Friday, August 26, 2022

The Future is a Hoax

 


I didn't feel very good yesterday. It wasn't anything specific, I just felt out of sorts I guess.

Age related? Nah. The same old aches and growing infirmities were the same ole, same ole's of recent years. I just did not feel right; or maybe I just did not feel right in my own skin for a time. Call it a moment of readjustment and I just needed a day to work out some wrinkles that pop up from time to time.

Yeah, it felt like wrinkle time; a feeling I have dealt with on an erratic, yet recurring cycle throughout my life. It was a familiar kind of out of sorts, one I recognized too late to fight. But then did I even want to fight it? After all, I had been here in this frame of mind before and I always came out of it fine....... next day fine usually.

And here it is the next day. The planet is still spinning, the humans are still insane, and I am back safely ensconced in  what I consider my normal frame of mind. And normal is just fine.

I have recently stepped up my blog writing. I have done it not so much to reach any specific audience, nor even reach myself for that matter. I am writing more because it soothes me, calms me down, and sharpens my focus. The time I spend taking a blog post from one end of the creation process to the final product, I am in my own world, free of the overwhelming Bullshit and pettiness of the Reality I exist in along with everyone else on the planet. 

When I write, either fiction or just commentary, I am in a safe place like when I read a book. The outside world is stripped away leaving a blank canvas for me or my chosen author to create a new imagination or momentary delusion for me. All that matters in that moment, that instant, is how what I am doing makes me feel. Self aggrandizement maybe? If so, so what?

Which brings me to another Facebook meme I came across yesterday. It is about living Life, not for the future, but for the now, this instant, not tomorrow. 

I had probably heard of Alan Watts back in my psychoactive drugging days. He was a 20th Century philosopher who was a force behind moving Zen and Buddhism in from the fringes of Mainstream and giving them some everyman cred in Western thought.

The little research I have done on him makes me want to check out some of his writings and also some of his lectures as he was a regular on some California Dreaming station in Berkeley back in the 1960s. He experimented with LSD in 1958 and spent some time smoking Pot. What he said of his psychoactive experience and why he stopped was:

"If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen."

There are hundreds of his lectures and radio broadcasts available online. He wrote over twenty books. The man was a prolific communicator. And now after listening to one of his short lectures, "The World is an Illusion", he definitely has an ability to explain stuff in ways I would never have thought of. 

Yes, I will hopefully check into more about Mr. Alan Watts. But maybe not. After all, according to Alan,

 ".... the future is a hoax."

Keep it 'tween the ditches ..........................................

___________________________

I had another tune picked for this post. Then I found a personally up until recently unknown Van Morrison tune, "Madame George". I have always admired his music, his musicianship, his lyrical composition. Yes, he will always be in the top tier of my musical quiver. "Madame George" is now maybe my new all time favorite of his. It came out in 1968, which begs the question how did I miss it? .... Hmm... I started missing a lot back then I guess.

Anyway, please enjoy the song. And if you like I have attached a link to the lyrics....... they are awesome and you can find them HERE.



6 comments:

The Blog Fodder said...

The future may be a hoax but not planning for it puts you in the same space as the religious nutbars who don't care what happens to the environment because "the Rapture". However living our life in the future causes us to miss a great deal of the present. Some of us do not live to enjoy the future.

Ol'Buzzard said...

The now is the future from yesterday. I can enjoy today because by hook or by accident I somehow charted my way to this moment. There is food in my fridge, gas in my car, my bills are paid, the electricity is on, my internet is connected, my wife is healthy... because of things I did yesterday to be here today.
the Ol'Buzzard

One from Ukraine said...

Like your flow of thoughts yet one time.
I see it rather disturbing, that older people are not that open to share their lifetime experiences -- who knows, maybe our world calamities would not be like reproducing themself -- evenly, each generation. If they do.
Remark: Oh, I'm using long words and long sentences again. While perfectly know how hard to make myself understood with em. Even in my native lang. Duh.
But you, your posts, clearing that disturbance out of me. Tnx.


Not sure if I'd overuse it. Your hospitality.
With talks about my favorite phylosopher.
As he is directly opposite to yours.
Phylosopher of a future. To whom future was more real than our mundane world (still, he had sharp eye of it too)
Stanislav Lem. Polish sci-fi writer. Might be heard as author of "Solaris" to you.(not one of his most prominent, most important works)

Main point of his views was an "ultimate understanding"(or how to translate it? ultimate comprehension? ultimate enlightment?).
Idea that it is a biggest challenge of a human being is to rise above itself (not Nithean, don't get what that nitheanism is about anyway).

Through development of science and technologies.

yellowdoggranny said...

thinking about the future keeps me going...want to be here so I can be a solid memory for the ggs

One from Ukraine said...

\\thinking about the future keeps me going...

Today, Future proposes to us things that is worthy of staying for longer.
And. Most important. It provides means of doing it -- life prolonging, longetivity in general.

But, there is a caveat -- in needs a LOT of brains power to go there...

PipeTobacco said...

I really like the 3 images you made of yourself. I always think those photo manipulation tools are pretty cool, although if I tried them I would simply cause the program to self destruct….. if I could even get a photo of my ugly mug that didn’t break the camera. 😜

Watts was a very interesting fellow with some really thought provoking ideas. Since he was also a pipe smoker…. that makes sense. 😜

PipeTobacco