The Olympics are barely over, and already the vivid events are almost wiped from our minds. Small super-fragments may remain bright for a while longer, but too soon they will fade away to nothing.
Humans pride themselves on their ability to remember, and are often scornful of other species who don’t have that capacity, but the fact is we have little to be proud about.
If we really had large and accurate memories, then it would not be necessary for us to keep the reams of paper, and now digital, data that we do. We would be able to access and trust information, one person or group to another. But it doesn’t seem to work that way; there never has been a direct and trustworthy system, for once the moment of contact passes, everything that happens from then on is third hand at best, a matter of retrieval in one way or another.
Blame Time; it doesn’t stand still, and most unwillingly we have to go along with that fact.
Most of us are happy to let things be that way, sensible of the danger of overloading our brains with everything that ever came to our attention. The day to day brain doesn’t absorb much and doesn’t learn too much either. It was built to experience and react, not to become an enormous information repository.
The experiencing of pain is worth noting, in that once the painful incident has passed, the brain has no record of the particular discomfort. What is good for pain relief, however, is bad for improvements in how humans lead their lives, for it appears that what has been achieved in that area, is not retained either. Not directly, which is the point here; to re-inform ourselves, we have to go to the saved record.
We all know how much pain and anguish memories that have somehow created continuous, almost unbreakable loops can cause us. They are out-of-present-time events, acquired responses to usually traumatic situations, for which there don’t appear to be acceptable reasons or mitigating circumstances, and as they have become deeply imprinted, they are most seriously resistant to removal.
Living in the moment was all life was supposed to be, but that isn’t possible if there are memories. Living without attachment is the highest aim of those on the spiritual path, but the human brain has found a way to double-check even that aspiration. It is not easy, we are told, to prepare to walk the long road to enlightenment.
Clocks mark the seconds and move on, the breath comes in and goes out, every single moment is new and unrepeatable; there should be joy in being so unencumbered.
Happiness is not a memory; it is the reaction to the moment, each moment. Fear is a product of memory, and sadly, returning to a fearing point does not offer information as to how things can be made better.
It seems we must work against memory, not live with it. Non-attachment, so often despised as laziness and/or stupidity, would appear to be what we should attain to.
There is a future in not knowing. Nothing in this world is ours to keep, including the planet.
The games are begun
I have memories of 15 summer Olympics! Hazy the further back I go, in fact, I think the very first one in 1956, was only on radio, we didn’t have a TV.
Leaving aside the heroic efforts of the athletes, which should always be the core essence of why these sorts of events are held, my enduring memories of Olympics past were often about the less than stellar attitudes of national governments, religious groups, and the general prejudice of ordinary people when it came to showing respect to countries and athletes who were not of ‘their’ kind.
It seemed also that elements of the press deliberately went out of their way to report in biased ways, and probably government officials were right in there with them, for the high-profile Olympics were regarded as a God-given opportunity to get in as many politically and religiously motivated digs as they could.
Were several generations of world social development stunted by the display of such ignorance and stupidity? Wars were endorsed by poorly informed populations, reinforced, it seems in retrospect, by negative reporting of Olympics, always a touch paper for nasty attitudes. Were the media being used, or were they, like everyone else, taking their cue from the harsh political opinions of the day? There was no quick way to check information in those grim years from the middle of the twentieth century. Once ill-conceived remarks were said, there was plenty of time to let them sink in.
What we heard in the news was what we thought back then; but gradually, as the years have slipped by, we have all witnessed and participated in an extraordinary revolution in communication technology, which seems to be reflecting a much more tolerant and informed attitude at the 2012 Olympic Games.
Yes, the little back room squabbles and wars go on, but thankfully there aren’t the same opportunities to score big political points, indirectly spouted through the mouths of commentators, coaches, players and fans. Way back when, no one was immune from the hurtful effects of propaganda; through our ignorance we simply allowed misrepresentation to occur. Now, however, we don’t have to accept second-hand information, we can Google it, call folks in the know, become much more personally aware of actualities, and as a result can more genuinely appreciate what the peoples of the world are all about.
My greatest desire is to witness the establishment of BIG GG, Global Governance, a high level of world administration that will take as its mandate, for starters, the protection of the air, water, atmospheres and land resources of this tiny planet. National agendas can’t cut too much more ice; world populations, developed as well as emerging, teeter on the edge of enormous difficulties if those natural essentials do not remain pristine for all time.
In developing new Global Laws, there is a strong need to express, in the clearest legal terms, what constitute serious crimes against the planet. We know crimes are being committed, we see the results of it on TV daily, and read about the incredible carnage in the newspapers, perpetrated on the slimmest of excuses. We know that greed and unscrupulous behaviour will be stopped by nothing less than laws which can transcend private interests, and be enforceable throughout the world.
The Olympics are a clear window into the condition of the human soul. What we take away from each Olympic Games, overall, advises us about who and what we are at this point in human history. From now on, through the explosion of communication, we can see for ourselves the areas of good progress and continued intransigence in our social development. We are aware that with hard work and persistence, something that athletes live with every day of their lives, there is room to greatly improve the human score card in the very near future.
Gone but not lost!
Hang in there folks! Caught up in a summer storm of activity that has to be done. If not blogging, thinking.
Thought creates realities
Shamans are known worldwide as having the ability to bring on the rain, affect a community healing when emotions and expectations are running low, and find balance among the people through dancing and singing. Shamans can unquestionably move Nature, having spent a lifetime learning the ways of spirit and its relationship to humans; they have time-honoured ways of achieving the desired results.
But what would happen if those unschooled in the shamanic art, which is most of us, were able to change natural events, such as the weather patterns, without knowing they were doing it. Crowds at sporting events and political rallies can alter results, simply by producing an energy which is capable of overturning the expected outcome. Stadium crowds are powerful examples of the common will.
