‘Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There’s no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we’re the imagination of ourselves.' - Bill Hicks
What Bill was talking about here is open to subjective interpretation. His main point comes across to me very clearly. If we are the imagination of ourselves, then are we not able to imagine anything? Certainly something better than we have managed so far. Something that involves all of us?
We spend a great deal of time thinking about what we do or don't deserve. Then, once in a while, we're forced to think about others that have been truly fucking hammered with the fuck you stick. How does that work exactly? Some poor innocent, like a child who's legs and arms have been blown off by the bomb that kills the rest her family, gets to endure a living death so my life can perpetually seem better by comparison? Or how about those babies born with terrible deformities as a result of low visibility nuclear warfare by depleted uranium munitions? Born to suffer then die almost immediately. The majority of our lives are quite a bit better than that from anyone's subjective position I would think. Let's assume those babies and children, the collateral damage for our best effort at collective imagination so far, do not deserve such a fate. The rest of us, who's lives are infinitely better by comparison, should be so affronted, that as one, we are compelled to take steps to imagine something for the world that does not produce such horror.
If you were able to be aware of every other human being's experiences at the same time, in parallel to your own, would you be able to sit and watch television whilst at the same time a whole village of people were needlessly starving?
Imagine the effect on us as a species if we were to take Bill's idea to heart. That would mean we could only judge humanity based on our collective experience. At the same time, more of us might be incentivized to be pro-active in re-imagining the world.
We don't know what life is.....let's choose what it means and make that choice with the objective of lifting us all. Why does the idea and emotion inspired by 'no man left behind' resonate at every tribal scale other than the one that matters the most.....humanity as a whole?
There are things happening on our planet, right now, that if i think too much about them, make me feel like pulling my eyes out and eating them. Thankfully, there are also things happening that make me choke up with a desperate joy......like every act of courage, sacrifice and love....made by millions. There is enough love for everyone at the same time.....we just need to broaden the scope of our collective imagination.
If there is an after-life, the only thing that makes sense to me, is that we are reintroduced to the reality that we are all one. That we will share an equal part of each other's subjective experiences so that those poor bastards who got nothing, get to share in everyone else's joy and the rest of us get to share and know their pain, fear and loneliness. Until any sense of separation is assuaged.
Let's imagine more, for everybody