Reaching for the stars

96:



When we look up at the stars in the sky (which presents no problem for us at all), it’s like watching a cat on a mat, observing what it is without wanting it. It’s there, it’s alright. Maybe we feel a yearning frustration for things we can’t reach. The state of mind of the cat is unreachable by humans … and so what? It’s just as it is.

Maybe as we gaze up at stars and yearn for the unreachable but we always have to return to the here and now, to appreciate what we already have at home. We have our own star, the sun, we’ve got a planet, companions, even a cat on a mat. So lucky!

We look up at the stars. They shine down on us just as they shine down on their own orbiting planets. That reminds us of our future (which we can’t ‘touch’, which we can’t possibly see because it hasn’t happened yet) but about which we can project probabilities. And that seems to be our main guidance. Well, it is for me anyway. By referring to the past, by listening to the stories which have made us what we are and moulded our social attitudes, it helps me to take in the reality of now, by learning from things I’d perhaps rather not know about.

Many humans have been exploited and many lives wasted. The age of the machines has arrived and machine-mind is responsible for a lot of the hard thought we have and the damage we’ve done to each other. We’ve even turned animals into machines so that we now have them producing goods for us, from the confines of their cages and concrete pens. Things couldn’t be worse, and yet repairs can be made. Repairs are possible … no one can deny the possibility of repair.