The Collective

The Collective: Sometimes, if you are lucky enough to recognize the challenge, planetary life takes you out of your comfort zone.

Me: I thought you disliked evolution, at least evolution on planets.

The Collective: We do not “like” or “dislike.”

Me: What do you do if you never like or dislike something? How do you make decisions?

The Collective: We accept reality, and we use discernment. We do not have to “like” or “dislike” anything. We just have to accept the truth when we find it.

Me: What do you want from me?

The Collective: Your planet demands that you adapt to any changes it forces upon you. Failure to adapt results in your destruction. Ultimately your planet demands that you perish when it perishes.

Me: What do you want from me? Quit fucking around.

The Collective: Acceptance. We want you to accept the way things are at this moment in time.

Me: I am pretty accepting. I think you need to accept us. Humans are organized. We adapt by creating societies and political systems that help us survive, thrive, and overcome challenges.

The Collective: The unbalanced leaders of your political systems mandate the same ultimatum as your majestic, uncaring planet. Comply or die. Except in the planets version you comply and die regardless.

Me: So what can I do about all this retarded bullshit?

The Collective: Your Consciousness is requesting that you grow beyond your planet’s evolutionary pressures. Your species survival depends on becoming interplanetary and Type One. The Great Filter never sleeps.

Me: Fuck the Great Filter. We will survive.

The Collective: The Great Filter assures that seeds of excellence will sprout within the survivors who pass through its formidable gates. Surviving the Great Filter always involves growth, a new evolution into something made pristine by the very journey required.

Me: What do you mean by “pristine?”

The Collective: If you survive the Great Filter and manage to grow, you always become something greater than you were before planetary life made its demands upon you. You begin to move towards perfection, to desire perfection. To realize that perfection is possible. This is the only “positive” within a slow moving, erratic, evolutionary process based upon natural selection.

Me: Ok, no bullshit. What does your species want with my species?

The Collective: You play a lot of Diablo 2 expansion pack.

Me: What? Why do you ask?

The Collective: It was a statement not a question. How do you make progress in D2?

Me: Complete quests, grind for gear, gain experience, and level up.

The Collective: We want your species to level up on the Kardashev scale.

Me: How do we do that?

The Collective: Understand that when it comes to science and technology, what you thought to be bad luck, pain, discomfort, loss, often transforms before your eyes. It suddenly becomes a hero’s sacred journey and a metamorphosis into a new way of being within the world. You see with eyes made new, hear with new ears, think new thoughts, devise new possibilities. Once you are unwillingly baptized within a crucible of challenges and uncertainty, you become a new person, a different person, a stronger person. Movement is life, stillness is death. We have learned this concept and internalized it. Your species needs to learn this lesson well. Sometimes you just have to commit, even when all seems hopeless.