Backing Away

[thoughts from   ~burning woman~  by Sha’Tara]

I’ve always “known” the world I found myself existing upon was not my world. Somehow though, I did manage to create an illusion, based upon my physical attributes, that I could belong here for the body’s duration. I went through the motions of being alive; of adapting; of participating. I played the game, I played along, most of the time.

There were serious bumps along the way as I made myself aware of the injustice, the mindless violence, the equally mindless drive by so many to cut themselves, or snatch or steal or beg, a piece of civilization’s dwindling pie. I watched the privileged few take ever bigger slices to try and find new, esoteric tastes for their bloated palate. Mostly I watched the millions not so privileged taking advantage of the temporary scraps that fell from the rich man’s table and the billions sifting through the floor and street sweepings to assuage their constant, endless hunger and that of their children.

I also watched as consumerism and greed ate away at this finite world. For a time, not knowing any better, I fought these errors and horrors. I tried to make a few at least see common sense. It seemed so important at the time, and it helped diffuse my own angst and anger. I thought, if I had to live here shouldn’t I want to live in a just, kind, compassionate society? And why could I not have that since what I wanted just happened to make a lot more sense than what my society wanted? Surely, I thought, once people were shown the error of their ways as they related to their world, the less fortunate and yes, including those non-human sentients raised to be food meat, they would desire to change their system of exploitation and oppression?

Time and wisdom taught otherwise. There would be talk, much talk, but nothing would change. Now there’s talk that the totalitarian measures imposed on society in the guise of fighting a virus will make people rethink their ways. I already know they will not. People will adapt, of course, to growing shortages of various things, as they always do in any war, and make no mistake this pandemic is a war declared by the super rich upon society in order to rob them of what little they have left.

While this seems obvious to me, it isn’t for the many, not yet. They still need to believe that their Big Brother loves them and cares so much for them He is willing to destroy society’s very fabric and raison d’etre, even to killing them and their children to save them. Such an absolute contradiction is beyond their mental capacity to reason. Reasoning the why’s and wherefores takes energy which to them seems a waste. 

So I’m thinking now is the time to back off as society makes its choice. I believe and observe that it is a deadly wrong choice but I choose to proceed, not as a member of some collective but as an individual against that herd choice.

I realize that to dissent and reject “the new normal” is to make myself an enemy of the herd with the possibility of being declared an outcast but so be it. There has never been a better stage upon which I can practice compassion as a self empowered individual. There was never a time like this when my choice to be a dissenter; to not vote; to not hope for change to come from accumulated power made more sense. I should be thankful. Perhaps I will develop that particular virtue yet before the universal taxi stops at my door and I have to go.

COVID-19 – What is that finally all about?

[thoughts from   ~burning woman~   by Sha’Tara]

COVID-19, the Day the World Ended… or was it civilization as we’d come to know it… or was it a natural, totally unexpected plague that threatened to annihilate mankind? One of the four horses of the Apocalypse, Death, Famine, War or Conquest, take your pick? Maybe none of the above descriptions or criteria? Maybe simply another convenient false flag?

I would like this to be a synopsis (hopefully short) of what I’ve learned so far about COVID-19. Wow, and good luck with that, I’m thinking. What haven’t I learned and what’s worth remembering now that we’re fully engaged into a “fanfreluche” war against a chimera. Explanation for those not of French extraction: Fanfreluche is a living doll who retells fairy tales and legends to the viewers. When the story goes a way that displeases her, she physically enters the story to “fix” the ending. I hope you can see the connection!

So, what I know, so far. The virus, real, imagined or partially real, no one will ever know now because the waters in the wake of its very loud passage were so muddied nothing can be seen, not even by the very best forensic pathologist, not even the non-existent bodies blamed on its passage can be found. I won’t say no one died a bit sooner than otherwise from the effects of this “manipulated” (medical experts’ consensus) corona virus “extract” but it is also true that the CDC has “advised” medical examiners to label any death due to complications of various pre-existent conditions as COVID deaths.

