If humanity is to turn away from its murderous, omnicidal, ecocidal, oppressive and exploitative trajectory, it will necessarily involve a sharp, drastic deviation from all its previous patterning.
You would think that this would go without saying; obviously a drastic change in behavior will look drastically different from the behavior which preceded it. This is self-evident. Yet when you look at the arguments that people are making today, there’s almost universally a built-in assumption that humankind’s salvation will in some way involve a continuation of its previous patterning.
Most people with an ear to the ground understand to some extent that the collective behavior of our species is unsustainable. Where they differ in opinion is on what should be done to address this problem. Where they unify in opinion is on the assumption that the solution will look like their own personal ideology winning out over all the others. Capitalists believe that capitalism will provide technological solutions to the problems that capitalism has created, and that this will happen more quickly and efficiently if the fetters on capitalism are removed. Socialists believe that socialism will solve the problems that socialism has been powerless to provide this entire time, if only this consistent pattern of socialism’s inability to obtain dominance is magically deviated from somehow. And so on.
But if you really think honestly about it, how can that possibly be? How can any preexisting ideological pattern possibly create a deviation in patterning? Any ideology you are bringing to the table will almost certainly be one which has been a part of humanity’s collective patterning for generations, and probably for centuries. How can an ideology which has been promoted in more or less the same patterns for generation possibly lead to a pattern deviation?
Believing you can create a sharp change in direction by shoving in a direction people have already been shoving for generations is like believing you can dry yourself off using water. The old patterns cannot create new patterning any more than water can create the state of dryness. It is against their inherent nature.
Because of our limited lifespans and our cognitive inability to perceive everything at once, it’s difficult to see the big picture of humanity’s plight as a whole. It’s difficult to give due significance to the fact that the ideological tug-of-war game which seems to be presenting in one particular election in one particular location we’re particularly passionate about has actually been going on all over the world since long before we were born, and all that it has gained us is the situation in which we now find ourselves. The shoving of your one preferred ideology is inseparable from the whole of our total collective patterning, and it always has been.
What this means is that if there is to be any deviation from our species’ self-destructive trajectory, the cause of that deviation will come completely out of left field. No one will expect it, because it won’t come from a direction that we have been conditioned through our experience to look. Our unpatterning will necessarily come from a completely un-patterned direction. A collective movement in an unprecedented direction will necessarily have an unprecedented antecedent.
So in what way is what I’m saying useful to you? If the only hope for humanity lies in the arrival of conditions you can’t possibly predict, then it makes no difference what you think or do because those conditions will either arrive or not regardless of your conditioned patterning, right?
Well, yes and no. Obviously there’s nothing you can do to create the conditions of a change agent you can’t possibly anticipate with your learned mental patternings. So in that sense you may as well keep fighting the bastards in whatever way seems best to you in order to keep them at bay for the time being (and also because fuck them). But one thing you can do in order to help grease the wheels of drastic change is to prepare yourself and the world for a leap into the unknown.
Because that’s necessarily what a drastic pattern deviation will look like: a leap into the unknown. The precipice of the changes we all intuitively sense are on our horizon is the precipice between the known patterns and the unknowable unpatterning. The annihilation that many are predicting will look like literal human extinction may well end up actually presenting as the annihilation of our conditioned patterning. Which is, experientially, a kind of death.
So what you can do on a personal level is let go of your attachment to the known. Sell off all stocks you’ve invested in your conditioned mental patterning and begin doing the hard inner work necessary to embrace the unknown and unknowable. Begin surprising yourself, and opening doors to allow life to surprise you. Take chances on new and unpredictable situations instead of taking refuge in the known and the familiar. Give less and less interest and attention to your conditioned, looping mental narratives and more and more to the uncontrollable present moment in which literally anything can be born.
You can carry this embrace of the unknowable out into the collective level by creating and expressing from it. Make art which comes from an unpatterned direction. Do things which make people question how reliable their patterned expectations are. It may sound cliche, but there is immense wisdom hidden in the saying “practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty”.
Making this your way of life can help create little gaps in our patterning, so that if and when the change agent for humanity’s evolutionary transcendence of its self-destructive patterns arrives, you and those who’ve encountered your unpatterning dance in the world will be better able to improvise along with it, without fear or inertia.
