20190926 00140 5 minutes
Political, Musings, Golden Rule

Indeed, what does matter?

Recently I confirmed what I had suspected for a very long time: Nothing matters, or at least, not much.

As human beings, we are anxious to believe that we matter, and that those things we believe in also are important. But I have difficulty proving it.

All those things that are so “necessary” to our little lives are just adult-style toys. And, like children’s toys, they are not at all necessary to life, just useful to make life more fun and easier.

If it is considered that our life is important, then food, water, and probably shelter of some sort, which are necessary to maintain life, are important. But what makes us so certain that the continuation of the human race is necessary for anything? From what we have learned over the last few years, the world managed for billions of years without us. Life, in various forms, eventually existed. It didn’t need us to help it happen, or to survive; in fact, to a large extent, we just caused problems to much of what was here when we did finally arrive. Basically, wherever we go, we expect to take over and dominate everything; if we leave, then things revert to the original state, depending on how much we have devastated things in the meantime.

For very many years I have questioned the importance of those housewifely virtues considered so vital by the majority of our civilization. Being allergic to housework, and putting things away in general, I consider those attributes important only to maintain a standard high enough not to be completely ostracized by friends and family. They also help cut down on the time spent looking for things that have “vanished.” But making them an end in themselves I do not understand.

Having been around for quite a long time, I have come across very many lifestyles and philosophies, being lived, not just from books or a purely academic viewpoint. Most of them have something to commend them, some nugget of validity, to warrant the individual believer’s faith in them. But looking at them from an over-arching time perspective, I wonder where they fit into the general scheme of things?

A few of the things which seem to me to be worthwhile are based on how we behave towards each other while we are here, versus the value we place on “stuff.” How we manage our time shows how amazingly off-kilter our perspective, as a society, is. How we can condone the wild disproportionate distribution of wealth is a mystery to me.

It seems to be a given that we exist. Most of the indigenous peoples of the world had devised a pretty balanced way of existing with the natural world, until the “civilized” intruders took over and disrupted their lives. We introduced non-indigenous flora and fauna, which had nothing to keep them in check naturally. The new arrivals multiplied unchecked and eventually over ran their local, less aggressive, counterparts. Now, both the human, animal and vegetable species are multiplying so fast that our little planet will soon not be able to support them. And then the chemical companies enable us to put a toxic BandAid on the problem, with all sorts of side effects. We are ringing our own death-knell. But maybe, for the planet, it’d be the best thing that has happened to it since homo sapiens first stood upright!