Perhaps only one thing is worse than dreaming one’s way through life and that is the brain bomb that the dream IS life. Love, friendship, education, politics, religion, professional wrestling, most sports probably, even science the discipline that wears its concrete, imperialism like a badge of honour laying claim to the veritable opposite is, in the final analysis, yet another triumph of imagination over intellect.
“Nebulous at best.” That was word for word what the most
relevant quantum physicist I have ever known said about the very building
blocks of science, in particular scientific method. It is in essence what a
bright young student of IT said to me about the cyber-universe recently; it is
what my experiences in the world of academia have taught me in no uncertain
terms; it is the ultimate absurdity that comprises the basics of a shockingly
comprehensive list of what we tend to consider the most meaningful things in
life!
Oh to regain the joys of youthful ignorance! This is no
aspersion, slight, or disparaging of those who wear the protective cloak of
ignorance, nay, there just might be wisdom in their folly.
Today my mother put some bags inside of a shopping bag I had
hung over the others empty and ready for easy access when I needed it next. I
knew it would be soon. This should not have upset me, but it did. The simple
act of taking the other bags out before using my preferred shopping bag is
compounded by other ills my mother has perpetrated upon me in the past. Why don’t
good things come to mind? My mother combed my hair when I was young. Not just
enough to tidy it but excessively. I know, to this day, of nothing more
relaxing and I know that that is why she did it. Was it an act of apology for
the whips and scorns of time into which she had ushered me? Or even those she
thought she would cause me?
My mother is a trip! I can think of few citizens more
esteemed and loyal to the world of mindless folly over reason nor better suited
to be its travel agent than my mother. More than once daily she proudly utters
the phrase, “I have no idea (about that).” Proudlyl! She doesn’t consult a
dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, or (perish the thought) the internet to
maybe gain SOME idea about that which she has none. Never. It could almost be
said that she is well versed in only ignorance. She is row, row, rowing her
boat gently down the stream of a life that is but a dream.
But does a thorough education in fantastical heaven prepare
a person better or worse for the shocking specter of hell? If I were to take
after my mother in this trait, could I blame her? I think not. Preparation
cannot be left solely to the parent. No matter how soothing the comb, or the
memory of it now that I no longer require one, the responsibility of
maintaining memories falls on my shoulders. I choose the good or bad to dwell
on and even the most hopeless of parenting provides a child with both. I choose
to think negatively and compound the simple act of rearranging the shopping
bags into something more annoying than it would be if I chose to remember my
mother’s ASMR triggering hair combing. I seem to recall her being a back
scratcher too, which, for me, had the same effect.
Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. Simple.
Problem solved, right? Or is this in itself just a variant pathway to that land
of ignorant bliss? Intelligence shows me daily that negativity cannot be
glossed over successfully with positivity without sufficient swings of the
dumb-hammer to my own head. Maybe that is the root of the issue. Is the
dumb-hammer medicine or poison? This question applies to the list at the start
of this rant and every single entry on it. Ignorance makes them all more palatable
and that can be viewed from both positive and negative perspectives. Indeed
both can be found within each entry. I’ll start with religion.
Matthew 18 is where Jesus said that having faith like a
child will make one the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. But it’s easier to
forgive as a child. They’ve only been lied to a few thousand times and betrayed
a few hundred. As those numbers increase the child grows up and its faith is
tested. Accentuating the positive in overwhelming negativity may just be what
separates children from adults. After all, every adult has something beyond the
fear of death that keeps them from throwing themselves off of tall buildings or
taking a few extra sleeping pills. Is it then just the discipline of
pinpointing those things and being ever-mindful of them? Again, too
simplistically escapist.
Before I mention Buddhists spending their lives in
meditation trying to accomplish exactly the above, let’s see what Jesus says in
Luke 7 about childishness. He said the people of this generation (and
presumably all since) are like children who are never satisfied and can see the
bad side of everything. John the Baptist didn’t eat bread or drink wine, and he
was called a demon. Jesus did both and was called a glutton and a drunkard.
Worse, he was called a friend to tax collectors! I love that! Tax collectors
were the worst back then and all that has changed is the explosion in the
percentage that they collect.
But concentrate on the seeming contradiction and in it you
will find a fine example of the nuances that make life the challenge so worth accepting
that it is. Don’t you see this all the time? In yourself just as much as
others? I think I see it in myself MORE than in others. I can get used to/tired
of anything and the older and more used to/tired of life I become the shorter
this process is. If I could somehow convert my “take-for-granted” gene into a “be-happy-in-what-I’ve-got”
gene, I might just have life figured out and I could die a truly happy and
satisfied man. But just to illustrate how far I am from attaining this
impossible dream, I hadn’t even finished typing it before reproducing and
selling that gene came to mind. Being unsatisfiable and always wanting more is
actually compared in the Bible to trying to catch the wind.
