The arc of history is plainly the emergence of the individual and the individual’s claim to be the ultimate arbiter. And as long as the adventurers could find new ground big enough to contain their egos, then the world could go on spinning.
Now the world is small and we are bumping into one another with nowhere to go.
So the race is on whether we mutually destruct or find the benefit in truly thinking outside the box of our own heads and join together.
For which we have to ask ourselves, for whose benefit are we acting?
From the accumulation of what desires, actions, and impressions do our current desires arise?
How do we step off this speeding wheel of accumulated desires, actions, and impressions that determine our thoughts, actions, and desires? That is assuming we even know we are on this speeding wheel or want to get off.
Menachem Mendel Of Kotzk said:
If I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you. But if I am I because you are you, and you are you because I am I, then I am not I and you are not you.
If I present to you a face made up of what I think you want to see, where my object is to satisfy my desires and your desires are irrelevant to me except insofar as they help me achieve my desires, then we never meet.
If I hide inside of you, or you inside of me then we do not meet.
If you are you and I am I, then the conditions are met for meeting, provided one thing.
The philosopher Martin Buber speaks about it in I And Thou. By looking at the way we relate to inanimate objects we can see to what extent we do the same with other people. And to the extent that we do not treat people as objects to be used but recognise them as essentially us, and connect, then a different experience of existence opens up.
And Buber says, God is what is felt when we connect. When that happens there is no future, just this moment for as long as we can hold it.