Standing at The Edge of a Hall of Mirrors

Striking thought: I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't met the friends I had. And if I hadn't had the family I had either. All of my experiences I have had with each one has radically changed my character. It leads me to wonder if individuals aren't formed over time in clusters.

Clusters of dialectical development: each connecting two individuals having exchanges with one another, influencing each other. They are then overlapped by other connecting individuals so that the entire social web develops each individual's character. The smaller the web, the more idiosyncratic each member will be as an individual. Further, the more social people are, the more traits are spread into their character, so that they all resemble each other and move about each other freely. And that is on top of cultural influence! TV, cinema, music, video games, all these inputs amassed from a centralized popular culture, an over-web filled with smaller units of organization, each one containing more units themselves, complete with individuals developing with one another.

Modern civilization is incredibly complex.

And so this is what they mean by interlocking systems. Activation thresholds become more understandable. Changes to a culture can spread throughout interlocking systems very rapidly, exponentially maybe, until there comes a point where there are major changes taking place simultaneously across different systems, marking a quality change.

Just imagine the interlocking systems in American civilization! The entire web is being pulled tighter and tighter every day: food prices, gas prices, rude behavior, bad entertainment, crummy jobs, dwindling jobs, the flamboyancy of the rich, mean politics, xenophobia, you name it; everything is self-reinforcing, building more tension, pulling people apart, stretching and straining the web. We will reach a point where we are at a system-wide critical threshold, an activation threshold where the entire population is primed and one pertinent event could throw the entire civilization into a massive quality change.

On Retribution

Sometimes a simple reaction based on emotional undercurrents provides an excellent opportunity for analysis; it serves as a vivid snapshot, demanding an investigation with its lingering intensity.

Today I was driving, lost in conversation, and I suddenly realized the right lane ahead was closed. So I checked behind me and put on my blinker to begin moving over. A white car, which was hovering impatiently behind me, began to drift over as well, but we were both going the relative same speed. Before I could make a move, the white car swerved into the left lane and rushed past me, effectively cutting off my lane change. Naturally, I thought this was pathologically selfish and short sighted. This white car asshole shit fuck (excuse me) could have waited a simple 5 seconds at most (the driver was already behind me) and then passed me if they wished after the lane widened. But they couldn't wait that 5 seconds, they had to cut off my own action and whiz past me.

I was sitting atop a boiling kettle that was heated by experience of the pathological selfishness that pervaded day to day life in America. This feverish need for instant self-gratification, regardless of the neighbor's well-being, has characterized the American spirit for decades now. As this impulse has permeated the top echelons of society, countless human beings have suffered. It is a characteristic that has ushered me to the end of my metaphorical rope, emotionally speaking, even though I know logically that this characteristic is simply a metaphysical quality of an atomizing culture. Still, my emotions got the better of me. So I honked. And then honked several more times for good measure. To express my displeasure.

I suppose horns are designed as a warning signal, a blast of sound to avert potential disaster. But many use it as a cry of displeasure, an extension of our shaking fists. I was using it in this way.

Now, as soon as I honked I was filled with regret. I usually am when I engage in unnecessarily aggressive actions. But I began to think. What does it take to correct this pathological selfishness? Will it be dissolved in a national sea change of consciousness? And what does that sea change consist of? Would it not consist of a wave of negative feedback? The very feedback I am engaged in? Or do we exercise patience and attempt to absorb the bad energy, thereby neutralizing it?

But what is the use of retribution? And how much force to apply before you invoke an equal reaction, therefore canceling out what good you are trying to achieve?

Was my honk a signal to initiate a deep self analysis on the part of the offender? Or did he or she simply become enraged and rebel against it and completely pass over it without a second thought?

Oftentimes, our enemies are guided by their own necessities and belief systems, and when we react to them and attack them, we effectively become their enemies (and not their teachers), thereby insulating and reinforcing their own value system.

Case in point. I was being absolutely hounded by a sales agency last week. I was being called every hour, literally, and I was on the brink of madness, of hulk-like rage and retribution. But when I finally picked up the phone and answered, I carefully kept my patience and softly told her the following: " Sorry but I don't want to waste your time. I've talked to your agency already and am not interested. Please take me off your list." She ended up thanking me for calling, sounding grateful actually, as she was probably an embattled individual (those poor wretches are positively whipped daily and demanded that they pester people during the course of hundreds of calls). I recognized that she was most likely fighting for her wages in a high stress degrading job in which her fear of poverty was causing her to flail against a wall of scorn.

So was this phantom driver a tortured soul? Was he or she simply externalizing the pain of living in a society that externalizes its pain and transfers it to the weak? Do we all transfer the waves of exhaustion that shudder down from the power core of this culture?

Well, if that truly is so, then I acted like a conservative today. But alternatively, if I deny my own impulses, I may hurt myself in the process. A labyrinth of possibilities. But at this point, I'll just go with the former and resolve to cultivate my patience.

Au Contraire

What if the chief peril of visiting a modern psychiatrist lies not in their notoriously subjective criteria for understanding the human psyche, but in the terrifying possibility that modern individualist consciousness itself is in danger of or has already become a pathology?

Here

Nietzsche spoke of a superman that was to emerge, a powerful new consciousness, a transcendence of a still adolescent human. This superman would be an expression of an overflow of power, a will to life, a physical need to outgrow one's shell.

And we are still adolescents aren't we? We swing reason about like a sword, shouting over each other, proclaiming our exclusive claims to absolute truth. We cling to old superstitions and new ones alike. We worship strips of paper and shiny objects. We, with the technical ingenuity and the sheer manpower to produce food and shelter for all of mankind squander our resources on the useless rich and let vast populations writhe in agony.

I myself am caught in embarrassing bouts of weakness, torn in various directions by wrenching emotions I can't find any use for, attributing original causation to links in greater, even infinite causal chains, clawing desperately for meaning.

But within me is a new consciousness, growing, budding out of the soil, showing itself in glimpses but remaining stubbornly hidden. I write and it speaks to me in whispers, I strike the guitar and it sings to me faintly, I dive into the electric internet ocean and am surrounded by it, omnipresent but hesitating to identify itself. I am certain we are on the verge of a great new era, but we are grinding along on firmly pressed brakes, stomped into the ground by fearful, spoiled infants.

The earth tears, but it will repair itself. The question to ask is, will we make it to a new age of enlightenment before the planet reestablishes equilibrium on its own accord?

Let it be, a voice says. It will come in due time. It will determine itself.