How to think about the struggle against absurdity

Starting points:
-think about the rant concerning Existentialism in the film "waking life"
-think about the search for meaning and if you put any stock in it
-think about an experience where fairness reigned, such as a job or team

We all want the world to make sense to us, foremost, and to future generations, abstractly. A good though-experiment perspective is to imagine yourself, as a child at a moment, having our society explained to you for the first time. This combines that future abstract with looking out for number one.

Let's take a step back. Existential struggles are the oft-ignored realities of the human condition. the illusion that we share our existential struggles is comforting but incorrect. What we share is a desire to have our existential struggles reflected in other people, and in the future.

Let's take the example of punishment for crime. Let's narrow it to crimes against individual autonomy such as robbery, assault, etc. Imagine explaining the punishment system we have to a child (you). The child says, "so it's wrong to forcefully take things from people?"

From here we imagine a teacher that understands 1. that existential struggles are the fabric of humanity and 2. that absurdity is best avoided by sound thought. He says, "Yes. Imagine having someone forcefully intrude upon your life, making you feel as if you had no control, and then imagine that experience depriving you of something that you assumed you would have in the future. It would likely make you feel that the world was less about your wished and desires, and more of a Gothic comedy."

The child might respond, "Sure it would be frightening and unfair, I can understand that, but why punish the thief?"

"We punish the thief out of compassion for the thief and the victim. For the victim, we are saying, 'do not read into this experience too much, it is not about you (from our perspective). What the thief did was wrong and so he needs to be punished, so as to understand his act. This experience has given him a great opportunity for growth, growth that he clearly needs. We are all grateful for your sacrifice and will try to reimburse you for your loss. We, as society, wish you the best of luck in figuring out whether there is any meaning behind your involvement with this experience. We, however, will deal primarily with the criminal, as he has availed himself to our laws and attention.' In this was society gives the victim a way out of his existential crisis, tying the event to the illusion that our individual consciousnesses can truly be connected in a meaningful way. The out is not logically sound though."

The child follows, "Well, that makes sense. The victim is a victim and there is little that can be officially done about that I suppose. If he is reimbursed and the criminal punished, he cannot ask more. Not everything can be addressed by society."

"Exactly. now on to the criminal. The criminal needs to be punished 1. because he was caught and there are laws and the only way for those laws to not be meaningless is for them to be applied and 2. because the criminal must be made to understand that his crime threatened to destroy the central illusion upon which society is built, that of shared existence and the possibility for shared future goals for society. Society says to the criminal, 'we truly wish for you to come to understand that inflicting you will upon another is a depraved act, depraved in that it shows that you have deprived yourself of our glorious illusion. If you do not adhere to this illusion, you will be a danger to society and will invariably face expulsion (in some form) or further punishment in the future. We do this out of compassion because we believe that this illusion is good and gives the kind of meaning to our lives that we can share and enjoy together. We would like to include you in our game, please take this opportunity to convince yourself of this illusion.' In this way society is offering a truce, an opportunity for 'growth' in the direction which they accept as good. And so you see that proper punishment is not malicious at all."

The child replies, "I see what you mean. It is complicated and circular and yet makes sense. What about this proper punishment business?"

"Proper punishment is that which a society can truly hang it's hat on and say, 'we ARE truly trying to save your societal soul. We do not wish to make you fear us but only to make you understand the position that you put us in and perhaps to fear your own actions. In this way we are not punishing you but allowing for your actions to cause punishment for yourself.' Or society strives for this type of punishment, or should, and this is what preserves the dignity of our justice system so that children like you can learn about it and choose to partake in our society without guilt."

I hold that if these were the underlying values and we aspired toward them, then absurdity would be lessened in the criminal punishment realm.



P.S.- In a state of nature, existential individualism would rule and punishment would occur without a society to impose it. This piece is not meant to be a proponent of society but merely an explanation of how we might look at our justice system without shame.

