We all toil on the chain gang stringing and unstringing the atoms of reality.  All of us are ciphers of reality.  But there are no atoms and no ciphers.  There are only relations and relations between relations.  There is only the chain.  Form is the only substance.  Only meaning and no meanings.  We know that from mathematical physics, but it is very hard to believe.

Reality begs to be sliced and diced and we readily comply.  That is our bread and butter.  But it turns out that every atom is a microcosm; is a flower in the crannied wall.  There are no unobserved atoms.  It takes the biggest machines and the biggest brains in the world to split an atom, and when they are finished we see the structure of the ‘Cosmos’ in their strings.  We set out to split the atom, but it looks like the atom may split us into yin and yang, into nature and anthropos.  Every time a photon hits an atom, our universe splits in two, or so they say.

If we ever turn from our Sisyphean labors, the cosmos will just collapse back into love.  That is the eschaton.  We must figure out how to harness that power of fusion, how to immanentize it.  In some sense we already have, but now we need to be more deliberate about it.  Now that every last bit of data has been digitized, the Internet will enable us to string it all back together into the big Tapestry.  I’m doing my bit, what about you?