Philosophical Analysis of Humanity and Its Obsession with Control

I want to let you know, before we begin our journey into the winding spaces in the pages of this story, something that will help. I must tell you, yes you, sitting there, reading this story, that in between these pages time no longer exists, the world outside of this story no longer matters. I invite you to finally and fully relax, if the phone rings, leave it, if there is a knock at the door, don't answer, because it is time to relax. Leave the hustle and bustle of life behind, find in your mind a green hill with one tree to sit under and relax, allow yourself to follow along without worry. If you can do this then I think that you might be on the path; already you should be able to see the meadow, green with some gentle hills. The wind blows lightly over the grass turning it into a great green sea and makes you think that if you could see far enough you might see the beach that the sea meets with.

Have you found the tree yet?

Sincerely,

Your author

There is an element in life that is illusory as it is farcical to humans. That element is control. We like to think that we have made enough progress to say that we control this or that, but in reality this is not so. For example, we believe that we control our own world, that we as individuals are independent and can say that we own ourselves and are masters of ourselves. If this was so, if we had truly mastered ourselves, there would be no such thing as "things got out of hand" or "I didn't meant to" because we would always do only what we mean to do. By not admitting that there is something about our world that we simply cannot control we take no steps forward, not even any steps backward, we stand very still on the precipice of our own development and evolution.

Admitting to ourselves that we cannot truly and fully master ourselves is unthinkable because we believe people are rational, logical beings with the ability to restrain themselves when necessary. This notion is only slightly correct. Experience has shown us that a person can be a rational, logical being but people are still the same panicky, irrational being that they have always been. This idea that we have less control than we believe may leave a bad taste in the mouth but if we accept it then we can move forward in our evolution into the beings we wish we were because it is conscious knowledge of this fact that would make us try to achieve better in ourselves and this striving that we do so well for the goal like this would make the idea of control less of a joke and more of a reality only because we are trying. This goal is not entirely attainable though and it is good that it isn't because a life that can be fully controlled and has no surprises is quite quiet and boring. Though this goal may never be reached, we can only hope, in time we might find that it is unnecessary to achieve it and in a way understand ourselves better.

Back

And

Forth...

The words seem to sway

In the wind attached to flimsy

Lines tied down to grass

Blades ready to cut the strings,

We will notice, if only ---

--Too late!

There they go

Far

And-

Get back------(here)

Gotcha Now! Don't

I! I control

Where you go.

"here" you go

there, right th-

No! no, no, no, no

Quit moving!

Dammit! Where is

Here

Now?

This is how we look at ourselves when we think of how much power we have. What we don't like to see, that ugly truth about humanity, is what we are at the mercy of. We have lost our belief in it because we have fallen into regulated patterns that bore some to tears, or we have explained so much about the world that we're not sure what's left for it. The "it" that I have yet to name is mysticism. Our control, which we flex like a large bicep quite often, has leaked, has seeped, like blood from one organ to the next, infecting the body, into things that should never have been controlled. We leave our darkest of marks on things when we don't realize that we have over regulated something that is alive in and of itself.

Mysticism, or fate, or whatever divine word may pass your lips, is just as alive and sentient as the human being. It can be mean, and nice. It can help you, but it can also kick you when you're down. There was a point in time when the mystical unknown was attributed to beings on another plane of existence but with human qualities, such as lust, jealousy, anger, and hatefulness, it was just accepted that these beings could do that and that humans could do nothing to control or rein in their insensitive ways.

This is unthinkable as far as we are concerned today, if we were met with any kind of mysticism from this old world that believed in the elemental power, magic, or mythology we would not know what to do, we might be scared of it. Why? As rational beings we should be able to understand and appreciate it. The real truth is that if we had been met with anything like this we would be afraid because it would reveal only our own weakness, it would reveal the chink in the armor of our ego, it would show us that we are not on the top of the ladder, it would cause us to run from the truth of ourselves. We are not in control.

"That's not possible! This stuff doesn't exist!" They just looked at him with knowing eyes. He had been told all of his life that the only way to get what you want out of life is by the sweat of your back and these gypsies were sitting here telling him in sober tones about the existence of something called free magic. "It's entirely true, free magic is the oldest and perhaps longest forgotten thing in this world, it's what created all things. You can believe the notions of modern religion, science, and so on and so forth, they strayed from the path a very long time ago. Humans were once highly concentrated forms of free magic and could bend reality to their will, now only a very few groups of people are still able to use it."

They were covered with tattoos that seemed to interlock and at the same time not so much. "So where did our driver go then? Why did he leave, did he need to take a piss or something you guys are freaking me out." They explained to him that the night carried with it pockets of free magic flowing like little rivers between the stalks and their driver fed on it instead of eating solid foods. "He'll be back soon but someone else is going to have to drive feeding on this stuff can be exhausting." A scream interrupted their conversation, definitely not the driver's but right in the direction that he went. "Shit! Another one! You people just can't stay away from shiny lights in the darkness can you?"

