By Bob Gaydos 

Is reality really virtual? What if none of it mattered?

  What if killing 168 schoolgirls in the process of killing much of the leadership of a sovereign nation that hadn’t attacked or even threatened us didn’t matter?

  What if killing innocent fishermen earning a living in the sea off Venezuela didn’t matter?

  What if cutting off the oil supply to Cuba, effectively starving the island nation that also posed no threat, didn’t matter?

    What if eliminating funds for food and HIV treatment for African nations, effectively killing thousands, didn’t matter?

    What if government agents randomly kidnapping people off the streets of American cities didn’t matter? What if those same agents killing innocent American citizens in the same streets didn’t matter?

   What if powerful, influential men participating in a worldwide sex trafficking ring with young girls didn’t matter?

    What if caring about such things was all just something we made up in our minds? A “construct,” to borrow a concept from Deepak Chopra. Constructs, according to the meditation guru who shared intimate emails about a taste for young girls with Jeffrey Epstein, are mental creations (beliefs, roles, ideas) that help us get through life, but keep us from recognizing our true nature – pure awareness, as he says. Chopra promotes meditation to get past the fear and ego which he says bind us to these constructs so that we can find the “real” reality within ourselves as part of a massive field of consciousness. 

    What if, as part of this vast consciousness, age, sexual behavior, honesty, respect, compassion, decency and other “constructs” that guide us through life don’t matter? What if grown men meditating regularly and engaging in sexual activity with young girls (a construct defined by most as rape) is a construct one can live with? And, of course, lying about it. One’s own convenient “real” reality? Pure awareness.

   Meditate on that.

   And while you’re in a meditative state, consider the proposition put forth by another proponent of the “all is not what it seems to be” fraternity — Tom Campbell. The physicist/philosopher posits that we are all simply characters in a digital virtual reality. Campbell’s “larger consciousness system“ is the computer that produces our reality.

   Campbell’s three-book series under the umbrella title of “My Big Toe” (“My Big Theory of Everything“), posits that your true self — the Player — is a non-physical unit of consciousness, which exists outside of a physical simulation, your avatar, which is your body and brain. The “player” (not your brain) makes all the choices for your avatar within the virtual reality. And, it has a purpose — to lower the entropy (the disorder in our lives such as war, killing, kidnaping, rape, lying) by choosing love and cooperation over fear and ego.

   Well, in that case, all of it would seem to matter.

   Hmm. Conundrum.

   “Real” reality or virtual reality?

   Upon reflection of about 30 seconds I’ve decided my Player is telling me that Deepak is full of crap. Pure evil. The Player has apparently also instructed me to keep writing that all the others who were part of the Epstein sex-trafficking and whatever else was going on construct deserve to be severely punished for their behaviors. And that the most efficient way to quickly reduce the entropy in all our shared reality, virtual or otherwise, is to haul Donald Trump’s diapered butt out of our White House and into a prison cell as soon as possible.

    For what it’s worth, that’s my construct of a big theory of everything and my very real reality.

By Bob Gaydos

Airman Jack Teixeira

     I suspect I am not alone in wondering how, in the name of Jack Ryan, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman trying to impress an online gamer chat group called Thug Shaker Central, got his hands on hundreds of pages of top secret intelligence briefings on the war in Ukraine, U.S. spying on Russia and lots of other countries (friend and foe) and posted it online, thereby presenting a potential whopper of an international crisis and a not-so-small for-real embarrassment for the Pentagon.

   I also wonder how, in the names of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a young man who was part of the military, intelligence and computer communities, could not (if the allegations against him are true) appreciate the potential risk in human lives of exposing such information to the worldwide web. How could he not process the difference between real life warfare and video gaming?

    And finally, I wonder how, in the name of basic common sense, could a young man apparently unable or uninterested in making such vital national security distinctions be granted access to so much “secret” information?

     More, as they say, will be revealed, but we already know enough to be concerned.

     So far, there are apparently two threads of “explanation” coming from Pentagon and intelligence services:

1. Yes, the information leaked was important for military and intelligence gathering reasons, but their dissemination is survivable. Ukrainian officials are even said to be glad for the leak, because it exposes their true need for more military support.
2. Young people in the military are given all sorts of important responsibilities and are expected to abide by the rules. In fact, they are essential to the storing and processing of all sorts of important intelligence material.

    This is all sorts of troubling. President Biden has ordered a review of the process of granting clearance to classified material. The Pentagon says it will do so. But what exactly will it do?

      Reassessing the actual classifying of documents would be a good place to start. How many secrets do we actually need? The people who collect them are likely to always think they need more. Maybe some outside eyes are needed.

