The Eraser
from 2019
Computation, in the binary, trigram and hexagram sense [1] is true. Society is predictable, and runs in cycles.
When things are fucked up, you call the eraser.
Sounds religious doesn't it. Even toying with the idea seems crazy.
Playing with a detonative artifact. Sounds true and bullshit at the same time. It can’t be true, life perfectly mapped, and yet, this sounds like a negation.
But this is what I believed for some time. That the price of knowing the direction of the future, was to act with a high responsibility, high conduct code in front of the revelation. Just like following an oracle.
This was insane in many ways, true but not good for the human affairs. Sleep, eat and work for others.
That avenue ended up in the loss of self respect, literally turning into shit and living without roof.
Why? Why if I had 'the future' and a high conduct, the performance was just the opposite?. People were indifferent, but relatives were worried, equaly. At the time I saw it just as a way to feel better about themselves, joining in a shared cause and to fix some ‘blame arrow’ to them. But worried about me? Doubtful. They did not respect my choices, first of all. But I did not respect my boundaries, I did not even know that you need to put boundaries, I expected the world to care [2]
I was mislead.
The eraser is a new introduction, is a new character (rephrase) in my rule-book. Its just like Jesus or Neo (the character from the 1999 movie [3]), or maybe, to point it out precisely, is like the rainmaker [4] of the Chinese story brought to the west by Wilhelm, a job that I wanted to have.
For those who have not heard it, is just the concept of a man that people call when was a dry season in the local area, and you need water for the crops. You would call the rainmaker, he will sit on a cabin, alone, and do nothing. The people would wait and wait until the rain came, and then the rain maker headed to another town.
But the eraser needed in our contemporary culture is the blame eraser. Usually this the closest to this role is an unfortunate one. In corporate culture or political affairs is the one to blame of our troubles. The knot is cut by his thinnest point (spanish saying), or the weakest go to the wall (english saying). I did not experience this, otherwise I would feel in jail (or be in it), but I've experienced what I come to understand as being nobody. At the time I didn't know it, I was sure I was discovering something new while preserving my values. But things started to get weird a few hours in. I heard tangentially my name from an outside source, an unknown person slide that in the corner of my perception. Then I was worried. How could they know? I was in the local media already? For doing what, being 'lost'?
And in my world I wasn’t lost. I was in fact very sure of the material that I was working with. I could go anywhere I wanted, anywhere my legs and my energy allowed (a very limited range sadly).
And I saw the scene of fakery everywhere. People running in circles going nowhere (car based). And chasing something.
I saw the difficulty on becoming the person they would call for the job. I’m afraid that this job, in contemporary culture has no name but is known, or felt. I would like to see another way to do this, maybe in the past wasn't like this, or is an idilic past that never existed in the first place. I realised that maybe monks or even CEO’s want this role, and is the closest they can get.
But the true blame eraser lies in the sewerage of society, just like the man who takes the trash, a noble and inspiring role, left for the bottom so to speak.
Even, the eraser could enter a building like a church and give meaning to the words, and kindle the tedious rite.
You could even replay (or start to understand) epic myths, like the Gilgamesh one [5]
My theory is that the majority uses absolute words like ‘never, always, nobody, nothing’ as an attempt to emulate the eraser, just to flip the coin of computation and understanding to the other way. Conscious or not (I think depends on the age) this operation means at best just local flip.
People wants to see cause and effect. Not in the basic way, as when you do something with your hands, but in the direction wise sense, when you do something and expect any, just about any response from the environment, and you treat it like an effect.
This is a shortcut to see reality maybe. But according with my conclusions, this is just a dog chasing his tail. And worst, the creative part of the mind working for the receptive one, which just ensures decay.
The true version that I experienced less and less is more like ouroboros, the serpent eating his tail [6] Just like calling bluff in poker. Is an active proposition, nor a waiting one. This adds more spiciness to life, while watching almost everyone perform in the dog like situation.
This is common ground, a common story. A story that you see at the bottom (most likely) or you see at the top, which for me is the same phenomena.
They only way you could not see it is to fear it, which ensures the unstoppable chase.
NOTES
[1] R. Wilhelm, I Ging, das Buch der Wandlungen [English version: I-Ching, The Book of Changes]. Anaconda Verlag, 2011.
[2] S. Pressfield, Nobody wants to read your Sh*t. Black Irish Books, 2016. In the Pressfield’s non fiction books, he also repeatedly reports the mistake of the writer expecting the society waiting to read what he had written, wich basically means: to care.
[3] B. Raferty, Best movie year ever, How 1999 blew up the Big Screen. Simon and Schuster, 2019.
[4] C.G.Jung, Mysterium Coiunctions, The collected works of C.G.Jung volume 14. Bollingen Foundation, Princeton University Press, 1963. Jung points out that the story is an exampe of being in Tao and it was told to him by Richard Wilhelm after his encounter with the rainmaker of Kiaochau.
[5] Anonymous, ed. by M Jastrow and A Clay, An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic. Yale Oriental Series, Researchers, Volume IV, 3, 1920.
[6] M.L. Von Franz, Alchemy An Introduction to the Simbolism and the Psichology (Studies in Jungian Psychology). Inner City Books, 1980. Von Franz mentions that Ouroboros is the guardian of the underworld, but it has to refeer to the demon in the form of a dog that has ben confused with the serpent. The book cover is the image of the serpent.