Thursday, August 09, 2007

The Reality of the Present Moment

The only reality is the present moment and how we actualize both the past and future in it. Because knowledge is of the past and a remembered thing, it is not the present reality we are encountering but attempting to classify the entirely new into a previous category of understanding (generalization), and in that way, nothing new can ever come into being -- if we insist that it can only be a repetition of that which has happened before -- which is a confirmation of our “knowledge.”.

It’s an obsolete manner of thinking -- that life (history) can only repeat itself, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is the worldview of many tribal (closed) societies -- that maintained a rigid social order (hierarchy) to maintain themselves at the top. And so the kupuna (seniority) could never be challenged, or even questioned. That was also characteristic of Western civilization in the Medieval Ages -- or its Dark Ages.

The “truth” was simply whatever those at the top told everybody it was. In modern society, government and law also gives highest value to precedent, as though nothing could be better (or possible), and that what was right in the past, must be right hereafter.

That’s the underlying difference between traditional societies and today’s state of the art cultures and interactions that always break new ground -- and why it is so problematical for Old Media to report on it. Journalism itself is rooted in the old worldview that there was an objective reality apart from the subjective reality -- rather than just the reality in which one’s actions and perceptions affect one another. That was a very empowering realization.

Interactive forums represent this quantum leap from the old publications of the past -- that many old media are still insistent on imposing on the new -- which is much more vibrant and powerful, when actualized in its fullest possibilities. That’s also true for most other forums and interactions (society), and are energized and transformed not by the categorizing (generalizing) of these truths to the categorical past, but in the actual expressions of these freedoms that summarize the past up to this present moment while manifesting the reality of the future.

It’s not inherently a “Hawaiian” problem but an individual choice and predisposition that confronts every society (individual) recognizing the challenge of change -- and its unlimited opportunities, if it can be grasped as such. The divide could just as well be the Old Media and the New Media -- or just the old and the new. The old insists that everything that is old, is the new, or the “news.”

1 Comments:

At August 09, 2007 9:45 AM, Blogger Mike Hu said...

Did anybody see that presentation on the guided bus system on the public access station's city Council hearing last night? That guy blew them away and made them realize the rail concept is already obsolete. You don't need a rail to provide a fixed guideway -- only tiny magnets. That's the state of the art -- the next generation.

And then they addressed the age-old question of dedicating a lane for that use -- and presuming that nobody will use it -- which seems to be the premise of their mass transit solutions, and so it should be placed out of the way. I think they miss the whole point that there are alternatives that might actually make a difference and cause people to use it.

The council members seemed to be in a panic that there was a real solution to the traffic congestion. Eventually, they have to get people out of the single-occupant vehicle mode -- and not just think that their "solutions" will change nothing and everything will be the same.

 

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