The world is doomed

Ours is a world of infinite and incomprehensible complexity...

I watched the SBS documentary Go Back To Where You Came From a couple of months ago, and at the time, I remember thinking that I didn’t know what to do with myself any more. I found myself completely, utterly and terrifyingly unable to comprehend the enormity of how totally fucked up the world is, to the point where the only rational solution was to stop participating in it by killing myself. Obviously I didn’t, but it seemed to be the only possible outcome if I took the thought to its logical conclusion.

I’m a person whose character is such that I prefer exploring the intellectual realm of the mind, rather than the tangible, physical world. I tend to gravitate towards Platonic idealism and the belief that perfection exists – that there is a solution for every problem, an answer for every question, and an end to every beginning. I’m not satisfied to just “do my bit for the cause.” I want the problem to be entirely gone

But I’m becoming increasingly resigned to the fact that the world suffers from an incurable case of entropy (chaos and disorder). The problems are getting larger, and our ability (or motivation) to deal with them is not keeping up.

It baffles me that in all of the discussions I’ve seen (including my own opinions here in this blog), people are conceited enough to think that they have a sufficient grasp on the issue, regardless of whether it’s asylum seekers, climate change, the National Broadband Network, to be able to judge others’ thoughts and opinions on the topic. We hold dearly onto the delusion that the world is even remotely comprehensible to us, and that our speck of understanding is sufficient to convince others of our righteousness.

In this regard, I’m beginning to see why religion is needed – if the Ideal doesn’t exist in this reality, then it must do so in some other alternative reality. Because we can imagine it, it must therefore exist.

How should I deal with this – do I throw my hands up in the air, say “to hell with it all” and live life inside a bubble of ignorance, as selfishly as possible? Or do I join those droplets of humanity dashing myself against the rock of futility, adding my infinitessimal contribution to the carving of humanity’s future?

It’s not even just asylum seekers. The media are constantly bombarding us with issues, and our form of democracy practically demands that we consider every aspect of running the country as if the prosperity of the nation is a very real responsibility for every individual, when the individual is already being beset on all sides by people, political parties and businesses trying to pass on more and more of the burden.

Pandora’s Box is not a myth – we’re living it.