Hopelessly in Thought

“What have we learned when we were told that instinctively draws them irresistible, such as the extravagant idea that they can dominate without realizing it, and whatever they do to get rid of it, that their thoughts come and go, mingle, mingle with uncontrollable rapidity, they see objects, hear noises, voices that exist, as is commonly said that in their imagination? ... We do not see, of course, that area of things we cannot penetrate further, probing the causes, the sequence of mental abnormalities which we speak. Is not none of the acts of the intellect, affections, especially as the sensations it is impossible to know and judge other than yourself? To get an idea of any pain, it must have felt, to know how crazy nonsense, there must be nonsense yourself, but be unreasonable without losing consciousness of our delirium, without stopping to judge the changes occurred in our mental faculties.”

- By Jacques-Joseph Moreau (de Tours)

In Hashish and Mental Alienation, 1845

To experience, is the essence of all life! To experience the vagaries and variances, the divinities and depths of utter realization, and be lost in the sea of life, where we drink in the strong and hard of possibilities, all the while drowning slower and slower as the waves of time rush by. To experience, is to transcend existence into non-existence.

We live through each day knowing fully that it is but a pattern we follow, and yet we believe in a reason for this fallacy, that this is meant to be. To live as though nothing matters and to live with the conviction that everything does, comprehending the significance of every small detail, are two entirely different experiences. One need not be a prerequisite to the other, even though the intricacies of their interactions are far subtler than what meets the general eye. Why must one think of either when wallowing in the mud of existence, all that keeps the simple mind occupied is the primal urge to be satisfied? In various ways and forms, through the infinite network of means and ends we live a very determinate life, forever entangled in the links of cause and effect. To live in such fashion without ever taking a look at the finer mechanisms of thought bringing forth existence and how the world continuously regenerates thought is akin to the meaningless drudgery of slaves. ‘Why’ and ‘what for’ are a luxury of questions never meant for slaves!

To deny the right to question, to evict from ourselves the finer aspects of being a human, such as the study of designs and patterns without ever conceding to the idea of coincidence, and bringing thought to the level of transparent contemplation of itself to reveal its nothingness, without these explorations life is nothing but a swamp of incoherent happenings, where every struggle to escape results in deeper entrenchment. As we are immersed in thought from waking moment to moment, we do not understand how it is from thought that our world is framed and being born into this ignorance is not a justification for continuing in the same pattern. Evolution is not just a betterment of our physical attributes according to the strength of the surrounding environment, but more importantly an awakening of our psychophysical capabilities and thereby adapting to our own changing thought process, understanding its mechanism and ultimately controlling its sycophancies.

Where has this inherent capacity to question disappeared in the neo-human? Questioning does exist in our social system, but in an imposed, standardized and bastardized format that serves no purpose other than to exhort the enquirer to conform to these social phenomena, subjugating free will and freedom of thought to the so called higher pathways of society building and maintenance of harmony. The irony is that all the reasons for structuring the complex interactions of our species into a well-defined mechanism of social progress have devolved into excuses and silly justifications for the widespread disharmony and degeneration we see around us in the world today. What this means is that we must rethink our objectives for all the social experiments, review our current position with respect to the various attitudes we incorporate into our daily lives and eventually have the guts to accept where we went wrong, instead of putting in stop-gap measures to hide the consequences of our early mistakes and continuing with this destructive agenda formulated by our forefathers day after day, year after year and generation after generation.

