"Life's hard. It's even harder when you're stupid." - John Wayne
“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.” - Chuck Palahniuk
[Note: This was written a year and a half ago. Never published, until now. I've edited it a bit. And I shudder to think that things have gotten worse since then and my disappointment today that I'm not in an apocalyptic wasteland is palpable. Note, my next blog post will not be about Abortion. It'll be about Led Zeppelin I think. Now see below where I ramble on.]
Well, got another blog behind my heels a coupla days ago and the missus is out doing distaff things with other wimmin so I've got the bunker to myself right now so I might as well do a blog. This here offering will hope to deal with the reality as to why the world seems to be such a screwed up place, why, as Pogo the Possum observed, we have met the enemy and he is us. And why, it would be just what we deserve to have the earth wiped clean of our kind and let the cock-a-roaches run the place for a few millennia for a change.
As I go from day to day I am continually struck at how people seem to be stupid, ridiculous, generators of stress and generally a pain in my tater hole. Think about your job...you could probably make a list of about 100 things that are wrong and get in the way of actually doing the job. Think about how the government is run, especially at the federal level. Think about your own life and all the might-have-beens and such of it. Why is it that Life is Hard, and why are we are the ones that are making it that way?
Last blog I offered that we already had this Life Thing figgered out at least 2000 years ago, and really much earlier than that and we didn't have so much debate and confusion about some of the basic realities of life like we seem to today. I remember reading Herodotus and recalling where he would talk about other cultures than his own and he didn't think those cultures were invalid or that their gods were all false, etc. When he described the Egyptian gods, he could see their parallels in the Greek gods, but didn't think he needed to send missionaries to Egypt to convert the heathen. No, their culture was their own, Egypt and Greece were playing the same tune, just with different instruments. Now the ancient world wasn't the 24/7 picnic I might have been making it out to be...but what we do know is before the rise of the world-eating Xian Church, many cultures throughout the world had their own sophisticated level of civilization and they lived their life more directly than we do today and were basically content in that life, because they were more balanced. Mainly because they were closer to nature, closer to the real experience of living, not distanced from the natural world as we are today.
Today most of us can shower each day, or as often as you want, and we have deodorant and other things that mask how we actually are supposed to smell. We have ways of cutting our hair and adorning ourselves in ways that make us look less like biological things than storefront window mannequins come to life. Consider Kim Kardasian...okay stop considering her right now. But isn't that sort of person as far removed from how a human is actually supposed to look as a plush toy bear from the genuine article? All these attempts in this modern age to change what we really are to some sort of ideal of what we'd like to think we are demonstrates that we have separated ourselves from what being human really is to some sort of fantasy about what we'd like it to be.
Then when you couple the fact that we ride in autos with air-conditioning and heating and live in homes with the same and artificial lighting, etc. etc. etc. it is no wonder that in the Western World, the Human Experience is a mystery open to debate about very fundamental things. We make simple problems complex and try to make complex problems simple while we give grants to people so they can study whether or not eating bacon is good for you or not. Look, I don't need someone to tell me that bacon has limited nutritional value. We already know that. Let's move on and deal with what we need to deal with and experience life directly. Which is why when I discuss Abortion, (next time), I'll be looking at it bald-faced, and will be peeling away the layers of obfuscation about such an issue. We really do know what is right and wrong...it is just that for various reasons, we are no longer able to distinguish between the two.
When the Xian Church rose to power as something only Doctor Doom could be proud of, it suppressed the knowledge of the ancients and only in the last few decades have really been able to change our minds about our more ancient ancestors and realize they had a lot on the ball and in some ways were smarter than us. You see, we humans have basically been the way we are now, physically, including brain composition and mass, for the last 100,000 years. The Ancients were also Us, and had all the intellect and reasoning power that we have today. Then we had the Dark Age and it wasn't until the Renaissance that the world discovered that the pre-Xian ancients weren't just a bunch of knuckle-draggers that ate dirt and wore sheets instead of pants but that there was a wealth of knowledge that we could still glean from them. The Library of Alexandria already contained a papyrus scroll Wikipedia database from what was already known about the world.
