I believe we have evolved in order to recognize the beauty of the universe, and manipulate free will through consciousness, in order to become creators ourselves. The nature of existence lends no hint to the fundamental construct which underlies every Planck length of existence; we can only speculate on what strings or levers may lie below the machinery of what we call ‘reality’.
Glimpses may be had of those depths, however fleeting…. But this is not for us to comprehend. Even our shared reality is merely sensory, and varies by each person’s interpretation of the world. Each a different angle, every fear, every hope, every desire affecting how we perceive even the simplest of things.
There is no consensus reality, and never was. We find strings and patterns which we agree on, and coalesce into factions and countries in order to uphold those patterns. Every creation eventually meets its demise, and human constructs are not excluded from that fate.
This means one should not mourn the passing of ‘Truth’ as an objective term. Nor the death of our faux culture. We need not fear that our economies are failing, that our people are divided, that there is war and pestilence and hatred and anger and frustration, for these are all reflections of the angst the universe periodically suffers, each of our own sufferings a mirror image of a planetary demise. Shared chaos….. and from chaos, emerges order. It is the only way it can be.
Out of the ashes rises the Phoenix, a rebirth always follows the death of a culture. In our case, the crumbling football stadiums will be no different from the gladiator halls of the past, and surely, our descendants will see them as equally absurd. I can hear it now…. “What do you mean, Father? Our ancestors gave themselves brain damage for entertainment? Why?” “I do not know son, I do not know…..We have come a long way, haven’t we?”
Perhaps in time, when the smoke has cleared, and the damage assessed, we will find the half-life of uranium was not so bad after all. Maybe. We could find ways to remedy our past errors, using mycelium and fungus to clean up oil spills, and maybe even nuclear waste. We might find a way to dispose of the need for harmful fertilizers and pesticides. We might even decide that eating meat, however delicious and nutritious it may, or may not, be… The argument of nutrition pales in comparison to the toll on our environment, and upon closer inspection of the miles of hog slop and manure holding ponds, the sludge from mining and extraction, and even the nuclear waste ponds leftover from rare earth mining for the very magnets we used to make our wind farms from, we may decide that it was just better to start over.
We had so many options…..
So much for green energy….. but hey, we at least tried.
There is nothing depressing about a tree consuming the decaying corpses of a million fallen cicadas…. So brief were their lives, just long enough to add some spice to the soil, and feed the local birds and lizards. But the tree sits silently, fungus assisting in careful dismantling of the innards and antennae of the rotting cicadas, until every molecule is dispersed throughout the underlying network of filaments and roots. Purpose served, the cycle starts over again.
As in the Roman Empire, a hundred others have fallen. Some larger than others, we have reached a capacity beyond the resources which we currently possess. Farmland becomes wasteland, desertification takes hold of our once fertile valleys and grasslands, as we make way for more and more ‘progress’ to insure we have enough subdivisions to hold the workers for the factories that would collapse in a matter of decades.
Yeah, we really fucked up. But what of it? What would we expect instead? We were primitive creatures just yesterday on the evolutionary tree, and have to remember how much we are influenced by our primal brains. Working to better ourselves, while a noble gesture, cannot change society as a whole unless others are willing to participate.
We only deserve better when we can agree on an outcome, and while a majority of us are still influenced by invisible forces and scary evil demons, that is what we will continue to pursue. Legislation will be passed affecting millions of individual people based on hearsay, religion and philosophy. Nobody is ever happy with all the outcomes of a society. Part of what it means to live in a so-called ‘democracy’ means we will not always agree on policy. That is as it should be, but when outside forces and lobbying interferes with rational discourse and decision making, entire societies crumble under the weight of their own fat greed and ignorance. The people become the slaves, and the masters become rich.
We have been there for a long time, the hammer has been held up by a few people in powerful positions for some time now. When we meet the demise of our friends in Rome, however, it is not likely that any superpower will arise from the ashes. It will be people. This is because when the shit hits the fan this time, it might take awhile to recover. Our society hangs by a thread, and the only thing keeping the world economies afloat is nothing has happened yet to shake us into the realization that we are completely going down the wrong path and nobody is steering the ship.
My belief, however absurd, is that everything has a purpose. In the case of consciousness, maybe nature wanted mankind to create something magnificent, something that would require a high degree of technology to achieve, such as sending our bacterial brethren out into the depths of space, to colonize other galaxies. Perhaps. With our current knowledge base, we can do a lot of great things for ourselves, but what can we do for the universe? The idea seems so ridiculous on one hand, but replace the word ‘universe’ with ‘God’ and everyone is suddenly on board.