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55 responses to “Humanity’s Salvation Will Necessarily Look Like A Leap Into The Unknown”
Your concern is “…our species’ self-destructive trajectory…” I assume the devastation and impoverishment of many societies as written by William Blum, Michel Chossudovsky, and Michael Hudson, among other writers add specifics to your consternation. John Perkins, as determined from his involvement, has identified Wall Street’s use of the CIA, the US military, the IMF, and the World Bank as some of the instruments utilized to install puppet tyrants so exploitation of dominated societies become economically rewarding for Wall Street. Douglass Valentine has suggested the same MO is being infiltrated into the US culture.
Wall Street has been accused of concealing vast funds with nefarious utilization of the Federal Reserve. A FOIA suit could audit the relevant accounts that have never been audited. Ref. https://ppjg.me/2019/11/18/the-federal-reserve-a-different-view/
What you are beautifully indicating is what I would call transcendental realism. This is pointing to deeper levels, dimensions, planes of existence than can be accommodated by current limited thinking and perception. This leap into the unknown beyond our abilities to understand it within present ways of knowing. This is the leap that Einstein could not make in the face of quantum physics and it’s untamed realities. This is the leap into unknown dimensions that zen koans demand of us.
For us now, it is make this leap – or go down with the ship!
I humbly submit that if you are not up for “doing the hard inner work”, and find that nebulous, that you focus on growing a vegetable garden and biking to work and/or grocery shopping as the new normal.
You’ll notice a lot and your thoughts and reactions will change without being all mental about it.
Excellent post ( or should I say, another excellent post) Caitlin! You’re a pinpoint of light in all this darkness. Our personal and collective patterning ( product of well-honed conditioning) is the main stumbling block to finding solutions, like the stone we keep tripping over time after time. We have to “think outside the box”, and the crux of the matter is that we like patterns, we like doing what we’ve always done because it offers us security and we’re addicted to our security..even if how we’re living is killing us. It’s uncomfortable to think outside the box, it makes us feel isolated and hence insecure. So, millions of people settle for living lives that don’t offer them the opportunity to fulfil their potential as human beings because to insist on wanting to live a life uncowed by the straightjacket of patterning and undaunted by the freedom that offers demands a strength that has been conditioned out of us..our patterning breeds “fear of freedom”. Anyway, enough rambling..y felices fiestas to you and yours.
I’m going to quote Jon Rappoport here, because he’s on to it. We’re in a collective matrix–product of our thoughts, so to speak.
The collective experiment on planet Earth
When all obsessive group-consciousness on Earth is finished, exhausted, when it admits defeat, then a different era will emerge. But for now, we are in the middle of the collective experiment.
High-flying cloying sentiment, profound dependence on others, covert repression—these are the order of the day.
How long until the collective age is over? A hundred years? A thousand years? The answer is, as long as it takes for every human to realize that the experiment has failed, and why.
The why is clear—the individual has been overlooked. He has been demeaned. He has been grabbed up and drafted into groups. His creative power has been compromised in order to fit in.
The majority of the world still believes in this approach, as if from good groups will flow the ultimate and final solutions we have all been seeking.
This is sheer mind control, because good groups morph into evil, and vice versa, in the ongoing stage play called reality.
Ideals are twisted, infiltrators subvert plans, lessons are ignored, and the whole sorry mess repeats itself again.
What constituted a triumph of good over evil at one moment is guided into yet another collective, whose aims are “a better kind of control.”
The most deluded among us believe we are always on the cusp of a final breakthrough.
But there is no “we” to make the breakthrough.
It comes to every person on his own. And it does not arrive as the thrust of an external force, but from one’s own struggle, accompanied by insights for which there is no outside agency to lend confirmation.
If indeed it will take a thousand years to bring this collective illusion to a close, that is no cause for despondent reaction.
On the contrary, it is simply an understanding that all experiments come to an end, as does the method of thought on which they are based.
One or ten or a hundred collapses of civilization, and the resultant rebuilding, are not enough.
The pattern endures.
It can only dissolve when overwhelming numbers of individuals, each in his own way, absent self-deception, sees its bankruptcy.
The “we” and the “us” are merely postponements and cover stories splashed on the front pages of the mind.
Fighting for what is right, here and now, is vital. But it does not preclude the knowledge that, as long as people are fixated on groups as the Answer, the underlying problem will persist.
Therefore, as part of my research over the last several decades, I have explored what is now commonly called the Matrix, from the point of view of freeing the individual from it.
