cosmicobjects

[cosmicobjects]

The Year is 4.543?

The year is 315,000 from the earliest human fossil discovered in Morocco.

OR

The year is 4,543,000,000 give or take from the Earth's formation.

OR

The year is 2024... 2024 years after a man was born and Europe got tired of adhering to the Roman dating system. And now the entire world uses this date.

Lynn Hunt, author of Measuring Time, Making History and professor of history at UCLA says:

One of the early writers to date this way was Dionysius Exiguus, a monk who, in 525 A.D., was intent on working out when exactly Easter would occur in the coming years. Given the importance of calculating when significant religious occasions should be observed, he formulated a new table of when the holiday would fall, starting from a year he called “532.”...The hinge idea, that there’s before Jesus and after Jesus really only takes root in the 17th and 18th century."

And now all of America's grocery stores revolve around this. Easter in Spring, Christmas in December. Society feels 2024 years old. We feel important. We feel part of the most advanced period.

I can't imagine on a daily basis writing 4.543 billion give or take 50 mil years... we'd have a cute little symbol by now for it. It would get far too complex when the year is 4,543,000,001... how would we abbreviate it? Perhaps a modern day roman numeral system would be in place. Ultimately, I'm getting at this...

Writing the real year might change our mindset about life as a whole and our relationship to it. Would it effect religions? Would it effect how we proceed through life? Or would nothing change at all?

[cosmicobjects]

TO WONDER WHAT IT MEANS PT 1

A bird is flying across the sky out my window. It looks so peaceful. No doubt the bird has seen death, but the bird is not asking why. It's flying again in another day. It doesn't think to itself, " I should make th most out of this, I don't know when my time will come." Same for the bear, the octopus, the whale, the giraffe, the gorilla. They are not thinking about what it means to be alive.

To wonder what it means is to wonder if it's about you.

To wonder what it means is to wonder if it ends.

What will happen to me?

We are so attached to the lives we complain about.

Before assuming this is an innate human issue we suffer from, it's worth noting the response of the Hadzabe tribe in Tanzania. They are one of the last surviving truly hunter gather tribes in the area. When asked "Life's toughest questions" the following aswers were given:T

What's the most important thing in life?

"Meat" one man laughs. "Meat, honey, corn porridge, and uh... going hunting for baboon, antelope, zebra." Then he excitedly points to the cliff where the baboons sit and mimics their sound while detailing how they will sneak up on them in the night.

When was your happiest moment?

"We are happy when we get honey and meat." one man askers. Another younger boy says, "To be happy, we need meat."

What do the stars and moon mean?

"Nothing" one man says. Another man says, "when the moon is full, it's too bright for hunting."

This seems to mean that asking, "what does it mean" is introduced to us and without larger life threatening problems, our mind latches onto it as the prime survival threat. Because surviving is overlooked in a society like ours. We are chasing celebrity, wealth, power, influence. We are chasing likability to make us more money to be able to "do whatever we want". We are chasing admiration, praise, legacy.

If you don't feel hunted, if can order food at anytime, if you can go to the doctor within minutes, then the mind is able to latch onto the next presumed threat - forgeability, so-called averageness, not achieving your dreams, an un-admired life.

Is the idea that we're somehow more advanced, more important, more spiritual, simply a bi-product of a powerful mind being introducing to asking "what it means".

To wonder what it means is to wonder if it's about you. To wonder what it means is to wonder if it ends. To wonder what it means to to wonder "what will happen to me, to the people I love, to the things I hold value?"

Would we be a happier species mentally without out basic needs met? None of us would be willing to find out. It's impossible to take away the comforts that have been arranged. It also seems impossible to avoid it going this way no matter what. Our brains were built to have ideas and solve problems. Over and over again making a new problem. What will we become with the luxuries AI will bring about? What will become of our mental health? Can we find happiness in the basics of life when we watch so many people live far more lavish, powerful lifestyles? How can our competitive nature be lulled? How can our longing to be remembered be soothed? Is it possible to silence the wondering as other animals do, or is it impossible to stop once we started asking as the human race?

[cosmicobjects]

Top shelf

THE TOP SHELF OF MY CHILDHOOD CLOSET was the last line of defense for secret keeping in my house. A note from the girl I kissed. Lacey underwear. An erotic draft of an alien love story. A bra with watermelon slices. Trinkets from the Wiccan store I'd been to in Colorado. The things my mom would throw away. The things my mom would arrange prayer meetings over. The things my mom would not want in the house. That was in high school. In college I didn't think my mom would search my backpack while home for Thanksgiving. I didn't think she's find her 19 year old's birth control. And I certainly didn't think she would cry about it... proclaiming "If you're not a virgin I'd having nothing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving".