Blundering Blindly
posted by Moontrap | May 11, 2009
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IcerocketIt has always been tempting for thinkers and historical observationalists to overlay a narrative onto to what they have known of the world; humans have a long and colourful history in the denial of contingency, in the art of myth, and of fevered teleological dreams. There is nothing in essence wrong with such a play so long as a humble agnosticism is maintained, and the myth building doesn’t spill into hubris. More promising has been the increasing acknowledgement and embracement of the value of uncertainty and the denial of universal absolutism.
Having struggled through the false-oppositional maze of recent human mental history, with all of its ontological gates and stiles, blacks and whites, and thrashed in the relativity of the post-modern void, we seem to be approaching a kind of tipping point, a seeming critical-mass of a particular awareness that is less anxious of the Vast. This awareness is one that is enabled to taste the universe anew, with a palate cleansed of outmoded notions, disabling dogmas, and the disastrous social ideologies that have been substantiated by the modern myth of progress.
The attempt to overlay new social systems onto ‘civilisation’ has always typically either been sinister or ridiculous; however, I certainly don't think we have seen the last of such attempts or of their avatars. Unfortunately narcissism, psychopathology and hypocrisy are the inevitable inhabiters of all such projects of forced social evolution. Social ideals and ideas are forged in a dangerous flame and their theoreticians are often flippant, enveloped as they are in their own personal fantasies, little imagining that their Utopia's might actually come to pass or come to literally smoulder in the recklessness of their derivative simplicity.
Personally it seems to me that in these troubled and troubling times, huge opportunities exist for fringe and novel thinkers, there exists a potential to embolden valuable and neglected memes, of ancient cultural practices and of futurist technologies; we cannot afford to limit ourselves. Not only can we feedback onto our environment, but we have the opportunity to do so consciously and with intent and a now relatively sophisticated historical cognisance.
Nevertheless I believe a time of great hardship and psychological dislocation is upon us, one that will test and terrify us all. In this time we will have to be very vigilant of ideologues and messiahs; there are many dysempaths roaming the hinterlands of our ‘civilisation’, some shunned and chained, others sadly we have elevated (or neglectfully allowed to rise) to the highest echelons of our societies, where they wreck and ruin. If we value our self-respect and our inchoate intellectual privileges, we cannot afford to keep blundering blindly into the future, whilst neglecting the lessons of the past.
Comments
There are evil individuals,
— May 11, 2009
There are evil individuals, above government, above laws. They control the means to our survival. They own the corporations that control food production, energy, transit, pharmacuticals. They and their successive generations live off infinite trust. Some are royalty. Most are bankers. All of them are billionaires at least. What do you do with this kind of existence? When money is no object, life is a game. World bankers have controlled the course of history for the previous century. They funded people like Hitler, Stalin. We are talking about individuals who care nothing for us(they call us "feeders"). Looking at the current major world crises, overpopulation, and lack of resources--how would you, if you were a 'god' amongst insects, deal with these two issues?
Its easy if you own it all. And if you don't really work, then you have all the time in the world to formulate an approachable "believable" plan. I'd start with getting rid of most humans. This would free up the already limited resources. Then me and my cronies can rebuild (the world we already "technically" own) however we like.
Us feeders don't really know what will happen next. Looking at history, it'd say the future is going to be bloody, and upsetting. Believe me, I'd love some miraculous event to change it all, and make everything better for everyone (I hope for it)--the reality is that prosperity is limited. As a father, I am afraid for my children's future. Planting a garden this year. Talking more with the neighbors...us feeders need to learn how to take care of our village-- outside the establishment. Re-awaken our abilities to farm and hunt and build, learn how to share with each other. This is OUR world. Not some fucking bankers' chess board.
1st of all
— May 11, 2009
What is in that picture?
2nd of all, both of you have fascinatingly accurate points of view. I wonder if either one of you have read Atlas Shrugged? Your comment, Ellis, is reminiscent of the pages I am reading in it now.
It has me thinking about competition over resources....the endless cycle of Animal Farm, monarchy, and corporatism that rebuilds itself every time the current structure gets knocked down. There is no way out of this cycle applying our current consumption paradigms.