The first step is understanding Matrix as an ongoing perverse “work of art” and viewing the nuts and bolts of it.
nomorefakenews.com
We probably only have a very small piece of the bigger picture as far as what is really going on here. There is most likely a lot more to the bigger picture that we can’t see or detect with scientific instruments or our senses etc. Imho the biggest instrument for real change would be more truth about the bigger picture getting out into peoples awareness. So just like a download can upgrade a computer, the same might be said of us.
I think it would be best for the planet if humans became extinct. We take ourselves way too seriously.
We are always planning and acting out of the past experiences we have been through in life, but more and more they do not fit what is really going on.
Life is always creating new spaces. Because of the way we are at present, we never meet with real life, we never merge with life. We experience life as something happening to us instead of life being experiences through us. We are always inappropriate, always bringing our past into everything. Therefore our answers don’t fit the questions that life raises.
To be appropriate means you will have to become spontaneous, able to act without a plan, without a calculation, without past experience as the guide. To not act out of your brain, out of your mental past, is to be appropriate. To act utterly in this moment is the great act spoken of in zen. And without it you are dead, you are inappropriate.
600 billionaires in the world, 7 billion others; and only the billionaires can figure out what to do? Obviously, the 7 billion can hardly consider themselves worthy of life if they can’t figure that out.
@ROY
YOU just came “Extremely Close” to the REAL “Reason” WHY progress will Never be resolved until the “Wealth Disparity” along with “White Supremacy” are “Terminated”!
Humanity was “Allowed” to “Experience” a “Version” of itself called “Mankind” by the “Creators” (Divine Source Melanin Beings)
Since the Question of “What If” has been Eternally resolved by the “Avatar” White White race, They will no longer have the kind of control they still seek to attain or keep…Just watch WHAT will Happen in 2020…ONLY to THEM.
The “Divine Melanin Beings” Never left US…and THEY will be the ones who will “Exterminate” ALL this planet’s problems.
Eternally FREEING Their “Original Created Human Beings”…The Original “Indigenous” people “Seeded” on this planet.
There will be no need for a “Slave Money System” because “FREE Energy” will allow for a completely different WAY of living “In Harmony” with “Mother Earth” and its “Original Indigenous” People…Created in “Divine Source’s Image & Likeness”.
Well, it’s still ok to bike to work and grocery shopping and grow vegetables while you await this particular rapture.
2021 and no devine melon beings … still a slave money system and a distinct lack of free energy.
The Inspector General’s Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude: Not Only for the FBI but Also the U.S. Media by Glenn Greenwald Please read this article here:
https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/the-inspector-generals-report-on-2016-fb-i-spying-reveals-a-scandal-of-historic-magnitude-not-only-for-the-fbi-but-also-the-u-s-media/
Read who owns/ controls the Intercept; former intelligence officer.
I’m not sure I’d throw out Socialism out with the bathwater. In many cases, different scenarios of Socialism have been working until the usual corrupt government came in to interfere and destroy them, i.e, coups and 50+ year blockades. Even considering these massive violations of human and Nation’s Sovereign Rights, we still have good examples of some of these Nations making great strides in implementing sustainable living, reductions in poverty and free education. Just what would happen if there was no outside interference and actually supported by their neighbors?
Socialism works fine locally (cooperatives). The problem is not that it doesn’t work, but that a most people prefer bosses to self-management.
Totally in agreement. If everyone was willing to co-operate, self-manage and pull their own weight, things in this world would be a lot different. Representative democracy is just a cop out instead of doing things right ourselves. I’ve just become a part of a newly born co-operative – and trying to stop the slow (or less slow) death of the tiny hill towns here in Italy and make our own little world a better and more caring place. But it is sad to see, even in a town of 70 people, that a third of the people just don’t want to get involved. For what reasons? From what I have heard, because they :
1. think it will never work, therefore don’t want ot be involved ( a bit like your argument that people want bosses)
2. because they don’t want to get involved with something that could be considered “leftist” (terminally brainwashed)
3.. Because being much more clever than eveyone else in town they are offended that they weren’t asked to “lead” the cooperative movement (unfortunately seems to be human nature).
Sigh. Humans are and will always be their own worst enemy. But I am in for the long term. It is time to stop believing that any government really gives a damn about normal people. We need to take care of things ourselves…even if we have to fight the people who should be our natural allies…
Well, there’s “Dunbar’s Number”, which is the largest number of people you can really work with in a group without a”boss”. That’s about 150. It’s a rough number, based on studies of societal patterns through history. It’s a fair approximation of the limits of our wiring. It’s how much complexity we can do before it needs simplifying.