Can we not agree to disagree on how to define this force? Jesus H Christ people, what is your problem with having to define the one REAL GOD? Ahem.
At any rate, we as creators must find our own path, and use caution not to fall into the trap if idolizing others. That is balanced with the need to avoid becoming an egotistical mess and needing constant approval ourselves to keep going. One must be strong, and wise, and healthy, and intelligent, and all of this in an environment where we are nurtured and feel safe, able to speak freely. How often do these conditions come together for the average person today? Not often enough. It’s a cruel reality that many live in conditions far too disgusting to find the time to worry about setting any path for themselves, except maybe to the water pump where they pay for a gallon of fresh water from their own well, which is locked at night by a Foreign company who bought the well and sells the water back to the people.
Yes, it happens, and it is reality. We treat each other like cattle, and this is always the sign of a failing machine. When all parts are not given equal attention, one loose bolt can collapse the cart. We destroy our own system. That is just fact.
External circumstances, however, are more likely a culprit for the demise of the Western way of life, and may come sooner than later. No matter what mess we can create for ourselves, Mother Nature can deliver more death than we could shake a stick at. Truth is, we have reached a time when our own nuclear arsenal could wipe out most of the life on Earth in a giant flash and a nuclear winter. But a virus, too small to see, could do the same in a very short time. We are living beyond our means and refusing to look at things rationally, but rather than preparing we are screaming at one another.
So goes life. You cannot prepare for a blind punch, only be ready for anything. My hope is that from those ashes, we can all be the Phoenix.
Are you depressed now?
Don’t be…. The vast field of possibilities we have in each of us allows for a change of heart at any time, and a change of pace to suit ourselves. We really are creators of our own reality, for only our eyes see things the way we do. Nobody really has a consensus reality except what we choose to pretend to understand in one another, those patterns that we agree on which create the divisions we decide to uphold as ‘values’. Those values differ as much as our faces do, though as non-material ideas they are harder to distinguish. I did not write this to show how we have failed, but to show why we will prevail. There was never any such thing as ‘Human Spirit’ in the past, only “Human Self-Interest” in not dying. We created that term to describe the desire to move forward, to discover new things and to share those discoveries with one another. That meaning however has become rather obscured.
Somehow, along the way, we decided that ideas were personal property, and people were items of commerce. We stopped sharing our discoveries for fear of losing the ego boost that went with being recognized, and we thought the only way to protect our empires was to pretend that slaves had inferior genetics and deserved their fate. That was bullshit, and we always knew it. We wanted more than we deserved, more than was naturally viable long term, and instead of using nature as a guide we took luxury as a given right. Was it? Who really benefits from the vast wealth which is accrued in the name of progress? We know where it goes, but forget that it is invisible. It has no substance. The trillions of ‘dollars’ locked up in hyperspace will never be collected on, for the only thing they represent is commerce, and what can be obtained differs from that reality. A billion dollars will not buy a carpenter if there are none to be found, so the system relies on participation by each of us. It appears that people have discovered this, and are refusing to play the game. This is a sure sign of collapse of an empire that has stood the test of time- the Human Empire. We have backed ourselves into a corner and the only way out seems to be to bring the house down. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and maybe a few thousand nuclear missiles or a virus, you know, that kind of stuff.
Which brings me full circle back to the loss of Truth as an objective term. “Do not mourn that which you never lost, for you may have never had it in the first place…” We never had it. Dusting off the cobwebs of our past and delving into the vast sum of knowledge we have accrued in the past few thousand years, those who choose to study civilization will see that History as presented is merely a fantasy, a collection of anecdotes and stories left by the ancestors themselves, just as overstated and biased as any modern blogger or author, and musician or artist who has an opinion and a theory. Religion shows us this well, how a small idea can be magnified and expanded on for several hundred years, and convince people who have no evidence whatsoever to believe as much, except what we call ‘faith’ from what others have told us. Faith indeed, for everything we are taught from the time we can talk is suspect, and the picture we have created of the world is far too subjective and personal to ever hope to study ‘consciousness’ as an objective observer. What a joke of an idea! Oh, what a joke indeed… we are trapped by our own consciousness, yet freed from the constraints of clockwork by that very trap. Such a conundrum.
The solution comes, eventually, to all who consider and seek it. The solution is to see there was never a problem, (or always a problem) the world will play out as it does, and the only control we have at all is over how we choose to observe, and what we choose to do; most importantly, how we react to those things around us. The Solution to the ‘Truth Dilemma’ is to realize that people have been lying to you from the time you were born. Presidents and officials have lied about the state of the union from the time that ANY country was founded. Protecting self-interests has been a cornerstone of politics in every time through history. The founding fathers of the United States were not all upstanding men with fantastic ideas and honest intentions, they were just much better at hiding the corruption in a time when the printing press was the best social media around. Information has always been controlled, and when you consider why, you see there can be no other way. Nobody wants to be smeared, nobody wants their darkest truths exposed or their failures displayed in the limelight, no politician wants their past inspected and every decision noted, but in the modern world, that is exactly how it is.