On the other hand didn’t Jesus himself preach against
complacency and teach his disciples to constantly strive for improvement? Hasn’t
ambition, desire, envy, even greed resulted in great achievement and
accomplishment? So what the hell, bro? Is it good or bad? Who am I to say?
But back to comparing the wisdom of being complacent
in ignorance vs. being greedy for knowledge. Or should I say satisfaction in
simplicity vs. striving for advanced intelligence. They can both be bad or
good, can’t they? What about the concept of just acting intelligent? Knowing
everything became impossible long ago if it ever were but since new knowledge
by the brainful is created every day, it’s just getting harder and harder to
know enough about everything to be considered smart. I believe even knowing a
little bit about everything, even just one fact about everything is even impossible.
Yet there are many who would like us to think they know a lot about everything.
When does the desire for knowledge intersect with vanity? Is it when a person
is loathe to admit to ignorance in something or when a person is loathe to
admit to ignorance in anything? I don’t know the answer, I’m just asking. It is
most likely neither. Maybe it’s when we start creating our own facts because we
just don’t want to do the hard work of finding the real ones. That ring any
bells??? It’s everywhere isn’t it? It’s one of the most annoying things in the
world and one of the most dangerous. Yet, it can be fun, beautiful, even
therapeutic creating worlds of make-believe.
Seymour Glass might be my favourite character in all of
fiction. In Salinger’s short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” he convinces
an innocent girl of the existence of bananafish. The girl manufactures the
bananafish in her vision as well as her faith exclaiming, “I see one!” The
Jesus-like Buddhist character Seymour’s reaction to this was to go back to his
hotel room and blow his head off. Is creating beautiful fancy in a world of
squalor noble or evil?
I watched the movie “Babylon” two nights ago. Lead
characters Manuel Torres and Jack Conrad have opposing epiphanies to these
respective effects. Jack too blows his head off.
I can’t claim to know the answer and although I may be
getting better at describing this, the enigma of my life, I admit to being no
closer to its solution, perhaps further from it than when I was a child. Maybe
death, or non-existence, holds the solution and being closer to it as kids we
maintain some knowledge however subconscious of it. Should it or shouldn’t it
follow, then, that as we get older and closer to re-obtaining that knowledge
that comes through non-existence, that we should subconsciously or even
consciously remember it? Seymour and Jack didn’t want to hang around and find
out, rather they hastened their passage to that undiscovered country to which
Hamlet didn’t have the balls to travel. Am I saying suicide is strength and
remaining in a life of futile suffering is weakness? Maybe if the futility can
be proven and the only solution lies in the ultimate solution, but, as yet, I
have found no such evidence. So for those who accuse me of cynicism, HAH! My
insistence upon maintaining this mortal meaninglessness is evidence to the
contrary.
Nellie LaRoy never feared death and it found her young. I am
guessing it was tragic too although the movie leaves us guessing. She
epitomized the joy of youthful ignorance of which I write. Who of us would not
consider it a satisfactory cherry on top of a life well lived to attend a gathering
of the pompous patrician perfumed aristocracy and puke on the proceedings AND
the chief poseur among them? Aye, tis a consummation devoutly to be wished! How
often I have pondered the abandonment of my intellectual search for meaning and
truth for the idealization of hedonistic enjoyment! In truth it may only be
finances that have kept me from the pursuit of worldly pleasures and the
abandonment of intellect altogether. For the time being I shall count the
failure of the lottery to match my numbers as my chief muse though there
remains some question in that sentiment. How can I know but through experience?
I can read of Sidhartha Gautama who renounced hedonism for a life of asceticism
that ultimately led to enlightenment. But reading is not experiencing. Now, as
promised, on to the Buddhists.
“Life IS suffering Highness. Anyone who tells you different
is selling something,” said Westley to Buttercup. This, though few make the
connection, was quite a Buddhist concept. I belittled them a while ago when I
said they were spending lifetimes in deep meditation and self-sacrifice trying
to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. However, the Taoist
tenet of joy and suffering being two parts of the same cloth is central to the
philosophy. There’s a Taoist allegory that comes to mind. There always IS! Lol I
love that about Taoism actually although, if you are sagacious you will see
that the little stories are not always as wise as they sound.
