Lessons from Dead Stars

The exquisitely filmed, if sometimes challenging and ambiguous film, The Fountain (directed by Darren Aronofsky), reminded me of an analogy that periodically occurs to me. The film uses Mayan cosmology in a surreal fantasy that explores the idea of death and rebirth, both in individuals and in the wider universe. In the film, the latter is illustrated by a nebula; the point is made that when a star perishes, it is reborn to make way for new ones. You have probably heard that some of the stars we see at night do not actually exist anymore. They are so far away that the light emanating from them is reaching us many years (perhaps millions) after the source of that light has expired.

What is true in the physical world also applies to the more abstract realms of politics, history and sociology. How many aspects of our day-to-day world, if we really think about it, are just as dead as any star millions of light years away? There is no paucity of insightful intellectual thought in these areas; far from it. If we consider the best of it (a subjective task, to be sure), we will find some commonly repeated themes. Modern warfare, especially since the advent of nuclear weapons, has become a completely destructive and unviable way to solve problems. It may sound like a mere tautology to say that war is destructive, but in the past --say, prior to the 20th Century-- war was at least sometimes practical and profitable for a significant minority. In recent years, that minority has been rapidly shrinking while the devastating effects have exponentially increased. Similarly, the very framework upon which warfare rests, nationalism, has been widely exposed as obsolete. The ease of modern travel, along with the global essence of the modern economy and telecommunications all present us with a world that is unified. I mean this in a purely practical way; you can speak of "everyone is one" in some kind of mystical, spiritual or ecumenical way, and that is fine, but it's also true at a the everyday level of communications and commerce.

So many of our other institutions also keep plugging along on outdated assumptions that most people know quite consciously are, at best, silly, hypocritical and obsolete, and, at worst, deadly and anathema to the long-term survival of civilization. Millions, if not billions of people work in environments that are using 19th Century (and much earlier) models of efficiency, hierarchy and mass production. If we were to sum up the entire paradigm in a single, familiar word, the one most appropriate might be "bureaucracy." Whether we are talking about power hierarchies, legalese, office politics, actual politics, the workplace environment of modern corporations or the myriad of forms and other mindless paperwork we have to continuously fill out, we are living largely under the bureaucratic paradigm that can be traced back at least as far as the Roman Empire. To say that our current society parallels ancient Rome is hardly original, but worth noting all the same. Now Rome in its decline was not so long ago in geological or astronomical terms, but in the context of human society is was quite a while ago. Think of all the progress that has been made in areas such as technology, psychology and, supposedly, in our value system since that time. Yet, as we read about the latest warfare, economic hardships and political corruption, or as we fill out our absurdly complex tax forms, listen to the vague generalities uttered by candidates running for office or the Dilbertesque gobbledygook of corporate mission statements, it seems like there is a serious gap between what we know and what we apply.

It is as if our actions are beyond our control, that some principle of inertia is compelling us to keep behaving in ways we know don't make sense. To use a recent example from the headlines, the supposedly anti-war (Iraq war, that is) Democratic congress recently approved a budget of billions of dollars to continue that war, which almost no one believes in at this point. Some other obvious examples: people continue to spend billions of dollars on junk food that contributes to sickness and obesity; transportation systems continue to be based on automobiles, which deplete natural resources, harm the environment while also contributing to more subtle maladies such as stress and the aesthetic wasteland of the modern suburban landscape. So much of our society is run along these lines. Repetitive, rote behavior is continued in countless areas where many, many people know that there are far better ways to do things.

The dead stars that are visible in the sky provide us with light, not to mention beauty. Unfortunately, their corollary in society -obsolete paradigms such as war, nationalism and bureaucracy-only serve to keep us from manifesting the next stage. What is crucial to realize is how obvious most of this is. So why is it so difficult to implement radical changes for the better? We could talk about the greed, selfishness, corruption and power lust of politicians and corporations. True enough, at least in many instances, but that is not the biggest obstacle. The latter represent such a tiny fraction of the population that they could not possibly keep it going without the consent of the vast majority of the rest of us. Let's face it, even those of us who like to think of ourselves as evolved, enlightened, educated, progressive (or whatever), live, lots of the time, according to obsolete paradigms. We are simply in the habit. It all looks so real and inevitable that we have to keep reminding ourselves that it can be changed in an instant.

I think the real challenge is not to "subvert the dominant paradigm" (as a popular counterculture button/bumper sticker says), but to recognize its basic irrelevance. It's hard to look at headlines and magazine articles and listen to respected talking heads on television and keep this in mind, but the fact is, corporations, nations, wars, laws, paperwork, as well as the wisdom uttered by respected experts in many fields is largely irrelevant today. While much of what we experience is still filtered through the media of these institutions, all of it could be accomplished without them. For example, we might think Microsoft is integral to modern technology and the internet. Yet, does anyone think that if Microsoft (or Apple, Time Warner, Dell, or whoever) went out of business tomorrow that creative people would not figure out a way to regroup and set up workable (probably superior) alternatives? Similarly, letters could be delivered without the Post Office, people could get from Point A to Point B without owning cars, services could be paid for without taxes, security could be established without large military forces and children could learn to read without schools. The point is not that we have to tear down any of these institutions right now, but that we should recognize their essentially temporary, nonessential and ultimately illusory nature. Then we can stop giving so much energy to them and start giving our energy to more viable, vibrant, sustainable and aesthetically pleasing alternatives.

Those who are inclined to believe that we are on the verge of, or in the midst of, a major societal and perhaps spiritual transformation might see the image of a dying star making way for a new one as more than a vague analogy. In any case, the basic point is that what we see does not necessarily reflect the truest version of reality. What we can imagine, envision or simply know is usually closer to the mark.