Individuality and the Collective

INDIVIDUALITY AND THE COLLECTIVE

An age-old debate: the primacy of the individual vs. the collective power of the community.

"There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal".

-George Santayana, The Life of Reason

The individual is the only reality. Everything else is a by product of that fact. The truth also contains the fact that we are born and live in a symbiotic relationship to others. We are not born without our mothers and cannot survive and flourish without a family and community that allow us to learn and gain maturity to stand on our two feet. I am not criticizing the reality of the collective life as it is a reality and necessity for human existence. What we do have to face is the pervasive and almost unconscious influence that collective reality creates which ultimately decides how effectively the individual embedded within it's web is allowed to become a truly autonomous individual with the ability to think freely against collective wisdom, to grow and change in ways not envisioned by the group and the ultimate gift of being allowed to express the particular and individual gift we have inside us that needs an opening to manifest. All real change, discovery, genius and exploration comes from the individual fighting to breakdown barriers and expand the frontiers of human endeavour. The role of society is to develop and perpetuate a structure that allows human life to survive in a hostile environment: safety and stability are it's watchword. These are not bad qualities. We would not be here without them. But to move forward we have to struggle against the fences of social constraint to meet the challenges that surround us. We need to recognize that most of the problems that confront us through history are reflections of the exaggerated effects of collective action: tribalism, nationalism, violence, fear, prejudice, stereotyping and a practiced ability to refuse to see the truth beyond our own small domain. The danger of the future is the jarring collision of tribal parochialism and cultural pride butting up against a world that is quickly intermingling but causing ripples of paranoia as this blending of peoples accelerates. It is interesting that at a time of rapid and improved communication around the world we are simultaneously confronting a kneejerk reactionary movement which denies the reality of what is happening and would rather blind us with nativism and terror. We are reaching a fork in the road where we need to be able to leave the old ways of survival behind that functioned well in a sparsely populated and scattered humanity. We absolutely need to understand the particular familial, educational, national and cultural conditioning upon which we continue to rely for dealing with a world that has moved far beyond it. It is knocking on the door and we need to know how to answer the call and take the steps that will lead us to a better future without damaging and possibly destroying that growth before it has a chance to be born.

The Characterless Future

I am citing a National Post article of Sept. 5, 2009 based on a Der Spiegel article by Reinhard Mohr:

" We have the infamous 'be Berlin/sei Berlin' city marketing campaign that wants to transform the lively process of change that Berlin has undergone over the last twenty years into a moneymaker, like a good that can be made pretty, packaged up and exported to all corners of the globe. But what the people behind the campaign don't realise is that, over the long term, this kind of sales pitch undermines the mystique of decay and excitement that made Berlin such an attractive commodity all over the world in the first place. It's like the process of sucking out all the aesthetic marrow that has happened to beautiful and picturesque places all over the world...Places give up their flair in return for long, ant-like lines of tourists - and the money they bring."

This is so emblematic of the commoditisation and uniformity that has gripped our modern world.

We want to transplant a bland sameness, regularity and security to everywhere on the globe. I thought the point of travel was to experience the amazing variety and diversity that should characterise any venture into cultural exploration. Instead we want to avoid the differences that might confuse or disturb us, or that might challenge our core understanding of how life is lived on this planet. This is symptomatic of our approach to life in general, at home or abroad. We seem to be systematically weeding out difference, character, eccentricity, and exploration into the dazzling variance of human life that has flourished upon this earth for eons in our seperate but brave attempts to cope with the diverse challenges that have forged our cultural identies. We need to be unified in celebrating and learning from our differences rather than mowing them down in the name of peace. We will only find peace in moving beyond our differences not by eliminating or pretending they don't exist. We are all as human beings trying to struggle with our ever increasingly confusing place in this world. As our technology continues to make us confront each other we must be both tolerant of difference and at the same time realise that if we don't move beyond the barriers of our historical limits we will put ourselves in a peril that could easily spin out of control.

