Sunday 14 December 2008

it's the thought that counts

Time for Revolution: ‘We must blink to see the world in a different light.’

At this point, even the truth lacks truth. Centuries have faded away and we continue lost in our own frenzy. As humans we have become the judgers of right and wrong, as if we are in any position to make that decision. Everyday I look out my window and I see the downhill path humanity has chosen: the tall buildings, the enterprises, the pipes, the lights, and the fire that keeps our city going. Our entire way of living has been built around concepts like time and money.

I bring this up not to put down mankind but to enlighten it. Like a cloud in the sky we each see something different until someone points out another way of looking at. Sadly to say we have all chosen to see the same way. It has now become a habit among humans to categorize things, to classify them under ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and ‘truth’ or ‘lie.’ Funny enough, as a race we question how to obey something more than why we should obey it. Our race’s greatest strength is actually our greatest weakest: adaptation. The ability to adapt has made us question so little when there is so much to ask. It’s because we are so use to the way we are raised that there is no need to question it, but we must take a step outside that line of thinking and evolve.

For example: time. We are so use to following a schedule our entire lives that most individuals believe in its existence. But when you take a step back and think about it, does it really exist? No, of course, it’s just a concept. Time can only exist in association to something. If something can only exist in associate to something else than it has no real independent existence. Outside the idea of itself, it does NOT exist.

Appointments, the school bells, our morning alarms, roads, airplanes, all these things have been created to support a concept, to create a purpose for it’s dependent existence, to make us forget that, in entity, it means nothing. Time is money, and money is time. People suffer because of an idea we are too afraid to let go. Because there are no other ways of living these days, if you do not follow the crowd you lag behind and become unsuccessful. What ever happened to ‘live and let live’?

Take the story of Cain and Abel, as another example. A story from the ‘holy’ bible itself. From a different perspective we can see the story in a new light. The same way we read mythology must be applied to the way we read the bible. They merely serve as representations to explain what happened. Cain and Abel are NOT two different individuals, but rather two different groups of people. Cain: the first agriculturalists, and Abel: the nomads who had chosen to continue living as they had for centuries. Cain offers what he has cultivated to the ‘lord,’ as does Abel. Cain offers him his harvest and Abel offers him an animal (a lamb, apparently). God tells Cain he prefers Abel’s gift. So in response, Cain invites Abel and kills him. This story, taken out of it manipulated religious context, is actually about the persecution of nomads done by the agriculturalists, who were probably the first settlers of the Fertile Crescent at the time. Whether my perception of the story is ‘right’ or not, changes nothing. Now we have a religion that has taken stories from the nomads and turned them into stories of their own faith. Ironically, the story just goes to show how mankind persecutes people that do not follow their way of living. The nomads did not persecute the agriculturists, for it is not ‘which method is the right one to follow’, but rather ‘what works for the individual.’

Example. First you are born. You are nurtured, raised, and fed. Less than six years after your birth you are sent to school. During your time in school, you will become TWICE the adapter your folks were. Grades will slowly start to matter, and competition between classmates begins. Your parents will then tell you to work hard because if you do your life will be great, you will have a proper education and a good job that pays well. So basically, you dedicate your life to working hard in school so that one day (‘hopefully’) you can be paid around 100,000 DOLLARS a year, in concept.

‘A poor man and rich man are the same dead: a man.’

Need I even mention the ‘Economic Crisis’ we are having? A gift from ourselves perhaps? I guess it’s the thought that counts.