The Surreal Tapestry

Things are certainly complex, and the web of wild weirdness seems only to be growing with each spin of the planet. The three cities pictured above are about as different as they could be, but they are all part of the network of human habitation that is coming to define earth. We stop rivers, blow up mountains, build bridges and construct massive cities to hold the incomprehensibly huge population that we have managed to produce. An insular species, we seem far more concerned with the other humans than about much else, even our own environment. This might have something to do with the pervasive struggle for land, but it might be something deeper. That human intelligence was derived and created not to deal with our sensory world, but with the minds of our fellow humans, which can be complex minefields of opinions, motivations and ambitions. One theorist (Geoffrey Miller) has posed the perspective that the reason the human brain evolved into this immensely powerful organ is because sexual selection favored the most intelligent specimens, which over time rendered a mind that could produce mentalities, realities and just anything else we can think of (literally). The human mind has swaggered onto the stage of evolutionary history like a megalomaniac Titan, annihilating species and altering landscapes en masse because it seems beneficial to us to do so. Having said all this we are still just a funky species of mammals whose only real claim to fame is our appetite for destruction, agriculture and making very complex tools to assist in our endeavors, which when looked at objectively doesn't really amount to much. No matter how serious we take ourselves and how much we hoot and holler, the surreal tapestry that we bipeds have weaved in our world is a perceptual poltergeist created for our own entertainment and survival. Of course thinking of yourself as some strange growth that came from bacteria ages past isn't a very romantic perspective, and it doesn't leave much room for our treasured notions of individuality and spiritual significance. All the wars we wage, the economic madness we manifest, the triumph and terror that is modern mans struggle with himself, it is all just an elaborate existential exhibition of ourselves. So we might as well sing and dance.
"We are like pygmies lost in a maze of haze. We are not at war, we are having a nervous breakdown,again." -HST
"It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in providence, than to see their real import or value." -Hegel