We like to think we’re big smart smart. We’re no cavemen. We like to think time is linear because we’re actually brutish, and it takes a higher order of thinking to conceptualize of the more abstract, cyclical truth of reality. We need a face to blame. We need something to hate. We need a goal to pursue. We need literal symbols of our deeper, subconscious movements.
There’s also stratification within our literal classifications. Our associations usually fall to the lowest energy level, our primal nature. Think of cultural “truisms” like war and violence, “dog eat dog”, “survival of the fittest”. Do I think this is just native human instinct? No. No, I do not. This only speaks to the mindsets of those who tell the stories. Those who’ve had power. And do I think they’re closer to cavemen and thus force upon as all this oversimplified, way-too-violent, brutish cultural explanations that leave our conversations and our dreams wanting.
Beneath and Behind and All Around those yelling their stories as if they’re final are the wise. The quiet. The observers. The humble humans aware of their historical embeddedness. Those who can resist (or who may not even experience) primal impulses of violence. Those who see these impulses as destructive and unsustainable. Those who’d rather wait and see, those who can know one thing while understanding that’s not everything, and not colonize the cultural conversation with my limited knowledge masquerading as fact. Those with honor in their gaze, humility in their hearts, wisdom in their minds, and a reverence in their being, whether conscious or not.
These are the people serving the loud. These are the moms, daughters, sisters, friends, servers, servants, of those delusioned to think they do everything on their own. These are the mature, the evolved. These are the fittest, and they always have been.
Darwin never said it’s a dog eat dog world. There only a sliver of his entire Origin of Species that mentions “survival of the fittest” and it means something entirely different there than it does in our common culture. If the wise had the pen and the audacity to broadcast their opinion to the globe, then perhaps the interpretation would be different. Perhaps it wouldn’t be the fittest who survive. Perhaps it would just be those most loved.
Fitness is a male illusion of independence. Who cooked Adam Smith’s dinner?
Every human you see if a result of generation after generation of accumulated love. Of a network of people around one person who made their survival possible. Independence is a delusion. If you read that and find it delusional, then i feel so sorry for you. That means your memories of your life and your current environment is bare. In reality, you’re surrounded by beautiful souls, full humans just as complex as you whom you deny any internality. You see these humans as just part of your environment. Your life is dead.
It will be painful at first to admit there is even a possibility you don’t know everything. To me, this is a good metric of maturity. Anyone who declares their knowledge complete and true is like a tree cut from it’s roots: dying in real time. Decaying. Perhaps you get eaten from the inside out, like an oak with termites. Or perhaps your foundation is so weak that one wind comes and sends you toppling. Fungus may come and cover your entire body and deter any other life from forming around you. Right now, I’m striking you with lightning, and if you can’t handle it, you will fall.
You’ll get ego withdrawals. You’ll get angry and tremors and sad and foggy and confused. You will be unmoored. But then your roots will begin to grow again and you’ll see you’re not alone. You will see you’ve never been alone. You are the result of inter generational care and kindness. You are the most loved. Bless you. Bless them. Bless us all.