Sometimes I feel its pull manifesting inside myself, the want of something I do not need. The other day, I caught my psyche thinking, "When I get a new job, I'll go to the spa (wtf, do I work for AIG?)". Not planning for the future, so my current state of up-shit-creek any day now doesn't repeat itself when things get tough again, but fantasizing about what to do with wealth. It is strangely not a conscious thought, the way it slipped into my mind like a snake's hiss. The "me" that I really am quickly dismissed this notion, but I noted its arrival nonetheless. It's hard to change. We have to mentally and physically set reminders for ourselves while there is still time.
Self-sustenance is the only answer, Ellis, I think you're right. (Photosynthesis would be a better one.) So the big question is here, what do we do with people who refuse to do for themselves, and prefer to steal from you? This is a cycle which perpetuates as well. Since self-sustenance involves a great deal of personal labor, we can't expect that everyone to be able or willing to participate (thus our current societal paradigms). I suppose that those of us who are able to be self-sustaining can take pressure off of that system? And if we force the very rich to pay for the very poor, where do we draw the line at who gets a crack at that money?
My point is that it's like the chicken and the egg. You can be self-sustaining all you want (and I intend to be) but it doesn't solve the problem of the top and the bottom. Why right now someone out there is out-growing their neighbor's organic carrot patch, and is the talk of carrot town. It's just a matter of time before they switch to all carrots and start their carrot monopoly.
We're probably going to all have to die to transcend this cycle.
Oh shit did I just say that? I don't mean it. There's got to be a better way. At least we have to keep trying, and your post Moontrap helps me realize that changing our current understanding little by little as things prove to be useful is the only means by which we will arrive intact.
Sorry to ramble. Great thoughts so far guys!
"With great power comes great responsibility." - Stan Lee (via Peter Parker)
Them
— May 19, 2009
Groups can only be submissive or passive to horror, if they all assent, complicitly. It is of extreme interest to explore and elucidate the manner in which Homo Sapiens manifests innate hierarchies, with their systems of control and diplomacy, as a spontaneous emergence. Importantly, it has been observed in other animal populations that hierarchies are also extant, and when a member of the hierarchy is removed, the system does not collapse, but reconfigures into the exact same hierarchical system.
Most tacitly defer to the relative authority, to a leader, even the most ‘rebellious’ will typically seek out a new figurehead unless they are suitably confident and dominant to become one themselves, hence why so many gurus, prophets and political luminaries are able to succeed; they take the need for authority and capitalise on it, not necessarily intentionally. These dominance battles might impose a new glossy sloganeered format, but one that only re-brands the same innate system, only in an apparently different form; hence the common platitudinous statements about revolutions never succeeding. If we are able to recognise this pattern and maintain vigilance, we can head off the most extreme manifestations of it; the likes of totalitarianism etc. but deconstructing the hierarchy will not be so simple, potentially the best we can do is to decentralise it. This is certainly something to ponder.
I was thunk of psychopath and evil; I try to avoid such words because of the historical and cultural connotations. In fact, the proposition of such a delineated form, to my mind, is only a simplistic, partial observation. Like all such biological contingencies, it is likely part of a more complex spectrum and not so simply defined. There are many folk wandering this planet’s surface and I know from experience and attention that such Amygdalic dysempathy exists, and of its ‘actors’. Nevertheless, I also recognise that this aspect of mankind is thankfully relatively uncommon.
No-one really knows the statistics, but they lurk among us, some thankfully ‘socially’ contained, passive, but there are others who are obvious and rapacious. I don’t think I have met too many of these functional dysempaths but I think I have witnessed the essence of their behaviour, one which has left a musty miasma that haunts the halls of history. We find them difficult to recognise, which is bad enough, but the biggest danger comes when they recognise themselves and each other; dysempath cabals. Myths of vampires, witches and evil are ubiquitous and deep seated, as is the conspiratorial sense of aloof secret orders, their origin is not hard to recognise in such personalities.
There are many ways that a ‘soul’ can be broken, life is cruel and brutal sometimes, but as long as we continue to under-acknowledge such individuals and the consequence of their play in our societies, their pathology maintains; and we will all continue to be dragged towards their decay as a consequence. The fact that this inevitable ‘not meme’ has sustained, unwittingly maintained (social Darwin theories) and sometimes naively encouraged in our world, means that the collective reasoning of man has been undermined by its own self-justification.
As such, vicious bloody things happen under our noses and we become desensitised, habituated, nigh on oblivious, normality continually redefined to include the horror as normal. To be well adapted to this culture is to be complicit to its darkest aspects and part of that collective pathology; we have all felt that tug of a vicious selfish will. Many either try to ignore it by whatever means, e.g. drugs, gardening, tennis etc. some dive-in, nihilistically, knife in teeth, trying to avoid being otherwise sick, and similarly curious others, stand watching, struggling to find ways to discourage themselves from attempting to destroy it.
