Things happen; that's one of the hallmarks of humanity. We respond to what happens, whether it is caused directly or indirectly by people or caused by forces of nature.
I am constrained to act by my own intellect and the according to chemical actions within my head and body. Nevertheless, I act on and am acted upon by my surroundings. Sometimes I feel the need to do something to affect my environment. At other times, I feel motivated to simply observe and take in stimuli and at those times, I usually prefer to take in the beauty and sensations of natural environs.
I derive hope and joy from moving as quietly within nature as I can, even though I feel an overwhelming need to effect change and remold the human world, in social, economic and spiritual ways. Things aren't going very well in human society, according to my observations.
We are, in my observation, a pathetic and sad bunch of morons moving through a maze of artificially variably scheduled and dosed negative and positive stimuli. We are, for the most part, tools of media prompting and bureaucratically administered social engineering.
Depression is medicated. Mental and physical health is modeled by Hollywood movies. Food is micromanaged in order to exact an optimum bottom line and maximum rhythms of consumption . Money is held at an arm's length (at least) from people who seek morality and pursue spiritual ethos.
Still, nature and human nature aren't that far apart. Nature's method is toward a balance between forces, between energy and entropy. Balance between heat and cold, predator and prey, light and darkness. Humanity, though, able to think egotistically and in many ways, beyond the light of today and the darkness of tonight, tips balance in favor of those who can benefit from imbalance.
We unconsciously think that we can outweigh, outbalance and out fight nature.
The same nature that supports our existence when work with it can swing toward night and cold with relentless frequency and pitiless momentum when pushed beyond its limits.
I'm not talking specifically about global warming or nuclear winter, nor ozone holes or species depletion. While those are ghosts of a Christmas future that might come to haunt us with more than just jangling chains and phantasmal warnings, what I refer to is more insidious and like an infecting microbe.
The need for sunlight and clean water are basic to the human soul and heart. While both can be simulated by technology, there is something missing from industrial simulacra. That something can be found at a place less deep, mysterious or ethereal than spherical music or spiritual essence- the difference is in rationale for and consequence of
technology and production.
Why do we need to manufacture clean water by industrial means? Our thoughtless pollution of primordial sources. Why must we be reminded of the importance of the energy chain of the sun and earth or the need to reduce pollution of the air by particulates in order to see our star's light? Really, the reasons are found in the same root; pollution and neglect of resources in a race to placate the impoverished souls of people who have forgotten the fount from whence comes their nourishment: the earth and those who inhabit it.
We don't only owe our lives to those who support our existence right now, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to our ancestors. They fought tooth and nail to bring us to where we are now. They had things hard. Survival without knowledge of nature's inner workings is next to impossible, and they had to come by their relationship with each other and the earth through trial and error, over many thousands of generations.
We have a great inherited and researched knowledge of the ways that nature's systems work. We see further into the stars, oceans and soil than any generation that we have memory of. Nevertheless, our survival is as precarious as any generation previous. That is irony.
Why can't we see the lies and deceits that we perpetuate in spite of technological advances? Why must we exist on the edge of oblivion on so many fronts of society? Why are there yet so many cold, hungry, sad, and/or lonely?
When will we seek balance as diligently as we seek power? If power hasn't brought balance and harmony, perhaps if we more collectively seek balance, we might find that which we really need.
I'm not really sure anymore what it is we collectively seek, or if 'collective' is a word that has any place in society, but I seek that which I know brings happiness at the heart.
Love. Agape. Harmony.
The great mystery.
What will happen next? What is happening in the grand scheme, both over our heads and under our feet? I wonder how we will respond.
