Home is Where the Walls Are

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.                                                                               Friedrich Nietzsche

The individual mind is an open system, and all of its content comes from the world. That means various tribes have their hooks in you; experience shapes the mind and if you believe it plays the largest part in building your identity, you have to accept that you belong to each of them to some degree or another depending on their individual contributions. And, even if you declare yourself to be proudly not a member of this, that or another tribe, you remain susceptible to their influence, even if only slightly, if they had any role in creating you. The danger of the human tendency toward tribalist behavior, though, manifests itself most insidiously when we interact with others who hold many of the same deeply held beliefs that we do while we each in turn hold onto the belief that we are completely autonomous individuals. A sudden turn of events can quickly conspire to polarize thinking and drive the individual into the arms of the tribe, and the more fiercely independent we think ourselves to be, the more ashamed we feel at such times.

If you think you are a completely autonomous individual not susceptible at all to the calls of a mob, than you are in great danger of joining one.

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Driven at Resonance

Points initially spread across the spectrum. 
Dials turned, frequencies adjusted.
Out of the noise, something began to take form.

A movement is started and a message is sent out. By radio waves and beams of light, the message is sent. The transmissions were received everywhere.

The authors of the message had hope, hope for peaceful changes, hope for a bright future for all.
But, it had to start with the truth.
It was a dose of bitter medicine for many as no punches were pulled.
Some, when faced with its harsh truths, were vexed and felt compelled to express their frustration using the very same medium the authors did. Coherence became confusion as more and more angry voices were added to the din. And in time some of the noise began to affect the authors in a negative way.
"How naive we were to be so optimistic! Our eyes are wide open now..."

Stimulation creates excitation and energy gets fed back to the machine as input.

In time, hope turned to pessimism. Then anger. Then defeatism. And, when someone finally broke through the madness and pulled the plug on the machine, it was too late; it had taken on a new source of power and the runaway effect was well underway.

Welcome to the feedback loop.

A Sense of Senselessness, But Only a Sense

In a very short period of time, one can lose more than one has ever imagined losing. It can come hard and go quite easily, leaving one with the feeling of having let it all slip through the fingers. Investing one's life - time, energy and resources - in building up that grand facade, that attractive amalgamation of what so many would call the the fruits of labor, would seem folly to the simple man, if only he were that simple.

To say his simplicity lies in a desire for nothing more than simple things, is a very simplistic way of looking at him as he languishes in exile. What he desires is generally not known to you because he doesn't have a voice to inform you of it; give him a voice and his declaration of what it is he truly wishes for will thunder across the chasm that separates you. Lay down a bridge across that divide and soon he will be at your doorstep, not in the most agreeable of moods.

It's not that you were wrong to want so much, to create a virtual world of endless comforts and amusements; surely, it's not that you walked across fields of bones to get to the gates of that great city.

So, how did it come to this?...

The Costs of Desire

"I was within a hair's breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up -- he had judged. 'The horror!'"

-- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Those with a penchant for the dramatic or those who are given to emotional railings, refer to 'evil empires' while those who are a little more collected in their expressions of thoughts talk about 'imperial ambitions.' One could say that the desires of a nation can cause more devastation than the wants of a simple human being. One might also say that the desires of simple men and women come to be the collective desire of the country they call home.

Us and them. The little people and the giants. The oppressed and the oppressors. The ninety-nine percent and the one percent...

Me.

You.

The Cradle

There are 3 million moving parts in a Boeing 777. Three million little (or not so little) things that you don't control.

Who's your daddy?

There are thousands of food processing plants in your country, with several hundred thousand employees working night and day to ensure that there's food on your table tonight.

Come give momma some sugar...

He edged slightly forward, every muscle straining. Unconsciously, he held his breath. It was time to add to his own burden while laying down that of another.
Under his foot a dry leaf cracked, and that was all it took. The chance was gone, and it would likely be a few days before another came. His stomach rumbled and he closed his eyes.

And he prayed. Prayed for a blessing, a gift from the heavens... anything that would ease the endless suffering.

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The nth Iteration

“It's a life's work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong. And that is something I don't want to be wrong about.”

Every day brings another chance to nail it down, to get it right. And when it's clear that you've veered too far off course, or that the wheels have come off of the wagon, tomorrow brings another chance to redefine yourself completely.

Or does it?...

“You think when you wake up in the mornin' yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it's made out of. Nothin' else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I don't know what all. Start over. And then one mornin' you wake up and look at the ceilin' and guess who's layin' there?”

No matter how much forgetting you do, or think you've been able to do, there come those times, maybe in the middle of the night after waking from a deep sleep, or maybe during a break at work when you've allowed your mind to wander, when forward movement all but stops and momentum brings that trail of debris you've been dragging behind you forth and slaps you right in the back with it. And that either lays you out flat or knocks you forward, getting you moving again.

Drag it behind you long enough, and eventually it will wear down, surface layers rubbed off and replaced by slightly less unattractive ones. Gone from your view, but rubbed onto the road. And you're not the only one who has traveled that road, nor is it closed to future travelers. Maybe those future travelers can trace the remnants back to you, maybe they can't. But, either way you slice it, you've been sloppy.

Do sons deserve to bear the sins of their fathers?

"Deserve's got nothin' to do with it..."

There's always going to be a reckoning.

1st two quotes from "No Country For Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy
3rd quote from the film "Unforgiven"