Full steam ahead in Part 3 of this Contemplation.
We would like to think on internet we interconnect, network, build platforms. We even say that it brings people together - as if “it” has a magical working all of its own. The place where magic happens? Not quite. Most of it is just another System with as many rules as in any real country (appointing new kings....).
On the whole, the Web is a place we come to when we are looking for something (be it as a provider or a demander, but also more metaphysically). May this fact be sealed with the significant percentage of real-life relationships (including marriages) that have been made through websites. However, this makes it, precisely, not a place for your average Buddhist or Yogi. For their practice is to seek and find exactly that which you already are. Why put yourself through added detours, when all is illusion? Still, we all have to travel from birth to death, and choose one mode of transport or other.
Scene from: Ang Lee’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s 2001 novel “The Life Of Pi”.
With a very broad brush stroke, let me wash out the two players in the game of Steemit. As in any game there will be the winners and the losers: it’s the nature of the game, a dualisitic given. Also those who play to win, and those who join in for fun. However, since there is always some contribution required (if only by way of kit and kaboodle and internet fees) few are happy-go-lucky losers.
On team one, we have the entrepreneurs, the established ones, seeking to expand their businesses or social lives; for convenience sake, to this group I must also add the crooks, phoneys, wannabees, souls impounded by the devil. Sorry, but they can handle it. This team uses money and personal satisfaction as a measure of their success.
On the other team, are those who want to join in for fun but also the game-changers and anarchists and sad and lonely ones. This team consists of exiles, fringe-dwellers, the wrecked, and the empty-handed who keep on losing themselves, their stuff, their ideas, always scattered to the wind, flushed down the drain, dissipated into thin air. Put in another way: we have around the board the materialists and the poets. (If “to poet” is to rummage through the collections of things for the elusive Self?) As poets do, they care mainly for the value of their words and images.
On A Positive Note
When we already feel outcast, outsiders, on the fringe of real-life (unemployed, handicapped, emprisoned in any which situation, or otherwise either forlorn or looking) we come to surf on an improvised life-boat, often no more than a raft or not even: just a piece of flotsam. We navigate the treacherous unknown like Martel’s tiger-tamer, Pi. We have been jettisonned or wrecked and come clinging onto a barrel of hopes. Hoping for what, exactly?
Anyone who has read “Pi” will know the chances of surviving an extended time alone at sea are slim and largely depend on living out the illusion - and daring to reach beyond. We all have to be gamers to an extent, the universe has us in a double-bind of do or die, but die you must. To overcome this doomed prospect we invented a game of snakes and ladders. The more rungs to climb the more excited we get!
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| Snakes and Ladders: a game of morality lesons. Each picture in this version represents a virtue or a vice. A good throw gets you up a ladder (virtue), a bad one, slides you down a slippery snake (vice). | Originally an Indian game called Gyan Bazi. Above a Jain example of a cloth board from 19th century. |
There is a positive note to be struck, however. Coming from a philosophy that smacks of Buddhism, but no less harkens back to the days when one joined the clergy mainly to contribute to culture, I was momentarily struck by how Steemit might be likened to a path of self-realisation.
Here is a place that has no moral law-giver nor - thanks to the money element prevalent - is this a sentimental spot. Technically, we find ourselves on a forum of experiments for liberation.
The School That is Steemit
Why not post on Facebook or Instagram or stick to your own Blog? Why come here? Why do Swedes travel to Thailand? Why do Chinese go to see van Gogh in his native land? People are natural born explorers and adventurers. Not everyone wants to test themselves in a “Lost” (desert island) scenario; not everyone wants to rise to celebrity status and be rescued. Not just a few people, however, generally my age or even older (45-65) are here on a challenge (to self) to see what more they can effect or be effected by. They may have, already, surrendered themselves to their limitations but they are not quite inert yet! What type of tour du monde, or school of life does Steemit make, then?
A good trip is only as good as its taker. A good education depends on what lies within.
