Keeping my balance

I’ve always asked questions. I’ve always wanted to know why  and how come. I used to ask my father, who like many of us grew up to be a disappointed idealist, why this and why that. Not so much how; almost never when or where.  He would look at me with a degree of sadness and fatigue and say “because it is/ they are.” The message seemed to be there is no answer and you are just going to wear yourself (and me)  out looking for one.  I loved my father very much.  And I thought he was very smart. Nevertheless, I continue to look for answers. 

I am presently reading two books that explore the question of humanity – our history, and how we became the dominant species on the planet;   how we succeeded.  That does raise the question of success, since we are unquestionably dominant among other animals, successfully reducing their numbers, but apparently working our way to extinction after we eliminate everything else.  
I have not yet finished Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and just begun The Upright Thinkers by Leonard Mlodinow.  The premise of Sapiens is that we succeeded because we are the only species that can imagine things that don’t exist like religion and law and the collective faith in such imagined systems (capitalism falling under the religion) allowed us expand our numbers and take over the world. (The size of groups of early hominids was limited by the need to trust by knowing all members of the group, eliminating the threat of being other). The author introduces new perspective on what we generally call progress which encourages readers to expand their view of the current world. In The Upright Thinkers (upright in that hominids stand upright) the key element that has made humans dominate the planet is their unstoppable curiosity and inherent need to probe the mysterious.

I find different points of view valuable in opening up the way I see things, so am very interested in these accounts. Especially now, when I find so many of the common beliefs and practices of particularly American human society leading us in directions that are clearly unsustainable physically and intellectually.  I don’t even understand how we have rationalized our behavior to get here. The rise of the right and Trumpism seems like the acme of absurdity.  But even well respected, balanced experts contend that making efforts to lessen climate change (which will all too quickly change the face of the planet and probably kill us) are too costly and are a risk to the Economy.  Ditto the cost of universal health care.  The economy is, to my mind, a system based on scrip that mostly exists in electronic data bases and conforms with the philosophy of capitalism that by this time has become the creed of winner takes all.  I find Harari’s ideas resonant with my own and have often wondered  why I don’t find more people who think this way. I also relate to Mlodinow’s thinking about wonder, mystery and curiosity as a source of human motivation, though it appears to me that there is a variety and wide range of interest  among us.  I remember the shot of excitement when I realized why it was called a hare lip - Picture a rabbit’s nose!

Where am I going with this?  Where am I going in any case?  At 80, I am less busy with responsibilities and have fewer intimate connections and obligations, so am more driven to question who I am, why I’m still here, why we are and why, why, why  in general.  This, especially in the time of COVID and social isolation.  The wheels of my mind keep turning, and though it may not be more useful than watching America’s Next Top Model, thinking about these issues, articulating and sharing them seems more meaningful and productive to me. Being able to share ideas with others makes others not other.

This year has been at least hard, if not awful, for so many of us. I am fortunate to not have stopped working or been isolated by family that lives close to me. I have also had the disease, the worst part of which was wondering whether it was going to get worse tomorrow. Now I have my shots and what’s hanging over isn’t as heavy. I admit that I feel older (I am older) and more tired, but more than Covid is responsible for that. I’m planning for that story another day.

While feeling more and more cynical and disappointed and sad about the world and the way we, as a conglomerate, think; and honestly, having less hope of any possibility of rational society, I am, as well, unapologetically sentimental, full of feeling for the world and the beings in it.  I talk to my cats, my plants and I thank the trees.  I relate. I want to be a tree and see what it sees.   I feel that way about other people too.  I watched a video recently of a flash mob in Hamburg playing the 4th movement of Beethoven’s  Ninth symphony. It started in a market place as a girl with a recorder played a line to  a man on a chair with a cello.  More and more instruments joined as did choristers.  At the end, everyone was singing and so was I. The intense joy of that kind of sharing is known to almost all of us and makes us feel that everyone is family. I love that about people. It feels really good.

I do not, however, think we are the master species, except in that we wreak havoc on all the others. We routinely rationalize wreaking havoc on our own species, at one time or another: killing Jews, Blacks, Palestinians, Tutsis, Yazidis, Rohingas, whomever other we see as a threat to our positions.  I don’t even want to talk to a Trump supporter (though I did for a year have a lovely neighbor who probably voted for him again – I hope not.) I just want them to disappear. 

So…… As always, there is what we think is good and what we think is bad.  We are such that it depends how our heads are screwed on whether it’s good or bad.  I’ve had days when I think everyone I see is beautiful.  I’ve also had days when I can’t believe how many  ugly people are out there. It depends on where I am emotionally, not whether they are.

I am also of at least two minds about the whole big deal.   Covid killed a lot of people. War killed a lot of Syrians. Climate change or a nuclear bomb could kill many, many people and affect everything on the planet.  Still, the universe would work the way it always works, the planet would adapt or not. Things would continue to evolve. In the eye of the universe, I suspect, it would be no tragedy.  If something terrible happened to me or a member of my family, it would be a tragedy to me – personal tragedy; but not a global tragedy.  For every Covid death there was a personal tragedy. Now there are fewer people in the world; that is not a global tragedy; there are too many people in the world.  Everything can be looked at both ways.

I find myself dedicated to the effort of accepting contradictory tenets; accepting that there is good and evil; that we are good and evil, and going on every day trying to feel connected to things I love. I trying to find my balance on the seesaw of being.