13.8 billion years after the big bang we find ourselves flying through the tremendous thrust of another big bang. We are particles propelled in the Homo Sapiens explosion. Appearing. Perhaps within an illusory existence. Growing from cosmic clay to fertile planet to the curious structure life – a single species suddenly collective. Civilization: through science and language stretching naturally into a matrix. 200,000 orbits ago our species becomes by our own definition a separate entity. 12,000 ago early man invented agriculture and organized society. And it has hardly been 20 since the multitudes tapped into the internet, building social capacity to rival the rapacious expanse of institutions and capital – marking the Planetary Phase of Civilization. The Age of Humanity.
We find ourselves in violent throes of evolutionary current, dust powder in a torrent of history. Will we collaborate, improvise, duck and swing like the finest athletes and musicians, or we will we merge chaotically into a beast of natural selection, subdued to rough coalesced force like a strain of virus or swarm of cockroach?
The times call for revolutionary changes. They sprout from traditions and cultures to encourage active philosophy.
A way to steer the craft of tomorrow – thought – through treacherous passages and into calm waters. Not with the words and practices of the philosophy of yesterday, although both come from the same realization.
Otherwise we acquiesce to passive thought. Resign. Turn our souls over to overdetermined forces through inane words and routines. Anesthetized consent and destructive hypocrisy rolls on and on into perpetuity, carried by the same weary concepts through armies of generations.
Wittgenstein realized that logic is dictated by “language games”, which can exist only because things are expected and “known.” Our understanding is a rotation of implied and allowable knowledge around an axle of unquestioned realities. In another instance he compared the most certain of certains to hinges which the rest of our knowledge uses to pivot.
He – like other enlightened souls – understood that words and numbers themselves prevent true apprehension of existence; they cannot contain the myriad complexities of life but seemingly stand firm.
On the other hand it is a Faustian delusion to match perfection, infinite knowledge: of course nirvana is not this at all. Consider this in regards to our responsibility to society.
The goal is to shift the axle away from passive thoughts that enable the violent tendencies of the past, simultaneously uncovering and discovering methods that accommodate and harvest individual potential.
If we think actively we can hopefully make some sense of here and now and find a good way to proceed.
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