THE FORKIE PHILOSOPHER

Mindless Musings

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  • FIRST TENTATIVE STEPS – LET’S GET TOGETHER: Rise of the Tycoons #1

    We’ll skip the primordial soup and jump ahead a few eons. I reckon we can bypass the evolution stage, and the debate for that matter. Let’s kick-off with the original human beings wandering the landscape looking for and trying not to become food. Shit! Can you imagine the treacherous learning curve for those people? Especially before they got together and figured out how to communicate.

    I imagine the first few generations didn’t last too long at all. We always hear about the gazillion to one chance that life exists at all; but the odds that an unskilled and unarmed human could survive long enough to find a mate and then pop out a munchkin must be just as astronomical!

    Despite constant peril somehow our ancestors managed to produce enough offspring to launch a bona fide species. After countless bouts of fatal trial and error, combined with a capacity to pass information on to the next hapless human test subject, they managed to compile enough knowledge to shift the odds of survival a little more onto the positive side.

    These primitive pioneers managed to survive thanks to a combination of ingenuity and communication (opposable thumbs probably helped too). This relatively puny creature with practically no natural weaponry, no great speed, no flight or great climbing ability, no feathers or fur, practically no hair (it’s as if they were not meant to make it!), no innate camouflage…holy fuck! It truly is miraculous!

    They endured and they learned. Eat this, don’t eat that. Stay well clear of those; if you hear this you better move your ass! They created tools and weapons. They fabricated clothing to keep warm. And fire! You little beauty! Did they make it or discover it? Google that, we haven’t got time.

    At this small tribal stage, I surmise that things were pretty egalitarian. No place for fat cats in this environment. Working together was the only way to survive. A group with no cohesion or too much dead weight would have slim to no chance of making it. There wouldn’t have been much tolerance for selfishness or greed.

    Now between tribes…I can see trouble brewing there. Like most trouble we humans seem to generate, it arises from too many of us. As we got better assimilated to the environment, we went from mere survival to flourishing of a sort.

    While hardly a population explosion, our numbers increased markedly. A nomadic tribe could only function up to a certain amount of people; the logistics just weren’t suited for mass procreation. Thus, it meant that the number of tribes, rather than the tribes themselves began to increase.

    While a few adventurous mobs would venture further into the unknown, a lot wouldn’t, and things started to get a bit crowded. I’m not talking Mumbai or Shanghai; hell, folks from Mogo would feel lonely in this setting!

    Be that as it may tribes would have been crossing paths more often after a millennium or two. Some would be strangers which means distrust and fear; others might be familiar, lessening suspicion, but they were human after all. The grass is always greener as they say…Envy breeds anger and anger breeds…

    I highly doubt these vulnerable groups would risk casualties through open warfare. Sneaky shit would definitely be on the cards though. This larceny might even escalate to abduction, which created hostility and ended in violence. As I said, they were human after all, and we much too often find a way to bring about the exact things we were trying to avoid.

    So this went on for a few million years and somewhere along the way one of those clever souls figured out the connection between the edible plants and seeds. Hello! We can actually ensure that there are plenty of the good plants. Things are looking up…

  • WELCOME TO THE SHIT SHOW

    “Into this house, we’re born

    Into this world we’re thrown

    Like a dog without a bone

    An actor out on loan”

    The Doors ‘Riders on the Storm’

    However you believe this circus got started, we’re in it and we’re stuck. There’s only one way out and that seems very final as far as we know. To most of us the human condition is the most important game in town, and we can only ever really experience it subjectively through our own body and mind. We see other people. We relate to them to widely varying degrees. We interact and often compete with them. We are individuals thrown into an interconnecting network of individuals trying to survive and hoping to thrive.

    We exist as one small part of a seemingly unfathomable system. However you frame it to make some sense for yourself, you’re in it with the rest of us until you cross that line into nothingness, paradise or any other idea you may have regarding when the lights go out.

    Okay, that’s kind of heavy, but don’t worry I do not intend to go too far down the existential rabbit hole. My focus here is on the way we behave as individuals, groups and populations on this place we call Earth. Psychology, sociology, economics, philosophy will probably be the main lenses I will be looking through.

    Whatever framework you use attempting to comprehend this thing we are in, it is infinitely complex and like us or not we are all in here with you. We don’t have to agree, but if we want to flourish, we need to deal with each other. This could be cooperative, competitive or even hostile; this dynamic, like many others, we have little to no control over.

