Worldwide Localization

What is far away, the mysterious unknown exciting, has a natural allure. Having been denied the freedom to pursue this urge in geographical terms by the pandemic, the vast swath of humanity has been forced to instead stay, and engage, local. 

Professor Malhi at Oxford is one of those many. He recently wrote an essay about his shift to studying the nature of his English surrounding instead of distant tropical rain forests. So many have similarly obliged, in various creative and intellectual ways, and I think the experience has been revelatory. 

It almost feels like the world has reached a level of global entanglement that is just too much. Like we stretched the elastic of ourselves until it could stretch no more, and now we're furling back into a more relatable size. 

I don't say this solely because the pandemic is distinctly of the time, its spread and reactions and aura exclusive to the Internet Age. I think it's been relatively clear that a point of satiation had been reached even before, but culminating, now. 

All the major political trends point to a rupture. Resurgent nationalism. Economic largess and inequality. Impending climate doom. The technological coup of society. The origin and facilitator of these widespread turmoils is clearly the modern lifestyle.

The obviousness of what's happening hit me when I read this article that explained how global health is no longer, and will never again be, centralized and dominated by the U.S. Power is dispersed, the world more equal and accessible than ever before, trudging through a radical newness. The paradigms of the 20th century are failing. 

I am realizing the value of local, less sprawled living, and from what I can tell I am not alone. Life is so much easier and more in depth this way. There ends up being greater connection with the world around you. Focusing on the details, which takes time and familiarity and a smaller sample size, is the best way to truly know something. 

And people are in sore need of connection these days. It's now evident that grand notions of global linkage don't really bring us closer together ideologically, and definitely don't alleviate our loneliness. We yearn for tangible bonds to the ground underfoot, the matter we can touch, hear, see and smell. 

 

Without mooring, without embedding an anchor in the seabed, we drift in a chaotic haze, isolated and unable to escape meaninglessness.

I think a smaller, more personal world is a necessary reaction to unprecedented globalization. I think it will not only help on an individual social level but on a planetary scale. It's so consuming to live the way we have. We all know we need to use fewer resources for long-term survival. The Swedes, even before the pandemic, were flying noticeably less for this very purpose. 

Maybe, with greater appreciation for what's directly around us, we could start along the path the world needs to go on. Isn't the air rife with possibility?

Change and Loss

I've talked with my sister recently about the human tendency to bestow meaning in the things surrounding us, animate or not. It seems a natural way to navigate through the complex world. We create placeholders to orient life amidst chaos. 

When through unrelenting, inevitable change, the familiar surroundings leave our lives, it feels like part of our very being is lost. It hurts so bad when the manifestations of our memories and identity are taken away. Sometimes the deep meaning these symbols of our creation have goes unrecognized until the weight of loss begins its heavy tug. Left hollow, lost, confused, our shape-shifting nature is unveiled as a series of layers that can never be ordered in the same way again.

I maintain that the worst part of death is how the absence gradually becomes normal. The presence is no longer present. It is forever a thing of the past. The tragedy is not only that which is gone, but so too that which is left behind by the living; the slivers and chunks of a fragile self that is buried with the dead. 

One of the defining themes characterizing my entrance into adulthood has been the loss of what once was. Aging is tangible now, and I have lived long enough for it to show me its mighty grip. Coming to terms with the ultimate reality is, in a way, what adulthood seems to essentially mean. 

As much as change makes the bad better, it takes what is good, too. Therein lies the trouble. It's a cruel setup that the greater something is, the more devastating, the more piercing its demise and disappearance will be. Even what is inside, protected by mass, mental barricade, and the shadows of the soul, is not exempt.

The highest challenge we the conscious face, the most insurmountable, crippling monster bearing down on every waking moment, is reckoning with change. For change is life and life is change, and refuting its authority is a losing, self-destructive war of attrition. 

To find peace is to accept change. It is a clear yet unbelievable taxing, emotional journey that seems to require the stuff of gritty fortitude and caring embrace. Loss makes me want to hate the unjust world, to lash out in a futile tantrum that forces the hands of time backwards so that I don't have to ever deal with it. I guess accepting it all means filing those reactions away and, instead of ruminating on the loss of what was, welcoming the creation of what is. And having faith that what is, and what will be, is worth a damn. 

Lastly, a song I heard again after many years: Dust in the Wind by Kansas