This is one of the most important posts in this blog. Don’t miss it out! It’s telling the essential story about myself.
1. Pre-Enlightenment
All my life, I loved horses, was very thoughtful, good at mathematics, and a very imaginative dreamer. Those have been and are the essential aspects of my life. Sadly, for a long time I thought that my love for horses was perverted and would pass sometime. This awful delusion was caused by living in a cruel and unforgiving world in which you have to adapt to the schemes of mainstream thinking to keep yourself from drowning – especially as helpless child! So, yes it took me a lot of years to accept my longings and the way I am. Meanwhile I was pretty interested in philosophy and spiritual stuff, like Buddhism, Thelema and (philosophic) Satanism. Probably I should also mention my obsession by the awesomely thought provoking science fiction series Star Trek, which made me ponder about the future and its problems and possibilities a lot. I didn’t catch up the philosophy of transhumanism back then (Star Trek is rather anti-transhumanist), but my thoughts went into similar directions nevertheless. My childhood and youth also were characterized by half-hearted efforts to “fit in”, so on the outside I basically made the impression of being a rather boring geek and a slightly crazed loner. At the end I didn’t really care and rather tried being myself.
Religion was something I soon found out was pretty illogical. So, at the age of 12 I asked god whether he exsists, and if yes, he should show me a sign. There was no sign, so I stopped believing. Consequentially, I rejected my confirmation. At school I didn’t attend religion courses anymore and was relatively happy to be able to join the courses on ethics later on.
Because my life was somewhat uninspiring, I spent an awful lot of time with playing computer games. Discovering the internet soon lead me to online gaming and so I joined Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike clans. Through LAN parties I met some very good friends with which I had a lot of fun. At school I was pretty good all the time, though. Actually I experienced school as rather annoying duty and limitation of my freedom, but I catched up some interesting ideas nevertheless. Yeah, I could have been better at school if I was actually really motivated and not so terribly shy and reclusive, but I didn’t care too much about that.
When I was very young I enjoyed extensive daydreaming about fantasy and sci-fi stuff. I considered that as rather entertaining enjoyment. Around the age of 14 I started becoming a rather experienced lucid dreamer. I got the hang of it quite naturally and it helped me fighting my nightmares, which were pretty dominant before that time. After a while I went beyond standard lucid dreaming and rejected controling the dreams, because I found out that the dreams were much better and more intense if I deliberately let my subconscious direct my dreams. So, in many dreams I was rather aware that I was dreaming and had a lot of interesting super-powers, like being able to walk through walls, communicating with animals telepathically, and flying around, but I rarely tried to control the dream consciously.
2. Enlightenment
At the age of 18 I still was playing Counter-Strike and loved trance music. After a rather frustrating Counter-Strike match with my clan I listened to RMB – Deep Down Below and sat down on my bed. Suddenly I had this clear image of planet Earth in my mind and was aware that all of the problems of this world were rather negligible, because… the view zoomed out and I realized what tiny and insignificant speck of matter this planet really was. That thought made me really happy and then I got these super-imaginative vision of strange aliens, foreign galaxies and planets (one of them even had tentacles!), and I knew the universe was so full of life of unimaginable diversity that even a whole planet full of suffering couldn’t really cloud that wonderful majesty. At that point I felt connected to a universal network which connected all life on all planets and all galaxies in the universe… and the binding force was absolute and unconditional love. Feeling connected to the whole universe in that way totally blew my mind and I was happier than ever before in my life. Even better: By focusing on those thoughts and feelings I could increase the intensity of my happiness at will. So I increased it more and more, until I hit some kind of maximum; a limit which is there just due to the fact that my body couldn’t simply allow happier states of mind. In that state of absolute bliss I even thought that I could die from sheer joy.
That state lasted for about the quarter of an hour! At the end I thought that I could stay in this absolutely wonderful blissed out state until I die. But I also realized that this would be pretty pointless, so I ended my ecstasy at will and began pondering about philosophy and the meaning of life more intensely than ever before.
As some kind of aftershock of that unbelievably extreme spiritual experience I got the ability to go back to such mind-boggling states of bliss deliberately! After that experience I surely cried more often from happiness than from sadness. This spiritual experience changed my life more deeply and thoroughly than anything else.
