Humans surround themselves with diversions. Much like the scattered Blue Tribe that circled the great Indigo star Carl Knowlseby, the humans of this sphere--at least in their larger, industrialized states--embody an at times desperate addiction to stimulation.
There are places on this sphere where excess stimulation is considered bad for the health. In most cases these are monasteries or religious orders. On Sol-3 the prevailing opinion that moving about, driving along, accumulating wealth, spending that wealth, saving that wealth, watching events, watching sports, participating in sports, watching telecommunication, making telecommunication, talking, walking, jogging, barking, discussing, arguing, having intercourse, thinking about intercourse, using stimulants to simulate intercourse, snorting, smoking, injecting, chewing, eating carcinogenic narcotics, is more socially acceptable than the absence of these activities. But this seems to have backfired for some of the religious orders. The one that comes to mind is the rather rampant sexual corruption in what is here known as the Catholic Church, an organization notoriously discombobulating in its ecumenical composition.
For their benthic reasons the Catholic Church sees fit to sequester their employees from physical temptation by barring them from sexual congress with the opposite sex (forbidden sexual congress with the same sex is considered sine qua non for these chaps). In the last few decades there have been cases, not in the hundreds, but the thousands, of Catholic Priests participating in (and, at times, encouraging) sexual congress with adolescent and even pre-pubescent males. Why young males? I do not feel I have grasped the intricate manner of human hypocrisy well enough to hazard a guess. Suffice it to say that, as you would imagine, the Catholic Church has done very little to quell the rising discontent in its flock apart from watching in stolid confusion as their congregations break rank and flee to the other side, sometimes away from Christianity altogether. Why leave the church at all, however, if faith is what truly wraps these people together?
Because the church, the Catholic Church, is an institution which symbolizes very pronounced moral values. In fact, disregarding the past two-thousand years of corruption, war, murder, and bigotry, the Church has made its living exporting those values to its customers. When a resource is no longer available from its traditional market a consumer has to move on.
My point, if I can make one, is that even in institutions specifically intended to reduce stimulation humans are fallibly drawn to entertain themselves. And the consequences are much greater because the institutions are held sacrosanct (though by fewer and fewer numbers, if statistics mean anything).
Even in this transmission I have myself diverted. More should be said on this subject. For now my hypothesis centers on, again, the humans' abrupt life-span. Perhaps an evolutionary quirk to the humans' keen adaptive prerogative is the cause. Creatures with short life spans crave input. Is this to impress the opposite sex? Can be but not always. Is this to expand the boundaries of self? Can be but not always. Is this as good a way as any to pass the fleeting time? Can be. May be.
Is humanity merely itself a diversion to the Earth itself? Wouldn't that be grand? And yet it would be a devilish addiction the Earth has crafted, one inevitably it should be drawn to break or risk its own health (an already marred attribute) to the despair of extinction. But that is too morbid a thought to end this transmission.
Perhaps when Timothy Leary said, "Turn on, tune in, drop out" he could be expected to be speaking for more than the mind-altering chemical lysergic acid diethylamide. Perhaps there is something deeper in humans' search for deeper diversions (like the world web network).
Whatever it is it may explain why folks around here swiftly change the subject when I ask them to stop talking so much.
No comments:
Post a Comment