Outside The Box

We were talking to our friend and financial advisor the other day. It wasn’t a long conversation because there is not that much to discuss. Nevertheless, it’s good to have the best maps available for navigating the treacherous and unknown waters of this strange and less than wonderful economy.

At the end of the conversation I thanked him for improving our chances for a successful journey and for shrinking those “Here Be Dragons” areas on the map. I always find it to be a mood enhancing experience when someone understands one of my obscure literary or historical references, and our friend and advisor did not disappoint. He remembered the old maps where uncharted regions of the world fed myth and rumor and were labeled with the phrase that introduced this discussion.

It got me thinking, it did. In this time of satellite imagery and surveillance, one would be hard pressed to find a dragon on a conventional map of the world. There is hardly a square foot on the surface of the planet that hasn’t been mapped, categorized and filed away for potential exploitation and monetization.

I have a Google Street View image of a former neighbor sitting peacefully in her front yard in my old neighborhood. The photo is a treasure now that she has passed on, but it also reminds me that the mysteries of human interactions are being mapped as fast as the surveillance state can manage.

Our species has always been driven to solve mysteries. We are intrigued by the unknown but at the same time we can’t tolerate it. We fear it, therefore we want to control it, and now that we control, we believe, the conventional maps of the surface, we seek to slay the dragons of human behavior and map out those corners previouosly marked “Here Be Privacy.”

Privacy doesn’t seem to be an issue for the ones destined to take the rudder someday. Many think nothing of broadcasting the most intimate details of their private (pause for irony) lives. These are my labels and my pronouns. See me, and you are required to like what you see. Pay particular attention to my wounds and scars and cut me some slack because of them. I want my Facebook friends to know what I had for dinner, and what medications I’m taking. I like this and this and that. Perhaps someone watching will suggest something I can buy that is compatible with my likes and dislikes.

Those who fear the unknowns of we, the unwashed masses, our uncontrolled interactions and what remains of our unmonitored behavior, are intent on taking full advantage of this culture that advertises empowerment but sells gratification, weakness and self absorption.

There are other maps, however, not commonly known outside of scientific circles and by those of us still capable of study and discernment. There is vast unknown territory suggested by those maps. Science is venturing inward, beneath the atom, past the neutrino, the quark, the lepton, the boson, the graviton, to the realm of the Creator. It ventures outward past the planets and deep into the past, beyond the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, to countless galaxies beyond imagining – to meet that Creator once again. As above, so below, said the ancients, and we still have pioneers intent on exploring these uncharted territories.

Back home on our unique and irreplaeable planet, there are still dragons to be found, though we might not be aware of them. We begin to understand that our planet is not the safe and quiet place for indulging our passions that we had come to believe it was. It can change rapidly. The climate changes, with or without our help. The sun itself is not a serenely glowing and benevolent constant. It lashes out on a schedule that our civilization does not remember, with a power that can erase that memory in an instant.

If we were more cognizant of this map, we might turn our efforts toward those elements of humanity that make us strong, resilient and resourceful. Instead, we indulge in gratifications and our addiction to unnecessary drama of our own creation.

We swim in a soup of chemical effluent, the byproduct of our addictions. We have soaked the planet in hormone disrupting chemicals. They are everywhere and inescapable. They are in the food chain, the groundwater, the things we wear and touch, the air we breathe and even the rain that falls.

Living creatures respond to their environments. They mutate, evolve, or devolve accordingly. Of all the waste products of our civilization, just this one category of “forever chemicals” is linked to obesity, cancer, gender dysphoria and feminization of male species, accelerated puberty, mood disorders and decreased fertility. There is evidence that much of what we see on the nightly shooting report and bandied about in the political theater can be linked in some measure to the chemical load we have imposed upon ourselves. Here be dragons indeed.

Thank God, then, for the explorers that remain, and for the ones who endeavor to hold the line and provide safe harbor for the adventurers who will lead us into the undiscovered territory of the future.