We put our ear to the ground to ascertain the infinite reverberation of a lingual deity, or a grand design, or a celestial ancient. It is only the shape of our ear collecting and filtering the full spectrum of noise into a signal of our own making. The only grand intuition in this multi-speciesial march is that to perpetuate complexity, and as evident by our annihilation-bent behavior, our divergence is but a mere glitch of consciousness, a divorce from the electrical harmonic hums of the cosmos and the casual and the crustaceal. In our attempt to find order, we divorce ourselves from the chaos. 

“The flutter of a human heartbeat becomes a heavy thump, then horses’ hooves thundering through roads turn into thunder itself. Clear crystal bells shatter, ripples turn into tidal waves washing over everything, then receding and separating into single droplets. A mountain or tree grows, an insect eats, a man thinks, a tear falls.” – MORSE CODE MESSAGE (1969-75), from The Human Argument: The Writings of Agnes Denes

The earth is an instrument and a hand on the clock. As an instrument, it continues to detune into a cacophonous sound more and more out of key to the orchestra of the stars. The lack of potential for capital gain and the inelegant truth of the solution are the only obstacles preventing the understanding of the mechanics. The goal is to let the planet retune, vibrating in pitch with the neighboring expanse. To ring true like a well tuned bell, pulsing out to rhythmically intersect the beat of the sun and the chorus of the planets in their sweeping scale. The hand on the clock is out of pace, crooked, gunked up at the works. This false time has us tapping our feet to some busted groove and offering a song both out of sync and out of tune.

With this busted horn and malfunctioning metronome it is no surprise that we sulk about lost in our own stuff. Living with a misguided vision to hammer the instrument back into shape, to put the slides and valves back in their place and set time once again to that of the expanse. They are the instruments we broke and we are not listening. If we would, we would sing softly to the non-purpose greater than ours of profit, growth and conquest, a surrender to the pending rejuvenation of the interconnected ecologies around the globe. 

This is the greater consciousness, not an individual epiphany or projected anthropomorphic script, but the whole greater than the eight billion parts and hearts. This is the noosphere. This is an orthogenesis, not by evolutionary design, for we are not convinced we were part of the plan, but a manufactured humility that will allow for this terrarium to thrive once again. Just maybe we will find a place for ourselves within its workings.

Here’s to the not too distant future, to the future after the storm and the darkness, to a future that does not require our sweat or our seed, one that will be swift in beginning a slow and steady burnout of the last stranglehold of hate and hope. Here’s to the soldiers of love and the saints of labor and the choir of reckless todayness.