    I have no intention of making this thing some kind of try hard PhD. I will do my best to avoid overcomplication and I am in no way planning on doing any extensive research. This is just my personal take on what I have learned over 50 odd years on this treadmill we call life and work.

    For a large percentage of us the two are inseparable. Living in this world is expensive and for the overwhelming majority of us the only way we can pay our dues is through work. This can be anything from slavery, through all the tiers of manual toil to earn a crust, up to the high achievers and those rare lucky souls who actually love their work.

    I will begin with my ideas of how this shit kicked off and what has led us to the situation we find ourselves in today. From hunter gatherers to simple farmers, those times are gone and barring an apocalypse they aren’t coming back.

    In the end we are left with just ourselves. All together on or in whatever this place is. With so much conflicting interpretations and no way to be certain, all we can do is make our educated guesses and roll the dice. We can only be sure that no one knows for sure. Of course, there are stronger and weaker arguments and there are always secrets, but total comprehension of exactly what we are standing in is beyond our grasp.

    Once again, let me remind you this will hardly be a scholarly enterprise. While I might quote a professor or philosopher here and there; I am just as likely to quote a comedian, song lyrics or a movie (also The Simpsons and South Park will certainly pop up). I will use what I have to try and create an understanding.

    Ultimately I am just one infinitesimal cog in this sublime existence ruminating on what might be going on. Finding the absolute truth is not the purpose here; the contemplation is the goal.

    Please feel free to participate in the comments. Agreement is certainly not compulsory, but I would greatly appreciate politeness and respect.

  • WHAT’S THIS BLOKE ON ABOUT?

    The goal is simple. The chances of success are…well, what do you consider success? If finding a concrete solution was your answer, you have probably come to the wrong place. Although I like to think that the main title set up more fitting expectations. Of course, there is a goal; it just isn’t a specific destination. It is a kind of random wandering of the mind. There is no set end point just now; the journey is the goal!

    If you’re still on board, let me assure you there is a path (of sorts) I intend to follow. It won’t be a straight line that’s for sure! Perhaps a spiral, or maybe a web. Whatever the network ends up being, I imagine it may be quite convoluted and probably contradictory. There is no avoiding this confusion. I can only take one step at a time and be fully prepared to change course or backtrack when it becomes necessary. Like life it will get messy.

    Like life, if we don’t get moving until conditions are perfect and we have a ‘perfect’ plan, we will never begin!

    I will try mt best to avoid overcomplication by keeping each post focused on only one narrow idea. Despite the whimsical title, I will be doing my utmost to form an understandable trail. “Mindless Musings” describes all that led me here; now I am trying to plot some kind of throughline into this lifetime of rumination.

    Trying to find causal links has always been my passion. Especially in terms of humans and the way we think, behave and interact.  Why do we do what we do? How do we affect each other? How does history influence the present? Will we ever learn?

    Certainty has never been my strong point. I always strive to keep a balanced view whenever possible. Feel free to call me a fence sitter if you like, but if you write in the comments, please be a little more specific regarding your disagreement. It is impossible to know all one’s own biases, along with what one does not know. It is positively mindboggling to even contemplate what one doesn’t even know what they don’t know!

    That does not mean I believe in a totally subjective reality. I am just acutely aware that objective reality is an elusive phenomenon. I am not preparing to delve into mysticism, nor are we heading toward quantum physics territory.

     For our purposes, it is enough to acknowledge that these gaps exist and humbly try to use logic and reason to find our way. It is also important to know that there is a world of other studies and have at least a fundamental understanding of them. What fascinates me is how we use these ideas and findings to help us make sense of this thing we are born into.

    I hope to create different threads following a somewhat connected theme. They will head in different directions, but I suspect they will link up at some point.

    I am beginning with a warren I will title: ‘Corporate Confusion: We’re up to Our Necks in it’. My next post will lay out the ideas behind it and its purpose.

    If I do decide to travel down the deeper philosophical or mystical road, that would probably require two more separate paths/mazes. Being a film fanatic, I will certainly at some point be talking movies too.

    For now, let us take the first tentative step-down Amateur Anthropology Street.

    If you are one of those people who are convinced that you have the answers you are not going to enjoy this journey much. It will probably be a waste of your time. All I ask is that you let us seekers carry on our foolish way and maybe giggle at us rather than hold us in contempt.