So why is it that we humans seem to have purposely hamstrung ourselves many centuries ago instead of innovating, developing, inventing and generally evolving...and why don't I have the jet back-pack and the sidearm laser pistol that the comic books promised? Why has America especially wasted its wealth on a military empire it doesn't, never did need; instead of using its resources to help humanity rather than putting a jackbooted heel on its neck?
I ended last blog with observing that Bill Cosby pointed out that parents just want peace and quiet...and they aren't that interested in justice. And that an apocalypse would be the punishment that our "parents" would dish out because we weren't behaving ourselves and generally getting soap in each others eyes and blinding each other for liiiiiiiife.
However, what if the opposite is true? I touched on this in a prior blog and it is part of my Theory of Woohoo that the reason for the Big Bang and all the discord that is upon the planet is basically...*G*O*D* gets bored. I mean if you were even a god, and had been around for many millennia and for whom time and space didn't have the same meaning as they do for us, wouldn't you get bored and restless? If we agree that consciousness/spirit is an energy field, and that energy cannot be created and destroyed then before the Big Bang, the potential for all consciousness and matter were both contained in that impossibly small/impossibly dense point. With just that point existing, in a vacuum, there would be no thoughts, because there is no frame of reference. In order to have some fun, *G*O*D* needed to open the front door and have something waiting on the other side to interact with. That other side is of course what we have now...consciousness and matter spread throughout the cosmos. Since we, as smaller expressions of consciousness, are cells or atoms of *G*O*D*, we would like an exciting life, too. Which is why we seem to be dead-set on complicating life and making it difficult. Because it's part of the plan.
Now of course you'd say...if we are hard-wired to wrassle, then why would we be "punished" by an apocalypse? We'd be getting into free-will here, which I dismiss...the perception of free-will is great, but just an observation of life will demonstrate that we are playing our part in the drama, not that we are all making it up as we go along. The whole free-will argument dismisses religions that say that your god will punish you if you don't do what he says, while also saying that this god is in complete control. I speak of course about religions like Xianity.
Let's go ahead and deal with this: If you have no choice but to sin, then you can't be expected to be punished for that sin. That makes zero sense and faith has nothing to do with splainin' that theology. If I had no choice but to sin, then why would I have to face everlasting punishment? Also, if your god is considered a god of love, then that god placing conditions under which he can demonstrate that love to you also dismisses him as being a loving god...because conditional love isn't love. Love is something you give freely, not something given in exchange for a favor or a task. "Hi, I want you to marry me, but you've got to also love my brother/son/cats/tv-shows/etc." Doesn't quite work, does it?
Of course the answer to this puzzle is obvious...there is no such thing a sin. What is and isn't a "sin" is completely arbitrary and is a cultural identifier, not a universal truth. Take adultery/fornication for just one example. Many would say this is a sin, but for some cultures, it is essential. For example in some Inuit cultures there is the practice of "Putting out the lamps." This is when various Inuit tribes/communities come together from different areas, people of both sexes "of the age" go into a tent, hut, etc. and the lights are turned off and they basically have an orgy. They don't know really who they are rubbing (noses) with. The point of this of course is to spread the genetic material around instead of having in-breeding within only one family group. (The Uhmurkan South is agin forn'cation but not agin marryin' you uns cuzin, which is why we've got people walking around down here that look like something Lovecraft would be afraid of. I went into a KFC restaurant in (city name deleted) in Tennessee and I thought I was in Innsmouth. The old lady walking widdershins over and over again inside the restaurant while muttering "ia, ia, ia" completed the effect.) Since no one knew who impregnated who after that Long Inuit Night, the different tribes can go their separate ways, raising new children within the group and there aren't any hard feelings. Because, unlike our know-it-all culture...the community is engaged in the raising of a child, doesn't matter who da was.
I can give you many other examples of "sins" that aren't even seen as taboo in other cultures. And of course someone who is against Abortion may have no problem denying free health care to a child outside of the womb...or sending their own child to fight in another country for no good reason to either kill someone else or be killed. So killing = "sin?" Nope, just depends on your POV.