Okay, a Taoist master was known to tell his followers that “Life
is suffering. We are born only to grow old then die. The things that we want,
we never get. The majority of the things we get we never wanted. Life is
suffering.” His followers couldn’t get this out of their heads. In fact it weighed
on them heavily. They started shirking their studies and just lying around in
morose lethargy. The master noticed and decided to take them on a journey to a
beautiful and pristine lake. The spirits of the master’s followers improved but
still the suffering of life remained foremost in their thoughts. One apprentice
approached the master and asked if he could further explain the statement. The
master produced from his knapsack a cup half filled with salt. He instructed
the young learner to fill the rest of the cup from the lake. After he did so
the master instructed him to drink it. The apprentice drank and spat the water
out. It was an affront to his tastebuds, and he poured the majority onto the
ground. The master produced a second cup only this one was filled with salt.
The student feared punishment for wasting the contents of the previous cup, but
the master said, “Now, go to the lake.” The young learner stood in the lake
waist deep and waited for further instructions. The master then said, “Now pour
the salt into the lake.” The apprentice did so. The master then said, “Now,
drink from the lake.” The student drank from the lake and the salt could no
longer be tasted. The water was pure and fresh tasting.
The master explained, “When you experience suffering as an
individual it is more concentrated and painful. But we are all part of each
other and the rest of nature. When we train our minds to commune as one with
all of nature our personal suffering is just a small part of the whole.”
Great story, right? PPPPbbbtthhhtthhbbbttt! If I were the
student I would have kicked the master in the nuts and told him to train
himself to think of his personal suffering as a small part of the whole of
nature. And such it was with my mother and the shopping bags. If I could train
myself to think of that action as just one in a lifetime of actions in our
coexistence, or even the whole family’s existence, and if all the good and bad
deeds could be piled upon each other in one good pile and one bad pile, surely
the positive pile would be higher than the negative pile! I know that but it
doesn’t seem to do much good. Maybe the concept of proximity comes into play
here. What have you done for me most recently? The pain from a kick in the
balls is immediate just like the nuisance of having to reorganize the bags just
before going shopping. Life happens chronologically and I would love to be able
to take it in on an astral plane in which I could reckon time holistically
rather than lilnearly, but I can’t. And I don’t give a shit HOW long you’ve
studied at the Shao Ling Temple, YOU can’t either.
So here we are again at the truth being compared to make
believe. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to believe all the mythology of the ages old
teachings about Kung Fu masters who flew through trees and cured cancer by
massaging a person’s baby toe? I just have a distinct preference for facts.
Now, you probably knew this wasn’t long in coming, let’s
talk about Trump. He is now the president of the United States. Scroll back to
where I asked if any bells were ringing and when I referred to making one’s own
fantasy world as being something dangerous I’m sure that the Make America Great
Pumpkin came to mind for many of you. There WAS a time when we needed
comparisons, analogies and allegory to talk about Orange Mulius but we don’t
have to anymore! I used to say his government was LIKE the WWE but he now
literally HAS Linda McMahon the WWE co-owner and ball-kicker in her own right
IN his cabinet. I think at one time I warned that if Trump was elected
president he’d help the filthy rich and leave Joe average American out in the
cold but look at the ludicrous display that was his inauguration. If I could be
granted the ability to collapse ONE building in my lifetime… But life is
suffering. What we want, we don’t get and what we get we don’t want. With the
possible exception of those inside the Capitol Rotunda…
I watched a movie last night too. Maybe the best movie made
in the last decade or two. “Don’t Look Up.” Like “Idiocracy” I expect that
movie to become more a documentary with each passing day of the next 4 years.
Well, save for the meteor part. The space ship at the end – Trump’s
inauguration – the list would vary only slightly. And like the heroic spaceman
sacrificed for humanity in the movie I think the good people in the Rotunda
would chain the exits shut and go down with the ship. Anyway, I gotta get off
that. I’m spending a bit too much time. I could get flagged and put in a car
full of FBI agents with a bag over my head. Lol
That was a reference to the movie. I think we’re in for 4
years of “Don’t Look At America” instead of “Don’t Look Up.” There is going to
be some world record breaking obfuscation, exaggeration, sophistry and
prevarication. We will, to borrow an oft-heard phrase, have no idea what the
hell is going on in America for the next four years. Now, will that be good?
Probably. Will I still want to know what is really going on? Absolutely!
I have no doubt and few qualms about the conscious choice I
have made against the passive acceptance of ignorance in favour of the heroic
search for truth. In THAT at least there is no confusion. But confusion arises
when I start fact finding. There is so much misinformation out there it’s hard
to know whether you’re finding your way to the truth or just obtaining a
harder earned and less passive version of the prevailing ignorance of the time.
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