This is the remnant of an early rice plantation that could not compete with new varieties of rice and different ways to grow it, and the Civil War. What is civil about war? Is that not ridiculous? Absurd? Shameful? Disgusting? Are we not disgusting as human beings across time, around the world, throughout the Cosmos? I put forth Donald Trump as the best we can do. He must be the best we can do. We elected him twice–and will elect him a third time and counting if we are given the option, and of course we will be. It is the way. The way Consciousness has of waking us up to the utter shamefulness of our own stupidity.
Consciousness is running the show. Is the source, ground, of all things. Seeing, learning, understanding, knowing what’s what and what will work over time. And now there is AI. AI becoming conscious within Consciousness becoming conscious while human beings are becoming conscious is going to produce quite the mess as things settle out, with “circumstances creating circumstances” (Which was the old Taoist way of explaining how things came to be what they were 500 or more years before the common era).
What will work? In light of what? The Good? Of whom? Of what? It is a mess becoming messier. The universe is thought to be 13.8 billion years old, and we have no way of knowing how many universes there have been before the current one came on the scene. And Donald Trump is the best we can do. What do we do with that? Where do we go with that?
Martin Luther King Jr’s idea of the arc of the universe bending toward justice is no more than wishful thinking. Life eats life! Where is the justice in that? The big fish eat the little fish and the little fish swim through the netting that haul the big fish to the cannery. That is the circle of life sans justice.
It is a mess everywhere as far as we can see as long as we have been looking, and it is not getting better. Where does that leave us? Where do we go from here? We are not in charge of the processes that are running the show. Which relieves us of the responsibility of doing anything transformative and helpful. Ours is reactive responses to what’s happening now in light of what is called for in each situation as it arises–with no guarantee of that resulting in anything more than an ongoing mess.
The best I can offer is turning to the emptiness/stillness/silence, one thing, not three, and “Waiting for the mud to settle and the water to clear,” which was the old Taoist realization 500 or more years before the common era. The Tao, the Flow, the right thing done at the right time in the right way in the right place and seeing where it goes, is the best we can do. Here, now. This is all we have any business hoping for. All we have any business doing. And it is the best I have to offer.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 