Deep Breath, Zoom Out
What are human beings up to these days?
I have only more questions. Curiosity and compassion will be my weapons until my dying day. I need no tools but the love and light that fills my heart when I call upon it.
I choose to approach conflict with compassion and understanding and consider how different people perceive information - given their context, mental model, or framework of understanding and the things that concern them as a result of this. We can understand that humans are often driven by fear - fear of the unknown, fear of pain, fear of death. Acting in response to our fear seems to only spread conflict, create more division, generate more fear. It creates confusion - deepening the muck in the waters of the unknown that are otherwise holy.
Faith in an ultimate peace of some sort can allow us to be objective in studying the behaviors and emotions of human beings. It is my goal to bring a greater understanding of each other, spread compassion for our fellow creatures clinging to this rock in space, and be a grain of sand that brings us closer to peace on earth - or at least a healthier and happier life here.
And so I ask: “what are human beings up to these days?”
How did x person get here?
Why did x event happen?
How is x person or event interpreted by others with a, b, c… experiences?
Observations
There is no doubt that we live in a toxic culture. Gloating in political victories behind the podium, when someone else will do the same in a few years, only feeds the flames of the ego, breeding resentment and causing pain. Trolls on the internet and in the physical world say or do things with the intention to make others upset. Some of these people just want to assert their right to do it as if it justifies bullying behavior. I can’t help but think it’s like grade school, nothing has really changed except the effects of our actions have a greater reach - in many ways causing more damage.
Asserting moral or intellectual authority is also common these days. These folks rely on power - authority or status they might hold socially or within their field of study, or simply by a majority consensus. While someone’s expertise on a relevant matter makes them more credible a source, if they assert they are the only source to consume, to not consider other sources, or to not evaluate their expertise, then that is a concern.
A big challenge these days is the amount of information we have access to. Back in high school and younger I had to choose a number of primary and secondary sources from our school library to write a paper. It was a comfortable endeavor because there was a limit to the sources I had to consult and the reader of the paper understood that my conclusions were based on that pool of information. If it was a good paper, it would be clear to the reader how I reached those conclusions.
Now? There is a world-wide web (and beyond - IPFS anyone?). We are flooded with information to the phones in our hands, if we choose to look at them. I had avoided social media for years but recently started to check it out again. It’s as bad, and as entertaining, as would be expected. I’ve also established better contact with friends who don’t live nearby.
I recently read about Einstein’s theory of relativity. Michio Kaku uses the metaphor of a planet in spacetime like a shot put on a mattress. Knowledge of this theory changes how we perceive gravity. We essentially fall towards a heavier object. Time even speeds up the closer we get to that object, and space condenses. I thought about this in terms of culture and our perception of truth… is truth also relative? Is our perception based on our position in spacetime? Enter: fate and free will discussion - free will is a muscle we first become aware of and then strengthen. How much can we strengthen it? How much can we adjust our perception of truth or our position in spacetime?
Are we too quick to form boundaries for ourselves and amongst each other? We are doing what we can to process and understand our reality - from our individual points of view. This obviously looks different for different people. Oftentimes it is easier to be told what the boundaries are, and who and what they contain, in order to make our day-to-day survival easier. But is this the truth?
An acid trip tells us otherwise. We are all connected, eerily so. We are each other’s mirrors, infinitely deep.
This is where the collective guilt, the original sin comes in. The worst evil in recent history, that I know if, is the Holocaust. We carry that guilt with us - fearful that the genetic coding of Nazis are among us and the human capacity for the worst imaginable evil is within us. If we look for it, we will find it. There are no bounds to anything. That is heartbreaking and lonely and dark.
There is however the equivalent boundlessness of light and goodness. Somewhere amongst and between the light and the dark, there is us. At the heart of it, we are energy that is neither created or destroyed.
In practice, we should not reward those that bully, even if they may be a “useful idiot” or a “means to an end”, and even if it feels like everyone is a bully in some way and there are only gradations. It is worth taking the hit to the sought out “end” because the less compassion it takes to get to that end, the shorter it will last.
We will always be limited in our ability to access and consume “all” the information - like searching for the “God particle”, it seems like we create more space to explore in the act of searching for it. Still, we should strive to have compassion for one other - knowing that we are acting from individual experience, made to play a transient game that exists partially as a warping of spacetime and partially as a manipulatable fabric of society. Either way, the game is ultimately unplayable.
Hermann Hesse writes in his book Demian, published in 1919:
“Everywhere… we could observe the reign of the herd instinct, nowhere freedom and love. All this false communion… was an inevitable development, was a community born of fear and dread, out of embarrassment, but inwardly rotten, outworn, close to collapsing.
Genuine communion is a beautiful thing. But what we see flourishing everywhere is nothing of the thing. The real spirit will come from the knowledge that separate individuals have of one another and for a time it will transform the world.”
It is relevant to mention that Hesse was alive in Germany during the rise of the Nazi movement. His wisdom did not prevent this atrocity. I don’t have the answers on how to prevent this again. I only know compassion is the soothing salve on a hurting heart. If we could see what is to happen before it does and take measures to stop it, as in Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report, we also run the risk of being proponents of evil ourselves. Of course, there are gradations. We can act and provide checks on our behavior and on that of others. I believe the only way to do this effectively, without creating more suffering, is with genuine compassion. And when you think you are being compassionate, ask if you have removed fear from your being, then try again, with ever less fear present, and ever more love - for you and your neighbor.
Sincerely,
Bridget Jane
As referenced, some of my current favorite reads:
The God Equation by Michio Kaku
Listen: