Assumptions and the fish
I can operate a television but I can’t get very
specific about how it works. I could never assemble one from scratch (without instructions) and I just don't care. You and I might freely admit this "not knowing" how to build
a television but somehow there is some amount of pride
wrapped up in "knowing" how nature works and "knowing"
how the universe works. We puff up and get “managerial” about the place.
(("Oh those?, those are the Andes, and him? he's just a fish")) As if we know something.
Fish
to fish communication is not our problem. It would only complicate
things. The managers of this human enterprise are very sure of
themselves. The willingness to be the first to take something
that doesn't belong to you metastasizes and envelops the
original structure leaving a mass that might read books by Donald Trump
and perhaps drive a new Corvette.
Why
the disdain for fish and mountains? What is wrong with us?
Most
of us can’t bring it to vocalization; it’s just too darn emotional to even
start. We got to keep up the facade. Unyielding and generally unsympathetic is seen as a positive personality trait in nine out of ten subjects roaming the sandbox.
If
we could ever just assume that the rocks and the oceans, the
plants and critters, might actually have points of view all their own instead of
the ubiquitous cause and effect logic welded permanently to our
present world view, then our goofy assumptions would become our strengths
instead of the love of strength being the basis of our goofy
assumptions.
A spider and a tree walk into a bar....
In a stroke of unmatched Hubris, ..Humans.. Are love
struck with a lopsided dominion over fictitious forces. LIFE is self-determining and our own definition of the word itself lacks vision and reflects
very little of our accumulated data. Our childlike mentality permits a two
dimensional animal to wiggle toward treats or squiggle from danger, nothing
contemplative shall be considered like a Judge refusing to allow evidence to
enter court. Life on Earth is what we are looking down on with contempt, a green carpet with
its fibers able to jump up and run around on purposeful mini missions
for a bit before reattaching to the floor. With eyes, ears, hearts and brains
we lie to ourselves in a last ditch effort to maintain a certain feeling of
Kingship over the natural world. The natural world, however, has to contend
with what it has produced. A man with an earth sized ego, a child rebelling
against his parents, slamming doors we didn't pay for.
Our very best
science aficionados take the podium offering us a sneering side comment intent
on its dutiful re-dissemination. It is directed toward a crowd of
lawn furniture, remaining careful to avoid eye contact with the hawk on the
fence and the spider on the microphone,
"I can do what ever I want,"
bellows our tantrum of self deceit. The wind replies by shaking the
leaves on the eucalyptus trees. The sound and the smell along
with a temperature change for the cooler sends a shiver up the orators back.
FOR
THE BIRDS
We
are so completely in love with ourselves that two birds tweeting away to each
other from tree to tree cannot penetrate our personal fictions. We refuse to
allow them an equal level of consciousness. They are obviously
singing nonsense unless we get honest with ourselves for a minute. "We
have a written language" is a proud batch of syllables we are
fond of referring to. In a moment of weakness, we give up a little
ground by observing in book form the mating rituals of male birds dominating
the competition, a line of reasoning to lower the creature in our minds while
we are pretending to see their beauty. We like our beauty in a box, even
if its only a mental one. Thinking about birds acting out their entire lives on
pure instinct is a great way to objectify an animal when you are intending to
cut down their forest. Will a bird actually have to text the word
"tweet" to us in order to be thought of as something which thinks?
Our human thoughts are so strangely self petting and dim that I find it
difficult to categorize the beast in line at Taco Bell anywhere above
a flying creature that has a compass and a calendar as standard equipment. A
gorilla can use sign language to communicate its feelings and we don't
generally give two shits. It's considered a circus trick, something you read at
the dentist’s office then forget entirely.
(((for
the bees)))
Using
our own serotonin-laced logic, if a population of killer bees took over the
world and drove us to live in caves, they would now have a respectable language
and newly recognizable beehive townships, a culture of their own, progressive,
organized and successful. We would be free to speak incoherent nonsense
back and forth between caves but we would be doing so for dominance and mating
reasons alone. The bees would have earned the right to ignore our status
as conscious beings. We respect power and alter word meanings to
accommodate enterprise.
Defining
a company as a living thing is the flexing of a crafty mental muscle by monkeys
on moonshine and by making sure to keep the Boreal forests of North America ill defined and stripped
of consciousness, we are then free to literally blow our noses at it.
((I
guarantee you; "Kleenex" or rather (Kimberly Clark Corporation) is a boycott-worthy organization.))
The
world will allow us exhaust ourselves. I feel like we have just begun to cry it
out on the couch. No, we can’t "do whatever we want" we are a
family, immensity more bizarre than the bar scene in Star
Wars.
WE need each other for survival, for peace of mind and
for reasons we can feel but cannot wrap our heads around.
People
talk. What if everything else does too?
B.E.B.
