1973
January
In January Richard Nixon began his second term as President which I was disappointed in. I had voted for the democrat George McGovern mainly because he vowed to immediate end the Vietnam war if he was elected. Unbeknownst to the public, Nixon’s National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, had secret negotiations with North Vietnam and in January announced an end to the war on January 28th. All U.S. troupes were removed by the end of March after over ten years of fighting and some 58,000 U.S. troops being killed. Although U.S. troops were gone and the war was over for the U.S., the war continued on for North and South Vietnam for another two years.
On January 27, 1973, I was greatly relieved when the Selective Service announced that there would be no further draft calls. I would have likely been called up within a few months if wasn’t discontinued.
With Nixon being reelected I did have to put up with people misspelling my last name for another four years. Whenever I met someone new and I told them my last name was “Mixson” they heard and spelled it “Nixon” and when I corrected them, they would spell it “Nixson” or “Mixon”. It would often take several tries for them to get it right. With Nixon being reelected, meant that this annoyance would continue for years to come.
Human Biocomputer
The new year started out with me reflecting upon the book Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer by John C. Lilly which had come out in 1972. I bought a copy at the Campus Book Store, and it changed the way I thought. Lilly opens in the preface with….
All human beings, all persons who reach adulthood in the world today are programmed biocomputers. No one of us can escape our own nature as programmable entities. Literally, each of us may be our programs, nothing more, nothing less.
Wow, he had me right there, I have been learning to program computers for the past three years, he was saying that our minds were just computers that could be programmed. Lilly goes on describing metaprogramming as…
To avoid learning to learn, symbols, metaphors, models , each time, I symbolize the underlying idea in these operations a metaprogramming.
Essentially, metaprogramming is an operation in which a central control system controls hundreds of thousands of programs operating in parallel simultaneously. This operation in 1927 is not yet done in man-made computers – metaprogramming is done outside the big solid-state computers by the human programmers, or more properly, the human metaprogrammers.
… we may be our programs, nothing more, nothing less…
This made sense to me, connected with me, why couldn’t I program myself? Lilly said…
Out of the substrate comes something else – the controller, the steersman, the programmer in the biocomputer, the sef-metaprogrammer. In a well-organized biocomputer, there is at least one such critical control metaprogram labeled I for acting on other metaprograms and labeled me when acted upon by other metaprograms.
And the says what connected to me, a way to change…
One path for self-development is to centralize control of one’s biocomputer in one self-metaprogrammer, making the other into conscious executives subordinate to the singe superconscient self-metaprogrammer.
Lilly even explains the creation of God as a “supraself metaprogram”…
These may be personified as if entities, treated as a network for information transfer, or realized as if a self traveling in the Universe to strange lands or dimensions or spaces. If one does a further unification operation on these supraself metaprograms, one my arrive at a concept labeled God, the Creator, the Starmaker, or whatever.
It made sense, God was a creation of our own mind. When we prayed to God for help, we were asking ourselves for help.
Lilly describes a method
We need ways of thinking which look as straight at the inner realities as at the physical-chemical-biological out realities. We need truly objective philosophical analysis inside ourselves as well as outside ourselves.
One might ask where is such a theory applicable? Once mastered, it may be directly applied in self-analysis. If on remembers that one’s self is a feedback-cause with other human beings, one can start at this personal end of the system and achieve beginnings of interhuman analysis by analyzing one’s self first.
Lilly says that…
[One] group who have no difficulty with the computer aspects but may have difficulty with the subjective aspects is that large group of young people who are becoming immersed more and more in computers, their use and programming.
I was one of those young people. It would not be easy, Lilly says…
It is devilishly hard work digging up enough of the basic facts and enough of the basic programs and metaprograms controlling each mind from within to change it poor operations into better ones …. But the basic investigation of self or other selves is not easy or fast. … Unconscious automatically controls our behavior.
It made sense to me, and I set out to understand, control, and program my mind. It wasn’t easy, I wrote in my journal…
There are many leads I can follow which many lead nowhere or lead my mind in circles, or yet to other problems. So, with there being many leads to follow, I must be selective in choosing the ones to trace down. Given enough time to myself it would seem likely the root problem could be found and then a solution found or at least a compromise with myself could be found. It would seem that no one can know one better than oneself it shouldn't be difficult to find the problem. But here is the major flaw, because it is yourself you try to analyze you are biased and avoid sensitive areas within yourself.
But more often than I would have like I would fall back into my old melancholy self…
Undecided
Sinking, sinking slowly up
I will never give up
Sinking, sinking slowly down
I have finally hit the ground
Round, round about I go
Oh it all moves so slow
She said yes, she said no
But I really don't know
Should I give up
Should I give down
It has got me bound
Can it be
Can it not
I really forgot
The simple me
is actually completely
and so I fell
what the hell.
It really didn't matter anyway
or did it,
undecided.
Updated: 03-16-2003