Consciousness can be just as deadened, even destroyed, by over-stimulation as it can by under-stimulation. Most of civilized existence, whatever else it may be, conspires to destroy every shred of worth that countless generations have built up. Language being one. The ability of the mind to create images that are attached to something meaningful being another. The noise of the city, the amplified music of the rock bands, the preying sounds of the jet, the array of petty experiences and petty irritations that life offers every day, the clamor of the crowd, the screaming headlines, the camera invading every space of longitude and latitude, the apotheosis of greed that must rationalize itself as something else, the general brutalization of the human being that occurs has done several things. It has, for one, driven as a spike to the vast unconsciousness where exists every murderous intention, every superstition, every act of madness, every ability to destroy, every ambition to gain the instruments of power be they weapons or powerful medias or chemicals and so on.

The modern world has been overwhelmed by this area and the consequences seem very plain. By doing such a thing the possibility of rational thought, of progress through the rational seems problematic at times. The rational mind reacts to the development by putting too much trust or develops dependencies on powerful institutions. Whereas the promise of rational thought is freedom from dependency on the irrational and freedom from dependency on the institutions.

The other thing it has done has prevented the being from finding any root structure that offers life substance up through that root and into the realms of the spirit. The hellish cast of the world- even the circumscribed world of our senses- laughs to scorn any such attempt. And the penalty for cutting that root is madness whether it is social or individual.

The root itself is not enough but that is the first thing that you perceive is missing.

Rootlessness equals manipulation. And if that is the case then the being spends all of its precious energy in fending off or adapting to manipulation.

Manipulation becomes a way of life. The community is made reactionary and people with a common tradition, a common root then organize for the destruction of those who are either manipulating or resisting manipulation. This is the mind giving itself up to the form and force of technology and its danger (which more than one has pointed out.) That is, the mind adapting to the speed of machinery; the mind adapting to the violence of machinery. The mind adapting to the organization which springs up around machinery; the mind adapting to the mechanical reproduction of human attributes, the mind adapting to the effluvia and poison and waste of machine production. Not to mention the noise of machinery and its general barbarism.

What possible humanity can be left under these conditions?

The root is the culture, the culture is the root. Those who tend the culture must tend the root. Must defend it against the madness of the present day.

Alongside of rootlessness is meaninglessness. Activity is organized around some economic need or political design. The organization is broken into many functions. The being is then required to fulfill his obligation to the function and this is then the meaning of his activity.

If not there then in the life-style he cultivates as a result of the successful execution of his function. And this, too, is there to confer meaning. And if it doesn't have meaning then people will celebrate the emptiness of it and leave the big questions to their children.

Despite the meaninglessness there is a rational for every particular thing under the sun; everything has a reason but nothing makes sense. I think that sums up the problem.

Now, right away we must accept the possibility that our perceptions are deadly wrong, that we are simply acting on the expansion of perception that has occurred as a result of our technology. But then, this experience is our experience and we are left with the necessity to give it order and meaning. Pressures kill off a lot of the desire.

Pressure will prevent people from seeing the raw truth of things. Rather than as instigator it is a constrictor; pressure is.

The pressure has always been to provide the necessities. The pressure extends outward from this to include the need to live up to someone else's expectations. And these expectations are created out of some other pressure. Then there is the pressure to be satisfied, find some equilibrium to where you are at. Problems become pressures.

From a certain plateau technology is a vast, benign tool.

The mind feels an obligation to use all the resources available to it by way of its own inventions. It's one way he keeps connected to himself as a human being, to history even, and certainly to a community of fellow human beings. The inventions are seen as gifts of the mind to be used by the same. That's not unreasonable. Although in a huge, dynamic culture who really decides? The ultimate question is "the best use of these gifts." If technology and its implications flow through a person and let's it all flow out again, maybe he see's right use. In other words, technology needs to be fully experienced before it's used properly. And how can technology be fully experienced when it comes at a person from so many oblique angles?

The self must learn to expel its contents from time to time and find the meditative sense that re-connects with the mystery of life."Must" is conditioned on how much a particular person wants to change or grasp something of the world he lives in.

There is an eternal paradox between life and danger.

Passion/Love/Community/Knowledge/Creativity: Only once in a great while are all of these elements active at one time. Mostly one or a few are active and others obscured.

They evolve one into the other and within themselves.

1988

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