Maybe something else.

I'm still refraining from talk about the Clique Space(TM) technology, but that does not mean that I cannot ramble about other stuff in relation to Clique Space.

I'm an atheist. I'm an unbeliever; I'll go further and disclose that (unless provoked - I suppose) I'm a pacifist anti-theist. This is no big deal for me, I've not had to negotiate any threat of familial estrangement. My life has been fairly comfortable. I think that, unlike perhaps the US (where I hear most opposition to atheism originate) I have lived in a society where one's own childhood development has not been impeded by persuasive charm of charismatic individuals who might otherwise have been able to scare my immature mind into submissive intellectual corners.

I started my adventure with Clique Space almost a decade ago because, being someone who had been equipped by a childhood where he was relatively free to explore, I felt the common urge to answer what I think are fairly fundamental aspects of existence. These aspects (if there are indeed more than one; I haven't bothered to enumerate them beyond ramblings like the one I am writing here) revolve around such questions like: what is it about the human brain that produces a mind? If a mind can be manifest through a human brain, can it be manifest in something that isn't a human brain? Does the brain perhaps act like a magnifying glass; does it focus a natural property of the universe, and if it might, might that same property be focussed synthetically?

From these questions, I ask myself, what then is being magnified by a human brain? Surely, it has to be the ego: the individual who not only perceives their own existence, but also understands 1: the visceral necessity of defending one's existence against elements that would do the ego harm, and 2: the opportunity of advancement of one's existence through elements that would nourish and protect the ego. In addition to this, I think that it is crucial to recognise the existence of egos other than one's own. If this were not true, then there would be no need to delineate between that which is owned and that which is not owned; the ego would therefore become a redundant artefact, and there would be no evolutionary benefit in having one. In fact, to the point of the existence of other egos and in reference to the second paragraph of this blog entry, a community of theistic egos regularly appears to withhold access by one ego to others as a way of coercing that particular individual to adopt and hold the beliefs of the community. The options for theism's victims are: adherence to a dogma or non-existence, at least to those who you have previously relied on for validation of your existence - other members of the theistic tribe in which the non-believing victim confides.

I couldn't have come up with Clique Space if I were a theist; for if I were, I would have been tied to the notion that the individual is a sacred property for which mere mortals like me have no divine licence to dabble with. Like nearly all of the history of progress, a new technological paradigm can reveal powerful universal maxims that often challenge the boundaries of the theist's world view. I believe that something like Clique Space hasn't been attempted until now because the human species may not have yet felt comfortable approaching and incorporating notions that attempt to see the ego as a universal substance like light or gravity which obeys some collection of governing principles.

Now, turning the criticism onto the opinions of many sceptics and even atheistic ones at that, I have met a few people who profess to be non-believers, who would similarly deny the existence of a mind. I have received the impression that they would dismiss the self as a mere side-effect of neural activity; having nothing to contribute to the individual's existence. I put that this is clearly wrong: if the individual (the self, the ego, even perhaps the soul) did not exist, then the organism in which the individual is manifest would have no reason to defend itself against deleterious forces of this world or to advance itself by capitalising on positive forces. Similarly, an individual that does not recognise themselves, would be incapable of recognising this similar property manifest in the world around them, and would crash through this world to meet its end when it encroached too much upon the space claimed by others - who would of course be similarly ignorant; something I do not observe except in cases where an individual appeared to be mentally deranged in some way.

It appears that a lot about psychopathology is about individuals who have problems recognising the ego either in themselves or in others. Perhaps, if Clique Space is a mechanism that is capable of manifesting an ego, maybe then, a lot about psychopathology could be studied in a Clique Space system. If this were true, what ethical framework would be necessary to keep study of egos manifest by this system from the type of harm that one hominid ego would not subject to another? How could a Clique Space system be sufficiently complex so it could be put into a state which could produce similar symptoms to various psychopathologies, while being as certain as one can be that no ego, possibly manifest by this unstable Clique Space, is enduring the terror of this instability?