3. Post-Enlightenment
After that experience, which I call enlightenment, for simplicity, I quickly came up with what I called the Philosophy of Diversity, which states that happiness and pain compensate each other, so that they are basically like two sides of the same coin and you can only change the size of the coin, but not the dominance of one sider over the other. In the Philosophy of Diversity the bad parts of life have to be accepted and one should strive for as much diversity as possible. Luckily, after a while a friend of mine told me that this was complete nonsense, so I abandoned that philosophy.
After being on that crazy trip I began studying mathematics, because I realized that mathematics can be used for virtually everything, even philosophy – as I have found out by reading parts of Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Philosophically I turned more into the direction of Utilitarianism, which – together with the information that consuming meat isn’t really healthy – convinced me that becoming a vegetarian was a very important step I should do. After about a year of being a vegetarian I went a step further and went vegan, which rather made me feel pretty high and more full of energy.
Roughly at that time I also began learning horseback riding, because I wanted to live together with horses eventually and thought that the experiences I would gain by riding finally would outweigh the discomfort I imposed on the horses. Actually, that wasn’t what happened. Instead, I got attuned to the feelings of the horses so much that I couldn’t bear it anymore to see them imprisoned. And I even supported enabling such living conditions for them by paying money for the questionable priviledge of horseback riding! So, I left the first riding school. It was interesting that I could even start riding, because my whole life I had strong qualms about riding and were pretty afraid that people would find out about my zoophilia.
After a while I found another riding school which made a much better impression on me and I gave it another try. Yes, it was significantly better, but finally I realized that even the kind of treatment there sucked pretty much, because the horses are forced to do things against their will for no sensible purpose! Riding often is some kind of socially accepted rape. Somehow, people just block that out and think everything is fine. So, I ended up misusing horses with no acceptable justification for about one and a half years. At the end, I just collapsed psychologically and stopped riding, because I just couldn’t bear it anymore.
4. Modal Realism
During my study of mathematics I stumbled upon mathematical logic and was fascinated by it at once. At the same time I learned about modal realism, which states that possible worlds are actually real worlds. This view makes it possible to translate modal logic into classical logic. Quickly I realized that there are connections of this idea with the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics and model theory, which is a subfield of mathematical logic. To me it felt natural to see our world as model of a purely mathematical theory, which is described by the laws of physics. Only later on, I found out that Max Tegmark had remarkably similar thoughts about the multiverse.
Modal realism has some rather mind-boggling consequences, which are pretty difficult to digest. One of the more freakish consequences is that there is actually an afterlife – a pretty shocking revelation for an atheist! That’s because this world exists both as world in itself and as simulation in another world. We can’t discern the difference, so we basically live in both modes at once, when just considering our subjective point of view. In the “purely physical” worlds, when we die we are pretty much totally dead, but in the simulated worlds it is possible to copy our consciousness into another world so that we live on there (see this explanation of Giulio Prisco of this concept). This is possible, and therefore, according to modal realism, true. There is at least one continuation of our consciousness in another world, but it isn’t clear how life in that other world actually looks and feels like. So, it’s rather sensible just to focus on our current lives and not to bother too much about what could come afterwards.
It isn’t obvious at all how utilitarianism can be applied to a vast multiverse implied by modal realism. One possible view is just to focus on our world and not bother about other ones. Intuitively it sounds plausible that our world doesn’t really interact with other worlds, but as soon as we will have enough computing power to simulate other words interactions will be possible indeed (ressurection of the dead of the simulated world for example, or playing god in any other way)!
Because of these and some other complications of utilitarianism I tried to find suitable alternatives – the Ascent of Life is one of those ideas I had. Currently, I have some sketchy ideas on how another alternative ethical system could work, but I’m still at the very beginning of devising it.
5. Transhumanism and Animal Rights
While previous thoughts are really fascinating, they really don’t help much in fixing the current state of the world, though. Just a few years ago I became interested in transhumanism and singularitarianism. While pretty much interested in technology and sci-fi, I still didn’t think that our world would change pretty soon, but the books of Ray Kurzweil, especially The Singularity is Near convinced me that a rather radical change of almost everything in our world will occur in just a few decades. It will be greater than human intelligence which will finally trigger a revolution that will essentially change the nature of nature. Technology will enable us to solve virtually all problems of our world – but only if we actually perceive them as problems and don’t accept them blindly.
This is where animal rights come into play. There is no compelling reason to deny non-human animals basic rights forever. On the contrary, it is very much possible that the superhuman intelligences of the future will treat (unaugmented) humans like humans have treated and are still treating non-human animals (which often is so badly that I don’t have appropriate words for it). But even without that consideration it makes very much sense to care about the well-being of non-human animals, because they basically have the same emotions as humans (maybe not all of them, but why should that matter?). From that point of view it’s a good idea to introduce basic rights for all sentient beings.