We are creating an increasingly sterilised society that has been scrubbed clean in the name of safety and a conflict-free world that I don't believe represents the way we want our future to evolve. Again we are hurtling into a future we haven't adequately thought about or reflected upon. If we don't wake up we will be so anaesthetized that we will be impotent to make all the proper decisions that we so desperatedly need to consider. We all need to take responsiblity for the direction our world is taking. We are creating an antiseptic cocoon that is too clean, too perfect, with no risk, no rough edges, no random chance, no life. Due to our obsession to protect ourselves from the vicissitudes of life we are wrapping ourselves in a straightjacket that will stifle our freedom and creativity until our evolutionary growth will grind to a stifled halt. Contingency is a fact of life and our attempt to eradicate it will eradicate the essence of life itself.

Reflections on an Economic Crisis

Now that we appear to be emerging on the other side of the great worldwide economic upheaval of the past year it is time to begin the process of studying, analyzing and defining how we got ourselves into this mess that came so close to a real financial meltdown with probable catastrophic consequences for the world economy. If we don't understand and resolve the conditions that contributed to that calamity we will be back in it's grip a few years from now. This effort will need the collective will, courage and honesty of all parties involved including each one of us who were cheering on from the sidelines for so long. Otherwise we cannot get to the crux of the problem and understand where the responsibility lies. We know that greed, self-interest and power were major contibutors to the events that created this near disaster. This exercise might be about assigning blame but not about punishment or retribution; instead about a process that will teach us all a lesson we so sorely need to understand. The need for sacrifice and the creation of a uniform and worldwide system built on trust is an imperative which will be difficult to attain.

The issue of bonuses for executives and financial wizards is an obvious example. The commonsense argument is that when successful the agents that created that success should be compensated handsomely as a reward for allowing all of us to profit from a stellar economic climate. But the other side of the arguement says that when failure, risk and incompetence create a serious downturn and a huge loss of investment worldwide then those responsible for the calamity should pay the price similar to what the rest of us face in our daily work lives: loss of job, income and reputation. The present system has an adequate response to success but none to failure. The spoils of success go disproportionately to the few but failure is spread evenly. The people who run and operate our financial system need to appreciate that they have a responsibility to all of us and that means that they take the loss if they gamble and risk our hard-earned money. Right now they win no matter how the game is played. They need to have the same risk we take so they will learn to be more cautious and prudent in their decisions.

We need to clean the proverbial Augean stables with the bright light of honesty and fairness. We need to get back to a system that rewards success but has consequences for irrational and venal behaviour. Then we will need to take a hard look at ourselves and realise how material gratification and greed play too central a part in our daily lives. We all enabled the problem to get out of control. We were eager and complicit partners in crime.

This could be one of those teaching moments.

Questions

QUESTIONS

The right question could save the world.

You might say that answers are more important but it is the question that is the crux of the matter. In the question, is the answer. We are so quick today to look for the easy answers to anything that we do not realise that it is the question that is crucial. How can we go about properly solving a problem if we don't take the time and interest to fully research and understand it so we can adequately articulate how to formulate the right question to ask. I believe if we do, we will come to more satisfactory conclusions that actually deal with the issue instead of framing the questions so as to get a politically correct or culturally accepted response. Problem solving is about getting to the truth, the crux of the matter honestly and cleary; and then finding the right, not the expedient or popular or easy resolution of the problem. To raise questions is to disturb ourselves, force ourselves to look at the reality of the situation with open, unbiased eyes and let it fully penetrate our psyches so we can understand it's true context and our role and responsibility in the problem. And guess what; we are always culpable, involved and responsible as individual human beings. It is not someone else's problem; we can't rationalize or evade and we have to seriously realize we are all in on the problemand we are all needed for the solution. The beauty of this method when fully implemented is that it leaves the answers open and fresh rather than using the usual method of presupposing the solution in advance to relieve our anxiety. As it is said: you are either part of the problem or part of the solution, and we are the problem. So we had better recognize that fact and get on with it and become the solution. We need to create a book of questions, a compendium of all the queries that define our lives, an atlas of riddles that need to be mapped and revealed.

