What if the World Isn’t Fixable

What if Absurdity Is the Point?

photo credit : Thomas Lloyd Qualls

We don’t know anything. – Rick Rubin

The world is absurd. A fact we are constantly trying to ignore or avoid, in our perpetual need for order. We wake up, drink coffee, put on our clothes, and head out into the world. To do whatever we do that must be done. We ignore ten thousand things going on around us all the time. Things like that the Earth is spinning around 1,000 mph. And that it is traveling around the sun at a speed of 67,100 mph. And that the solar system is traveling around the center of our galaxy at 447,000 mph.

Also, the fact that an electron does not exist until we observe it. That electrons and photons can be particles or waves, depending on how we observe them. That objects can actually be in two places at once. And also, that there is very likely a multiverse. One in which there are no actual choices, just an infinity of realities, possibly/probably created by all the forks in the road we come to everyday, all the time.

But setting all the mind-boggling stuff about the Universe aside for a minute, we really don’t know how anything works here on Earth. Including ourselves. We don’t really know how our minds or our bodies work, let alone how flowers know what to do or how a sequoia grows so big, or how plants learned to talk to each other through their roots.

We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly.

― Catherynne M. Valente

And there’s the more human things, like the absurdity of our collective political and religious actions, things like: (1) Giving tax cuts to people so rich they don’t need them and won’t even know they received them. With the economic result being so fiscally devastating to the country’s balance sheet that the rest of us (almost everyone else) is denied universal health care, education, and other basic life-sustaining services; (2) Voting “pro-life” and then hypocritically refusing to pay for anything that would actually make that life livable when it comes out of the womb; (3) Worshipping a loving God that will happily condemn you to eternal damnation if you think the wrong thoughts; (4) Claiming to be a follower of a man who said love your neighbor, don’t worship money, and take care of the sick and the poor, while you steadfastly refuse to do any of that, and openly mock those who do. I could go on.

Even our best-intentioned actions can have downsides. Recycling, for instance, tends to be energy-intensive, creating a much larger carbon footprint than most people understand. Also, due to contamination, it is far from efficient or effective much of the time. And plastic recycling has been shown to have other negative environmental consequences, including the fact that much of what we thought we were recycling was being sold to China, where a great deal of it ended up in rivers and oceans.

Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe,

and the vast majority will believe you.

Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.

― George Carlin

Also, as has been discussed openly recently by artists like Rick Rubin and Elizabeth Gilbert, we don’t really know where ideas come from. We don’t really know how art or books or music is made. Only that humans seem to be some kind of conduits for these things, tapping into some kind of electromagnetic field, a sort of sea of collective consciousness.

So what if absurdity is the point. What if we are not supposed to figure it out. What if left-braining is the opposite of true understanding. What if, on this Earth plane, things are not fixable by the human mind. What if even our best-intentioned endeavors have a down-side that cannot be avoided.

Like usual, I am not saying I have an answer to these questions. But I think we hurt our brains -- and our hearts -- by trying to figure everything out. By thinking that it is possible to figure things out. Especially right now, when a man who cannot speak in complete or coherent sentences has been put in a position to dismantle a nation’s moral fiber and a world order that has taken at least 80 years to build.

Maybe the answer is for us to stop thinking this is a problem we can solve with committees or speeches or town halls. Maybe this situation is center stage to teach us that we cannot think our way out of this. That the way forward is to trust our hearts. That this has always been the way.

Once again, perhaps the Universe is smarter than us. And we are here not just to solve math equations and political solutions to trash or crime, but to evolve into wiser beings. Beings who understand that the electromagnetic power of the heart is thousands of times stronger than the brain. Maybe this is what the masters have been telling us for thousands of years, with teachings like: “try to love the questions themselves” or “you do not have to be good” or “when you walk on the way, the way appears” or “blessed are the peacemakers” ... maybe.