Purpose or lack of purpose is something that exists in the human plane. To escape suffering that is caused by war, famine, climate change, a person risks his life with the purpose of reaching a better place. Purposes relate to cause and effect; to agency. A subject acts and an object receives the action. By virtue of our lived experience, we interpret the universe in terms of separation; we see causes and effects and we look for purpose. If we find it, we decide that there is meaning to our lives, to the universe. If we do not find it, we may decide to believe in a supernatural or an unknowable purpose: “mysterious are the ways of God…” Or contrarily, we decide that there is no purpose, neither meaning. It’s all a blank.
This is all from our human point of view, the perspective of individual subjects existing in a universe of objects. You can say that indeed this is all that matters: whether our experience of reality is valid or not, we are stuck in it. This is what we know and perhaps all that we will ever know. We suffer, we struggle to find meaning, we search for a purpose to our lives.
And yet it is still important to understand the limitation of our manner of looking at the world, and to admit that there is another way of seeing reality, even if this is not currently accessible to us. In this other reality, there are no subjects or objects, because there is no one to stand “outside” or “apart” from the universe and observe it. There is just an all encompassing unity in which every particle of the cosmos is a full expression of the whole, in which everything is in perfect sync. Because it is all one, there is no agency: there is nothing separate to be acted upon. So, indeed, there is no “purpose” and no “meaning” that exist independently of the whole. There is no consciousness that is separate from existence.
The purpose, if you will, is therefore intrinsic.
I am stuck in an inflatable dinghy on the open sea. The craft is losing air and taking on water. I have no life jacket, and am unable to swim. My dreams of a better life, or any kind of life, have ended in failure and will soon end in death. Shall I be thankful for the short time I was able to spend with my mother and siblings? Shall I die with feelings of immense bitterness at the broken promises, the greedy smuggler who betrayed me, the foolishness of my venture, the loss of everything I hoped for, the cruelty of my fate? Shall I look from the dark ocean to the sea of stars, and think that I am one of them; that they are my brothers. That I am somehow a vessel for this cosmic radiance that comes to me across the aeons, and will continue to shine far into the future; a continuum of life. Shall I come to terms with mortality and immortality, perfection, beauty, frailty and power?
Being a good citizen of the 21st century requires knowledge and awareness so that we can make good decisions on an individual level, about what products to buy, what to do and what not to do.
On the other hand, our individual solutions have very little effect, compared to those of the big companies and climate criminals. What Greta Thunberg points out in her book is that despite the relative insignificance of small individual decisions, when they join together to form a mass movement, such as a mass boycott, they count for more – so we need to be public about them.
But being public about anything reminds me of past instances of moral hypocrisy. So, when someone tells me they are flying to Prague or Paris for three days for a “short getaway”, it’s hard for me to say I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do during a climate crisis. And I can’t say I’m going to set a good example by flying less, or not at all, because that’s not something I can be sure I’ll do, in a country where the only way to reach Europe or the rest of Asia is by flying. So I keep quiet and don’t say anything, which means again, that whatever I do has virtually no effect.
Hamsin
The hamsin is supposed to let up by this evening or tomorrow. It’s currently 41°C outside. A hamsin is actually a kind of sirocco, which Bedouin colourfully describe as issuing from the mouth of hell. Yesterday afternoon, we were sitting on the balcony of La Brasserie by Mary’s Well in Ein Kerem when a sudden blast of wind surged up the valley, felling huge, stone-mounting umbrellas, which in turn gave one of the diners a nasty blow to the head and toppled her to the floor. She was OK. The restaurant owner apologized profusely and offered the couple a meal on the house. He said he’d been there for 11 years and this was the first time it had ever happened.
Musical performance, Marwan Halabi
On Thursday evening Magdalena organized a musical performance at her photo studio in a nearby village. There was only room for about 20 people but we all squeezed in, to hear Marwan Halabi, a young Druze singer-songwriter with a sublime, amazing voice. Accompanying himself, just with a guitar, he sang some of his own compositions; some were traditional sufi songs, and one or two Egyptian. Most were in classical or spoken Arabic, with a couple in Hebrew. He can be found on Spotify and SoundCloud – I include a SoundCloud link because that’s the service I usually prefer – worth a listen!