Life as Art

lying in my bed

watching the sea crash the shore

a Tamil sunrise.

when a flash appeared

two trails of exploding light

meteoric dawn.

Life as Art:

Life as a Work in Progress

...a sort of synaesthesia,

polymorphous perversity.

I think it would be a step forward for the human race if they were able to individually conceive

of their daily life in it's minuteness and in it's total breadth as a work of art. Not to take ourselves too seriously but always mindful of the gift that is our place upon this little planet with all it's trials and sorrow. We should be able to include all the elements of the artistic view such as symmetry, balance, harmony and rythm into that creation which is our daily life. Not just to create a work of art but to live it. Art is a way to experience ourselves in relation to the universe and our particular chance to express what we are to the world as a whole. We should be able to step through life with a lightness and studied movement that evokes our deepest sense of living and contributes to a better relationship with our fellow man that can influence without manipulation, that encourages sensitivity, deep awareness and perspicacity in those we touch in our lives. To use perspective to create a balance in our actions as we unfold the mystery that is our sojourn through life. To be able at the end of the day to say this is what I achieved and added to the sum total of human existence. And sleep well at night.

The Future of Education

What is missing from the education system? Heart, soul, breadth, passion, rigorous allegiance to facts, openness to a new spectrum of ideas, debate and wonder. Education has become a deadened teach-to-the-syllabus process of mind-numbing conformity overburdened with government interference and control; too afraid to challenge it's parents to allow it to achieve what they never experienced: a pursuit of excellence and rigour at all cost allowing the free expression of thought which can allow a society to be the frontline on the frontier of the future where our children will be living and creating a new world. There is a tragic loss of potentiality with each generation that fails to resolve this deficiency. Education has the power to help us all to realize the weak fallacies that underpin our cultural framework, sweep away the deadwood and allow the next generation to have the grounding and scope to develop the fresh perspectives that can lead us to a better outcome and give us the integrity to influence a sceptical world to move in a more progressive and unified trajectory. Until we reward excellence and the pursuit of the truth with an objective analysis of all our shortcomings as a people we will never allow the individual to unleash the powers of their minds and talents to build toward a better world. Teachers need to be the facilitators that fire the innate energy and wonder of children to open their minds and give them the world so they can put a constructive and reverential stamp upon it.

The Lighthouse Keeper

a lighthouse keeper

alone above the dark seas

sighs, guards the beacon.

The lighthouse is an excellent metaphor for how we should approach the issue of influencing the world around us toward a better end. The lighthouse is our self. It needs to be well maintained and properly constituted so that the light that shines from it is strong, pure and coherent. But what is most important is the fact that we project to the world what is best of ourselves and in such a way that it is seen and received in a manner the watcher can accept as his own. Like a boat at sea upon a dark night, the observer needs to use that light as they see fit, or not at all. Influence is a very dangerous thing. To maniputate and bully is to emasculate those being influenced rather than giving them the inspiration to make the journey for themselves. We all have to step softly in the public arena. To be a catalyst that signals and nurtures another beacon in another lighthouse is the best we can do. Then they have to tend to their own fire and light their own way in the world.

Keep the fuel stoked and the flame clean. Wipe the windows clear, maintain a silence in the tower. For the epiphany will come unannounced and unbidden, an ineffable moment. And come it will, to those prepared.

Tower of Babel

What a great noise we are making!

An overwhelming tsunami of sound and fury. A great flood has inundated the world and Noah in nowhere to be found. From the empty bellowing of the radio waves, to the puzzled phrases of the written word, to the blurred visual imagination of television, to the inane drone of the ubiquitous cell phone, to the anger and bombast of internet postings, to a twittering in the distance. This cloud computing leviathan has put a dank fog upon human discourse. We can access the world but cannot discern a single voice. We have a million thoughts at our fingertips but we can't wade throught the clotted digital arteries full of bile and mediocrity that blinds us to a commonality of purpose. From duelling mystics to craven mammon: a virtual Tower of Babel.

