Duality is essential for a Third perspective in this case your observation is of the dual nature of life. As the observer your understanding of a self fulfilling duality is what makes your choices all the more significant.
Duality is a mind bender. Especially when I think about how it might not be the only reality. The dance between duality and non-duality is something akin to the Trinitarian idea, I think.
Being implies non-being. I think this dance between duality and non-duality is a principle of gender. I am sure duality isnt the only reality only a perspective of the whole reality. But I feel like gender is expressed such that two sides make the whole. The trinitarian idea is also valid but why should it nullify the duality. Just like in math, a line is one dimension, but it can be zoomed in to see a rectangle. When you realise the line has a length and a width. However a rectangle could be the front face of a 3 dimensional box.
I don't like math but it is just an example I can use.... What's you take on that... Duality, trinitarian and other infinite dimensions....
I don't know, but I think it's always fascinating to ponder ... especially when physics has begun to seemingly contradict what we thought were the rules of existence. I imagine that in some way, all things exist, even non-being.
After you recommended it, I watched it. The 2 eps college standard. Fallout is genius portraying western extremes, the gore is so human yet inhuman. I guess I will watch the full season but for me the plot is still a catch 22. I love how you related to it after I re-read this blog.
There's more to life than the two solutions of religious escapism and utter nihilism (the former also in my estimation being a form of nihilism anyway). As Christians or really any people of faith, we acknowledge that something is wrong, broken, or slanted in the world. It's obvious that we don't live the way we're supposed to. Not with ourselves, our family and friends, our community, and creation broadly in the cosmos. The point of this recognition and the path of faith is not a pacifier to help you sleep at night, it's to rouse you to an understanding that on the one hand, something is wrong and we should probably be doing something to fix it, and, that that fixing has to be something greater than ourselves. The 12 step programs get this right. On the individual level the 12-stepper recognizes powerlessness over their problems, that they need a higher power and others to resolve their issues. The same is true on a more global scale. These are fractals. The "system" or "machine" or whatever you call it is addicted to power, prestige, and profit. Grasping endlessly for control in a universe that is uncontrollable.
Accepting our powerlessness is the first step in humility and then maybe from there an aperture for light can open in which we can find a way to resolve the interminable difficulties within ourselves and our relationships. It's of no avail to try and find a solution to the Palestinian occupation and genocide if my relationship with my family is shit. How can i ever expect to resolve broader problems when those closest to me are broken? It's easy to chant "free palestine" it's not so easy to ask for forgiveness or to extend it. So it's fractal, it's inside out. It's holding the paradox of powerlessness over the Archons of the age, but taking action in our lives to rectify some of the brokenness we encounter. It seems pride is at the root of attempting to fix all the problems going on "over there." Strangely, the problems are always out there, rarely in here.
And accepting that also isn't the unctuous self-serving negative self-talk that neither helps your current problems nor any of the broader more existential problems that exist. It isn't a "boo-hoo i'm so bad and God hates me" it's a sober, honest, and compassionate acceptance that we all have crap going on that we're working to resolve.
Despair truly is a bourgeois sensibility. The dirt poor plantain farmer in El Salvador or the palm tree farmer in indonesia can't afford despair. He focuses on Christ, Allah, or Buddha, and his family and gets it done. That's probably a decent place to start.
thank you for your thoughtful comments and for reading this piece. I fully agree with your analogies at the end with the farmers...that is something I remind myself of every day. What brings me to some sense of acceptance and resetting my focus every single day is my family, my small plot of land, the things and the people that I have in front of me.
I feel a little sad that my pacifier analogy might have come across as condescension towards the viewpoints I painted. My redefining of the term from 'implement of comfort' to 'method of making peace' was intentional; I often find myself having to reframe my judgments of my OWN mental habits (in this case, trying to find anything to just make myself feel better about all the problems 'out there') and I truly feel that everyone does what they need to do to find a way forward and keep going. Everyone from nihilists to religious people to people living with active addiction are attempting some version of this. Ultimately I respect that.
Accepting powerlessness is huge. For me, it has been and continues to be a process. Especially as I navigate life post-certainty...I no longer have a back-burner sense that 'everything is working together for good in the end', which used to be the thing I relied on to ward off the mental and existential torment I felt. Now, without it, I have to face it, deal with it, and try to make peace with it. It's a journey.
