This is a book about existence. You exist in a world that is governed by nature and society. In order to perceive and interact with the world, you need to pilot a vessel called a human. You only have access to one human throughout your time here in this world, so it only makes sense for you to learn how the thing works.
Although this book contains information about almost every subject in existence, it does not contain all there is to know about anything. Instead, presented in these pages is an introduction to many different concepts that will require further study to fully understand. The purpose of this book is not to teach you everything there is to know about everything; the purpose is to show you how everything is connected.
Repeat this phrase to yourself: everything is connected. This is one of the most important and life-changing concepts that you can ever learn. It will allow you to see the world with new eyes and discover answers to questions you haven’t even asked yet. The idea that everything is connected helps you to widen your perspective to consider new possibilities outside the realm of your expectations.
One of the ways for you to experience the connectedness of everything is by reading this book according to your curiosity. Of course, this book is arranged in an order to make logical sense: first you will learn about the human you use to experience the world around you, and then you’ll learn about that world. In addition, this book has a large Appendix section with supplementary information on many different concepts.
If something strikes you as interesting or confusing, you have the choice to explore more on that topic in the Appendices before continuing. This book is somewhat of a “choose your own adventure” based on what you want to learn about. The Appendices are ordered alphabetically by section but you can always flip back to the Index to find the exact page to discover the most about a particular word, phrase, or concept. It’s up to you how you want to learn about the connectivity of existence!
If you want, you can even open this book to a random page and learn about a single concept. While each section is self-contained, there are plenty of terms and phrases mentioned in one section that are defined in a different section. This will help you to gain a better understanding of the connectivity of it all as well as inspire you to follow your own natural curiosity.
Beyond the understanding that everything is connected, this book is also intended to teach you about your perspective and how to alter it. The skeptic philosopher, Rene Descartes, established the idea “I think therefore I am.” This idea means that your existence depends solely on the idea that you can perceive it. The lens by which you observe your reality is called your perspective.
Some of the most important parts of life are all a matter of perspective: happiness, love, and connectedness, to name a few. If you have the ability to see your perspective as it is and change it to what you want it to be, you can “hack into your brain” to live the life you want to live. It’s your choice how you want to experience this world; life is what you make of it.
In order to practice adjusting your perspective, this book will give multiple perspectives to explain concepts. You may have heard of the phrase “looking at a problem from multiple angles;” in this book, you will have the opportunity to see tons of concepts from multiple perspectives. Only seeing the world from a single perspective is limiting and possibly dangerous when you need to make a decision based on that limited point of view.
Two types of perspective that this book will use are called “top-down” and “bottom-up.” A top-down perspective is one that looks at an idea through the lens of an overall rule that applies to more than just that idea. Conversely, a bottom-up perspective looks at an idea through the lens of individual perception of that idea.
To better understand the difference between these tools of perspective, let’s look at an example. Lightning strikes the ground far away from where you are standing and you see the bolt travel from the clouds to the ground, lighting up the darkened sky. A bottom-up perspective says the lightning occurred and wonders why. Perhaps there was a shift of energy from the sky to the ground, maybe a creature who lives in the clouds threw it to the ground. The reason doesn’t matter; the important point is that the bottom-up perspective starts with the actual event being observed: it happened.
A top-down perspective on the same lightning strike says that everything diffuses from a high concentration to a low concentration. The friction of water molecules in the clouds caused a build-up of electrons; the bolt was a side effect of the world balancing out the concentrations by giving the energy a path to leave the cloud and move to the ground. The top-down perspective requires understanding of a fundamental rule of the universe, the event isn’t necessary for the understanding to exist: the rule exists.
Both perspectives see the lightning bolt happen, and both have the potential to understand the true reason it happened. The only difference between the two perspectives is the path they take to link the event with the reason it happened. This book will present many ideas and give reasons for why those ideas exist at all. Regardless of which perspective you prefer, seeing each concept from multiple perspectives will give you a far greater understanding of the concept in general.
The linking of both of these types of perspectives is called enlightenment and it allows you to fully understand the idea in question. Enlightenment, in the most general sense, happens all the time. Any time you have a dispute with a friend and then discover they were only acting that way because of a misunderstanding, you are becoming enlightened to that conflict. The most famous version of enlightenment is when you can approach the idea that “I exist” from multiple perspectives. This book will give you the tools to observe yourself and your world and the connectedness of those ideas.
To fully utilize this book as a tool, I recommend you take some time to familiarize yourself with the four Human Tenets. A tenet is a philosophical rule or guideline; it is not a law that you can break. There is no punishment for disregarding the tenets; they are meant to help you become the best person you can be. There is no consequence for ignoring the tenets that cannot be fixed by following them; it’s never too late to take control of your life.