{"id":219905,"date":"2022-09-19T12:01:15","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T11:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=219905"},"modified":"2022-09-18T04:33:57","modified_gmt":"2022-09-18T03:33:57","slug":"our-mortality-should-unite-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/09\/our-mortality-should-unite-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Mortality Should Unite Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe\u2019re all going to die, all of us, what a circus!\u00a0That alone should make us love each other but it doesn\u2019t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities; we are eaten up by nothing.\u201d<\/em>
\n— Charles Bukowski<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

17 Sep 2022 – <\/em>A jet airliner opens up and sends its passengers falling to earth. You\u2019d expect them to scream, to cry, to cling to each other in fear, to prepare for the end, to pray, to think about their loved ones, but they don\u2019t. Instead, they turn on each other and start fighting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate you! I hate you!\u201d they scream while flailing their fists at each other on their way down.<\/p>\n

Some try to strangle each other to death. Some try to steal from each other. Some try to climb on top of others so that the other will die a fraction of a second sooner. Others cling to their possessions yelling \u201cYou\u2019ll never take what\u2019s mine!\u201d and kick at anyone who comes too close.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re all headed toward the same fate at the same time, but they turn on each other and try to get one over on each other during their short plummet instead of making peace with each other and with what\u2019s to come.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what our bizarre relationship with mortality is like. A giant vagina opens up in the sky and births babies who grow as they fall to their deaths, and they spend that short time hating, fighting, manipulating, and scheming against each other.<\/p>\n

Of course it doesn\u2019t feel quite that way. Because of the way humans happen to perceive time it doesn\u2019t feel<\/em> like a fast plummet toward death. From our point of view it seems to last just long enough for us to forget what\u2019s happening, to get distracted and get caught up in drama and conflict and opinions and grudges, and lose our focus on the great splat that awaits us below.<\/p>\n

But that is what\u2019s happening. We\u2019re all engaged in an intimate dance with death, whether we acknowledge that that\u2019s what\u2019s happening or not. We\u2019re in the thick of it. Everything we do in life is a ball that we\u2019re bouncing off the wall of that definite end from wherever we happen to be standing. It\u2019s the other end of the span of time where we get to be doing stuff on this planet, opposite where we are now. Death is standing on the same court as we are, hitting back every ball we serve.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to avoid coming to an authentic relationship with this predicament if you\u2019re not an authentic person, or if you don\u2019t expect to die any time soon, or if you don\u2019t love anyone with much depth. To truly, deeply love someone is to immediately plunge into an acute awareness of death, because the more intensely you love another the more that relationship\u2019s inevitable end moves into your attention. But as long as you avoid taking that leap and live a life of distraction and shallowness, it\u2019s possible to spend a long time pretending your dance with death isn\u2019t happening.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s how we\u2019re able to pretend we\u2019re at odds with each other. To pretend it makes sense to live in a competition-based society where we need to claw our way overtop everyone else in order to get ahead in a zero-sum rat race that can\u2019t exist without losers. To pretend it makes sense to live in a world where there are wars, where there is militarism, where there is hatred and selfishness and greed and defensiveness. The whole game depends on everyone spending long expanses of time forgetting that none of us get out of this alive.<\/p>\n

And then before you know it you\u2019re sitting alone in a frail, feeble body, wondering why it hurts to walk and where your lover went and what the hell that whole mess was all about. None of the achievements you spent your life chasing mean anything anymore. None of the times you got picked over someone else for something you wanted feel special or significant anymore, and you can\u2019t remember why they ever did. You\u2019re certainly not sitting there wishing you\u2019d spent more time at the office or bought fancier clothes or had a car that could impress your neighbors. All you want is to see the people you don\u2019t get to see anymore, and maybe a hug.<\/p>\n

If we could see it all play out quickly, or just perceive what we already know with greater consciousness and lucidity, we\u2019d never choose to live our lives the way the powerful want us to live them. And there\u2019s no way we\u2019d consent to systems which demand that we do. A whole lot of perception management goes into keeping us from seeing clearly what\u2019s going on here, and what they\u2019re taking from us, and how much better this world could be.<\/p>\n

What a circus is right.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly\u00a0at <\/a><\/em>Medium<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 caitlinjohnstone.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A jet airliner opens up and sends its passengers falling to earth. You\u2019d expect them to scream, to cry in fear, to prepare for the end, to pray, but instead they turn on each other and start fighting. \u201cI hate you! I hate you!\u201d they scream at each other on their way down. Some try to strangle each other to death. Some try to steal from each other\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":219906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[570,1817,1169,1253,307,2919,1170,1269],"class_list":["post-219905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus","tag-animals","tag-anti-militarism","tag-death","tag-demilitarization","tag-humanity","tag-ignorance","tag-life","tag-materialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}