Reason for that? Think two things: profits for emptied hospitals being paid big bucks for declaring C-19 deaths and governments eager to enter into a new age of totalitarianism, putting an end to those annoying “democracies” with their constitutions demanding that leaders be accountable to the peons. That was an intolerable affront to ruling elites. Well, no more of that, it’s over. The “divine right of kings” has been re-established. “Wear a mask-step, sanitize your hands-step, six-foot rule-step, nitril gloves-step, report your neighbours-step, no large gatherings-step… step-step-step. Halt! Papiere bitte! Vakzine? Nein? You’re under arrest! Turn around, hands behind back or I will shoot you like the dog that you are.”

What else did I learn? Well, during the whole C-19 brouhaha, the problems of climate change miraculously disappeared. Wow! Some even went so far as to claim that suddenly the planet’s physical, if not mental, condition was doing much better. According to hyped up disinformation, the air and even the waters, were so much cleaner. Why? Well because for a few days people drove maybe 20% less and airliners stayed on the ground. I didn’t buy the cleaner air claims but then I’m not exactly an easy sell for propaganda. I like to annoy claimants by stating, “Don’t tell me, show me.” I didn’t see anything. Chilliwack, where this is coming from, is bottled up at the east end of the Fraser Valley and the mountains (see my blog’s header picture!) act as a giant collector of city and port pollution from the coast, from Seattle, north to Vancouver, B.C. Wonder why our pollution levels didn’t seem to “lighten up”? But the good news is, we no longer have to worry about climate change. Fanfreluche is re-writing that part of the tale.

I also learned that during the “pandemic” the problem of a crashing economy due to gross malfeasance and corruption in all highest places of government, military, banking and corporate prevarication was conveniently laid on the shoulders of little Fanfreluche. Up to her now to go in there and change the way the tale is to be re-told! The perpetrators can line up at the trough again, like they did in 2008 and rack up some more billions; buy up more stock options and cut off the small investors out of any hope for some profit on their investments. The “roaring twenties” repeated… in spades! Now comes massive unemployment; loss of homes and security: all COVID’s fault, naturally. Oh, and let’s not forget the “incremental” profits by humongous corporations as tens of thousands of small businesses are neatly excised from the competition field. Does it get better than that?

What else? I came face-to-face with the worst corruption of all: the politicizing of what was presumably a serious medical situation; the blatant corruption of those in charge of developing a real solution to the virus. Instead of handling the virus like any other in previous years the entire planet was suddenly inveigled into acquiescing to outright stupid, inane, pointless and in most cases, deleterious rules ostensibly meant to “contain” the spread of the virus. I learned that those who at first jumped on the Bill Gates agenda to declare a world-wide “vaxable” emergency as millions were sure to drop dead in the streets, in elevators, on beaches, at parties, in swimming pools, in theaters, at board meetings, in planes, trains and automobiles, when caught in fragrante delicto recanted and began to say that the rules were worst than the disease they had been meant to contain.

Think “Dr.” Fauci (whom I lovingly like to call Herr Doktor Faucki Mengele) and his gross lies, not to mention his corrupt behaviour in moving his deadly virus research from Fort Detrick to… yes, Wuhan(!) after Obama shut him down in the States as his “research” was deemed too dangerous. So he took taxpayers’ money and gave it to China. Smooth that, very smooth. About a month and a half ago, his royal lowness, King Donald “promised” to look into Faucki’s corruption: I think we’re in for a very long wait on that one. Corruption investigating corruption? Not unless there’s profit in it for Trump, which based on the level of believers in the COVID divinity, there isn’t. We already know how the “political left” feels about King Donald ordering people back to work.  

We should be so much more trusting of our leaders, wherever we place them, shouldn’t we! When they say no, we know they mean yes and mean well. When they say yes, we know they mean no and mean well. When they tweet endlessly we know to bleat endlessly to complete the “Song of the Zombies.” It will be our very last performance, done alone, in a dark room, under quarantine and one kilometre/mile social distancing. No one will hear. 