Actually, it is very reasonable to go even further and try to abolish all unpleasant emotions as much as can be done in a responsible way, by the use of very advanced (bio)technology. In fact, it is the aim of the Abolitionist Project to do that for all sentient beings on this planet. That Project was initiated by the British philosopher David Pearce. It’s not only humans who are causing harm to animals, but also nature/evolution itself, which is a rather unpleasant entity without any care about the emotional well-being of the sentient life on this planet. Of course, it is possible to romanticize animals being hunted down and eaten by other animals, but even though such acts might be “natural”, it is definitely not a good idea to approve of them unconditionally. Still, far too many people fall for the naturalistic fallacy. A radical redesign of nature is really necessary and also the most pressing reason why we need a technological Singularity as soon as safely possible.
6. Emotional Addiction to Horses
It’s interesting to find out what was actually the cause for me creating this blog. Just recently, I found out that I am really emotionally addicted to horses and that my psychological state deteriorates the more, the longer I don’t have contact to horses. I guess the reason for that addiction – aside from my zoophila – is that I got very much attuned to horses at the riding stables I’ve been going to. Finally that lead to my depression in 2009, which caused a rather spectacular collapse of my shields against aggressive behaviour. That can be seen when reading my first blog post: Last resort.
Taking an antidepressant (Bupropion) helped a lot. It actually encouraged and enabled me to start a harmless little romance with a very nice stallion. But at the end he was accompanied by a mare, so he didn’t need my attention and company that urgently anymore. Still, being around that horse was a pretty wonderful feeling and I miss those crazy old times a little bit. Strangely, later on I got the idea that I don’t really need to be around horses and that I could stay sane, if I gave my emotional state very much attention and care. I didn’t really want to acknowledge that I need horses, because I felt that this dependence would diminish my freedom slightly. And I wasn’t ready to accept that. Nothing I tried was enough to keep me from sliding down the downward-spiral of less and less motivation, happiness, efficiency, concentration and spoons (“energy”).
After using up my last reserves for preparing a presentation about topological K-theory for a seminar at the end of June 2010, I fell into a state of rather complete inability to do any kind of work. Even worse: I actually didn’t bother! That was the beginning of a severe crisis, which I’m currently still in. I quickly realized my mistake and overestimation of my own capabilities. Without being around horses I can impossibly balance the (sometimes rather arduous) work I had to do at university.
Even though I immediately started taking the previously mentioned antidepressant again, it couldn’t stop the emotional pain I was feeling at the deepest phases of the depression that followed. Only visiting horses could help me, and yes, they did so very effectively 
(And no, I don’t need to have sex with them, it’s the emotional connection with them that I am really addicted to.) Horses are the best antidepressant for me. Not only I realized that I needed horses for living a meaningful life, I actually embraced that thought and decided to be around horses every day. For my whole life I have set my priorities wrongly! My attempted dominance of my mind over my heart came with a bitter price: My health, my happiness, my motivation and even my performance suffered immensely, because I wasn’t ready and courageous enough to find a way to live with horses as soon as possible!
Currently, I still don’t have a safe place I can visit to be close to horses. It would be awfully difficult to keep a horse all by myself, but I am ready and desperate enough to do that step, if I can’t find another possibility to be around horses every day. There’s also the complication that I’m actually known as zoophile, so I need all support I can get.
It’s one of my deepest desires to increase the quality of life for horses. In fact, I identify more with horses than with humans. All love, attention, respect and appreciation I get from humans cannot compensate my need to be around horses. Alone among humans I would starve from loneliness inside. I would really love to live at a pet sanctuary with horses. For the fulfillment of this dream I am ready to fight until the very end!
Actually, the public acceptance of zoophilia (see Equality For All) would even help to save the world! Why? It would help deconstructing and dismantling speciesism, thus strengthening the idea of animal rights. With effective animal rights we would have a pretty good chance to create a wonderful future for everyone (hello? Even the UN urges people to go vegan!). We cannot afford passing the values of enslaving, imprisoning and abusing those who are weaker than us to a future in which it is rather inevitable that superhuman intelligences will be ruling over this world. That would probably turn this world into a hell for almost everyone.
So, let’s hope and fight for the best!
May the futures elevate us!
P.S.: Horses are awesome! 
Bookmark on Delicious
