Evolution has made things stand still.
When the first life forms appeared on the Planet, all the landscape was all in flux. There were few landmarks and pathways to follow – perhaps only the qualia of heat, light, vibration, and some chemical acids and bases.
Qualiadelic relationships, over time, clarified and separated landmarks and pathways out from the undifferentiated landscape. The world in motion slowed down and became predictable to the senses of an alert, complex animal.
Human thought, likewise, makes the world motionless in order to understand it, naming and classifying all the things in it. We know the inner qualia of things, while the rest of life stills the world by sensing the surface qualia of things — colors, shapes, smells, sounds, and textures. We have developed some sense (a little) for the inner qualia of things — the patterns and laws which inform all things, which give them their meaningfulness, and which make them greater than the sum of their parts.
We use the qualia we have discovered within matter just as animals use surface qualia — as landmarks leading us down pathways to things we need. These are our conceptions of things, our imaginative interpretations of the world. Alas, detrimentally, too many of these landmarks lead us, beyond what we need and to things we desire.
The human endeavor to control the world is not necessary. We don’t need to grasp the landscape, for the ecosystem will provide. Stilling the world to know it, to wonder at it, is enough. The less we cling to material things and desires, the more ecosystems will send their power, their bounty, their gifts, to — and through — us.
Knowledge, as control, gets us into trouble. Rather, as an artist learns to let go of knowledge (control) in order to create, so we can move safely (spontaneously) beyond stillness and back to flux, and change.
To let go of knowledge is not to lose it; knowledge is qualia, and qualia can be shared without diminishment. Knowledge will always have value, inform our lives, and make the world meaningful. But knowledge must serve the ecosystem, not us. We must, inevitably, return the gifts we receive.