THE FINALITY OF OUR SPECIES
Humankind is an unbelievably powerful force. This fact is not up for debate.
The sullying and destroying of natural habitats, lush canopy, clear rivers and compartmentalized Brazilian rainforest regions inhibited by strange and ancient cultures.
The fast and steady approach of global consumerism, wholly encompassing economic theorems, and Coca fuckin’ Cola.
So, yes, we are a disease of biblical proportions. A walking, talking, farting, toxic cloud of doom; looming menacingly over the planets horizon with an impressive armament of sub-atomic warheads and genetically modified livestock.
This is what we have become…
However, if you believe, like the overwhelming majority of rational thinkers do, that Darwin’s theory of natural selection traces a near photographic outline of our immediate reality, and exactly how it came to be, then you may appreciate the following thoughts. Namely, that a former strain of bacteria, a single cell in a storm of cosmic possibilities, born in an assumedly freakish explosion of indescribable power, could end-up with you, the reader, interpreting and understanding the illuminated liquid crystals in your 22” Samsung Widescreen LCD Monitor…
That a species can, in the space of around 10,000 years, go from spear wielding hunter gatherer, via the eloquent taming of the vocal cord, to The Moon, is something which should not be taken lightly. But it’s a lesson that the majority of us, judging from the current fear-mongering horseshit that plagues modern culture, fail to appreciate in its glowing and soul-cleansing totality.
The joke is not that we find ourselves at the edge of the abyss, but the fact some of us believe we could actually fall.
These pessimists fail to realize that we, The People, make all the decisions in the end. We can’t fall, but we can choose to jump. Or more pertinent to the reality at hand, be talked into jumping.
That we can come this far, through a vast and comparatively infinite field of cataclysmic alternatives, is testament to the fact that we are only riding the pulsing waves of existence. Proof, if ever it was needed, that in the ocean of reality; white caps billow, but the current remains. The sort of underlying singularity that nothing of our physical doing can ever push against without feeling like a fool pissing off the rear deck of a yacht to gain some discernible forward thrust. And all with the weighty payload of uncut diamonds and raw Peruvian cocaine…
From the splitting of Apes from Monkeys in the Miocene Epoch fifteen million years ago, by means of crude tools, toward the rumbling devastation of total global nuclear armament and the definitive mass-extinction that would undoubtedly follow…
And in this view, some may argue that an end to humankind’s influence would be massively beneficial to the planet as a whole. That pristine winter valleys of hawks and wolves, and dark green summer riverbanks, and forests that go on for as far as the eye can see, would serve the general purpose of life just as well as the current regime of asphalt refineries and multiple-lane motorways winding their way down the country like a series of hardened varicose veins.
But I’m not here to judge. Christ no, I have no quarrel with these people. At least they have a dream; nihilist visions of sewer-dwelling night-terror. But everybody needs to dream.
And thus, the next chapter is yet to be written, where the grand finale of this brutal journey is wholly decided by us. Which is why, amongst my hatred for all things farcically plastic, tainted, marketed and mass-consumed, I retain a solitary fragment of love for the United States of America: The American Dream. A radiant orb of clean-slate ideals. The one thing still glistening at the heart of The Beast. The Roman Empire of our time. Ghastly and vicious, imperialistic and self-righteous, disconnected, uninterested, and generally too fat to care. But moving, all the same, along the seemingly coincedental linear path that we all find ourselves restricted to. And all directions, eventually, lead to the same destination.
The white caps billow, but the current remains. And Rome will fall. And The Moon is ours.
We Are The People. And don’t let them tell you otherwise…
About fent11111
I appreciate the fact that your cynicism is not of the modern American variety.
What passes as run-of-the-mill cynicism in America these days?
Either simple apathy, narrow minded single-issue focus, or bizarre sensationalist conspiracy theories. Whatever sells. There are a few broad ranging and historically spanning cynical critiques, But the emphasis on "few."
Put me down in the apathy camp.
It just occurred to me that perhaps understanding the "spirit of the time" is by necessity a backward reflecting, historical or historiographical endeavor.
