The more I read and the older I get the more I am upset with the state of the world. I’m upset with my own role in the state of the world. I’m done. I’m done with riding the wave of our society. I’m done shrugging my shoulders. I hate what’s going on and it’s overwhelming to see. Even just getting a small peek at the horrors makes me want to go back to my blissful ignorance. What can I do? I’m only one guy, buried in the matrix, desperately trying to face the reality of our existence. I want the red pill so badly, but so much around me makes the blue pill easier to take every day. The construction of our society hands me a blue pill the second I wake up and look at my phone in the morning.
This world is distracted. I am distracted. I recently read The Grapes of Wrath, and I was struck by how similar it felt to our world today. I guess we've always had the same problems. All of the wealth being aggregated into a few people's hands, and technology driving people out of their wellbeing. Decimating the land without a care for the consequences in order to make as much money as possible right now. Food going to waste while people starve because it can't be sold for a profit. The only difference is that most of the regular people are in such chaos trying to survive the Great Depression that they can't spare time to think about the bigger picture. I am not working to survive. I am comfortable. And yet I still can’t take in the bigger picture? What is that all about? I am not distracted by survival, I’m distracted by my phone? Pathetic. Embarrassing, really. In The Grapes of Wrath the only two people that thought deeply and tried to combat the tidal wave of oppression were the ones that banished themselves to the wilderness. I need to do the same and free my mind from distractions to see what is going on. While reading The Grapes of Wrath, the following passage struck me so immediately that I read it out loud to my fiancee. It’s been stuck in my head ever since I finished the book. I know it’s a long passage, but he says everything so much better than I ever could. It’s John Steinbeck.
One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate--"We lost our land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have none." If from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket--take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning--from "I" to "we."
This is happening right now. To all of us. The mechanism of distraction has changed, but the isolation is just as real. Systems are being created and propagated that are designed to make distraction effortless. We are fed a simulated existence, keeping us from investing the time and effort into sustained engagement with others. The powers that be heard the message from the above passage loud and clear. If their users continue to think “I” instead of “we”, they have nothing to fear. We are trapped in cells of dopamine output. They don’t have to bomb that anlagean embryonic area capable of forming a structure (I had to look it up), because we are so ensnared mentally and biologically.
It’s a part of human nature to distrust those “other” than us. This has played out in so many terrible ways in human history, but it is reaching much more insidiously into our lives today. We are increasingly more accepting of people from other cultures, genders, or financial backgrounds, but at the same time have never been less connected to those immediately around us. I couldn’t tell you a single one of my neighbors names. Young people have moved into three houses around me, and I haven’t said a word to any of them. I already have a community, why would I need to reach out to these people too?
I have always found myself surrounded by dynamic, interesting people. For a long time I (pretty narcissistically) assumed I had something to do with that fact. I thought something about myself attracted smart, funny, interesting people. Even when I didn’t have much to do with bringing the group together, I still somehow thought it was a unique experience that I was having. As I’ve aged and continued to meet more people and have had to resettle in new areas a couple of times I’ve realized something else: people are interesting. I wasn’t attracting these dynamic people. People are just dynamic, and I was getting to know them. I find myself falling into the trap from the end of my last paragraph all of the time, and when I’m forced out of it, I realize again that there’s no limit on the number of people who can add value to my life. Why then, do I resist leaning into connection? Why do I allow myself to be isolated by the systems in power?
These questions have led me back to an impactful series that I read last year, The Remembrance of Earth’s Past (This is the series that begins with The Three Body Problem) by Cixin Liu. The main driver of the story is an addition to the Fermi ParadoxThe clear contradiction between the high statistical likelihood that extraterrestrial civilizations exist and the total lack of any evidence, contact, or observation that Liu calls the Dark Forest Theory, explained as thus:
The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there's only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people.
His argument is that the only way to ensure safety for your civilization’s survival is to destroy other civilizations. The universe does not contain infinite resources, and if you let other civilizations grow and flourish, eventually you will clash with them. So the easiest way to win that clash is to destroy burgeoning civilizations before they come of age in the universe. The whole trilogy revolves around not revealing your position within the dark forest. There is still communication and information shared between humans and aliens in this trilogy, bringing in an era of prosperity and technological growth to humanity. But it’s an uneasy type of cooperation, with all parties involved deathly afraid of revealing identifying information.
The matter of fact way Liu writes about these interactions had me fully convinced that this type of interaction was the surest way to continue within the universe. But then I had a conversation about intelligent life with my future mother in law, and when I pitched the dark forest theory, she was horrified. She was sure that intelligent life would come to us with love and goodwill. Throughout my sci-fi journey, I had grown a little cynical on the idea of cooperating with other civilizations. I had only thought about protecting the human race, not propelling the human race forward.
For a long time I have naturally kept a cool gap between myself and others. I felt comfortable discussing personal matters and more vulnerable topics if anybody asked, but nobody ever really did. I never offered anything up. I was in a holding pattern with almost every person in my life and I never saw that I was enacting the dark forest ideology. I kept people at arms length, never giving anybody critical information that could potentially harm me in the future. I have so many incredible friends, but before this blog there were only a couple of people in my life that it felt natural opening up to. I told myself that I was good at meeting people where they are, and that I didn’t want to force anything that my friends didn’t want. In reality, I was protecting myself. Like I said above, these relationships can still bear fruit. They are relationships of probing, of wariness, of cool distance. Not love, friendship, and depth. I understand why I acted that way. Society today makes it scary to be exposed and vulnerable. But protecting myself from the risks of connection also means denying myself its possibilities.
Mindful Abandon is my Voyager Golden Record. The record stands in opposition to the dark forest theory. We are sending humanity out into the unknown in peace. We are freely giving up the coordinates to earth. Could something come to destroy us? I guess so. But we are willingly making ourselves vulnerable in the name of connection with another entity. Maybe another civilization is just as lonely in the universe as we are. Maybe a beautiful partnership forms. I’ve decided I’m going to reach out into the unknown and try to make those connections. It’s a work in progress. Sometimes it still feels uncomfortable to discuss real things in person. It’s easier to present a polished version of my thoughts from behind a screen. But I’m working on overturning the dark forest inside my own mind.
We are alone. We are isolated. This blog has opened my eyes. When I started sharing my thoughts online, I didn’t think anyone would care and I was ok with that. I was finding joy and purpose in putting my thoughts down in an ordered form. If I’m being honest, no offense to my beloved readers and community, I thought I was the only one thinking deeply about myself and my role in the world. I couldn’t have been further from the truth. The response has been incredible. Almost every person I shared this with reached out in one way or another to talk about something that had been on their mind. And sure, it’s not that many people. I get that. But it’s a sample size greater than myself. I know I’m late to the party and only now figuring out what many of you have known all along. I won’t lump everybody in with my own ignorance. But we are not alone in our musings and worries. I needed to learn that on my own.
I’ve been a little lost in this world. It feels like we are hurtling towards our doom and someone has to do something. Is it me? Probably not. I’m just a guy. But society’s issues cannot be solved with its members in isolation. I can make myself vulnerable and break out of my confinement in a world increasingly designed to keep us apart. I can do my part to turn “I” into “We”.