Pause For Thought

Human creativity is one of the fundamental driving forces in 'our' world - an undeniable truth and practically a truism - for better or worse as far as the rest of creation that we share the planet with. I'm sticking with the notion that the human imagination is effectively an infinity of infinities wrapped up in just shy of one and a half kilos of grey matter and stuffed into a thin carapace of a bony skull. Some of us have the intuition to see but cannot understand - for there is no understanding, much as no lens can focus upon itself - the infinity of thought that we all possess within us. Some either can't or simply choose not to introspect on such things, relying instead on the outer stimulus of others and events beyond their sphere to populate their Weltanschauung with meaning.

Some choose to tout their ignorance wilfully as a badge of honour, embedding themselves in the confusion of the world without question and attempting to exploit that chaos to their own 'ends': an endeavour fated ultimately by that ignorance itself, subject as it is to exploitation by similarly ignorant, wilful or otherwise, bad actors. Thought and introspection, self-education and listening are the keys to survival in this world, and those that preach otherwise; the bread & circuses pedlars of false nostrums, quack cures and useless self-help 'philosophies'; the servants of the idiotic and venal instruments of control: these are the natural enemies of the human race, and they themselves are of our number.

The enemy within is ignorance. Anyone who is wilful enough to feign ignorance whilst exercising influence over others is necessarily, by definition, morally agnostic; in a word, evil. That much is evident in so much of human history, when 'ignorance' of blatant reality and morality for whatever reason, leads to human catastrophe. The paradox here of course, is obvious: all actors in this world, good or bad, are possessed of the same basic mental apparatus as all others. The differentiation between the good and the bad boils down to the complex and ill-understood nexus between nature, nurture, genetics and belief, that curious admixture of conflicting purposes that is as old as our species itself.

This predominantly unfortunate condition of ours however doesn't and can't deny that on balance the human race and intellect produces more good than bad. The challenge is, however, to reduce the bad in favour of the good; and only appropriately applied, true and unbiased knowledge and collectively agreed upon rules can address the issue. We live in a world of our own moulding and we need to start facing up to our collective responsibilities toward that world and ourselves if we are to survive for much longer as a species. Short-termism is no longer a viable option for us, and our infinite capacity for ingenuity of thought really should provide us with the answers we so sorely need...