CHAPTER 06 The Birth of Everbecomingism

A Glimpse of Time, a Few Old Poems, and an Unexpected Book

I did not wake up one morning and decide to invent a philosophy.

For much of my working day, I have more immediate problems: a leaking pipe, a furnace that refuses to light, a property that needs attention, or a tenant waiting for an answer. Philosophy rarely arrives with a service appointment. Yet, somehow, it arrived.

A Glimpse of Time

On a recent visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art this year, I was looking quietly at a small portrait before a tour group arrived. Suddenly, the words “Art gives us a glimpse of time” jumped into my mind. I thought I could use them as inspiration for an English poem. But I did not write one, because the thought quietly led me in another direction.

It was a small observation. I did not regard it as the beginning of a book. But the thought stayed with me. A portrait holds a moment from a life that has continued—or ended—outside the frame. The person, the artist, the viewer, and the world around them all belong to different moments in time.

The museum did not hand me a philosophy. It awakened my curiosity to explore other possibilities. One thought led to another, and the questions began to travel far beyond the museum.

The Poems Were Already There

Long before that museum visit, I wrote poetry in Chinese and English, and I wrote a novel in Chinese. Writing was never entirely new to me. What was new was the idea of developing an English-language philosophical book.

In an English poem titled “The Dream,” written on December 13, 2014, I wondered: “What if my life were just a dream? Would you wake me up when I got home?” This question reflects my early thoughts and perspective on life. The poem also spoke of memory, love, freedom, and a changing world. I wrote it to express what I felt, not to establish a theory of identity.

In another English poem, “A Drop of Water,” written on June 26, 2016, I wondered whether a drop entering the sea would change the sea or be changed by it. I was thinking about existence, relationships, and the cosmos, without imagining that those questions might later become part of a larger philosophical argument.

An earlier English poem, “Becoming,” used the image of a caterpillar and a butterfly to connect transformation with imagination. The title has a family story of its own. When I was sharing the newly written poem with my young children at bedtime, my ten-year-old son Freddie suddenly jumped up from his bed, raised his hand in the air, and called out, “Becoming!” The title stayed.

My wife and children were my first audience. I cannot claim that every poetry reading was greeted with great enthusiasm. Most of the time, my children would have preferred a bedtime story. Perhaps that was my earliest lesson in keeping a reader interested.

More than a decade later, as I developed Everbecomingism, some of those poems naturally came back to my mind. Suddenly, I began to see connections I had never consciously intended.

The thoughts, questions, and early ideas had been present all along. I simply had not imagined where they might lead.

I wasn’t looking for the poems. The poems found their way back into my thoughts.

Their original meanings still matter. They were poems about feelings and life, not secret outlines for a future book. But they had become useful companions in asking new questions.

From Silicon Valley to a Leaking Pipe

Years ago, my first real American job was with a high-tech company in Silicon Valley. I had worked in engineering and technology. Later, my days became filled with insurance, rental properties, repairs, and the practical work of keeping buildings usable.

That experience did not disappear when I began writing. It gave me another way to think about change. A house can be renovated while remaining recognizable as the same house. Sometimes a repair preserves what exists. Sometimes a larger transformation changes what the building can become.

I do not want to pretend that fixing a furnace is the same as examining the universe. One requires tools, testing, and immediate results. The other may produce a better question instead of an answer. But both reward curiosity—and both punish careless assumptions.

During weeks of writing and thinking, I sometimes walked in the Metroparks, beside lakes or rivers, looking for inspiration. Meanwhile, I spent less time than usual on repairs. My philosophical universe was expanding while some very earthly maintenance jobs waited. The tenants, I suspect, would have preferred a working furnace to a new theory of becoming.

But With AI, I Dare

Technology had already changed my habits. I once did mental calculations quickly; after years of using calculators, I relied on them for things I used to do in my head. Convenience can weaken an ability we no longer exercise.

AI raises that concern on a much larger scale. It can make us passive, dependent, or less willing to struggle with a difficult question. But it can also help us attempt something that previously felt beyond our reach.

Although I had written poetry and a novel in Chinese, and even poems in English, I would never have imagined writing a philosophical book like this in English for publication.

But with AI, I dare.