And here I am in the middle of it waving my flag. Maybe I'm making the same mistake we all are and should just keep my mouth shut.

I think we have gone through the looking glass and we have no idea whose running the asylum.

It's all White Noise. Is this the best we can do?

Maybe it will eventually cancel itself out and we will be left with ineffable silence.

GADFLY

Aristotle's defence at his trail:

"If you kill me, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me."

"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of the truth"

The gadfly needs to be the postmodern man. The pinprick, the balloon deflator, the applier of cold water, the translator of signs, the voice that cries in the wilderness and the hand that stays the onslaught.

...I talk to the wind.

And the gadfly needs to start, by healing thyself. It is no good pontificating to an uncaring world with vacuous words. There is enough of that already. You begin by cleansing the dross of a lifetime that is your identity and place in this world. The unexamined life is not worth living as Aristotle also wisely added. Almost all that we are and believe has never been questioned or examined. We are a collection of disparate influences: family, community, peers, school and media. We have swallowed the menu whole in unquestioning obedience as good members of our society and culture. Now it is about time we look at ourselves and what we represent with an unjaundiced eye and a reasoned temperament. Undauntingly we must challenge our deepest core beliefs and values to find out if they pass the true test in the clear light of day. Then and only then can we proceed to view the wide expanse or our community, culture, nation and planet with open eyes and begin to effect a change which could transform our lives.

We must rub our eyes and throw off the sleepiness so as to begin to walk in the daylight of a mature human life. The childish things need to go. We are not playing with toys anymore.

CERTITUDE

You need an absolute, unshakeable certainty and conviction in your own self-worth and in the wonder and beauty of life. It is only with that at the core of your being that you can then clearly and vigorously look at your life, the community around you and human life upon this planet in such a way that you can come to the crux of the problem; which is the solution of it all. Not a wilful stubborness or a blind faith in unjustifiable ideas but a grounded and honest understanding that at one's centre lies a clear vision and an emotional honesty and passion that allows us the strength to take on the messy vicissitudes of the world and the obvious contradictions that exist in our own being. You will need an inner strength to be able to strip bare all the conditioning and the dross that so fills our lives and propels us to actions we can't possibly excuse. Joseph Campbell said: " the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are." And how many of us allow ourselves the time and space to find out who we really are. It is quite simple and a wonder. It is not navel-gazing. It is about the fact that we can't take responsibility for our place in the world till we take responsibility for who we are.

The pathless land

I sat on the edge

of an ocean, setting sun

no roads to follow.

I am at the end of the road, of a life-long journey. I came all this way to look at what I thought was the last best hope and instead find that I have to set aside all my illusions that there is really somewhere that actually practices what it preaches, lives up to it's expectations and could become a home of like-minded individuals on the same quest with the same passion and integrity. Since it appears a lost cause I have to confront that fact and then get on with it. I might feel some pain but it is also strangely liberating. All paths have been trod and found wanting. I feel like I am being stripped clean like bark off a tree. It is a cleansing process and tossing away the accumulated garbage of a long life can lighten the step. It's like throwing your life into the Large Hadron Collider until you hit the wall, splitting yourself up, breaking apart and then picking up the pieces to map the scattering shards, read the runes and move on. I made a mistake early in life by taking an epiphany that came unbidden and then to try to fit it into the mould of present spiritual and philosophical experience rather than just get into the depths of what it represents for me personally without being put into a straight jacket of thought and living that could never express it. I now have to get face to face with myself without any filters and go into the pathless land.

