"This is pouring rain, this is paralyzed". [Bon Iver 're: stacks']
'The house always wins' is not just a tired aphorism of American popular culture, but the reality of the lives lived by most people on the planet - a reality so obscured that few ever realize the con.
It starts with the idea of a horizon.
As a species, we flock to the horizon. We view it, see it's grandeur and project divinity into that space beyond which we are. Between sky and land, land and space, sea and clouds, we imagine a power beyond our grasp, an order beyond our choice.
And whether or not one believes in science, or God, or nothing, that is all true. That space, the horizon, the sky, the unfathomable ocean, the endless eccentricities of earth, dictate an order beyond our choice and have a power that we've barely begun to grasp as a species. But more importantly, the natural disposition of humanity to look at the horizon has been hijacked to imprison us in a world where the horizon is our own destruction.
And we have granted the same divinity to that horizon- namely capitalism.
In this world, one in which all of us are not just trapped, but entrenched, the horizon is palatial materialism, bred from material deprivation. We're withheld just enough of the horizon of wealth to think it a worthy goal, to think it a horizon we want to achieve - to think it divine.
And the cost is the poverty of billions, the murder of millions and a perversion of our humanity that is unfathomable. Most importantly, it betrays our own self-interest. Yes, the self-interest that tells us that to survive we must band together - we must be one. We must understand that horizon as our own projection - our childhood puppet show - a show of tinsel, light and mimeographed truths.
There are spaces in between. The horizon is precisely that - the space in between - the space into which we project our most intimate thoughts. So let's use that again. Let's imagine a world whose horizon doesn't end in human destruction. Let's project a world in which we are all equals. Let's look at the sunrise or sunset and rejoice and celebrate that we are and that we can see our way past infancy into a greater universe that is our next horizon.