I haven't posted anything here for a while, partly because nothing much happens apart from study. In a way, that's good, it means nothing much awful happens in my little world (ok, except the thing with Claude). I am feeling more philosophical at the end of another year, must be a sign of age. Some of the events reported in the news recently are just so horrific, I wonder where it will all lead. Violence, torture, murder....every generation says it's getting worse, but I suspect it's just wider reporting and bigger populations. And I really think overpopulation is the key stressor for this and future generations. I find it really hard to think of really GOOD things happening in the world, and they rarely get reported. The media focuses on bad, sensational news, and in a way creates this bad news loop (Morgan Freeman said it better!). Somebody needs to start a good news loop! I just read a series of books by Kim Stanley Robinson (Forty days of rain etc.), which were quite refreshing as he uses up-to-date research to speculate about different ways of doing things in science, politics, social living etc. Although it is fiction, I like some of his ideas, and he borrows quite heavily from Emerson, Thoreau, and Buddhism. I haven't had much exposure to Emerson, but Henri Thoreau (Walden) is more familiar. In the way "web imitates art" sometimes, someone followed Robinson's lead of posting snippets of Emerson and later, Thoreau, on a website called emersonfortheday.com. I like how one can digest just a small paragraph at a time and think about it. These guys knew how to live with nature, and we can learn from them. A quote from Thoreau -You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
So, perhaps in the coming year I will use this blog space for good news, things that show that homo sapiens may perhaps not be such a blight on earth in the future. Happy New Year!
I pondered upon this section of the quote from Thoreau: "Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
ReplyDeleteI see it a little differently. If you remain on your island and don't look out toward another land might you not perhaps miss the opportunity to try something completely new, to know the exhilaration of taking risks and of learning from these experiences?
If you do not expose yourself to dreams, to the unknown, to ambition and curiosity will you not become insular, stale and intolerant?
Yes, live a good life, grasp the opportunities this life affords you but don't close off the possibility of something different whether that be cultural, spiritual or 'gasp' extra-terrestrial. Who knows what the future might hold? (Other than the Doctor)