June 25, 2011
Civilization – the neurotic art of getting and loosing 0
My intention yesterday was to relax some hours with a newly bought computer game called Civilization. There was a suggestive intro with an old father giving his son the task to lead the creation of a glorious empire. The task begun by settling a small village and begin farming in a small and un-explored world. Slowly the village started to grow to a city and expand as new technologies were discovered, bigger and more effective farming, mining, keeping cattle, sailing and fishing to give some examples. Cultural and religious institutions evolving and of course, military resources. The aim of the game was after all to conquer the world.
I was somehow pulled in and also quite stressed by the game and all night along I tossed and turned in bed with images from the game passing by. At daybreak I found my self in a quite painful and alienated state and I really longed for a breathing meditation to process all this energies and maybe get a clue around what was driving all this frustration. To my surprise a quite clear pattern showed up immediately as soon as I sat down breathing. First the insight that settling in a centre, “the capital city”, and then building and expanding from this centre is both the driving force of the ego as well as civilization, they are one and the same, inseparable. Ego is civilization and civilization is ego. Then the insight how both ego and civilization is driven by the urge of getting and as a consequence of that, the fear of loosing.
I agree with Lasse Berg in his book “Dawn over Kalahari” when he suggests that the competition and struggle between men came with settling as farmers. Before that there was not really any personal ownership of property and things, hence also nothing to loose. With ownership and the prosperity of getting more came the fear of loss and the foundation and main driving force of civilization was laid. As the computer games so well pointed out with all this energy around getting and loosing. In terms of society we could call an ideology based on ownership for capitalistic and it is clearly painful. Weather we speak of ego or civilization which is really one and the same, the believe in a centre with the ability to posses (and loose). May it be things and money, relations and love or spiritual achievements. They are all the same game of getting and loosing.
Freedom is to see that there is nothing to get and nothing to loose. That it is all constructions in the mind that we choose to believe in. To see that there is no true ownership to be found in reality, not even to that we call our own life. All is given but it is not for a you. It is told that Alexander the Great wished to be carried through town towards his funeral with his empty hands dangling outside the coffin. Showing to people that not even him, the great king that conquered the world, could really carry anything with him. This is true not only regarding physical death but in any given moment of life. There is nothing to get and no one really to get it, that is all mental and emotional constructs, and the realization of that is true freedom. Not an alienated and distanced freedom from but an intimate freedom in …
or even as … the dance of life.
In this high place
it is as simple as this,
leave everything you know behind.
Step toward the cold surface,
say the old prayer of rough love
and open both arms.
Those who come with empty hands
will stare into the lake astonished,
there, in the cold light
reflecting pure snow,
the true shape of your own face.
- David Whyte -
