Finding Paradise
following a beaten path will not lead us to progress; turning back to the basics is the only way to move forward
Written by Claire Diao
I sat listening to a speech from philosopher Alan Watts. Regarding college admissions, he proposes “an entirely new kind of college entrance examination in which instead of answering a lot of silly questions, you write for about 20 pages on your idea of paradise. It could be any kind of paradise you want… but spell it out: what do you want to happen in life.”
My paradise will bring me to a place, a job, a mindset, where I serve an honest purpose, where I feel at home.
I will find paradise when I realize my personal legend. We all have our own personal legends. They are the dreams of becoming an astronaut, or president that we have in kindergarten. They are the phenomenon of assured fulfillment. As we get older, our dreams get clouded by the seemingly endless requisites of enduring our socially constructed world. We forget our heart and souls. Our lives polluted with stagnation so much that before you know it, you have lost your dream, and it’s too late. We might not know what it is we want, but we do know what’s easy. So, we comply, and we settle. We compromise what’s good for us to get momentary satisfaction.
We, humans, have been advancing down a path diverting from the laws of nature. But just like wild species in an ecosystem, my fundamental niche is shaped by sustaining progress, resiliency, and downright survival in my community. I presume that many others, especially in this age of distractions and disconnections, have the same dreams as I do: to feel that you are exactly where you belong, where the past is behind you, and the future unfolds with no rush.
But this dream is far more difficult to achieve in the present than any time of the past. We are living in a time where the lines of reality have never been more obscure. The saga of our species is one of advancement. In relatively no time, we reached the top of the food chain. After that, we went even further by surpassing nature in entirety and creating trans-biological institutions, things we call culture and economy and government. We have completely changed the way this world works from a sustaining circle of life to an exponentially accumulating cradle-to-grave.
Feeling unneeded is a soul-shattering thought. A species found without a niche in the wild has a sentence to extinction. So, it goes without doubt to say that our minds steer towards that same thought, that a person without a place has no reason. We therefore hold onto friendships we know aren’t true, keep jobs that make us miserable, and find welcome through our internet personalities. We are too scared of the risk to reach for the reward.
This concept we call progress is the driver of evil’s saturation through today’s world, whether it be through singular acts, global events, or persisting patterns. Lost in the invisible present, we individuals have forgotten our place in the narrative of our species. As much as we try to omit ourselves from nature’s order, we simply cannot hide from the truth of our roots of biological beings. And what is true is that everything is connected to everything else. Our empire now operates on such grand scales that our minds have lost the ability to follow the effects of our own lives. We now talk about this reality as external costs. We have lost a story to follow, and without a story, we lose our sense of connection. We are over-stimulated, under-engaged and overall, lost.
Doug Tompkins, a late avid climber, and responsible for the largest national park donation in history of Conservation Patagonia in Chile, speaks in response to those who say that we can’t turn back, “What happens when you get to the edge of the cliff? You either take one step forward or turn 180 degrees and take one step forward. Then which way are you going? Which way is progress?”
These words speak nothing but the utter truth, that following a beaten path will not lead us to progress, that turning back to the basics is the only way to move forward. To think that simplifying your life has become the harder alternative to complicating it.
But in many ways, we have already begun to regress in a few departments. One evident instance of this is the dwindling amount of biodiversity and wildlife species we are facing. We have passed the peak, and are now in retrograde to no fault but our own. By trying to accommodate and transform the established ecosystem order, we are leaving little to no room left for those conflicting life forms that continue to survive off the structure of nature.
Another warning sign being, in the development of language and written text; when most populations began writing through partial script, a system representative of methodical, mathematical, and numerical information, we grew to write in full script, being able to record myths, novels, letters and complete thoughts of spoken language. But partial script is coming back now as our dominant form of language, in print, in thought, in comprehension.
Too many of us suffer from stimulant fatigue. A momentary flash to grab our attention, then there’s a sound, next a vibration, minute after minute we’re being distracted, and our minds can no longer decipher what is relevant or not. We have practically paraphrased our language. Connection can be understood through the amount of online likes one has. Trust has become as simple to gain as the sum of currency. Time is accepted as a linear, chronological sequence of seconds. We are evolving with our technology, to think in equations of one’s and zero’s and to leave behind the sensation of genuine understanding.
This paradise of mine feels unattainable at this time. I can feel myself being pulled further and farther away from ever finding it. I feel myself around people that aren’t helping me find my purpose, but rather getting me more and more caught up in the distractions I try to avoid. The more time I spend in this environment, the more I feel myself victim to the stimulation, the distraction, and the insecurity manifested by our creation. With the trajectory of our population heading in the direction of hatred and hostility, I don’t know where I will find my home. So, I argue once again, that we accept that we have come to the sidewalk’s end, and that it is time for us to begin the long, winding journey back.
