Monday, December 29, 2008
Several cups of tea
In our modern industrialized antisociety, it is considered actually pretty damm well fine to be indifferent, but it's not OK to feel hate. I think this needs to change.
That isn't to say it needs to be reversed. That isn't to say that hate is some good thing. Hate is wrong in all it's manifestations, from annoyance up to rage. But hate is at least always an attempt to right a wrong. Hate is always an attempt at what the person perceives as justice. The real fundamental problem is indifference.
The level of disconnection between people (and also animals), the incredible degree of indifference is just too much. I understand when you're surrounded by millions of people that it's impossible to treat everyone like they ideally should be treated. But instead we've decided to treat virtually everyone like they don't exist.
Man is a tribal creature. This means endless ugly things which we ought to recognize. It also means that we are supposed to have more meaningful connections than the majority of people currently have living in industrialized society. But the connections have been cut and indifference reigns supreme.
I met a guy living in a small religious commune in New Mexico. He told me one day their "leader" lined the men up on one side and the women up opposite and said, "whoever is across from you is who you'll marry."
This may sound horrible in a way. But it is also beautiful. Because if you had only people who were openminded, nonindifferent (compassionate), and honest with one another it would indeed work. Any two such people ought to be able to get along well enough to have a pretty good marriage.
In comparison today it is perfectly OK to just endlessly blow people off. There is no need to work with people. When someone is different from us, instead of examining the differences and learning from one another we simply never speak to them again. We go from person to person looking for someone identical. Those who aren't identical are discarded.
And, we haven't just evolved into aggressive, warring people. We've evolved into work proles. Which is to say, people who spend so much time working that they generally would have to really enjoy working, working, working... (which is to say they have nothing else in them that needs fulfilled) to an extent that most of them no longer even know what to do with free time. And those who don't, don't prosper/don't reproduce as much (evolution.) And so what do the work proles do with free time? Drink beer and watch Nascar?
You're allowed to fuck one person. That's your spouse. You can drink beer and have light meaningless conversations here and there. And that's it. What else do people nowadays do with their free time? Not much. And you cannot have numerous meaningful close connections with people. You cannot reach out to people. Too many people. And who knows who's a predator anyway?