Hence kings…
Ms Johnstone your readers may enjoy these two articles:
For those who find themselves with excess time this holiday season which they would prefer not to squander with idleness or Netflix binges, then I would like to offer this serving of Frank Capra films to uplift the soul. This article can be read here:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/12/21/capra-battle-with-deep-state-and-hollywood-role-in-cold-war-era/
There’s no electoral and constitutional Santa Claus coming to bend the arc of American history away from a descent into fascism and toward democracy and decency. Only a mass movement of, by, and for the people beneath and beyond the election cycle and stale aristo-republican constitutionalism has any chance of doing that. This article can be read here:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/is-this-goodbye-to-the-american-republic/
“Socialists believe that socialism will solve the problems that socialism has been powerless to provide this entire time.”
Not quite. Socialism has worked well, Denmark, etc, where it has been allowed to work however the crapitalists have spend enormous energy over the centuries to make sure that it would never work. This why the US has screwed up Cuba ever since they tried to create a better society with socialism. American billionaires knew that having a successful socialist country right next door would would threaten their crapitalism propaganda.
Give socialism, ie working together, half a chance and the world would be a far better place
That’s right! With every passing day there are more hungry mouths and fewer arable acres, and sooner or later we are going to have to collectivize. Why not be smart about it? We don’t have to wait for hunger and guillotines to see change, we can start planning and collectivizing right now. The 1% won’t like it, but we can remind them that we are the only thing protecting them and their wealth, and that protection can be withdrawn.
I absolutely agree that socialism, or social democracy as practiced in Denmark, works perfectly well. Social democracy also worked great in Germany for decades (I’m German), though not so much anymore, e.g. Germany has seen a wave of privatization in recent years, just like the UK.
But as for the ever growing number of hungry mouths I have a suggestion: Let’s address the problem that is destroying our planet more than anything else in my opinion – population explosion! The world needs a one child policy like China once adopted, and ASAP. It greatly upsets me that overpopulation is never addressed by the climate activists.
To govern oneself, or to be governed by monsters. That’s the choice. It doesn’t matter what government you start with, however benevolent it may be, being the ideal environment for sociopaths, it will eventually be saturated with them, as they all currently are. As long as we continue to believe the lie the Sociopaths In Charge have convinced us is the truth, that selecting the correct sociopaths is our salvation, there is no hope for change at all. After all, they are insane. For example, a great many of the ills we suffer are the result of a debt dependent economy of imaginary money. How many would even be possible if they had to be financed with gold in hand? Anarchy would be an improvement.
Roger that JWK
Dear Caitlin,
you are probably aware of Thoms S. Kuhn’s: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He uses the metapher of clouds, apperaring at the horizon of scientific theories. While most of the established scientists will follow their thread defending it by more and ever complex elaborate additional assumptions, until the whole thing breaks down. But not until younger scientists will follow a new theory will be born.
This would mean we should look out for the clouds thereby finding the weak pivot point, to bring the old system down (remember Siegfried in the german saga)
I was with you right up until the last paragraph…
The “problem” is that, objectively speaking, humanity ISN’T destructive. I know it feels like the opposite is true, but when you “crunch the numbers” you see that a) there are more human beings alive now than ever before b) there are more ELDERLY humans alive than ever before and c) there are more people alive now whose material needs (shelter, food, etc) are being met than ever before.
In other words, humanity has done spectacularly well.
That’s not to deny climate change, pollution, endemic wars, and all the rest. Truly. I am not downplaying any of those things in the slightest, and I’m certainly not arguing that “everything is fine.”
But you can’t put the “transcendence” horse before the “big picture” cart. First, you have to acknowledge the tremendous SUCCESSES that homo sapiens have had and continue to have.
Sam – you are confusing current circumstances with resource utilization, most importantly fossil fuel energy.
More people are alive because we are eating fossil fuels (only one step removed). All that tasty energy allows us to do things like spend time creating shelter, inventing awesome medicines, etc.
The mistake you are making is to confuse access to energy as some divine right, some assumable condition that will last forever.
It won’t and there are literally zero efforts underway to remedy that dependence. Well at least none that don’t round down to zero.
