Keeping it simple

I wonder. Often. I wonder. Why do I write a blog? Do I need you to know something? Do I need to say something? Or is it for enjoyment?

In the end, I’ve decided, there is no reason other than I like it. I don’t need you to know what I’m thinking and I don’t need to say it. But one of my favourite things to do is think about things. Anything. And. One of my second favourite things to do is write about what I’m thinking.

If a simple idea occurs at the same time as I have the opportunity to pick up my computer and write, then, voila, a blog. It’s fun. But it’s only fun when I keep it simple. And a lot of the time I’m not thinking about simple things. Also, these days, even simple things can get complicated.

In the past I imagined that I would write social commentary…on pertinent topics…that I would write thought-provoking, controversial arguments…fuel for stimulating debate. Not anymore.

Interesting ideas and stimulating debates have been replaced by preset dogma and brittle dogmatic confrontations. My sense is that our world has become religious. The kind of dogmatic religiosity I was part of until I was almost forty. Everything we said and did had its roots in our particular form of religious doctrine. Not subtlety but overtly and deliberately. Our doctrine had blanket coverage over such things as the nature of man (humans), the roles of men and women, the machinations of the nations, our relationships, how we raised our children, what we wore, what employment we should have and on and on and on. We believed that God was ruling in the kingdoms of men. God was ruling in our lives. Everything that took place was determined by the invisible hand of God. Everything had an end goal, an end time, a culmination…determined by God. Our job was to figure it out and then to wait and see…it would all be revealed in due time.

Our job was also to get it right. To be right. To read the signs of the times. To get them right. And our job was to tell everyone so they could get it right as well. Or at least that’s what we told ourselves. Looking back, I think we needed to tell people so they could see how right we were. But that’s another thing.

Being right about the time of the end was particularly important. So we watched for the signs…various wars in the Middle  East…Russian aggressions…China…the Catholic Church…earthquakes…disease…the deterioration of society… These were the signs that God was working in the kingdoms of men. These were the signs that assured us that the invisible hand of God was still visible to those of us who watched close enough and had it right. We mocked other churches and people who didn’t get it right. In the name of our rightness we argued but in the end we isolated ourselves from them (the world) and protected our children from their (the world’s) influence.

In mid-life I left it all. It no longer felt right. I knew I had been wrong. Thoroughly. Utterly. Absolutely. Wrong. No longer did any of it feel like God. It felt a whole lot like some strange form of human entertainment.

I had missed so much of life already I couldn’t catch up with ‘worldly thinkers’ and their ideas. I tried. Noam Chomsky, Ralston Saul, bell hooks, Malcolm Gladwell, Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Marshal McLuhan, Michel Foucault, Toni Morrison… Random reading. I wanted to be like these thinkers. I was no longer constrained by having to be right. I could try ideas out and these people were fun.

I spent the next almost 30 years in and out of university with insatiable curiosity. I was free to think and write. It was pure enjoyment.

Now that I am mostly retired I have time to think about pertinent topics. I could write thought-provoking controversial arguments and have stimulating debates. I am no Ralston Saul or Malcolm Gladwell but I could indulge myself with more than writing about simple observations. But I don’t. Because I can feel my world spinning backwards. While exciting writers and thinkers are still sharing cutting edge ideas, the bigger world I so freely joined in midlife is becoming increasingly fundamentally, dogmatically, religious. Everyone seems to be vying to be right. Everyone seems to be creating or believing stories about the time of the end. Just wait and see…it’s coming…it’ll all be revealed…is now a coffee shop discussion. No one is testing their hypothesis. When one thing doesn’t pan out the next one is layered on. In my day, in my group we all hung our hat on the Bible. Today everyone has turned into screen wizards hanging their hat on influencers who are selling themselves for huge profits.

The invisible hand is no longer God it’s ‘them’…the no name, no face power. Less satisfied than the old religious set that had some comfort that God was in charge, the new believers are edgy. Their stories are dark but the bearers of what’s-really-happening hold their stories close. They have given up the last vestiges of freedom by believing they are pawns being manipulated by the invisible hand of power. They embrace yet begrudge their victimhood.

In many ways they aren’t wrong. My sense is that individual humans are and always have been managed and oppressed by other humans who have more resources and power. I doubt that my ancestors, living in the hills of Scotland, had much individual autonomy. What personal freedom pure survival from the natural elements didn’t take from them the overlords took.

But that’s not the point. People are angry and frustrated. They aren’t looking at the big or long picture of human experience. Every generation gets to be immersed in its own legitimate rage.

I get it. But I’m disappointed that I won’t live long enough for this to pass…for people to tire of chasing after rightness. From my experience being right I have come to believe it’s pointless…it brings little satisfaction and in spite of all your assertions you can never be sure. ‘The end’ will come. There have been and will be many ends. No one yet has gotten it right. Not completely right. I’m thinking if and when such a time comes it will be a lot like the inscription on the gravestone of a hypochondriac “I told you I was sick”.

My sense is that thinking will become more dogmatic not less and I am tired…very, very tired of dogma. So rather than engage in the back and forth of big, difficult, important ideas and rather than return to religiosity and rather than argue about everything I write, I have retreated to the simple.

Now, of course, I am thinking about how big and important and incredibly difficult it is to keep things simple.