Now that the smoke of catastrophe has cleared for @samstonehill, who seems to have fully bounced back to functionality following his most recent round of BITCHIN', it was back into the THROES of BITCH-dom for me, yet again. But this new round manifested more in the OFFLINE realm, which tends to be EVEN MORE of a roller-coaster ride through the VORTEX than those nervous breakdowns which are more narrowly isolated to the Steemiverse. This time around I found myself with an unstable internet connection, and a two-day "romance" gone HORRIDLY off-the-rails, sprinkled with various other social and financial calamities which ACTUALLY DID leave me half-COMATOSE and partially-NAKED, with SEVERAL physical and mental bruises and contusions, in some parking lot on the wrong side of town, following a weekend-long bender of hard liquor, SANS the crack-cocaine. But, once again, all was not lost in this most recent descent into the underworld, as my last post managed to draw in some "interesting" new GROUPIES and commentaries which have helped fuel my bounce-back with this (self-proclaimed) FINE treatise on the nature of things.

We Are Strange Attractors

We are ALL a bit STRANGE, and we're ALL attractors. We are bodies and spirits floating out here in SPACE on simultaneously paradoxical RANDOM and NON-random trajectories. We are continuously ATTRACTED to some people - and sensory inputs - while simultaneously REPELLED by others. Yet this OVERALL process of attracting and repelling ultimately leads us in SOME kind of subtly-organized DIRECTION. In other words, there IS a METHOD to the MADNESS. There IS an ORDER in the CHAOS. The problem is that we often DON'T SEE it, and often CANNOT see it. Sometimes the ONLY thing we can do is maintain FAITH that this underlying order DOES INDEED EXIST in the world, and then let the chips fall where they may.

Empires Built On Bunk

As more and more people are gradually realizing - especially many of us trail-blazing RENEGADES here on Steemit - the BULK of the history of our civilization, as it has been taught to us, is built on a GIANT MOUNTAIN of BUNK. Our books are full of BUNK. Our religions are full of BUNK. Our fundamental social INSTITUTIONS spew out a CONSTANT STREAM of "Grade-A" BUNK. There are massive pyramids, and ruined civilizations, lying stagnant, deep underground. There are massive pyramids and ruined civilizations, lying stagnant, within human diving-distance under the sea - not to mention those BEYOND human-diving distance, which can be reached with our ever-evolving specialized underwater exploration gadgets. There are technologies and structures which have been INTENTIONALLY hidden from us, lying right under our noses, and there is STUFF, far and wide, out there in the infinite expanse of space. It may very well be that our modern civilization will fail to pull itself out of the current DITCH we've been DIGGING ourselves into for ages, so that when aliens land here ZILLIONS of years from now, and begin digging up the REMNANTS of our fast food wrappers, silicon breasts implants, and broken pieces of skyscrapers, hundreds and thousands of layers beneath the radioactive topsoil - and/or ocean - they will surely SCOFF at how FOOLISH we all were in this "WANNABE Golden Age".

One certainty about life and history is that civilizations rise and fall, one after the other, one "imperial nervous breakdown" at a time, while the only thing which TRULY remains is the PROCESS of evolution and consciousness. All of those great big, ancient monuments are merely TIME-STAMPS which call into the future that "We were here! We FUCKED it all up! And all we got was some LOUSY t-shirts and lots of rubble and/or nuclear fallout to show for it!"

Leaving Our Time-Stamp On History

If all TANGIBLE things in this BIG, BAD universe ultimately degrade back into star-dust -and vice versa - then WHAT kind of MARK can we ACTUALLY leave here, if any? Well, we can WAX ourselves into a PHILOSOPHICAL STUPOR on this issue, OR we can put that stupor on hold for a bit by considering the more SIMPLE idea that what REALLY matters in this process of life is our EXPERIENCE. We're all going to die. We're all going to move forward in this finite time-limited journey "one nervous breakdown at a time", experiencing all kinds of good and bad STUFF. In other words, the ONLY thing we REALLY HAVE is our EXPERIENCE, whatever mixture of "good" and "bad" characteristics that experience may take. We then USE our experience to MAKE STUFF. Some of us are introspective enough to CONTEMPLATE our experience and then attempt to TRANSMUTE it into something which OTHER people can take into THEIR process. We EXPERIENCE stuff, and then we MAKE stuff, and then OTHER PEOPLE are able to DISCOVER our stuff and mix THEIR stuff with OUR stuff to make NEW STUFF, and ultimately form SOME KIND of a synthesis whose WHOLE is greater than the sum of its PARTS.

Dude, You're Losing Us!

To bring the above CLUSTERFUCK of DEEP-THOUGHTS back down to earth, my core point is that the ONLY thing we really have in this world is our EXPERIENCE - our INDIVIDUAL experience, and our COLLECTIVE experience. As INDIVIDUALS we move through time and space experiencing STUFF, processing STUFF, and sharing STUFF through our speech and actions. OTHER INDIVIDUALS are doing the SAME THING. Then when we encounter SOME of those other individuals who are putting out THEIR STUFF which RESONATES with OUR STUFF, we REACT. This happens ON and OFF of Steemit. Someone says something in a bar, or on the train, and it RESONATES with us. It flicks one of our switches. It STIMULATES or GLANDS. It may REINFORCE some aspect(s) of our own experiences, and/or it may PROPEL our sense of experience into a new direction which may bear MORE fruit into the future than if we hadn't had that interaction. We are "strange attractors" who resonate with OTHER "strange attractors" and bounce off each other in new directions - sometimes "POSITIVE" directions, and sometimes "negative" ones. Sometimes someone says, or does, something which "spiritually BITCH-slaps" us into an ALTERNATE DIMENSION of CHAOS from which we can BARELY return, or NOT return at all. But EVEN SO, they have STILL forced us to move in a different direction.

Our EXPERIENCE is the ULTIMATE CURRENCY of existence - the only REAL currency we have, through - and even SLIGHTLY BEYOND - our individual temporary journeys in this so-called "reality". Our bodies, our books, and our monuments will ultimately dissolve back into star-dust. They are simply CARRIERS of our EXPERIENCE. It is our EXPERIENCE which is the FOUNDATION upon which all IMPERMANENT material "things" are built.

Today's Dreaded Homework Task

As you interact with people on Steemit this week, observe and meditate on the process by which you RESONATE with other people's content (posts and comments), and how that RESONANT attraction/repulsion affects you. Did you read that ONE SPECIFIC post which REALLY made you reconsider your ideas/beliefs about the world in some way? Did someone have an ESPECIALLY strong reaction to one of YOUR posts or comments? If so, where did that "resonance collision" lead? Follow the progression of thoughts and events beginning from when you resonated with what someone else wrote or said (or someone resonated with what YOU wrote or said) and the chain of events that followed. Did it lead to something TANGIBLY productive, such as you being able to write an interesting new post (as it did for me with THIS post)? Did your interaction with this person cause you to consider some idea more deeply, or differently? Did the "collision" motivate you to follow that person in order to begin to develop and explore your resonance DEEPER? Meditate on the FLOW of this resonance process, and how it affects your actions moving forward. By become MORE AWARE of this process we become better able to HARNESS its potential, and TRANSMUTE these "resonance collisions" into new content which can be beneficial to others as we use our "experiential currency" to fuel our own - and others' - GROWTH on (and off) Steemit, and leave our PERSONAL (and COLLECTIVE) TIME-STAMP in the fabric of existence.

As usual, feel free to share your thoughts, ideas, challenges, insults, etc., and as you continue moving forward, just remember to take life (both ON and OFF Steemit)...

"One nervous breakdown at a time".

@transcript-junky