is it even possible to one to be a poet, or Artist or
painter or in my case, a writer in our modern capitalistic times?
As I bring in no money in my chosen venture, I haven’t published
a book, well, once about 15 years ago, but it made virtually no
money… as it made no money or brought any fame or titles or
power or material goods, it has no value in our modern world…
what I do has no value in the world… but that doesn’t make it
worthless… because value is not just about money or fame
or power or titles or gaining material possessions…
a light showing us what it means to be human, has the
highest value in the world…
Existence is not about the trinkets of existence for they are
transitory and bring us no meaning that has any value…
We are empty, suffering from a malaise that has infected the
society and state since the beginning of the modern age,
roughly 1800…and this is so because modern day capitalism
has made the pursuit of those empty trinkets the priority of
capitalism… but the pursuit of money or fame is the exact
same as eating empty calories.. it can never fill us up…
we are starving in the midst of plenty… but this starvation
isn’t physical, but it is empty because it fails to fill our souls…
we cannot fill our soul with money or fame or titles or power
or material possessions… Capitalism literally offers us
empty calories that can never fill our inner needs…
The discontentment and despair you feel, that is the
emptiness of what capitalism offers us… empty calories…
it is not the accumulation of wealth or power or fame that
fulfills us, for example, ART fills our soul… for ART is
something that human beings have done for over 30,000
years… the act of creation, of defining ourselves through
ART, that is what fills our soul…You don’t have to recreate
the Mona Lisa… you just have to discover what fulfills your
own need of creation… for me, it is writing, I dabble in
poems and have written fiction but mostly, it’s by
the exploration of being human that fills my own soul
with what is missing from our capitalistic system…
Now some may say that the pursuit of god and seeking out
god is what fills our soul…I disagree… for the pursuit
of god is about finding that which is outside of us, not inside
of us… which the act of creation does answer… inside of us…
the question of god does not fill our soul as the power
of creativity does…god is just more empty calories…
I believe the answers we seek are not outside of us, like
god, or money, but within us, in the answers we bring to and from
the soul… in our modern busyness, we forget to listen
and answer the call and cry of the soul… after
nearly 50 years of working, today, my own soul has arisen
and I now listen to it… I guess it’s better to be late than
not at all…
One might ask, how do we fulfill the call of our soul?
One of the many paths is to be silent, quiet the outside world
and hear the almost silent cry of the soul, as he sings
and prophesizes the past into ‘‘Shoulda, woulda, coulda’’
am I heard?
I doubt it because all we listen to nowadays is the coins
dangling in our purse… and the cry of the merchants,
in commercials and ads that blanket our world…
buy this car and becoming instantly successful and
desired by others, all you need is cold hard cash
and all your dreams will be fulfilled by a brand new shiny
car in the driveway, after a quick credit check, of course…
your dreams are not found in easy credit or in 20% off sales
or in a new TV… How small a dream is that merchandise that
can be bought on easy credit? An item that we will throw
away in less than a year… how does that answer the cry
of the soul, the yearning to fulfill the soul with more than
just the empty promises of our capitalistic world…
What is permanent in this world? certainly not the fake
answers of materialism and capitalism that has emptied,
bankrupt our soul?
the only permanent thing in this or any world is the need
to answer the cry of the soul… for what we have from the
day we are born to the day we die, is just the soul…
and nothing else we human beings do, is more permanent
then answering the cry of our soul… for it exists every single
day of our lives… and nothing else we have, will ever
last as long our soul… in fact, as is known, the human body
is replaced cell by cell, every 7 years… even our own bodies
will not last us from birth to death… only the soul…
But Kropotkin, you are talking about religion, NO, NO,
I am not… for part of the modern failure lies in our
thinking that the only prospect for our soul, is religion…
not only can we exist, prosper without religion and some
engagement with the soul, in fact, the idea of delivering
the soul comes best away from religion… and the thought of god…
it is a great mistake to think that we can only engage in the soul
in terms of religion and god… we can and we must answer the cry
of our soul in non-religious terms… that is the only path…
Kropotkin