Gifts to the Night

Now that I have given up on the past
I've garnered some trust and I know it will last

How that I've started to let myself go
The end is inside every act of the show

Let me rewind you and open your eyes
Your spinner is spun, you wont compromise

The fruits of the future are carrots on strings
Once you begin to believe what you sing

Others are sources of intrigue and hope
Inspire the tireless focus of scope

Consumption and light are gifts to the night
It isn't so cruel to have such a plight

To be conscious of time nexus

Imagine being conscious of time nexuses
Conscious meaning knowing that you know

A time nexus, as used here, is a place in time when continuing change has begun
From this moment forward, a pattern will arise

We all experience time nexus thoughts
I just don't think that I'll have enjoy this much longer
I bet this signifies the beginning of an end

Imagine knowing, and knowing that you know
That a nexus of time has occurred

It will be liberating and powerful
And cut down on grasp-mileage

The open road

I can hit the open road
I can deal with undealt hands and unknown faces

The problem is that I can already do this
What I can't do is stay, sit, stay

Keep the wander skills fresh or develop the domestic ones?
The problem with domesticity is that it's a trap
Hard to see how wandering is a trap, well not too hard

Settle too early or settle to late
Which is my fate?

How to get help from the world

We all need help. Most of us are not so great at getting the kind of help that we truly need, though. That long-lasting, dynamic help, the watching, waiting-for-the-right-moment-to-step-in help.

The easiest way to learn how to get help is to learn how to give help, learning how to listen and wait, respecting the unique struggles of others.

Helping isn't easy. Helping is a sacrifice without a guaranteed return. At some point, though, helping is much easier than living without knowing how to get help from the world.

We prefer to think of time as a concept as opposed to a dimension.
We prefer to think of when we are as opposed to where we are in it.

We must experience where we are.
Now is the only when.

Where has it been all my life.
It's been here, now, my whole life.

Now comes from nowhere.
Now has been here.

The future is there.
the past is there.
Was and will be are mere directions.
How far was that, how far will be that.

How long until the now I hope for.

Monkey's typing Shakespeare

If you have never heard of this thought experiment, look it up!

It seems to me that the probability of a monkey or group of monkeys writing Shakespeare would go down if we were to teach all the monkeys in the experiment a few words but not all the words they would need and, of course, not as much as they would need to know about the human condition or language to re-create Shakespeare's wit and insights on their own.

Really think about that. I think that if you do, then you will agree that teaching the monkeys a little will reduce the likelihood of one or a group of them writing a sizable passage of Shakespeare, let's say a sonnet or more.

Now let's extrapolate. The odds of a modern human creating a perfect communication (explanation, poetry, lyric, whatever you wish to imagine) goes down the more they are "taught," from the outside and take to be a kind of necessary ingredient. I mean "taught" as in beyond language, like about the importance of this or that. I mean...

That was perhaps a stretch. Instead, let's just say that if we all knew English but never felt any pressure to agree with each other on anything, we'd find more perfect forms of expression quicker, as a group, than in the situation we have now.

I believe that from this conclusion, we can salvage a new source to justify our ever-longed-for interdependence. Imagine if all we ever wished to accomplish by socializing was to understand what other people were trying to express. Not to agree, or start a club, or partially agree and then convince them of a slightly better formulation, but just to understand. And this will to understand, this desire to understand, would of course lead one to wish that they could be understood more easily. This would lead to general compassion and, as mentioned before and fortified by this will to understand, a quicker process of genuine intellectual, poetic, and perhaps all other forms of expression.

Let's cabin this "expression" concept to speech and imagine a conversation:

Person 1: "blah blah blah"
Person 2: "I understand, blah blah blah"
Person 1: "I understand, blah blah blah"
Person 2: "I understand, blah blah blah"
Person 1: " I understand, and... that is the most sublime way of putting it that I have ever heard."

Now let's try a conversation in the society we have now:

Person 1: "I was thinking the other day about that thought experiment with monkeys typing Shakespeare. Do you think they would type Shakespeare faster or slower if they were taught only a few words? I think slower."
Person 2: "Oh yeah. I learned about that in college. is it like the whole group is pressing keys and there is only one output? Or are there just a bunch of them with individual outputs. I think that makes a difference."
Person 1: "That definitely makes a difference. For my variation to make sense, it would have to be individual outputs, more monkeys just to make the process faster."
Person 2: "Yeah well I don't think there would be a difference. It would still seem random"
Person 1: "But don't you think that a monkey knowing a word would make that monkey have some weird preference for the word?"
Person 2: "No."
Person 1. "I don't understand how you could see it that way."

Are we scaring the kind spirits away?