Individuals make the difference, and I suppose the last challenge left is to educate one’s neighbour as one would like to see onself elevated. We can't keep looking at eachother like monkies. One day, surely, we'll all know how to fry and egg or fix a roof or we will have decided not to want to know how to give birth underwater or climb the Kilimanjaro. What's left to know when we have peered down oceanic vents, discovered two types of iron supplement, and chosen our favorite amplifier? Are we not already in the know that knowing stuff hardly equates being especially intelligent (emotionally/spiritually)?
We should be very slowly, oh so teeth grindingly slowly, be entering the age of a tolerance that knows there is no meaningful distinction to be had in differences in race or religion. We aren’t there, yet… But the days are a-coming, oh, they will surely come…. (maybe). The only true discriminator between people lies in the different levels or types of intelligence. In short, this has little to do with what you have been taught, and everything with what you have brought out of yourself. The individual has to learn to be authentic, original and unique by daring to be their Self. It takes a bit of computing, discipline, concentration, determination and much consolidation - whether you build a rocket or grow sugar cane.
New Intelligence
As we progress into the future, we will have to come to rely less entirely on the intelligence of our brains, for then we will only lose out to robots and computers, or if the game is about longevity, to trees or jelly fish (plenty of intelligence at work there, if only not applied to holding a pen or turning a knob). We need a good head on our shoulders first and learn to think. But then we also have to let that go again, as a mastered skill, allowing us to do what needs to be done; like driving a car is a useful skill to help us on our journey, and should never become fully automatic, but doesn't warrant constant "thinking about" either. Which skills will we really come to rely on?
Every now and then I drop a controversial notion and my latest one is, that as long as we have prisons, hospitals and schools - as we currently know them (serving law-givers, money-makers and the oligarchs of society who thrive on a fear-culture) we cannot speak of having an advanced civilisation. They do nothing to further the kind of intelligence we will have to come to depend on if we are to do more than simply survive (a bit longer).
Content-curation
Life will end (with a bang or a gurgle) and then what? Let’s not think too big, for now, and consider the teeny-weeny legacies each and every soul leaves behind. The less you write, produce, speak or do, the less this legacy may be, but also the less the pollution, waste or debris to clean up after you. Not everyone has much to testify to, or leave behind in a testament. Some of us feel compostable at most, and I think these humble souls may be the wisest ones among us, yet.
What do the souls that were the starving babies in Biafra leave behind? A rather uncouth cynic would hope they, too are indispensible, in how they may refertilise the arid ground somehow…. But also the Unattached and Liberated (Buddhist) mind cannot be sentimental in his all-encompassing compassionate view of the world. It is one thing not to think in classes or castes in terms of inferiority, but another to acknoweldge it takes certain steps to attain a new way of seeing clearly, walking steadily and talking measuredly. This is to feel responsible for the health of all souls.
There are a great many “school-leavers”, checking out of the regular games of life who are looking for (something like?) Steemit, in order to give of what they have become, on a wing and a prayer, to those looking for a new way in, back to school, in search of a new consciousness. At the same time, a good teacher is an even better student, and remains ever open to learning from everyone. If you create a platform with too many parameters you are going to do the same as always and create elitist niches.
There are however good schools and bad schools, also from a spiritual perspective. Not just anything goes and works. A modicum of discipline (self-rule) is indispensible. May one not become dogmatic or zealous, though! Simultaneously, we have to become eachother’s quality controllers.
The tricky bit is, though, how to begin on a virtual footing? We find the most integral and sincere websites that form mini communities, or workspaces generally have a foundation in real-life. There is actually face-to-face contact (if even only by video call). There is some kind of recruitment procedure or invitation. While, I think, ideally it is helpful to step away from this, it does not solve the problem of how to generate meaningful content.
Leaders Need To Be Followers
What you don’t want is more reviews, recommendations, advice or feed-back; more How-to- or What-is sites, which basically communicate information and play into the information culture and the real, economical market of products, stuff, matters of interest and current affairs. This will not inspire a new virtual travel location, or Utopic Work and Leaning place.