Yesterday I signed up for yet another server, this time KNThost, because they have a managed service for Hubzilla (also Streams). At this stage I really think I need to have some help with running Hubzilla instances. The one that I hosted on an unmanaged VPS has gone bad, and no longer shares posts. It’s a one way hub, with a growing queue and database problem.
So, on KNThost, for a small monthly fee, they install and offer assistance with the service. It’s a bit like Mastohost in that way, and the subscription is cheaper than my other VPS. The only thing I don’t like about it is the US server location but, these days, it’s a bit hard to decide on a good location in any case. The EU is beefing up its internet laws and privacy is threatened there. Israel, where my current servers are located, is also a questionable location. I think that if one posts to, or uses the web in 2023, one must automatically assume that there is surveillance.
I find myself scratching my head with regard to where to post my content. From my Epicyon Activity Pub server I am doubtful that the posts actually reach anywhere, since I rarely get a response. On Hubzilla, I no longer subscribe to anyone on Mastodon (or Pleroma or Akkoma, etc.). Perhaps this was a mistake? It may also have been a mistake to remove myself from Fe.disroot, from the point of view of reach. If you want to be a first class citizen of the Fediverse, it’s best to be on a large instance like mastodon.social. But, from the perspective of what’s good for the Fediverse, small instances are better; individual instances are best.
POSSE
Rather than focusing on social media to publish my posts, and favouring one place over another, I am thinking to embrace more fully the POSSE system (see below).
POSSE is an abbreviation for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere, the practice of posting content on your own site first, then publishing copies or sharing links to third parties (like social media silos) with original post links to provide viewers a path to directly interacting with your content.. Why. Let your friends read your posts, their way.
In my case, I will be publishing some individual items first on epicyon and my hubzilla channel, and then collating these back into a daily blog post that contains all the significant items, reflections and links from the same day. This itself can be posted and,if I like, be sent further, such as Tumblr. I’ve done this before, and found it to be a satisfying practice. It is similar to the practice adopted by Cory Doctorow in his Pluralistic blog.
Ultimately, everything is ephemeral. What matters is our current interactions, rather than trying to preserve everything for eternity. But it’s also important to be in control of the medium, to the degree possible.
Epicyon search
A friend asked in Epicyon’s Matrix room about search, since he is interested in finding his old posts and interactions. It turns out that Epicyon has quite a good search mechanism built in.
Are we just who we think we are, or do we always represent something – some group; some nation; some identity? There are things we would like to say, but then we remember that as a “privileged white male” or as a citizen of a former colonial power, or something else, it is probably better to keep our mouths shut. That’s what I’m reflecting on now, with regard to that Israeli film director who raised a furor at the Goa film festival (see my previous post). What he said, regarding the “vulgarity” of the film (“The Kashmir Files”) may (or may not) be true. On the other hand, if one is a foreigner and, on top of that, speaking about a highly sensitive issue – well, maybe there are places you might not want to go.
But besides even those aspects, there is a question of one’s own identity. The director, I assume, sees his podium to be that of a filmmaker, given the honor to chair a prestigious panel of judges. His professional credentials are the source of his courage in speaking out. However, those who hear him are no doubt aware of other aspects of his identity – perhaps more aware than he?
Being an Israeli Jew carries a certain excess baggage in the world, that is added to the baggage of just being a foreigner. Among its sources are, on the one hand, the history of persecution against the Jewish people, including the Holocaust of the last century; modern-day antisemitism, and, on the other hand, the perpetration of terrible injustice towards Palestinians today. These heavy bags cannot easily be left behind.
No matter which group we belong to, even when we are eager to rid ourselves of this group identity, we can’t, because this does not depend on us. We will always represent more than ourselves to the other. If we disavow, say, imperialism, or chauvinism or Zionism or whatever identity we want to disassociate with, we cannot shake off the attibution. So we had better be aware of it in our speech and our behaviour, and do our best to compensate.
