En los Jardines del cabo Noval

By Parson Thru

Sun, 29 Nov 2015
  • 1203 reads
5 comments
 
I'm watching the kids playing football in the sun.
 
There are many times when I sit and think there’s nothing more to write – that I have nothing more to say.
 
That’s how I feel right now.
 
I’ve been playing with ideas. 
 
About how my head’s a mess – victim of all that’s going on around it and inside it. 
 
That old thing – the world and my place in it.  The universal problem, acknowledged to a greater or lesser extent by all thinking beings. 
 
The difficulties:  big stuff, such as wars, want, ecology.  (Doesn’t seem so bad when you summarise it in three words.); smaller stuff (?), such as family, relationships, and what to do with those three-score and ten years (if you’re lucky).
 
I’m discounting killer asteroids, geology, etc. – why worry about those things?  We can’t prevent them.
 
So it mainly comes down to people.  Happiness depends a lot on people and happiness is what we want. No?
 
Want and war. 
 
Economics and religion. 
 
Greed is catered for or justified through economic models.  Religion justifies superiority and hatred (we’re all going to Heaven/Paradise – you’re not). 
 
So much for peace and love. 
 
Humans are somehow caught up in all these things. We’re not at all free.  But that’s all we really want to be – healthy, safe and secure first, maybe.  Instead we get appropriation, oppression and war.
 
I struggle with the idea of a choice between evils, which is largely what we have.
 
Utopia has been discredited.  Heaven, or Paradise, should be, too.  Nirvana?  Don’t know enough – someone will have to help me.
 
How about the small things?  Family, friendship, relationships?  Filling those three-score and ten?
 
“Tell me why…is it hard to make arrangements with yourself?” sings Neil Young through the headphones.
 
Quite.
 
Reconciliation with one’s self is a work in progress – a never-ending daily task.  Every human encounter changes the picture.  I doubt the validity of claims that people have it all worked out.  I would like to eavesdrop on their daily conversations with themselves. 
 
Or maybe not – it won’t be pretty.
 
I was always drawn to the psychological and spiritual rather than the sociological, although power structures are real enough.
 
The closest I can get to an answer, personally, is conscience.
 
Forget the metastructures and megastructures.  If humanity could get to a position where the conscience machine functioned correctly, it might have a chance – every individual as a free agent listening to and acting in accordance with their conscience. 
 
That might work. 
 
People largely know when they are doing something that hurts others, it’s just that the mechanism gets broken, often from an early age.  The damaged damage the innocent.  That’s how it works, until no one is innocent.
 
How to fix that?  I wouldn’t know where to start.
 
Bring in the sociologists.
 
Free people with functioning consciences – maybe that’s Utopia.
 
Is anyone listening?
 
I doubt it.
 
No wonder my head’s a mess.
Certificate U
Story
Mortality Games
Miscellaneous

Comments

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

I'm listening...and I guess the answer's No. 42, and I think the Snark knows something about it too.  

'And there they all were...watching kids playing football in the sun'smiley

The Flowerpot Men have a lot to answer for, in my view, at least.

Nice one, PT

Tina

 

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Hi Tina. I've been swimming about the Internet in search of answers. Thanks for introducing me to the Snark. Now, the Flowerpot Men. That sounds like an interesting sojourn. 42 has been a suitable answer for very large enquiries in the past and I don't see why it can't be now. Maybe it's the most valid to date. Roll the music. X

Postscript: I think my tuner's a Snark.

Parson Thru

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

Mine, toosmiley

 

Submitted by celticman on

Everyone is a mess and the answer lies in less. 

 

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Yes.

Parson Thru