Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

I've been keeping track of the synchronicities that happen in my life. One of the more recent examples involves a mention I made in these pages of a "mix tape," containing a variety of music, that a former girlfriend made for me thirty years ago, includg a short talking piece about Burger King. (See the gray box below there.)

Looking online for the audio to include in the article, I came upon what no doubt once was a live link to such, below which was a single, 15-year-old comment from a guy whose girlfriend also made him a mix tape containing that piece about Burger King: "I remember this from a mix tape you made for me (back when we were dating?)." What are the odds?

Arnold Zuboff
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Later, and more explicably, I came across a former neighbor of mine, Arnold Zuboff, in a YouTube video. When I was in grade school, I lived a few blocks away from the Zuboff brothers. Mark was in my class. Arnold was ten years older. I went off to a prep school in a different town, but another friend of mine became good friends with Mark and got to know Arnold, who, while we were still in high school (1974), became the youngest tenured professor at University College London, working in their philosophy department until his retirement in 2011. In the video Arnold talks about probability. He notes that the odds of you coming to being are so tiny as to be nonexistent.

At the moment of your conception there were 200,000 of your father's sperm, each different from the next, trying to fertilize your mother's also unique egg. Arnold compares your particular sperm's success to the odds of a coin flip coming up heads 1000 times in a row. Then he notes that for there to be you now, those radically unlikely odds also needed to be fulfilled for each of your parents and for each of their parents, and theirs, etc. In just a few generations we enter the realm where the probability of that is so slim as to be mathematically nil.

I considered this phenomenon, which I call "The Lucky Sperm," before listening to Zuboff. Think of those millions of other persons who did not come to be. It's like winning the lottery, after each and every of your ancestors also won the lottery. It's a cause for celebration, even in life's darkest hour: "Against impossible odds, I am here."

Based on this improbability, Zuboff draws an interesting conclusion regarding personal identity, which is identity is not personal. Either every person now and ever (nay, every creature ever born of sperm and egg) is the luckiest being alive, all of us all together at once, or we are thinking about identity incorrectly.

To resolve the highly improbable situation of personal identity, the sense of immediacy and mine, Zuboff suggests a collective identity. And here, in trying to understand the philosopher, I venture out on my own. It is as if consciousness rests like a crown upon the head of our physical organisms, but really it is all the same crown.

This thinking seems in line with insight I gained from two other recent videos; two other synchronicities. The first was from Harold Bloom talking about Shakespeare, noting that the Bard created 100 distinctive major characters, and hundreds more minor. The second comes from a video titled "Borges and the Impossibility of Writing." The great Jorge Luis Borges imagined, in his Everything and Nothing, Shakespeare after his death asking God to restore to him his own unique identity.

Shakespeare says to God, "I who have been in vain so many men want to be only one and myself." To which God's voice answering from a whirlwind replies, "Neither I am I. I dreamt the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare and among the shapes of my dream there was you who like myself is many and no one."

(In Exodus, by the Burning Bush, as God is sending Moses back to Egypt to liberate His people, Moses questions God, "When the people ask, 'Who sent you?' what should I answer?" God answers, not as is often translated, "I am I," but "I will be what I will be," still the two include each other. So, Borges' "Neither I am I" is wonderfully ironic.)

Borges' work is full of the interconnectedness of things; a library that contains all books that have, will or could be written; a catalogue of the universe; the letters of the alphabet that name, describe, contain and give reality to reality.

Others before Borges entertained the idea of a Universal Book. And although the assertion would make these old masters wince, it seems obvious that, in some crude way, the advent of the internet brings us imperfectly closer to realizing such a collective cataloguing. In any case, the video on the "Impossibility of Writing" discusses the importance of trying for the impossible. Failing gracefully is all that we can do.

Jorge Luis Borges
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Borges' philosophy puts one in mind of the infinite regression that takes place when two mirrors face each other, which puts one in mind of each of your many ancestors, regressing through time, winning the lucky spermatic lottery.

I have my own plan to manifest the universal collectivity of Zuboff and Borges. Like some old alchemist in his tower, I've been working on a practical project to bring to light this commonality that is often far too obscure. And my project has to do with the internet.

Lokkal, like the Yellow Pages robustly reborn, is (or will be) our digital hub, the local community reflected online. The internet does not need another commercial website. It needs a public platform acting in the interest of the local community, building that community and strengthening the local economy. While the nerds are all expecting Artificial Intelligence to rule the world, I'm betting on Collective Human Intelligence. It's a much happy, more human future.

To get involved send an email (6lokkal @ gmail.com) and/or use the orange donate button below. Thanks.

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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