Our sense of identity has to include both what we see in ourselves and what other people are likely to see too. This is only fitting. We are speaking about persona, whose original meaning was “mask” (the mask that was worn by actors), yet we cannot function in this world without one. It’s a Greek tragedy, but still just a play. The error, and the source of our confusion, is in taking the play, or our role in it, too seriously.
It being the eve of the Day of Atonement, when the roads become quiet and the sounds of nature come to the forefront, I enjoyed my afternoon walk through the woods and fields, without the distant roar of traffic.
Earlier I had seen part of an episode of The House of the Dragon series and read the final chapter of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry of the Future . Probably these influences were in the background of my thoughts. The Dragon series is about in-family rivalry over the struggle for the throne and dynastic succession – itself rather a boring plot-concept, but one that is well-rooted in our history and culture. One of the characters, thinking of his legacy, says that history remembers “name” rather than “blood[line]”. The interest in how one will be remembered is, according to vedantic thought, a projection of sat (existence), and the longing to live forever; the instinctive wish for immortality.
The Ministry of the Future also circles around these ideas of mortality and legacy; of the meaning and possible influence of a single human life and of the survival of the species in the time of the climate crisis. Taking the risk of venturing into new-agey territory it celebrates nature and urges human self-restraint in terms of population growth, resource use and territorial expansion.
I already feel like I’ve lived a long life and when I die can hope to be forgotten. But most likely I will go on living for awhile, so I sometimes feel a need to assess the use of my time. Influenced by yoga and eastern philosophies, I have always understood life and human evolution as the striving for the attainment or rediscovery of our true nature. Besides the aspect of sat (existence) mentioned above, this is said to include also chit (consciousness) and ananda (bliss, or joy). We have a voracious interest in acquiring knowledge and experience on account of sat and chit, and a hunger for pleasure on account of ananda. All three of these basic instincts are infinitely insatiable. So we want to live forever, accrue knowledge, experience, money, material goods and sensual gratification, while fearing suffering and our mortality.
Indian philosophy says that the only way to “quench / to extinguish” these drives is through inner/integral (not solely intellectual) understanding of our true nature as already immortal, omniscient and joyful. Thereupon, according to both Buddhism and yoga, we attain nirvana (which means literally the action of extinguishing).
So how to do that? Not, I think, by denial of these instincts (asceticism). That has no meaning. Not by diminishment. As we approach death, we experience the extenuation of the physical and mental faculties. This morning I read that dear old Shraddhavan recently died at the age of 80. This English woman was one of the founders of Auroville and for years and years held study circles on the meaning of Sri Aurobindo’s poem Savitri. The obituary said that since the end of last year, she began gradually to “fade away”. Whether or not that is true I do not know, but my hope is that this was just how it looked. My hope is that, rather than diminishing, we grow, i.e. expand into the cosmic, the universal, the infinite. From the outside, this can also look as if we are “fading” because the attention has shifted.
In the final pages of The Ministry of the Future Robinson mentions the statue of Ganymede and the eagle on the lake shore of Zürich. His character surmises that the bird may really be the phoenix, which constantly rises from its own ashes, and that the bronze human statue is making an offering of himself, and all that is, to it, for the sake of immortality.
Figure 1: Ganymede statue, Zürich (Wikipedia)
At the end of the day, we die. The atoms that made up our bodies, our brains and the wisps of consciousness that gave meaning to our lives, seep out into the ether. They are carried on the cosmic wind, to recombine and make new bodies, new souls. We may hope to leave a legacy, to live on through our children or our good deeds. But the fear of death and the longing to continue at all costs, even with senses and bodily functions impaired, seem to express doubt.
If we want to die instead with an intimation of our immortality, with awareness of the universal, and with the feeling of deep joy that are our birthright and inner-nature, we need to consecrate our lives to expansion, rather than fear extinction. But why wait for death, if we can seek to do this already? That’s the purport of vedantic philosophy.
