It’s conventional wisdom that what we used to call Nature
is conservative. Every thing
at rest stays at rest, and every thing in motion stays in motion, unless and
until it meets another thing. Every living thing
wants to go on living. What we want to have is
immortality, and what we want to avoid is death.
If this is true—and everything that’s said must be true
in some sense, or it couldn’t be said—in what sense is it true?
The world is always changing because it
doesn’t consist of one thing, but many. Our
earliest teachers said it only seems to be many. In reality all is
one, and change is an illusion. It used
to be conventional wisdom that only the infinite and unchanging world we used
to call Supernatural is real. If
this is true—and everything that’s said must be true in some sense—in what
sense is it true?
If it’s true that all is one, and we are parts of a greater whole, it’s also
true that we are separate and unique individuals. There is not one truth, but many. If there is one truth, infinite and unchanging,
it’s not our truth, because we are many, finite and always changing.
Freud said whatever we think we want, sex is what we
really want. If this is true, it’s true
in the sense that all living things want to go on living. Our individual lives are brief, but the
life of our species is long (at least in comparison), so we want to go on living through our children.
It seems everything we used to call civilization was
created in pursuit of that kind of immortality - not, or not only, for our biological children, but for our species, our nation, or whatever greater whole we see
ourselves as being part of. But what we see is
seldom great enough.
Therefore when we change that part of the whole which we call the
world because it’s the only part we know, we change it in ways we cannot
know. We change ourselves as well. Often we change both for the worse.
It seems the more we try to change the world and
ourselves for the better, the worse both become. We tried again and again to undo our mistakes and begin again, but always found
we can’t go back, only forward. Why, then, do we keep
doing the same things again and again, knowing they’re the wrong things? Is it
because we don’t know what we’re doing? Perhaps we do know, but don’t want to admit it.
Freud said whatever we think we want, sex is what we
really want. He also said things we
think we want to avoid are often things we really want, but think we can’t or
shouldn’t have. If this is true, in
what sense is it true?
Near the end of his life Freud decided what we really
want isn't sex, but death. Most neoFreudians
dismiss this as the delusion of an ailing failing mind, but it’s always made
sense to me. If we can’t live as we choose,
we can at least choose to die.
What we want is not just to die, but to die well; a death
that concludes a life well lived.
We begin life full of hope, but most of us soon meet with things that distract and/or prevent us from doing what we want, and living the life we should.
Throughout our history our teachers told us what we
should do in order to live well. But most of us can’t or won’t do what we know we should. Not because we’re selfish, but because we’re
unselfish.
Most of us live for, and are ready to die for, things we think give meaning to our lives,
but which in reality live on and through us as a parasite lives on and through
its host.
All the gods we used to live for, and die for, are now either dead
or dying. We’re beginning to wake from
the long dream we call history and see the world as it really is, not as we hope
and/or fear it is. How many of us can
look at the world as it really is – or rather, what we’ve made of it – knowing
what it could be and should be, without wanting to die of shame and disgust?
We’ve lost faith in our gods, who forgave us when we couldn’t forgive ourselves. We’ve also lost faith in ourselves, and our
ability to make the world a better place.
We know too much now, and too little. All we want is to forget.
But it seems most of us want to suffer and do penance, to enter the
purifying flames of the Apocalypse like sinful swimmers into cleanness leaping. That's what they call a good death. Whatever we think we want, death is what we
really want.
