Sunday, August 28, 2016

To A Better Place (Survival of the Fitness)

The lesson in life is that one must constantly improve -- or be left behind, to perish with those who can no longer move on.  But that fitness is not only about strength and agility, or any other one thing -- but about everything, and how they work together -- to create more than the sum of its parts.  That is the synergy of life -- making it more than just the little details -- but altogether, take on a life and intelligence of its own, and creates marvelous new things and possibilities one could never have imagined before.

The new, is not merely the old reinvented, and improved.  It is something different entirely.  There's a reason it never happened before -- because it took time to come into being.  And then when it does, people wonder why they never thought of it before -- because it is so obvious, simple, and straightforward.  Life does not move to greater complexity but towards greater simplicity.  That is the genius of it.

But many confused and confusing people, think the object of life, is to make everything more difficult and complicated -- so we need them to understand and explain what is going on.  There is permanent job security in that -- or so they think, until people catch on, and realize they don't have to be dependent on them to interpret life for them.  Of course, some people never achieve that clarity -- or think it possible -- but it is always there for the taking.

First, one has to let go of one's previous conditioning -- that what they know, is all that can be known -- and look with fresh eyes unprejudiced by their own knowledge.  That is a great handicap who those who pride themselves on their knowledge -- and want to hold on to that as long as possible -- thinking it conveys great advantage.

The advantage is always that of an inquiring mind that presumes it knows nothing -- and thus, is willing to learn everything.  Such a mind, is a formidable mind -- because it knows and recognizes no limits, and so is free to observe only what is, as the only reality it knows.  The truth is out there -- and not in the words, thoughts, culture and traditions of an imperfect time and understanding -- that its adherents and devotees insist must be for all time.

Reality and truth is not like that; it is in every moment -- in its own time.  It is the best we know at any time.  And time changes everything.  So the solutions of our youth, are not the solutions of our maturity and seniority -- that we now have to rise to.  The life of one time, is not the life for all time, and thinking so, will keep us answering to the wrong challenges of our lives -- despite all we do.  It is simply the wrong thing, at the wrong time and place -- though many knowledgeable people, will insist that one can never properly and successfully time life, and what must be good, must be good for all time, and every occasion -- which is why they are often so disastrously out of step.

And they grow more so each day, with each passing year -- until the final isolation, which is to be cut off completely from life and apart from it.  That is the obvious.  So our challenge is simply, how do we not get that way?  The real tragedy is that many young people get that way and so don't even make it to adulthood -- let alone the golden years of senior citizenship.

Survival is the fitness.  That is the reality of the matter.  That which is dying, disabled or dead, is not fit -- and one has to change.  Life is not an entitlement -- no matter what you do.

Monday, August 08, 2016

Two Kinds of People

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who create problems, and those who solve problems.

The worst pairing, is when a problem-creator, gets together with a solutions-creator -- in the classic dysfunctional relationship of codependency.  The more problems one can create, the more the enabler solves for them -- always resulting in a zero-sum game, canceling out the efforts of one another.  Eventually the problem-solver realizes that the more energy they put in -- is the game of the energy-draining problem creator -- for never in their universe, must everything work well.  If it does, it is their calling, to create a problem -- as the only thing they know how to do, to gain the attention of others.

For in their faulty upbringing, the only time they ever received any attention from their parents or teachers, is when they were bad -- and all their efforts to be good. were ignored, dismissed, or ridiculed.  From a lifetime of such humiilations and shame, they learned only fear, and the power of making others fear them -- even if it was to upset the apple cart others had so thoughtfully and carefully loaded.

These are the psychological heirs of the Vandals -- wreaking havoc as their greatest joy -- because they could not conceive and build their own orderly, well-functioning society.  But they knew they could have a power and control over others, if they merely learned to destroy.  A variation on the theme, is an offer to help build -- while undermining everything others built -- in desiring its failure.  And thus the good society of people, have no suspicion that one is working against them -- which is an even worse crime than those openly opposed and defiant.  Because then one knows -- and allows for that caution. 

Eventually and in all likelihood, they are simply identified and banished -- where they can no longer do much harm.  In the extreme, it is physical isolation and detention while in other cases, it is just the advisement and warning to assume and presume nothing about that person -- and particularly anymore, what they tell one to believe about themselves and their motives.  Those are the villains of history and literature -- the cause of "tragedies."

It was never believed that "bad things just happened," since humanity came into its consciousness.   And that consciousness is to believe that there is a cause of problems -- as well as its solutions, and avoidance from future recurrences -- rather than the trap of despair and hopelessness, that it doesn't matter what one does -- the cards are stacked against one, so all one can do, is rage against them.  And of course, rage becomes an end in itself -- to sow as widely as possible -- as one's calling in this world.

Theirs can never be a better world -- just another precarious step away from doom and misfortune -- expecting one day to succumb irreparably.  There is no "happily forever after," as am objective.  Others can merely be pulled down with them -- as their idea of "leveling the playing field."  Gain and advancement is not possible -- only the mind-numbing repetition of life as it always has been before -- and in fact, devolving from that.  There can never be more, but only less.  And so it becomes their self-fulfilling prophecy -- that life can only get worse, despite any progress in every field of human activity and study.

That is the dark side of life -- while on the other, there is relentless change, progress and evolution -- as the whole object of life at any time.  One is never too old or too young to make that progress -- in everything one does.  That is the only way life gets better -- to work at it, and not despair that nothing matters -- it is all futile and hopeless, and so they go about repeating what they've always done before, no matter how spectacular the failures.  And of course, learning nothing from it.  Never any breakthroughs -- to the other side.

The bright future is always on the other side -- the new world, and not the old world people cling to as the only world that can ever be.  It's not like nobody has ever gone there before.  There have always been the few and exceptional -- who know they have to find out as the whole meaning and purpose of their lives.  The worst that can happen, is never to find out.