But back to the whole "free-will" issue. If we are part of a system in which basically we amuse ourselves by acting like the Six Billion Stooges all the time because we like drama instead of napping under shade trees...then why would we deserve an apocalypse? Well, we wouldn't deserve it naturally, it would be just something that would occur when we were ready to move on to the next phase.
One of the reasons the modern world is so screwed up about what the human experience is, when we shouldn't have any questions at this time of day is because, as I mentioned last time, modern technology's purpose is basically to allow the sharing of information and ideas, worldwide, via physical and electronic communication. We have, being materially over-competent and spiritually in-competent, allowed this modern technology to confuse and distract us from living the human experience. Stuff is sexier than Spirit, and appeals to us in an immediate way...however these enjoyments of the senses, of physical gratification, are fleeting and unsatisfying. And of course they are only arbitrary perceptions based on how our senses operate anyway, they aren't real. What is real is what goes on in our minds. But when our minds can't be still, are obsessed with things, stuff, our physical bodies and other mundane things, we find we become more stupid and ignorant. Because we aren't dealing with what is real, we are dealing only with props and distractions. Do you wonder why, when we are in an era in which our technology appears to have peaked, when we probably won't get to Mars in the next century, in which we just keep improving cellphones instead of really developing new technologies, when we already had a perfectly good lily and we keep painting layer upon layer of gold paint on it that drug use is rampant? Technology wasn't created to make us smarter, or help us where we needed help...it's purpose was to try to bring us together, or at least not leave us with any excuse. It is within ourselves, right now, to fix everything that is wrong. But we won't/can't.
So, sigh...we still go "ooh shiny" and forget the meaning of life or what the human experience is supposed to be. So what is the human experience? Well, being human. Just the act of being. A direct interaction with reality...how we are to live based on what we are and what nature is. Easy peasy. Basically the key to this is realizing that you are not as important as They. That your grudges, your ideologies, your POV, your hang-ups, your race memories, your record collection, these millstones are not as important as connecting with other humans and together enjoying life.
I'm reading the Bhagavad Gita currently and just today a passage stated that all the people on the planet right now are the failures. That the good people have moved on to Nirvana or wherever. That the people here are the ones who are needing help extracting their head from the rectal area. That we are basically a reform school. And that is one of the reasons of course the the world is such a mess...only the losers are still here. This the idea of the Earth as a nursery, where we kids learn our ABCs and are toilet trained and so forth. Scientists are more and more leaning to the idea that life didn't spring alla sudden from a primordial soup, but that the earth was seeded with life that could have arrived via comets, asteroids and other expressions of cosmic litter. Which would of course mean that life originated out there, and that of course that life would be exponentially more sophisticated than our own. And then of course gods, Keebler Elves, UFOs, whatever name makes you comfortable for the other expressions of consciousness out there...these are our nannies checking up on us to see how we're doing. But instead of learning our ABCs, we're just dirtying our diapers.
Why do we seem to not care about the earth? Why do we use up its resources without regard for the environment? Why is that Truth...Inconvenient? Because maybe we're the caterpillar that is just eating for the sake of eating and we can destroy the leaf because we know we'll soon be able to fly. We have the information now to better ourselves, we have all the faculties of reason at our disposal. But if we won't help ourselves, then someone else needs to come along and require us to change, don't they? Japan created the Godzilla movie in which Tokyo is destroyed, because, deep down, they felt like they had it coming. What monster will the US create...are zombies our punishment, in which the un-thinking, ravenous hordes will teach us a lesson? Have we met the Zombies and are they Us?
While there is chaos and order in balance, life itself is fundamentally good, because it is life. When one can stop placing his own interests above another's, then we can be free. But the focus on "fruitive results" keeps us chained to the ground, because these are in our face, more readily available for sense gratification. I believe that we can have technology and a healthy mental life. But we won't really have that until we don't care about the physical aspects of life. When we have mental comfort, physical satisfaction will be less important. And this is what I think the ancients understood. They didn't wonder about life or try to develop narrow ideologies about it and they didn't needlessly complicate it the way we do today. We are minds, not bodies, bodies are just things, but our minds are more than things...they're the only thing. And a thing is a terrible thing to waste.
Selah
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