We have somehow made the heritage of humankind's knowledge of this planet not only an institution but a requirement for living. We believe that if we don't have the proper knowledge for nutrition, medicine, and other things in life, we will somehow either die very early or live a life of seemingly poor quality. As evidence to convince ourselves, we point to poor countries of the world which do not have access to this knowledge.
Now as an individual, what does such a belief do to one's psyche? It creates fear and desperation to acquire this knowledge or be attached and dependent upon ones that have such knowledge. As if it is the knowledge of life that will keep one going and life itself is devoid of such intelligence. We have cut ourselves off from the force of life and entrusted our lives in a distilled, dead, abstract concept of life which we hope will tell us how to live. Does this make any sense?
Of course, one is not implying that research into diseases must stop - that should go on but one is trying to illumine the nature of a society so desperately attached to knowledge where a huge population needs pills to sleep, work, be happy or just be - without the burden of their own minds.
It is interesting to note that this complete trust, while it may have brought freedom from polio, TB, etc., it has also created a tremendous insecurity where a mutation of a virus (anything new) in a fowl or a mammal (birdflu or madcow) creates not only physical insecurity like the past but also psychological insecurity of a kind seemingly unprecedented in human history. Because the trust is on a dead thing - knowledge rather than life itself. Nothing is anticipated or expected from the intelligence of life, it is as if a machine without intelligence and yet any new thing that life springs on is feared. The savior is determined to be knowledge that will decode the program of the machine (life) and until that is done, there is only fear, gloom, and worry in the destiny of man. Since knowledge is the savior and the hard fact is that some things are not known at any given time, the urge to know as much as possible in as short of a time as possible creates a pressure within which itself blinds observation creating further complications.
On the other hand, if trust is in life, not in the sense of an abstract caretaker or a personal custodian but in the sense of a communion that one is not separate from that which ails oneself and what one determines via knowledge as the possible cause of illness is a distillation of something that one does not truly understand or hope to understand; one can take tentative steps with humility in coming up with possible remedies understanding that in the final analysis, it is life flowing through us and around us that gives us consciousness to judge, fragment, categorize, separate and in fact it itself is intelligence - not a machine that operates on rote that can be toyed with the human intellect.
So the demand the human intellect may make of a prolonged or a particular quality of life is all in some ways childish for how do we truly know what bearing on the planet does our demand for a life span of 75 or 100 years have? And does it make sense to call knowledge the savior, if it does give us what we demand but in the process the planet accelerates to annihilation?
So really the actual fact is that of nature which is both us and outside of us. One can study and observe and participate in it since one is that but one cannot isolate an aspect of nature, namely, the human intellect and demand subservience of all to it. It simply is crazy!
Now as an individual, what does such a belief do to one's psyche? It creates fear and desperation to acquire this knowledge or be attached and dependent upon ones that have such knowledge. As if it is the knowledge of life that will keep one going and life itself is devoid of such intelligence. We have cut ourselves off from the force of life and entrusted our lives in a distilled, dead, abstract concept of life which we hope will tell us how to live. Does this make any sense?
Of course, one is not implying that research into diseases must stop - that should go on but one is trying to illumine the nature of a society so desperately attached to knowledge where a huge population needs pills to sleep, work, be happy or just be - without the burden of their own minds.
It is interesting to note that this complete trust, while it may have brought freedom from polio, TB, etc., it has also created a tremendous insecurity where a mutation of a virus (anything new) in a fowl or a mammal (birdflu or madcow) creates not only physical insecurity like the past but also psychological insecurity of a kind seemingly unprecedented in human history. Because the trust is on a dead thing - knowledge rather than life itself. Nothing is anticipated or expected from the intelligence of life, it is as if a machine without intelligence and yet any new thing that life springs on is feared. The savior is determined to be knowledge that will decode the program of the machine (life) and until that is done, there is only fear, gloom, and worry in the destiny of man. Since knowledge is the savior and the hard fact is that some things are not known at any given time, the urge to know as much as possible in as short of a time as possible creates a pressure within which itself blinds observation creating further complications.
On the other hand, if trust is in life, not in the sense of an abstract caretaker or a personal custodian but in the sense of a communion that one is not separate from that which ails oneself and what one determines via knowledge as the possible cause of illness is a distillation of something that one does not truly understand or hope to understand; one can take tentative steps with humility in coming up with possible remedies understanding that in the final analysis, it is life flowing through us and around us that gives us consciousness to judge, fragment, categorize, separate and in fact it itself is intelligence - not a machine that operates on rote that can be toyed with the human intellect.
So the demand the human intellect may make of a prolonged or a particular quality of life is all in some ways childish for how do we truly know what bearing on the planet does our demand for a life span of 75 or 100 years have? And does it make sense to call knowledge the savior, if it does give us what we demand but in the process the planet accelerates to annihilation?
So really the actual fact is that of nature which is both us and outside of us. One can study and observe and participate in it since one is that but one cannot isolate an aspect of nature, namely, the human intellect and demand subservience of all to it. It simply is crazy!
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