Two HUndred and Eighty

I dreamed of war last night.

Not modern war—a game soldiers play, sending drones to kill civilians who are to them no more than blips on a computer screen—but war in which soldiers fight each other hand-to-hand on a battlefield.  The war of all against all. 

I woke with the cries of the wounded and the dying still ringing in my ears.  What must I do to silence these cries?

We all know too much, but not enough.  We know how to kill and die, but not how to live. 

We used to admit we’re ignorant, and trusted the wise and/or the gods for whom they speak to teach us how to live.  But the wise didn’t trust us; so they taught us instead to obey those who they said were our betters, and sent us into battle to kill and die for them.

Eventually we lost our trust in those we called, and called themselves, wise, but not our trust in the gods for whom they claimed to speak; so we stopped listening to what the wise told us about god and his world, and studied that world ourselves, hoping to see the creator in his creation.  But god never spoke to us as the wise claimed he spoke to them; and now most of us have lost their faith in god, as well.  Now it’s our community, and its collective wisdom, in which we put our trust; or rather in someone who claims to speak for our community, but seems as superior to it and us as a god. 

But no one person can know what everyone knows, and is able to speak for all of us; therefore no one person can inspire the same trust that an omniscient god once did.  So the fears we once allayed by putting our trust in the wisdom of men and/or gods have returned, and they're driving us mad.

We used to seek out the wise, hoping to learn from them how to live.  But we learn nothing from others.  Everything we know, we knew from the beginning.  Not because we’re wise, but because we know so little.  Those we call wise are only a little less ignorant than the rest of us.  They’re wiser than we are in that they still know they’re ignorant. 

The ignorant no longer admit they’re ignorant.  Now they tell themselves that although they don’t know everything, they know everything worth knowing.  Such illusions are madness, but we need illusions to live in a world going mad. 

Am I going mad?  Of course.  I may not be going mad in the same way everyone else is, but I am in my own way.