Two Hundred and Ninety Two

Love makes the world go round, says the old song.  Freud said the lover needs his beloved as the predator needs its prey. 

The predator needs its prey because life feeds on life.  We feed on each other as a dying body feeds on its own flesh; and every body begins dying the moment it's born.

The body politic is a sadomasochistic game in which the rich pretend they govern and the poor pretend they are governed.  They need each other because only a god or a beast can live alone, without the company of its own kind on which to feed.  But only by lying to ourselves, and each other, can we live together without admitting we're killing each other.  

Society's the macrocosm, and the family the microcosm.  In most families, parents use and abuse their children because they were used and abused themselves when they were children, so they never learned what love is.  

Most children never admit their parents abuse them.  Not because they're innocent, but because they're afraid of admitting they're helpless, powerless.  Thus adults can abuse children without fear of reprisal, just as the rich abuse the poor.  

Children should eventually grow up, but most never do because even as adults they remain powerless.  They only grow older, struggling to believe the lies they were taught when they were young.  Most adults want good masters for the same reason most children want good parents.

Society is dying now because we're realizing those we’re taught to worship as gods are no better than we are. 

Adults abuse children, men abuse women and the rich abuse the poor.  Most of us despise ourselves and/or each other for abusing other people and/or allowing them to abuse us.  But we can’t or won’t admit what we do to them and/or allow them to do to us, because we need each other as the predator needs its prey. 

   We're sadists, abusing the people we claim to love so that we can comfort them, soothing the wounds we ourselves inflict.  When they're wounded and helpless, we no longer need fear those we love—fear they’ll find out who and what we are, and despise us as we despise ourselves—so we can love them safely, without fear of reprisal.

Two Hundred and Ninety One

Last night's dream.

I’m in the city hall plaza.  People are everywhere, and none of them are wearing masks.  Neither am I.  Is the pandemic over?  We’re behaving as though it is.

As usual, I’m lost.  I can’t remember where I parked my car.

As I walk across the plaza, I see a parked motorcycle.  It looks like the one I had when I was in college.  But how can that be?  That was half a century ago, in a city half a continent away.  Nevertheless I get on, and try to start it.

It starts, so I ride it around the plaza, getting used to it again.  But then it stops.  I try to start it again, but I can't, so I get off and walk towards city hall.  I go inside, intending to telephone a friend (apparently in this dream I have friends) and ask them to come pick me up.

The building is full of workmen in white coveralls.  One of them tells me I shouldn’t be there because they’re going from room to room spray painting every surface white. 

An overhead loudspeaker announces the sequence in which the rooms are being painted.  Just as I open the door marked 6, in order to leave, the loudspeaker announces that room 6 is now being spray painted.  I quickly close the door, just in time to avoid being spray painted.  The workman tells me I’ll now have to wait inside the building until the paint dries.

Two Hundred and Ninety

Is it life, or just my life, that disgusts me?  That’s a distinction without a difference.  Most of us live the life we have to live.

At least we’ve finally gotten over our odd delusion that eternal life is what we want.  Any reasonable monster would have accepted that it’s a monster by now, and destroyed itself.  But although we are destroying ourselves, as usual we’re doing it wrong.  We’re destroying not only ourselves, but every other living thing on this planet as well.  If only we took a moment to think, we’d realize we should all just lie down and never get up again.  But who am I to judge?  I’ve often lain down with that intention, but I always got up again.  So much for good intentions.

Two Hundred and Eighty Nine

We know, if we know anything, that we’re part of something greater than ourselves—something we call the world.  We don’t know what the world is, any more than we know what we are; but we know we’re part of it. 

We used to think we’re an important, even the most important, part of it—that whoever or whatever created the world created it for us.  Why, then, does he allow his creatures to suffer?

Life is miserable for most of us most of the time.  Nevertheless we struggle to go on living.  Some of us go on as an object in motion remains in motion unless and until it meets an immovable object.  Others do it because even the most miserable of us can remember at least one moment of peace, and even joy.  That moment felt so right that we assume it must be what our creator intended life to be at every moment.  Why, then, isn’t it?

