Thinking of Things

I have been reading a lot, lately. I am not very sure of the purpose, but I do remember I had one when I began. Somewhere down the line, I realized I didn’t need one, and hence decided to do away with it altogether. Do you need a purpose to breathe?

I read all sorts of stuff. Whenever I can, I make it a point for my reading to vary wildly in genres. A book on management follows a book of mysterious short stories. A treatise on science and then an anthology of poetry. Of course am limited by what I know and what am capable of understanding. A crippling constraint, but I try to do my best.

I try exercise my right to chose.

I can’t say the same about what I read on social media. About what my friends and acquaintances have to say about the world and their interpretation of events therein. It comes in an endless stream, from multiple sources, in multiple voices. And I care for them, for they are interpretations of our shared reality. The only one there is. Subjective, colored, biased: but truth nonetheless.

Every once in a while, all the incoming inputs tends to clog up my senses. I wish there was a way to let it out. Art is, but am not an artist. Writing is, but am not a writer.

There’s one way I have known since a very long time: Put it all in words, and set it afloat. That’s writing, yes, only I don’t have to be a ‘writer’ to do it. Just an ordinary mind, transforming its formless thoughts into transactional words. It’s easy, if I can convince myself hard enough not to try sounding smart while at it. When writing, you crave to be a writer. You imagine you are being read, and judged. And that forces your pure formless thoughts to take all sorts of pretentious shapes. But I digress.

I hear so much talk about gender. About inequality and exploitation. And it gets to me. Hard. Firstly because I don’t understand it in all it’s complexity. Secondly, because I don’t know what to do with the monstrous absurdity it almost always comes across as.

I have a favorite vantage point when it comes to looking at issues. It involves rising a few miles above the surface of the Earth, flying beyond the atmospheric strata into the cold, dark vacuum of outer space and peering down on the Earth. That gives a remarkably unbiased, objective view of things.

From this vantage point, what is gender and inequality? Merely an act of people being silly. Imperfect. Diseased.

How about politics and religious fundamentalism? Little ants crawling about, trying to be heard and followed. Trying others ant to not to be heard or followed.

From this vantage point, most that is critical seems trivial. And much that’s otherwise trivial, seems critical. The unpredictable future of a random spinning ball circling around a random ball of fire embedded in an illuminated saucer: is very critical.

And that future is linked to all the trivial, illogical events happening on the surface of the ball I look at. All those trivial events are real, and are keeping the inherent intelligence of the planet to manifest itself.

Question is: How do we fix it? Can we fix it? We haven’t, for centuries on end. But we have made tremendous progress despite our fixation with the absurd.

What will be the future of gender and politics and poverty?

I am thinking. And am not all blank.

Can you help me shape my thoughts? Nudge me in the right direction?

Can we talk about this?