TIME: A Double-Edged Sword

The one thing missing in this time-obsessed world is time itself. We are so busy, our days so filled with activity that another day is gone before we even realise it had started. Time is money: what a curious thought. In our commoditized world it might make sense but it is a very dangerous phrase. Time is your life! It better be worth more than money. Otherwise we are dead people. I believe that time is the one precious experience we need the most and have the least of in this modern world. And by time I mean that totally free time, competely seperate from our daily whirl. We do not take time to get away from it all and remove ourselves from our personal daily circumstances enmeshed in the drama of our culture in which we are so deeply identified. We need time to decompress first. We cannot realise what is going on or what we could possibly be missing till we radically seperate ourselves for awhile to let that chaotic momentum wash away from us. Only when that occurs can the real process begin. A certain seperation, isolation and distance is needed to give the perspective that will accomplish the goal. A complete change of scenery and geography is probably best and that is why travel can be such a tonic when it allows us to confront the world and ourselves in a totally different way and forces us to climb out of that morass of daily life. A wise man wrote extolling the efficacy of idleness. Allowing such a taboo idea into our focussed world could give us permission to step back and take stock outside the prism of the daily grind. The problem confronted here like with all issues contains a joy and a challenge. The joy is the opportunity to step away from your normal routine and glimpse another possibility. The challenge being that we all bring along our own excess personal baggage making it difficult to appreciate the experience and to throw up all kinds of reistance to it. Our personal baggage needs a weight limit. Otherwise all the possibility recedes into irrelevance. We invariably we feel impelled to do something when confronted by these moments of opportunity. The being has to precede the doing. We are so used to our cluttered routines that when confronted with quiet solitude and self-reflection we to tend to run away as from a disastrous encounter. Are we up to this? Do we want it? If not how do we break the cycle we are stuck in and for which we feel an obvious disatisfaction.
Again we reach another puzzle and the answer is in the unravelling.

ESSAY ON AUROVILLE

The aspiration of the community of Auroville is represented in it's charter formulated by the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1968 as a noble endeavour. The charter as written is:

1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be the willing servitor of the Divnine Consciousness.
2. Auroville will be the place of an undending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.
4. Auroville wil be a site of material and spriritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.

This wonderful aspiration attracted me to the noble experiment of this community over the last fourty years. No one who has the best intentions for a better world can criticize the conception envisaged in this charter and effort to implement it on the ground in the real world. Let me begin by giving praise to the clear and positive impact that this project has had on the environment of the area. I first came to Auroville in it's early days to be astounded by the harshness and utter desolation of the land upon which the project had planted it's flag. To my utter amazement in subsequent visits there has been a triumphant improvement in the landscape. Instead of a denuded desert of red soil it has become a forested region reclaimed by wildlife that had fled the area years ago. The change is astonishing and hard to comprehend if you had not seen the early days. For the success of that alone, Auroville should be proud, congratulated and supported in those efforts. It the rest of the country had accomplished similar efforts with the scant resources but obvious dedication and will this whole country could have been a rejuvenated ecological showpiece for the world. I call on everyone to look at their methods and support those same efforts everywhere we can as they have provent their efficacy with few financial resources.
Ok, so that is the great visible achievement of this community and maybe the easier one to accomplish. Going back to the charter which formulates a psychological and social change in human life you have to admit that this experiment appears to be failing at it's core. I am not sure the participants can objectively understand this and without a clear confrontation with the facts they sow the seeds of it's eventual collapse. One wise man responded to it's difficulties by saying that at least the community had lasted fourty years and endured to fight another day. This is true and commendable but not good enough. Survival is not an answer and explanation. The community can only have a rationale to exist if it has kept it's core beliefs alive and well. thriving in an adverse environment. That really is certainly up for debate both inside and out the project. Too many people who come to Auroville and even the members themselves have serious concerns about it's status and progress. There is a sense of stalled momentum, a stilted inward thinking and defensiveness that mitigates against all the values upon which Auroville staked it's reputation. I do not expect perfection or pure enlightenment out of the community. But I think a fair person would expect to see a greater appearance that the members of Auroville are working diligently and honestly in everyway to develop and bring to fruition the concepts that underpin it's creation. I will not go into the details of the numerous flaws of the community as that is not the issue that concerns me in this commentary. I might be more concerned if there were not any issues that needed identification and resolution. In an imperfect world with imperfect people this experiment needs to move forward and be ongoing. My concern is that there is not enough serious reflection and effort on a personal level to ever properly tackle these issues so that Auroville can be seen as a true participant in solutions and be a beacon of progress and vision in a broader world. Auroville maybe the community the "world needs" but then it needs to live up to the responsibility this implies and take the necessary steps on a personal and communal level to begin to resolve it's problems in a new way that shows the way for all of us. The world is in serious trouble. God knows it needs some help and guidance but the role of Auroville has to play is being lost in the petty personal bickering and politics that we can find anywhere in the world. Until you give yourselves a collective slap in the face you will miss the opportunity you have been given to show a way out of the morass of our times. And believe me, others will leave you by the wayside if you do not meet the challenge. It is a sad tragedy that this wonderful possibility is allowing itself to be sidelined when it is needed more than ever. I am beginning to think that the process at the heart of the experiment is flawed. I'm begging you all to get your act together. You have no stronger cheerleader but I will not refuse to see the reality of what is happening because I believe that this is the crux of the problem: looking clearly and honestly and then acting upon it. Maybe Auroville can only really exist in our hearts and maybe that is where it belongs. Not in any collective experiment that cannot get past it's internal problems. Others will find a way to keep the spirit of this idea alive but maybe in a totally different way. The personal issues have to be dealt with first and the colletive will follow.
This is too important to be allowed to utterly fail.

