h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hey Jordan .

Be calm. I know that Justin is an unreconstructed, OT hypocrite, but he is eliciting just the reaction he wants from you. Your anger, especially as a good Christian, reinforces his sad beliefs.

I honestly believe that this man lives in a world of self-imposed fear and pain. As a Druid I cannot pass this by without at least attempting to heal him. Besides my guides warned me that just such a test would soon present itself, a test of my ability to remain calm and rational in the face of anger and fear.

Thus I will pursue him and speak clearly to him until he withdraws from my sight or begins to listen.

Do not get me wrong I don't want to take him away from his God. Druidry has no need of converts nor any mission to attain them. But if I can get him to return to the fold of his Shepherd as a lightbringer, rather than the agent of fear and ignorance he presently is, then I will be happy.

Blessings,
Matholwch the Apostate /|\.

Thanks Math.

It's hard not to get angry, he's so /entrenched/. I can't even pick at his beliefs with logic, they are so implacable in the face of opposition.

I can't decide - is he really living an awful and unfulfilled life, or is he so empty, so vacuous and free of thought that he really believes that he's truly happy?

OK, two things. Firstly, it's not the word 'thought' that I'm looking for. It's something else that /isn't there/ which I see in everyone else I meet (to some degree or another) but I just can't distinguish in him. Second, I am uncommonly upset. I can't believe that he is causing me such anguish, but he makes me feel - /something/ - that really hurts. I can't find the words for it, but they're really there and they really make a difference.

I've just wrote something, the most important elements of which are words I can't find. Who would have thought it.

I'll try and stop being angry. Thanks Math.

<-- not cheer up, just thought I'd give you a flower.

- Jordan

"It's something else that /isn't there/ which I see in everyone else I meet (to some degree or another) but I just can't distinguish in him."

I'm serious when I say that what you see in everyone else that you don't see in Justin is... consciousness.

Ste and I both independently speculated some months ago that Justin was not a fully conscious human in the accepted sense - he doesn't seem capable of the introspection and empathy normal humans do, and he speaks often of his personal relationship and conversations with Jesus, as though the voice in his head is completely real. It has many of the hallmarks of a neurological disorder.

Someone (and I still think it might have been Ste, and he still thinks it might have been me, and I fear we might both be wrong...) took our speculation and created "Steve, Programmer of Justin the Preacher". Which took me in.

Seriously: what you see in me, and in Math, and in everyone else here, is a sense of self (maybe another DNA site...). Justin seems to be incredibly detached from his sense of self, which makes empathising with or even properly realising the existence of other people as separate entities like him impossible.

I cannot recommend highly enough that you get hold of a copy of "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", by Julian Jaynes. You may disagree with its basic thesis (most people seem to) but it's a rivetting read and a fascinating idea. If it's not in any library near you, give me a hotmail address and I'll personally make sure you have that book for Christmas, how does that sound?

"I can't believe that he is causing me such anguish"

Stop that right away! You're not taking him seriously, are you? You don't think for a moment that he's right? The only emotions he stirs in me are curiosity and pity. I pity him because his life sounds really miserable, and I'm curious as to how someone gets like that. And I don't just mean idly curious, I mean fascinated. He's like nobody I've ever known. In many ways I'm glad he's here. Surely this is the very best place to meet someone like him - you wouldn't want to meet him on the street, would you?

Don't let him get to you Jordan. Seriously.

H.

Consciousness... I'm genuinely hazy on this term, but it seems very, very close to describing what he's lacking.

Remember I said that all humans have free will? Maybe his access to this 'free will' is almost gone. It's very disturbing. I can see that he isn't a computer immediately. What disturbs me is that I cannot see that he is /human/. When we see a computer program fooling us, it's more because it pretends to encompass some of the idiosyncracies of a human being. He's just not a person.

I felt something similar when I was looking after my Grandmother in Hospital. She tells us that she wasn't really conscious, that she could remember nothing of her experience. I get precisely the same feeling from Justin that so unsettled me, scared me and upset me that I did when watching over her duing this time. That's all - my mind draws a total blank when I try to work out what could cause this. I'd be tempted to put all the Justin-types into a psychiatric ward and treat them for their weird condition. Especially disturbing in light of the fact that he claims that roughly 1% of the population are Christian. I'd feel safer next to a convicted murderer than next to him - in fact, I have.

'The Bicameral Mind' - I remember you mentioning it before. I'll have a look in the library before I impinge upon your good will! Even the title intrigues me.

All anguish is being left out of this mind. I refuse to waste it for much longer like this. However, I will reserve my pity, and if at any point I think of something, anything, that will let me pull at Justin's tangled knotted thought processes (are they thoughts? Or are they just the reaction force of hitting his blinding wall?) I won't hesitate to use it. And I will consistantly treat him kindly and lovingly. Matholwch is right - the worst thing to do is to get angry with him or try 'debating'.

I'm going to have to wrap this posting up if I've to get any sleep tonight, so goodnight all and have a sleep. Being a student, I share my present nocturnal patterns with a certain Margaret Hilda Thatcher. Expect insanity some time in the future.



