A beautiful morning
Seriously, wow. The weather is perfect for running. Not too hot, not too cold, no blazing sun, not a ton of clouds to wreck the beauty of the sky. The one thing that is against me is this horrible pain in my right foot. It’s the joint where my big toe meets the foot. It’s not swollen, it feels like a deep bruise, or some other injury like that. I can run on it, obviously, but it is super painful at the start, enough to change my gait and foot strike. But as I have said, I will run until I break. That’s what I did today. Well, ran, I didn’t break, I should have no problem getting out tomorrow morning, assuming I wake up in time.
I was thinking about seeing my family. While I really want to see everyone and say hi, I don’t really want to spend all Summer in the US. But I need to, I need to work this Summer, and I can’t work here and see my family and friends. Plus I have to get my license renewed and get a motorcycle endorsement. So Summer in the US it is. Everyone really needs to start making plans to come visit after that though. There are marathons, half marathons, 10km races, I’m sure ultras can be found. Yes, you need a medical certificate, but I can’t keep getting on airplanes all the time.
Right now, I’m just trying to sort a plan of attack for running this month. I keep getting side-tracked though. I’m bouncing between thoughts about work, the US, politics, socio-economic issues, racism, everything. Why do we make this world so fucking complicated? In no way is the way we conduct our society sensible. The worst is, as uncomfortable as I’ve always felt, I can only imagine how horrible that feeling must be for those who face the more insidious issues we create. My burden is only that I recognize the issues, and I know I must fight to correct them. It has to be corrected. Ignoring it is not an option. It’s not like a hurt toe. Because it won’t go away in time. It is a structural deficiency. As I’ve pointed out many times the beliefs our current system are based on, the “best ideas” of their time, the “best science” of its time, it was horribly flawed. Sometimes intentionally, mostly just due to ignorance.
Let’s get back in our time machine, and go back to the dawn of the anatomically modern Homo Sapiens. Let’s take one of those infant modern humans, and bring them today and raise them as any other child today. Are they deficient? Do they know less? Do they struggle with simple concepts we take for granted? No. They are anatomically modern, which means they have the same form and abilities as any of us. Educated in our modern system, with all the knowledge at our disposal, they should have no trouble grasping these concepts and learning just like any other human being. What’s the point of this thought experiment? Homo Sapiens has been around for a long time, and we’re not better than anyone who came before, and the people who come after will not be any better or worse, naturally.
Will our offspring have more knowledge to draw from? Better ideas? Better science? Better philosophy? Of course (particularly if they find this blog)! But anatomically they will still be like us, well unless some unforeseen evolutionary events happen. Yet the ideas our society are based on do not understand this concept. Not only did those who came up with the theories which run our society today believe that ancient humans were ignorant, incapable barbarians, naturally. They honestly believed in a difference between modern peoples. That the modern European male was the pinnacle of homo sapiens evolution. You can’t have a just society based on these ideas. Fundamentally dismissing most of the world’s population is going to give you a system of oppression no matter how well-meaning anyone using the system, or running the system, tries to be.
This is the basic idea of the “Ancient Aliens” shows and shit like that, I’ve talked about that many times. “It’s impossible these people could have figured this thing out, I mean they weren’t as wonderfully perfect a human being as I am, and yet I can’t even figure it out.” That’s the actual premise of those types of shows and ideas. When they say things like, “This stone was carved so perfectly, we can’t even do it today with our modern machines.” That is what they are saying. It is that sort of persistent thinking that the ideas which run the world are based on. There’s an inherent inequality in the thinking itself. How can the system that is built off it, be fair by any true measure?
Let’s look at it this way. I want to build a house, I don’t bother to level the foundation. Now, I build the house on top of that. My foundation is flawed, it is not level. I build a standard, timber-framed American house on top of this. Will my house stand for a particularly long time? I can’t even truly modify the home to stand properly. Due to the flaws in the foundation, there would be gaps between the foundation and the timbers, water would get in. There’d be decay and eventually structural failure. It may take a hundred years, it may take 10, but one day that house is going to fall no matter what, unless we constantly repair it and constantly shore it up, and eventually that’s all we do. How is that a sustainable model for the world? Not to mention, look at all the work involved? Why would we want a system which, itself, requires us to work. There’s nothing natural, normal, sustainable, kind, intelligent about it.
This is why I’m always saying, we need to look at things in a new way, we do need a true change in consciousness. We can’t just take an idea from the past, dust it off and give it a go. It’s still flawed. You can’t fix it. We have to first change our ideas, we already know the science and then the philosophy, which sprang from that, of the Enlightenment was mostly wrong. Why do we look to Capitalism, Communism, or any of the other ideas which came from those bad ideas to fix the problems we’ve created for ourselves. Also, why are people so resistant to changing when it is pointed out what we are doing is causing a problem in the first place? It’s time for a change, a real change.
Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!
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