When you go back and scan headlines for the pat year, it's as if "news" outlets have been recycling the same stories over and over, hardly adding new details to keep them fresh.
For those of us tiring of the same ol' same ol', fear not, something BIG is coming and by this time next year, we may be fervently wishing for some o' dat ol' fashioned Same Ol'.
Here's a little fun you can have at home. Go out and buy a couple of thousand Slinkys. Not only will you soon have a greater understanding of Time, but you'll be doing your part to boost lagging Black Friday sales. Take one of the Slinkys, collapse it to its smallest shape, and look at one end. It's a complete circle, right? Now look at it from the side and pull the ends apart. Now its a Sine Wave, right? Now look at it from an isometric angle (approx. 30 degrees oblique). It's a coil, right? You now know what Time looks like.
At this point, you'll want to connect the ends of a couple of dozen Slinkys, and then wrap them around a pipe or column so that one end overlaps the starting end. You now know what a Year looks like. Now take your Year loops and curve them around something so that your loops form a bigger loop. Continue this until you run out of Slinkys.
What you have created is a Mandelbrot fractal pattern that ultimately continues in from the tiniest detail to the largest, ad infinitem.
Welcome to Time: a series of spirals forming loops, that in turn form spirals that create loops, etc.
What we have here is a constant set of changes that have similar circumstances producing slightly different outcomes until your brain is completely fried and struggling to climb out of your ears to head down to the local pub for a pint and a breather. Speaking of which, we'll be back right after this break.
There...nothing a couple of (dozen) pints of Kilkenny at Molly Malone's couldn't cure.
Now, back to Time...
So, as you can see, Time keeps spiraling around so that from one point of view, it appears to repeat over and over again. The Earth appears to rotate around the Sun in a circle, except that the Sun is moving too, so really the Earth is making a spiral if you look at it from a stationary point in Space, though it is impossible to be completely stationary in Space, so really...oh, damn, I need another run to Molly's. Hang on.
Anyway, where were we? Oh yes...so we are making all these sprials and history seems to repeat, but really that impression is only from one particular point view. What is really happening is that events are overlapping with similar circumstances, but with completely different outcomes (e.g. looking at it from the side). If we look at history from our oblique position, then what we see is that all these repeating events are themselves part of bigger patterns, which themselves are part of bigger...hello, Molly's? I'll be right there. Get those pints ready.
Once in a while, though, the spirals overlap each other and a major shift happens, as the path alters slightly to avoid hitting the previous round in the rear. And sometimes, those slight alterations happen to synch up so that the shift happens on multiple scales. THAT, dear reader, is where we are now.
Welcome to the Age of Shift. We are looking at the overlap of economic, political, social, meteorological, astronomical, and cosmic cycles, with all of them taking ever so slight shifts, but the shifts are multiplied thousands of times by the "coincidental" timing of many different Slinkys all jumping slightly to avoid hitting the previous cycle in the...hoo boy...hello, Molly's? Have you finished roping off and carving my name in that bar stool yet? Go ahead and put a full keg on hold for me, would'ja?
All of this is not necessarily a problem, except that it is all the downward part of the cycles that are synching, and even more fun is that they, like the entire Universe, are all interconnected, so that one is part of the cause of the other...damn! Maybe if I just took my rig down to Molly's...
OK, this is better. With any luck, I won't slosh my precious barley water into the keyboard, at least until I finish this article.
As I was saying, we are seeing (once again) the collapse of a number of different cycles at a great many levels, and though the collapses have all happened before (the circle), they have never happened with our particular set of circumstances (the spiral). Like alternating current from your wall socket, every +1v must be matched by a -1v in order to maintain balance and flow. First Law of Thermal Dynamics. Or was it Ralph's Only Law of Getting Drunk (what goes in must come out - one way or another)?
Us hardcore Time Lords have been waiting for this moment for a long time. A lot of people have seen varying amounts of this moment for many decades. Some predicted climate collapse, others economic collapse, and still others social collapse. They were all right, but missed the key link that all things are dependent on all others things.
What is unfortunate for us, since we perceive the -1v part of the cycle as being painful, is that all these cycles are synching on the down-beat. What is more unfortunate is that, I assume all the readers are alive, we happen to be living at the particular moment in history when this is happening.
Many people fail to consider that every choice we make is influenced by the sum total of all the other choices everyone else in making. And all those choices are influenced by the natural cycles going on around us. Thus, when a large number of people perceive negative events occurring, they react by making defensive choices that, in the conglomerate, exacerbate the negative parts of the cycles.
In other words, if an entire city of people perceive a typhoon coming their way, they all run out and clear the shelves at the local grocery store as they stock up on supplies. This in turn causes the people who arrive late to panic because there is no food or water on the shelves, and their negative reactions cause further problems, and so on ad nauseum. What most people fail to see is that the grocer has benefitted by selling out his stock and profitting from the increased sales. Your negative is his positive.
Just as Molly's here has profitted mightily from my downing of the better part of a keg while I ponder these imponderables, and just like the Mandarin word for "chaos" contains the symbol for "opportunity," all cycles contain within them smaller cycles and are part of larger cycles. Uh...bartender? Could you just leave the tap open and give me that big piece of food-grade rubber tubing over there?
Regardless of what you think of Brexit, or Trump, or the results of coming elections in France and Germany, all of it is nothing more than the collective response of large numbers of people who perceive negative events coming from historic cycles. These things can no more be stopped than you or I can stop Time by breaking our clocks.
The secret to a long and happy life, besides a keg or two at the local,is realizing that all things return to their origin, though not quite. The prepared mind is the one who knows that in every black cloud is a beautiful ice crystal waiting to fall, melt and hit someone else on the head.
Learning to read the cycles requires a certain amount of resigning oneself to the process. This, however, does not mean we are helpless. Like the grocer, or the owner of Molly's, there is always a way to survive, and even flourish in the Natural Way of Things. You just have to be on the right side of the equation.
Uh, bartender, what do you mean you're cutting me off?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to leave your own view of The Far Side.