2020

Tomorrow we enter 2020, the year of clarity. The year of near-perfect vision. So What do I see?

It becomes difficult not to be sentimental when entering a fresh decade. It's a time when we reconnect with our deepest aspirations. Many of us will think about what we want the future to hold not just for ourselves but for humanity. While I lack the wisdom to know which way we should pull world politics, I am suspicious of any strategy for social betterment that does not include in its proclamations some relationship to our humanity. Whatever our philosophical inclination may be, the logic behind that philosophy should be informed by our physicality. Our felt and socially acquired understanding of who we are on the animal level needs to be part of how we navigate our culture through what seems like phantasmatic times

As we leave our historical marks we should consider how as individuals we can be more attuned to our biology. Only as we achieve greater individual health in all its many forms, can we expect any real social improvement. Just as a clock can only be accurate if all its gears are in proper shape, the well-being of society is contingent on our health as individuals.

There's is a reductionist danger in mechno-morphing people but, I do think we all are a part of some meta - entity that is far beyond our comprehension. Not necessarily in a physical sense, although I suppose that true, but energetically. In the realm of consciousness. Just as a skin cell of someone who happens to be surfing does not understand the marine ecosystem of the pacific ocean we do not understand how we too are part of some grand interwoven psycho- emotional reality. If we pay attention we can glean glimpses of this reality. We can see how our individual thoughts and emotions become projected out of us. How our nervous system can become excited or agitated on the thoughts and emotions of those around us. When we look at this process from a greater vantage point it is clear there is no real end to all these nodes of neurochemical energy that make up what we call us. The only real demarcation between us and not us is what we recognize as us is where we have the most control.

So whatever noble schemes we may have to better the world should start with reconnecting to our humanness; by looking at our problems as they exist on a human scale. What better way of improving the world than cleansing our internal static? So let's eat food that we evolved to eat, balance our sleep cycles, socialize more in person, and less through screens become more attuned to our own felt biofeedback, and less concerned with what data points our fitbits ply us with. Let's trust whatever we do to improve ourselves will radiate outward into the world.

So my optimistic vision for 2020 is we find ways to unidentify with being consumers, fans, citizens, criminal, rich, poor, liberal, conservative, or any other limiting label. That we do what's in our ability to reconnect to our bodies and practice just being human.

Anthony Bruni