Monthly Archives: February 2025

The Great Escape

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Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

I’ve been dancing around some new themes that haven’t entirely come into focus (and might never), but I’ll try to pull some of it together in this post. I apologize for a pattern of putting out half-chewed perspectives, but that’s my meat-brain just doing its best.

I’ve written many lines admonishing human supremacy, bashing brains as limited organs, and cautioning against aggrandizing notions of transcendent consciousness. I’ve praised the genius of Life—all the way “down” to microbes. I’ve called modernity various unflattering things: a brain fart; a cancerous mode of living that has no long-term place on this planet; and most recently linked it to video-game style virtual reality. Let’s see if I can manage some synthesis.

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Virtual Reality

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Image by Sabrina Belle from Pixabay

Our culture is fond of creating virtual realities (make-believe worlds) and then spending much of our time in these alternative worlds. In fact, modernity itself is a type of virtual reality, in that it cannot be a long-lasting way of living on the planet: a temporary retreat from a deeper, broader, and more ancient reality.

In the context of virtual realities, this post compares loathsome modernity to loathsome video games, and the mental miscues they share in common. While brought up on video games and modernity, I have developed allergic reactions to both, and only now made the connection. It’s a single root cause.

Both modernity and video games offer addictive rewards that prove to be empty where it really counts. We can do better.

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Nothing But Flowers

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Photo by Aaron Carlson; CC-BY-SA.

I recently stumbled on a song from 1988 by the Talking Heads, called (Nothing But) Flowers. It’s hard to believe I would not have heard this song before. It caps off the “Best Of” album, after all. But, to be fair, a sampling of the album reveals that 8 of the 18 songs are unfamiliar to me. So, maybe it never hit my ears.

Anyway, listening as if for the first time, I’m captivated by the song. Although it’s not perfect, it hits themes that few songs do. What I’ll do is quote all the lyrics and intersperse comments. I’ll put my interpretive slant on the piece, which may or may not accurately reflect the intent of its creators. So it goes with these things. Sometimes the original intent isn’t even all that important or sacred. In this case, I don’t sense I’m far off the mark, but just want to be clear that I do not claim to have perfect knowledge of the creative intent, nor am I trying to achieve such.

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Views: 2466