All that you touch
You Change.All that you Change
Changes you.The only lasting truth
Is Change.God
– Earthseed proverb from “The Book of The Living”, itself from Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Is Change.
As much as I wish the work could speak for itself (and as much as the FAQ attempts to) I feel like I’ve got to explain myself. It’s certainly an odd thing, making up something to believe in. And obscured by language like an “art project” and “joke” it’s hard to tell how seriously I take it. But sharing the origins and the lifelong percolations of this project should at least suggest I’m earnest and self-aware, and mean no ill intent.
I’ve described myself as a “spiritual mutt.” With an Episcopal mother, a Jewish father (neither very religious), an African Methodist Episcopal Zion godmother, a Tibetan Buddhist godfather, and raised in an agnostic household with a strong interest in the science– I honestly had no idea what to believe. I remember nights in bed as a child nearly in tears because I wished I could believe in something. Being in my godmother’s gospel church, feeling those vibes and seeing the inner strength and wisdom she drew from it had given me faith in faith.
My interest in science wasn’t exactly grounded, either– I went to college to study far-out theoretical physics until I could no longer handle the math, ending up in the arts and studying Eastern religions as part of my degree in Chinese language and culture. My love of science fiction and futurism had me repeating Arthur C. Clarke’s old adage, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and imagining Robert Heinlein’s Martian culture from Stranger in Strange Land where art, science, and religion are indistinguishable. No wonder I intuited the metaphor of a “human operating system” as a kid, watching my computer magically translate my intention into digital reality, the way my mind did my self.
“The first sentence in The Books of Bokonon is this:
‘All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.’
My Bokononist warning is this:
Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.
So be it.”
– From Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
And so over the years I was also drawn to esoteric studies and the occult, my credulity oscillating between the deep titillation of arcane knowledge, and how it all obviously operates as metaphysical self-help with different dressings through the ages. Finally, my struggle with and exposure to mental illness and cognitive bias made me familiar with myriad mundane psychological explanations of all manner of phenomena.
All that said, I’ve always held space in my sense of possibility for the truly inexplicable, the literally transcendent, and the deeply profound patterns of meaning woven into my life. It was in these cracks of certitude that my faith would grow, and my observations always draw me to some flavor of the perennial philosophy. (Not the fascist ones though, thank god.)
But probably as important as my spiritual and philosophical journey was my DJ older brother casually introducing me to PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect) back in the ‘90s. Regardless of what one thinks of the rave scene and if they uphold those values, there is a memetic genius to the way the phrase worked and took root, and how it formed pillars of an ethical culture.
My full list of inspirations – personal, historical, fictional – is genuinely beyond the scope of this post. But as I continue to expand the KRNL and deepen my studies I expect to take time to reflect more on them, as some influences – like the I Ching’s 64 Hexagrams – have had a direct impact on how the system was designed. For now it’s enough to understand that the KRNL, and its author, shares in the search for truth, meaning, and purpose that is every human’s struggle.