as we all await the great transformation of humanity that will lift us out of the darkness and cast off the load that tethers us to the ground, i rest easy in the library, gazing detached out the window, sitting in a state of amusement writing imaginative assessments of the future. other people pass outside the window with shopping bags in their hands, further back some builders on a construction-site stand around smoking cigarettes. i wonder if these people im seeing ever think about the future of our world and if they sometimes imagine how the world could be if it could be changed. judging by their walking pace i assume they are thinking of other things. school has just finished and the streets are crowded with teenagers. all the sudden a girl texting on her phone stops in the middle of the road. she lifts her eyes up from the phone and looks directly at me. wow. she is dazzling. i wonder if she feels lost like me. she turns around and starts walking the other way. further down the road a man is dragging a reluctant dog. two acquaintances pass and nod lazily to each other. faint smiles.
finally a man walking slowly creeps past the window. the slow walkers always make me happy. the man stops to observe the builders and their equipment. yes, at last, here is a man of the Dao i think to myself, floating downstream with the passing of time, savoring each moment as it grows and expires. these other people, especially some of the young ones, walk fast with their backs slightly hunched forward, as if they were leaning toward that goal they can't get to fast enough. but this man is not capable of lacking time. he can't possibly run out of time - he is time itself. every movement he makes is so slow and patient. he stops the world when he moves. apparently he is amused by the things going on at the construction site and he pauses for a while to let the whole scene sink in. it's lovely to see someone who obviously appreciates the act of seeing. this man is clearly fascinated and usually you only find that in the children. he disappears and two elderly women stroll carelessly down the road at an awkward and low pace, seemingly without purpose or destination, smoking cigarettes as if to lament their indifference.
i see a well-dressed man with a tense face and am reminded that one of the great signs of psychic tension is a strained brow. today the only people with strained brows have been men. they also walk fastest. some of the women look distracted also, but not as intensely as the men. its strange how their eyes flicker around and bounce off the scenery without settling anywhere. they are constantly looking up ahead and down at the ground again. back and forth. they see the building site - look up - then down again, then back at the building site, kind of disinterested and apathetic. the couples and the young mothers seem like the happiest. they are the ones who smile just because. and their stature isn't dense and stiff like the others. again i catch myself wondering if these people, like me, feel like their life is just random fumbling around in a place where everything is pitch dark. do they sometimes wonder why all this is happening? have they seen as i have how life leaves you dumber and dumber as each day goes by?
surely the freshly-baked parents and the couples in love do not succumb to such existential despair and the teenagers are probably too immature to even know what to call these feelings. but i dare say that in the most fundamental sense possible we are truly lost. no one knows the way forward anymore. the situation we have now is one of total confusion and utter alienation. and i think this is why im sitting here performing this half-assed attempt at psychoanalysis on strangers in my field of vision. actually they are stereotypes inside my mind but that's besides the point. im analyzing them because i sense that the modern person really has no anchor or foothold in existence. he drifts from day to day, from stimulant to stimulant, without a point of reference to ground him. he knows no familiarity except constant change. he travels and travels and never comes home. this is why my extended family out there in the world of money and jobs, which i have no part in, all look so discontent and dispirited. this is why they walk fast and endlessly scan their surroundings. they truly have no place to rest their mind and soul. so they walk endlessly from place to place never really stopping anywhere, never really resting. they're always aimed toward that next thing up ahead, always preoccupied by things in the future.
if you were to take any average person in western society and bereave them of all their worldly goods and lock them up in a dark room for a very long time they would probably have a nervous breakdown. you would have taken from them all that prevented the realization of their own emptiness. no longer kept distracted by the endless turmoil of modern life they would with great reluctance and denial gradually come to see themselves as the empty shells they were. no phone or computer to provide artificial communication. no tv to provide artificial ideas and situations. no people to provide an artificial sense of identity. indeed, the whole person is artificially created and maintained by stimulation through social norms and mass media. all the layers are provided so that one gets the illusion of being a person, of having values, interests, tastes and preferences, without actually going to the trouble of acquiring them through actual experience or reflection. in the business of life we forget that ones identity, both within and without, must be earned trough effort and determination. if you wish a change of personality, a change of character, you are required to do massive amounts of internal self-discernment. there is no other way than to sit down, literally with yourself and only yourself, and get to work.
instead we are told what to wear, what to say, what to do, what to like, what to believe, what to feel. all these things that define us are chosen on our behalf so that this whole process of individuation becomes cramped and what we get as an end-result is a bunch of would-be angels with their wings clipped by propaganda and expectation. its scary to think that probably half the world is running on auto-pilot half the time. and mass media and consumer-culture create this sort of hive-mind where you have half the country watching the same station every night, seeing the same things, hearing the same songs and, in sense, being the same person. it is deeply screwed up, i tell ya. but what i think is happening here is that mass media, in their ever-expanding mission to reign the earth, have fashioned a template for individuality. this, when confronted by us, the tired wanderers who have always been wondering who and what they are, seems like an excellent opportunity to get a break from the harsh reality of searching and unknowing. the endless grinding of forces which is required in the process of individuation can finally come to a halt. no tension - no problem - no progress. this is mildly put a huge issue in the world today because when people don't blossom into the independent strong-headed learning-able beings they have the potential to become, they regress into this hive-mind, the collective mind, which is this template of personality we all more or less copy in the attempt of being a person.
so if you have the collective mind informing fifty percent of your behavior and beliefs you are half zombie, half human. to the degree one is instructed by the hive-mind and follows this instruction one will be what the hive-mind is. and let me say that this concept, "the collective/hive mind", is not something that just exists out-there, like a mountain or an ocean. it is to a large extent maintained and influenced by day-to-day human activity. saying it is the sum of all human behavior comes about as close to the mark as i can get at the moment with my understanding. this sum may when added together become a ruling pattern of behavior. what most people did last year is what most people are likely to do next year. this is the way the hive-mind could work. the more minds that follow the same rules, think in the same way, watch the same entertainment, talk about the same things, the bigger the hive-mind may become.
anyway, to round this long rant off, a lot more people than usual are more confused than ever about what the hell is going on. shit is happening and its becoming more evident as time passes that big changes are about to occur. so if my theory is correct more and more people will cease their efforts to grow as individuals as a consequence of general confusion, and regress into the hive-state, which in turn should cause more people to display similar behavior which again increases the influence of the collective mind. in effect this means that we are headed toward a very rough time for the individual. seeing as the 21st century is likely to the be the era of the individual, this makes little sense at first glance. i think that what we are experiencing is the last feverish death-cramps of a colossal power, maybe the old hive mind, that reigned the earth for millions of years. and so like an animal rids itself of anxiety by shaking itself violently, this is is the earth gathering strength for a giant shake which will probably last many decades. but before it does this, the earth, ourselves, Gaia, God, whatever, will probably concentrate and intensify all its bad aspects, like poverty, war, the old controlling hive-mind, until it reaches a climax of suffering and general shittyness that is so bad that we have no possible alternative than to create a better world. its like flushing out bad energy. you gather it all together in the most concentrated way possible and then you release it all at the same time. i have no idea if any of what i have said might be true but it is one of the few explanations of our worsening situation that has made any sense in light of the fact that we are evolving while simultanously getting worse. evolving but getting worse seems to be an incompatible statement but if my theory if plausible, its likely that this is how the earth does it. it evolves for millions of years, then goes haywire for a hundred while all the organisms go through trials and hardships and get rid of all their shortcomings, then its back to business as usual.
so yeah. i expect weird times.
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