Humanity presently doesn’t have a Plan B for what to do when (not *if) oil runs down. It’s coming far too soon to really do anything but react when it does. The ‘age of response’ for an intelligent culture would have been 30-40 years ago. Back when Carter put on the sweater.
The only thing that humanity has done “spectacularly well” at is ignoring the basic math of its existence while failing to plan for something that is quite easily foreseen. Energy is everything. It provides the bulk of the explanatory power behind our species’ success….as is true for all species.
The billionaires did something secret and hired PR firms to tell us happy-days-are-here-again after they saw people didn’t like the truth so much and it was bad for bidness. There’s this “continuity of government” project that Cheney and Rumsfeld were working on singe Jerry Ford’s short term. It’s supposed to make things be about the same, without most of us, for when that happens.
If I understand you right, in some ways what you’re saying here amounts to the same as everything being preordained; if something’s going to happen it will happen whatever we do. And that sort of is the way things work out. But in order to counter this type of argument, we must still look at the possibility that if we had done things differently maybe things would’ve worked out differently. In other words, the only way to effect change is to try to see as many possible outcomes as we can and try our best to work towards the one that we feel is the one that will benefit all humanity. The problem with that is that too many of us have very different ideas of what is best for humanity. So, you’re probably right. I know none of that makes sense, but if we look at how little actual life there is in the universe as we know it, life itself doesn’t make sense.
“…one that will benefit all humanity.” Context defines the subtext IMO. The prime context for humans is the tiny planet we inhabit along with trillions of other life forms. Image if we were truly wise. We would be willing to share our planet with each other AND the other life forms, because we realize that it all fits together. We are not the most important. No creature is indispensable or necessary. No creature is more worthy or less worthy. In any complex system, like our planet, changes to any part has an impact on the whole to some degree.
The real problem is that a few thousand (less than 10K IMO) people run the world for their benefit while the rest of us would like to just enjoy ourselves, our family and friends. Can we achieve enlightenment before all hell breaks loose? No evidence so far.
Spot-on, I couldn’t agree more! Humans are NOT more valuable than any other species.
Humanity doesn’t need to break from ‘all its previous patterning’ at all. In the epoch before private property and ‘civilisation’, humans lived in radically egalitarian foraging/hunter-gatherer societies. Numerous anthropological studies attest to the harmony and manifest happiness of those living in these societies, from Henry Lewis Morgan onwards. The ‘patterning’ of this ‘primitive communism’ was overthrown when humans passed from ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism’ to ‘civilisation’, where a polity and state machine was established to defend the owners of the means of production and enforce their enslaving of the propertyless, from the chattel slavery of antiquity, serfdom and peasant production under feudalism, or modern proletarians under capitalism. And women’s equality was another casualty of this transformation.
It’s the private ownership of the means of production that imposes the enslaving and oppressive ‘patterning’, seen since antiquity, where both the enslavers and enslaved believe it to be the ‘natural’ order of things. Only when the means of production is collectivised, where no-one owns the productive resources yet everyone does on a modern basis, and where the struggle to exist is no longer ‘up to the individual’, will humanity have any chance of recovering its former communal ‘patterning’ and social cohesiveness so necessary to survive the challenges ahead.
The true ‘leap in the dark’ is to have socialist revolutions in technologically advanced countries and spread them all over the earth, eliminating capitalism completely and replacing it with a democratically planned collectivised economy, which clearly hasn’t happened (yet). Nothing less can eliminate the fetters and the overweening ‘will to enslave’ that private property imposes on humanity — along with the accompanying
ideological ‘patterning’ that it’s ‘natural’ and part of ‘human nature’ — and finally liberate us all from the horrible ‘patterning’ bequeathed by the ‘traditions of the dead generations [that] weigh like a nightmare upon the living’ (Marx).
As a species we are ” extremely dysfunctional ” and whatever ” fate ” befalls us is what we deserve. We might blow ourselves up; or maybe ” mother nature ” or disease might wipe us out. Ms Johnstone things do not look good for us in the near or far future. If we have a future it will be led by people such as yourself!
People such as Caitlin, you or I will never lead. We are not psychopaths which are the ruthless people who always control others.
” Principled Leaders ” lead by ” example “; they confront the things that need to be confronted. These type of leaders never look back to ” see how many people are following them ” that is not why they are leading. Psychopaths care only about themselves and how many idiots they can get to do their bidding; all of humanity means nothing to them except a herd of victims to be taken advantage of.
