What is wrong with a mind that meticulously transcribes every word of a quote from a YouTube video but then fails to note who said it? I have spent a huge amount of time trying to find that video again so I can attribute this, but alas... I cannot find it. I entered all of the quote, and parts of the quote, into a Google search. It returns a host of discussions and names and refers to videos and substacks, none of which is THE video I watched. I did discover that this idea is called panpsychism. So, it is not a new idea, so maybe the attribute is not quite as important. It was the first time I had heard something that so closely matched what I have long felt.
"This view is that consciousness is actually not an emergent property of evolution. In fact, evolution is driven by consciousness. Consciousness is non local. It is transcendent. It is eternal. It is the ground state of the universe from where everything emerges. And, being prior to time, and transcendent, it is not subject to birth or decay."
Now that is something to think about when I am tending the horses, the supreme beings of my little patch of earth. They are the smartest beings on the planet - well, at least around here they are the smartest beings.
Speaking of horses, by their very nature, they engender in a person a wish to still the static and stress, to listen carefully to that motionless, immutable silence that speaks, that unmoving center we so often overlook in favor of football, or politics, or failing hot water heaters.
Next up this week, I want to shout out to the Y chromosome carriers in the human species. Yes, I am speaking of men - those guys who do not say much but get stuff done! They have tools and know how to use them. And, thanks to our species' long evolution as hunter/gatherers, if a man doesn't have a certain tool, he by God knows a guy who does!
Oh yeah. All the weeds, rotten hay and horse manure was scraped out of the stalls and from around the barns, pushed into a surprisingly small pile. (Of course, the horses are busy replacing as much of the manure as possible!) The drive way has new gravel and some serious grading in an attempt to stop the deep ruts in one particular spot. All the overgrowth around the old garage and the barns was mowed with an industrial machine that saved a single human probably 100 hours of truly hard clearing work. In less than an hour, that machine cleared all that troublesome timber and underbrush. In the hot summers that is a fire hazard.
The old decorative rail fence was falling down, aided by trees falling across the drive and dropping big limbs. I wanted it removed and hauled off and was going to install something cheap just to keep people on the lane between the two ravines! But no, the guy said, "This is solid!" The next time I went to get my mail, the entire fence had been repaired! In addition, a pipe rail panel is now installed at the most dangerous spot, where the water has washed out about a 15 foot hole that would swallow a car if someone did not see it in the dark. And 20 tons of big rocks were delivered and thrown into that gaping hole in an effort to slow the loss of the bank there.
An eyesore of a planter left over from the old house, and the hole left by the demise of the twin hackberry trees was removed, hauled off, smoothed over in no time. The entire barbed wire fence around the pasture was tended to, and any trees or impediments removed.
I was charged for 11 hours of labor for all of this work! I paid for the dirt, the gravel, the rip rap, and the big mower time, but still a mighty bargain. One guy talking to other guys, and then, just like that, all that work is done. The XX chromosomes thank you XY's. You guys built the world and keep it running.
In addition, my son's favorite football team since he was just a tot, the Kansas City Chiefs, are so darned good that people are starting to hate them the way we all grew to hate the Dallas Cowboys and later the Denver Broncos. It is wonderful when your team wins and wins... and wins. Especially when your team was good for a long time, but never won the whole shootin' match!
Just a reminder to give those Y gene carriers a big hug for being our fathers, sons, husbands and friends. They work hard. They deserve to have their teams win once in awhile.
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