After finishing Morality: Individual and Social, the idea got stuck in my head at its end that what people will think in the future is not beyond us now, it is just the things we are not ready to accept. None of the things we call improvements to our societies socially now were unheard of 50 or 100 years ago, they were just unsettling the majority of people then. The aim of Towards Tomorrow was to move beyond the present and kick over a few sacred stones of beliefs to see what might lurk beneath them, or see if their foundations were really that sound. It was meant to be disruptive, controversial, but in the end lost its edge, shifted into a different mode, and became something else; understanding how we can define time and where we are possibly heading, and what we might be able to do about that, about the future and the time definition of ourselves.

          After Towards Tomorrow was done, many different ideas kept popping into my head, paragraphs self-contained about various things Towards Tomorrow did not address, and where it failed in its original intent to think outside the box of what is acceptable in this time, to go beyond the current mindsets of this time and society more completely in search of truth regardless of what is conventional, accepted, or safe. Something which I call gloves-off or bare-knuckled philosophy, not being held back by anything, afraid of offending no one, letting only the abstract notion of truth matter. 

          This is impossible to do on so many levels, to be able to truly think beyond the bounds, conventions, and biases of ones own time, people, and civilizations. We can gleam a few perspectives from the past, (what we are allowed to know or think about it by current governments), postulate about how other more advanced species might perceive things, or extrapolate on how those in the future might see things as humanity matures, and more of its denizens have greater and unrestricted access to its histories, all of them, not just which versions their present societies wish to stress for their own political purposes which are nothing more than caricatures of the past constructed to validate or support the current beliefs into "instant traditions" more often than not at odds with the past they claim to be upholding.

          The results of those paragraphs were assembled into a slightly more coherent collection by placing them together and giving it a title called The Heretic Papers, taken after its best paragraph which fully realized the intent of wanting to go beyond what people now think, hold sacred, unquestioning, and treads on it mercilessly yet reverently, not out of spite nor animosity, but in the simple and pure pursuit of truth. Of that one small paragraph, the pious of many faiths would find both much that is provoking, (heretical), yet also something which is true and beautiful. That such truth and beauty are seemingly at the expense of cherished beliefs, many would undoubtedly see as disturbing and unnessecarily harsh, distorting, and that is for those who could see past that at all.

           Of The Heretic Papers, or those few dozen paragraphs I refer to as The Heretic Papers, they really do go beyond what some devoutly religious people might want to withstand or be exposed to. Generally I am respectful to all persons' beliefs, their various levels of tolerance and intolerance, and therefore decided they are not really for general consumption, though writing them was a bit of a catharsis. Yet as with Morality: Individual and Social led directly to Towards Tomorrow, chasing those truths or insights we are really not ready for quite yet, but we are capable of perceiving and how that was not really addressed (enough) by Towards Tomorrow, the collection of ideas in those original Heretic Papers, born out of the same original motivation for (writing) Towards Tomorrow, were assembled in a more coherent, more structured, less controversial form into Deconstructing the Universe.

          Much varied factors contributed to Deconstructing the Universe. What I termed bare-knuckled philosophy, truly trying to think outside the bounds of ones own time, conventions, and social beliefs, and the results of that were a key part. My father's illness was another key factor. The Heretic Papers was probably the last thing I ever wrote which he would have been able to comprehend. He always talked of writing a book that would reveal more to humanity than they were ready for or expecting. Whether he could have done that, it is impossible to say, for now it is not likely he even will have such a chance. 

          That I am not capable doing such, now any number of people are now qualified to say, for I have attempted just that, to go beyond what people now are capable of understanding which may make sense or more sense to people a dozen or a hundred years from now, to do it for him to show him that even the things we are not able to do that we wished to do, that somehow everything gets done eventually, however indirectly. I doubt anyone can know (with certainty) what people will find relevant a hundred years from now, but to set our sights that high; to attempt to look beyond our world today, our present beliefs of our own time or place in history to see beyond our own horizons to what is or may be true beyond them, such attempts are good and valuable even if the results of which are worthless in and of themselves.

          Philosophy when it works best is done in layers. Take what has come before and add to it, build upon it. What people believe now, that which has worth and will withstand the test of time if it is left unsheltered enough to meet all challenges, will at best provide ONLY a foundation for new outlooks we might only catch glimpses of today. The past and previous outlooks need to be incorporated into future ones, and not dominate them, nor restrain them, nor seek to prevent them from arising. Religions are great bearers of the past to the future, and many ideas and ideals would not have survived without being encapsulated into them, yet it is a sad thing when many great ideas of different faiths are not taught or stressed in others because they are perceived as being foreign, outside of ones own religion, and to even think of such thing would be to be unfaithful to ones own religion or people. Religions have kept many great ideas and viewpoints intact for thousands of years, but it is that very rigidity of walls between faiths which keeps good ideas and outlooks from being shared by all.