Digital media has made it appear that there is something new in the works…
They call it ‘Lying’. Oh my goodness, what will we ever do?
Sarcasm aside, those lies are easier to confront when evidence can be presented, and our current world allows everybody to find whatever dirt they choose on whoever may have committed a heinous act or used public funds improperly. We can find criminals, and use digital trails to catch all kinds of failures of values, and expose them instantly for the entire world to see. This means on one hand we can all help to expose the corruption, but on the other hand it allows us to buy into the lies more easily, and the new idea of ‘Fake News’ comes to be born.
There is nothing new under the sun, and these behaviors are not exclusive to our generation or time. They are just more plentiful, and easier to see. We have a literal window to the entire world; in many areas more people have cell phones and internet than indoor plumbing. We are truly living in strange times, and our fast paced lives create a sense that everything is falling apart and there is no way to stop it.
(It’s not falling apart, relax. It is just starting over. Reset. Reboot. Recharge. Of course our descendants may or may not participate)
I speak for my own perception, to be sure. I could be lying. You never know. Nothing I say should be considered fact. I know no facts, only ideas. I have no Truths, only opinions. We can never perform the same experiment twice in the same way, as conditions and expectations are always changing, and the very observation affects the outcome of the experiment. We are ripples in a pond, moving outward, water slowly moving back to a calm state. We are soon far below resting on the bottom, with no trace left on the surface. Our societies are like anthills, working hard to build higher, higher, higher… but eventually every one of them is abandoned and left to the elements. It is inevitable as the existence of matter from a vacuum. It just has to be.
I see our trivial efforts to understand the needs of the universe as humorous; the way we argue about idols and gods, or property and borders, is akin to children fighting over an empty box- in the end both walking away, and nobody had a point to begin with, just a temporary release of emotion and a hope to have something others do not.
Nobody really wanted the box, it was just too good to pass up. It was never about the box. Somebody else had it, so we wanted it too. Simple really.
To see and understand the vastness of the universe, to the best ability of a Human, all senses and emotions considered, and not believe that universe is conscious…… well, that is something I cannot understand. The more we try to disprove a Conscious Universe, the more absurd the excuses become. On the flip side of that problem, the more we try to anthropomorphize ‘god’ and put a face on that awareness, the more problems we run into when expressing ourselves to others. We may be fighting over something as trivial as a language barrier, which says a lot about our primal selves. Nobody really understands what we are here for, what our deepest roots are, or what our destiny will be as a species or a planet. Plenty of people pretend to know, and for every false idol there will be a thousand eager followers, so untrusting of their own minds merely because they have not yet learned how to properly use them. They become trapped in a paradigm, indoctrinated in one way or another, and the groupthink is too strong to break free of. They become one of the millions of walking dead, zombies in their own minds and trapped in the system of someone else’s choosing. The cycle continues, and we end up with groups within groups within groups, just as it would be otherwise. It is, in a way, inevitable in a diverse world.
It became about ‘Winning’. It became about who can achieve the biggest, the best and the finest. We tried on many different clothes to suit us as a people, and none of them could cover up our birthday suit to our satisfaction. We tried to tell God what to do, we tried to allow God to tell US what to do, we left god for another god, and another, and each generation found a new belief to suit what he thought to be reality, to explain the vast complexity of existence in a way everyone could understand. It never worked.
We used archetypes and allegories, and the wise and educated of past generations encoded their discoveries into texts they hoped would survive. They discovered hidden languages in nature, ones that we call geometry, and mathematics. We used those tools, and those predictions and equations allowed us to create amazing works. We could see results. They knew to preserve those truths which CAN be known, no matter how we differ on our perceptions. Mathematics resides outside our senses, outside our language, and using geometry we can understand the space we inhabit, (however only slightly more than without it.) No amount of research, no amount of scientific study and no math equation, no matter how detailed and long, can explain the beauty of a sunset with a person you love, that last sliver of light, just as it passes beyond the horizon, like a glimmer of hope passing not away, but settling in for a brief interlude, soon to rise again. Hope is always there in the waiting, and the Phoenix will rise from the ashes of what we call civilization. One way, or another. Because it has to, it just has to.
We are significant through our very insignificance- this is the very free will that allows us to move through space and time with our own intention. What do we make of it? That is for you to decide.
-Carpo
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