This still does not really answer the how. On my walk, perhaps with Robinson’s Ministry resonating still in me, I began to think that one approach could be to live more closely to nature. From the perspective of climate action, this is a little counter-intuitive. The best arrangement for humans is to inhabit small to mid-sized communities or towns that provide most of their needs within walking or cycling distance, without the need to commute or import. Ideally goods would be shared rather than owned. If we are fortunate to live in a place where heating and air-conditioning are less necessary, the carbon footprint can be further reduced.
But there are communities that fulfill these requirements while still being close to nature. That’s why I looked again at Auroville (and discovered Shradhavan’s death). From their newsletter I also learned about the latest developments regarding the internal strife that they have been experiencing within the last year. But like the Aurovillians themselves, I believe they will eventually overcome those difficulties, since their lives there really depend upon that.
As human beings in our world community, the lives of our children and grandchildren depend upon overcoming the enormous challenges of our era. It’s the dire necessity of doing so that underlies the optimism in Ministry of the Future. As Robinson says, “we will cope no matter how stupid things get” and “the only catastrophe that can’t be undone is extinction.”
I would add that something of ourselves survives even extinction. Matter, energy and consciousness are never truly destroyed – they simply recycle to make something new. Seeing this can lead to an understanding of the inseparable interdependence between ourselves and our biosphere. If as a species, we begin to get, to really grok, this interdependence, we will surely take all the steps that are necessary to safeguard our planetary home.
There are two or three cats that pass at every hour by the pateo screen door, on what look like regular patrols. Their pace is unhurried, as if they have all the time in the world. If the door is open behind the screen, they take a moment or two to peer in; no doubt if they could enter they would do so. I don’t want to discourage their patrols. One day on the path we found a dead snake; perhaps that was their doing.
Reflecting on their manner of living I compared my life to theirs. Animals seem never to question the purpose of their existence. As far as we know, they never wonder if they are making any kind of contribution, whether they are being lazy or over-zealous, kind or mean. They just exist.
When humans exhibit the same behaviour, I’m the first to grow judgmental, and I try to watch my own, worrying that I too am just a burden on the earth, despite my decidedly low-key way of living.
Yet the existence of human beings is much more expensive to the planet, in terms of resource use, than that of animals. Maybe there is a reason to look at the time spent as if we are here on an expensive scholarship?
But I’ve got it all wrong. A vagabond who sleep-walks through life does less damage to the earth than an accomplished technocrat. A person who achieves nothing beyond procreating and taking out the garbage is much less of a drain on resources than a wealthy stockbroker. In fact, the poorer and simpler our lives, the better for the planet and the future of humanity. If we could just live like those cats…
Links
In PaleMoon, a browser not noted for the range or quality of its extensions, I found one that can take a web page and convert the URL and title into OrgMode syntax, for import into my blog. Perfect!
Approximately 3.7 million Syrian refugees live in Turkey. The influx of Europe-bound migrants to Greece has dropped dramatically over the past year but this week’s crossing is a reminder of the lengths people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa are willing to endure to find refuge in the west.”
“The EU has been urged to introduce a travel ban on Russian tourists with some member states saying visiting Europe was “a privilege, not a human right” for holidaymakers.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview with the Washington Post that the “most important sanction” was to “close the borders, because the Russians are taking away someone else’s land”. Russians should “live in their own world until they change their philosophy”, he said.
Yeah well, if that’s true, the EU should close the border also to Israelis, on the same grounds. And Ukraine supported Israel in its latest military operation.
I’m actually not so sure that citizens should be punished for the crimes of their governments, especially when the cost of disagreeing is often to be put in jail. Even when it is true that the majority of a population supports the actions of the government, ordinary people should be presumed innocent of the crimes of their countries, or at least seen independently and treated with respect.
On my home server I have, till now, Hubzilla and WordPress. Hubzilla is a good all-round piece of software that does various things, though not perfectly: it is an activity-hub connected social network, a place to store photo albums and files; a content management system for blogs, and a place where you can make static websites.