The monetary element is not the problem; it merely spots the problem, and as such may even be part of the solution (quality control). Nor does everybody have to deliver "professional" copy, some of us are better at managing finances or scouting talent. But remains the main problem of who do we think we are, and who is going to tell us and why should we let them?
Man needs stimulation which equates meaningful validation. Gurus are only tricksters, putting you to the test. How ready are you to penetrate the lie? Few manage to be that selfless and even fewer proove trustworthy guides. The best ones follow your progress and validate you as you are. And you let them till you no longer can bear to be that person. Or you end up trapped in the web and will be gobbled up by the friends who pretended to like you in real life.
Getting Ready To Be Ready To Change
I don’t know if Steemit (or any other parallell platform) is ready for a new way of connecting us humans by enabling our true selves to wake up. That is to ask, Steemit, being us, unfangled and unmanipulated (?): are we ready?!
What can we invent to take the place of what used to be the function of relgion (=to tie back to our collective Self)? What could be the equivalent to the monastic stations situated between earth and the Higher Worlds? How can we offer the seeking refuge, support and training? How to build communities on virtual personas? That, of course, cannot be done.... How then to be "real" and whole on the internet?
Fontvraud Abbey by Coyau / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Possibly, Steemit is the manifestation of a prepratory stage. In the near future, some clever heads will have to come together and design a science which looks at our future social needs from a spiritual perspective (so not a statistical, empirical, abstract and conservative one, nor just a fancy reformatting of what already has be tried endlessly). This can only be done by standing in the midst of the ones who are ready to level-up.
Nicholas Roerich's banner of peace.
Steemit As A Path
On a positive note then, I found myself comparing a life on Steemit to one in Buddhism. Howzat?!
Well, look at the Five Precepts we get to practice here (the vows of a practitioner). I am a massive Alan Watts fan, so I shall be using his translation and then they read: (1) do not destroy life, (2) do not take what is not given, (3) do not exploit your desires, (4) do not speak in a phoney way, (5) avoid intoxication.
Lesson 1 and 2
Roughly speaking, I like to assume those on Steemit will have mastered the first two precepts: do not kill and do not steal. In copy writing and photographing this comes down to contributions that concern life (no plans for the next massacre discussed here, god forbid!), and we all seem to be keen to accredit the original source where relevant (we’d all like to stay out of court!). Also figuratively speaking, I have not come across any bullying, bashing or soul-destroying feedback.
The drawback to this high level of tolerance and easy-going attitude is, that it feels extremely superficial. Frequently a reply finds a post “mind-blowing” without further extenuations. Why?! You wonder. And then you hear the button drop into the collection box.
I’d love to see more “amazing” content. Not necessarily serious, but sincere, and maybe challenging but above all novel.
Lesson 3 and 5
This one is a tricky one. Alan Watts knows his Sanskrit and the original third precept does not translate: do not commit adultery, as is often quoted. It's about reigning in your desires. It’s not easy to say there is no exploitation going on here, for to make money is to exploit (in the nicest possible - if possible -way).
It boils down to mindfulness and respect. It is unwise to pick up a lover as a consolation prize; it is hazzardous to take that first drink to comfort yourself; one quick fix soon leads to addiction, and then you will find yourself programmed like a will-less robot going through the motions.
If votes are no different to likes, be they to win favour or to accumulate your own treasures, then Steemit will have become another one of your narcotics.
Lesson 4
Speaking for myself, I find all of internet somewhat like a huge ear-trumpet leading down into a wormhole of all that I was. A molasses black and deadly stifled past, leaching energy away from the future. It is in this funnel how we discover how tricky it is to practice “right speech”. The type of waste-not-want-not speech is mindful and honest, measured and generous at the same time but classically quickly misunderstood. It is too unconditional and unself-serving for the Net. It walks a very fine and tight-rope line; you have to have a lot of faith to walk on or pause but not wobble.
When does the prospector have anything to gain by “being real”. How “profitable” is being genuine?
