Because of the school walk outs and Walk for our Lives I have had reason to see ariel shots of large crowds of people. In some of marches people are moving in the same direction. The DC march for our lives had so many more people than the Trump inauguration that people spilled out of the mall onto adjoining streets and from high up it looked like several rivers coming together at one outlet. In one shot I watched of students who had marched to a cement square where they were waiting for others and no speaker was speaking: many were standing still but groups of two or three would move in a same direction but simultaneously people moved in all different random directions.
Recently I have been very aware of different groups of people moving with intend focus on tasks designed to try to improve our country. I have been aware of gun control activists, DOCA activists, the renewed Poor People's campaign, climate activists, etc. Like the ants sometimes they are aware of each other, occasionally collaborating but for the most part singularly focused on their own mission.
I have also been aware at the same time, usually from the media, of people singularly focused on things I regard to be utter nonsense: which movie stars are divorcing, some "innovation" in processed foods, attempts to collect obscure items from the past, the 5 hours a day most Americans spend watching tv, attempts to invent machinery which will be impossible to use in the climate future that scientist tell us we are on, time spent on hold on customer service lines for mistakes on our bills, hours and hours devoted to incremental gains in personal sports performance, hours spent balancing check books which years from now will be pointless, etc etc. (I'm sure you have your own list of things you deem a waste of time) In fact if on our death bed we could all trade back in the hours and hours of things we did that were a complete waste of time for more years of life we would all live decades longer!!! Again I imagine some being very high up in the sky watching all that random and rather pointless activity and ....well seeing a bunch of ants wandering around. Would it help any of us discern what is pointless activity if we viewed it from a distance, or asked ourselves will this matter in a year? In a decade? on my deathbed?
All of this has prompted me to wonder about human consciousness. Buddhists speak about mindfulness as an antidote to a sort of mindless sleep walking - caught up in seeking pleasure, pride and vanity, carried away with strong emotion, and afraid of death or even change. What would our world look like if we were not sleep walking? What would it look like if more of us were in touch with our actual soul's purpose, if we were moving like the ants who know where they are going and why, rather than the ones who seem to aimlessly circle? What would it look like if we were aware of all the other ants in our nest and our connection to them? What would it look like if we shared a sense that our nest is threatened and our very survival depends upon our collective joint coordinated action?
