It is in the nature of any Edifice of Thought that it evolves into a prison.
There is an alternative.
It is in the nature of any Edifice of Thought that it evolves into a prison.
It does so internally, trapping its victims in stereotypical behavior, denial, and seeking relief through accepting lies. It does so socially, devolving societies into open air concentration camps before ultimately destroying everyone and everything. I does so culturally, and within the realm of meaning, by replacing actual engagement with the semblance of meaning and value; turning against any direct engagement with what-is in any form of truthful inquiry. It does so by turning every question of worth and value into an economic equation where qualia is actively displaced by a fictional belief that what creates profit must be valuable and what does not create profit must be worthless.
Chasing after “solutions” never addresses the underlying condition and can only lead to a churning that only hastens the inevitable collapse. Without grasping the scale and scope of this source of our Predicament we have no chance of doing anything but pile on “unintended consequences” that hasten our destruction.
This would be true of any Edifice of Thought. It has been true in the past. It is in the nature of Thought to do this.
The underlying principal of my book, Designer & Client, ostensibly a book about boat design, was that seeing life as if it were a combative condition leads us to make simplistic and counterproductive decisions. Only by looking at life as broadly as possible, and opening up to our imaginations, may we discover ways of being that are hidden when we focus all our attention on winning.
The only reason the combative/competitive/neopredatory* way of life has lasted so long is because there was always enough of a reservoir of healthy biosphere to withstand its depredations. We are now at the end-game of the entire Edifice of Thought that created and extended this mode of existence. No “tools” of this lineage can help us. What we get from turning to them is a false-exit, taking us back into the Predicament it, Thought, has created and holds us in. All such tools; strategy, tactics, planning, chasing after ratio; are bankrupt and destructive. They rest on assumptions that can no longer be defended. Assumptions that have had “the benefit of a doubt” afforded them because there was always a “somewhere else” where the damage could remain out of sight.
*Neopredatory is an attempt at naming the habit of imitating the semblance of what a predator does while acting towards fellow humans and the biosphere as a whole. It is a profound misunderstanding of what actual predators do and why they act the way they do as part of a web of life. Neopredation attempts to use predation as a model removed from every meaningful context solely to provide justification for psychopathy. It is a foundational assumption upon which our Edifice of Thought rests and it is a lie.
Once again, I’m reduced to fragments. Everywhere we look all we see are people desperately seeking solutions. Unable to acknowledge that every “solution,” generating its inevitable “unintended consequences,” is but a fragment of the Final Solution. And, as we saw in April/May 1945; this solution ends in a bunker with every choice distilled down to one decision: Luger? Or a cyanide capsule….
We don’t live in a puzzle. This is not a game. And, while we’re at it; why does every game have to be a battle?
Life is a mystery. All we have time for is to inquire, to look at our situation, our condition, and find a next step. We demand answers. In so doing we demand that we will only accept lies. Every answer is a lie, or will become one if held onto long enough.
I’ve long marveled at the utter lack of a working sense of self-preservation in people. It used to be most evident to me at small-boat gatherings where no one seemed to recognize the folly of leaving oarlocks in their sockets when not actually rowing. Being in and around small boats where it’s easy to lose your balance and fall while intentionally leaving a pair of sharp horns pointing upwards on either side; I could just see the potential result: The most innocent stumble leading to horrific injury.
“Any idea what dying from a torn liver feels like?” I’d ask no one in particular. Already aware that no one cared.
This results from the lie that underlies every claim of “unintended consequences.” That, something is “an accident.” “Who knew?” I also believe this is at the heart of what James Baldwin meant by Whiteness, a celebration of the privilege to deny consequences whose results would always fall on someone else.
This lie seems to be at the heart of what we have called Civilization. That focusing on how much more secure we feel if we just allow ourselves to do what is easy and accept that our monetary happiness™ will result in death and destruction. All the while wishing it lands somewhere far away. All the while ready to insist that feigned innocence is a legitimate defense.
And so every aspect of our Predicament has roots in this pact we each inherited and each have accepted to one degree or another. Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD, should have brought some pause. It did not. And now, from wishing away Covid to wishing away that genocide is a red-line, to riding around on freshly paved roads in a “pursuit of happiness;” we see the levels to which self-preservation has been destroyed.
Show up wearing a respirator mask, or insist that no genocidaire should be able to show their face, let alone lead the “fight for democracy!” and you will see how deeply ingrained the resentment and defensiveness is among “regular folk;” how willing everyone is to not just risk it all; but guarantee the destruction of all to maintain their illusions.
While the “leaders” who led them past the illusion of a Thousand Year Reich to the rubble of every one of their cities were hiding in their bunkers, preparing to make their final choice; those “regular volk” were left to face the consequences. All that distinguishes us from them has been the long well hidden truth that the victors in that war just wanted their own American Century™. Not the end of fascism, just a rebranding.
Fascism at its roots is an impoverishment of imagination. A learned, and welcome abandonment of the hard work of responsibility: responding instead of merely reacting to one’s situation; in favor of a conspiracy to maintain a lie. A willingness to risk, and lose, all for the temporary ease of, “getting what we want.”
Imagination starts with being able to look at a situation and imagine what results might arise if we ignore, and actually accept as normal, threats and dangers around us. Especially threats and dangers we have ourselves allowed to be present, and that we could easily remove. If we choose to be responsible.
Like those oarlocks…, “I might need to row!” The rationale for every threat we accept today has its roots in a denial of consequences and a shared refusal to buck the tide of what is “socially acceptable.”
Socially acceptable…. We’ve been trained to see this through a Culture Wars!™ lens. We are either to insist on traditional mores or insist that every transgression is a personal choice™. As with every elite-centric dualism meant to obscure and divide us this ploy hides the fact that obedience to this duality IS the only socially acceptable course.
I recently watched a “documentary” on Life on Earth, “depicting” a half-a-billion year evolution strictly from within the Neopredatory School. Everything a battle. Everything a domination of winners over losers. Each Era of life depicted as if it were an Empire. Each “Empire” overthrown by the next “winners.” Narrated by the universally acknowledged present day Voice of God.
It was agonizing to watch. Knowing how those who made it knew full well that what they were doing was perpetuating a great lie. No coda outlining the “Sixth Great Mass Extinction” could cover their responsibilities, turning the history of Life into a tale to scare children into following a bankrupt ideology.
The story of Life and the history of Civilization are not parallel. Life has always sought coherence and acted to slow entropy. Its great losses were accidents. Truly accidental, resulting from changes in flows, in cumulative and compounding stressors, and once in a half-a-billion-year astronomical events. The rise and fall of Empires has always been self-inflicted. Pushing away consequences until they come home to roost. Insisting that belief trumps actuality. Challenging Nemesis and reaping the world-wind.
The story of human life on Earth is also not just the history of civilization: A predestined march towards the only possible culminating conclusion, Overweening Hubris and Narcissistic Self-worship.
Wow, so many great lines, observations, insights in this! Beauitiful.