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #101

“Part three of the plan is much more chancy.  We need a particularly wicked desert wind storm combined with strong electrical discharges and heavy banks of clouds to blind any satellite sensors that may be operating.  We think there may be some but we have not found them while passing out of the atmosphere.  We do not think this world is under long-range interplanetary watch.”
End blog post #100
—————————-
Start blog post #101

“I’m getting truly frustrated with all of this Yoba Four.  The sensors are on Albaral.  Why can’t you understand this?  Why this blindness to what that thing is for?  Even the women slaves here know this.  What do you hold sacred about that construct that you won’t accept its evil presence as regards this world?”

“We’ve investigated it at length Antierra.  We think you have become somewhat bewitched by the local legends and are looking for something to blame, something easy to find, visible, obvious, for the troubles of this world.  We don’t believe you, or the people because there are no signals, no known kind of communication, happening between Albaral and this planet.  What sort of probe would be working there that people can sense but our own sophisticated technology remains unable to pick up?”

“Maybe I can explain that, or at least point in some possible direction.  Can your “sophisticated technology” discern between a ‘normal’ human and a Cholradil?”

“Pardon me?”  She is genuinely bemused by my question and it’s as if lights are going off in that Cydroid brain of hers.  “Are you saying the probes emanating from Albaral could be some sort of naturally empathic signals which our probes do not detect but some higher life-form long ago knew how to manipulate and some may be doing so now?” 

“My Altarian teachers say, “Believe all things, believe in nothing.”  It has served me well.  I discount no possibility simply because it seems impossible.  I just accept it’s something I as yet, cannot understand but if my mind has created the possibility in thought, that now exists in ‘real’ time for me.  Thus Albaral is our information gathering and disseminating device.  How it does it, and to what input it is responding, I cannot tell.  But here’s a scenario that might interest your Cydroid mind.

“On Túat Har circa C-20, C-21 Earth time, it was possible for certain groups to own orbiting satellites and rent space/time on them to other groups who used satellite communication but could not afford to put their own in orbit, or opted for renting instead.  Now think thus.  Albaral is “owned” by some consortium on a distant planet, say Ditani and some group on Ditani have, as you do, a “plan” for Malefactus that has to do with total control and manipulation of the population; that depends for reasons known only to them and a small secret society group here, on promoting and maintaining misogyny as a modus operandi.  The local group, and probably some locals also involved in the plan then “rent” space on Albaral, using its communication facilities to watch, record and warn of events on Malefactus.  The probes are programmed to search for certain patterns and report immediately when a pattern breaks, weakens or strengthens.  Thus they plot a course to make necessary corrections and maintain their delicate and deadly status quo.  Perhaps Yoba Four, their hold on this world is not as strong as they’d like all to believe.  Of course this is only one scenario.

“I realize there are a host of holes in my theory but it is still something to build on or work at dismantling to arrive at some truth.  Still better than blowing smoke rings in the fog.”

“???”  She has a comical quizzical look from raised eyebrows that makes me laugh.

“Just ask Cedric what that means.  He’ll be delighted to explain it to you.  It does not originate on Túat Har but from a place inhabited mostly by people we call “Dwarves” who are very fond of smoking pipe tobacco.  Their world of tall mountains, deep ravines and countless streams and rivers bordered by giant ever-yellow torias, trees that rise to as much as five hundred to one thousand meters in the air, is regularly hemmed in by thick fogs for weeks on end.  The dwarves are not affected by this as they do not guide themselves with their weak eyesight but use their feet to ‘talk’ to the ground, much as we do on Altaria.  Anyway, interesting saying, as full of legend as is the dateless gloomy Dwarf world of Takkar.  You should make a note to visit there some day.”    

She nods non-committal.  “I’m more interested in having time someday to record your tales in my mind.  I find the way you move your information around, generating new ideas from contact nodes and particularly when you switch to your alter-ego Al’Tara persona, extremely seductive.  I want to swim inside your brain and travel your neuron pathways to worlds I could never construct in mine.”

