Where is the mankind going...

"If you don't know where you're going, the wind will bring you there..."Tao

GETTING TO THE POINT: THE GOLDEN RULE OF ALL HUMAN ACTIVITY

Release Date 2007-12-23
http://www.nomorefakenews.com/archives/arc...ew.php?key=2703


DECEMBER 23, 2007.. The culture, such as it is, requires investigations of phenomena that arrive at a practical use.

If matter is composed of atoms, can we build a bomb that will wipe out a city?

If germs are the cause of illness, can we develop medicines that kill germs?

If a relationship is formed around 17 keys, can we produce an application form that will link two people in a lasting marriage?

Scientists study mockingbirds with the goal of understanding their screeches, buzzes, croaks, whistles, grinding noises, wails, cheeps, chatterings---it must be all about securing a mate.

It is assumed that action or thought that has no obvious point is: insane, based on superstition, random.

Even after thousands of years of painting, most people believe that its sole purpose is imitation of nature.

If so, then why not glue a real rock on a canvas and have done with it? Why not merely reproduce a photograph?

The more the culture applies pressure of this kind, the closer we come to a critical mass.

On the other side of that mass is the grand entrance of the imagination.

That is the result of the volcano finally blowing.

The human being will not labor forever under the flag of "getting to the point."

Even a human being who claims not to understand what imagination is or how to access it will, in the long run, be forced to ally himself with it.

A chunk of gold can spend a thousand years denying it is gold, but eventually it will come around to the revelation.

You might say that Earth culture is the sum of all stories that avoid and explain away this primacy of imagination.

One such story vectors in on the trials and tribulations of those who have worked from imagination. Van Gogh, Gauguin, Tesla, Bruno, and other so-called heretics.

Another story punches up the fact that we are all heading for the end times and the complete and final destruction of Earth as we know it. Therefore, the idea of tapping into an individual wellspring of power is too late and too little.

"Forces beyond our control" are in charge, and despite our best efforts, they will have the last word.

You would be hard-pressed to add up all the novels, news stories, movies, and TV programs that tout an apocalypse of one kind or another.

Why are these stories so popular?

Because they feed a hidden urge within us to tear down a structure that has omitted imagination, creation, improvisation. These apocalyptic stories give us a chance to feel the outrage. They allow us to, yes, imagine, a moment in which the whole edifice comes crashing down.

That's why, somewhere in the early 1960s, people in theaters began rooting for the monster instead of the hero in horror/sci-fi films.

Fear was replaced by glee.

Underneath all the concern and worry about a flu pandemic, there lies the submerged hope that some virus really will take out a few hundred million people.

Who knows how many citizens of the US want Bush to nuke Iraq?

Certainly in modern industrial societies, as the rich get richer and poor get poorer, and as daily life becomes more highly organized and specialized---as the concept of collective work pushes further into the ant-colony outcome---people feel the closing claustrophobia.

They may not voice the feeling, they may appear to be calm, they may seem to be adjusting, but deep in the psyche another more profound sentiment is arising:

Will I never get the chance to create? Will my imagination never soar? Will I never step outside all the boxes? Is this it?

Sooner or later, need becomes insistence. What is an objection becomes a rebellion.

The first half of the 20th century saw the leading edge of this rebellion among painters and some writers. To name only a few: Kandinsky, Braque, Picasso, Dali, Breton, Ernst, DuChamp.

One of the most reviled (and praised) writers of the 20th century, Henry Miller, wrote a book called Tropic of Capricorn. His pages on "The Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company", for whom he worked in New York, reveal a man who has long passed the point of no return. Miller saw, early on, that the extreme industrialized/technological society was heading for a crack-up.

The individual would not be able to sustain his acceptance of such a system.

It was not about the increased comforts provided by that society. It was about the life of the soul. You could attempt to rule out the psyche as a legitimate entity, you could heap scorn on it, you could call it an outmoded and fanciful idea, but you could not steer the express train of progress away from it.

The individual creative force would not be denied.

Historically, there has always been a make-break point in highly organized civilizations. They eventually implode. They take on wars that will ensure their death. They demand destruction.

At the heart of these suicides is the desperation about IMAGINATION.

Without imagination, no human can truly live. He can only achieve imitations of living. Fronts. Facades.

He can only BEHAVE.

America is currently obsessed about behaving.

Some souls must live a trillion lives until they admit that it is the creative force---their own---that they are seeking.

Others undergo an awakening and slough off the myths that have been holding them in check.

To remain asleep, or to awaken and begin the real voyage---the choice is always there. Even if a person claims to have no knowledge of what the imagination is, or what to do with it, the option, the door, is open.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com