Confronting Nature
I come across people who genuinely believe that objective reality's purpose seems unknowable at best, many of whom instead subscribe to subversive voices that seek to divide, herd and hoard. Despite conforming to ideologies conjured to appease the mind’s desire for meaning, there always seems to be an inertia for exodus from ideological camps. The comfortable systems we build for ourselves eventually become prisons for mediocrity and resentment in a vicious cycle of bipolar proportions. It is only by recognising this that we have a chance at independent thinking. It is my genuine belief that freedom of thought is critically important in breaking the ideological infection that are aimed at hijacking our affective systems for performative compliance.
For many reasons, the rise of secularism for all the good it brought to draw us from the depths of dogmatism, threw the baby out with the bath water by demolishing time tested virtues and profound wisdom, ushering in systems of ideological beliefs that mirror the final years of ancient Greek and Roman civilisations. Perhaps the cyclical patterns are part of human nature, and nature at large. Ironic, considering several eastern philosophies have alluded to the death and rebirth of civilisations, moral decadence and erosion of values that allowed them to succeed at one point, at the last stage of their demise.
Among those that achieved liberation from beliefs of old, there are sensible people that veer off and away, recognising authoritative drug dispensaries of ideological mind control designed to subjugate and control. Our relationship with reality and a strong desire for survival in the uncharted wilderness rife with demons of all nihilistic varieties is where I find ourselves in. Waking up from delusional indoctrinations, it is only sensible to lead enriching lives that are supported by clarity and wisdom.
In accepting the impermanence of everything including ourselves, what do we do with this brief period of conscious awareness that we have been gifted and cursed with?
Finding Purpose
In our shocking thrust into living awareness, the perceived realisation of a pointless mortality and the limitation it is prescribed with, the need for survival in this context seems to be filled with despair, as observed increasingly in modern societies. I would argue that there can be no despair without hope. The zigzag of hope and despair is the only reason humanity has made remarkable leaps that may one day liberate us from the confines of our current reality, but in the same breath has every pathology needed to destroy ourselves.
Our infinite tendencies for messianic collectivism have often led to cruel outcomes through history. For the young optimistic mind entering the workforce, it is easy to fall into the ideological traps set by various special interest groups, that motivate us to think we are here to “save the world”. I am intimately familiar with this, as I too was a naïve young mind. I realised that through my entrepreneurial journey that I only had myself to rely on, forsaken by family, friends, and opportunistic ‘business partners’. My intentions were good, but they led me down the road to hell that I spent years recovering from due to one fundamental ideological error I made, I put the world before myself. I also made the grave mistake of trusting everyone and everything blindly, slowly turning resentful and paranoid the more lies from my peers and my environment crumbled down when it came in direct contact with the confrontational nature of objective reality.
In my view, the bedrock of freedom is how freely we can think, not how freely we are allowed to think. Any distortion to truth impedes on our freedom to think and it is only when we can have access to truth, is when we can define a clear purpose for the conscious awareness we seem to possess. Regardless of philosophical arguments on the nature of freewill, I think, therefore I am. The ability to identify that biases, genetics, upbringing, and our environment heavily influence our thoughts and action does not negate individual agency and freewill. It is with this understanding that we can navigate the world effectively, with personal accountability for our actions as a guiding force behind our trajectory into the future.
The Wolven
From the microcosm of private relationships to the macrocosm of culture and global politics, none of these are nearly as reliable as the individual. Just like the wolf is expected to be individually strong for a formidable pack, the strength of individual links makes up a strong chain, so too the strength of the individual is a prerequisite to a cohesively strong society. For that, selfish pursuits such as self-development, self-improvement, and introspection are essential, from integrating shadows to keeping oneself in harmony.
Our textured canvas of predetermined attributes has been handed to us. The here and the now, with which as freely as we can, begin work on an artful life, our very own masterpiece. To indulge in the clockwork and rules of society, but reject any dominion it claims to have over freedom, freedom that has been painfully realised through the abyss of our own abusive, megalomaniacal mind, previously and carefully curated by the ideological factories that repurposed them for service to the collective. The uncharted wilderness is home, where our minds roam free, from the eyes that has been opened, through wills that may move mountains.
Welcome to The Wolven.