“Are you saying you believe I’m making this up as I go along just to get you to believe in my viewpoint?”
 
“I’ve reserved judgment on your stories.  For now I must decide if this view of Albaral merits cipher time and how to analyze what you’ve forced me to consider here.  The implications are somewhat frightening to us because this means our presence here, our “safe” comings and goings in the small ship we hide in the desert may already be known and our destination plotted by some group that may use us to establish a similar foothold on Koron.  Our presence here may be putting our own world at risk…  I must speak to doctor Echinoza before we do anything else.” 

“Where is doctor Echinoza if it is proper to ask?”

“In the south with my sister.  He was in a dangerous mood so she decided to go on a tryst with him.  It always brings him back to us.”

“Why does he stay here if his mind is being perverted so?”

“His choice.  He wants to conclude a plan to which he has dedicated his life.  He wants to understand this power that manipulates the minds of the people here.  He also hopes to introduce some antidote that will destroy this mind-virus.  His dream parallels yours Antierra.  That is why you fascinate him so.  I will trance-call YBA5 and they should return within 3 or 4 days, depending on his state of mind.  She won’t return with him until he’s back to his normal self. 

“And meanwhile?” I ask her.

“You choose to do what you must, what you can.  Return to the training and sleeping compound, talk to the principals and their supporting groups as much as you can or dare and get everyone prepared for the great miracle of Hyrete, our great escape.  Get them excited about it while cautioning them to remain calm.  I’m sure they’ll know already but the young ones are always dangerous in such matters.”

Our conversation is interrupted by a loud booming noise and crashing from farther battlements.  More of the keep crumbling, no doubt, but what was the boom we just heard?  We look at each other and she motions me to silence, bowing her head and ‘trancing’ to members of her family in the keep.  She is expressionless during whatever information sharing they do.  When she speaks again there is a touch of sadness in her eyes.

“A small but very well armed mobile land force has attacked Hyrete.  To what end, we do not know.  Many people were crushed under the falling stones.  I feel terribly constrained that neither you nor I can go over and help in the rescue.  Only three of ours can be involved since they are…” Another loud bombardment, the certain explosion of small concussion missiles hit the old walls and more crumbling can be heard.  We hold each other and wait it out.  I can now begin to ‘feel’ the additional pain added to this place’s burden of suffering.  It comes at first as a constricting of the heart, then a throbbing in the head.  Yoba Four cuts the stim cube she must have retrieved from Cedric and gives me a half, storing the other for some other time.  I take it without hesitation and regain some of my composure.

She continues, “Only three of us are cleared as legitimate staff in this place.  The rest, we are nine in all now, must exist in hiding.  What we could do with our medical expertise and healing powers now.” 

We hear footsteps coming towards the doctor’s office.  Yoba Four disappears instantly inside some secret passage and I stand by the door, head bowed.

A guard in a brown uniform stands in the door as it slides open to admit the human.  He looks around.  “You gora, where is doctor?”

Without lifting my head I say, “He not here.  I wait, nothing.  He gone, not tell.  Please take to compound now, I frightened here.”

I hear another guard in the yard.  “The ignorant gora won’t be any help, I told you.  Let it go back to its compound and see if we can find more defenders.  Told you last week we should have patrols at the old perimeter.  Shit.  You, gora, follow guard.” 

I meekly and quietly step behind the two men who take me to the compound.  Once there, I am handed to a trainer who happens to be Hudu.  He takes me in hand and asks if I need to eat.  I nod ‘no’ and he locks me in my cage where I’m confronted with a surprise.  Both Tieka and Zel are there.  We quickly huddle together more from joy than need for comfort.  I may certainly enjoy my moments with Cedric, Cydroids and Balomo for the challenge to my intellect but this is my family.  I belong in this cage with these women. 

