I call my body intact with this experience I call my life is one that I share equally with all sentient life forms.

I need to act.

Another immediately observable characteristic of this landscape is a frozen lake that stretches before me.

It is both wide and long and has my destination on its remote shore. That this may ultimately be another point of embarkation across or around neutral terrain, or is indeed my final destination (one as undeniable and certain as the destination I may alternately reach along any chosen path), is academic, as capricious and arbitrary as all destinations, possessing only that one salient property of being somewhere other than here, achievement and desirability being no more than an acknowledgement and appraisal of arrival.

I now have a choice – the lowest common denominator among all things considered sentient.

I can take the long way, and follow the shoreline of this frozen lake. Terrain I am familiar with, but a journey of unknown length that may exceed my abilities to cover before I freeze to death.

I can cross the lake to my destination, but absent any empirical information, such as a certificate testifying to the mechanical properties of this ice to support my weight, or anecdotal evidence such as footsteps in the snow across said ice, I know not whether I will fall through the ice into the water below and freeze to death.

What I do know is that if I stand here and do nothing else but think about it, I will freeze to death.

Another ‘knowledge’ I have is that my destination thus far, this frozen shore, is sufficiently remote and has consumed more of my limited supply of resources getting here than it would take for me to retrace my steps. I will just as surely freeze to death retreating to previous destinations.

That I can freeze to death is a concrete belief that I have in accordance with the actual physical properties of my surroundings and an observation of similar souls who have encountered these circumstances. As far as a belief goes, this is pleasingly concrete and motivating.

That I will actually freeze to death is now a logical extension of my actions in accordance with this belief.

How and Why I got here are direct consequences of every single decision that I have made since my brain became organized to the point where it was capable of making decisions. My beliefs concerning my circumstances are unique to me – I am alone on this shore, and consequently my beliefs only have relevance to my circumstances.

My actions, similarly unique at this point are neither good nor bad only the consequence and my perceptions thereof.

I can cross the ice or tread the shore.

This next footfall cements my fate, not the one previous, nor the ones subsequent – this subliminal and elemental fulcrum that moves the past into the future and is this most ephemeral and defining thing called now.

That now is white is not a neutral of lack of color. I know that it is in reality a confluence of all of those components that stimulate this sense I call sight, as it is with every single thing that I encounter that presents itself across my perceptual threshold – each new or familiar thing that enters my consciousness with this burgeoning insistence of now.

That I understand light and it’s corresponding action within my brain, but cannot use this cognitive capability to separate out these components into a rainbow in no way affects my ability to perceive and enjoy this phenomena and is presented to me in a stunning and surd beauty that again requires no practical knowledge whatsoever to appreciate.

Red, and green, and yellow and blue have no inherent properties of beauty, but their emergence from the uniform whiteness of my surroundings is as magical and elevating as the emergence of my consciousness from the whiteness of everything else that my brain does that is as uniform and un-divisible to me as the white at this place I call now.

That this elevation of my consciousness is subject to my control, and not just some delightful phenomena like a rainbow that emerges only at certain times in accordance with physical laws is evidenced by the fact that I can pick up a shard of ice and make rainbows.

Of the myriad of physical things that assail my senses continually, my knowledge of such things allows me to manipulate my environment to produce those sensations most in accordance with my own definitions of good and bad. All things equally in this existence of mine offer up such qualities that require only according to the dictates of my will that I pluck from them just those that are most pleasurable, even when I am freezing to death.

That I am indeed freezing and need to move propels me forward, and the sum of each footfall carries me through an environment where all things physical assail my senses continually into an experience that combines to impress on my brain that whiteness that is the sum of everything that I have done this far (thinking and acting) to make it what it is. Completely white, completely familiar, completely made up of every beautiful colored elaborate and complex strand that is the fabric of all human existence, but that is fabulous, beautiful and uniquely mine.


I need to be going soon enough, and in accordance with principles known and operable by me.

Until this moment of action, this moving ahead on a path toward a destination that are both equally contributory, I can indulge that most germane property of this consciousness of mine.

I can make a rainbow.

A consideration of all the parts right now, glorious or otherwise, and my contribution to each that have bought me to this personal and unique now – all that I am, and all that I will ever be, neither good nor bad, but only wanting that next step to make it so.