I find it somewhat puzzling.
Even though we in theory come from nature,
Most of our endeavor is in insulating ourselves from it as much as possible.
We crave freedom from nature and its restrictions and randomness,
And build ton loads of infrastructure to minimize direct contact and mediate.
We build:
shoes → to avoid touching the ground
clothes → to escape temperature, wind, exposure
houses → to avoid the wild field of sensory unpredictability
walls → to create zones where nature cannot enter
climate control → to flatten the volatility of the environment
cities → to replace nature with controlled artificiality
screens → to mediate reality through safe distance
cars → as moving capsules of insulation
hospitals → insulation from biological randomness
religions → insulation from metaphysical dread
civilization itself → an enormous buffering machine
Humanity’s entire project seems to be buffering, insulating, distancing, and filtering the raw world.
The feeling of living in a well
I feel like I’ve fallen into a well,
And it is so much effort to shout and reach out to anyone or even anything,
And no one bothers to even peep in,
Nor are they even remotely interested in knowing where I am.
Like I’m ostracized, exiled, banished, outcast.
Like I’m dying, receding, fading, falling off the radar, falling off the map, falling off everything that is known.
Hope is wilting and dying, as I fall further into the well with every passing day.
More and more contact with the outside is relinquished because of the phenomenal effort it takes to maintain it from 200 ft under.
I have to scream at the top of my voice to be faintly heard outside, and the beings outside only hear my words, not me, so I am basically abjectly alone.
Never will be seen, never will be fully heard.
There is the crushing weight of despair, but hope pushes me to reach out with great resistance, only to get a few bread crumbs of outside engagement (obtained with disproportionate effort), and then I fall back into the darkness again.
There seems no way out of this well,
and I only fall deeper and deeper into it,
moving farther and farther away from contact with the land.
My whole life has been this way.
I could never achieve anything more than a superficial fleeting intermittent connection with the world/outside.
I have always lived in a well, in the cave of wonders, in the interior castles, in the dungeons of my subconscious, in the underside of the iceberg of humanity.
Except for occasional short bursts of outer engagement which have exponentially reduced with age.
I am in the unknown, in the mystery, living it everyday,
While every other I see appears to be far far away.
And it is so much effort to shout and reach out to anyone or even anything,
And no one bothers to even peep in,
Nor are they even remotely interested in knowing where I am.
Like I’m ostracized, exiled, banished, outcast.
Like I’m dying, receding, fading, falling off the radar, falling off the map, falling off everything that is known.
Hope is wilting and dying, as I fall further into the well with every passing day.
More and more contact with the outside is relinquished because of the phenomenal effort it takes to maintain it from 200 ft under.
I have to scream at the top of my voice to be faintly heard outside, and the beings outside only hear my words, not me, so I am basically abjectly alone.
Never will be seen, never will be fully heard.
There is the crushing weight of despair, but hope pushes me to reach out with great resistance, only to get a few bread crumbs of outside engagement (obtained with disproportionate effort), and then I fall back into the darkness again.
There seems no way out of this well,
and I only fall deeper and deeper into it,
moving farther and farther away from contact with the land.
My whole life has been this way.
I could never achieve anything more than a superficial fleeting intermittent connection with the world/outside.
I have always lived in a well, in the cave of wonders, in the interior castles, in the dungeons of my subconscious, in the underside of the iceberg of humanity.
Except for occasional short bursts of outer engagement which have exponentially reduced with age.
I am in the unknown, in the mystery, living it everyday,
While every other I see appears to be far far away.
Journey to the Abstract 