Better Web Metaphors
Yeah, I know I said that was a bottom level post. Maybe this is a lateral bottom level post. You know: another rung over on the web.
So here is the better web metaphor:
The universe is a web of interconnection. The silk threads, of which there are seven different types with different functions that catch and release beings in different ways, that can move elements for beings, that can enable dispersals and travels, that can build temporary homes. The silk threads that are everything in our reality and enable all that we can perceive of that reality.
But where do the threads come from? Who built the web? Was it us that built it with our stories? The architects of our own reality? Was it god? Or is it god? Could it have just been spiders? I mean, if you stay up late reading about spiders on the web, you kind of start realizing that we have mis-underestimated them.
They can basically shoot seven different types of silks with different uses out of their bodies that enabled them to fly by catching wind or electrostatic currents, to disperse their progeny, to live under water and transport oxygen below the surface to breath, to build comfortable temporary homes that are both biodegradable and aesthetically and functionally valuable to humans.
They are usually the first species to colonize new territories.
We thought we invented colonialism. And how long did it take us to figure out ways to fly, how to use electricity for transportation, to devise a way to breathe underwater, to build sustainable homes, that other species can repurpose? Have we even figured all those things out? If so, did it take us way longer than spiders to figure out how to do it? They’ve been doing all of these things far longer than our species has existed. They got us beat. And all along we have been mis-underestimating them.
Maybe it is the spiders that created the web of everything. Maybe they are the creator: of everything, the interconnections, the existences, the perceptions, the stories that we call our reality.
Maybe we should start a religion.
Seems as plausible as any other religion.
Except it may be too compatible with reality. Because all of its beliefs are metaphors that attempt to understand the reality that perceived and constructed the metaphors.
So, what would we call it? Spiderism? Arachnidism? Arachnia? Would we all have to worship spiders? Or at least see them as sacred?
But there are a lot of things we just don’t know. Even about the private life of spiders. What else might they have been up to that we haven’t been able or bothered to observe and understand?
How many other species might we have mis-underestimated because we assumed that there just wasn’t that much to know about them? Or because we haven’t been able to observe and understand the complexities and agencies of their vastly different lives?
What if it was another species that created the web of reality? Or, what if it was many other species that created aspects of the web of reality? Each contributed its own little aspect of the reality that helps maintain everything else in that reality? Would we have to worship them all? Or, at least deem them all sacred too?
When you put it like that, it sounds like the interconnected web of reality may not just be made of silk, but of everything because it is the universe. The web of everything is the universe. We perceive of it what we can. Try to make sense of what we can. To our selves. Or, we try with stories, with metaphors of how things are connected to remind ourselves what we need to do to survive and possibly thrive for a time until we overdo it, decline or cataclysmically exit for a new cycle to begin. One extinction makes way for a succession of new life forms with new conditions.
We arose along interconnecting lines of those processes. To tell our stories, to spin the threads of the eternal golden braid of everything: the web of reality. That is our little contribution to the reality that helps maintain everything else in that reality.
We are probably a bit part in a process or story that transcends our ability to even imagine in complexity and possibility what may be at play in the universe, in reality like every other species that has come before that has contributed to the possibilities that became the next types of life forms or created the conditions for them to evolve.
Eternal. Golden. Braid.
Probably mathematically provable, but not by humans. Maybe provable in physics and chemistry, but not by humans. Likely philosophically provable using logical methods, but not by humans. Possibly, creation myth provable, but not by humans. At least not yet. Not one we can all agree on. We all have different stories of what happened and how. Some cause us to deny the eternal golden braid of each strand of the web of everything. The hierarchical urge is one of denial in the service of self-interest. Considering an “other” doesn’t deserve true status of being in the web. We fight over that when we should be protecting the web for ourselves and for everything else because we are and we depend on everything else.
Is there a religion that already has that foundation? Or maybe did at one space-time? Or is that the foundation of every religion before it got corrupted, co-opted, and conscripted to use its own principles to subvert its own principles in service if accruing power and wealth for a few people who desire that?
Maybe it is a better web metaphor to just believe in The Oneness Principle and the web of everything.