       Then there’s the issue of who gets to actually look at the secrets. Is it crucial for a 21-year-old living on Cape Cod and serving in the National Guard to have what appears to be easy access to classified reports on the war in Ukraine and USA spying on Russia? Was there anything in his background to suggest an inability to comprehend that casual dissemination of the material he was privy to was a serious crime?

     The airman, Jack Teixeira, apparently knew what he did was against the law, the FBI says, because he was searching the topic of  “leaks“ on the web the day before he was arrested. 

    In response to the online leaks, the Defense Department is reviewing its processes to protect classified information, reducing the number of people who have access, and reminding the force that “the responsibility to safeguard classified information is a lifetime requirement for each individual granted a security clearance.” So said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks in a memo issued following Teixeira’s arrest.

     That’s all well and good and necessary. But the Defense Department also admits that it has long been concerned about the proliferation and popularity of video war games with many of its younger members and cites its inability to monitor such games for any illegal activity. That’s the purview of the FBI. It’s probably safe to assume that some agents will be working on their video gaming skills in the near future.

    Meanwhile, Airman Teixeira, apparently well-schooled in the victories and defeats of virtual reality, is about to get a crash course in real-life consequences. Wonder if he’ll notice the difference.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in/residence at zestoforange.com.      

By Bob Gaydos

Donald Trump is messing with my journalistic instincts. How do I know? Well, I never got past the headline of the Facebook post that informed me psychologists were diagnosing something new among their patients, informally called TAD — Trump Anxiety Disorder.

I never bothered to read the article. Of course they are, I said to myself. What took them so long? The whole damn country is suffering from it. We’re one, big, herky-jerky mass of resentment and anxiety just waiting for the next tweet to make us great again. Or have us at each other’s throats.

I recognize the symptoms in myself every morning when I wake up and remember that the sorry excuse for a human being called Trump still lives in the White House and millions of Americans are apparently OK with that. I’ve also been told that acceptance is the key to serenity and that I don’t have to like the situation to retain my sanity, just accept that it is. So I’ve now given up trying to figure out or reason with the Trumpsters. The universe and history will deal with them.

But as someone who has been trained and conditioned over time to write about such things as a colossal upheaval of the moral underpinnings of the supposed defender of democracy, equality and justice on the planet (i.e. the United States), I also feel obliged to try to write despite the angst. To report, if you will, on the latest outrage. But really …

There’s no keeping up. Pick a topic. Is it Korea, Russia, the wall, trade wars, utter incompetence, lies, NATO, Iran, hush money for sex with porn stars, China, lies, kneeling football players, the queen, racism, ignorance, attacks on reporters, lies, Hillary, tax cuts for the rich, boorishness, caging immigrant kids, nepotism, the budget deficit, witch hunts, lies …?

It’s all different, yet all the same. Follow the bouncing ball. Three-card Monte. What did he just say? So, while I may have Trump Anxiety Disorder, I think I’m also suffering from what the mental health professionals call a co-occurring condition — Trump Fatigue Symptom.

It’s downright tiring writing the same thing over and over again: Dotard did/said something dumb or cruel, or both. Then he lied about it. Republicans didn’t care (they’ve committed suicide) and his loyalists cheered. End of story.

The end of story I’m hoping for, of course, is one written by Special Counsel Robert Mueller: Trump led out in handcuffs, along with his family and cronies. But I’m also looking for a good read in a chapter to be written in November — the midterm elections. If there’s not a big Blue Wave vote for Congress, TAD will become epidemic I fear.

Meanwhile, someone who cares about me and is curious about the true meaning of life (it’s not politics or baseball, I’m told), has steered me to some people who seem to have a pretty good handle on it. Eckhart Tolle. Mooji. Rupert Spira. Deepak Chopra.Tom Campbell. Thanks to YouTube, they are helping me to change my outlook, maybe even lower my anxiety level.

The key is simply to be, these enlightened men say. I am not my thoughts. I am not even my body. Consciousness (not the Dotard) is in charge. All I have is now. Be present. (Have lunch with my sons.) Meet everything in the moment. Be aware of being aware. (Do all-you-can-eat sushi every Sunday.) Lower the entropy (disorder) in a system (consciousness) and increase the cooperation, order, caring, even love. There are no coincidences.

This is all a virtual reality, says Campbell, a physicist. In that case, I want to be the player in charge of the Dotard’s avatar. I think I could bring plenty of energy to that experience, appreciate every moment and lower the entropy of the entire planet.

It’s working slowly.

Also, please vote Democrat.

rjgaydos@gmail.com