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.
If civilization were built on ‘evolution and transcendence’ vs ‘insulation and survival’
- Cities would be monasteries disguised as infrastructure.
- Technology would aim at cognitive clarity, not dopamine comfort.
- Architecture would support meditative states, not consumer flow.
- Food systems would support energy and wakefulness, not sedation.
- Education would train perception, not conformity.
- Work would be minimal, the body would not be the identity.
- Entertainment would be exploration of consciousness, not numbing.
- Relationships would be energetic resonance fields, not attachments.
- The “economy” would revolve around inner development, not scarcity anxiety.
- The purpose of collective life would be to create states of lucidity, not safety.
- Not a world of insulation, but a world of revelation.
Journey to the Abstract 