Now we can talk, since by signal and touch I’m assured that all those around us listening want to be included in our plans and want to help in any way possible.  As simply and briefly as possible I relate some of what the Cydroid told me about the planned escape.  I can sense the excitement among the listeners, especially with Zel and Tieka.  A dangerous point where hope can rise too fast and blow the top off its human containers.  I strive to bring down their enthusiasm to a safer level by listing the many real dangers those who choose to escape will certainly encounter before they reach any safe zone, and even then they will not be entirely safe. 

I force them to consider this, emphasizing that only by a miracle would all of them reach their destination alive.  I speak of the carriers which, if found, may be overloaded and crash, or succumb to the action of sand and wind in the desert storms.  I speak to them of the many hundreds of kilometres to cross with no access to cover or water.  Of roaming tribes of black people who hunt down trespassers in their territories and ritually kill them to eat.  Of giant snakes in the badlands beyond the borders of the desert.  But the gravest danger remains the possibility of discovery by computer sensors and being chased by Hyrete police, Elbre military forces or worse, hunted down by bounty hunters.  A shiver passes through me as I remember, so vividly, my first encounter with these hunters of human beings.  The group gathered around me feels my pain and remains silent.

End blog post #101

“Why worry about what can kill you tomorrow when so many things can kill you tonight?”

 

(title is a remembered quote from the movie, “Lord of War”)

[thoughts from  ~burning woman~  ]

I’m sure that title and quote is also a paraphrase of something else I’ve read somewhere in my travels.  It is a line however that I have often thought about.  What does that mean to me?  Does it mean, in the hedonistic sense, “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die!”?  Throw caution to the wind, live for the moment, and the Devil take the hindmost?

While I completely disagree with the common politically correct phrase, “we’re all in this together” (which is obvious bullshit in spades when you think about it seriously for a second) there is definitely one thing we all have in common: death.  Whatever we do to avoid it, and believe me that the amount of money people spend to try to avoid it is beyond staggering (well, OK, I don’t know how much, I just know it’s a whole lot more than “that”) we simply can’t.  Death is our constant companion through life.  We’re born to die, with a little lunch break in-between we call life. (We don’t get paid for that either, the opposite actually.)

I’m not trying to cheer you up, but I’m not trying to depress you either as both would defeat my purpose.  I haven’t (yet) said anything you don’t already know so if this feels uncomfortable, think of it as a reality check.

Why do we worry?  Why so many stressed to the max and depressed?  What happened to the pursuit of happiness, the verve, the “joie de vivre”?  What is this terrible darkness that is descending upon the planet which seems to increase every time some major man-made event is propagandized?  Why can’t we be infected by a beneficial virus for a change? Why can’t we have at least one major truly joyful man-made event of gargantuan proportions to celebrate ourselves within?  Since we can’t outgrow the need for leaders, why can’t we have smart ones? Why must everything of major import be sad, dreadful, horrible, hopeless, destructive, death-dealing, polluting and/or costly with no end in sight when we are sick and tired of hearing about it or experiencing it? Why must what we hope for be forever out of reach, more likely to recede from our grasp than approach it?  Why does the carrot always turn into a stick?

I think it all goes back to death.  Consciously we may choose to ignore the monster and try to live relatively normal, happy lives among those we love or the society we fit in, but subconsciously “it” is always there, just like *Joe Black, not always recognized for what it is but suspected, distrusted and feared; the entity with its own agenda over which no one has any control.  Death, the great equalizer it’s been called.  Well, I don’t know: I see a lot of death, I don’t see much equality arising from its presence, quite the contrary.  Death is like that bouncing ball that after it’s set a bouncing, every time it’s touched it bounces even more wildly and unpredictably.

In a moment of wild ecstasy I suppose, John Donne wrote “death thou shalt die.”  Literally or figuratively?  It really doesn’t matter “how” it matters more “when.”  Until now man has been the slave of death and the certainty of having to face that executioner has caused man to behave in quite irrational and contradictory ways.  For the average Earthian, the way to avoid death is to be the first to deal death to some whose existence is perceived as a threat.  This knee-jerk reaction is called survival of the fittest but is better defined as war, man’s most precious invention; the one he spends the most resources upon by far; his joy, his baby, his heritage, his great love.  Makes me want to write an ode to war, or a love poem:

O dear war,
How I missed thee in the dark days of peace!
How I praise thee now that thee art returned
To fill the aching void in my human heart,
To stop the aimless wander of my soul!

