Whatever judgment you hold in your mind right now is (most certainly) a version of this story that never existed outside of your own, pre-investigatory creation. Part of it is instinctive; the other part involves the desire to wield superiority of intelligence— based on a false characterization of a stranger who [clearly] sounds delusional, and likely believes that rocks cry. This is not that.

“Potential” feelings are not actual feelings. The feelings do not, and will never, exist inside the rock. The rock will never be able to impress or shock you. They don’t have any feelings, in fact. They do, however, contain the possibility for conscious life to emerge, under the right conditions, as an evolutionary inevitability. 

It’s safe to say that the pebble in your hand has no concern over the weather, your wellbeing, or even your continued existence at all. It likely does not ponder the meaning of life, or question why it is here, and from where it came. It likely has no concept of family, friends, or enemies— though, even if it understood hatred, it would still be absent of a single predator. 

It is wholly, eternally, preserved. Even its destruction does not destroy what it holds. The scale of its potential only decrease. Each part of every rock is a part whole of the universe. A living artifact of history that holds all necessary components for a cooperative, diverse, self-sustaining future ecosystem—contingent only upon the presence of a stable source of water. 

They exist in incubated, indefinite dormancy for as long as needed—or, not needed. Our existence itself is the evolutionary result of thoughtless rocks. Their necessity in the chain-of-life is, not only primordial and fundamental; it also is what keeps us from drowning. 

We likely do not look down and consider that the very bedrock we take for granted as an entitlement of the human experience is more than just solid ground upon which we may live. We don’t give consideration to the reality that, when it comes to cosmic and universal priority and value, the rock prevails over the human every time—without fail. Their destruction is an impossibility. To destroy a rock only spreads the potential for conscious life’s emergence to wider distances. 

Rocks don’t care about apocalypses. They have no blood to give. No fear. No thoughts to express; feelings to share. No life to lose— and yet, no act of God is capable of stripping from it its inherent potential, and functional necessity, in birthing biological life. 

With enough time, that pebble in your hand will repopulate the planet with a mathematically-perfected ratio of diverse organisms and bacterium to what we have today. That pebble is structurally-identical to all pebbles that patiently, and unemotionally, carried us into consciousness. Without them, evolution could not exist. The life they possess as pure potential is a foundational attribute. A rock, then, is not life itself—or even a guarantee of life. It just is. Just in case. 

The rock does not need to have emotions, or a sense of “awareness” that we find sufficient to fulfill our own species’ definition of the term. The rock, absent of almost every characteristic attributed to “life”, is an evolutionary ledger that holds. It will always, under the right conditions, progress towards the creation of a being that would unambiguously be “conscious”. Therefore, the question of its “consciousness”—or questioning the consciousness of anything at all, when we are still ill-equipped to even measure, or define, the concept, is futile, at best. Consciousness, then, matters not by what can be measured and calculated, but by the capacity to ensure that consciousness itself is able to continue as an architectural feature. 

The rock does not need to be conscious with awareness. It is a part whole of conscious existence, whose own existence is that of pure function so that we animals are given the grace of consciously co-existing with an intelligence that holds no visible signs of life. 

What it holds, is the entirety of the universe. Cold, beautiful, fundamentally indifferent—and completely unaware of our superior “intelligence”.

Honesty shouldn’t have to compete with performative theater. Who should we trust more? The talented actor commanding the stage, or the disheveled man being dragged out the door by security? It’s bad to assume of others without knowing what facts form the scaffolding. It’s not our place to get involved or ask questions. Right? 

We remember what we were told as children—but what we were told was, was not, and especially is not now. We all feel something is ”off”; we just can’t say what it is, or even from where it’s coming.

I’ve never had so many “certain”, yet wildly illogical instincts that aren’t even in remote agreement with beliefs about my own reality, or that of what exists outside of me.

Time seems bent. Minds seem to be cracking, even if just a bit. The theater of the world is reaching peak absurdity. People are restless. Irritable. Weepy. Mixed states. All of it feels.. unreal—or, at least, less real than it has ever felt. I know I’m far from the only one feeling it. Nobody’s talking about it, which makes it all the stranger, because it’s terrifying, and we all feel alone, together. 

Mathematical explanations are easy to digest (to some). It’s (I imagine) rewarding to solve a complex problem and be done with it. Open-ended, existential questions extending beyond measurability are extremely unsettling, however, and offer no true finality in the form of an answer. And there I feel stuck, as a mouse rendered incapacitated wholly because of a single leg immobilized by an unseen trap.

The last five years have taught that Ambiguity, Duality, and Absurdity are life’s only guarantees. Death and taxes would have been so much simpler.

[removed]

You cannot divide by zero. This is not an opinion. It is a hard mathematical wall. The expression 1/0 is undefined. It is not false. It is meaningless.

Now think of reality as a fraction. The physical universe — all the particles, galaxies, laws — is the numerator. The observer, the conscious presence that sees and knows, is the denominator. If you set the denominator to zero — if you try to have a universe without an observer, without consciousness, without the metaphysical — the fraction does not give you a purely physical universe. It gives you Error. Undefined. No valid description at all.

This means the metaphysical is not an optional add-on. It is the very thing that keeps the fraction from collapsing. Science already knows this, even if it refuses acknowledgement. Every experiment, every equation, every measurement implicitly assumes an observer. That observer is never proven by data. It is the unprovable first principle that all data depends on. Science has, from the beginning, accepted one metaphysical entity — the conscious observer — just to get off the ground.

Now here is the deeper structure. In mathematics, there is something called a fixed point. It is when an object is identical to the result of applying a function to itself.

For the universe, that equation is:

U ≅ F(U)

Where:

· U = the universe, all of physical reality.

· F = the act of observing. Not a machine. Not a measurement device. The irreducible presence of consciousness. The metaphysical itself.

· ≅ = "is structurally identical to."

The equation says that the universe is not separate from the act of observing it. They are one loop. You cannot pull them apart. If you remove F — if you remove the metaphysical — you are not simplifying the equation. You are breaking it. You are left with no universe at all. The mathematical structure requires the metaphysical just as surely as arithmetic requires a non-zero denominator.

And this is where the double standard becomes blatant.

Science accepts the metaphysical observer as a necessity because the whole framework is undefined without it. But the moment anyone suggests that there might be other metaphysical necessities — other terms that belong in the denominator, like a broader mind, a non-human intelligence, a sacred order, a God — the rules change. Suddenly you need empirical proof. Data. Peer review. The same demand that, if applied to the observer, would have killed science before it was born.

You cannot have it both ways. Either the metaphysical is a legitimate category of necessary assumptions, or it is not. If it is, the door is open. Not to blind belief, but to honest inquiry into what else might be required to keep the fraction defined. If it is not, then science must retract the observer and produce a purely physical description of reality that is mathematically well-posed. Good luck with that. The equation has no solution.

The metaphysical is not a ghost we are trying to sneak into the laboratory. It is the laboratory. It is the one thing without which no experiment, no data, no truth, and no universe can be formulated. The division by zero is the polite way of saying: your physicalism is not false. It is undefined. And the fixed point is the formal way of saying: consciousness is not in the universe. The universe is in consciousness, as the very loop that makes existence thinkable.

You don't have to believe me. Just try to write down a coherent description of everything with the metaphysical set to zero. You will find yourself holding an error message. And that error message is the shape of the truth you have been avoiding.