What Shall We Do Now?

I consider myself a process existentialist. I’m to the point that I don’t much care whether the “experts” agree or disagree with my assessment. What I do increasingly care about is the conundrum posed by such a worldview, namely that it is terribly difficult—if not impossible—to focus on the now. I believe that it is true that we have no control over the past. It is equally true that we have no control over the future unless it is in that infinitesimally brief moment when what could be is transformed into what was. This elusive present itself becomes debatable with regard to whether or not it is actually “real”.

My musing is prompted by the documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave that Mary and I watched over the weekend. “Filmmaker Robert Kane Pappas presents a riveting argument for his theory that America is under an Orwellian watch with the rise to prominence of the radical, right-wing Republican party, an ascent aided, unwittingly or not, by the mainstream media."

At the time, I expressed my alarm at what was happening to the very foundation of our democracy as Bush et al stole the 2000 presidential election from the people. That this happened is well-documented, as is the 9/11 conspiracy that was used to justify—to “sell”—the invasion of Iraq that had already been on the neoconservative drawing board for years.

Such chicanery is made possible by diverting the public attention to either the past or the future and by portraying either in such a realistic fashion that it dissipates any focus upon the present. The very fact that the past five years have been used to engender a palatable fear of something like 9/11 happening again instead of zeroing in on what actually happened is an example of what I’m talking about.

I’m uncertain as to how we go about better focusing our attention on the now. It is, as I have already said, an elusive reality that is easily sublimated by the apparent reality of what has already happened or what is going to happen. It is true that we must learn from our mistakes (history) in order to avoid making them again in the future, but the truth is that such education can not take place anywhere but in the perpetual now.