Looking Down

Information is no longer power. It lost its value like the dollar bill, as more and more of it ballooned into the economy. It fills the air like pollen, just out of sight but a constant irritant. There is simply too much. It cannot be sorted. It cannot be verified. It fills our screens and minds and pages and memory banks. It flashes in our eyes. It buzzes in our ears. It covers the streets, the cars, the radio waves. It is there if we will it or not, and more is coming. Faster than we can process, the content is generated, and there is no way to turn off the churning machine. There are no fact checkers. We have long lost the trails of validity. Every point is just as likely. They all hang tenuously, without foundation, without grounds. Each story is just another story. Each belief is just another belief. For every argument, there is a counter. For every counter-argument there is a repost. And the back and forth wanders lazily along forever. If it ever ends at all it is in a stunning silence. There is simply nothing left to say. Both parties must admit their ignorance and move on. The conversation hangs abruptly over the abyss. There is discomfort but acceptance as we stare disheartened into the dark. The empty. The unknowable.

But this unnerving state is not held for long. Soon, we slip back into discourse, forgetting our sudden brush with that which is not. It brings us no joy or practical benefit to stare unendlessly into the dark and so we forget.. We shake off our minds and dislodge the fragments of doubt as we continue in our search for something solid. But as each trail leads back to the abyss we grow tired of endlessly chasing. We seek tangible bits of life to bite into. We begin to test - to taste hesitantly at first- and then to sink in. We delight in the fruits of belief - so delicious- so readily accessible - so easy. We treasure these happy safe-holds and carefully avoid following the paths that lead away to the abyss. We send away those who try to take us there or point frantically down to warn us of our ignorance. We have seen what is there. We have taken so many paths down.

And so we gather ourselves and many repetitions of ourselves. We weave our nests with carefully chosen branches. As one belief folds in to the next, it surrounds us in an intricate web. The whole coheres and we forget the path downwards. We cover the view with our tapestry. We weave one belief into the next and the next and the next until we have come back to the beginning again. And there is comfort in our nest, although it hangs over nothing, as if by magic. It is solid in itself, but has no place to perch... The key is learning to not look down.