To your last point, how do you differentiate that lack of hope from despair?
Cards on the table, I am a Christ follower, but I'm not like 100% certain about it. I mean, who can be 100% certain about anything at all? But if we don't have at least a hope that things can improve, not in an enlightenment "everything always progresses to the better", but a hope that at the last all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well, how does that not inebriate us towards something like a hedonistic nihilism? Things will get bad, obviously. Worse than they are now probably. But absent of hope, the impulse to jump off a bridge would seem to grow as a more sensible solution--nothing matters, i have no hope for the improvement of the human condition, we are powerless to resist this degradation.
Hope definitely isn't certainty. It's more like an interior yearning for an outcome, or maybe even an intuition based on our final end which is the blinding horizon of the Infinite. A need for inner strength to overcome the interminable chalice of suffering everyone has to partake of from time to time. That making peace doesn't seem arbitrary. If anything it seems like a necessity based on our teleology.
I think that the point you are making about hope is the same point I am making…except you are making it more eloquently. :) that hope is a choice to lean towards something that may not seem apparent or even sensible.
In the absence of a certainty of a final hope I have had to learn to *choose* hope, to practice it, and to return to it over and over. Perhaps some (or many) Christians have successfully been able to balance belief with an open mind and retention of curiosity / uncertainty — I was never very successful at doing that, likely because of being diagnosed with religious / existential OCD. It runs strongly in my family, and I sadly did not escape the gene or the activation of that gene via whatever triggered that for me in childhood.
Leaving religious institutions behind has provided me the mental space to live more peacefully and less anxiously, but I don’t necessarily prescribe that to others.
An an enneagram type 1 I completely empathize with that struggle (although likely not to the same degree). I'm almost, without exception, my most brutal critic, and scrupulosity comes more easily than grace. It does warm me to hear that you've found some form of serenity. I've loved your music since college, and your song, I shall not want, was and in many ways continues to be an anthem for remembering that it's not all about me doing it "right." Keep rocking :)
Duality is essential for a Third perspective in this case your observation is of the dual nature of life. As the observer your understanding of a self fulfilling duality is what makes your choices all the more significant.
Duality is a mind bender. Especially when I think about how it might not be the only reality. The dance between duality and non-duality is something akin to the Trinitarian idea, I think.
Being implies non-being. I think this dance between duality and non-duality is a principle of gender. I am sure duality isnt the only reality only a perspective of the whole reality. But I feel like gender is expressed such that two sides make the whole. The trinitarian idea is also valid but why should it nullify the duality. Just like in math, a line is one dimension, but it can be zoomed in to see a rectangle. When you realise the line has a length and a width. However a rectangle could be the front face of a 3 dimensional box.
I don't like math but it is just an example I can use.... What's you take on that... Duality, trinitarian and other infinite dimensions....
I don't know, but I think it's always fascinating to ponder ... especially when physics has begun to seemingly contradict what we thought were the rules of existence. I imagine that in some way, all things exist, even non-being.
After you recommended it, I watched it. The 2 eps college standard. Fallout is genius portraying western extremes, the gore is so human yet inhuman. I guess I will watch the full season but for me the plot is still a catch 22. I love how you related to it after I re-read this blog.
An excellent piece, thank you.
thank you Cy!
🫶 thank you for this
you are most welcome <3 thanks for reading
There's more to life than the two solutions of religious escapism and utter nihilism (the former also in my estimation being a form of nihilism anyway). As Christians or really any people of faith, we acknowledge that something is wrong, broken, or slanted in the world. It's obvious that we don't live the way we're supposed to. Not with ourselves, our family and friends, our community, and creation broadly in the cosmos. The point of this recognition and the path of faith is not a pacifier to help you sleep at night, it's to rouse you to an understanding that on the one hand, something is wrong and we should probably be doing something to fix it, and, that that fixing has to be something greater than ourselves. The 12 step programs get this right. On the individual level the 12-stepper recognizes powerlessness over their problems, that they need a higher power and others to resolve their issues. The same is true on a more global scale. These are fractals. The "system" or "machine" or whatever you call it is addicted to power, prestige, and profit. Grasping endlessly for control in a universe that is uncontrollable.
