We cling to the landscapes of our families and the communities that inform us, and to their landmarks and pathways with pride and honor.
But individual people, just like the frozen water molecules fixed within a snowflake, don’t need those “greater” landscapes to exist. Water might unfreeze, and individuals might feel lonely, but they would still be water molecules and people. The real test once separated from the group is to discover a new sense of belonging.
As in particle physics, an individual is continually pulled like a molecule into greater groups and masses. However, one need not be fixed. Any one of us humans can maintain independence – while still belonging – by developing a sensitivity to the difference between greater matter and greater qualia. That is, discovery new meaning for themselves.
Alas, because the human economy is founded on more, on addiction, we have lost site of the qualiadelic side of our nature. We ought to hove toward ecosystems, which are qualiadelic, instead of toward human landscapes, which are materialistic.
Where then, might we find new meaning? A good starting place is through aesthetics – through the relationship between the beautiful and the sublime.
We revere the arts and the artists who create because they recognize this relationship. Their sublime works expose the decay of our qualiadelic potential into material addiction, and that stirs something deep within the rest of us. Of course, we have been groomed to resist this stirring by our material culture.
Artists (at least those who have not “made it big”) must struggle to survive. All too often the rest of us then label them as failures. But that is not the case. They remain focused on qualia. They see the beauty but expose the decay.
But there is hope. To those who have never separated from the “greater” somethings in which we we raised – the families and communities which groomed us – outsiders like artists always appear as if they must have some mysterious, dangerous power; they appear to have some magical realism to their existence.
Eventually the “in crowd” invites the outcasts to use their magical realism to put things back together when they fall apart. And fall apart things certainly have!
Magical realism is an excellent way to understand the language of ecosystems, and to fix the mess we have made. Magical realism reveals the relationship between beauty and sublimnity, between hope and despair, and between the growth and decay inherent in existence.
If more people learn to notice and consciously ritual with qualia maybe we can save the planet.
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