Can anyone really understand what is going on now, at the moment it is going on? If so, it is a rare ability.
Catching the zeitgeist wave takes more than a fair share of luck. But it also requires a keen sense of direction, impeccable timing, a steady supply of boundary-dissolving hallucinogens, razor sharp self-belief, and maybe a little youthful charm….
There are, however, those people whom I think just happen to be in the right corner of space at exactly the right time. And it’s these people who get closest to defining, within the woefully inadequate restrictions of our language, exactly who and what we are. Words could never succeed in totality, but they can set off the spark, and besides, Karma loves a trier…
I don’t think it’s possible to get too deeply entrenched in such thoughts; the bottom line (or “The Answer” if you’re that sort of seminal seeker) is in a place beyond mere definition and description. Thus, I think the only constructive thing we can do is to try and find the lowest common denominator; an underlying singularity that links Everything with All. (continued below)
And this is: Progress – the constant and unabating forward thrust of time – is the one thing that courses through The Game and everything connected with it. Everything else is just hearsay and vicious rumour.
I’m sure many people know, in their soul, exactly what it is that’s going on around them. But, alas, communication of such ineffable thoughts is utterly impossible.
And this, I think, is the scourge of the intellectual. Doomed from the start.
Which I think, in itself, raises a fairly pertinent point: that reliance on others will get you nowhere in life. You can read all the books, by all the guru’s, and be no closer to anything other than someone else’s intangible conclusions…
If there is an answer, and that in itself is a subject of great debate, then I would put Free Thought forward as my own educated stab in the dark…
What’s the psycho-analytical view?
I'm far from a Freudian, but I don't think the psychoanalytic perspective could account for grasping the Zeitgeist. Not a primitive enough urge for the id. Though perhaps the failure to grasp it, and understand the times and pressures we live in and under, strains the ego.
Personally, I suppose, I have briefly been there and understood the moment and the spririt of the times. But it's an all too brief interaction – ships, or high speed freight trains, passing in the night. By the time you realize you've gotten it, now, it has passed, and "now" is now then.
All of this, especially in light of American cynicism, brings to mind Hunter's "wave speech." A finely written, and deeply cynical, 'Zeitgeist-then' passage. Too bad the analgous sentiment for these times has not yet been so beautifully articulated; or at least if it has, it hasn't crossed my path…
I see what you mean regarding zeitgeist commentary, by its very nature, being fuelled by retrospect.
I guess you're right – that the essence of "now", in itself, can (probably) never be defined. It would seem that life itself is just a constant stream of past events (in tangible, definable terms at least). That nothing substantial can be wholly grasped for any significant period of time.
I have, however, had such moments of clarity where I do believe I’ve figured it, whatever it is, out. Such moments are all too fleeting, but they remain magical and infusing; even when dispersed on the wind at the end of the summer; lingering only as afterthoughts in the half-forgotten rhetoric of dreams past.
Which is surly a far too nihilistic hypothesis for yours truly to ascribe to.
I am, as such, an enthusiastic proponent of hallucinogenic drugs. Not in the brainlessly dangerous beer-soaked party atmosphere, but in the manner of responsible and educated medicinal use in darkened corners of TV-less candle-lit rooms. The key to a furiously creative internal dialogue where infrequent trips at very high dosages become the order of the day. I've always found such methods to be wholly effective in inviting the rich tapestry of original ideas and notions, however ephemeral, into ones world.
It was through such pursuits that I found a connection with the idea that whatever happens, whichever direction the ship is steered, and however seemingly terminal the situation becomes; the end result/destination will always be the same. And thus the incommunicable plight of the learned story-teller begins…
And yes, the HST wave passage is probably one of the finest and most articulate examples of zeitgeist-definition I’ve ever come across. An interpretation achieved through the realisation that the only reality of any true material substance is the past. And most importantly, all assembled whilst shining a mega-watt electric-blue spotlight on the whole sordid affair, and furiously screaming incoherent verbal memoirs. An absolute legend of a man.