There are idealistic, practical and economic considerations regarding home hosting. On a practical level, the experience has been much smoother than I anticipated. The system has stayed up most of the time, despite occasional power cuts. There haven’t been so many issues at all. I’m using an old laptop for the purpose, connected to my modem-router. There are still one or two things I have to figure out, but that’s only because I’ve been lazy.
On an idealistic level, I love the idea of being in control of my own server.
Economically, it’s probably cheaper, after the small fee I pay for a permanent IP, and the electricity used, than hosting the site on a server. There were no hardware costs since I’m using an old laptop, which would otherwise just lie in the cupboard.
There is still a question whether the effort has been worth it. Regarding blogging and social networking, it depends a lot on the usage case. Although it is occasionally nice for me to see all the product of 20 years of writing together in one place, actually I could achieve the same by writing off line, on my computer, and then uploading it somewhere – anywhere – perhaps various places – not necessarily a personal website. That’s true because there are no commercial or reputational considerations involved. That would not be true for everyone.
Regarding social media, also there, there are few advantages to be found in hosting your own network. It is easier to become known and discover others by using a commercial network or a popular federated instance. If what you are posting is mainly short posts and links to your own writing, and the service is free, then there is no real need to host it at home.
What would make sense, perhaps, would be to host your own email system. That would be great, if it were not so technically challenging to host email, and if were not so difficult to self-host email without being blacklisted by the big companies who today host email.
It does not make sense to use a home server for a file server, because the main advantage of backing up your files in the cloud is that they are not being stored at home. If the house is burgled or burns down, it’s better that the files are stored elsewhere. It still makes sense to rent a cloud server for that; it is simply better that it isn’t at home. I pay a little money to Disroot in order to store my files on their server.
It would be a good idea to use a home server for storing a photo and video collection. Photos and video take up a lot of space, which is sometimes costly, so a good case can be made for creating a photo gallery on your own server. But that too could be hosted somewhere in the cloud.
Listened to another YouTube video of Yuval Noah Harari, This one was a lecture at Google in 2015 and is about “new religions of the 21st century.” I have read only the first of his books, and listened to various interviews. He lives not far from here, practices vipassana meditation, is strictly vegan, firmly on the left, anti-nationalist, and deeply influenced by Buddhism. The video is chiefly about the increasing power of the algorithm in undermining our currently dominant religion, which, as he says, is humanistic liberalism.
I was thinking his talk about the “new religions of the 21st” century would be about the discovery of our interdependence with nature and of the impossibility that the human race will survive the coming centuries while maintaining its existing speciesism.. At a point in the talk he asks a rhetorical question about the main scientific discovery of the 20th century? (the response: there are so many of them that it is hard to say), and then what was the main discovery in the same period from the faith religions (“the religions that believe in God”). The response he gives is that it is hard to decide, because we can’t think of any. But I don’t think that’s strictly true. There is a discovery or re-discovery, of one of them core teachings of all religions, of altruism and the need to overcome our inherent egoism for the good of the whole. It isn’t exclusively the domain of religion, and the dominant religions have themselves contradicted this message to disastrous effect. Yet the belief, or understanding, that there is a deep connection, or even a fundamental unity, between our own existence and consciousness and that of the universe, is both at the heart of religion, and is the key message of our times. “Key” because it is key to our survival as a species. Like the power of the algorithm, this understanding challenges humanistic liberalism and individualism, as Harari defines it. But unlike our new faith in algorithms to address the issues of our times, the earlier message that we can, and need to, transcend our egoism is at the heart of the human condition. It predates humanistic liberalism by tens of thousands of years and can be felt when viewing the art of the first humans on cave walls. And it will supersede our present stage of evolution, if we are to survive at all. It’s a truth with which we have grappled from the beginning, but which rises to paramount importance in an era when we have the power to destroy both our species and the delicate symmetries that make all of life on earth possible. Eventually logic may lead us to the same conclusion. Indeed, we may already have enough scientific knowledge to emphatically confirm it. But if we don’t grasp, at a deep level, and quickly, that in order to survive we must stop destroying the biosphere for selfish reasons, it won’t be very helpful if this understanding remains confined to the rational level. Understanding has always been a matter more for the heart than for the intellect.