When I feel my most peaceful and lucid I find cars and the hard-lines of development frightening.

I find flippant remarks like "well that's just the way it is" and "life isn't fair" to send me reeling

And so, I must ask again, are we scaring the kind, wise spirits away?

I heard they live in the water and come out at night
I heard that it is a dangerous journey for them
Dangerous even before, before 24-hour streetlights and the stumbling young, before all the hard ground and hard-line-shadows, the buzz and the smell of waste

Are you scaring the kind, wise, peaceful, beautiful spirits away?

Are you hard or soft before you tumble to sleep?
How would you react to spirit coming to your bedside?
You might ask, "what are you doing?" and the spirit will hold your hand and say, "This is alright for now"

Are we scaring the kind, wise, peaceful, beautiful, gentle, brave, caring spirits away?

Walking briskly down a Portland, Oregon, street I see a man in a wheelchair, facing a most confused direction in the middle of a crosswalk. I spring into action and as I grab the chair and start pushing, I quickly gauge this man's cognitive abilities.

He is in his late 50's and a bit muddy of mind. Immediately I analogize his condition to that of my now-deceased father's toward the end. Multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's or some such thing I unconsciously decide as I try to figure which direction to take this man and when to stop caring.

We get to a safe location on the sidewalk and he starts talking to me with a purpose. I lean in and he says in an all-too familiar tone and cadence, "cheeseburger,... cheeseburger."

I recognize this kind of shameful demand as the world constricts and crushes my chest. My emotional attachments discontinue and I say in a friendly tone, "You are safe now. I've got to go. Be careful," and slowly walk away.

At some point, some (perhaps all) of these cases, the people with the degenerative neurological type of disease, lose the strength not to use others as a means to their ends. They use those around them to enable their cravings, enable their many masks and delusions, and most tragically to enable their now-inevitable rapid decline. I had seen it before.

It's not that I didn't wish to help the man. I wanted to help him. I just knew that I couldn't.

My Musk

All the ladies can smell my sweet testosterone
It ripples outward from my furrowed brow
Having seeped down from my glorious bare forehead

Bitches beware
You are going to love it
But you won't like that you love it

Such is the potency of my musk

Written for another

Love me world for I am a flower
I swear that I have tried to grow in the right direction

On cloudy days I crumble
Sometimes enjoy the fall

I get lazy and grow with the wind
I save energy and make myself tired
I apologize in spite of my lack of beliefs
I imagine myself wandering in spite of myself

Pull me through
I wish to go through
Enough with this going around the eye of the needle on all sides
Feeling the slice of my past

Enough with feelings that I can wish away but don't
I'm saving my energy and making myself tired

Love me Because
I still try to go in the right direction

Blink in the eye of Brahma

I had a realization the other night about phrase I'd heard along the lines of "it's all a blink in the eye of Brahma," referring to the time line of our entire universe being a relatively contained and perhaps even controlled event from the perspective of the "God" that created it. Whatever you may think about what ancient astronomer/astrologers had figured out about the time lines of our universe, I believe the concept that I arrived at has inherent appeal. Sure, I tend to think that The Mayans and "Hindu" writers of the Upanishads tended to have a good grasp on the time-patterns our our universe but such blind faith is not required to understand or appreciate the concepts below.

What led to the realization was a conversation with a friend in which i was trying to explain what an evolution within consciousness would be like. I explained that our universe had already had evolutions within consciousness like the development of life-consciousness, parent-offspring consciousness, family identity, national identity, understanding power and dominion, and interaction with technology, etc. The point is that while not everything is alive, has a familial identity, has a national identity, or has become aware in other ways, the result of these evolutions within consciousness are all around us. These evolutions are occurring and will continue to occur.

I was putting forth the idea that we are approaching an evolution within consciousness that will take us to the level of the God-consciousness that created this world. That is when I had the realization...

Think about a blink. A blink is the closing off of the eye from the light of the outside world. Surely even those of you who couldn't follow the first part of this post can understand light as the perfect metaphor (reality?) for (of) truth and the absence of hidden truth. And so, Imagine that our whole universe is what occurs when the creator God, call it Brahma, consciously or perhaps even unconsciously, closes itself off from... well the truth about itself?... and plunges into darkness. The darkness tries to figure itself out, it is made of God but it has forgotten that.

