Great Expectations

In Thinking Animals, Paul Shepard argues that our continued human evolution and maturation is directly related to our relationship with the other animals with whom we share this planet.  In as much as our culture has evolved in the direction of limiting and/or eliminating any direct and personal relationship with the wild animals, we have also stunted our own maturation, both as individuals and as a species.  (I hope I did him justice there.)

His premise makes sense to me.  I've written often here about the lack of other awareness, other sensitivity in this human culture, meaning that we've become almost completely human-centric in all our day to day living, consumed by human doings continuously.  What little awareness we bring moment to moment to the others who are not human with whom we share this life!

In this lack of other awareness, we become myopic to the extreme, our focus is ever increasingly inward, isolating.  The aspect of this I find most disturbing is the inevitable impact this will have on coming generations of humans in our culture.  I continue to look toward the new generations with the idea that a new vision will emerge, a vision which will allow us to precipitously change our direction . . . but realistically I can't conceive how that could happen--without some kind of outside-the-realm-of-human-control intervention.

I'm not a parent, other than what retro-parenting I am perennially trying to do for myself; so I don't really know what it must be like to raise a child in this world.  I don't know what fears and ambitions I might have for my child.  I don't know what fears and ambitions I might have for myself as a parent of a child.


The above was written 2 days ago . . . .  Then I simply got stuck.  I couldn't figure out exactly where I was trying to go, much less how to get there.  One of the drawbacks to blogging, I think.  I need the dialogue.  So, thank you , Jon, for the time and the conversation yesterday.

The problem I was having was the fact that I was trying very hard to not use the word hope in the sentence, 'I continue to look toward the new generations with the idea . . . .'  I didn't want to say, 'with the hope that a new vision will emerge . . . .'  If you've been reading this blog since the beginning or have gone back and read earlier entries, you may remember the one called Pandora's Box.

So, you see, I didn't want to appear to be hypocritical and confess that I actually do feel hope.

The truth is I do.  But I am so wary of that emotion.  Yet, there it is.  I don't manufacture it.  It just arises within me, like sadness and joy and fear.

Think about this in the context of what I'm writing about here.  I mentioned (obliquely, yes) my hope toward the 'new generation' and my more veiled hope toward the 'outside-the-realm-of-human-control intervention.'  Who among us does not in all honesty have these same hopes.  And why not?  Most of us generally feel so stuck and so helpless in the face of the cultural juggernaut, that to not have some kind of hope would feel . . . well . . . hopeless.

But if we hang too much on hope, then are we not hanging on to that deeply ingrained cultural meme of the penultimate need for salvation?

Can you allow yourself to question hope itself?  Can you, if only for a moment, allow yourself to feel no hope, without giving in to it's sinister twin hopelessness?  Can you allow yourself to consider not hoping for things to be different than they actually are and instead to allow things to be just the way they are and not feel victimized by circumstance!?

I stand here in the midst of the rising waters.  No floating thing is at hand.  I don't know whether or not the water will continue to rise.  I know that I can swim or float for a time, but that my strength and endurance will ultimately become exhausted.  I don't know what will ultimately happen.  I my notice that hope arises within me.  My thinking mind imagines various things that could happen that would prevent me from suffering and dying.  Yet that does not change my circumstance.  If I do not choose to let my attention move away from the images of hoped-for salvation, I will likely miss whatever strategizing I may be capable of that may make some kind of difference.  I may become so lost in the internal visions of rescue that I don't notice what may float my way as aid or comfort.  I will certainly miss the simple and complete engagement with what life has given me . . . now, in this moment, which may be the last of my conscious existence.

The opposite of hope is now.