Wise men said we suffer because we don’t live in the real world, but in its shadow.  We left the real world, which is illuminated by god’s truth, as our ancestors left their hearth fire and ventured into the forest.  Forgetting the way back, they became lost in the dark forest of illusion that we call civilisation.  Why, then, didn’t our creator rescue us from that forest, as any loving parent would rescue a lost child? 

Westerners said our ancestors disobeyed their creator.  He therefore banished them from his garden.  Ever since then we, their descendants, have wandered the world, trying to find our way back.

The creator tests each of us to see whether we, too, will disobey him.  Those who pass his test are rewarded with an afterlife of everlasting bliss in his heaven.  Those who fail are punished with everlasting torment.

Some Easterners also said we’re being punished, for sins we committed in a previous life.  Buddhists said the miseries of life are as illusory as its joys, and we must free ourselves from both to find peace.  All Easterners agreed that the only escape from this world of illusion is the peace we Westerners call death.

Despite their differences, Westerners and Easterners agreed this world of change is an illusion, a shadow of the real world, which is eternal. But if scientists can find no proof there’s any world other than this world of change, then nothing is real because nothing is eternal.  It's real to us because we ourselves are what we call illusions.

Not only the world, but the universe, will one day end, scientists say—perhaps to be succeeded by another, just as it presumably followed another.  Perhaps the multiverses of Western science are as illusory as the kalpas of Eastern religion.  We don’t have, and may never have, sufficient evidence to prove either.     

Neither can give us proof, so most of us have lost faith in religion, and are losing faith in science.  But we still believe in gods.

Those who still believe in a heavenly god can no longer believe he’s merciful and loving.  The world has taught them he can only be a god of wrath, who punishes those who dare to disobey him.  But even those who no longer believe in heavenly gods still believe in earthly gods.

Those who have wisdom, riches and/or some other power often think they’re gods on earth, free to do as they choose.  But only fools believe they’re powerful enough to master those who can't or won't master themselves.  

Human society consists of masters and slaves.  Politics is a game they play, the former pretending to command and the latter pretending to obey.  Both know, if they know anything, that it’s only a game

Our powerlessness keeps most of us free from the delusion that we're gods on earth.  But most of us want to believe some people are, or can be, gods on earth, who could right all its wrongs if they chose to do so. 

Some of us do want to make the world better.  But we can’t do it alone.  And we’re always alone.

We’re told to obey our masters because they’re gods on earth—wiser, stronger and/or more powerful than we are.  We all know that, far from being our superiors, our masters are more often than not our inferiors.  But we obey them anyway—or pretend to—because we’re powerless.   

We’ve lost all hope for justice, so we settle for order.  But we know, if we know anything, that it's an illusion.

Two Hundred and Eighty Eight

 I am self-isolating, as most people are, or should be, during the pandemic; but I’m more isolated than most because I have no family or friends with whom to share my isolation. 

Most people find living in such intimacy with their family and/or friends stressful because their relationships are as competitive as they are co-operative.  Siblings compete for the love of their parents, and the more friends have in common, the more they’re also rivals.  Isolation exacerbates these conflicts, constantly reminding people of things about their friends and/or family that they usually ignore or overlook. 

I don't have enough in common with other people to make us competitive or co-operative.  Other people always deferred to me, and asked me to tell them what to do; but they never did what I told them.  So I went for weeks without seeing or speaking to another person long before the pandemic.

Aristotle said a man who’s unable or unwilling to live in society must be either a beast or a god.  But we must live alone, because society's an illusion.  We pretend we're all fundamentally alike, and there's a society to which we all belong; but we're alike in that each of us is unique.

The people with whom I had the most in common were never my family and friends.  They were people I knew only through books or other works of art.  But I never made Holden Caulfield’s mistake of wanting to know their author.  I knew the person who the creator seems to be from his creation is never his real self, but the self he’d like to be and/or imagines his readers would like him to be.  We all imagine the person we’d like to be; then we either pretend we already are that person, or we love someone who seems to be that person, or believes we are that person.  Our best companions are always imaginary.