O dear war
Promise me from thine bloody throne
Thou shalt abandon me never again!
I could no longer bear the emptiness
Caused by your troubling absence!”

Well it’s a start.  Dark humour, but how far from the truth of the matter?  We kill remorselessly in vain attempts to save our own life, a life that was forfeit from the moment it was conceived.

OK, so I’m not looking for rationality among the species, I know such a thing is anathema to man’s thinking.  I’m just wondering if there is a cure to worry.  Let’s spread the reasoning net.  All animal life dies, sooner than later.  Do animals worry about dying?  I don’t think they do, although many animals experience powerful emotions when one of them dies, some more than others.  They know about death; about the end of the body, but they don’t seem to be worried about their own coming death.  It’s only when the predator appears that they resort to their fight or flight mode.  If they get sick they do not linger.  Either they heal themselves or give themselves over to death with hardly a struggle.

For whatever reason, Earth people approach the matter of death much differently than animals.  Animals don’t form armies to attack and decimate their enemies.  They may be territorial for naturally mandated purposes but they don’t try to expand their “empires” outside limits set by the Alpha male of the tribe or queen of the hive.  Those outside the limits are safe from attack and free of harassment.  Animals kill to survive, not to enhance their own personal power or “wealth” as the expense of others.  {Oh please God, make me into an animal this minute!  Amen!}  Animals gracefully surrender their bodies to the earth and shortly no evidence remains of their passage.

It is foolish to worry, even more so to allow oneself to get depressed.  Depression isn’t a disease, it’s the dirty diaper of the spoiled and entitled modern bratty Earthian who wants more than it’s willing to earn for itself; who is not willing to share.  Depression comes from a “I want it, and I want it now” civilization whose technology provided a lot of stupid, unnecessary polluting toys and continues to promise more toys while the natural resources that fueled that technology are wasted by misuse and war or vanishing from the planet in waves of entropic energy like climate change.  Depression from not getting what one feels entitled to leads to worry about more serious things, like losing one’s home or having no money to buy basic necessities such as food or losing one’s children through violence… Ah yes, the list of things that cause worry grows long.

I choose to live by my first quote.  I don’t worry about what could kill me tomorrow.  I think about the things lurking in the night of my mind, the things tonight, that can kill me.  I think about the dangers of reverting back to being a common Earthian; of waking up tomorrow morning worrying about food, clothing, shelter, money, sex, what’s been stolen in the night, etc.  I think about spiritual regression and mental devaluation from nightly visitations of “demons” from the darkness of the capitalist, consumerist Matrix.  I think of the horror of discovering I’m no longer immune to the foibles of man but rather fully back in establishment clutches.  I think about what it would be like to lose my sense of self empowerment, of knowing what I am; of losing sight of my purpose… in the night.  And I shudder.  That would be worse than any conceivable depression.

Ah, but I’m a witch!  I have spells to protect myself from demons who would steal my self-made personhood:  “I think my own thoughts, therefore I am my own person.” And spells also to protect me from well-meaning people who would destroy the essential me with their verbal weapons of fear-based mass distraction.  My simple response to all of it is “I choose me.”  Then I remember that death approached at through self-determination has become my greatest gift, my doorway out of a dying place to another I know of and look forward to – no: not heaven!

When does death die?  It dies when transcended every waking and awakened moment.

PS: this isn’t in response to the current Covid 19 pandemic. I wrote these thoughts some years ago but they do fit the moment.

*Joe Black: reference is to the movie, “Meet Joe Black” with Brad Pitt as Death.

