This post is also ironic. I listened to about 100 hours worth of recordings of the late Jiddu Krishnamurti in dialogue with people over a 40 year period, (or there about). Some of the people in his audience had been following him around for much of that time.
Jiddu was perhaps the inspiration for the Jedi, who knows, he appeared to retain very few black and white views. I learned a great deal from him, without needing to agree or disagree with what he said. The best thing about his teachings,(for me), was his invitation to re examine our assumptions and the costs and benefits of holding them.
He basically suggested that holding rigid views of the same reality, without being prepared to let go of them was garraunteed to produce a future of conflict.
Yet people took his teachings and tried to find a strategy in them. Tried to turn them into a belief or piece of code they could use to always react a certain way “in future”. Instead of making reality their first point of reference they sought to create a “fixed” advantageous perspective… yet another belief.
While Byron Katie is perhaps the most effective teacher and Eckhart Tolle’s deep presence is beautiful, the late Alan Watts remains my favourite teacher. What I liked about Alan, was his sense of fun and irony. Laughing is such a great way to shake off our excess tension (and its way easier than dancing or cardio).
What’s with today’s strange image?
It is a Rubik's cube that is supposed to look like the Earth crashing through a piece of glass.
Why? (why not)
It represents how we have taken a natural regenerative organic system and shaped it into more rigid structures. How that happened through a series of “improvements” as we both invented and solved problems. The habit of solving what was perfect has led us to a place where we can not stop solving and when we actually do, we are filled with so much wonder and bliss we call it spiritual and try to turn that into a box as well ha ha. Sorry you gotta laugh...
As far as I can tell, the Earth was at peak biodiversity, (maximum relationship) about 70,000 years ago, that is around the time when humans started working together in large groups. (Give or take 100,000 years). Which is super cool, dont get me wrong…. But hell, a lil reflection never hurt
The environment up until that point easily corrected for population or other imbalances, not enough grass, the herds die out. Not enough water, everything dies back, the nutrients remain in place for re-blooming with the return of the rains.
Now humans back then, would have been keenly sensitive to their environment, or they simply would not of lived long enough to add to the gene pool. (Hey Jean, can I use your pool?)
The reason humans work in groups? To share work and diversify tasks, to take advantage of unique aptitudes, skills and experiences. Mostly though because as a group we become instruments of change, we could alter the way we received what we needed or believed we needed.
We had thumbs for making and using tools and we had minds for rehearsing events before committing resources. We could imagine what might happen and we could learn from actually trying those ideas out, so long as we were flexible in our thinking we could work with minimal conflict. Minimal impact, maximal returns - efficiency built on an up-datable and expanding understanding of our environment. Both its hazards and its opportunities could be responded to with intelligence and a wisdom born of rich and direct experiences.
The Story of Man
If we needed more people to help, we had sell our ideas, get people on board. We had to motivate them to stop what they were doing and help with the new plan. We had to not only be good with ideas, we had to be good at selling them.
The problem here was that some people were geniuses at designing fish traps and other people were great story tellers. Pretty soon alliances had to be formed and deals had to be made. A proportion of the catch had to go the story teller, who really had to be creative to keep people excited.
Which is fine except, while the fish trap maker had to conform to reality, the story teller soon learnt that he needed something extra. Everyone had access to reality, all they had to do was sense. The story teller needed something unique. We all had imagination - the ability to create images in our minds. That was not enough to hold peoples attention, we had to make it mean something personal - and make it important.
The stories had to be more interesting than the background of reality, they needed to stick. Emotion needed to be added, and then dialed up, the images needed to be “felt” even “louder” and more vibrant than the background of nature. Where our senses were rich in texture, stories became rich in contrast. Shockingly so. They became SUPER natural.
The added advantage of the SUPER natural, was that these new stories could not be verified or dis-proven. They happened in another dimension and came from a higher author.
Even today we still look to authority figures and experts before we trust our own senses.
Story tellers wove their alternate versions of reality, and crafts people built their machines to alter the flow of resources and control almost every facet of nature. We built structures and social rules to defend and maintain them. This is the cube in the picture, the natural flows of nature confined into our synthetic systems.
So is this a rant against technology? - absolutely not. Our ability to imagine, unite and manufacture also emerged from a perfect system. This is just a stroll through the world of Sapien, both the real and the imagined, to examine what happens when we confuse the two.
Please join me again for the next chapter.. as we explore wether we can create change with less calamity, less conflict and a whole lot more freedom and fun…
=8P