I’m burning to write something but I don’t exactly know what. Everything thought leads into a deep rabbit hole that I get lost in, each way lies madness.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my own idealism, how naive it must be. I dream of this utopian ideal that requires me to tunnel into a fantasy of order in a world that is mostly chaos. I listen to a lot of podcasts in my spare time, by many different people about many different things. The range is so eclectic it actually feels like my mind is being stretched like butter scraped over too much bread.
I hear so any different takes & perspectives that it’s impossible not to see the chaos in it all. I’ll listen to someone talk about how amazing our society is, how peaceful it is & how amazing our technology is. Then listen to someone speak about the atrocities of the CIA or the billion dollar sex trafficking industry. The funny thing is most of it is true-ish, but because we are localised both biologically & geographically it really does relativise truth.
People love to take moral stances based on ideals, but the older I’ve gotten the more I’ve realised how foggy all these ideals are. For example, most people including many of its creators see the atom bomb as a ghastly horrible invention sprung from the depths of hell. An invention of mans ego, a phallic symbol of toxic masculinity. Totally anti-free love man, make love not war man. But putting aside what the knowledge that the atom bomb was made from has done for humanity, — like allow you to read this — suppose this.
What if a thousand years from now, we find that an asteroid is heading on a direct collision course with earth, & as a response earth fires a nuclear arsenal at it, skewing it’s trajectory or destroying it entirely. Therefore couldn’t you surmise that the atom bomb itself is a beautiful invention that saved humanity from certain extinction. The answer is both, to varying degrees & on varying timescales.
We have not a single clue the full ramifications of our actions, & that goes in both directions. The sweetest, most innocent & myopic acts of kindness could in of themselves have catastrophic consequences for humans down the track, & vice versa. This is a disturbing realisation, I think. I think a lot of people can be lead to nihilism through this. Or even worse.
What grinds my gears is the droves of social media accounts, or Clubhouse conversations espousing their moral virtues & ideals. Fighting for justice, peace, love & all that good shit. Ultimately I think most of it is just clout seeking, or pure naivety.
So what to do about it? For me it’s become a practice of really trying to examine my desires, & be ok with those desires not being altruistic & to make sure that I am not hiding behind some obnoxious morality ideal blinded from the complexities of the world. Do I succeed? Not really.
But the other thing that has become essential & it’s strange to come back to it after all this religious scar tissue I’ve built up. Faith. Radical, inexplicable & pragmatic faith in whatever it is that is pulling or pushing us into the future. Given all the insanity all around me it’s the best I can do really.
I have a desire to do a few big pieces soon, going into more depth about certain topics I’m interested in including this one. But I can’t promise it will be soon, even writing these small ones is hard to do at the moment. Thanks again for reading, love you all.
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