Duh ...

Confronting the Obvious

I awoke this morning from a tumultuous dream and wrestled my thoughts into something approaching coherence, initially inspired by my friend Don Hynes’s poem which I’ll replicate here before exposing the “Emperor has no clothes” epiphany that erupted from my thought mess. Don is a subtle word genius and I heartily recommend you subscribe to receive his weekly spells of awakening.

Sing All Praise

Suffer the windswept ocean,
the cold air and crested waves
on this patch of green.
An aquifer of imagination
lies underground in pools,
rising through the roots of trees
and the sound of orcas breathing.
Down in the dark water,
up into evergreen towers,
I mingle with the gods of earth and sea
and sing all praise to the rain-cast morning.

Don’s poem immediately connected me back to random musings I did yesterday while completing the tile job in our Maui kitchen, recalling George Harrison’s signature song and legacy promise: All Things Must Pass. Enjoy the song here.

Now the darkness only stays at nighttime
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
It’s not always gonna be this gray.

I’m celebrating Don’s encouragement to enjoy things as they are (sing all praise to the rain-cast morning) and George’s assurance that things will get better (it’s not always gonna be this gray).

Their combined message might be summed up as: “Celebrate the moment and know things are always changing.” Ironically, we’re taught absolutely zero about either of these mindsets, essential for a happy, meaningful life. In fact, the virtual opposite is championed and might be summed up in one famous motivational speaker’s personal mission: “I’m here to make things better.”

Sounds admirable, on the face of it. But like so many bromides, practical value fails with unskilled application. I’ll use a story from my own life as an example. This embarrassing episode happened about 25 years ago at a workshop where I was tasked to help manage clients arriving for personal wellness sessions. Being a card carrying, proudly efficient Virgo, I organized an elaborate booking system and rolled it out on day one… with disastrous results.

Although well meaning - just wanting to make things better - I managed to screw up a system that was already working just fine. Oops. And today, it’s easy to see how the same myopic arrogance is ruining the planet and our personal lives, all the way from replacing meat with insects to replacing humans with A.I. betters.

As if nature needed improvement and we had nothing to model after…

I’ve had a notice on my phone for over a month, alerting me to an upgrade I’m afraid to make because it will likely disrupt normal operation. My phone is working just fine already, and I don’t use about 90% of the clever features dreamed up by obsessed creatives doing exactly what I’m talking about… making things better.

Facing the obvious, our efforts aren’t making things better! We live under the shadow of nuclear war (the current global arsenal stands at 15,000 bombs… when experts believe that just 100 would be enough to destroy society as we know it), our economy is in a debt driven free fall (interest on the national debt will soon soar to the equivalent of $10,000 per year per U.S. household), toxification of the environment by careless human activity is catastrophically damaging our health (we’re enduring epidemics of chronic physical and mental disease)… and on it goes.

But we forge ahead with blinders on, perhaps hoping that A.I. will save us. Or maybe aliens will. Meanwhile, we refuse to confront the obvious which does become obvious when we examine the stories we tell, which is how we traditionally measure the condition of any society.

I frequently sample trailers for new movies, especially sci-fi. These days they are mostly horror films about mindless evil in some form trying to kill humans for rarely explained reasons in dystopian future landscapes.

Why would people make films about that?

Why would people want to watch films about that?

Remember Aesop’s fable about the boy who cried wolf? The relevant point to that tale – now over 2,500 years old - is that, eventually, there was a wolf. But, as Pete Seeger sang in 1955 (and that’s almost 70 years ago), “when will we ever learn… when will we ever learn?”

And, as the German philosopher Georg Hegel famously said, “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”

Facing and acknowledging the obvious seems to be a species-wide problem whenever it might interfere with”progress.” For instance, 5G. Telecommunication companies used the cover of Covid lockdowns to expand their network of towers, especially near schools, but that’s just the beginning. Here’s what’s coming soon to the planet we live on: “5G networks will leverage LEO (Low Earth Orbiting Satellites) in their architecture, which greatly simplifies 5G deployments. With the combined space and terrestrial infrastructure, a seamless 5G experience can be delivered across the entire globe.”

 What could possibly go wrong?

Well, this just in from Dr. Mercola: “5G induces cell death in the amygdala, a region of the brain involved in emotion regulation, memory, and decision-making.”

Oops.

Sing all praise. All things must pass.

And… let’s wake up! This is why I write these essays. It’s why Don gives away his poems. It’s why millions of us labor with our art, often unpaid or underpaid: “Wolf… wolf… wolf!”

My latest modest offering to make a difference with all this, especially the dangerous threat to our minds? This five-minute audio induction to Refresh Your Mind. Listen with headphones.

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