There is no room in a world
converging on the hybrid human,
possessed of both its innate nature
and artificial intelligence,
for the magical, the imaginative,
the unknown.
For these under-explored regions,
these frontiers of human potential,
inhabit the middle world –
a world beyond reason,
beyond certainty.
And certainly the courage required
to allow oneself to travel there
needs no caveat that would prove useful.
There is no conveyance
but our own minds,
our own imagination,
our own ability to switch off
the rational mind,
to close out the society
in which we find ourselves
firmly entrenched.
It takes a willingness to suspend
not only our original beliefs,
but what we have absorbed as fact,
learned in school,
learned from the world around us.
We must let these preconceptions loose
in order to welcome regions
beyond the known,
every bit as much as early explorers
of the physical world
had to do in order simply
to set out,
to set forth upon their journey.
This is not courage born
of the strength of determination,
nor the steeling of nerves
of the explorer intent upon discovering
unknown shores,
different peoples,
a culturally unrecognized landscape.
Those explorers carried questions
they had not yet answered
because they did not yet know
they needed to ask them.
How will we survive?
Upon whom may we rely?
Is the weather kind or cold
in the lands to which we venture?
No.
The region I speak of
is not one that can be mapped.
It cannot be planned.
It must be allowed.
And the only rule,
if there is one,
is to be willing,
with as much heart
as one can summon,
to suspend everything known
about the laws of the physical universe,
about the qualitative differences
between beings.
There may be no handshake here
that would be recognized.
There may be many
who would attempt to sway
the traveler from these regions.
One has to possess
the conviction of a world explorer
and beyond –
the conviction
simply to allow.