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<p>I like this tangential riff into our "theater of the Absurd"</p>
<p>It is equally (similarly) absurd to me that: <br>
</p>
<ol>
<li>We are sentient enough (some of us) to sense and anticipate
(sortof) that we are muddying our own water hole, shitting our
own nest, tragedizing our own commons to the point that we might
not survive the consequences, yet cannot seem to actually push
the sisyphean rock *up* the hill rather than just wander it
around without any sense of the gradient?</li>
<li>We imagine we could *ever* do anything more than just bash
around in pseudo-brownian motion?</li>
</ol>
<p>I think we need to write a followon to Ayn Rand's "Atlas
Shrugged" under the title "Sisyphus Wandered"?</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>On 7/16/2025 8:22 AM, glen wrote:</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:0c4cbf5b-cddd-4fa1-bd59-f00380b4fbcb@gmail.com">"Know"
is a strong word. But I think at least some of us perceive the
*absurd* - "Imagine Sisyphus happy". This sentiment is present in
every community I've ever interacted with, from academics to
politicians to plumbers. Sans suicide, what option do you have but
to keep pushing the rock up the hill?
<br>
<br>
This is something we "know" that could help a lot of people around
us. I have lefty friends who are caught up in the outrage about
ICE and Trump, righty friends caught up in Epstein Files and Woke,
academic friends caught up in the death of the university (of
which Trump is a symptom not a cause), etc. Many of the older ones
simply forgot about absurdity. The overwhelming majority of the
young ones have never even sensed it, much less perceived or lived
it.
<br>
<br>
An important part of living absurdity, however, is pushing through
into a skill, repetition/retrying until you can get into the Flow
of some activity. You can't *feel* absurdity without Flow. So
another thing "we" know is whatever skill we have hammered out
enough that allows us to feel absurdity. So whether it's a
knitting circle or wood turning, find and mind-meld with the
others doing that. And then reach out in to the milieu and *hook*
others into it ... and keep them there long enough to broach the
absurd.
<br>
<br>
On 7/16/25 6:56 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">What do "we" know that might be of help in
remedying what I am identifying as faults in our mode(s) of
"collectivism". In the spirit of part-whole
conflation/emergence, *can* we, as sentient beings (maybe with
the technical leverage of LLMs, etc) take a more conscious part
in the collectives we are a part of? We already do it by trying
to design/engineer/clamp these systems to our presumed
intention, but it does seem that these "best laid plans often go
awry"? What insights does complex systems science offer us to
obtain another result?
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
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