The Needle in the Haystack: A "Common Sense" Narrative
1000 Takes and Most of Them Suck. Figuring Out What Matters in the Era of Mass Opinion.
Ultimately, this short article is simply a reminder to take a deep breath, relax, and reassess how you look at the world. I hope it brings you a little peace today.
Most “hot takes” about why reality is melting before our eyes, are not hot at all. If they aren’t trying to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn, their trying to sell you one to Jerusalem. If its not some product, its some pseudo-religion disguised as a philosophy. We try to sift through the mountains of content featuring belligerent finger pointing, covert advertisements and sterile philosophical perspectives about modern life, in search of some purpose, meaning, or credible explanation for any of what we are experiencing.
I imagine that you, just like me, almost always feel completely unfulfilled after any given 3 hour bender in a useless internet rabbit hole.
You’re always left wanting more, wanting better, and feeling more empty inside with whatever new piece of content you consume. You find yourself using the internet as a distraction more and more as your time gets dragged through the infinite scroll, instead of using it intentionally as a source of wisdom and understanding.
The primary reason for this is the majority of people LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) reality. They pick a narrative—red versus blue, atheism versus theism, communism versus capitalism, conservative versus liberal—and they try to explain everything happening in life through that extremely limited context.
In your search for valuable information about how to understand the world, you end up getting caught in one of these mini-games, becoming a clown in the circus, a mark in the kayfabe super complex. These low-resolution, peripheral takes masquerading as maps for the real territory of reality have no value outside of the mini-game they exist within.
We’re being played. We’re being dragged into an endless cycle of some detective story that never gets to the bottom of anything. Its only objective is to hold onto your eyeballs and never let go. Even if the creator of the content doesn’t want to admit it. They spin in circles the same way, constantly chasing the next engagement milestone. Debunking this, or exposing that or whatever other bullshit spine-tingling tactic they employ to stay relevant in an ever-changing cultural landscape that is more confused than ever about what the hell is actually going on.
Nothing changes. Scooby-Doo and the Gang may pull the mask off the bad guy of the day, but they never get to the heart of any problem and why that problem persists. Today it’s Blackrock, yesterday it was Big Tech, the day before that it was Enron and on and on. Except nothing ever changes after the revelation.
In the early 2000’s it was neo-conservative warhawks. For the last decade it was radical-left international communists. But again, the bank robber makes off with the money all the same and a new conman takes their place. White men were the biggest threat to the world for the last three election cycles. Now it’s, what? Indians? Is it Indians now? Who are we suppose to be hating? I can’t keep up.
Can’t you see? It’s all bullshit.
The answer to the problem, the real needle in the haystack, is transcendent and yet unbelievably simple. It’s called common sense. It’s judging a tree by the fruit that it bears AKA holding individuals accountable for their individual actions instead of stereotyping every group, anytime any one member of the group does something wrong.
It’s honoring the Two Commandments, while also tarring, feathering and humiliating all criminals with the ferocity that Jesus had when he flipped the tables.
It’s reading more well-written books (and articles :) about the evergreen wisdoms of life. You know, the stuff that always works.
It is sitting, and breathing, as Buddha instructs.
It’s believing that you can do far greater things, as Christ charged.
It’s being the hero of your own story and taking back your personal agency.
It’s getting to the heart of the strangeness. It’s admitting that none of us know what the hell is going on here, and starting from there. It’s holding hands and walking into the abyss of the unknown, together. Without assumptions or expectations. Just an open mind and a little bit of courage.
The answer isn’t Christianity, or Islam, or Conservatism, or Communism. The answer is unspeakable, even abstract in relation to our ability to conceptualize it through language or cultural modalities. It is the unspoken Dao, which can only be understood through its felt presence in the experience of being truly alive. Truly alive OUTSIDE of the current cultural context being shoved down your throat by peddlers of kayfabe-realities, LARP mini-games and circus side shows in clown world.
What is real is the transformative space; this dream-like fever we are collectively experiencing together that is not nearly as static as people keep telling us it is. What are the actual rules? What makes a psychological movement start? What makes it go viral? What is the reason for its downfall? What is the source of its negative aspects? Of greed? Of fear? It’s not a political party, or a religion, or an ethnic population. It’s far stranger and deeper than that.
And how do we actually remedy a problem that shows up no matter what or who the bad guy is? What is the virus that infects all hosts and convinces them to deal out suffering and chaos at scale? And how the hell did we get so far from the common sense understanding of transcendent archetypes of the human mind?
At what point did we stop heeding the wisdom of the ancestors in their teachings of the spirits at work? Bad ideas, trauma, ego, and maybe even stranger types of possession are what really corrupt any movement or person.
So we can continue chasing our tails with more finger pointing at whomever it’s hip to criticize and hate. Or we can finally wake up to the reality and see beyond appearances.
The Map is not the Territory.
The Person is not the Problem.
The Truth is Stranger than Fiction.
We must ungrip from what has become a psycho-toxic maelstrom of bad information being recirculated and mutated by more and more frustration, confusion and hatred. We must take a step back, take a deep breath, and remember what the world was like before we all got tricked into participating in this 1984-esque two minutes of hate that we all call the twenty-four hour news cycle.
It’s natural for us to get caught up in the whole mess of rage-baiting and hot takes. We want answers, especially in a time that the amount of secrecy from our institutions and gaslighting from our officials is at an all time high. Our government shrugs their shoulders as mysterious SUV-sized drones buzz across our city skylines. Half of LA is burning with 100 different accusations as to who’s responsible. Our amygdala is working overtime to try and process a thousand perceived threats all at once. It’s just becomes easier to get a simple, all-encompassing explanation in someone’s poorly thought out theory of everything.
It is easy. But it is in no way helpful to you or anyone else. And when you detach yourself from that part of the news cycle, from that part of the internet, from that part of your social circle, you will find, almost immediately, a nearly alarming sense of peace slowly creep in. Don’t fight it. Let it in. Let yourself get normalized to things that are actually normal.
Seek out productive conversations with level-headed people. Remember the joy and adventure that life is. Set your sights on what could be a BETTER future. And start problem solving from there.
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Very good advice. I'm sitting here with this cat and we're so comfy that I hate to disturb her but I have to go now.
Very nicely illustrated 🙏