Commuting Thoughts 1

1. To avoid mob rule, a democratic society should always steer as clear as possible of monolithic generalizations. It should aim, instead, to approach the threshold of what might be called or thought of as something like individual law, a form of justice that seeks to protect the right of every individual to be unique, indefinable, without absolute category, then pull back just enough from sinking into something incomprehensible and chaotic. I believe this is what law intends to do, in theory, though some politicians and citizens would wish it were otherwise. It is only those who cannot tolerate question, difference, risk, and actual freedom who would find this incomprehensible. Anger would most likely be their reaction, for something has come up against the simple view they have of how things ought to be and their inability and lack of desire to try to see anything from anyone else's perspective, and possibly let a new idea enter their minds, terrifies them, frustrates them, drives them to hate without limit.

2. The first order of business for any being that finds itself in the midst of existence should be to protect the 'ecological capital' of the world, preserve it for the untold billions to come, rather than selfishly use more than we need at the expense of future life. To do any less is to be complicit in a type of mass murder that only disasters of a cosmological scale are supposed to inflict. The second order of business is to do all one can, make the constant effort, to take responsibility for the growth and evolution and continuation of the concept and state of freedom, never tiring of fighting the good fight, to never think one has done enough, to know that to enjoy freedom now without making the effort and recognizing the responsibility one has to future generations is, again, incomprehensibly and irrationally selfish. It is to spit in the face of the untold millions who toiled to bring us the opportunities we enjoy and face today. It is to turn a blind eye to the billions yet to come into a world that could be made better, that could speak of heroes and the benevolent societies that came before them, as they donned the mantle of responsibility of this proud tradition. Of course, there is still the intriguing problem of creating a common understanding of the sanity of these two principles.

3. Never judge a person until you've truly, truly walked several hundred kilometres in their shoes. That is, value the power of empathy. So many proponents of certain hard-line ideologies claim to be able to speak for the so-called "bums on welfare", claiming to know, with god-like omnipotence, what goes on in their heads, generalizing to such an extreme that you'd think a concentration camp of some sort wouldn't be good enough for them all. To do this sort of judging is not only irresponsible, without merit or evidence, but is ultimately a sign of a hate filled and diseased mind, one that has lost all sense of compassion except for what is already their own and will never stoop to empathy, entering into what is probably the early phases of a sociopathic personality. The day we cease to be moved by the plight of even one of us is the day we cease to be human and become little more than a part of an inhumane and inhuman machine.

4. Never lose hope. This is what they want us to do. Lose hope and enter into a state of permanent fear. Fortunately, as history shows us, these sorts of rulers don't tend to endure, but even the short term is too long for them and the price paid is always too high.

5. Do your best to love life, but do not be afraid to risk it. Life is not lived without it. Avoid or question and challenge those systems and forces that seek to distract, defocus, confuse, over stimulate and enslave. We all suffer at the hands of these apparent ways of accomplishing through purchasing or wiring ourselves into some larger sphere of communication. But unless handled with skill, these methods lead to a thinning, a dilution of thought, of will, of life. They offer only a ghostly substitute for something they usurp and replace. I remember only a short 20 years ago how the world felt. It was different, more solid, and more alive and I wanted to be in it, out in it, seeing it, knowing it, walking it. Now, it feels hollow, harder to connect to, ironically, and smaller. I spend most of my time staring at screens such as this one. This may sound paranoid or reactionary but it is not. It is testimony from a witness to this change, one who has, like so many of us, seen and experienced the radical shift, untested, unprecedented, that computers and other technologies have inflicted. My mind is different now and not, I fear, for the better. Perhaps we should have been more critical of the introduction of certain methods of making sense of our lives. The word 'cyborg' comes to mind, unpleasantly.