Red Eye

Posted on 14 January 2010

I flew into NYC this morning – the “red eye” – waking up just as the plane was at a 45 degree angle coming in over the city. It was a beautiful thing, all those lights spread out from Jersey to the sea, a hint of dawn color in the sky. I can’t help but think about the Hobbs discussion that is going on right now a few entries back on this blog (Jan 1st: “Thomas Hobbs, Redux and The Some”)– something I’m really proud of being a part of – hoping it will continue – asking the question, has civilization really been a good thing?

And there I was this morning so much a part of “civilization, flying over it. Flying in it (the jet). All this technology. Also there’s my video a ways back now, “Flying into LA” (Sept. 3). There is so much about civilization that is beautiful, wonderful, inspiring. So much of it that is deeply troubling.

And then, of course, we can never really know where we might have been as a species if we had gone in a entirely different direction. Is it possible we would never have come up with war or Wall Street? Is it possible millions, well billions, of us wouldn’t have had to be slaughtered by each other? Has all this slaughtering had some kind of deep internal effect on our collective psyches? Is there a collective psyche?

Are we on track to something? Is it good? Or is it, as described at the end of the highly technical movie “Avatar” that earth is now a dying planet. A dying planet. Is that true? Is civilization (so called) killing this planet?

Can civilization (as we know it) save the planet (ie: keep it nourishing humans for another million years or so), if in fact the above premise is true? But I’m really pretty jet lagged now. It’s after 10pm. It’s dark outside again. Nonetheless, something tells me that we are far from the end of our road as a species.

Something in me speaks to the idea that in fact we may still only be at the very beginning.

Something definitely in me hopes that this is the way evolution looks, that civilization (its wars; its rapacious, greedy, lying leaders, priests and madmen; it’s starving and slaughtered millions; its art; its movies; its convoluted responses to things like earthquakes in Haiti or floods in New Orleans; that all of this) is just a bumpy step on the road to what it is we as humans are headed towards being.