The Year of Illumination

It’s been a weird year. That is how I would describe 2011 – the year of weirdness. 2011 has seen the death of Osama Bin Laden, Gaddafi, and Kim Jong Il. Thus we have witnessed the passing of the leader of Al Qaeda, the leader of Libya, and the leader of North Korea. These three individuals have plagued the world in one way or another for long periods of time, and in one way or another their passing will affect multiple outcomes in our current timeline. They have altered our reality, and in so doing altered our future and our history. The story has moved on, but the weirdness continues.

Fractured economically, the chaotic turmoil we see in the world around us is not a harbinger of change but rather the change itself. We have reached critical mass. We have hit the tipping point. Ecologically, economically, emotionally, and intellectually, our greatest minds struggle to find meaning from the seething soup of the constantly rotating variables in our environment and associate them to calculations that will enable us to assign sense to some of these events. They have not succeeded. Simulations based on observation show the alterations of the past like rings in a tree. 2012 is but another ring, but the tree itself is unhealthy. Something has to give.

Through all of this we continue our daily lives. Very little of it seems to affect us individually. We are not major pieces in this game. Most of us are filler, marking time on this world day-by-day in a rhythmic march. Fragments of our world come together and drift apart. But this is how it has always been is it not? History, when read from perspective, seems frozen. History, when observed in the present, seems liquid. Future past fits in patterns of change that seem predictable when taken after the fact. It is simple to look back and know what to expect. It is difficult to look forward and assign new outcomes based on previous changes.

2012 has a flavor of newness to it. Like crisp clean snow covering a frozen pile of rotting mud in an ancient graveyard, 2012 is a blank white surface polluted from the darkness below. If you chose to make a snowball out of it, then don’t go too deep. How long will it remain clean before some animal leaves their mark on it? Not long I suspect. If you want to taste 2012, do it on the 1^st while the snow is still clean and pure. Wait until the 2^nd and you’ll likely taste piss.

I expect isolated pockets of resistance to open up this year. Areas where the light hasn’t shined will be illuminated. That’s what this coming year is, the year of illumination. Science is on the edge of multiple discoveries, many of which will change our understanding of the universe we live in and some which will change our understanding of ourselves. Others will threaten our entire species. I expect the ignorant to come forth and enlighten us all with their lack of belief in the foundations of our understanding. The year of illumination will focus laser light on their logic, exposing their twisted beliefs to most of us, and converting those who wish to drink of that ignorance for the bliss that it brings. It will be a bumpy ride for many of us. I expect turmoil in the form of social and cultural alteration. It is time for that – long past time – and the educated minds of the newest and most unemployed generation will have their say. Their voice is only beginning to be heard. They are only now finding it. What have we taught them? Did we teach them well?

My own generation seems weak to me. Raised on change, brought up in both worlds, we adopted and adapted to technological advances almost as a function. It’s as if we were created as catalysts for future reaction, but not the primary reagent. That was left to our children, and they are now learning what has been left to them. They do not want the world of our parents. They are not interested as we have been in straddling both worlds. They want the dream, but they haven’t figured out what it is yet. We didn’t give them one, we thought it best if they determined it for themselves. They only know that life should be better than it is, and they are right. For my generation there will be two sides to choose from – the uncertainty of the future and the nostalgia of the past. The strength of both sides will be astounding, and we will fragment to one end or the other as we always have because we are weak but versatile. Our flexibility is our strength, but we can only bend so far before we break. If we cannot straddle both sides, we must choose. No matter which side we choose, we will weep for the other.

Change is never easy. Neither is looking at the truth. Be ready to do both.

Advertisement