In unsettled times, which are coming upon us, worry and stress, unexpressed anger and suppressed feelings could rise to such a pitch among a sufficiently large number of a population that the natural weather balances in a region could swing to extremes, causing drought on one hand or flooding on the other. Even though the shaman skill is missing in those situations, the energy is not, and to date we really don’t know what happens when human thought coalesces into form.
The media work hard to sway vast sections of public opinion, but maybe they should temper their efforts, maybe the disasters that are occurring all too regularly these days might be greatly reduced if there was less overheating and hyperhype in the daily news. Just a thought.
Duh!
How can important ideas and actions about the global environment be understood and acted upon by everyone in the shortest period of time?
I’ve no idea!
No two people see the world the same way. In fact, no two leaves on a tree, or grass on the ground have the same world view either. It gets worse: for many people exist out of current time, and being ‘real’ is not something they practice very often. A few ideas are imprinted in their minds at an early age, and after that they’re content to raise their eyes and read what they see written on the inside of their skulls! There’s not very much to contemplate, and it isn’t profound.
This does not imply that people are stupid, they are not, but many lives offer no opportunity to look further afield, and all they have, therefore, is their personal on-site billboard, which is comforting to them by virtue of its close proximity, but not informative.
In times of great change, being a victim is about all we might aspire to.
A bit of Good Luck wouldn’t go amiss either.
What if? What next?
History is a repeating pattern of flourishing success and dismal failure, and the first state always contains the elements that will bring the second condition into being.
Individuals and nation states will come and go, and both will leave something behind by which they will be remembered. It could be good or bad, or it could contribute something tangible that the future will use to its advantage.
Can we say the Greeks gave the Western World philosophic premise and logical thinking based on argued theoretical ideas? And the Romans, perhaps it was, for them, the application of power as conquest and the use of an elitist language, Latin, by scholars and the Church.
It seems that whatever is remembered of a civilisation takes a long time to be evaluated and then integrated by the successor. Once this happens, however, the New Imperium, recognising that worth, applies the discoveries with vigour.
The British Imperialists were holier-than-thou militaristic explorers; they gave shape to the world, created the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and put a benign constitutional face on Imperial Law.
Subsequent historical events, moving at speed, didn’t allow for a decent period of evaluation and integration following the British downturn, and that which should have been recognised as past its best and dumped, was allowed to move on, to contaminate much of future potential, and greatly lessen the value of creative new thinking and ideas.
Crumbling bricks and sand have much in common; neither offers a solid foundation that can be relied upon. This makes it difficult for those who inherit the trappings of past glory to know what is truly good and durable.
Still things go on; there’s always something that sticks out as new and amazing, and at the present time this is speed of light communication systems that have wrapped themselves around the globe, and the scientific ability to fully study the smallest and the largest of everything around us.
Perhaps we will all really learn from these contributions.
Over-weighted
Apologies for being ‘gone’ so long. Sooooo much going on!
The gross weight of human beings on the planet is a staggering figure, far into the billions of tons. Add to that the weight of vehicles, homes, places of business, etc., and poor Earth must definitely be feeling the strain.
Humanity also strains these days to cope with the colossal weight of self-imposed but collapsing socio-economic structures worldwide. The great pillars of society, the State, Bureaucracy, Church and the public values and sentiments as presented daily by the Media, have become out of date, sluggish, and weighed down by ideas and beliefs that are seriously irrelevant.
The opposite of weight is buoyancy, lightsomeness, and when it comes to the thoughts that currently possess the human mind, there must also be clarity.
What is becoming startlingly clear is there has to be global governance; for the concerns of individual national states are often contradictory, narrow-minded, caught up in the party-political see-saw, meddling, aggressive and downright phobic. To mention but a few deficiencies.
The need to protect the planet from excess and stupidity has come upon us very fast, and what we are discovering is there is little time left to put matters right, and definitely no time to invest in what is not working.
Global governance that deals with issues that affect the planet, and all those who inhabit the surface, on land and sea, must rise out of a willingness to rethink, re-evaluate and restructure every aspect of human life on Earth, without reference to that which is outdated and dead.
Up,up and away!
If the idea of Earth being sentient, alive in the way we think of ourselves being alive, is a little uncomfortable, if not silly, then perhaps the word ‘sensitive’ will do instead.
It bothers me that so much digging, sucking and pumping out of materials, oil and gas goes on; processes that take from Earth’s body, but do not bother to properly put back. Surely this must lead to areas of weakness, as far as the planet is concerned.
Sure Earth is big and sturdy and can take it, but even so there have to be necessary adjustments made to balance out the whole, and in doing this new tensions will appear that will markedly alter surface conditions, including the atmospheres.
In ancient times, a few folk wandering the globe were hardly affected by ongoing change; nowadays billions of settled people can’t fail to suffer, either directly or as a consequence of alteration.
In short, to compensate for shrinkage and reducing surface pressure, Earth pushes more material outwards; a deficit on the surface leads directly to higher inner activity. Earth is cognisant of every square millimetre of Her being, and has the means and the intent to put things right.
Loop the loop
I wonder how many times the Earth has renewed itself up to now. It’s not a surprising thing that it should. You could say that as events stack up and a pressure grows, there’s going to be a moment when something has to give, and after that event, very possibly nothing will be what it was before. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Depends upon where one is standing, but good and bad are values that shouldn’t be applied to situations of this sort, in fact deciding that anything is good or bad is a pointless exercise, there is rarely enough information to allow for an informed opinion.
Life goes on after catastrophes, it just does. Not comfortably or well, but short of quitting ones life, the business of each day is attended to, and often something new comes of the effort. Will one be better or worse for having gone through the experience? Who knows, each person alive brings something different to every situation.
tetralogia 