The Answer is Out There

The Great Realization is that we know far less than what we don't know -- or think we do.  Just because we don't have the answer, doesn't mean that nobody does.  It may even be that what we think is hard and difficult, is really very simple and easy -- but our conditioning (education) is to think that everything is hard, and requires years to learn -- especially if the "educator's" job, is their own lifetime job security -- for as long as they can convince their students, that nothing else is possible -- for everything that can be known, has already been discovered, as though knowledge were always a thing of the past, and not the future work of humankind.

For surely, that is the work of everyone -- and not just a self-selected and designated few.  It was not always that way, and among the oppressive individuals and societies what makes them distinctive and dangerous as the world becomes more populous.  We no longer live and organize to conquer and vanquish every other -- particularly those who do not believe as they do, and demand that everyone does on forfeiture of their lives, as they deem necessary.

That is true even of societies that consider themselves "enlightened" -- as they predictably do -- justifying all actions to enforce their "consensus."  Formerly, they owned the machinery of control and propaganda, and so could be fairly successful -- especially in the schools of indoctrination to convince the young and impressionable, that they did know "everything there is to know."  But the answers, are not just what they control, and even create -- but the actualities every individual life creates for themselves.  That is what is real, and happening, at every moment in time.

How much we know of it depends of every individual's openness to those possibilities -- that they may not know everything there is to know, or even the little to solve the problems of their own daily living -- before presuming to solve all the great problems of human existence -- for everybody else.  Invariably, those who never solve the problems of their own living are "too busy" solving the problems of everybody else -- and so there is no time left over for the selfish pursuits of "cleaning up their own act," and in that way the proper work of the world is left undone while much that is unnecessary and counterproductive have highest priority.

And things just get worse, year after year, unfailingly -- even calling it "paradise," or the "Best of all Worlds. "  They may not convince everybody of that, but they convince enough people to make that their "localized" reality -- and all that can be known.  Dissenters from those lockstep truths, are purged, or purge themselves -- in moving to more agreeable conditions rather than accepting that life can be no other way.

Those are the brutal struggles of societies of the past -- hoping to remain in that past, rather than discover the future in which those problems and difficulties that have tormented humankind for time immemorial, are solved, because that's what people do, and live their lives to do. Either that, or they just accept the lives that were handed down from the past, and go no further -- as the unwritten taboo -- of where no one should go.

Information used to be scarce and hard to come upon -- and societies were organized to maintain that situation as the competitive advantage for those who got there first, even if it meant exploiting their own progeny -- because that is what they were convinced, was what everybody did, from time immemorial -- and that was their fate and destiny too.

Now we know that if we don't know the answer, it is that we haven't asked the right persons -- even if we have to find that out for ourselves rather than just accepting what we know that doesn't work -- as the be-all, end-all of that matter.  Those capabilities are programmed and designed into the very tools we use -- not just to hammer nails or threaten others into seeing things the way they would like us to, or even telling us what they know but arriving at the essential question, how do we know? -- and beginning beyond that.

The Golden Age

Retirement is great -- as long as one is healthy.  When one is in declining health, nothing else can get much better.  That is dependent on one's health.  Therefore, obviously, attention to health must have our highest priority -- and implies the quality and vitality of one's life.  If one is getting better, what more can be said?   And if one is in a declining health spiral, eventual disability and death seems the only certainty.

Yet many are paralyzed by the fear -- rather than realizing they have nothing to lose in doing everything they can to make themselves better.  Certainly, they can't get any worse.  But most don't want to change -- even if it means getting better.  The inertia is too great -- to get moving again.  They don't want to move on; they want to die where they are.  Formerly, people made those choices for themselves.

But now with so many health care workers, social workers, home health aides, one can be kept alive longer than their own efforts alone make possible. That is fine -- as long as any other doesn't have to sacrifice their own health and well-being for any other, whether the young for the old, or the old for the young.  Often, it is not just one for one, but many for the one, until one has a whole empire serving the needs of The One -- for which any sacrifice, is not too great.

That is not the trend in modern societies -- fortunately.  The highest attainment is the greatest self-reliance and self-sufficiency, because everyone is given equal access to all the resources -- particularly information of what they are, and how to access them.  But the outcomes and results, will never be the same for everyone because of individual variations that ensures the survival of the species in the diversity of responses to any crisis or challenge  Otherwise, one thing would wipe out everyone in an instant -- rather than allowing a few exceptions to the rule, to survive and eventually flourish in drastically changed circumstances.

It could be that some can stand the cold better, while others the heat. But as such, some enhance their survival prospects by moving towards their most favorable conditions -- rather than their most trying and difficult circumstances -- as proof they can withstand anything.  Far better, for them to identify and move towards their greatest strengths and favorable conditions -- in optimizing their life and existence.  That is what every living thing must do.  That is their categorical imperative -- the drive above all the others.

The individual must survive -- in order for the group to.  If none of the individuals survive, than the group is not possible.    That is why the individual must survive, and beyond that, thrive -- to make all things possible beyond that.  And rather than retirement being the end of those responsibilities to do well, it is actually the test tube of experimentation for how life can be -- if one's primary responsibilities are no longer the perpetuation of the present society, and its dependencies.  It can be a life of greater independence, than increasing and inevitable dependence.

That is a choice -- that the most able make, because they can.  That creates the society of the future. -- and not simply extending the lifespan of failing/fading life.  That formula is doomed to extinction. -- because the measure of life, has never been its quantity -- but its quality.  And quality is not just more of the same -- but significantly and appreciably different and better. 

Those are the foundations of a golden age -- of individual or collective life, when one has access to all the information.  The limit then, is not the information, but one's own desire and drive to tap it.  Many don't even want to know about it -- because if they did know about it, they'd feel compelled to do something about it -- and so let themselves off of that responsibility, by choosing not to know, and turning away from every possibility of knowing.  So theirs is the age of darkness -- repeating life as it has been, for thousands of years before.  Or even the generation before.

That is the betrayal of all that have come before us -- not to see what lies beyond.  Quite probably, it is of life beyond the money and cares of our traditional lives -- which we think is the ultimate goal and destination. And then we die -- or spend the rest of our lives worrying about it.  That too, will come to pass, but to spend the better half of one's life worrying about it, is wasting the best years of one's life -- in the actuality.

All of life up to this point, has been a preparation, for moving beyond the past and knowledge that limits us. Only those who take on the challenge and responsibility of finding out the life never lived or imagined before will enter the golden age of these discoveries. And that is to embrace and embody, all that has gone before -- and go beyond that. That is the golden age of discovery.