THE TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGE

There is a technological momentum that is gathering speed like a digital tsunami rolling over the world, leaving us breathless and flailing to catch up. This wave is a reality of our times which we have to face, a challenge put to us that needs a response. We need to take a collective deep breath, pause and look at what is happening. Can we not reflect for one minute? We need to look at what is being created for good and ill. Then decide if this is where we want to go and then how it should be done. Are we to be led about by the nose? Remember the train has left the station and we are on the ride with or without our consent. The challenge for all of us is to look at all the personal and social implications of this movement and how best to channel it into ways that are best for all of humanity not just the powers that be. Are we individually going to have some input and control over this digital wave or are just going along for the ride and accept the consequences passively. What we have to understand clearly is that throughout man's history we have progressed greatly on the technological level and this change appears to moving almost exponentially. Throughout our history we have climbed an amazing technological ladder but simultaneously our ability to understand ourselves, deal with our all too human frailties and participate harmoniously in the wider world of human relationships and community has barely progressed since we left the caves. This is the great conundrum and challenge of our times: we can increasingly understand and utilize the outside world for our purposes but we are hollow and primitive inside. We are playing with fire and our internal resources are not up to the task. The great challenge is inner change not the outer technological momentum. Unless we quickly catch up and understand ourselves and our relationship to our fellow man we could be in for a very difficult future. I don't believe that man yet has the depth or intelligence to wield the great forces we are unleashing about us. Unless we meet this challenge now the consequences could be dire. We are at an event horizon of the heart and mind where we have to start taking personal responsibility and have the courage to meet the problem head on. We need a growth spurt of the human spirit and if we can't expand our abilities to cope as people on this planet we might end up facing the extinction of all that is great and wonderful in the human experiment.

LOCATION

I am able to do all this while living in a tropical forest in an obscure part of southeast India. In touch yet sublimely removed, observant yet able to see as from a great distance giving a detachment that enhances clarity. It is lovely to wake to the exotic and varied calls of birds hidden throughout the glade, a riotous cacophony of sound. To have a light breeze rustle then waken the torpid great trees while the bamboo groans as it reaches ever higher into a searing scorch of sky. The music of nature descends into my thoughts like an aural landscape and a vibrant silence lies; just out of reach. A peace enfolds the morning air and reason sits quiet; in awe of nature's presence. To work in this setting is a privilege and a blessing. Being is a state of grace.

...and patience needed when sporadically torn from the web. Yet that has it's charms too...