          If someone were to take a notion like honesty and build a religion around it which became dominant, that notion would get entangled with that religion, and to people of other religions, honesty would have connotations to a particular (foreign) religion. I am not saying other religions necessarily would become less honest, just that it should not deserve by being stressed so highly by one group, as to become identified with one group over the other. But that would probably happen. Thus if someone seems overtly honest, you could call that person disparagingly as the term for that group, one of those honesty nuts from that other religion.

          Many good notions have been incorporated and identifiable as being stressed by some religions yet it is those very religious connotations which helped them survive which may keep them from spreading, as if by buying into one notion or belief you must ascribe to an entire belief system, or that you are unfaithful to your own faith by considering views which are parts of religions outside of your own faith. The pursuit of truth ought not to be hindered by who had which beliefs first or which group stresses which values more. The free flow of ideas ought to include all views, not just economic, governmental, and scientific. (Actually after going back to University, (sooo English, where is she, She is at Hospital, He is at University, They are at Earth <g>) I now think only science still fits into that category). Those systems are evolving by and large by what works best regardless of how or where it originated, yet with some philosophical and religious ideas, changes seem destined only to create new fractures and vying versions and sects because there are few ways or means to incorporate outside ideas into them to grow or evolve.

          I do not necessarily believe what we believe philosophically or religiously will or ought to be believed ten thousand years from now just as no religions from ten thousand years ago are dominant today. Whatever new belief systems emerge will have a part of our beliefs in them or will in some way have grown out of them (and away from them), just as they who will hold and believe them will have grown out of us and our lives. I do not claim to know what those beliefs systems will be like, nor would I necessarily hold them to be more true, but I hope they are tried and true battle tested through rigorous comparisons against contentious contenders without appearing to corner the market or have a trademark on any particular value or belief over any others, and that they will be what we all are, stronger for coming from many different sources into one being. 

          After Deconstructing the Universe was completed, three separate times counting the postscripts (this I can tell would have been written in just after or on Christmas 2002, right after "Shattering Time". As a sequel, I would like to write, "How to glue time back together again". That would not be as easy <g>), again I am left with hanging thoughts of a mind that fails to recognize an off switch. At least two (paragraphs) of which will be placed at the beginning of Deconstructing the Universe (they were, click here to see them), something which is best reread after each end, for both postscripts redefine all which came before them. (Eventually there were 8 postscript sections added. At the time, each of the first two postscripts added seemed to cast the previous sections in a different light. I am far beyond that now. I can say that the 1.8 version and the original, though still there, seem different in purpose. I was different too.)  In a way each life is a redefinition of all which came before them. Upon each revision, or each redefinition, there are those which are not contradicted and new ideas hinted at which begin to emerge when trying to synthesize them into a coherent whole.

          Life is equally complex and  real truths are best written between the lines, either that or we just see and apply new meaning to what is not really there which we wish was, some deeper meaning or purpose or logic (which we did not see the first time around) which we wish to impose upon it. That life itself exists as interactions between individual's lives, that time lies in-between individual moments, and that truth lies between (different) individuals' conception of it, is hinted at upon the rereads (to me anyway, at that time, and is said ad nausea since then in the Notes) after the postscripts of Deconstructing the Universe, but to say that openly, plainly, without having to work at it to understand it in your own way or coming to realize it all on your own, it is just words, smug words, portending to some higher realization in the end just another construct no more real than any other, some more over simplified nonsense in a world as infinitely complex as you wish to make it (by imagining it to be).

          Again I have decided to group together these self-contained hanging paragraphs and try to sort out some order of them. From the first Heretic Papers, Deconstructing the Universe emerged, and again these paragraphs (alluding to in a collection called The Heretic Papers II, which this was written to explain, which unfortunately is as lost to time as the original collection, but I think most of them and even more I never would have used ended up in the Before the Pre-Notes,) written without regard to present sensibilities are probably best kept under wraps but they seem less likely to be misunderstood, and hopefully this has attested to why one ought to step outside what one ought to think once in awhile, challenge everything that is known or believed on occasion, to attempt to glimpse the Universe beyond our own minds, beliefs, and mindsets. It is ALWAYS heretical, and depending on your society, sometimes (such questioning is) illegal, but always can lead to something more, something valuable, something which now only exists as potential, good or bad, which like us will be judged for its value only once it has been attained, realized, and known. And in the end, not realizing it, not conceiving of it as an option, letting some truths go unknown until the end of time, it is not even a possible viable option. Truth will seek us out to become known, even and most often when, we spurn it.