"That's the third one this week. People are going to get very suspicious about this if we don't keep a close eye on that." They left the vehicle and their hitchhiker all alone on the side of the road, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere. "What world have I fallen into?" He pinched himself and slapped his face to wake up. It was useless this was real and he was still trying to understand it. All through history he had always read that there was a god, gods, or some logical reasoning to hold onto for humans to believe in but this was out of a whole different kind of history. Humans being made up of just energy, or free magic, as these people call it, is just not real, their joking.

All of these thoughts were still reeling in his head when they came back to the car. One was helping their driver and the other two were arguing over something and pointing at him in the car. One made a gesture across his neck and pointed out into the field. "If their talking about what I think they are then I'm out." He opened the door and ran out into the field they just came from, he didn't know why he went that way he just picked a direction and ran. The other two followed him until he tripped over something. The light from the car's headlights was just enough to help him see the dried up husk of a human being out in the field next to him.

Where have we gone with ourselves since we began the experiment known as civilization? It has gone too far and we have lost who we are. We have lost that wild side that we once had. Any who are considered "wild" by society are actually very tame compared to what I am talking about. I am talking about that same wild feeling that we once had before we began to limit ourselves and tell ourselves what we can't do. Somewhere along the way we forgot that we can do anything and that anything is possible. The wild look in the eye of true human being is something that has not been seen for years at a time in more than perhaps one or two "radical" human beings who really are only that way so that they can achieve their own agenda. Have you ever looked into the eyes of a wild animal? There is no agenda, they think with their instincts and react with their gut. They move because something tells them that here is no longer safe. We always talk about that sixth sense that animals seem to have, the only reason we don't have it is because we over complicate things in our lives.

We have caged ourselves within our minds, with our own minds. We have locked away the lions and the tigers and all of our animal spirits and we have let them rot without anything to feed on, no wide ranges in our selves to run around in. What have we done to ourselves? We have locked up our best parts and left them to gather dust, and why; because we are too busy chaining ourselves with the "I can't". If there is any more deplorable saying in the world, it has to be I can't. The only thing that I can't means is that whoever is saying it is afraid of what they might feel when they do it.

Look at any child and you can see the barely contained, wild excitement that makes them do something, which is partly the reason why they answer "I don't know why I did it." Many times they don't know because they are still wild, they are still uncaged. At some point though we lose that wild look and our eyes glaze over because we become used to being served up our thoughts by the zookeepers in this world. We are fed by hand what we are supposed to do, how it is supposed to be done, and more and more we are taught how little we actually have to think for ourselves because no one wants to be the one who gets blamed for making a mistake.

Be wild! I tell you now that fear is the only thing that keeps us in line, fear of what the neighbors might think,

fear of losing our jobs,

fear of not achieving our goal in society. Well fuck

the neighbors, and is the goal that was set for you by society really what you want to do with your life? This is what I think bothers every human being that has to

trudge through life

as part of the world in general. Everyone has desires that are left unfulfilled; these are the most powerful of desires.

Make mistakes,

it is the best way to learn about yourself and I promise you that the more mistakes you make and learn from the more you will be able to do, the more you understand the world around you. However our society has gotten so afraid of making mistakes that we have told ourselves not to try anymore. This is what we need to do more of,

TRYING

Without it we make no mistakes, we make no life, we live empty and hollow, and might as well bury an empty casket instead of putting a body into it.

I plead with you to think for yourself and take initiative for yourself. Humans are used by their own civilization. The great hand of society points and like slaves under some unseen master's control we go without question. We do go quietly into that goodnight because that is what we like to do, we like to quietly move into our own demise like some new house.

It's been three months since then. Three months since the president gave the country its final order. "Kill them all" he said, who "them" happened to be was obvious, because no one specified we realized that "them" meant everyone, even our best friends. There was no draft, no war for a draft really, one day we were all neighbors, the next day we pulled out our rifles and shotguns and became each other's executioners. Bridges were blown out, trains were derailed and a sickness came over the country. We were diagnosed with a disease known as Mass Murder. It had turned from a sunshiny world to the apocalypse no one had even dreamed of.

The odd thing, the really weird thing about it all was that no one said "no". We just cleaned our guns and armed ourselves for war upon ourselves. Now, after everyone has shot each other and those still alive holed themselves up as hermits there's just the few of us that were able to survive the initial rush. Now the sun, shameful of our actions, has decided to shine no longer, the sky is eternally gray; the plants that so need the sun have turned white and become ghosts to match the army of souls buried no where and everywhere all at once. I don't know how much longer it will go, but I can see that no help is coming. We had become crazed, worse than zombies, more like rabid animals stuck in the same cage. No one wanted to touch the diseased country we had become. Canada and Mexico both built high smooth walls that could not be climbed over, every country in the world blew up every kind of sailing vessel. Escape from this place is impossible, only survival is left, true Darwinism taken to the utmost extreme.

