The hook for a lot of guys is their kids. They want "things" to hold together so their kids have a shot. It's understandable, even good as far as it goes. But in this context where "things" means the human-constructed, artificial world-within-the-world, what it means is allowing the larger world, the real one, the "natural" one to degrade and fall apart, while preserving the human one. That, in the long run, is dysfunctional. It's the opposite of things holding together.
The scam is the in-betweenness of our living. We get invested in "the way things are", and then it's a very real threat to our whole purpose in existing - the continuation, the next generation, the future, the kids - to consider dismantling the "way things are". Especially to the degree it's becoming obvious is necessary, because this way isn't going to work much longer, and we're deeply committed to it.
So a lot of guys are getting stuck there, and rather than resolve it they just step away. But it continues. It's becoming less and less realistic to think of the human enterprise five hundred years from now, let alone millennia. But that thinking, that imagining, which is a kind of active hope and promise, is exactly what drives the best of us.
So what you have is a bind, where the very impulse that makes you want to sacrifice anything for the ones you love, condemns them.
Hard choices, and they'll only get harder.
The scam is the in-betweenness of our living. We get invested in "the way things are", and then it's a very real threat to our whole purpose in existing - the continuation, the next generation, the future, the kids - to consider dismantling the "way things are". Especially to the degree it's becoming obvious is necessary, because this way isn't going to work much longer, and we're deeply committed to it.
So a lot of guys are getting stuck there, and rather than resolve it they just step away. But it continues. It's becoming less and less realistic to think of the human enterprise five hundred years from now, let alone millennia. But that thinking, that imagining, which is a kind of active hope and promise, is exactly what drives the best of us.
So what you have is a bind, where the very impulse that makes you want to sacrifice anything for the ones you love, condemns them.
Hard choices, and they'll only get harder.
