Dream

Along with all the rest of humanity, I watch as a gigantic sphere approaches, slowly. It is very far away and hazy, but as it comes nearer it looks like a huge mirror ball, twisting and glinting, its surface reflecting from billions of small facets.

Oddly though, the closer it comes, the more it sizes itself down to human scale; finally it lands, softly, small enough to fill a small room, easy enough to approach now.

I approach, fueled by my own curiosity, without any fear.

Once up close I realize that what looked to be small mirrors from a distance are actually face-sized windows, through which one can peer in. I find a window. I peer.

I see nothing but a big slow swirl. My sense of disappointment tells me that I must have picked the wrong window. Others are peering in and have become fascinated by something, riveted to their view. I conclude that there must be a certain window for each human, a unique view for every individual. Yeah, that's it - I simply haven't found "my" window yet. Nobody is fighting over windows, so there must be one for everybody, there must be one for me somewhere. I move about, examining available windows, looking for the window through which I'll be able to see whatever is in there that people are exclaiming over.

Finally I find my window. When I look in through it I see all of human history and past that all the way to the beginning of time. The view is strangely telescopic and wide-angle at once, and I can see all the way in to the center, the start point, and all the way out to the surface, the present moment; I can stop at any focal length to examine any point in time I want.

This must be it. This must be what others see, and are busy looking at.

I see a species called human, which has evolved and took its place recently and to which I belong. It is unbearably maladapted to the planet, physically and emotionally maladapted, yet has spread all over it.

I see when it lost its fur. This was a very pivotal wrong turn. At least, as I see it, through my window, that's how it looks. From that point the expansion was more than just gustatory survival - it looks as though it was a starting point for what follows, a planetary expansion that has been based on need, greed, and in more recent days, making the earth bleed by sucking out as much oil as humanly possible. The liposuction of the planet until it begins to heat, and cave in on itself. Pretty gross.

I see that religion might have started out as a well-meant coping mechanism, a cultural adaptation to try to keep peoples' minds off their own individual fates, a distraction from the pain of realizing that once born, we're all stuck here until we die, forced to scratch out a living by using up a planet. It looks like it accelerated along with everything else though, and, from my perspective, through my window, backfired; it turned into an accelerant instead, serving to zombify rather than merely assuage, justify rather than clarify, lubricate the "descent" of humanity as it continues creating "hell" on earth, rather than support individuals as it was intended. I see science as a cheerful, determined attempt to mop up, but mostly after the fact and mostly also having become another accelerant. It seems no matter what humans try, what seems like maybe it was a good idea at the time becomes institutionalized and exploited to turn the process into more and faster destruction.

I wake up.