Discovery
Discovery: the uncovering or recognition of a preexisting noun. You cannot discover something that is not already there. Despite this, it is impossible not to have an original idea. Each idea that comes from an advanced intelligence, if it is within our ability to grasp, comes as a clue to a puzzle through which we can interpolate from our current knowledge the missing steps or backtrack from the clue the path leading back to where our knowledge left off. There are consequences to playing a game several levels up when the keys of passage were not earned. When the clue is within comprehension the mind must impersonate a more intelligent mind to replicate the steps leading to its discovery (provided its antecedence does not cancel its causality).
The danger is that during this phase, rushing from point G to point J, the further implications of each step are missed as are any links to the necessary associative hooks that would have enabled your own continued progress; in other words there was a reason why you were stuck where you were stuck. You miss out on the methods, and you miss out on the things that make that path to discovery your own, things that can grapple it to you and prevent it from being a stunted orphan of the towering web of associations it should be. Perhaps this is what our dreams attempt to resolve at night. If the process of backtracking or interpolation (the creating of personal contexts and mental breadcrumbs which I call “associative rendering”) is completed thoroughly and one gives you the time to manufacture personal associations and metaphors to each step then the result is the indistinguishable equivalent of a personal original thought.
However, if the question is far enough beyond our comprehension that we cannot even conceive of the steps necessary to make it possible to subject it to associative rendering it sits before us like an equation we can only decipher part of: an E=MC2 where only the E and the M glow; a Stonehenge where its presence is the only question we can understand it to be asking; and those questions, cases or problems so far beyond our comprehension we do not even actually perceive them as anomalies continue washing in at our feet or streaking down from the sky. The presence of the Ozone layer explained cooler temperatures and protection from ultra-violet radiation, but what explained why our developing technology happened to demolish it so quickly and efficiently? So many complex things have coincidentally stood directly in our path. We’ve destroyed them as if it’s our second or first nature. Our vampirism is leaving the planet a dead husk.
Take this moment, and take the moment the Earth dies. How many steps?