The Earth is Roughly Pear-Shaped - Jan 29 2025

 

The Earth is Roughly Pear-Shaped

Jan 29 2025

It’s not that the globe is a sphere

or the oceans separate.

There is, after all, only one great sea.

And unlike tectonic plates

grinding against each other

lines on a map can be erased,

redrawn

by acquiescence

or force of arms.

And while scholars may argue

that right and wrong are absolute

and man-made law is relative,

morality is private;

but we all know

the only real law

is what you get away with.

So is nothing as it seems?

Is even the ground under my feet

as solid as it feels,

or will it too

shake and shift

then liquify,

open up and fall away?

I seek certainty.

But then, I sought comfort

and it didn’t bring contentment;

sought happiness

without knowing how to get it,

or more important

what it meant.

Perhaps it’s the word itself.

Too smiley, too trite

like pretty and nice.

A happy-face

eating a happy meal;

a happy family,

or one, at least

that makes it look that way.

Or is happy a word like interesting,

too ambiguous

to nail down?

How interesting

you say evasively,

the sort of wishy-washy compliment

that can cut either way?

Or could it be

that happiness was in the seeking

and there all along?

Or not in the seeking at all

but in subtraction;

not in more, but in less,

in absence instead of excess.

The renunciation

of status

stuff

desire,

the satisfaction of needs

instead of wants.

Because when nothing’s as it seems

it makes sense that less is more.

And why bother with right and wrong

when lawlessness

just makes the strong stronger

and the weak afraid?

Or bother with solid ground,

when the earth is mostly water

and continents collide?

In a world of uncertainty

attachment is unwise.

To your earthly treasure

admirers

success.

And to your legacy

posterity

bequest.

Because this too shall pass.

Because even you

won’t last forever

or be remembered long.

I think I was looking at earth from space. At how from a distance our presumptions change: the shape of the planet; the coalescence of the various oceans into one great sea; the artificiality of national boundaries.

Where it went from there was more stream of consciousness. Some interesting ideas. But not so sure how coherent it is. I suppose the unifying theme is uncertainty, the illusion of both permanence and absolutes.

Although I believe there are universal truths: physical law, the nature of the universe. And that right vs wrong is clear. But also that morality is more instrumental than spiritual, and therefore perhaps not as universal/absolute as we’d prefer to think: that things like altruism, empathy, self-sacrifice, an ethos of collectivism, marital fidelity, shame, and guilt have all been selected for in our evolution as a social species, necessary for our survival. (Because we are tribal and interdependent: ostracism is a death sentence; the “self-made man” is a conceit; libertarianism and individualism only take one so far.) Have we chosen between virtue and vice? Exercised moral agency? Or are we simply the instruments of how we were made? So what we regard as good is really just what works, and in some other circumstance might come out differently.

The reflections on happiness are both borrowed and mine. Such a great history of scholarship, religion, philosophy here: what constitutes “the good life”; what does it mean to be happy, and how/where is happiness to be found?