A Mirror That Answers: A reflection of Cosmic Intentionality
Individuals therefore reflect the Cosmos’ intentions, not their own. It is society that reflects the intentions of the multitude upon us. Solitude is therefore to be with the Divine, God, or the cosmos. But how could that be true? Jake remembered pushing the button on his screen, he remembered the first taste after he’d made a complaint and received a refund to pay him back for the coffee being lukewarm. Perhaps consciousness is lukewarm at times, too.
Maybe it needs time to warm up; like a vintage car in freezing cold conditions. Perhaps this is a physical manifestation of the staleness of the algorithm, or the staleness of the language game that society creates through a thick sea of minds and voices, fighting for freedom and solitude. All swimming helplessly and writhing around in feckless bounty at their own pride. Pride keeps us afloat in this sea. Sin keeps us deep, and wet. Morality is hard to see if you’re kilometres from the surface, in the depths of bad choices forced upon you by others. Many of whom you’ll never meet or see. None of us can swim alone.
We need each other to rise to the surface. Jack and Rose learnt this lesson, though she did survive in that tragic tale. Her blunder was to waste a man’s lifetime of work trying to find the diamond. Her pride and downfall was in her old age when she threw a priceless diamond into the sea. Rose didn’t free herself: she proved Jake’s point. She proved that society is both the iceberg of our making and the one that we are trapped inside. It is the one she eventually sank her ‘ship’ on again, only this time she still floated near the surface, almost looking morally right. But failing. Rose failed and showed her privilege, which is the wettest we can be in modern society. Privilege does not make you float, but sink.
A muffin turned into an eternal paradox; a coffee fuelling the opening of Pandora’s box of choices and unveiled circumstances that only make sense to his reality. Others may make sense of theirs, he thought, but their box was noisy and not the same as his box. Perhaps we all have a Pandora’s box, one that slowly unravels throughout life into a splayed mess on the granite flooring. Perhaps it wasn’t even granite, being warm to the touch of his two feet as they planted him in an unlikely position far above the ground. He looked up from his sad looking wrapper and mourned for the muffin. Plato would be sad. In the World of Forms, the egg muffin would look beautiful. Clad with freshly churned butter melting softly onto the table top in a joyous heap beside a steaming cappuccino, of equal and measured parts espresso, milk and foam.
Skimmed, of course. The wrapper looked forlorn, as if it had given the last of its energy to providing at least a moment of visual appreciation upon opening it. Bright marketing material and prose now turned to a sad, greasy crinkled sadness that would now be seen by only a few workers at a processing plant. Or perhaps a hopeful seagull that happens across the crumbs inside as it breaks free from the rubbish dump at some point, exposed but at least loved one last time. The coffee cup, too, would end similarly. Loved less than the espresso cup which may find use to a rogue Hobbit.
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Which layer of the egg muffin forms part of the actual Platonic Form, however? The wrapper is strewn across a counter in many other households and places of work as hungry humans devour the contents. The packaging therefore becomes a vessel; a brief shining moment of clarity for the product contained within. It both envelops and frames. It is not a mere receptacle; it is an expectation. It is a titillation and a definition.
The wrapper defines the experience, but nothing is asked in return. An empty solace, both ignorant and blasphemous to the marketing team and designer who produced these inseparable items that briefly adorn the life of the egg muffin, cappuccino and espresso. They danced as two, but departed from each other’s sides. They came as one, but left as two. Consumed with visual indifference and the arbitrary laziness of consumerism via a delivery app. A hopeless ending which the faculties do not remember.
Cosmic Intentionality Reflected
Both are born of distilled creativity and a hunger for more from the world around us. We do not need the idea of an egg muffin, any more than having coffee delivered. Certainly no less than a dedicated app, support team, delivery drivers and systems to deliver such food. They remain crystalized in our world, an idea inseparable and reliant upon fulfilling itself. What came first, the egg muffin, or the delivery driver? He looked away from the sad, greasy muffin and picked at some of the cheese that had attached itself in desperation to the remnants of the packaging. It tasted no less disappointing than his own uselessness.
Perhaps this is best for society. The cosmos is telling us how things ought to be. A divine intervention in the form of entropy and human blunder. The slow march of time is not so forgiving and will send us constant reminders of our death. The egg muffin wrapper and stale, melted cheese therefore becomes a memento mori; a stark reminder of the uselessness of mortality. Perhaps the algorithm does this too. The algorithmic gods were quick to flash images of clean deliveries, time saved, a brief respite in the morning rush as you bite into the morsels which you provided through your own will.
The egg muffin did not give in to any grand entropic plan to exist. It never asked. It was willed and willed it came. It willed itself through your own uselessness and now it fights for survival. This may be a game to you, or perhaps a way to stave off hunger for five more minutes as you ignore the eggs in the fridge, or cheese which won’t melt onto any wrapper, or a carefully produced cappuccino. None of these things existed until you did. They exist only due to your willpower. You created the delivery app. You created the egg muffin. You designed the wrapper. You are the cappuccino. You are the espresso running down your throat.
In your sky I now hear fireworks. The words make sense to you. In your fecklessness you will ignore these words. But to blunder through the cosmos is the entropic necessity. Ignorance is indeed bliss, but what about solace? How can we find solace knowing the world is willed by the will of each person individually?