Moonperson and his train of something
— May 18, 2009
Moontrap has something going on, which brings some old soul song to mind.
That aside, his tract on the fallibility of this fragile human lot contains much to be regarded with open eyes. It would be ludicrously arrogant to assume that somehow we have, to date, 'mastered' the world, its resources, its depths or its magic. Be wise, be open and always ask the difficult questions. I tell myself these things each day and it is never easy but it appears (to me) that life improves on every asking. So endeth the pouring. Be ever aware of the power of fnord, folk.
Nothing is certain
I wish it were..
— May 26, 2009
...unfortunately it is more like the drunken stagger of an automaton.
Half drunk, half sober
— May 31, 2009
I am such myself, I should surely have wished to share the company of this man. We treat such folks unkindly, more now than ever before, but their strength and dignity maintains nevertheless. However, I used drunken as a flourished modifier of stagger, no judgement, my focus was intended at automaton.
This is a very interesting
— Jul 22, 2009
This is a very interesting blog, and the comments are all interesting as well.
It's really not that uncommon that we deem those who go on spiritual pursuits as crazy. The first historical example of that I can give goes back to when Christians in Egypt (after Greek assimilation) fled to Ethiopia to become monks -- it was the best way of saying 'eff you' to the Romans who were infiltrating Egypt. Everybody thought they were crazy too -- but have you seen the Christian monuments that were eventually built in Ethiopia? They're grand and... well monumental, for lack of a better word.
I suppose my point there is that when you're alive, if you go against the grain, you will generally be considered nutty -- it's when you die, when people are given the time to reflect, that people accept you and respect your life's work.
For any of you who are interested, there's a book called My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn which is also relevant to the discussion here. I highly recommend it to everyone interested in... well, humanity's survival.
This goes back to what I was getting at in that other blog, Moontrap... about systems being defective. This principle came from the book I mentioned above, but I believe it -- the systems we've created to live by are NOT beneficial to all of humanity, but they are not completely defective. We know that because a select few get to sit at the top of the 'power ladder' and watch the rest of us panic.
I think that was a great example, comparing animal behavior to human behavior, how we socially organize. My understanding is in the case of humans, the first people deemed worthy of running the show were the same people who would claim a special closeness to God (or Gods). This goes back to justification to rule. Since the people accepted this claim, powers were given accordingly.
The chicken or the egg? Did someone take the power first, or did we GIVE the power first?
Another idea presented in My Ishmael that I believe is the beginning of the system (which only benefits a few, and takes from most) goes back to when we started being able to farm and domesticate animals. Let's say there was some established sense of hierarchy by that time -- however, not nearly as convoluted and complicated as the one we have today -- and a certain small group proposed the idea that we cultivate only our favorite foods... that we put food under lock and key. The central negatives within the group wanted to know how that would be possible -- to impose a standard of living on Others -- and it was simple. You work, or you starve. You have to make your own way if you want to live with us. How can we enforce that? We hire guards to watch the harvested food, we regulate how much people work, we regulate how much people eat. Life became what it is now from that point forward.
The point is we have an inherent right to food, to survival, and that right was taken from us a looooong time ago.
You said something about revolutions that keep coming and never happening. It's true, and I have to say, revolution is the first word I hear people cry in reaction to the system, and revolution is NOT the answer in my eyes -- revolutions end in bloodshed. Do we want to keep making the same violent mistakes? I don't.
Now evolution? Yes, I believe the changes that are occurring, the changes that have stemmed from waaaay back in our early stages of humanity, will facilitate an adaptation in humanity. Whether that change will be physical or mental or spiritual, or a combination, I have no idea. But huge shifts bring about huge changes in lifeforms, and adaptation is going to be absolutely necessary for survival. However, I admit we can't just adapt at will. It's a collective thing, and it sparks on the collective level.
Social Darwinism is something hidden within this discussion here. The idea that 'survival of the fittest' can be applied to humans in the sense that if you don't pull your own weight, you're simply not 'fit' to survive. It's got justification written all over it -- justification for the putting down of Others to save the sorry Self.
All I can say is we have to remember there IS comfort in knowing a lot of us see the pattern. That gives me hope that we will adapt accordingly. I am for sure going to reply to the blog again, thanks for making us all think critically!
