140mph #5

Why be a King Canute? Actually it would be wonderful if we all could be King Canute.  Look how wikipedia describe what its correspondents say actually happened in the famous story attributed to him:

"Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for
there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea
obey by eternal laws."

The entry then says he hung his gold crown on a crucifix and never wore it again.

So we are living as they say in interesting times and so it is better to go with the flow.  It doesn't really matter if we are living in an obsessive time pressing for the demands of attention, it does not matter if this new undiscovered country crowns its kings and queens of narcissism or if it offers the quick-buck artist an opportunity to live life as a parking meter for human thought.  None of this is my business unless I turn this into a business and this isn't my business, let alone an excuse for a virtual coronation.

There are memes present in these the dark ages before the dawn, which would make Shakespeare's Shylock very proud.  Our pound of flesh is called brand, it is called measured reputation and even words like transparency are being traded as mechanism rather than as a relationship.  Transparency of the machine so that a few merchants can kaching in the name of "great things" but transparency used to be a word that belonged to the soul, but which now belongs to the meme machine.

Am I not transparent, are these not my thoughts I think out aloud here.  Then what more is transparent, fear is transparent (I think not), brand is transparent (this carefully painted life?), the only thing therefore that is transparent is when one can see through people.  Is our language transparent (do we live in a world where we have two sets of accounts), is it desirable in a world educated to be an image, to be somebody, to have blind ambitions (which is educated greed), to have a POV rather than simply be thoughtful individuals - is this transparency?

So long as I am able to hear the thoughts of my own voice and that voice can flow from my prefrontal cortex or amygdala or hippocampus or even the occiptal parts of my brain, on an unhindered pathway to my fingers, then that is what I call personal transparency.  This other word, this imposter called transparency is a word that is sold rather than is.  "We want to know who you are" is the rally cry of the imposter kind of transparency, why? because most of the people who chant this, don' even know who they really are.

Why do I care about this other than in this early young morning, I can feel free enough before human transparency is superceded by commercial transparency.  There is nothing wrong with making money, but to use human values as a vehicle to trade, that is what Shylock did and that is what my Freedom Oasis is - a tiny personal space I am afforded the luxury of crawling into because there is an ocean of madness, of wannabee's and people just looking out to make a buck, but too ashamed to admit that what they live for is the fear that they don't matter, rather than the joy that they do.

How anyone lives their lives is none of my business and even King Canute, as successful as a King he was, has been misunderstooda and if history cannot remember that story that existed for a thousand years, why should it afford me the luxury of respecting mine.  If a day comes when this tiny Freedom Oasis is covered by the sands of human capriciousness, then quoting George Bernard Shaw:

"Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself. 

If only we all understood who King Canute was as a real human being rather than as a brand, I mean, if only.  Other than having the freedom right now to express these thoughts of mine, I am not stupid enough to think I have the power to hold back the ocean of humanity and just like King Canute, I do not want to wear this crown...

e.g., The Ocean of Thoughtlessness

[Em] @ "THE PLATO CAVE"  & "Emerigent"  &  http://www.twitter.com/emerigent