The Final 14 Seconds of the Cosmic Calendar

I've written a bunch of posts on spirituality, the meaning of life, humans and human interaction, and yet, I continue to gravitate toward the subject. The learning is never over, and while watching the finale of "Avatar: the Last Airbender" (yes, the children's cartoon series), I was reminded of my queries all over again. I am going to quickly recap the moral struggle faced by Aang in the last episode:
The main character, and the last airbending nomad alive, Aang, is conflicted over how he will be able to defeat the scourge of humanity that is the Fire Lord. This guy is so in need of an ass-beating, it's insane. Everyone knows it, yet no one is powerful enough to defeat him except Aang, but Aang is doesn't want to kill him. Aang's crew, even his true love, Kitara, all want him to kill the Fire Lord to save the world. Conflicted, Aang, sleep-swims (?) to an island off the coast of the beach where he and his posse have set up base. When he wakes up on the island, he realizes that it's moving. He's far away from his friends, but tries to use the time to meditate and to reach his former lives. Even his past incarnations as the Avatar, including the previous airbender avatar, all ask him to consider sacrificing his convictions to save the world. Their arguments are based on ridding the world of evil and injustice, and rooted in utilitarianism. Logical and based in their own experiences as the avatar, Aang cannot deny their wisdom, but also cannot accept it.

Finally, he confronts a truly universal master, an ancient Lion-Turtle, whose back Aang has been riding on (it's so massive, it's an island). The Lion-Turtle, once a guardian of humanity,  had something very interesting to impart on Aang, "The true mind can weather all lies and illusions without being lost. The true heart can touch the poison of hatred without being harmed. From beginningless time, darkness thrives in the void, but always yields to purifying light. In the era before the Avatar, we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves. To bend another's energy, your own spirit must be unbendable, or you will be corrupted and destroyed." 

Aang literally "sees the light" as the Lion-Turtle shows him how to bend pure energy. In his final battle against he fire lord, when given the opportunity to kill him, he does not. As any real villain would, the Fire Lord interprets this as weakness and tries to destroy Aang. Yet, Aang ultimately is able to bend the Fire Lord's energy to remove his ability to bend fire and wreak havoc on humanity. He takes away the Lord's abilities instead of killing him, leaving him to think about his abuses of power until he understands and accepts what he did. 

I agree with Aang. I don't think I could kill someone even if they were evil and destructive. It's not my place to wield power like that, nor do I think it's any human's. Today we couch our killing in legal language to sanitize it, take the "messiness" out of it by ensuring no blood is spilled (in the US anyway), and call it "capital punishment." It's still expunging another life and it's still against most everything that is preached in every religion and moral code employed by humankind. Killing is killing. The STATE killed Murderer X, but we are the state. It's not some sort of external entity that we passively watch, although many of us do act like that. 

My beliefs in this are only further strengthened by something that I saw/heard on the science program "Cosmos." Host Neil deGrasse Tyson was walking along a "cosmic calendar" to put into perspective universal versus human existence. Only in the last 14 seconds of the cosmic calendar do ALL recorded human events (re: history) exist. He says something so simple and yet so poignant, that I can't stop thinking about it. All the heroes, kings and queens, anyone we've ever known or have heard of, all did it in the last 14 seconds of the cosmic calendar (here's Carl Sagan saying it - and it makes me cry every fucking time). Wow. No, like seriously contemplate that. Wow. Recorded history is 14 seconds of almost 14 billion years of time. And to even understand the whole of what brought you (yes, YOU) here right now, is almost unimaginable.

How many twists and turns every atom that makes up your presence has gone through - how many life cycles of birth, death and rebirth (in some way), each particle, each cell has experienced to bring you to be here had to have happened an infinite number of times and could have turned out a similarly infinite number of ways. But it didn't - because you're here now. And I think that just makes me wonder what the hell we ARE doing - as a species, as a society, as individuals. ON ALL LEVELS. We're here because we're here and now what? We've been awakened to the vast beauty of the world around us only recently, and have squandered so much with our careless touch - even the destruction of ourselves.

And an argument for killing (notice I didn't use execute, or remove, or get rid of, but kill) rapists and murderers is that it's impractical to provide for them for the duration of their lives since they've wronged others. And yes, it's impractical if the key point of human society was to be efficient and tidy. But is it? The Nazis were pretty efficient. And no, I'm not conflating capital punishment with genocide, but utilitarian arguments have the same cold edge to me no matter the scale.

