#500

It's really hard to believe. After more than a quarter million words, I've come to my 500th post. If I were a champagne drinker, I supposed I'd be popping corks.

Blogs aren't all I write, but blogging does take up a good portion of my time. I've poured a lot of words into academic containers, I can assure you, for it seems that higher education is unthinkable without text. What I learned over there was that we have established a lot of fact, we have described a lot of phenomena, and we know one helluva lot these days. But what I've realized that in spite of all that, we're really not all that smarter -- as a species, that is -- and we're certainly not any wiser for it.

Writing aficionados will tell you that you need to write a million words. Well, just over five years, just over 250,000 words ... you can do the math. Who's says I'll even live long enough to know whether I found it or not. At least in the blogging world, that is. But, maybe it's not a hard-and-fast rule.

Yes, the 500th blog post. There was a time when numbers were thought to mean something. (Oh, we still think that they do in some areas: like business where as long as the last one is bigger than the previous one we think we should be happy; or if you're the millionth customer somewhere. Funny: the bigger the number the better, but it hasn't always been so. There was a time when small was beautiful: one world; a happily married couple; for Christians, the Trinity; the four corners of the earth; the seven wonders of the world ... OK, so some numbers were left out. We moderns all know that was all meaningless nonsense anyway.No, I'm not going to make a case that gematria or number mysticism is "true", but it is a way to get off dead center and maybe see things in a slightly different light.

Take the number 5, for example. Traditionally, this was the number of change. After all, it was at the midway point between 0 and 9. The mystic Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin thought it was an evil number, and I suppose it is, if change isn't one of your favorite things. And 500? Well, that's two orders of magnitude greater (5*10= 50, or one order of magnitude; 50*10=500, the second order). If one order of magnitude is a kicker (for example, four may be a foundation, but think of 40 years in the desert, or 40 days of fasting, or 40 days of rain ... those familiar Bible texts start to look a bit different, I must say), then what's two? If 10-times is a spiritualization, then 100-times starts looking cosmic. Right. And that's kind of how I feel right now?

Stated somewhat differently, it would appear that my 500th blog post should mark some kind of fundamental change. And maybe that's where I am. To be perfectly honest, in all that I have written here over the past five-plus years, I've done everything I could to be clear but civil, to be controversial but considerate. And now, perhaps, it's time for a change. Why not?

It would seem, dear Reader, that now is simply a propitious opportunity to vary the presentation, to alter the approach, to step up to the plate, to ... well, you get the point. But, perhaps it's time to simply up the intensity. Now, that's a thought ...

Just a handful of years

No one should get the idea that I'm making fun of people who love their country. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am merely saying that I, personally, don't understand the fascination, because you are born where you are born by mere chance and whatever it is you call your country today might something very different tomorrow.

What I suspect lies behind these feelings, though, may be worth thinking about, namely, our common, individual desire to belong: to be a part of something meaningful, to be accepted, to know there is something greater than ourselves, something that gives us a feeling of safety, security, and being welcome ... somewhere we are not just lone, often lost, individuals, isolated, alienated, and lonely.

We humans are, at bottom, social creatures. We need and desire the company of others. We're not rugged individualists who can survive on our own (well, except for a couple of eccentric hermits). We function best in groups, and this is OK. It's what makes us what we are and it is something we need to seriously recognize and acknowledge, not merely hoot and holler about from time to time. It's never about just "I" or "me", part of being human is knowing and embracing "we". Studies have shown that we do best in groups that do not exceed about 150 individuals. Fortunately, for us, each of our 150-people groupings overlap with other 150-people groupings of people in our group. While the intensity of the relationship decreases, the principle of relationship remains: we cooperate, we try to get along with one another, not necessarily compete. Cooperation is the natural state of being, not competition.

Obviously, that's not how things are in the world today, for a whole litany of reasons, most of them bad ones. It is unfortunate that things have developed this way, for our world is not a better place for it. We have inverted the natural state of things, from cooperation to competition, and while we have made great advances in some areas, we have ruined and destroyed a lot along the way. I think we can get just as far, less destructively, if we are true to who we are. It's time to change our minds and shake off that which is simply alien to our nature.

If anything, this simple message is at the heart of just about everything I have been posting on this blog for the last five years. The official anniversary is tomorrow. A lot of words have flowed over the network in that time, to be sure, but when one writes, one always wonders whether one is making any sense as well. Anyone who has ever tried to find something worthwhile to say for any period of time, regardless how short, knows precisely what I'm talking about. For some, five years is nothing, but for others it's half a decade, a significant chunk of life. I would be lying if I said I was weary of writing, but it is not always easy to find the right words to say what it is I really mean. Sometimes it flows, and sometimes it is simply very frustrating.

On this occasion, then, I would like to thank all of you who bother to read these posts. Whether you agree or not does not matter: I write so that you can read, and I appreciate that you do. For those whose feel their toes have been stepped on, I'm sorry, but I can only call things as I see them. I would be doing both you and me a disservice to simply be agreeable all the time. We're allowed to and should disagree on things, for it is only in the interaction, in the dialog, that truth may be found.

None of us is born with the Truth. We all have it search for it together.