Worthy of your time

[BillHopkins]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2ctHuPxcCM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-b895UdLzc&feature=related

Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on "where," but on "what's there." It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred monks do a monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky.

Despite it's perhaps omission of some parts of western culture (excusable in light of the fact that the destructive and sheer ant like nature of developed socieites depicted here is a product of the modern west), this is a moving and sometimes unsettling view of what existence on this planet means. Often the serene and religious nature of tribal peoples looks much more meaningful compared with the rat race of developed nations. There seems to be some more sort of profound connection between some peoples depicted in this film and existence.

The main pathetic reality that strikes me from watching this and thinking about these things is that most people in the west would watch the first video with a profound sense of awe, but then go home and support companies, politicians, and ideas that are in direct conflict with the conditions needed to cultivate the delicate and highly precarious human achievements called culture that are depicted. The most profound attachments between human beings and something prior to their individual lives is not a fucking product of 'free will' and 'autonomy'. These attachments are highly contingent products of a long chain of causes that, particularly liberals, have absolutely now knowledge of. Sometimes I feel a profound sense of regret because I know I will never have the chance of experiencing the profoundity of existence with a society of my fellow human beings. I have friends with whom I have shared profound moments, mostly via music and art, but as far as sharing this with a community, all there is church, which seems to be more concerned with the state of unfortuantes, the sick and dying in the third world, and purely human concerns. There is zero connection between modern western individuals and a more than human existence, on a social level.

[fallot]

Are you different from your fellows then, enlightened unbeliever?

[BillHopkins]

Are you different from your fellows then, enlightened unbeliever?

There is nothing enlightened about misrepresenting the social conditions necessary for a higher connection with existence. So, maybe, yes.

[crow]

You can't have the tribal content, but you can have the content.
Live in a forest in Northern Canada for a year, with nothing but a backpack filled with essentials.
You'll experience real life.
If you dare.

[indjaseemun]

You killed and cooked the animals?

How to dispose the human manure?

[lost_wanderer]

Living away from nature can be so toxic but sometimes you forgot about it until you go back in the woods. All the meaningless tasks, social interactions. What can be painful is the fact that people can make the life of other hard for stupid reasons like not liking some new brand, opinion or if we do remarks about how useless, meaningless their assignments is, while if we think about it, nature is so more greater, meaningful and is closer than we usually think. It came to a point were you pass as a mental case if we tell someone that we spent hours watching rocks and moss but almost no one will stare at you if you say that you passed the time in from of the tv.

It's a strange feeling to go to a big city where there is no trees. It feels so oppressive. I often watch the sky to make sure that I am still in a real world.

Is so easy to get trap in all that modern melodrama, it's like the human ego is trying to block all that is natural.



If I got a new year resolution, it will be to  get closer to nature and to escape the world of opinions and egodrama.

[aquarius]

That's exactly how I feel lost wanderer. Basically a totally normal guy ends up getting the thousand yard stare just from living in modern times.