Blog/2024-11-04/Victory in Death

I'm a near-religious believer in Multicellular Mankind. Looking back at my childhood, I think this was (and is) more innate or early axiomatic than it is a reasoned position. Like many children I once believed that ghosts or other such beings inhabited the dark. And I've definitely hit the lights and jumped into bed to dodge them (the bed being safe, especially under the covers, of course).

The part that relates to this, though, is that at some point I'd decided that I was going to beat the ghosts by revealing that they existed. Even if they could terrify me or do terrible things to me, I'd win because:

1. I would know for a fact that they did exist
2. I would alert everyone to their existence

Being a child, the idea of death too fast to react to wasn't quite at the front of my mind, so I would go to these dark rooms with the phrase "There Are Ghosts Here!" primed to yell. If the ghosts showed themselves, I'd yell that and people would know that ghosts are real. So even if I died, I'd still win! They obviously wanted to hide, and I would have revealed them!

The plan is obviously full of holes and I never actually ended up yelling this (obviously because, knowing that their victory would be pyrrhic, they avoided me). But I think it shows that I always believed this idea of Something Greater Than Me.

I call this specific form of discovery purpose my Observation Dharma.