There seems to have been a fair amount of confusion about my last post. I was trying to describe a particular way that I've been feeling lately, and maybe I assumed on behalf of the reader a little too much familiarity with my own thought processes, or even deliberately got a little obscure to amuse myself. I think I do that sometimes. I am convinced that if I could have just posted that John Lennon song like I wanted to, all miscommunication would have been avoided, music being the universal language and all. Anyway, I don't think I did a very good job of conveying what I was trying to convey, and then I kind of got drawn into an argument about it, which is pretty crazy when you think about it, since arguing about the way you feel is like trying to disprove a headcold. And now I feel like maybe I should just let it be and move on. But instead, I'm going to try to simplify and clarify the description of my personal and moral mood, at the risk of boring/annoying/confusing everyone further. Maybe that makes me an indulgent, egomaniacal jerk. But then again, this is my public diary, and what the hell else am I going to write about? If you don't like it you can go and read someone else's blog, or better yet a good book. I recommend
The Life of Pi, which Johanna gave me for my birthday and into which I'm just starting to delve at bedtime with Alison.
So, here's all I was trying to say: I try each day to make my life one of joy, wisdom, compassion, and, above all, awareness. And by "awareness" I mean a pre-linguistic, pre-cognitive, consciousness of what's actually going on at any given moment, before it gets bent into some already recognized shape by thought and language. I believe that this trying is the best kind of life I can make, not only for myself, but for the world around me, especially as such awareness actually breaks down the mental distinctions between myself and the world around me. That's what's with all the yoga and meditation. Sometimes I am better at it than other times. Lately I've been feeling like it's been going kind of all right.
But then when I look at the state of the world, I become disappointed and frustrated that there doesn't seem to be enough like-minded effort going on elsewhere. Most of the stuff that happens on a large scale seems to be caused by people either a) being overly concerned with maintaining the status quo or b) desperately avoiding facing the reality of their own and other people's lives. And b) is probably just a consequence of a), since confronting an unpleasant status quo would mean doing something to change it. But that's fine. I can deal with that. It's a pitiable state of affairs, but it's probably always been like that, and I certainly don't blame anyone personally. After all, it's very easy, and often even advantageous, from an evolutionary standpoint, to filter out what we don't want to see. And it only becomes easier the more technology and entertainment we happily heap onto ourselves. I'm as guilty of it as anyone.
However, we're now reaching this state where the physical world itself is showing the effects of all our avoidance and self-distraction, and these effects may not be reversible. The two most obvious examples: i) Average global temperatures have as a direct result of human culture risen faster than anyone thought they would, and are causing much faster, much more permanent damage than anyone thought they would. ii) The very finite and irreplaceable amount of fossil fuels left in the earth is rapidly approaching zero and almost no headway has been made on what we will do when they're gone. Surprisingly, we're not even building enough nuclear power plants to take on the extra load, let alone getting cost-efficient "clean" energy sources up and running.
It seems that things are probably going to get very, very bad for the human race in just a couple of generations, and we may all in fact be completely obliterated in a few generations after that. If we're going to do anything about it, it has to be done fast, assuming it's not already too late. I.e., the status quo is glaringly NOT WORKING, and will in fact change itself for the worse, no matter how much we try to maintain it. But we're not, as a culture, very good at facing up to problems that are not affecting us directly at the moment, or at changing our collective mind about things quickly. In fact, we've set up systems with the express purpose of PREVENTING ourselves from changing our collective mind quickly. This is the feeling of frustration and disappointment I've lately been trying to overcome.
I wondered "aloud" (atype?) in my last post, half in jest, whether the best way to overcome these feelings wasn't to just think of the matter objectively, and see our species as merely one unimportant, dead-end phase in the long history of the universe. So there'll be no more humans. Big deal. Might as well have a good time while we're still around. Maybe our downfall will even prove (to whom?) a complicated mathematical theorem that I barely understand myself and almost surely should not have brought up in a bit of light writing for the general public. That was the kind of stance I was starting to feel like I should take toward the whole predicament. But I think that this kind of nihilistic attitude is exactly the same as the cultural problem that's giving me a hard time. Turning away from possible solutions and thinking only of myself is not going to help anything, and is in fact going to add to the ugly mess. Besides, I really like us humans, warts and all, and I can't pretend I wouldn't be sad to see us eliminated. We have such great potential. Sure, we blow it a lot of the time, but that's part of what makes us so gosh-darn lovable.
Maybe we won't be able to get out of this one. I really don't know. But if there's any hope for us, it's going to consist in compassionate, non-judgmental awareness of ourselves and each other, so that's what I'm going to keep trying to develop in myself and put out there. Even if it's a completely futile endeavour, at least it makes me generally happy. And if the fact that most people are not trying to develop such awareness in themselves sometimes makes me less happy, I can feel sadness and sympathy that there are unfulfilling lives being lived, rather than anger that I can't do more about it.
And now, since Castpost seems to be gone for good and I still haven't found any other way to post sound files (without paying for a subscription), I recommend you track down and listen to Tomita's 1974 electronic version of Claude Debussy's "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair". Such beauty, ingenuity, rapture, and existential longing... It makes me feel completely alone and completely connected at the same time, like when you lie on a beach at night and look up at the stars. And it'll do the same for YOU.
- Andrew
People are always saying this. You can see how they get the two mixed up. Both time and money are abstract figments of the human imagination which can seem terribly real due to the importance we place on them. They each have a track devoted to them on Pink Floyd's hugely popular album Dark Side of the Moon, for instance. They both travel in one inexorable direction, from possibility into memory.
I can't be both here and not here at the same time, but give me two different times and it's the easiest trick in the world. Similarly, the only way two people can occupy the exact same place (in this dimension) is if we are checking at different moments in time. And how can that old man slumped on the park bench be the same person as that little boy playing stickball in the street with his friends? Because we have agreed to identify objects with each other which share a contiguous history through time. It is a system for distinguishing objects and events one from the other.
Money, conversely, is a system designed to equate different objects and events with each other. It allows us to evaluate everything in the world relative to everything else, based on human desire. One apple is equal to two-thirds of an orange, or three minutes of work emptying wastebaskets in an office building, or one forty-fifth of a Fifty Cent compact disc, or one four-hundred-and-fifty-millionth of Fifty Cent, or one three-billionth of Oprah.
The next time you find yourself irrationally anxious about one or another of life's great impossibilities, ask yourself a couple of questions: Do I want something I can't have? Then it's money you're after. Or am I afraid of something I can't avoid? Time is your guy. Let's try to keep the two abstractions straight, despite what the bankers would like us to think.
