So, here are the ingredients, in no particular order. Qi. Fluid dynamics. Blood. Salt. Obesity. Viagra (and analogs). Emboli (embolisms?). Gas transfer. Heat transfer. Pressure. Pumping. Repression. Expression. Balance. Flow. I could probably go on.
If you've followed the news, you know that there are lots of items about obesity and salt in the diet and about the general meltdown of health among those privileged enough to live inside the American triumphalist economy. The sky is surely falling, and we are our own worst enemies, and if only I could want what I need!!!
This is not to mention global warming, melting of the icecaps, spending more on bombs and viagra than schools and antiobiotics, or smart bacteria or pandemic flu or conspiracies to profit off your fears. If you watch advertisements, you know that Viagra and the like are making lots of money. If you've been reading me, you know that I have had issues with pulmonary emboli as well as air emboli in the heating system of my car.
Now I make no claims for superior intelligence or access, other than whatever I come by as a matter of luck. I guess I was born with good genes for intelligence of the sort what we mean by the word in schools (which has demonstrably little to do with intelligence in the "real world" outside of school). I haven't done a whole lot to cultivate that, so I'm not claiming any particular accomplishment here. I figure the congruence between my particular life matters and those in the news is also a matter of something like luck (good or bad). But on the other hand, judging from the voice message on my doctor's phone, lots of people take blood thinners.
Lots of VW owners have clogged heater cores, although apparently not a lot of them quite understand the involvement of air embolism in the loss of flow. I learned about that from SCUBA diving. Lots of people apparently take Viagra, which increases blood flow as I understand it. Lots of people have high blood pressure, or high cholesterol or both. Not to mention diabetes, and other circulatory and cross-membrane osmotic pressure issues.
Everyone I know seems to focus on which inputs corrupt their personal self. Red meat? Sugar? Corn syrup? Fat? Chemicals? MSG? People worry about the impingement of electromagnetic radiation on their physical selves which had been pure a mere century ago, its somehow having been rendered moot that these impingements also involve the impressive macro-effect of television, radio, cell phones, internet over the air, not to mention powering the lighting in our houses. You don't even need a conspiracy theory to sort out some of those effects. Well, unless you really think these are all just ways to dupe you away from Godliness, which they might be for all I know.
The earth seems to be undergoing various kinds of pressure release, as it always has, from earthquakes (tectonic pressures built up and released?) volcanoes (are these related to tectonic shifts?), melting of clotted water. Is the earth alive? Are we? What shall we do, oh worra worra worra . . .
I am a part of all this fluid dynamics, as are you. I "believe" that the world operates a lot more on the model of microcosm, macrocosm than it does cause and effect, so no congruence is surprising or upsetting to me. I would be rather more surprised if that were not the case. I shall worry more about the cost to my environment of eating meat since my body will definitely go the way of all flesh no matter how much I pay for a personal trainer, or organic inputs, or artificial silicone inputs, or what-you-will. I'd love to hear a truly convincing argument that I am not my environment. Neither is very pure, but I'd rather not worship me.
Some examples of microcosm/macrocosm which might be familiar within the commonly accepted scientific paradigms would be holograms (where a chip off the block contains a complete, though attenuated, set of whatever was contained in the whole (rather than an analytic component of that whole); chaos, which is a provable mathematical construct whereby the micro view of chaotic structures can be shown to match the macro view; the narrative structures of popular entertainment up against the supposed course of history, just as a few quick ferinstances.
I know - believe me I know - how crashingly boring it can become to watch someone rehearse the happenstance of his own paltry life and try to make some meaning from it. It should be far more interesting to watch someone more purposeful construct real meaning in the manner of a talented artist. But artists all lie if they lead you to believe that they are the creators of something which existed prior in the space of their head.
What else do I have but the material of my accidental existence? The heater core turns out actually to be clogged, and the purging of gas only changes the pressure differential slightly so that some heat can make it through the uptight core. The experts were more right than wrong, although I have other tricks up my sleeve to keep the car in heat.
My heart enlarged, but not to the point of bursting when my lungs got clogged. I guess plenty of hearts shut down long before the ridge I topped. What a lucky dog am I! I never even knew I was climbing.
The earth is macro for our micro. All we must do is to change our minds and the earth will be saved. The trouble is that changing our minds is not trivial. It can't be accomplished in a prayer circle, no matter how much straining the prayer involves. It can't be accomplished by some sort of willful belief. The analytic understanding we now do have about how the climate "works" only leaves us feeling helpless with dreams of technological overcomings of the way of all flesh toward corruption and death.
The only way to change our minds is via science. The method to accomplish agreement. Of course, we'll have to leave behind all true believers, but they form a minuscule minority among a vast majority of sensible people willing to drive cars and fly planes and take medicines because they trust, according to a much more fundamental paradigm of faith than the one the religionists pander. Protest as you will, these things work and you know it, and you can't just throw out that baby with the bathwater of your protested-too-much faith in some "higher power." Yeah, there's a higher power. The sun gives off a lot of wattage.
At its limits, the world out there is what we make it. No matter how many new particles we can describe or discover or bring into being by our deployments of artificial containments of that awesome power of nature, there is no getting around the most basic artifact of scientific progress: that at the very limits of objective knowledge, the mind is implicated.
So, choose your narrative. Does it require conclusion for sense? Must there be some imposed shape drawn from the abstract; which means abstracted from the real in the first place? Or can we yet internalize some of that Eastern wisdom, where the seed contains the whole, and the end of the individual is as beautiful as the setting sun, and no more final? (Final enough for the hapless individual though, but who would want to go on for ever and ever, amen? You'd have to be nuts! Or a real gasbag like me!)
With regret, I look back on a life lived less well than it might have been. On days when I was sprung and didn't have a clue what to do about it. I wonder at the accidents which might have killed me so many different times. I wonder at the accident of survival. But I don't really wonder that my life, in microcosm, should reflect the life of the entire earth. I see nothing lost in coming down from the pinnacle of my own would-be successes. There is no loss in relinquishing property and wealth, if love can be gained. Why look back in regret? Might I?
Here I sit, lonely hearted, I have no art, but I only started. What pneumatic tale of woe does that remind me of? What impolitic release of what gas? Is it really the same one which overwarms our planet (A: Yes!)? Is expression nothing more than the release of what got corrupted inside in the first place? Fermented! Is nonsense really nonsense, or is it the stuff taken seriously that becomes nonsense? What is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of life? Is God red? Is God a red? Sentences don't make sense, people do. Sometimes. Though surely not always.
How dee!! It's a GOOD DAY I declare.
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