To think, defines our very essence of being human and is the foundation of what we have made and where we have reached so far. Thought as an entity, is the single most revolutionary device that isolates us as the highest evolved system in the universe today, until such counter-evidence can be brought to light proving the existence of another system anywhere else. It pains me then, to see so many of my own species going through life as an automated system does, programmed with so many ideas and methodologies to deal with issues; these issues being created by the very social machine that programmed them in the first place. Because of this tyrannical process of programming, these auto-beings living and struggling in my world have forsaken the power of thought and cognitive analysis, crudely replaced with following dictums and demented social ideologies simply for the pursuit of base pleasures and for the avoidance of silly illusory pains. Do they deserve to be called human beings, I do not know; it is not in my infinite wisdom gained through lifetimes of experience and error to classify and judge another. All I can reveal is that if humanity does not reassign its priorities as soon as possible, we are all headed towards a major catastrophe in terms of our journey of evolution and there is no saying what the consequences of our actions would be, for at that point of time no stop-gap measures would exist to save us from our follies.

My meanderings in thought would seem inconsequential to most of my fellow human beings, and to many these may reflect the insanity of a mind unoccupied by what they deem is important to daily life survival; nevertheless, I agree this is insanity, but it is the insanity of an evolving mind which has torn itself away from the mechanisms of social compulsions and which is trying to see the bigger picture. This mind may not function as per the whims and fancies of the society and will not obey the rules and constructs governing its workings, but because it is removed from this stage, it observes unbiased and understands where the errors lie. By placing thought at the summit of our personal endeavours towards sustaining linearity in our path of evolution and by revoking all attempts of society to condition us and program our activities and thereby branching away from our sole purpose which is to become the epitome of intelligent design, we can address our current issues in a succinct manner and become who we really are. I must reinforce this idea again and again; that what we are today is not the real entity that lies hidden within us but only a pale shadow of the glorious self that we shall eventually become. This is the gist of our evolutionary framework, and all our efforts lie in the realm of thought and mental expansion, which is the next stage of progress and metamorphosis.

We have already passed the stage of animal evolution, of physical fitness and adaptation to natural challenges and checkpoints, of redefining our environment to better assist in the succeeding stages of innovation of thought and intelligence. We are almost at the brink of completing the social evolution stage, where civilization and systems of interaction have been perfected to such a degree that the world seems a lot smaller and lot more connected than what it was a thousand years ago, all of which happened in the last hundred or so years. But somewhere along the way we dissipated our efforts into many ineffective strategies that a paradox exists – technologically and scientifically we are way ahead of our times, but in social principle we are degenerates, never assuming responsibility for the development of our social mechanisms and worsening the situation by reacting to the issues in a haphazard fashion. Either we pull the plug now and discover alternative methods of adaptation, or it is clear that the point of no return will present us with a situation where all existing systems will crash and a new framework will emerge. But the latter will come at a cost, so hard to bear but bear we shall for we have no choice when it comes to evolution; as Darwin so beautifully put it, ‘only the fittest shall survive.’

So to summarize, we live a life which is a continuity of experiences, from birth to death, nothing more and nothing less. It is these experiences which guide us from lower to higher stages of our own evolution, and to forget this is tantamount to forgetting ourselves. Which in theory, and almost in all practical applications of society is what we end up doing; forgetting who we are, why we are and the significance of this journey called life. Simply because the family we were born into, the people we interact with to build the various networks and the systems that keep our daily processes going, all of them keep us from realizing these simple truths. Why? Because for their survival, we must forget all about ours – this is the way of our world! And in order to keep us from realizing this, prolific systems are in place to engage our thought, our most powerful evolutionary tool in mundane trivialities of daily living. Is it possible for us to be aware of this deceit and escape the trap we were born into? Maybe, and then again maybe not – only time can tell!

In conclusion, it is only fitting to quote Nietzsche, one of our foremost thinkers who was way ahead of his time, and who was persecuted by the very society he tried to redefine: The only seeing we have is seeing from a perspective; the only knowledge we have is knowledge from a perspective. The more emotional affects we allow to be expressed in words concerning something, the more eyes, different eyes, we know how to train on the same thing, the more complete our "idea" of this thing, our "objectivity," will be. But to eliminate the will in general, to suspend all our emotions without exception—even if we were capable of that—what would that be? Wouldn't we call that castrating the intellect?

Hopelessly in thought, this is how I would define my transient life!