Living Against Evolution

When was it exactly that we forgot how revitalizing it can be just to simply, fundamentally, have hope? Since when has “this is the best of the worst” become the motto to live by? Why is it so hard for us to imagine that perhaps the way we are living that leads to such a high murder and suicide rate may possibly, maybe, be the wrong way? Other cultures have been studied throughout history, cultures that are descendants of the same distant ancestors as those living in western society. Many of these groups of people have been untouched, or nearly untouched, by “civilized man”. Is it so hard to imagine that perhaps they are happier than we? They live in a way that until 2,000 years ago our ancestors also lived, and always had lived. They live in the way that humanity evolved to live. When we live against evolution destroying rather than respecting, how can we expect anything other than destruction to greet us in return?

We leave our children alone in rooms to cry themselves to sleep and then wonder why it is that they have issues trusting later in life. We pass from job to job in a constant search for happiness, and never find it. We take two days out of seven to actually live and end up fretting about the other five for half of the weekend. We can go for months, and for some, perhaps years without feeling a cool rain on our faces. Constantly hitting the refresh button we check the weather in our windowless offices feeling a longing we cannot define—a hopelessness that seems out of place in a nine to five society. We pop Vitamin D supplements because we are never outside enough to absorb it naturally. We avoid human interaction by emailing and doing everything possible online.

Some of us realize that life should not be a monotony of meaningless days occasionally punctured by actual living. Some of us rebel against the norm and read books about true life while surrounded by the cubicle walls that smother. Some of us wonder if the life of those untouched by our kinfolk is possible for us. Some of us attempt to spread the word that happiness is but a few simplifications away. Yet few listen and most are repulsed. To admit one is wrong is a long undertaking for an individual, but to admit that an entire society is mistaken could take centuries. The problem? It will be too late by the time western society admits their errors, if ever they do.

So perhaps a reflection is in order. Perhaps someone needs to tell those brainwashed by typical Christianity that humanity is far from inherently evil. Humans are just very talented at teaching their flaws to offspring at a speedy rate. How many nights alone in a bassinet does it take a child to realize that only with constant sobbing will human interaction result? Children are born knowing more about the intricacies of life than the average western adult. They need no books to know how to behave, no television to shape their vision of themselves. They are pure. It is their upbringing that adds the sin so many faiths claim is “original”.

So what now? What action or vision could re-teach humanity what they knew as infants but forgot as children? How does one go about teaching the art of hope? Perhaps this economic downturn will educate westerners of the fact that understanding arms can be just as comforting as a cushiony paycheck. Perhaps the giggle of a toddler as they play peek-a-boo will bring back the inner desire to pick them up and run about out doors. Or perhaps even with the challenge of limited means our society will find its own way to squelch the urge to return to a simpler and happier way of life.

Maybe it is too late for a society when internet is seen as a need and companionship as merely a desire.

Oh Boo Hoo

I don’t watch as much television as most, don’t have cable, and only have two shows I plan to watch each week. Yet even limiting my television viewing I see countless advertisements for antidepressant medications. The ads are obviously flowery and beautiful, with smiling people and sunny days—but that isn’t where my train of thought took me after seeing them. I began to wonder why it is that now in our history, when we, for all intents and purposes have everything we NEED, now have the want (contorted into a need) for constant smiles and medication to help us to it.

Are we more unhappy now than ever? If that is the case, I am not surprised at all. Humanity needs to realize that there is more to life than the necessities. When people work jobs indoors with no windows and never spend more than five minutes outside, it is bound to result in a listless existence. We are animals no less than deer are, and when we are penned up we react like an animal in a zoo. We find ourselves pacing, whether literally or figuratively, dreaming of days filled with sunshine, and yes, flowers.

I cannot help but to think of the Victory Gin in 1984, and the Soma in Brave New World. Perhaps we should dwell on the fact that these were meant (at least by most interpretations) to be avoided in the actual world. In a society that necessitates drugs in order to maintain sanity and order—perhaps there is no society at all—but an artificial existence only.

Western society tends to pretend that death does not exist, any mention of it being ignored and covered over before true emotion can be expressed. The concept of suicide cannot be grasped by most people, and so to avoid the chance of it drugs are ingested at a startling rate. Those considering death in a society wrought with destruction are labeled as “crazy” and those ordering war are “heroes”.

I am not telling you all to go out and stop taking your mind altering medications, but I am telling you to evaluate what is making you unhappy in your life. Are you frustrated with your cubicle job? Are you wishing you could be outside more? Is it too cold for you here? Well I have a crazy idea! Think of what makes you unhappy, but in the same breath consider what it is that makes you happy as well. List the things you love and that make you smile. Then, GASP, go do them, live them, be them. Our society of psychologists and prescription writing fools seem to fail in this one simple conclusion—this society is created to cut out your mind and let your soul float away, leaving a drone that works 40 hours a week and cooks out on weekends with other drones.

Refuse to be another Soma addict, toss away the Victory Gin, and find happiness beyond the pill bottle.

Do we live longer because we have forgotten how?

It seems that bizarre philosophical thoughts always come to me when I should be sleeping. The other night my mind was wondering through random fact after random fact, when it got stuck on one. I started to think about life expectancy and how it has changed over the course of human history. With a few cultural oddities, humans now live longer than they ever have in history (as a whole). I started to wonder why.

I shrugged off the boring scientific answer that has to do with advancements in medicine and other boring, non soul-wrenching facts. I started to bend my mind in order to reach outside of the cultural box we are all placed in at birth. With that bend I started to wonder if there is, perhaps, another reason entirely behind why humans live longer now. I thought that maybe this reason is what stands behind the medical advances, what drives them.

I began to consider quality of life, and the differences between the way we live in modern western society and the ways in which people used to live in nomadic societies—notably many Native American nomadic societies. As often happens, things I have recently read (especially in Derrick Jensen’s A Language Older Than Words) started to play into my take of things. In his book, Jensen discussed how food of all sorts used to be so plentiful that many cultures spent most of their time in leisure activities. With just a bit of conservation and understanding of the environment many Native American tribes could focus on the arts, love, and nature in general instead of constantly worrying about providing for their families.

These people had time to really enjoy and experience life almost every single day. They truly LIVED every year of their lives. That is in stark contrast to the predicament western culture has gotten us into. The wondrous industrial society that so many embrace and essentially bow to makes it impossible for anyone (even people who have removed themselves from it) to truly live life every day.

The rivers that once ran so thick with Salmon that you needed only to lower a bucket into them to get dinner are now dammed, and empty. The few remaining salmon launch themselves fruitlessly at the concrete structures we have built to create ‘clean energy’ and lakes that we in turn, pollute. The fields once so thick with Bison that the ground could not be seen for miles are now empty, dusty, and dry. Those that remain walk penned and domesticated—perhaps wondering where the days of old have gone to.

I think life expectancy is higher today because it needs to be. In order for us to truly live the 30 years that our ancestors lived in 30, we need to live 80. We spend the other 50 wasting our lives in front of computers watching YouTube videos, pretending we are intimately connected to those we only communicate with on FaceBook, commuting, shopping, and wondering why our lives hold no meanings.

If we restored the environment to its former glory, and gave up our consumer driven lifestyles would we not live as long? I of course do not know this, and no one ever can. The environment is too broken, our population too large, for that to be a realistic experiment. Perhaps we should start be fixing what we have broken, and go from there.

I for one miss the days I have never seen. The days when salmon ran nearly solid in the waters and bison shook the ground with their mere numbers.