as i'm sitting here with an annoying headache and little impetus to get anything done except assemble beach boys tunes for the upcoming trip to chautauqua institute and my brother's wedding, i'm thinking maybe i can finish off some of my thoughts in this thread. it's been a depressing, unhealthful couple weeks, but i feel like i'm coming out of it now. for one thing, it looks like the agent that was giving me these paranoically-tinged headaches is nothing less than fish oil capsules.
the first time i took these was last fall at the advice of my step-aunt, a doctor and accupuncturist. she had recommended them as an anti-depressive, and having worked myself through many, pharmaceutical and supplemental in nature, i figured i'd give fish oil a try. what i wound up having was a somewhat enlightening, but mostly awful experience while i was transitioning from the fish oil to a new med my regular doctor had prescribed. the head pain got so bad at the time that i thought i was not going to live long, and left a message to that effect online (which i'm sure managed to enlighten no one, heh). even after that i didn't realise in the least that fish oil was the problem, but i do have a much stronger hunch now. i had been trying it again recently for my high genetic cholesterol, but we're quits now since the headaches returned and the connection was revealed.
the other thing that was getting me down lately was this 'grappling with civilisation' crisis, which i'm glad happened but don't want to go through again for awhile! but it was good, you know; it resolved certain questions in my mind and allowed me to construct a more accurate view of reality that can serve me the rest of my life. i know where we're going and i know how we got here and in the end these conclusions reinforce what i already intellectually realised some time back: that life is short and precious, and should be enjoyed to the extent that one can before one's turn is up. which of course puts us in the same boat with every other life form on the planet and quite possibly, everywhere.
anyway, what was it that was left to say?
i had believed for years that man was the 'bad guy', off-track in his pursuits and incredibly cavalier towards animals and nature for quite some time now. then lately i begrudged the fact that the problem is inherant in all life. this knocked my deep reverance for all forms of life down a bit (although the reverance is starting to resurface in different ways). and now i'm back to thinking of man as the bad guy, just not as bad as before.
why? because the difference between us and the other lifeforms on earth is that we have more free intelligence than any of them to throw back at the 'civilisation and extinction' problem and prevent it from getting out of control. notwithstanding the fact that we (mostly) are the ones responsible for the current / impending crash, it was man's responsibility more than anything / anyone else's to prevent it. which is not to say that some of us didn't try and aren't trying- it's just that the forces of selfishness inherant in life were always a bit stronger. it's one of those struggles which seems to be always unequal, which is to say a losing struggle for control and a winning one for entropy.
so what does one do with one's life knowing that one's family line is likely going to go extinct, that barring a series of miracles civilisation will certainly go extinct, that very likely nothing we do or accomplish is going to have relevance to mankind or the future world? that almost everything we think of as permanent is going to crumble, and very little, if anything, of human history or these times, is going to be preserved or remembered? there's all the depressing stuff.
the corresponding positive thoughts seem paltry and nearly worthless by comparison. at least at first. what's going to carry on? life, almost certainly. the planet, absolutely. the potential or achievement of high intelligence by animals? probably, although the timeframes may be knocked back. human life? maybe, possibly, probably... we just don't know. if you look at the 'major planetary disasters', i think most of them model man as surviving. if you look at global climate change, the one we have some of the most detailed and extensive data and modelling for, the potential for human extinction is quite likely in the worst case scenerios. but still, nobody is going to know ahead of time nor their descendants understand very well what actually happened if man does survive.
so... what to do, taking all the above as the working conclusions? i guess that's the last entry to write, or maybe just to carry into action the rest of my life. there is a kind of strange beauty that occurs to me in this whole arrangement, if i can only put my finger on it. anyway, thanks to myself for working out this difficult period in words and by reflection, and thanks for anyone reading / listening!
recently i started adding some text to sketches of mine that i'd uploaded. if there's a carrot at the end of this thread, maybe that's it. :D
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38097009@N05/sets/72157619422490947/