The Man Standing on the Street Corner

Have you ever really looked at the people around you as you go through this world? At times, I'm sure you have, just for a fleating moment, but then we quickly go back to blinding ourselves to those around us, because, well, we have problems of our own. We don't want to take in any more than we already have to deal with on our own. But some time really stop and look at that guy on the street corner. Do you see the glazed look in his eyes? Do you see the weight he carries on his shoulders? Do you see the pain that eminates from his very core? He has no one to share that eternal struggle with. No one. There is no one on this earth that he feels can help him unyolk the burden he drags and has dragged for as long as he can remember. This man lives The Divine Comedy as you and I do. He cannot look to help another because he cannot help himself, and there is no one to help him. And so we all bury ourselves as a society, steadily reaching a level of frustration in which we snap. Frenzy is a common way to pretend we have not yolked ourselves to pain. We go a certain kind of crazy, and in that supposedly civilized insanity we keep our minds conciously free of where we are and how we truly feel. It gives us an excuse for why we will not stop and notice the pain of others, and it gives a temporary numbness to our own pain.

But that man on the street corner, the one with the gray beard and the glassy eyes, the one who bears the weight of his world on his shoulders.... Next time you see him, really look at him. Because he is you.

Mortality

Mortality. Every human being is bound by it, yet we spend all our lives trying to ignore it or avoid it. And then someday something smacks you upside the face and forces you to open your eyes. But we are good at fooling ourselves. We quickly find ways to take our minds off of our ticking clocks, ways to trick ourselves on some level to think that we are immortal. Only at the moment of our deaths are we ever truly forced to open our minds to reality. We are scared of the infinite, but we are mortified of the finite. Overall, we're all just afraid. We're always afraid. Fear drives everything. But fear is not base. Want is. It is the quintessential human base. We want, we desire, and everything stems from that. For what is fear but an emotional reaction to the possibility of loss? And we can only lose what we desire. If we didn't desire it, then we would be indifferent to its presence or absence. So desire leads to fear. Where to from there? Ignorance. We try to ignore what we fear, so that we don't have to worry about it. We hide and call it bliss. But ultimately, we all know we are afraid, and so we are edgy and rotting from within. Something is eating at us and we don't know what. We refuse to open our eyes, choosing instead to bury our heads in the sand and try and weather through it. But we are only fooling ourselves. We are rotting at our very cores, screaming inside but refusing to deal with our issues. And so we feel pain. A deep and immense pain. A pain that has come to define us. An internal struggle that we fight because we will not open our eyes and see. A struggle that has become the very nature of our lives. The Divine Comedy.

DESIRE --> FEAR --> IGNORANCE --> PAIN

I Am B

About two weeks ago, Erik gave me a book to read. He presented it to me as "a mind fuck greater than The Matrix". Bold words. This book was The Story of B. It would be difficult to describe the plot of the book accurately, but basically the point of the book is to deconstruct your preconceived ideas about the world in which we live, and the ultimate goal of that world. What you are left with upon finishing the book is a much clearer view of our culture. Not American culture, not Italian or Mexican or Asian culture, but a culture known as the Taker culture.

The core idea is that a culture practicing totalitarian agriculture essentially engulfed the world and that that culture is the culture to which we belong. And this culture's way of life is threatening to finally give way and the whole system is going to collapse. It is quite possible to read the book and think that it's simply a book written by an environmentalist, but it presents the reader with so much more, and it's that more that I really came away with. The Matrix discusses enlightenment largely in terms of the mind, but The Story of B gives a new vision of balance and "enlightenment" which is so simple and natural that it will amaze you how the answer has been right before your eyes.

Without bringing too many details into this, what I want to explore is this: What is humanity? This really is the core question of the book in many regards. We say we are human, but what does that mean? Or, more directly, what is the difference between humanity and its various cultures? In order to get at the heart of humanity, you must strip away the layers that culture has stacked upon us. Take away writing and speech and agriculture and civilization and look at what lies at the core. We are a part of the world, not conquerors that were put here to plunder the Earth and make it our own. We are as much a part of the "natural cycle" as a deer or a fox or a mouse or a lion. but when our culture was born, we gave ourselves a destiny and eventually forgot how to live as part of the world. And this has brought us to our present day, fast approaching a dead-end in an evolution many would rather close their eyes to.

Another core idea in The Story of B is the connection between vision and programs and how they relate to a changed mind. The moral of the story, if you will, is essentially "the world will not be saved by unchanged minds with new programs, but by changed minds with no programs at all." A mind has a vision, a world view, a way of doing things. A vision determines one's course, like a river. Programs are like sticks in the mud, trying to retard the flow of the river, push it in another direction, but with very little results. In order to alter the course of the river, the flow, or vision, must take it in a new direction. This is a changed mind. Programs are not needed if the vision is right. This is what must happen to alter the crash course our culture is on.

There is more in this book than I can talk about in one sitting, but I'd like to end with why I feel this relates to The Divine Comedy. The Story of B discusses the effects of this crash course we are on, and how we in this culture experience these effects. How we know something is wrong and how we whole-heartedly believe that our programs are the best way to find relief from this suffering that ails us. But our minds are not awakened, are unchanged, and so we struggle to find a way to climb out of the pit, when all we have to do is turn around and walk out the door right behind us. This kind of struggle is the very heart of The Divine Comedy.