#218 / Blending In

The world we have built (our world) contrasts completely with the world of Nature. Our creations do not "blend in" to the world of Nature very well. They tend to "stand out."

Trying to blend in more to the systems that govern the Natural World might be a worthwhile approach. One of the reasons we don't do that, I think, is that the Natural World accepts (and in fact is based upon) the principle that death is the mechanism by which life prevails.

Gore Vidal, who died on July 31st of this year, was a prolific author. One of his lesser known books is a novel called Messiah. As it happens, I had just reread Messiah the week before Vidal died. In Messiah, Vidal dramatically outlines how spiritual insights are perverted by the human tendency to turn all such insights into "religions." In the case of this story, the insight brought by the Messiah was that it is "good to die."

Most of us find such a message hard to bear. "Our" creations do not accept the principle. The synthetic compounds that we fashion are persistent and near perpetual.

Our plastic clogs the Pacific.

We can't go on, much longer, standing out against, and defying, the laws that govern the Natural World.

Those natural laws include the law of death, which requires that we die, so that we can be blended back into the New Creation. That law applies even to our most distinguished members. To our most distinctive monuments.

Farewell, and thank you, Gore Vidal.