Concerning Cavemen...

[crow]

I myself am a caveman. Or at least, I have been.
Maybe it's partisan, but I like to think I was a civilized one, though.
But 'civilized' is a word, like any other loaded term, that means different things to different people.
On the one hand, it is about the highest state a human can aspire to, yet on the other, it has very little to recommend it.
It was suggested, moments ago, that cavemen have their uses, and this is true.
Caves would suffer the depredations of all kinds of critters and creepy-crawlies, were it not for the domestic instincts of cavemen (and cavewomen). They even inspire cavemen to resort to art, to while away those dreary ice-ages.
Out of caves come civilized humans.
Sometimes.

Caves are quiet, dank places of reflection and contemplation. They embody nature, and its permanence.
They enfold, like a chilly womb. They provide shelter and safety, or at least the illusion of it.

I often look up at the night sky, and see it as a vast cave in which everything lives.
Once, it might have scared me. But now, I feel only wonder, and safety.

[Wild]

Imagine several prisoners who have been chained up in a cave for all of their lives. They have never been outside the cave. They face a wall in the cave and they can never look at the entrance of the cave. Sometimes animals, birds, people, or other objects pass by the entrance of the cave casting a shadow on the wall inside the cave. The prisoners see the shadows on the wall and mistakenly view the shadows as reality.

However, one man breaks free from his chains and runs out of the cave. For the first time, he sees the real world and now knows that it is far beyond the shadows he had been seeing. He sees real birds and animals, not just shadows of birds and animals.

This man is excited about what he sees and he goes back to his fellow prisoners in the cave to tell them about the real world. But to his astonishment, they don’t believe him. In fact, they are angry with him. They say the shadows are reality and that the escaped prisoner is crazy for saying otherwise.

Some moments I feel like the escapee and am baffled that other people don't understand. I think: "they must be so fucking stupid."

Other occasions I hear something that's obviously true and I think "why didn't that occur to me?"

Yet, there's also the other occasions where I hear something and it seems like it could be profound, but it's difficult to understand at the time. In such moments I react with my club, so to speak.

Those have turned out to be some of the greatest revelations of my life, a few months later.

Being one of the "fellow prisoners" is one of my greatest fears.

[dead last]

So, sometimes we crawl out of our cave only to realize that we are in a bigger cave.

As long as we keep crawling.

[Wild]

When do the caves end?

And what lies beyond?

[crow]

Being one of the "fellow prisoners" is one of my greatest fears.

Being one, or remaining one?

[crow]

When do the caves end?

And what lies beyond?

The caves, themselves, are infinite. We see them as caves because we see ourselves as separate.
We can, with considerable difficulty, become both the caves and their contents, and so there is no beyond. And no end.

Climbing into the earth is what caves are about.
Being one with it.