To admit we tend to congratulate ourselves when we see a problem, a fault, a discrepancy should be nothing new to us. We think ourselves rather clever when we find a weakness in what is proposed or accepted as sound. From some ability to poke holes in an argument or contention to the discovery of some heretofore unrecognized defect or weakness to exploit. And for us it has often served as useful in a gazillion pursuits. Finding some chink in armor ranges from battling viruses, plagues of bugs to armies afield, to figuring out why tungsten works best as a light bulb filament in the face of a thousand other failed attempts.
We are in toto quite given to the notion of ourselves as problem identifiers…and from there, problem solvers. And what has more fallen into common acceptance in the argot of this age than “admitting you have a problem is the first step…”. We like to work on things, or what we think is improve on things, and fix things. And who can deny the flush of success when taking something once un-serviceable and restoring it to sound use? Yes, we like it…a lot. And to come up with something new to address a once commonly accepted and ir-resolvable estate now able to be overcome? (Think a bazillion things like refrigeration and air conditioning) Progress as we call it, can be seen in almost everything as it really is quite impossible to miss. And how many fortunes have been made by convincing others of a problem not once known or much cared about to them “Are your whites dingy? Your colored fabrics lacking vibrancy”?
Or “Do you mean you lack a device that will let you communicate instantly with most anyone on the planet?”
And we really do think…”My, my, my, but we have come such a long way…from the runner at Marathon”.
And to be honest, if not fair, to a great extent our survival appears dependent upon this matter of identifying problems, their potential(s) and seeking some remediation…or fixing. Not everything appears as frivolous as lawn dart’s invention for remedying a boring Saturday afternoon enlivened by a visit to the ER.
And although the above comment itself may seem wry, or clever…we might also admit there is some “down side” to much that we have come up with to address or remedy “problems” from the dire to the lesser. Superbugs developing from over usage of antibiotics; themselves once thought game changing and in all necessity for life saving…yet…not without consequence(s). Holes in the ozone layer from fluorocarbons (refrigerants), islands of plastic twice the size of Texas, floating lazily in the Pacific; and of course, what to do with those spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors. It’s not a hard case to make that we may actually be operating at net gain zero. Net progress only illusory. But we love feeling as though we are moving, headed somewhere…better…and can of our own resourcefulness, get there.
The gospel of Jesus Christ, of course, put that all to lie. In fact we cannot even do anything about our propensity to see life as a problem to be solved. And if you haven’t yet met a (if not the) fundamental issue of a thing having consciousness, especially of itself in a vessel made of dust (or clay) and has not found that consciousness in all conflict with the frailties, weaknesses, discrepancies and/or defects to which clay is subject and thence by that imposition is utterly directing that consciousness, you will. The consciousness that to itself seems free, uninhibited to every imagination and all manner of consideration can never free itself from the jail of knowing…it abides in clay. And its demand(s). And so, even that freedom becomes illusory. Yes, consciousness in clay…is very much a problem readily accepted as to be solved…for, and by, consciousness in clay. We are our own enigma. And so, yes, we try to solve ourselves.
Have fun storming the castle.
There’s a futility appointed to man in any attempt to be more than he is. Simply thinking dirt…talking, walking, planning for and planning against…problem identifying and (assumed) problem solving dirt. And every bit of the so called progress, the elevation of all investigative methods, technologies, and techniques has left many in conclusion, no, even “proof” that none of us are ever more than a bunch of molecules swirled together with chemical and electrical reactions and impulses percolating in such dirt, that we make claim to knowing what and all we are. And not only so, but what all else…is. Or might be. Could be. Or allowed to be…“is”.
Tangle with that absurdity and even the word absurd (as all words among men are “made up”, fabricated) and find that one doesn’t even begin to describe what it is proposed as sufficient to describe.
But then nothing of man is sufficient…to anything…but being man.
Is there a problem with that?
israelx7wordpresscom 