Let's Go Wild
#27: 19 November 2023
“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
“Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? …The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness.”
― Philip K. Dick
How do we know what we know? Is what we “know” even true? How certain are you, that you truly know anything? I believe humans evolved to make sense of our local environment and our tribe. We didn’t need “law enforcement” because “law” comes from inside as well as within our relationships, but only in the context of other humans we know as well as we know ourselves. We grasped it was frightening and (usually) tragic if we pissed off the wrong people and were exiled from our group. Yet it was possible, if enough other relatives (we are all relatives of each other) went along over the hill into the next valley, to get by and birth a new tribe.
Which is why it is so odd today when I am unable to call out crimes because our social rules don’t allow me to question what I am being told by “authorities”? The prohibition (decades ago) of talking about politics, sex, and religion in polite company has led to the withering of our abilities to have calm, civil, but difficult conversations. The transformation of common words into hate speech, at least according to some, is also odd. I sense it derives from a lack of respect in general for differing opinions and our seeming inability to negotiate a settlement that recognizes the needs for safety and growth of everyone involved. We have come to identify with our own worldview to such an extent any differing views threaten to destroy our intangible selves. We (America) can’t sit and talk with Russia about the need for a security structure in Europe that works for everyone and eliminates all worries about territorial expansion through kinetic warfare. This is childish; if we (America) have to co-exist with Russia, we’ll have a tantrum, turn over the table, then take our money and go home. This is deeply rooted in exceptionalism, hierarchy, and exploitation through domination. We call it a “rules-based international order”, which is code for “we like the rules as they are, despite treaties and international law, so just go along everyone and we won’t have to hurt you”.
But again I ask: how do we know what we claim to be certain of? Are you sure the Universe is a dead resource mine waiting for humans to extract what we will? Are you positive it is important to have lots of those resources “in my name” when you die…like some sort of competition where the most toys wins the game of life? Are you sure technology solves more problems than it creates?
Here’s how tech (including medicine) works: you are enticed by the carrot, which might be a faster process, a lighter workload, a ‘free’ application or service. You join a particular ‘environment’, code for company or ‘product ‘system’. The provider builds out a more complete environment, sucking you along. At some point, unknowable in advance, you are hooked; you can’t step out of the system. You rely on it even as it turns sour; it would take too much energy and/or money to switch to something less problematic, or to return to what you used before. Who remembers paper maps and wants to use one again? The unforeseen consequences continue to appear, and grow more problematic with every ‘update’. The mission-creep becomes onerous, but again, it’s too late. You are trapped, hanging in your cocoon in the Matrix, being sucked dry by the system you initially joined in innocence and without understanding. Tech Is No Answer (TINA).
The medicine piece is similar; remember, today’s allopathic ‘practice’ was created in order to use some portion of the long-chain hydrocarbon seeping from the ground in the late-1800s. J.D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil) wanted to use the ‘waste’ left after processing oil into fuel for something rather than have to throw it away…and thus we have pharmaceuticals. First chemists contrived substances that mimic natural herbal remedies for illness; Nature does an amazing job of matching dis-ease with its relief in plants and animals nearby. Then the Godfather of Drugs founded ‘schools’ to indoctrinate healers in the new magical potions. And lest they compete with traditional healing knowledge, he founded medical organizations to ‘license’ both the products and the ‘doctors’ that would push them onto the unsuspecting public. I point this out primarily to open this can of worms: if you are certain that today’s medicines are the best way to prevent and cure disease, then you have drunk too much out of the Flavor Aid[1] punchbowl. You likely believe the medicines have all been tested for safety and efficacy; you are wrong. You likely believe the government prevents anyone or any company from doing anything to hurt us; again, tragically wrong. Not to put too fine a point on it, what do you call someone who graduates first in their medical school class? Doctor. What do you call someone who graduates last in their class? Doctor.
Yes indeed. We are living in a time where "science" has become similar to religious authority; in many cases, it supplants religious authority, also without solid proof/truth. Newtonian physics gave rise to the dead, cold Universe idea of resources humans can use at will, yet it is not even close to reality. Quantum physics comes much closer to Truth, but partly because we can’t possibly understand something so complex and hidden from sight, and partly because we still love to believe in a Clockwork Universe, we don’t question the old Newtonian science paradigm. Those who question it, disagree with it or provide info that contradicts it are deemed dangerous heretics who are sharing ‘misinformation’ despite any veracity and world-changing potential.
Myths are a central part of science: the part that decides the significance science has in our lives. They lead us to interpret science in particular ways. But as we interpret, that’s actually the result of ‘not knowing’; and science is all about interpretation (not knowing) and evolving as knowledge grows (non-consensus). When you are ‘sold’ an explanation of a phenomenon as being the result of consensus, you are being asked to believe ‘because we can’t prove it’. That should send us running the opposite direction if we care about Truth. Most aspects of life are not provable, in any really sense of the word certain; isn’t that the fun of living our wild and beautiful human life? Take vision as one example of how we take for granted we understand what is real and think we are all, each human, seeing the same world: there are blind spots in the retina and thus the image our brain “sees” of the outside world is incomplete. Yet you have to “look” very carefully to confirm these blind spots, because brain fills them (through repetition and pattern matching) that create what it “thinks” is normal. IOW, my brain is just winging it, predicting some of what I see, not limiting vision to what I actually see. There are also differences in the experience of what I see compared to yours…how does red ‘feel’; we have no way to be certain red feels the same to you as it does to me. It gets worse…magenta. There is no light frequency that we can tie to magenta, which is a blend of the spectrum beyond red (infrared) on one end, and beyond violet (ultraviolet) on the other. The plant we use to make the color dye we call magenta looks brown; the ‘taste’ that is magenta is wholly created in mind, not reality. Most don’t process also, that what I see as an object that is red in color, is actually rejecting the visible light frequency we call red and absorbing the rest. So when I see green grass, the grass is not green, green is the light grass abhors.
Let’s begin to wrap this essay up: the intense synchronicities I've experienced recently also point me toward the idea that the personal is metaphysical, and the metaphysical is personal. As above, so below. We can't remove ourselves from the equation; this is the key takeaway from Quantum Physics, which is that conscious awareness is the bulk of reality. That awareness varies human by human; and thus so does reality. NOTHING is certain, immutable, unchanging or permanent. In fact, anything with a beginning or ending in time itself is unreal, imaginal. Everything and everyone is participating in the creation of the myth of reality, creating a web of relationships so complex it can never be grasped completely or proven to be True. This is hugely uncomfortable, untenable, given our apparent need for certainty and safety. We become wedded to so many notions: ideas, stories, concepts proven or not, many long since proven to be a lie, yet we feel we must defend the lie to the death lest we admit to ourselves the gravity of our own failing to know truth. Far too often, we identify with the persona engendered by the falsity, so disbelieving is tantamount to rejecting all we stand for. In a Wild world, we deeply know we will never be certain, about anything. We adopt perspectives as they appear to work, and set them aside as soon as it is obvious they are flawed. We hold competing concepts and words in mind, not in agreement or acceptance, but out of curiosity and concern. Living in a Wild, shared playground we call life, we can only be true to our inner and outer relationships and care. Who have you helped today? How have you helped yourself? These are key questions; may you find that living Wild gives you better answers to life’s mysteries than any you know now. Let’s All Go Wild.
[1] Another misconception: people began to use the term ‘drinking the Kool Aid’ following the stories about Jonestown…they actually drank Flavor Aid, not Kool Aid.