Today I’ve been on this beautiful ball of dirt for forty six years.

Sorry, not much more to say about it, wisdom or insight wise. If anything, I “know” less than I’ve ever known before, I believe less than I’ve believed before.

Well, to be honest, I really don’t know what all to say about it that will be of any use to anybody else, but that’s never stopped me from spewing forth my usual bile and existential angst.

All I know is that I’m here, and it’s kinda cool, most of the time. The rest is just sad observation and depressed disgust.

Anyway, on my natal anniversary, here are some things that come to mind.

I suspect that most of what passes for “progress” is mere muddling through, and “improvements” are accidents.

I used to have a certain faith in reason, and in “truth” and “history”. I used to think that people learned from the past, that we could advance if we would learn from past mistakes. I love that old hoary Santayana chestnut, about pasts and learning and repeating et cetera.

I see absolutely no sign that any of that is true.

No need to go into the current politics, the abject failure of what passes for liberals to stand up for the mythical “rule of law” or even “human decency”, since a clear-eyed view of both shows only myths and self-serving lies. While it’s good to see some recitation of the American past to be presented with more context than usual, to see new leaders from so-called Latin America, mestizo / mixed blood leaders who try to inform the latest Imperial leader or call the US on our support of targeted assassination …

… wait, why am I wandering that far afield?

Always looking for the big pattern, the grand scheme … I don’t know where that tendency comes from. Lets start closer to home:

• the police forces that resemble paramilitary forces more than peace forces.
• the prison complexes that serve as huge sources of slave labor and corporate profits.
• the empire and supporting war machine that spreads death and hate across the globe, in the service of corporate profits and simple-minded American exceptionalism.
• the resolute resistance of this country to never, EVER, live up to the intent or meaning of our supposed founding documents, let alone the promise of the various treaties and laws that we’ve passed over the years.

The simple, sad, terrible, horrible fact is that Americans expend a great deal of effort, treasure and blood on hating, fearing and punishing each other and “foreign” others, that we cling to a pernicious form of capitalism that is as close to a secular version of feudalism that the human mind can devise. Every fucked-up dystopic variation of evil science fiction corporation has some current analogue.

I used to have a rough humanist faith that we could learn, that we could advance, that we could care for and love each other, that we would learn to cooperate and create together. Human history is repleat with examples of the good that comes from multicultural cooperation and learning, of forgiveness and second chances, and we don’t need made-up human sacrifices on crucifixes to find those examples … yet we still act little different than medieval savages with better tech.

So, forty six years and I’m learning, at least trying, to step away from my childish faith and hope in human progress. The enlightenment was a glitch, a mere blip, a shimmering mirage floating over the usual greed and powerplays and bloodlust. I’m falling back on a sad, resigned decision to just accept what is, for now anyway, to try to concentrate on the local and the beautiful, to treasure friends and family and the beauty of this world we seem so determined to despoil.

Forty six years, and I know so little, though I’ve absorbed a lot. Forty six years, and I’m falling back … on the void, I guess, and acceptance, and trying to just enjoy watching the passing parade, to read and watch and treasure and OBSERVE. How very American, but I’m just disconnected and acting as an audience member … it’s been made terribly clear by the charade that is the “change” offered by that fraud Obama that there is little or no political outlet for resistance from a humanist direction, unless one is willing to step completely outside what passes for American “civilization”, and I’m not that guy, too bourgeois and comfortable to risk the confrontation necessary to effect that change, if it is even possible.

Forty six years … a blessing, though it’s hard not to feel terribly sad we handle this treasure our lives are the way that we do.