 

 

 

 

We Improve but we do not Progress

[an essay by   ~burning woman~  ]

Time, or the lack thereof, has become my enemy. Of course I realize that from the larger picture, time is not relevant, but I also realize that as a physical entity possessed of an Earthian body, I have to reckon with the time constraint, a real pain! I exist in a mental cage, a Matrix-designed prison in which no “greater thought” is meant to exist. Time, or what Earthians like to call past-present-future, controls thought, awareness, expectations. Nothing here is expected to exist outside of time – that would be unthinkable. Think, how important have time-measuring devices been throughout man’s various attempts at defining itself through his so-called “civilizations.”

It is possible, however, for some of us to push our mental awareness through the bars of the time jail and see from infinity. It’s a bit like traveling several magnitude beyond the speed of light (time and light being artificially tied together in the Matrix) and feeling the mind stretch as she pushes out into the past in order to see the future she is going into – not, as is popularly believed, creating. I do not create the future (there is no such thing as “my” future – not yet!) but it is possible for me to see it take shape if I make the effort to “see” and understand some of the past, that which I have already experienced, forgot about and now must learn to recover in order to make use of.

The real past does not exist within the artificial boundaries imposed by an equally artificial time machine. It certainly does not exist in any “historical” recording, those being even less meaningful in terms of understanding what a human being was/will be. Only a recovered once-traveled and experienced past can have meaning.

I used to be fascinated by history, my favourite subject in high school and I kept on reading and studying history long after I escaped the academic world. Then I came to certain realizations about reality, what it is, what it isn’t. Man’s recorded history became about as valid as using Monopoly money to purchase goods and services: there was a credibility gap that could not be breached. Man’s history, the collectively remembered and the recorded, was not so much a lie as pointless. Pointless as an exercise in recording it, even more so in reading it.

How did I arrive at that? Simple: nothing, absolutely nothing, is learned from history and nothing is gained by having some knowledge of it. It is irrelevant. What is relevant is what I can personally “remember” of what I experienced of past events, how those changed me and re-made me and how, as I collected that awareness, it opened the only trustworthy and meaningful window on a future that my remembrances gave me to look out of.

This will be the third time that I have read Stephen Donaldson’s science fiction “Gap” series. The title of this “essay” is taken from book 4, Chaos and Order: the Gap into Madness. “We improve, but we do not progress.” I imagine that for a programmed entity, such a thought is, well, unthinkable. How could we not progress if we are improving?

The question is, what do we mean by improving, or do we even have a clue what it could mean? What does it mean, for an intelligent, sentient, self-aware being, to “improve”? Does it mean that as a society, better put as a civilization, we are palpably, noticeably improving, in keeping with our claim to be living on a human scale? Does it mean we are improving in terms of developing “new and improved” human values, as individuals?

Yes, technologically we are undeniably improving. Many of the things we surround ourselves with today and take for granted would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

But aren’t we existing as characters in a series of Marvel Comic books? Aren’t we in fact using Monopoly money to go shopping in our improved world? How meaningful to us as human being are any of our improvements? What are these improvements doing to us? Are they not stealing our minds and locking us in our “now” mental jail?

What is progress? What would it mean to progress? Wouldn’t progress mean becoming better people overall? More aware of our environment, of others? More eager to ensure that as we “improve” we are adding to the overall betterment of this world and all who live and exist on and within, it? Wouldn’t progress mean that we are breaking free of our killing rat race and our insane repetition of acts we time and again performed then swore we would never do again? Wouldn’t progress mean we strove to become more human by demonstrating our desire to display the quality of humaneness towards all life?

I will tell you, once again, what my window into the future is showing me. Think of the current baby pandemic called Covid 19, make it real and multiply that a million times. I see horror upon horror building up exponentially until the entire world is awash in desperation, violence, bloodshed and a total loss of humanity or humane expression. I see the utter end of this civilization and everything that made it possible – people and systems.

But then, at the end of all improvement, I see progress. A new beginning, none of it predicated on the old. I can see this future because I can see the past beyond historical/hysterical fake news and beyond collective memories.