initiate big change:
as smaller blocks tip the bigger ones over, creating an avalanche effect that increases in intensity, which eventually creates big change;
sending shockwaves throughout the world and throughout centuries…
there is no knowing how big the end block is going to be;
you might even tip over reality…
Hello!
This was inspired by Visakan Veerasamy.1 I write it as my own freeform writing, my thoughts about my dominoes.
The first important thing I notice about Visakan’s dominoes, is that the last domino is absurdly big. It is a goal so big that it affects the whole world!
The second thing is that the first domino is a natural concept. It is not a physical, immediate goal, it is definitely not something like “start taking banjo classes”. It does not entail any decision to be taken in the next week, or the next month; it is not a new year’s resolution. 2
Instead it is a concept. A concept can transcend the ebb and flow of daily motivations. It is not bound to any physical action we take. Thus, it is robust, resilient. The first domino is not dependant on your personal willpower, it depends on your soul.
Visakan’s first domino is “love+curiosity”. Through love and curiosity, which is something we all possess, a series of events are triggered. This specific procession of events is not something so frequently found in nature, but at the same time, it is very natural, since it comes from something that is only natural: Rocks tumble down the side of a mountain, and causes an avalanche. This event doesn’t happen everywhere, it needs very specific conditions. Yet, when it happens, we don’t find it unbelievable that it happened. Shouldn’t we be surprised that mountains exist? An unthinkable amount of dirt and rock piled up to the skies, in one uniform composition. A small rock falling down from the top, can then cause all others to fall with it. It’s only natural that it happens that way, it’s so steep! Yet we don’t wonder in amazement at how a rock could have been carried up so high.
The smallest rock, is the most densest rock. Love and curiosity. Change it to inventiveness and doubt, change it to drive and strength; they all work.
The smallest rock tumbles and brings down a myriad of rocks. When the avalanche hits the ground, it’s like a blanket. It’s in hundred pieces, and each one is different; and none of them are connected.
The concept, just like the smallest rock, can cause an avalanche. For the concept, tumbling down is the same as triggering an action. We can act based on our “love+curiosity”. Physical actions, triggered by any kind of abstract concept, can trigger a series of other, bigger physical actions, which turn into events involving or affecting many more people than just you. The triggered events can become so big that they change the whole world–through affecting or involving every human alive!
There is a concept. You have a relationship with this concept. It drives you to do something.
Curiosity. Religion. Science. Hatred.
These tell you to do things, and you will do something. The concept is something inherent to and personalized for everyone: everyone has their own way of pursuing Religion, every scientist and science enthusiast runs after a different idea and parsel of scientific thought, we all get curious about different things, and we all give in to or resist hatred in our own personal ways.
You will do something, though, you will do something very real… A pilgrimage, you may go on a pilgrimage to pursue your true faith… Or you may start building an experiment, to test that hypothesis you’ve had for such a long time… You may pick up a new book out of curiosity, and you may choose to distance yourself from a friend that you started to hate…
Your action involves only you. You started it.
Your action may quickly or slowly start involving or affecting other people…Your pilgrimage might take you across strange lands, getting you to meet all kinds of different, unknown people, and you may share love and unity with them, and faith spreads…Your experiment may prove your hypothesis, and get recognized by scientists around the world, expanding their knowledge about the field…The book you read may entertain you, turning you into devotee of the author’s novels, or your decision to distance yourself from the friend you hate, may lead you both to find better friendships…
What if this series of triggering gets multiplied beyond scale?
It starts involving the whole world. It starts changing everyone.3
Visakan’s biggest rock is “golden age for humanity”. Change this… Change it to “carbon-free age for humanity”, an age where the world will heal from the industrial revolution’s damage…Change it to “space-faring age for humanity”, where humans will venture beyond the cradle4…
The trick is that it’s not you who is affecting this change.
YOU ARE JUST A ROCK.
It is the procession of rocks, it is the avalanche, that brings about the new age.