- Jordan

he's really quite scary!

He is indeed.

I have the book! It's a big, green hardback affair, and apparently it contains three separate books (there should be a fourth somewhere). It looks quite sinister - which makes it most gratifying to carry around...

- Jordan

I'm not talking to him anymore: it's a fruitless exercise and just gets both sides angry, so I'll come back into the discussion when things have cooled down!

Jordan: Keeper of Nervous Maths, Muse of Creative Psychology, Carrier of Sinister Looking Books!

Let me know what you think of it when you've had a chance to look at it.

H.

Feeling caustic today Hoo?

Why should today be any different?

I'm feeling caustic, and I have an acid tongue, so fortunately I neutralise myself...

H.

: not much you can say to that!

Hoo wrote:

"Someone (and I still think it might have been Ste, and he still thinks it might have been me, and I fear we might both be wrong...) took our speculation and created "Steve, Programmer of Justin the Preacher". Which took me in."
Honestly H, it wasn't me and I don't think it was you. I have absolutely no idea who it was. We were joking around that Justin was a bot and someone picked up on that and played a spectacular joke which easily convinced everyone. Which brings us back to a lack of consciousness.

You know when sometimes you are talking to someone IRL and you can just see a lack of intelligence in their eyes?, it's a sort of a lack of any glint, any expression any real deep thought. It's hard to explain, but maybe you know what I mean. Well, for the first time through the medium of text-based conversations on the internet I have got that exact feeling, albeit massively amplified, from Justin. I've never come across anything like him. As I've said before I find it deeply depressing and I sincerely hope he has a neurological disorder for the sake of mankind. Although, I'm with Math in thinking that he has had some severe phycological traumas, gaping cracks that he has held together with some very shaky sellotape. Hence nothing can be allowed to shake him even a touch. He is *not able* to move from his stated position, otherwise he falls apart.

Ste

Justin has given up his free will to his God. Whatever sins he has committed in the past he has dumped on the Devil. It may be the only way he can live with himself. Any slackening of his resolve would mean having to face his sins again.

Alji the Magus

It's not often I'm in agreement with an entire thread, but there's always a first.

FwT and Jordan especially (the rest of us are old reprobates anyway) - don't be offended by anything he's said to you. He's the one with the problem, not you. Compassion and detachment are the only possible reactions.

Noggin

This thread is starting to feel like an "Exposure to Justin the Preacher Support Group".

*Stands up*

My name is Ste, and I have been exposed to Justin the Preacher...

[s Ste]

We've all been there, Ste! I was first exposed less than a week ago, and since I have felt so... empty...

- Jordan

Hoo, I've read the bits leading up to the first chapter, which I am avidly reading. I've looked into what the basic thesis was, and it seems to be that, until recently, we were not 'conscious' at all, but were all operating schizophrenics.

Which is very, /very/ strange, because not long ago I was thinking of a topic on which to write a book, and I had a thought: 'Why not write a book about a time in the future, in a world where the norm is to be a schizophrenic? What would the world be like? How would they percieve reality? What would they make of 'normal' people? Would we feel sorry for them in their inability to hear voices? Wonder at how lonely it must be?' Then again, there's the fact that many of us are criticised by these disembodied voices, which leads one to wonder even more at the possibilities.

I also find it very strange that I don't actually /disagree/ with it yet - it seems like a perfectly reasonable possibility. Although most schizophrenics are induced to aviolition rather than exertions...

I will really have to read some more pretty soon.

- Jordan

- Jordan

I actually found myself thinking about justin (scary thought!) the other day.

I was in Newcastle city centre, and there was a man standing by Grey's Monument with one of those big boards saying something like "JEsus Loves You, You MUst Love Him" or "Only God Can Save You", or some such message. There was this man who looked to be in his mid-50s preaching manicallym, throwing himself into his words, harrassing passers-by. he stopped me and asked me If I had seen God. I said I wasn't a christian, and that i had a train to catch. The man continued that i must see God, as he had, and my worries would be over. I pointed out that my only worry at that time was that my train was about to leave and I was being ambushed, but he gripped me by the arm and started preaching about sin, and forgiveness, and lakes of fire, as Justin tends to. I managed to pull away, but I noticed that he did have wide eyes, they never seemed to blink. he almost looked like an automaton- not blinking, not thinking, just programmed to preach. He had a vacant look about him. He was just hoiw I imagine Justin.

I would just liek to point out that I am an atheist, although I find myself interested by all religious views (hence my involvement in the "fact or fiction" thread) and believe in the right of everyone to believe what they want, as long as they don't try and convert me. that is what I find offensivbe about Justin- his dogged insistence in trying to convince us we are wrong and should follow a righteous path (HIS righteous path).

"My name Is Egaon, and I am a Justin-phobe..."

Jordan:

I *knew* you'd like that book!



H.

Oh and Ste: I don't think "Steve, programmer..." easily convinced *everyone*. I think I lot of people, especially the Italics, were sceptical that such a thing was possible.

But on the other hand, there were VERY few people prepared to stick their neck out and definitively say it was NOT possible.

Which was interesting...

H.