Stewing

by Jon Sullivan - 2024-09-03 - Jonism

<<<<< previous blog         next blog >>>>>        album containing this post's photo

---

Often my posts here are less for faithful readers, and more for me to just figure shit out. That was yesterday's post. I'm still figuring....

The two years before I moved to Oregon changed me completely. I was a pessimistic hermit who hated being around people, never knew joy, a dark soul in a tiny dark apartment. Then I became happy. Insanely happy. But the last two years after moving here have been even more transformational. I've been forced to rethink, all over again, who I am and what I believe. Yesterday I tried to describe my shift away from a science/logic based cosmology, to something more..... fluffy? metaphysical? irrational?

I have an ever present fear these days about leaving behind the primacy of the scientific method. I ignore that fear and keep it locked away in the basement. But yesterday's post made it louder, and I spent the night stuck in nightmares about trying to derive the taxonomy of a DMT-like universe where language and meaning seemed to not exist. I'm broken as fuck.

Yet the need to understand is relentless. I could just be happy. But somehow that isn't enough. So if the lens of science fails to resolve my current objective reality, I need to find an alternative cosmology that placates the beast in the basement. Philosophy just muddies the water without providing answers. Religion doesn't address my problem. What even is the problem?

The problem is that I now have complete confidence that love and kindness and community can solve all of the world's problems. Where the science of game theory and economics have led us to oligarchy and homelessness, love and kindness as an automatic response would lead away from economic winners and losers and towards a sustainable safety net. Making kindness and love central to government, rather than wealth and power, (let's suggest the Nordic Model of social democracy) would promote economic security and opportunity for everyone. Our current social systems seem to equate "freedom" to the right to hate and victimize others. Paradoxically, we have a homeless problem that is largely driven and fed by hatred of the homeless problem. We have fucked ourselves. We should have made kindness compulsory.

Our economy and politics seem predicated on the idea that for us to succeed, others must fail. On the idea that those in need have only themselves to blame. On the lie that the American Dream means any of us could achieve wealth and power if we just worked harder. If we put our own self interest ahead of everything. Supposedly this would make us happy. It hasn't. And it never will. How happy does Elon Musk seem? Would we all be joyous if we were all psychopaths?

The dream should be a shared one, not a selfish one. We can all prosper if we lead by kindness and compassion. And yes, it's the old demonized hippie thing. Hippies are antithetical to the idea that the American Dream is a pursuit of wealth and power. The hippie goals are peace, love and freedom. Hippies sought to change the world through compassion and by living what they believe. By being kind. And I understand that some sort of national kindness based economic model is a ridiculous suggestion in 2024 America. But it is a model that can scale as far as we let it. As far as there are people who believe in kindness and reject greed and hoggishness.

And.... here we are.... I am no closer to that new understanding. I've spent hours articulating how all the world's problems could be solved by love, only to conclude that's not possible. The beast in the basement is unsatisfied.

<<<<< previous blog         next blog >>>>>

---