Problem is, that it seems that most people who want to lead others are psychopaths. The ones that aren’t get quickly suicided or otherwise dispatched to the great beyond…
Yes, it really seems like in every group a psychopath or two sooner or later emerges. Even people that you feel very much aligned with and share a passionate cause with, can quite negatively surprise you. E.g. I’ve observed it in my local animal rescue group, there are always a few that want to dominate, establish hierarchy or cliques, backstab and gossip. I’ve never understood why, to me such behavior is completely alien. But in many organizations, if you don’t wish to play kindergarten and just stay focused on the cause then suddenly you’re the outsider. Happened to the only ray of hope in German politics in many years – Sahra Wagenknecht, former leader of The Left party, she got bullied by her own party members until she quit.
History is not too encouraging for us humans. It tells us that pretty much everything we’ve tried to live well with each other and our world has failed. We can’t get along with each other, we can’t get along with our natural environment, we fear the unknown, we lash out when we don’t like or understand something, and we don’t even know what it real, truthful or factually accurate. We refuse to believe the evidence in front of us, even when it is staring us in the face and causing us direct and immediate suffering.
We must be the only species on this planet that can deny its own reality.
It does not bode well for the human race, which cannot evolve until it learns to accept fundamental facts and then based its decisions and activities on the evidence – not on ideas or beliefs, but hard cold facts. Irrefutable evidence. Evidence that can be tested and confirmed by anyone.
Only then can we start to build (re-build) a civilisation that can live up to its name. Civilised people know that they don’t know everything, that they don’t/can’t understand everything, that it is not a bad thing to disagree or to have a different opinion, that it is a healthy thing to accept another person’s opinion or belief as long as it is not harming anyone.
Our starting point now has to be the crisis, the emergency that the world is facing – not just the changes in climate, but the resulting changes to the ecosystems that support us. The systems we rely on for food, fresh water, and so on. These are under threat, and will start to fail badly very soon.
The big question in my mind is how close to the edge of extinction will the human race get before it learns this lesson, and becomes genuinely civilised..
History has shown that when you present humanity with the same set of conditions, they act exactly the same way. As the Earth cools, crops will fail followed by starvation and pandemics. Nature is getting ready to solve a lot of problems by simply thinning the herd. If the cooling gets extreme with the magnetic pole continuing to drift towards Europe, expect migration from colder to warmer climates. This will bring wars as well further exacerbating a bad situation. Yes we will change by nature forcing us to change. THIS IS NOT CLIMATE CHANGE. Just the normal cycle of the world.
I think you missed my point.
I’ve been trying to sort through something. On the one hand, I completely agree with you that oligarchic manipulation of narratives to control people is wrong. But that judgment in itself is a kind of narrative. So is the necessary principle that innocent people should never be made to suffer unjustly. So any “good” narrative should embody those principles. But in that respect, there can’t be any “new” narratives that transcend these principles. I mean, the stories might change, but the principles themselves wouldn’t. One could debate terms like innocence and justice, but we all know what they mean. Cruelty is wrong. But this also means that human salvation can’t be totally unexpected. We know the principles; we just don’t live them out.
We already have good narratives, but now it seems that we have undermined the fundamental categories that define goodness itself. In effect we now distrust the old tools that we have failed to use rightly. But it’s not the fault of the tools. Why do we refuse to see what’s true? To question authority? To be compassionate? To hate war? To love our enemies? And what narrative would be so much more compelling than the ones we already have so that we would begin to live out our highest values? I don’t know.
I very much enjoy your essays, poems, and articles because you lead your readers to consider our deepest values and to reconsider what we perceive as true. Keep telling the truth as best you can! Thank you for defending the innocent.
Thank you for continuing to care, Caitlin.
What if we woke up one morning and we realized what an amazing place this is and how amazing life is? What if we suddenly had a profound insight into the beauty and awesomeness of Life? We are here for such a short time, maybe we could make life a little less hostile for each other & for life around us. I am sending that intention to everyone around me because I have the ability to alter reality in my local bubble by being kind, compassionate, and generous of spirit. I have to trust that the universe is unfolding as it should whether I like it or not. I pray we figure it out soon and fast.
