Disconnection And Death
A Human Problem That Seems To Be Escalating
Written by a human, for humans, always.
What does it mean to be human?
It is a fascinating question that has been asked by all forms of people since at least the beginning of records we can find.
What allows us to flourish as humans?
As well as...
What is it that causes our demise?
These are the types of questions that we must consider in order to understand what it means to be human.
We can also take a step further and look at science...
To see what creates health in us as humans...
As well as what causes sickness...
And death.
There were three things that I was looking at that made me see something important about being a human and the consequences of losing that.
I was reading an article about how e-cigarettes have become a gigantic health issue that is as bad, or perhaps worse, than the traditional smoking options they were designed to replace under the guise of being a “healthier alternative”.
I was reading another article about Odysseus, the Greek Epic, where the author clearly did not understand important details of the original story, creating a complete failure to see why certain things happened or their implications.
(This seems to be a gigantic problem in most “modern retellings” of the story, including the recent Nolan adaptation, which ironically disempowers every woman in the story)
I also saw a video of a child who was making a decision to clean the ocean on their own, because if she didn’t, the fish would die.
Now...
On the surface, these may all seem like very different things...
But there is a common thread between them all...
Disconnection and death.
See...
When you understand humans...
There is something that is incredibly important to our health...
Connection.
We are, by design, interdependent.
We need others...
Others need us.
We are not designed to be individuals who are secluded.
We are designed for unity.
In unity, true unity, we can begin to flourish.
But...
As we become more disconnected from things...
We begin to lose sight of both ourselves and others...
And often this ends in different types of death.
The e-cigarettes were never really about a healthier alternative to traditional tobacco products...
They were a marketing gimmick designed in the face of the loss of profit margins from decades of studies, warnings, and horror-inducing commercials on the dangers of tobacco products.
Younger people were brought up terrified of smoking...
Older populations were dying, often due to the health problems caused by the tobacco products in their design to make them more addictive...
And profits were decreasing.
So...
A “healthy” alternative needed to be created that did not have all the negative baggage that had started to catch up with the tobacco companies.
Do you see the disconnection here?
Instead of actually caring about the health of people...
The companies were really only worried about profits.
Damn the consequences...
To real human lives.
Disconnection leading to death.
In these different tellings and retellings of the Odyssey...
What is frequently missed...
Is what certain things meant within their context.
For instance...
If you actually understood the story of the Odyssey, you would know that the two individuals who are seen as the greatest heroes in the story...
Are Odysseus...
And the only person who is his intellectual equal...
But perhaps without the egotistic tendencies (aka, Odysseus proclaiming his name at the absolute worst possible moment)...
His wife, Penelope.
If you actually understand the Greek Culture that is at play...
What she pulls off is nothing short of a miracle.
To keep tons of suitors at bay...
To set them against each other so none took power...
To provide enough hope that they remained docile, without providing too much hope to cause them to act...
To protect her son...
To stay loyal to the one person she loved...
For 20 years...
Requires a genius mastermind who truly understands how the humans around her function.
But what is she often reduced to by those who fail to understand the story...
The patient wife.
That is not how the Greek Epic portrays her...
But it is what disconnection from understanding people or periods of time does...
And it is a trend we see throughout history.
The more disconnected we become from other people...
The more we fail to understand them...
The more we generalize them into categories...
Over time, these categories frequently get twisted and distorted...
And this has often led to death.
If we look at another part of the Odyssey...
We see this with the character of Clytemnestra...
Another woman who most people fail to remember exists in the story.
Her husband, Agamemnon, is the guy who leads the efforts in the Trojan War.
In his greed for glory...
He sacrifices his daughter to appease the gods...
After having made the mistake of claiming to be better than them.
How do you imagine this would make Clytemnestra feel?
Well...
It ends up going terribly for Agamemnon...
Because in his absence...
Clytemnestra plans his assassination...
And succeeds.
Agamemnon’s greatest failure is his disconnection from what his actions cause to those around him...
And it is what gets him killed.
It is a story that people frequently forget, or never learned because they never bothered to read the Odyssey or understand culturally what is happening...
And it is another example of where...
Disconnection leads to death.
Finally, we can look at the little child who went to clean up the ocean.
What was it that caused this child to make that decision?
Connection.
Connection with the ocean.
Connection with the fish.
If we take this a step further than the child likely understands...
We also know that the fish provide food for other creatures, including us.
We know that ocean plastics are a growing problem in the world.
We also know that there are solutions that could dramatically change this problem...
Relatively quickly.
But why are these solutions not being implemented?
Disconnection.
Most people are disconnected from the oceans...
Disconnected from the fish...
Disconnected from the source of the food they eat...
Disconnected from the communities that rely on fishing to survive...
And the result is that we begin to see death.
Death of the fish.
Death of the wildlife of the oceans.
Death of communities that rely on fishing.
Death to people who consume the fish that are contaminated with microplastics that we are discovering more and more in people.
But the child who is connected...
Has a very real understanding...
Even if it is simple at their young age...
The plastics kill the fish...
So we should remove the plastic.
When we are actually connected to people...
And the things that cause us to thrive...
We have the ability to bring health and healing to the world through that connection.
But as we become more disconnected from others...
We fail to see these different problems...
Fail to really understand the consequences...
Prioritize things that end up causing more death.
If we are to change this...
We must understand this connection...
And seek to create real relationships with others and the world at large.
Only through true understanding is that possible.
Only through real connection...
Can we change the world.
To Your Sageship,
Cody
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