Saturday, May 21, 2022
2:30 a.m. Setting switches for maximum focus, receptivity, clarity, and presence, as usual. Shall we continue the discussion from yesterday’s bullets?
Number them, for convenience, and list. Re-read them, and we will begin.
- Good and bad as judgments. The fruit of the tree.
- Light and darkness as conditions.
- The vast impersonal forces as they flow through 3D humans and thereby process the shared subjectivity’s unfinished business as well as the individual’s.
- The nature of perception via comparison. How do you know hot if you have never experienced cold? Or, rather, how can hot exist without reference to cold?
- A system’s components are always balanced, though not necessarily obviously.
- “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”
- Whether you are lost depends not only on where you are but where you were and where you want to go. “Confused” is not the same as “lost.”
- We say it again: Never assume you are smarter or better than the conditions of existence. What looks wrong, or unnecessary, or repugnant, may be merely a matter of your point of view. You may not like dung beetles, but they serve a necessary purpose. And those who see them differently see not something repugnant but, for instance, a scarab.
Let’s begin with number eight, though the point ought to be obvious.
Oh, I don’t know, I know a lot of people – I used to be one of them – who think they know better than nature. Look at people who are vegetarians, or pacifists, to cite just two examples.
You are going to have to focus more, and, again, go slowly. We understand what you mean, but you have not actually said it.
There are many reason to be vegetarian, but the one I am citing is based in ethics: It is wrong to kill in order to eat. There may be many variants of pacifism, including something as simple as objection to the endless militarism that is a sign of social decay, but the reason I am citing pretends that killing is not a part of nature but is an exception to the natural law.
You still haven’t quite defined your position, though you are getting closer.
Ever seen a vegetarian tiger? Everything in nature seems required to kill or be killed. We don’t have to like it, but it is dishonest to pretend that killing for food is a specifically human thing. There are specifically human types of killing – for pleasure, for “sport,” etc. – but that doesn’t destroy my argument. The fact is that the natural order appears to be an ecology containing killers and natural prey.
As to warfare, you see it from channeled aggression called the “pecking order” all the way up to the war of the red ants and black ants Thoreau described in Walden. I am not saying that either vegetarianism or pacifism is or is not practical or desirable; I am saying they are not a sign that whoever adopts either one is “more moral than God,” as you put it, nor more intelligent than the system as a whole.
We told you years ago, in response to one of Rita’s questions, that without predators the world would be awash with live creatures, and without scavengers it would be awash with dead ones. Together, they maintain the balance that is always a part of a functioning system.
Still, something within us objects. It feels like it shouldn’t be necessary for life to be this way. Why should every animal in the wild have to live in a state of alertness all its life? Why should killing be required of the predator, for that matter? One can hardly argue that the animal kingdom is degenerate because of Original Sin!
And that is a reasonable demonstration of the emotional bias you were citing. Yes, it doesn’t feel right, but still when you look at an ecology you see that something must preserve the balance. So sometimes you lie awake wondering how things could be improved upon.
Bernard Shaw described himself as a “world-betterer,” seeing reform as requiring clear vision and effective organization. Shaw certainly saw himself as more intelligent than the creation, if not of the creator.
But then you have to ask yourself, how well did he understand the system? How well can anyone understand all the interconnections and nuances of any system? And if you don’t understand what you are tinkering with, you are always going to be surprised.
The law of unintended consequences.
Yes. A functioning system might be described as the result of worked-out consequences. Trial-and-error, if nothing else, has brought things into a balance. However, in the nature of things, balance does not persist forever. A catastrophic event may change conditions, or the continuing evolution of behavior and characteristics may change the cost/benefit ratio of a given behavior. One way or another, things change.
We seem to be in the middle of what the scientists are calling the sixth great extinction. The world is going to be very different, again.
It will. But although human activity is playing a major part in this one, don’t be too quick to assume that human activity outfoxed nature, or put in a fast unexpected blow to the natural order. The fact is, the earth is larger than humanity, and the 3D and non-3D consequences of activity are always more obscure than you may think, and – here’s one you aren’t going to like – tragedy has its rightful place in life.
Meaning?
Meaning just what we said.
Well, what do you mean by tragedy?
That is an intelligent question. Rather than react, inquire first. Good.
In this case, we mean, one tends to think of continuance as normal, and interruption as abnormal. Carried to an extreme, this would amount to an expectation that one would live forever, and any death would be tragic. Indeed, people do sometimes feel that way. But more normally, deaths are seen as tragic when they cut short a young life; when they interrupt what seems a great task; when they seem unnecessary, or inexplicable, or the result of malice. Nor of course is tragedy confined to deaths. An accident resulting in paralysis, an illness resulting in chronic incapacity – you can draw out the list endlessly. And you can add emotional heartache, and unnumbered variants. They all amount to life serving up something that seems unnatural in some way, either undeserved or unbearable or, with Lear, as if the gods were boys tormenting flies for their own amusement.
If life did not contain any of these things, would it be paradise, or would their absence have a down side?
I presume you are not implying that we would suffer boredom.
No, actually think about this. If 3D life did not include tragedy, how would it be different? How would your lives be different? Is it possible that you would lose opportunities, would forfeit potential growth?
I’m getting that you literally want us to think about it.
Yes. Let’s leave the question open, for the moment.
I’m getting, too, that it is important that we think of this in the context of the 3D being “only somewhat real.”
It will change your perspective.
So, today’s theme?
“Second-guessing the universe”?
Maybe. I can see that this thread may continue for quite a while.
It will depend. If you can stay loose, yes. If it becomes too uncomfortable, we will move on to other things.
I guess we’ll see. Our thanks, as always.