What a Hell of a moment, right?
I know it’s hard to watch what’s going on out there, and I’m not nailing that to any particular event because there are so many of them every day. A year or so of being inside looking out, wondering what is happening and what will become of the human world has made us all a little raw. Seeing people divided more than ever, numb and callous to each other in so many ways, has a new sting in this shared trauma and drama. Didn’t anybody learn from this? Does anybody ever? Feels like we keep acting out the same roles on different stages, with different masks. Why do we keep showing up?
Don’t worry, you too will eventually no longer be shocked by the audacious malice of the self-styled ruling class and the abundant stupidity of the general population of Earth. You too will eventually narrow your focus to the immediate more than the crane shot. You too will stop taking hard sides to be sorted into an engineered cultural narrative when extreme polarity is just two flavors of insanity. You too will get tired of the game you’re coerced to play and learn to develop your own.
This moment is designed to sort us into boxes, drive us to hate each other, push us into some conflict or other that helps justify more control and less humanity. Buck that trend. Go the other way. Here’s a target for you: authentic kindness is one of a few precious things that will never get old, and there isn’t nearly as much competition there as in the blame game. You can bring more good into the world than you might currently imagine is possible. Surprise yourself. Surprise us all.
As you get over and break up with the greater hum of human society while finding ways to survive emotionally and economically within it, you will grow to understand that you can effortlessly exist at different levels of the same game. No matter how sick “the world” gets under the watch of myopic humans with memories goldfish can now safely mock, there’s always the real thing beyond the walls and the matrices.
That good old world that never got old, the clock-less ever that patiently waits for us to change or get out of the way, the thing every culture has a different name for and every individual has to recognize within themselves, that thing goes on. The reality of interconnected harmony that persists forever just outside of our foolishness will, once it notices you noticing it, charm you away from trying to be a martyr.
Of course you want to save the world. You still love it, despite it. People too, even after all that’s happened. Your heart still glows like the last ember of a forgotten fire. They didn’t snuff you out, and the angels love you for that. Never lose the impulse, it’s who you really are. Bless you for your persistence in the face of all the smoke and mirrors of this world under a thousand shadows.
It’s so easy to give up and cop out but it won’t give you the ease it advertises. Be aware but don’t be destroyed by the awareness. May you and I and everyone pass effortlessly from innocence to horror to misanthropy to integration to right livelihood and simply doing what we can as we can. The world doesn’t belong to us, to steal or to save. It never did and never could. But your life does belong to you and whoever and whatever you choose to spend time and energy with or on.
The human shaped vehicles for entropy that “run” the world are so disconnected from your concerns as a sensitive with intact intelligence that no amount of rage or riot will touch them. They’ll always have more force. You gotta work smarter, not harder. Empire and total colonization is the long game for them. Divesting from and displacing the control grid is the long game for us. Stop giving them your money and your time and your fear and your hate. Just cut the little goblins off.
Of course you’re mad, you ought to be mad as hell. We may be on the cusp of some science fiction world with regard to tech but we’re still hundreds of years behind socially. Riot and violence have their place, and condemning the people who engage in them to feel seen is not helping things improve, but the real problem is that there even are separate economic and justice systems for what amounts to castes anyway. We must outlive the dinosaurs keeping us in the old ways and outgrow this decrepit society.
But again, that is the long game. We are all quite well trained to demand instant gratification. So okay, you want a big shortcut to a more satisfying and less alienating life? Find a path to service. You will see joy and relief and make discoveries about yourself. You will meet enough people who are trying to help that you won’t believe it’s all darkness anymore. You will breathe again. Don’t y’all miss breathing?
The darkness seems all encompassing and insurmountable but that’s just it’s sales pitch. It is huge, and everywhere, but it is fragile and depends on you having faith in its inevitability. It sustains itself on that fear. You are its blood supply. Once you realize the darkness is also vulnerable, you are on the way to being larger than it can ever be. You are of another energy.
So start retuning your receiver to get away from the flypaper of always on dread and pomp and remember the quiet, good news. Get up tomorrow or start today over and be glad you have the awareness that work needs to be done. Be glad that you have some degree of agency and power to do something positive, and find what that means for you. Do not let the weight of our shared predicament keep you small. You didn’t come here to wither, but to grow. The world is backward, but you can go your own way.
Oh, and when you feel yourself starting to rise, grab somebody and pull them up a little without worrying if they notice or appreciate. I promise the seeds will germinate eventually. As annoying a request as this may be: Don’t worry about it. Just keep going.
This is where a lot of people would fill another 6 pages telling you what to go do that fits their definition of good. I recognize your sovereign right to decide what that means for yourself, so I’ll pass the candle to you. Take the light where you think it needs to be. Thank you for your service.