On Rivers Without Guides
Morning Thoughts #41
On rivers without guides, we are told to be true to ourselves. We are told to follow our own passions and to think only of the current flowing downstream as the mildest of suggestions. Its worn path is only the accumulation of the arbitrary biases of history itself! Today’s culture instructs, "The demands of those times were relative to them. You've been freed from past humanity. Go and flow down your own river with your personal engine, as you choose. Free will means you are born your own authority figure, and the reason we do not see the need to supply you with a guide is that you are the guide, child. Go and dream! And if you succeed in living your life fully, it will be because you remembered the lessons of your long sleep. Sleep long (well through adolescence and beyond) and then write as holy scripture a dream journal!"
Friends, haven't you been subjected to an abundance of such preaching? How many of you have begun to suspect that we were born in a world that lost its way due to a decline in the belief of the wisdom and usefulness of guides? We are taught history only to learn what not to do and for the sake of buffering our own sense of psychological superiority. We teach that all history is relative to us and the ethical norms and demands of this moment! Because we take our position for granted, when something is backward from our perspective, we proclaim it to be backward from all perspectives! We teach ourselves as the lessons themselves; we are those who have progressed beyond the backward past and we test only to see who can be the best at patting themselves on the back!
Friends, do you see how dangerous this tendency is for the future of humanity? If we only teach the errors of the past, soon enough we will begin again only from scratch! Humanity ascended to the heights that it did precisely because it sought to preserve the hard-earned wisdom and society-preserving practices and traditions of its forbearers. But now, any history teacher who praises almost any aspect of the past is considered suspect in the eyes of today's self-righteous moral arbiters! These arbiters have no use for anything that speaks of the "universal human condition."
Friends, do you ever feel like your life force, the force that powers your life flow, is given without river banks? (Without even a "batteries not included" type disclaimer?) As with any river, if we do not contain ourselves, our too wide and eager explorations will spread us out to the point we completely dry up, losing our flow entirely! A good guide knows the best paths are necessarily limited. There is a good way forward, and very likely, there are multiple very good ways forward, but every way is not a good way! Too many ways never end in any way at all!
Left to ourselves, and the starting point's seemingly boundless reserve of energy, we are tempted by many diversions which then lead to necessary reversions. All time and flow-consuming! Trial and error is good, take chances, but make sure these chances have some degree of possibility of success or of leading you in a direction you might realistically want to continue. Don't expend your reserve energy just because it's there! You can buy such energy in bulk only at a certain age in life! Spend wisely, but with courage too! Find or sculpt a serviceable riverbed that sustains and channels it forward so that it may be a source of productivity and creativity in the days and years to come!
Friends, I suggest we comprise a generation born on rivers without guides! An open-minded world is unintentionally (and sometimes intentionally) leading us to go beyond ourselves, which drains ourselves, or, which has the effect of emptying us out into a vast sea with no wind. Every mass movement is the doldrums of real thought! I have a horrifying vision of a hundred thousand rafts on a still sea, their occupants chanting in unison: directions for the best way forward. The shouts, in all their volume and self-righteousness, do not stir or even threaten to stir the slumber of all the nearby and quiet sails. Such doldrums!
Find a guide or be a guide. You are energy and little else, keep it within bounds like a property line. Contain your flow to maintain your flow!