The Ministry of Youth

This past week I was invited by the young persons of our community to participate in one of their games of mechanical reproducibility. The Magus has already illustrated in the Communist Youth Manifesto the emerging culture of young people and their commitment to radical forgiveness, common meal fellowship, and singing in collectives.

What I did not know--could not even have imagined--is that some of these young in their emerging free time (increasing numbers of our youth being as it were unemployed because advances in steam tech have decreased the need for youthful labor) have modified mechanical reproducibility to such a degree that the original image is embedded as a deep and tiny core inside image "building blocks."

This is to say, they have created a game in which not only are images reproduced, but images themselves are building blocks, so that individual "players" can construct worlds.

This is all the more remarkable, not simply because the youth have invented a game world to engage their free time and work creatively, but the core of the blocks in this world are the image of the Image, the one through whom our theologians argue all things were created.

As a clergyman, I have some concerns. I wonder if this image-world is of a second-order, a simulacrum of the Real. However, given that the Image that drives these images is itself the basis for all created Reality, I also am skeptical of my own trepidations. It may be that I am older, and to a certain degree failing in openness to this new youth culture.

I also observe, and have learned from these youth, that sometimes the realm of the visible, though apparently lacking in the imprint of the image itself, yet is driven by, embedded in, directly enabled by, the very Image itself even if that Image is not "visible." Seen and yet not seen.

There is more to say on this matter, I offer here some images from their Kraft, and encourage all my correspondents to consider encountering this building block world in all its reproducible glory.

A (virtual) Unifying Theory of the Bible

Dear Magus,


As I have reported in some previous correspondence, we do not anywhere that I am aware possess a Scripture whole and entire. Yet recently, while perusing the correspondence of a literary luminary of the last century, I came across this hand-written note on the back of an envelope:


"After dinner he spent some time with the holoscope, studying Elias's most precious possession: the Bible expressed as layers at different depths within the hologram, each layer according to age. The total structure of Scripture formed, then, a three dimensional cosmos that could be viewed from any angle and its contents read. According to the tilt of the axis of observation, differing messages could be extracted. Thus Scripture yielded up an infinitude of knowledge that ceaselessly changed. It became a wondrous work of art, beautiful to the eye, and incredible in its pulsations of color. Throughout it red and gold pulsed, with strands of blue."


Is the holoscope he mentions at all comparable to your crucis glass? Or is this some other alien technology?


Yours,


The Ecclesiast

Sub-Ports

To: The Alpinist
From: The Ecclesiast
Where: At a dual port and air-port on the Black Sea

From your recent correspondence I know you have been particularly taken with your airships. While attending an assembly here at (what I confess must remain an undisclosed) port and air-port on a small island in the Black Sea, I have learned that at least some ship-builders are exploring how an air-ship might also work as a submersible. They call these marine-subs.

I myself cannot leave the port, duty calls, but I wonder if you might, in your travels, have time to ride on one of these vessels. As always, I believe we need to be wary of the imperialism we effectuate, either by air or by sea. I wonder what sub-marine creatures might be imprisoned by our presence.

I also confess curiosity. Given that water is so integral to our philosophical-theological system, water densely compressed at the bottom of the ocean must offer clues concerning the Geist our dear Magus concerns himself with. Yes?