The Bottom of Everything
You have gotten to the bottom of everything! Well, at least as far as this project is concerned. You’ve navigated a labyrinthine Odyssey of Letters to get here, among other things. Thanks for persisting. I hope it was worth it or worth something.
You’ve probably read a lot to get here. Hopefully, some of it made sense. But this is where I explain what this project is as nakedly as possible.
We live in a precarious time. Mostly of our own doing and the ways many of us think. I fear we have violated The Oneness Principle. The point of this project is to experiment with curiosity to see if I could nudge people to think differently about a variety of issues that we face. Do some of our old ideas present dangers now? Can we rethink them? Could some old forgotten ideas present new ways of approaching ourselves, our societies, and the way we interact with the rest of the living and non-living world? I honestly have no idea. But I wanted to experiment and see if that is possible. To be clear: I do believe that the way we think has practical consequences .
So, yes, this is a social experiment to really see if curiosity is connection and if it can help us see the astonishing interconnection and interdependence in our world and between our selves in the hopes that we can try some new social experiments based on new ways of thinking (or old ways that we have forgotten about) or new ways of being (or old ways that we have forgotten about) to head off this approaching apocalypse. Can we forge new social realities? Through collective intention, can we build more inclusive and fair realities? Because we understand that one day we may be the minority or the odd person out or the one who is down on her luck? Can we construct a social reality that is more respectful of our physical reality? Because we can see its immense beauty but also its absolute necessity to our being and all future beings?
It is also an inquiry into the limits of our understanding and what is knowable. I think those limitations and unknowables should entreat us to act with humility and care — with each other and the rest of the living world.
And, yes, this project is a web metaphor — in several senses — where everything refers to everything because I believe that mimics the complexity and connectedness of our social reality, of our lives, of our universe, and what it means to be a self in that universe. The strands of silk that connect everything in the web that is the universe. And like life, this project mimics the multiple paths, the disparate silk threads we can all follow to arrive at similar places, similar moments, similar understandings, as well as the interpretive nature of reality due to our unique perceptions, experiences, and perspectives that we have gained by following those divergent yet intersecting paths.
That all said, despite my purpose for this project, it may mean something entirely different for each person who encounters it. Based on the paths that person has followed, the paths one has followed here. The perspectives forged by those paths in their section of the web. Or, it may mean nothing at all. That is the subjectivity of being alive with a brain that creates its own deceptions. And realizing that is important — I think. Maybe it is something that can help us get beyond our disagreements, our conflicts, our destructive proclivities. By realizing that we all subjectively see things differently, can we begin to understand that we will all see things differently, and we do all see things differently? Can we all expect that we will all have different perspectives? Can we start to look for common ground? Can we find ways to work together to save what is still savable?
I don’t know.
But this was my way of trying to find out.
One other hope is to get people thinking and talking about what it means to be alive at this unprecedented moment. Nothing will ever change if we don’t talk about the problems we are experiencing and creating, if we don't look up.
I really hope we can tell better stories to ourselves and about ourselves so that we have better stories to tell to ourselves and about ourselves as our history at some distant future point. Can we use better web metaphors to create meaning for ourselves and the living world, which maybe indistinguishable from ourselves?
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Can we get beyond our individualism, our dualisms, our hierarchies to see the web that connects us all and save it for us all? Maybe reinstate The Oneness Principle?
Together may be the only way.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.