Then all of this gets wholly disconnected from any of your personal flaws and strengths: the whole is so much bigger than you. The initial concept, by transforming into a physical action, attained the ability to enact physical change. And physical things have the ability to multiply. Your actions multiply as long as, as much as, they interact and involve others. The avalanche would have never been possible with a single big boulder… no! One big boulder would have done nothing. EVEN A METEOR NEEDS A PLANET TO STRIKE! And what happens when it strikes it? It melts into it… The beauty of life, the beauty of existence… The meteor striking earth5 is still part of our Earth; its space rock has found a new home amongst our own pebbles. They are unpurifiable now; you can never seperate the space rock from the earth pebble, and you can never seperate the earth pebble from the space rock… The beauty of life, the beauty of existence… That is exactly how generations6 work. We marry, melt into each other, and our genes become inseperable in our offspring–and the offspring is something completely new. It exists for the first time in reality, it looks at the world with new eyes–a combination of DNA never before seen in time. That’s you! That’s all of us!
This is why the dominoes don’t depend on your ego. Events need other events to get big. Our individual rocks collide, hit, boost, stop, divert, break, meld into each other, to become something all-together new, all-together bigger. And it’s bigger than you. Your ego melts into the collective.
The dominoes are not pushed by you. It’s bigger than you. The collapse of a huge domino, the biggest of the dominoes, can only happen when everything pushes against it.
This process expands across generations, beyond the reach of a single human.
Era defining changes can be made, BY YOU!
and this is not a self help article, because the change won’t be attributed to only you!
EXPLORATIONS
- Visakan Veerasamy writes on Twitter (amongst other places). He creates long threads of tweets where he builds concepts. Then he references them in his other Twitter posts. This way he creates a lexicon, which he can use to get his point across without losing intensity of meaning (just like what professional philosophers do). “dominoes” was one of the big threads he always referenced. I joined the discussion about it once, and that made me think about what my dominoes would be. This would become the basis of the GNC Bards thought I developed soon after.
- It feels like the fourth paragraph I wrote has the exact same structure of the song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” by Gill-Scott Heron. I re-wrote my paragraph to fit the song’s lyrics: “The first important thing is that the revolution is not going to be televised. It is not going to seek approval, it is not going to pass over, and it is definitely not going to be state funded. The revolution won’t wait for you to find the time for it, it won’t wait a week, it won’t wait a month: The Revolution. Is Not. A New Year’s Resolution.” …And the Revolution. Will not be Televised. (I am glad I did this section)
- If I continue expanding the 4 examples to describe how they would affect the whole world: your pilgrimage spread faith to people. You share it in writing, exceeding the limits person-to-person interaction, and your faithfulness reaches millions and billions online. People start teaching others the value of faith. Generations hear the call to faith. A new era of faithfulness begins for humanity. Where lives are sacred, where it becomes so important for humans to hone their willpower, to start seeing with their inner eyes; meditation and prayer becomes common practice for every culture and community around the world. Humanity grows the third eye. We start seeing into the future, into the past, into the now, and we peek beyond reality. God sits infront of us. We bow, and sit down to have tea together… Can you see?
- “Jewel in the Night” is a song written by the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, which he recorded while he was on a mission in the International Space Station (ISS). In the song he refers to the world as “The Cradle”. When humanity leaves the world, and sets life up on other planets, they will have left the cradle.There are many interviews online where Chris Hadfield describes what it’s like to wake up every day and see the world floating outside the window. I really recommend them.
- The Chicxulub crater is the site of a meteor which struck the earth millions of years ago and triggered a series of environmental catastrophes that wiped out dinosaurs from the face of the world. I first heard about it in 2018 when I was reading the book “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History“
- I have never read anything like the book “Wild Seed” when it comes to talking about generations, and the melting together of different people to create new kinds people. It is a beautiful book, and it made me fall in love with Octavia Butler that much more.
In the end, this article ended up not specifying what my dominoes are. This was an exploration of how I define what “thinking in dominoes” is. In the future, I can tell you what I decided my dominoes were, and you will know what I want to do to create the “GNC Bards”.
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