So now what? Way back in my first post, I joked that we needed a fascist of love to spread a new message. But I really don't think forcing anyone to do anything will ever work. Again, it's a clean and efficient way of working - force submission and expunge the outliers, but it isn't sustainable. It breeds more problems than it solves. Aang's crew, all those who supported his power, but questioned his sanity when he could not use it to destroy, were converted into believers when they saw how his choice played out. He didn't destroy the destructive force. He took away its power and yet showed acceptance of its existence. Maybe those "evil" beings that use their power for wrongdoing and self-gain need to experience the removal of their power, whether it be physical strength, intellectual acuity, money, et al. To sit and realize that they're HUMAN just like everyone else. That their power will fall one day - to another, stronger power, or even just to mortality. Our desire to create a name for ourselves, to live forever in the annals of history is laughable when we put it in perspective - the final 14 seconds of 14 billion years of time. And those 14 seconds won't mean much if humans aren't around to continue to propagate the message through time and space. Seems so futile and desolate if you look at it from an angle of self-preservation, but freeing and beautiful if you consider that you even got a chance to play at all.

The Stranger

“But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”-Camus

When I get to points like this, there's little I can do or say to really make myself feel better besides laughing at the absurdity of everything.

'Cause right now, I'm like the Dude in this scene of The Big Lebowski and I need a "Stranger" to set me straight:

Why am I like this? I'm frustrated. At myself, at society, at humanity in general. Maybe a cynical eye is blinding me to the wonderful possibilities in this world, but it surely seems like the bad guys are winning. What does that even mean? The bad guys are winning? Am I living in a fucking soap opera? Thankfully, no, although I do understand the reason that people create drama - to entertain themselves and to distract from the ultimate downer, death (whoofa). In the past few weeks, I have been thinking about a few different aspects of life, but I haven't had cause enough to sit down and write a coherent, fluid post. Maybe this will end up being disjointed in the end, but maybe not. The two main threads I keep coming back to are "time" and "freedom."

Way back in the spring, in my initial post, I had contemplated pulling an all-out Thoreau, moving to some remote area and never looking back. While that urge has hit me more than a few times since then, I have yet to do so. Is it out of cowardice on my part? Or inertia? Or is it that I am not ready to give up on this path yet? In this pondering of why I haven't left for sincerely greener and more isolated pastures, I come back to the idea that I can find what I am looking for wherever, and can also find sadness, frustration and discontent wherever I run to. So if I move to Montana or the Yukon, my new locale will not solve my problems? Nope, not quite. But there is something that I think can be taken away right here, or wherever your "here" may be -that comes from this sort of quiet lifestyle, and that is the dissolution of time. Why does time seem to move more slowly in the American South? Or the countryside? Or, hmm, anywhere but a world-city like the NY-Metropolitan area? Because it actually does. There's not that infernal, constant ticking looming over every aspect of life in those areas further removed from the bustle of modern society. The tendrils of constant connectivity to the life-force of the city are weaker. Don't get me wrong - I love being in NYC. If I lived there, I would be OK with it. But I would probably have to walk a lot to be able to get out of the hustle-and-bustle headspace of the rat race.

Smashing our concept of time and its effect on our lives is something I am trying to cultivate. Can I speed through my chores to sit on a computer for an extra 20 minutes? Sure, but what if I just spent time actually peeling potatoes for the act of peeling potatoes?  What would I get out of that? Would there be some sort of satisfaction in this rote action?

This practice of being present is a Zen realization on the importance of everything that you do, according to Alan Watts - “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.” Not especially enlightened or creative, but this type of mindfulness, I have found, is important in feeling as though you're not constantly under pressure. Similarly, and in a much lighter vein, according to Ron Swanson of Parks and Rec, I should never half-ass two things, but "whole-ass" one thing because the outcome will likely be more satisfying if done right. It's funny how libertarian, manly-man carnivore Swanson coincides with the Zen attitude that I admire and try to emulate, but I think it takes repeated efforts to show us humans that the way to contentedness always takes the same (but in a good way), measured steps even thought it may come to us in different packages (Alan Watts, Ron Swanson, Winnie the Pooh, The Dude, etc).

I go in and out of modes of being - sometimes I am pretty good at just "peeling the potatoes" and other times I am full of frenetic energy that leaves me wanting to punch through walls (or faces). This wildness, when trapped in our regimented social order, is a bad combination. It furthers my frustration, leading to feelings of despair and hopelessness. Millions of questions fly through my mind - how can people not SEE that this way of life is stifling creativity, destroying dreams, destroying the planet, etc? Is there a solution to this sort of trapped feeling? Yes and no. I don't expect everyone to sympathize or even understand the sentiments I am expressing here. Which is OK as long as others can even consider that there may be some alternatives to what we're doing now, as a society. This is what Rousseau was getting at with the corrupting nature of society. And for whatever reason, I am bad at suppressing these feelings sometimes. But that also begs the question, should I even have to? 

Ultimately, "peeling potatoes" is what I need to continue to propagate within myself because the hours of worrying over all of the elements that I cannot control is truly a wearying, thankless task. I am in good company though because even Ron Swanson has had some missteps along the way of becoming a true master of life.