I have been meditating a lot in the past couple of weeks, seeking to find what makes me tick, what infinitely inspires me, so that I can focus on it, and let the rest go. What have been unable to do is reconcile my idealism with reality.
I don't think this makes me special, but perhaps my obsession with it does. My indefatigable quest for personal peace is thwarted by my own pervasive preoccupation with the destructive tendencies of humanity.
How can we live this way? So much intelligence used for ill. So much of society has become a cancer upon our humanity. Why are we STILL violent? As if physical domination will ever resolve discord— 'I don't like what you believe, so I am going to kill you'— it's like we are the product of a dispute between cavemen. That dispute has evolved into a feud between tribes, between nations, and between individuals who have never learned to live and let live. 150,000 years later, we have traded up our arsenal from sticks and stones (as we never did put much stock in words, which "never hurt") to nuclear arms.
We as Americans are aghast at the idea of someone strapping dynamite to their chest and blowing up a crowded street corner. Why have we not looked at our nation in macro- scale? With the introduction of nuclear arsenal, and the subsequent arms race across the globe, have we not established ourselves as the ultimate would-be suicide bomber? We have essentially strapped ourselves to the bomb, entered the conference of international relations and made the passive statement that if things don't go our way, we'll take everyone out including ourselves. And we somehow expect to have any sort of quality to our discussions? With the threat of imminent annihilation if anyone makes any sudden moves, we profess to be interested in cooperation and trust? I guess I am just completely ashamed of human traditions established in that first caveman argument. The one where they couldn't use their words, and each chose to bludgeon the other instead. Sticks and stones over words and patience.
Now we live in our 'Us vs. Them' societies, and we have only improved our language in regard to making threats. Even poets are preoccupied with self interest. Seeking to be understood, refusing to understand. Strong arming our way to our objectives with a vocabulary of ultimatums and promises of mutual self-harm. At best, we hope to form suicide pacts with other nations, because we cannot hope to survive the eventuality of our behaviors.
Welcome to my dystopia. Where we as citizens concern ourselves on a national scale with the private behaviors of the individual. Whether it be denying them equal rights, based on sexual orientation, making judgement calls on what the individual is allowed to do with their own body based on skewed-yet-absolutist ideas of morality. Government control of human appetites. Seeking to homogenize the human population.
Agonizing over the idea that your culture is not universal (as if this somehow inhibits you); perhaps you would be more well-travelled if you didn't have to worry about cultural diversity? Our over-sized brains operate in categories of 'We' and 'They', as if our person is in constant threat of being attacked by a tribe of cannibal cavemen. We draw correlations and conclusions about other cultures as being bizarre and threatening, and never acknowledge that our own behavior is quite likely despicable even by our standards.
We are destructive. Whether it be destroying the hopes and dreams of equality for minorities, the economic climate, the livelihood of the un-incorporated, the lives of innocent civilians in 3rd world countries in a quest for vengeance and/or power/oil, entire cities of human beings as we did with Hiroshima and Nagasaki... We thrive on entropy. Hence my misanthropy.
On the other side of the coin, I have such hope. And it is inspired by the immense potential I see in humanity. The untapped capacity for love and compassion, learning, acceptance, collaboration and r/evolution of ideas, sheer man-power as a resource for reshaping the planet in literal and relevant ways, selflessness, support and compromise, the ingenuity to realize dreams, philosophical planes that transcend the idea of being "just human".
We are ALL just humans, being.
Can we all start living up to our own standards, and stop holding others to them? Is that an ironic question?
My goals for myself are to come to terms with the state of humanity, and attain peace in that way. To stop blaming my situation on others, to celebrate the existence that I have on a moment-by-moment basis. I have spent so much time wishing I had a different existence, and I have taken this one for granted. When I think of overcoming my views as a misanthrope, my behaviors as an angry iconoclast... I wonder if it is not just a matter of mind over matter. I get lost in that spiral. When I start nourishing good will, I become keen to all the ill-will surrounding me. And I get overwhelmed, and resentful. Before I know it, I am harboring and spreading ill-will in the name of love. In my duality, I am no better than the fundamentalist Christians who feel compelled to save homosexuals from themselves through legislation. No better than the Islamic extremist who resents the abuse of power against humanity by America, yet in the name of ending it, they commit atrocious acts against humanity in an 'Us' vs. 'Them' mentality.
I find myself experiencing the same sense of vengeance that the U.S. felt at being attacked on our own soil, and subsequently brought the attack upon others on their own soil who had nothing to do with the event.
And so, I continue to try to reconcile my philosophies of how we should treat each other, with how I treat others. Can I accept entropy as reality? Can I then transcend the numbness of that realization to find my zen? My meditations have become centered on the duality of a state of Zentropy.
-Namaste
Evan
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