Friday, October 14, 2016

Civilization is what you do, not what you are.

We all live in a simulation created by language, art, and symbolic thought. We all live within the social systems that symbolic thought makes possible: agriculture, trade, politics, technology, etc. We all live in the matrix we call civilization.
Our Matrix is not created by aliens, AI, or future versions of ourselves; it is created by our ancestors and by all of us together, by our consent and by our not knowing any other way to live our lives. Our matrix is created by our parents, our education, ourselves. It is the project we all work on, the thing we were all trained to do.

What you are is both less than, and more, than civilization tells you. Civilization tells you that you are human and special amongst all creation. Civilization tells you stories about yourself so that you think only in words and pictures. So that you see only other humans. So that you learn to compete with other humans to build the walls and screens of civilization ever higher.

What.you are is an animal, amongst animals, a creature amongst creatures, a pool of proteins, a city of cells that walk on its back legs. What you are, as are all things, is the inheritor of stars and eternal, a continuity of life in its unceasing transformations, unseparte from the farthest reaches of the universe, vibrant with the traces of supernovas and black holes. You are, it all is, much bigger than the little box that civilization puts you in.

But civilization is very entertaining.

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