What are we if we have not become wild? Well, the answer should be simple but it isn't anymore. We still think of ourselves as an accountant or construction worker, but we forget the Emerson credo to be the man constructing or the man accounting which is what we should be; man first then our job title or woman first and then the job title if you want to take the word man meaning only men, which it really shouldn't because for years the word "man" has been short for "Human" but this all besides the point, which is a very important one to our daily lives as people who are free and that is that words are not so dangerous as people think because there are many ways to say something but the worst way to say something is in a way that you don't really mean it-I'm talking about political correctness, which is a way of limiting what we say and how we say it because there are some people in this day and age who are too fucking soft to just let go of the fact that someone said something the way they didn't like it, because god forbid we call "little people" midgets, or "African Americans" blacks due to the fact that they might have some kind of negative connotation in the mind of the people who hear them and who make the jokes about everyone else as well which is why white people are the only ones who give a shit about being politically correct and its that they are afraid of being called a racist, when really it's the people who say that someone else is a racist who are really the most racist because they are the ones who make a big deal about it all- come on they're just words folks, it's not like any blood falls from the ears when they hear something they don't like only because they have no sense of humor and cannot laugh at themselves being made fun of like most of the people who are made fun of should be doing instead of grabbing their torch and pitchforks and running free speech out of town like some disease ridden monster when really all we need to do is turn off that internal censor in our minds, let ourselves be free from the shackles on our tongues and watch the world tremble with laughter when the whole joke is told without any interruptions in the language like a public service announcement that cuts into the show you were just watching- in the end we should take an example from a very uncommon sentence, one that is truly sentient and takes no orders, it just does what it wants and says what it wants which is the main goal of what is called a labyrinthine sentence, which frees the mind and allows the writer to say anything because in the context of this sentence the writer no longer has to control himself(and I won't add any qualifier to that goddammit) he can just say what comes to mind because whatever comes to mind inevitably has to do with what the writer is saying and still it interests you, the reader, to follow along to the end of one of these sentences like you just did now.

We like to control ourselves and as you can see we have fun in not controlling ourselves also, which presents a problem, do we go with what we like or what we have fun doing? The important thing is to do what you want to do, not what someone else says you want to do, take a different card out of the pack, hell take three cards. Take off the watch you've been wearing for the past few years and notice the day around you, please. If you don't take my advice and decide what you want to do on your own, then you have understood me perfectly. We control ourselves with a heady notion that we are able to manage time. This is impossible; time goes on without us and will keep ticking away as long as it wants to. We can only really manage ourselves inside that time that we give ourselves.

The only difference when it comes to time is our perception of its passing. Experience shows us how much slower time seems to pass when we aren't wearing a watch than when we are. When we do wear a watch we tend to be a little neurotic about how much time we have to do anything and this ends up affecting our personality and way of dealing with things. When a person wears a watch there seems to be a tendency for them to be always in a state of barely contained impatience, these people can even become hyper controlling if they wear it long enough, often showing up way too early for something and thereby getting bored because of their need to control themselves. When we take off the watch, and quit watching the watch we free ourselves from ourselves really,

Take off the shackles,

Shrug off the weighty chains of the day,

We become free and give ourselves up to what could be a much fuller day. The time seems to pass slowly for us because we are no longer in control of it, we no longer can keep a close eye on it. The one who does not wear a watch tends to be a little more relaxed, late for a lot of things, closer to themselves and their inner thoughts. They get closer to their more wild side because they no longer have to worry about the time, and worrying about time is what gets us to try to manage time, when we must realize that time goes at the same pace with or without a watch, but we need to let go of the watch and find out what a truly free human being can do.

It had been a few years since then,

Since he had lost his watch, at the same

Time as his job, before, but not too much,

He had lost it all.

He used to see her hands in his dreams,

Ticking away the disappointments because

He always had to keep up appointments,

No more dreams,

Without his watch there is no more time,

He has run out of his allotted minutes,

But has made up for them in hours at

The bar,

The clock is broken

It's always quitting time,

But he doesn't quit the day anymore

He quits the weeks,

The months,

The years

spent under the yoke

With his tiny Swatch of life pointing

which way he should go,

The clock he goes by now

Is right all day

Correct only twice

But he's done with the race

Done running with mice

Away from one rat and into the

Other.

His new friend Tequila treats him well

And burns the seconds down for him,

Tick, shot, tick, shot, shot, shot, shot.

We can be free. We can be truly human and still interact with the rest of the world. This can be done with one simple change in our own outlook about ourselves. We must come to realize that at some point or another everyone is interdependent, as any man farming and he will tell you. There is a string that binds all of us together and we must grasp hold of the string. No matter where you are you must remember what makes a human truly human. This is the trait that binds all humans, all moments together. We lost our grip on it somewhere along the line and we must regain our footing to see where this string is. It runs through us and with us at the same time and we must lose hold of it. Should anyone lose that one thing that makes us totally and completely free and truly human then I hope this message has reached you. I hope that you understand what I have been attempting to get at and try to implement it in your own life. This idea and feeling that can fill up the soul and make us feel hurt is what keeps us going and I ask you to hold fast to it for yourself, the person next to you, anyone you think might need it, even if they say they don't trust your own instincts, how many times have they let you down, and hold fast to this for their and your sake.

Hope...

can give us purpose

can purposely hurt us helping

can help us live when laid low

can lay waste to full hearts

can fully confuse our focus

can focus its energies towards distraction

can distract our minds from our plans

can plan for future "cans"

because hope is all we have

when nothing's left in our hands.