SATCHITANANDA

This Sanskrit word steeped in the philosophical being of the Hindu tradition is one of the great conceptions of the ancient world, still relevant today. I have a personal interpretation of what this idea implies for all of us.

SAT: Existence, Being: We are here in this world. No discussion is possible without this essential fact as the central reality. We have this one unique chance to be here and participate in this life story.

CHIT: Consciousness, Awareness: our innate human ability to know we are here, to be aware of it; yet bound to our knowledge of it's ending, recognizing the fleeting nature and preciousness of life. Also, our ability for some control, choice and will in this existence with the responsibility that implies which was only instinctual before our species arrived upon the great tree of life.

ANANDA: Bliss, Ecstasy: the quiet joy in being alive on this planet at this time, to be able to celebrate that revelation and to keep it stamped upon our hearts as we make this journey full of light and darkness.

This three part concept defines the basis of our being, the foundation formula for seeing in the now: what it is and how it feels. The amazing fact that we are part of this lonely, miraculous planet that by sheer fortune allowed us to eventually walk upon it and to be able to do so with sensitivity, awareness and reason. To enjoy the absolute fortuitousness of it all.

NOW HERE MAN

....he's a real nowhere man...

Be Here Now.

There is somewhere we have to get to, yet we are already there: now.
Time divides into three parts as we all know. The past which is the accumulation going back to the beginning of it all, if there was one, which begins for us at birth and includes all memory. It contains all the traumas, abuse, pain and joy that we have endured. We carry all this around, reminding us of all our mistakes and regrets including what we didn't do we wished we had. We constantly analyze and obsess over this history and allow it to condition and taint everything that happens in the present. Then we have a future into which we project all our past and then try to use it as a blank slate to write all the wishes and desires we have never accomplished and as a very clever escape from the now. So then the future is written....
That leaves us with the now. Now is the great wave which we sit upon for eternity, endlessly moving on that continuum which is the present. Yet how much of the memory of the past and our fantasies about the future impinge on that present. If we watch carefully we realise that we drift through life in a dream which we occasionally wake up from and realise where we really are, which is the now. Is it possible to just be in that moment? It appears we need distractions and amusements; or to dwell upon the past which has left us behind or worry about a future which never comes in the way we imagine it, thankfully. We can have no real future if it is a mere projection of our past. What we need to do is sit wide awake in the now. And then figure out why it doesn't seem to be good enough for us as we seem to be escaping from it as fast as we can.

Be a Now Here Man

It might be good for you.

GUIDELINES FOR DISCUSSION

I would appreciate if all dialogue on this blog proceeds in a considered and rigorous manner. The main components consist of: respect which means accepting that we all have our own world views and biases which need to be challenged but in a clear, fair and polite way; listening which is the most critical component as we do so little of it today and way too much talking, in other words, reflect upon what another is trying to articulate and understand it as best you can before responding; be passionate in discussion but not emotional, care about your views but don't personalise the individual or the discussion. I want to raise the tempo of discussion to a higher level not to recede to the babble of conversation that is accepted as normal discourse in the modern world. This should be a learning process for all. Debate is good, arguing and trying to shout down or wave our egos at each other is not needed or wanted.
Thanks.

DNA



DAMN NEAR ANARCHY

HELICAL UNRAVELLING

ORIGAMI EYE



DNA is the code of all life. The genome is the map.



What I propose to do with this blog is decode rather than deconstruct, explore rather than just observe. Since I was child I loved the stories of the explorers of old: Magellan, Cortes, Columbus, Cook. The sagas of their adventures fascinated me as they travelled into uncharted waters and lands. That type of exploration is gone and the results of it in retrospect have not been too great; but we will leave that for another discussion. So an exploration into any and all aspects of life is what I propose to do. Hopefully a dialogue will ensue. The warf and woop of life is the subject. I will constantly try to develop new themes of discussion and try to tackle them from as many angles as possible and try to extricate the valuable from the wasted, but then is anything wasted in the universe.



I will lay down some guidelines, signposts next....