Our conversations did not make every idea correct. Often they made the questions harder. We compared Marx, Darwin, Descartes, religious traditions, technology, and the future of humanity. Having AI help me navigate and discuss those giants’ ideas probably saved me months of reading and research—though it did not remove my responsibility to question, check, and understand them. We questioned our assumptions and adjusted chapter titles. Sometimes I lay awake all night. Occasionally we found a sentence that sounded beautiful but did not yet make a convincing argument…

I supplied the vision, the ideas about how to write the book, its structure, and the subjects we needed to explore. I brought questions, experiences, English poems, judgments, and the bold proposal “Bypassing Death Before It Occurs,” connecting the possibilities of transformation to individual lives. I edited words and sentences, revised the writing, and decided what belonged in the book. AI helped me explore, organize, challenge, research, and express those ideas. The collaboration itself became an example of how technology can change what an individual is willing to attempt.

I once joked that writing this book made me the architect who draws the blueprint, the building commissioner who approves the project, the inspector who checks the work, and the coworker who helps finish it. AI is like a remarkably smart contractor with a powerful, efficient engineering department. But even a great contractor needs someone to decide what to build—and to inspect the results.

A Name for an Unfinished Journey

At first, our discussion concerned what humanity might become after changes in labor, society, intelligence, and technology. The question grew beyond any one economic or political ideal: Why should we assume that humanity has a final social destination?

I began calling that open-ended vision Everbecomingism—the first new English word I had coined, apart from the abbreviations TINDOD and BDBIO.

Then the inquiry widened. Could future technologies change the human body or the boundaries of a lifetime? How does an individual shape humanity, and how does humanity shape the individual? What does it mean for a star, a galaxy, or the universe to have a history of becoming?

The four dimensions—existence and continuity, transformation, relationships, and open-ended possibilities—emerged as a way of examining these questions together. They were not laws of physics, and they were not final answers. They were lenses we could test against different realities.

Even the book cover helped us think. A caterpillar, a chrysalis, and a butterfly flying toward sunlight expressed a process of transformation. The image did not prove a philosophy; it invited imagination.

I first designed the TINDOD and BDBIO logos by hand on white paper, sketching both their graphic shapes and the arrangement of the letters. AI then helped refine the designs. Rearranging the two names and declarations produced four versions almost by accident, and those variations encouraged us to ask how different perspectives might belong to one vision.

Still Becoming

I have sometimes described this work as standing on the shoulders of giants while looking through homemade, AI-equipped binoculars. The giants offer knowledge and hard-won insight. The binoculars are imperfect, but they encourage me to look farther. When evidence shows the view is wrong, the lenses must change.

I am not claiming to have invented change, transformation, or the idea of a reality in process. Others have explored such questions for centuries. What I am trying to develop is a perspective that connects individual becoming, humanity’s possible futures, technology, and the universe without pretending that their differences disappear.

I also do not know whether the framework will survive every criticism. It should remain open to correction. A philosophy about becoming ought to be willing to become something better.

When I began, I was not searching for a new identity. I was simply following my curiosity. Now I find myself moving between two kinds of work: repairing what exists and writing about what might become.

Perhaps Everbecomingism did not begin when I gave it a name.

Perhaps it had been quietly becoming within me for years.

And perhaps the next chapter of its story will be written not only by me, but by readers who look through its lenses and discover questions of their own.

There Is No Destination, Only Destiny!

Originality

Everbecomingism is the original philosophical framework presented by Tang Ren in this book. The author introduces and develops Bypassing Death Before It Occurs (BDBIO) and There Is No Destination, Only Destiny (TINDOD), including their associated original logos and their place within the four dimensions of becoming.

First English edition: 2026.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank OpenAI’s ChatGPT for its important assistance in creating this book. It helped me find and discuss sources, organize ideas and chapters, draft and polish the writing, and work on translations. At times it also raised questions that challenged my thinking.

The philosophical vision of Everbecomingism, my personal experiences, original poems, and central concepts arose from my own exploration. I posed the questions, set the direction, reviewed and revised the writing, and take responsibility for the final content.

This collaboration is itself an example of how artificial intelligence can expand an individual’s creative possibilities.

Without AI, I might never have attempted to write a book like this.