I would imagine being made of God is a good start but certain leaps must take longer than others. Imagine how science tells us that our world has evolved. Matter turns to more complex matter, suns then planets form, organic materials and then life, and then of course evolution (only then, OF COURSE!). All of this time has been a period of remembering and trial and error and intuition.

I personally believe that everything has some form of consciousness and some form of intuition. Such a belief is not necessary, though, to understand what follows. Think of it as an allegory. If the only type of consciousness around is matter, who is going to figure out the need for organic matter? Inorganic material has no need for organic material, you see? There make have been some intuition (or call it what you will) to become more complex and so matter got together and the massive pressure and fiery oven of stars surely fulfilled some of that intuition. Anyway, I think you get the point, that it would take a while to get from point A to point B if all you had was a bunch of A.

As you can imagine, these evolutions get quicker as they go. This is why things have been speeding up. Having human beings with our complex brains and creative tendencies has allowed for these intuitive steps (the same steps that the first atom "wanted" to make but couldn't figure out) to occur more rapidly. Humans realized that communication is important--> the internet.

So, in closing, I don't mean to just berate you with cumulative arguments but I realized that we are in the moment in history right before the lid separates and Brahma's eye is open once more. This universe will rejoin the God-consciousness that created it by shutting itself off from the truth about itself. So far, though I have not decided the fastidiousness of the blink metaphor, I prefer to think of it as a conscious blink, similar to the Toltec god Quetzalcoatl jumping into the fire, that God knew or had faith it would emerge from. Perhaps God has done this before.

A Twinge of Pure Fear

I had been thinking of picking up my old blog for the past few weeks. I was inspired to do this by an old acquaintance, Rachael, who had recently started one up. I was lying in bed tonight and browsing the web when I stumbled upon a youtube video about a certain drug of a certain psychedelic type...

For some reason I had a premonition that this generically titled video about the drug would have some scary truth about it, the kind of scary truth that I might explain later but some of us deep meditators are all too familiar with (essentially the illusion of life). I have no idea whether this video would have scared me or not but I do know that the combination of me having that mind-frame and the music starting out loudly did in fact terrify me for a moment. Add on to that the picture of an alien head on a thumbnail for a related video and, presto, I am now blogging instead of freaking myself out late at night. I decide to start a new blog because my old one was rather childish, late-adolescent/young-adultish to be exact.

So this post is about pure fear. I have had certain experiences that have added depth to my understanding of things, mostly through meditation. I do believe that those experiences have, for better or worse, opened up (down?) certain depths in my consciousness. I will never know if these depths are well-placed or beneficial. This is fine with me. Without dwelling on this set-up, I mean to say that I do think my personal depth-journeys have led me to some truth and insight about this particular subject.

What is pure fear? I think that I know. I must confess. Pure fear is fear that one has no control, that life as one knows it is a lie, that from this moment forward one will know for sure that nothing one called important before will ever seem even slightly meaningful ever again.

Pure fear can be described differently. Pure fear is not an approaching death where death is believed to be nothingness. Pure fear is realizing that one is already dead or rather the reaction to that realization. When I say "dead" here I mean that a realization takes all meaning out of all things one thought would continue with meaning. Pure fear is the instantaneous, pre-conscious reaction to that realization which itself might be unconscious.

And now, for those of you who have hung in there with me this long, I offer you a warm repose. Fear is only ego-deep and you are not your ego. Fear is limited in degree to the level of control your ego has on you. The ego must first convince itself of important, meaningful things before it can convince you of them. The ego wants to be needed and so invents. Before we go too hard on the little one we must remember that it is not malicious in intent. It wishes to serve, wishes to help us survive, wishes to give us something to think about. We let it do everything that it does but then... we forget that we have let it. So when an outside event or an intuitive realization occurs which pulls the rug out from under all of those white lies, the emptiness of the ego is revealed and for us the reaction is fear. If it truly was all of those white lies which were destroyed, then the fear will be great indeed. For a split second our self is without a blanket, without a room, without a story to be constantly listening to (whether it be a close listen like to a lover's heartbeat or as an old woman listens to the TV in the other room while she does her chores). Our self thinks that it is without itself. In truth, it has just taken a big leap toward self-realization.

I hope that if you have followed this far you have also understood that this post begs and may answer the question: Is death the end?