This is an amazing place, life is amazing or can be. You are to be comended for your efforts to treat your fellow man fairly. However, all this expression does is create a sentimentality that obscures our realities. As long as there are desirable things on this world, people will find a way to get them. How will they get them? They will devise a plan inside that black box called the human mind. They will lie and distort the logic of humanity. That is what it is all about anyway, logic. Thinking logically is an advantage, distorting logic also conveys an advantage. That is why humanity is in a state of perpetual war. Because of the black box and the honest and dishonest distortions to human logic in our societies. We can never reconcile our thinking and work together in a environment that promotes logic. We have to get past the sentimental dreaming and find ways to address the real issues.
Not sure how you can write this and continue to ignore me. What is it you said, “we need to change our relationship with thought”? You have never once replied to my post. I have brought the solution to you and no answer. Is it your pride, your ego? Do you worry about loosing control there behind the curtain you wizard of Oz. You seem to be smart enough, you dance all around the solution. It is not rocket science. I have preached this sermon for more than ten years and I have come to the same conclusion, it is hard for people to understand a world they were not born into. Is that you also? we need to get the work started. So once again, tell me where I err.
https://medium.com/@whmilk/save-the-world-collective-vs-individual-intelligence-69e1353ea9b5?
https://medium.com/@whmilk/here-is-a-book-i-have-placed-on-amazon-and-smashwords-e864cc0e2c60?
I read your article and enjoyed it. I’m left perplexed only because other animals have the ability to reason. Animals can and do think and feel joy, pain and fear. Humans aren’t that special. As an animal I don’t think this higher reason and logic you speak of is really achievable. I think humans have some very basic emotions and animal like instincts. A collective wisdom paints a happy photo of people holding hands solving problems together. And is any of this higher self really original? Very little is being uttered for the first time. Our education is already a collective of passed down information and instincts between human beings and from generation to generation. Do you have a twitter account I can follow?
Thank you David, I agree with you that humans are animals. What I am trying to convey is that now because of modern technology we have new options.30 years ago none of what i hope for would have been possible. It is all about forming better conclusions and elevating the logic we already use to the forefront. It is about haveing a permanent platform project so that if you wake up at 2:00 am with a new perspective you can make the picture clearer for us all. It is about a work in progress, creating and forming logical conclusions that serve as teaching tools as well as resource. This is not about absolutism I still believe in spirituality. It is just about making what we do, better and that is all . Take for instance this comments section. Is it productive, efficient, is logic even an integral part. Where will it be 3 weeks from now. What did we accomplish? We as individuals use perceptions in our understanding and we are content with that. This will fail us in the end, We must find a better method. We must step back and see where we are failing. .Search for the Standford encyclopedia of Epistemology. I hope it will give you perspective. Other than that I don’t do twitter, facebook etc, This is not about me. If I had half a brain I would have spent some of my money on programmers. I really thought this would be easy. All I had to do was tell someone. When I see articles like Caitlin’s it think we are so close. She is not the only one. Still as she said it will be foreign to us, People just can’t seem to go there.This is about heading off the War we will have because we humans have no way of getting our personal, individual selves out of the equation when forming our conclusions.
I read that, Clint. You have to start the work.
We can’t see the whole path. We have to work it out together by beginning to walk it. Reduce fuel use. Grow vegetables, Become a bike commuter.
Live those changes. You will change.
You will be less helpless.
You can start being the change, working the solution.
Thanks john, I have come to the same conclusion. Doing will feel a lot better than wishing and hopiing.
Unless humans will mutate so that greed and envy is no longer a general personality trait we are all doomed.
Merry Christmas
What I do with my performances: Amazing Amy: Eccentric Yoga Entertainer.
Especially unpatterned directions and senseless acts of beauty and presenting the unexpected.
https://www.reverbnation.com/amazingamycontortionistuniqueyogadancer
I’m not so sure change will totally come from the unknown. We know what we need to do. We need to stop subsidizing fossil fuels and we need to tax carbon to help keep it in the ground. Without these major steps I think it’s more likely humans are headed for extinction. The best possible outcome for life on earth
This is one of your best.
Sarcastically no doubt…
You mean go back to premodern times. This terrible petroleum is used in every aspect of your life and the reason we have a modern society today. We will not just stop driving cars but also start starving to death. Battery and green technology use petroleum products as well. All means of transportation and technology use petroleum products. Be honest, you just want to kill off a big portion of the planet population because that is what will happen when you keep more of that terrible petroleum in the ground. And of course lets all start paying that life saving carbon tax which will shave a couple tenth of a centigrade off planet earth in the next 50 years according to computer models. BTW you can make a computer model say whatever you want by just tweaking the numbers.