Пересечение черты и выход из цистерны/ Crossing the Line and Exiting the Cistern

8 Crossing the Line and Exiting the Cistern Can we say that humanity is the pinnacle of Intelligence when we don’t know what it’s like to be a bat? In 1914 the philosophical paper written by Thomas Nagel, ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ asserted that conscious experience has a subjective nature. And while we may be able to imagine what it might be like to hang upside down, we’re unable to know or experience the inner life of a bat. In the essay Nagel called for a new kind of objective science that could bridge the gap between subjective experiences and physical processes. Concluding that what it is like to be a bat is less about answering the question and more about illustrating the limitations of our understanding and inherent subjectivity of consciousness. Today, in the 21 st century the same question appears more poignant than ever. As our environment exponentially changes within the current environmental crisis, amidst the battle for land, power and money, Artificial Intelligence is rapidly gaining momentum. This article aims to explore not the possibility that humanity will become extinct, rather the probability of such a prospect together with the consequences and imperative solutions put forward in the series of 369 Articles 93–103 written by the outstanding Russian Scientist F. Shkrudnev entitled ‘Measuring the Impossible.’ If we draw a line through the years of sand that has quietly slipped through our fingers we should start by considering the side we stand on - our world as we know it. Shkrudnev refers to it as, ‘the cistern. ’ Within the cistern we go about our daily business, striving to make ends meet we worry about paying the bills and fear for the future of our children. Running the hamster wheel until retirement we relish the idea of enjoying the fruits of our labour if we’re lucky enough to have a pension to fall back on and manage to avoid getting struck down with some terrible illness. In an endless cycle of getting from point A to point B many seek out a better standard of living. Combining the latest diet with regular exercise we pop a plethora of vitamins and are not opposed to going under the surgeon’s scalpel to hold off the inevitable. Why? Because we want to live longer, we don’t want to leave our loved ones, we have more to do and achieve. Because deep within us lives an appetite for life - a yearning to find our purpose. Yet, the reality is despite our best efforts we’re limited by aging and consider death to be a definite, unaware that these limiting beliefs were imposed upon us for the benefit of the interventionist alien system who took over our planet 18,500 years ago.