Reply #11: Don't misread my position

[GliderGuider]

I'm still totally convinced that all the bad shit I've written about is going to happen. If humanity ends up consisting of more than a billion people by the end of the century, I'll be totally amazed. Our Taker culture has fucked up but good, and now it's time to pay the piper. I'm convinced there is going to be a lot of turmoil and misery in the next few decades. The Chicago School is going to hang ten on the biggest wave of disaster our culture has ever seen.

But of course that's not the whole story of humanity. What will those billion survivors be like? What will they believe, how will they behave, where will they find their joys amid the sorrow? And rest assured, they will find their joys, no matter what we might expect from our vantage point here in the past.

But never mind the survivors. How should we, the participants, act as the world unfolds around us? Will we choose the path of despair, denial, resignation, grim determination, armed insurrection or withdrawal from our fellow man? Or might it be possible for a person to become fully aware of what's going on, but at the same time work to improve the lot of humanity lot by promoting strength, courage and awareness in others and joy in themselves?

I've tried both despair and joy, and I'm convinced of two things. The first is that joy beats despair any day, any time, any place, to any degree. The second is that by giving in to despair we are not recognizing Truth to any deeper level. Rather, we are letting our ego's attachment to pain and fear lead us into a trap of illusion -- the illusion that only the shit is real. That perception is not Truth, it's just the ego speaking.

Reality is what it is, and I have no doubt that enough hard rain is gonna fall to make an ego's skeleton dance with delight on the graves of the undeserving dead. But that will happen Then, and this is still Now. There is a lot to be gained by fully living the infinite succession of Nows that pave the road to Then. If we live them well, we might even change (no, we will surely change) what happens Then. What that will be, we cannot tell. We can't know Then, we can only know Now. Live the very best you can right now, and Destiny will take care of itself.