Accepting our powerlessness is the first step in humility and then maybe from there an aperture for light can open in which we can find a way to resolve the interminable difficulties within ourselves and our relationships. It's of no avail to try and find a solution to the Palestinian occupation and genocide if my relationship with my family is shit. How can i ever expect to resolve broader problems when those closest to me are broken? It's easy to chant "free palestine" it's not so easy to ask for forgiveness or to extend it. So it's fractal, it's inside out. It's holding the paradox of powerlessness over the Archons of the age, but taking action in our lives to rectify some of the brokenness we encounter. It seems pride is at the root of attempting to fix all the problems going on "over there." Strangely, the problems are always out there, rarely in here.
And accepting that also isn't the unctuous self-serving negative self-talk that neither helps your current problems nor any of the broader more existential problems that exist. It isn't a "boo-hoo i'm so bad and God hates me" it's a sober, honest, and compassionate acceptance that we all have crap going on that we're working to resolve.
Despair truly is a bourgeois sensibility. The dirt poor plantain farmer in El Salvador or the palm tree farmer in indonesia can't afford despair. He focuses on Christ, Allah, or Buddha, and his family and gets it done. That's probably a decent place to start.
thank you for your thoughtful comments and for reading this piece. I fully agree with your analogies at the end with the farmers...that is something I remind myself of every day. What brings me to some sense of acceptance and resetting my focus every single day is my family, my small plot of land, the things and the people that I have in front of me.
I feel a little sad that my pacifier analogy might have come across as condescension towards the viewpoints I painted. My redefining of the term from 'implement of comfort' to 'method of making peace' was intentional; I often find myself having to reframe my judgments of my OWN mental habits (in this case, trying to find anything to just make myself feel better about all the problems 'out there') and I truly feel that everyone does what they need to do to find a way forward and keep going. Everyone from nihilists to religious people to people living with active addiction are attempting some version of this. Ultimately I respect that.
Accepting powerlessness is huge. For me, it has been and continues to be a process. Especially as I navigate life post-certainty...I no longer have a back-burner sense that 'everything is working together for good in the end', which used to be the thing I relied on to ward off the mental and existential torment I felt. Now, without it, I have to face it, deal with it, and try to make peace with it. It's a journey.
To your last point, how do you differentiate that lack of hope from despair?
Cards on the table, I am a Christ follower, but I'm not like 100% certain about it. I mean, who can be 100% certain about anything at all? But if we don't have at least a hope that things can improve, not in an enlightenment "everything always progresses to the better", but a hope that at the last all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well, how does that not inebriate us towards something like a hedonistic nihilism? Things will get bad, obviously. Worse than they are now probably. But absent of hope, the impulse to jump off a bridge would seem to grow as a more sensible solution--nothing matters, i have no hope for the improvement of the human condition, we are powerless to resist this degradation.
Hope definitely isn't certainty. It's more like an interior yearning for an outcome, or maybe even an intuition based on our final end which is the blinding horizon of the Infinite. A need for inner strength to overcome the interminable chalice of suffering everyone has to partake of from time to time. That making peace doesn't seem arbitrary. If anything it seems like a necessity based on our teleology.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your outlook though.
I think that the point you are making about hope is the same point I am making…except you are making it more eloquently. :) that hope is a choice to lean towards something that may not seem apparent or even sensible.
In the absence of a certainty of a final hope I have had to learn to *choose* hope, to practice it, and to return to it over and over. Perhaps some (or many) Christians have successfully been able to balance belief with an open mind and retention of curiosity / uncertainty — I was never very successful at doing that, likely because of being diagnosed with religious / existential OCD. It runs strongly in my family, and I sadly did not escape the gene or the activation of that gene via whatever triggered that for me in childhood.
Leaving religious institutions behind has provided me the mental space to live more peacefully and less anxiously, but I don’t necessarily prescribe that to others.
An an enneagram type 1 I completely empathize with that struggle (although likely not to the same degree). I'm almost, without exception, my most brutal critic, and scrupulosity comes more easily than grace. It does warm me to hear that you've found some form of serenity. I've loved your music since college, and your song, I shall not want, was and in many ways continues to be an anthem for remembering that it's not all about me doing it "right." Keep rocking :)
Working with trauma victims and those suffering from PTSD is my way of giving back to the world.
i love this <3 thank you for what you do