Ummagumma

Image credit. One of humanity's fundamental challenges actually has to do with our sense of time.  Most people consider time not by clocks but through the experience of their lives and their extended family, their parents and siblings.  When they are younger, their grandparents are part of the equation.  When older their own children and grandchildren are major measures of time.   This isn't true of everyone, of course.  But, as rule, we are accustomed almost universally to give context to time and our lives through five generations or so.  This is a mistake.  To understand the effect of accelerating change upon humanity we must first widen our context because our brains and our bodies are basically the same as they were 70,000 years ago (or so).   We need to broaden our awareness and to witness our humanity not only during the reach of our own lifetime but also within the reach of all generational lifetimes over the past 70,000 years.  That is basically how long our contempor

The oak tree this May. From my Twin Oaks in May post last year.  Obviously, this tree is in decline but I had no idea it was so close to death.   Last year I blogged that this photo seemed to have "a power" about it.  This year that old oak tree is dead.  It makes the fifth large tree I have lost in my small woods in the past three years.  Such things are natural, of course.  Under-story trees and shrubs can now take advantage of the new sunlight and grow more lush and tall.   But, in 28 years here I have never had so many older trees die out so closely together.  As a " Steward of the Wood ," this troubles me.

Image credit. Nietzsche believed that you and I do not possess a singular, constant self but, rather, a multiplicity of instinctual drives.  The sex drive is the most obvious one.  But we have all sorts of drives...for success, knowledge, freedom, recognition, power, closure, validation, etc.  If you can think of life as a “quest” for something, that something is most likely one of Nietzsche's drives.   Neuroscience and Buddhism agree with Nietzsche about our shifting sense of self.  Our brains have evolved to accommodate a plurality of possible selves, depending on which instinctual drive or combination of instinctual drives most influences our lives at any given moment.  Human brains are hardwired to express drives, likely because drives have a high survival value.  The survival instinct itself is a drive.  Having conquered survival, for the most part, contemporary life still relies upon a multitude of drives (quests, efforts, ambitions) that created it. When a baby

Image credit. While traveling in India during the mid-1980's, I spent a night in a cave with a holy man.  The cave was small, the size of about two large tents inside with a short, wide opening allowing for plenty of sunlight.  The hermit practiced the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Hinduism, as did his guru, Sri Ramana Maharshi , a famous early 20th century ascetic teacher in southern India.   The holy man believed the world is completely an illusion.  That our physical senses are deceptive.  Our “real” identity is our atman (the reincarnating vessel) and its transition through repeated lives until the chain of reincarnation is broken through life practice and achieving complete unity with the universe ( Brahman ). I had fetched a simple dinner for us to enjoy together as we sat outside the cave in the twilight of the day.  He had fresh goat's milk that was brought to him by a devotee each morning from the town at the foot of Arunachala , the holy high point where t

  Image from here . (Although this series is tagged as my "theory of everything" it is not really a theory of "everything."  What I intend is "everything within human experience.") In February 2021 Pew Research asked a random sampling of over 10,000 Americans how many days out of the last seven they felt nervous, anxious, or on edge.  38% said less than one day, basically none at all.  31% said 1-2 days.  20% said 3-4 days and 11% “most of the time,” up to all seven days.  The interesting thing here is that 62% of Americans feel some form of anxiety on a weekly basis. When asked to rate their level of personal distress as high, medium, or low, two-thirds of people over 65 haven't a care in the world.  But only about one-third of anyone aged 18-29 feels that way.  Moreover, 32% of 18-29's report high distress and 31% medium distress.  It is interesting that this younger demographic spends more of their lives immersed in technology than any previous