New Heart-Felt Format
What if there is a self-defeating purpose to Steemit but with a precious spiritual lesson: to show to those who tend to flood difficult situations with words (see “At Last” by Edward St Aubyn) that there comes a point when inarticulation is inevitable? This may well be the moment of peace you have been looking for all along. Is that then the moment you step off social media platforms? To continue ... in real life? So internet was not real? Fake?
Could we go so far as to say, those who stick up the boards with photos have the same horror vacui and are perhaps, even more superficial than any writer ever could be - dealing in surfaces andrepresentations - and because there is no auditory sense involved in picture taking (unless perhaps, if you take a photo of a steam train...?). Or is anybody who made it this far online, already more socially invested than they who stay at home infront of the telly and mumble, ‘What have I got to share that is worth sharing?” Or are we nuts to trust, there’s always that frittata nicely arranged on a plate with a couple of extra large capers and a serving of pickled cauliflower, you had for lunch, and megalomaniacs for believing “I can help others by showing them how tai chi and qi gong worked for my psoriasis.”
All friendly folk, but it brings the adage to mind that nothing will aid the comprehension of yourself but you your self. It is our ultimate desire to know who we are and where we are headed; but we are continuously distracted by the new desires created for us by (well-willing) others. Taoistically, or Zen-Buddhistically, it could be perceived as a disservice, ultimately, to share and care by bringing gifts. It would be kinder to be reserved and withold them your splediferous Nigella Lawson recipes and not send them pics of your Swarovski crystal themed Christmas tree. But how, then, does one go about alleviating the suffering of all others, if not by cheering them along with pretty and sweet little nothings?
Could we, somewhere, if not on Steemit, but why not on Steemit, as good a place as any, meet eachother heart to heart? Not to possess or curb or judge. Holding onto our common sense but putting down our cutting swords or cynical and unnuanced criticism. Guarding against the dysphoria that comes with a restive intelligence too easily unpleasantly bored. Guiding by example: true to life experiences, witnessed with sensitive intelligence.
How To Continue The Game?
There will, naturally, come a crash for social media. At it’s core it’s an economic venture and not a project meant to save souls. The crisis is upon us, already. Things will come tumbling down in avalanches quicker than before, because the snow has packed itself faster and more haphazzardly in our quickened times.
Aside religious people, nobody much takes the salvation of the soul very seriously. It simply does not appeal to the modern, mental imagination. When we used to think with our whole self it was different; but how to return to this integrated state of union? We will have to rediscover the body-mind-soul-spirit being as our only ticket for peace, harmony and, who knows, maybe even eternal life.
If we are to survive the 21st century as social beings, we will have to reinvent society. This is not a task for politics (designed for building cities) but for the artists and (spiritual)scientists who demonstrate to us how we work best as sentient beings; and philosophers and modern magi to envision how levels of Higher Consciousness are best explored. These aren't astrologers from the East who have come down from their tall towers pointing to the heavens, but people like us, plucking a daisy and cradling a child, writing a script, nursing our elderly, inventing circuit breakers and herding sheep to give us snug yoga leggings.
I predict one of two things will happen in the future. Either social media will disappear entirely, like a puddle in the sun. Or new wells will have to be dug. There may not come a next Zuckerberg who will invent a kind of Waldzell (as in Castalia; cf. Herman Hesse, “The Glass Bead Game”), but it sure would be swell to find somewhere to hang out and share an impulse that is hard to nurture in the Real World (for many varied factors and displacing influences). We can't really hope to build new kinds of churches in the Real World without creating an eyesore for some unhappy soul. Sanctuaries of learning and helping will be brought down by legistlations. On the Web one can still be more "occult" (hidden literally) albeit not to hide on purpose, let alone to obfuscate or deceive. But to sit and wait for whomever might be interested. Only you have to be somewhere, in good faith, endorsed, so others know where to find you.
Goodbye solitaire, hello meaningful community.
All aboard the choo-choo.
Have a great journey, steam on,
Your Sukhasana Sister @Sukhasanasister
