August 8, 2007

• Fantasy
  

  When I turned thirty my girlfriend took me and two of her friends to Disneyland for my birthday. I'd never been to Disneyland even though it was only a couple of towns over from where I lived. It may also be of interest to note she did not tell me where we were going when we all packed into her car and started our trip. Whether she wanted to keep it a surprise or whether she knew I wouldn't willingly go to Disneyland remains a mystery to me and she's no longer on my radar screen so I can't ask her. Back then, the Magic Kingdom turned me off in a big way. From my perspective Americans didn't need another form of escape from the realities of the world they were destroying. It seemed better to me half a lifetime ago to face the problems we were creating and do something constructive to resolve them, not pretend we lived in a land of talking rodents. Now? Well, now I'm not so anti Disneyland and proactive about the human race. Quite frankly I'd rather spend my time with singing, dancing, talking penguins than with my own kind, as it were. Yesterday in a chat the person with whom I was talking said, I used to share your cynicism. It's not uncommon for me to be labeled a cynic. Since I understand the roots of the word I take no offense. A quick dictionary definition for the word is, a person who believes that people are motivated purely by self-interest rather than acting for honorable or unselfish reasons. But there's more to cynicism than that for which the label has come to stand.

  The Cynics were adherents to an ancient Greek school of philosophy which held that the fundamental ethical precept that virtue, not pleasure, is the end of existence. The truth is I'm not either kind of cynic. And it's not just because I resist being labeled. I'd love a label that fit. Labels are neat. They're a kind of short hand for thinking. If you have enough labels you don't ever have to think again. You can spend all your time in Disneyland playing make the world go away. Not an unpleasant alternative to playing make the world go away in war games. Perhaps because I have devoted so much time and energy to dispassionately (as far as is possible for me) observing human behavior it appears that I'm pessimistic about people. This leaves out a huge chunk of what my life has been about. Given that we live in animal bodies that are well under the law of the jungle I think I'm quite optimistic about people. You see, I think we can overcome the natural tendencies that come with an animal body evolved from lower life forms. From my perspective some of us have the chance to evolve in an entirely different direction from the animal body with its limitations. Furthermore it appears to me the path starts off with what Socrates called virtue. It doesn't end there but it's a good start. What is virtue? Socrates said it was knowledge. But his definition of the word appears to have been supplanted in modern times so it's not what we think it is.

  An opportunity to transform into something other than what we take as a normal or common human existence is fascinating to me. Yes, we are selfish, greedy, arrogant and violent. But that's not all there is to us. We can get beyond much of that by making the right kind of effort. I don't pretend that everyone can. It's clear that some people are incapable of even generating the desire to be something other than hedonists. That doesn't mean everyone is held by the same limitation. Even gravity can be transcended if one is willing to make right effort. Rather than moan about what we can't do I choose to press the envelop of what we may be able to do. We have models. People, like us in that they too had animal bodies dragging them in the direction of natural evolution. But they took a different path and led others, not too unlike ourselves, to make great strides on that path. They couldn't do it for us though we'd love to believe they could. Their early students understood we must each breath, eat and drink for ourselves. Somehow over the span of time which seems to separate us we have screwed up nearly everything they ever tried to show us. Much the same way great art and people are lost or destroyed in the periodic global madness we call war that plagues our species. What we may achieve is far more encouraging than what we have destroyed. Perhaps it's all a fantasy but I think not. Individuals have progressed even while the body of humanity we call people has regressed. Yes, I think we can go either backward or forward. Just because time passed doesn't mean we got better. But just because most don't get better doesn't mean some can't. Optimism or fantasy? Hell, I don't know but I'd like to take a shot at the transformation and talk as many others into the trip as I'm able.
  

  • 1:16 pm
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