The Circle Game
When lost in central Tokyo, locate a Yamanote subway line station. If nothing seems familiar after 29 stops, you can just begin again where you got on. Disoriented motorists on Vienna’s Ringstrasse–or any city circle road–are assured that sooner or later, their departure point will reappear and with it, their beginning.
Subway stations are color coded to aid identification, while motorway signs help ensure motorists do not mistake skyscrapers for corn fields. Yet colors and signs are no guarantee you recognize your true beginning. Your heading may be as unsteady as your objective. To rewrite the opening words of an old American television detective program: “The following story has been changed to protect the guilty”. Without a clear destination your beginning will likely bring mindless repetition. Sometimes it’s better to begin again, mindful of the beginning.
If returning to a beginning, tray to know it for the first time. Finally, make repetition bear no repeating. Since news reporting has become virtual, with aimless personal commentary tweeted and repeated billions of times 24×7, we are drawn into a whirling sea of echoing data, thinking our commentary insightful. But is it? An echo is just a repetition, while a mindful repetition may indeed be the mother of invention. Facile social network posts do not a serious thought make!
Health recommendations change, often interminably. Eating eggs was once thought good for us, then the culprit behind spiking cholesterol levels, only to return as a healthy meal choice. On any given day, that morning cup of coffee may be better spilt than enjoyed, while reading about its freshly ground disadvantages. Even wine selection puts health beyond the reach of simply good taste.
These cycles of information create confusion in everyone, and often suspend credibility. People blog dubious quotations, lest they let the facts get in the way of their views. While the Pope Francis Facebook quote that had him renouncing the Catholic Creed may seem fantastic, a connection of mine posted it as Gospel, but without attribution. In the Social Media ether you can find a quote to fit your taste, an article or claim to confirm your opinions. No argument is too circular for recirculation. Maybe intelligence really is artificial.
Explaining why we are “all too human”, Christians cite the sin of Adam as exemplified through the seven deadly sins, recurrent themes in great Western art. Others see humans as blank slates corrupted by our environment (Who made that environment anyway?). Humans being all too human.
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), wrote a philosophy of human history describing how different cultures create similar results in pursuit of a guiding principle (e.g., God), while repeating constant themes. Vico’s philosophy can be summed up in the words of American baseball star Yogi Berra: “Déjà vu all over again”. For a more challenging summation look to Finnegans Wake (Joyce was under the influence of Vico, amongst others.). While universal agreement is fantasy, arguments about being human revolve around constants. Repeating something aimlessly is one constant example.
Nothing is really new, only the human ability to understand it personally and in context. ISIS, the Syrian civil war, capital market fraud, and the epidemic of police murders in the United States–a small list of the latest cycle of corrupting world events–are humans being humans, albeit in the vilest possible ways. Human actions can be good or evil, civil or barbarous, with many stations between. Yet all are variations repeated from the same script.
To overlook the constant of human repetition risks missing the opportunity for a mindful return to a beginning and perhaps a better start. Returning to rethink a beginning is something anyone with tweet-able opinions could do repeatedly. There is urgency in this moment as elections loom large here in the United States. And, a return might provide surprising insight, even genuine solutions, both individual and universal. Otherwise, we just might find ourselves at the beginning of the end.
