(zany) Harmony of systems

Older friends of mine know that I am an intense car guy. I used to write for a car magazine, and love learning, talking, listening, and arguing about cars. I am still a nerd, however, and I cannot change that, simply because cars are supposedly for "tough guys" and whatnot. 

Engine from Jaguar XK

So, my geeky, nerdy side is amazed, amused, and fascinated by all the little pieces, that work together seamlessly at 6,000 or more cycles a minutes to let you, me, and everyone else travel in comfort and safety at 70 miles and hour (more in Europe, of course!). These systems made of metal, plastic, rubber, brain-sweat, oil, and coolant vibrate, oscillate, rotate, and explode in a series of intricate interconnected events in one giant system of parts that together bring us .. motion! 

Likewise, we are similarly responsible for the grand achievement that is civilization and life! I have no interest in reducing human beings into proverbial cogs in a machine, but we are very much interconnected and interrelated. We are communally responsible for our future. Some believe that we ought to be sovereign, and we ought to be responsible solely for our own actions. Such ideas, I believe, are misguided and ignore just how much of our daily existence would be absent without communal thinking. It saddens me that we, as humans, with so much cognitive capacity, so much creativity, and so much moral acumen, are unable to grasp the significance of community. Oftentimes, we fail to see this importance for the sheer reason of a blinding light of ideology. 

Every choice we make, is another step in keeping this machine churning. Every time we do something as simple as turn on the internet, or a light, illuminates (forgive the pun) the importance of communal good. 

We can understand this concept when it comes to monetary issues. Pooling our resources, we can build better houses, better cities, reap more return on our investments. Why can we not understand this with human development? How about investing communally in better schools? How about safer neighborhoods, or better food for all of us? Are we so ignorant of the common fate we share with "the others" - the evil, nebulous, often brown, always poor others? Are we so ignorant and so arrogant, we rather buy our own swing set, pay exuberant tuition, drive a 100 miles daily to work, and live exclusively on credit, just so can completely prevent (heavens forbid)  any encounter with the others? 

Lost analogies be damned, the current popular thinking has us believe that we are islands, cruising the seas in our metal yachts, living in bubbles called house, or in better scenarios subdivisions, ignoring the benefits of community. We (ought to) live in complete isolation, believing we are better off for it. Yet, we are relegated to reinventing the wheel, and paying for it. We are draining our pocketbooks, our lives, and out happiness in pursuit of ill-conceived dream of wealth and prosperity. All the while that very prospect is staring us straight into our face! 

My roommate would likely talk about the conspiracy that brought this on. The same conspiracy that brought on so many other tangible failures in decision making (e.g., high fructose corn syrup just about any food on the shelves) but I want to give us a little more agency than that. We are oppressed. Most of us are oppressed of the mind - not even realizing we are oppressed .Some of us can see pieces of the puzzle (or matrix if you will) and some of us, even, are approaching liberation through acting against this oppression. Most, however are still obliviously, bovinely toiling at their lives, routinely smiling while dying inside from boredom and apathy. 

There, likely, is a way to tie this story together with a nice red bow and give it a conclusion, but social movement, social struggle and my particular crusade against the oppression of the mind among my peers, relatives, and neighbors is not a concluded story. It will unravel going forward. 

Love ... I