Third Stone from the Sun
When I was growing up, our next-door neighbors had some … uh … peculiar notions about housecleaning. As sons of a Marine, my younger brother, Keith, and I would walk into their living room and be astounded at the volume of clutter, the nature of the clutter, and the general lack of order or cleanliness.
One day, Keith, who’s always been the smarter and sharper-witted of the two of us, said, “Holy shit. If aliens ever came down and landed in their living room, the aliens would open the door of their spaceship, look around, and say, “What the hell?!”
To this day, the idea that extraterrestrials would necessarily have that point of earthly reference makes me laugh out loud.
Different Strokes
I understand one man’s pig pen can be another man’s paradise. I get that tastes, styles, tolerances, preference, and priorities differ. It could also be a sign of having too much stuff, making it difficult to organize and maintain a clean environment. Or as George Carlin put it:
Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? God! And you say, “Get that shit offa there and let me put my stuff down! (Thank you, Mac Bogert.)
On a more serious note, failure to keep one’s home clean can have negative effects on physical and Mental Health, lead to feelings of Stress, Anxiety, lack of control, and even Depression. But it’s hard to tell, and we shouldn’t be quick to judge, regardless of what extraterrestrials might have to say about it.
That Was Then
In case you haven’t noticed, things have gotten significantly worse since then. And I don’t mean at that next-door neighbors’ house. I mean with the world. The world’s house is in disorder. We’re letting ourselves be divided, be pandered to. We’re devolving into lesser versions of ourselves. We’re judging, fearing, hating, and killing each other. And by and large, we’re acting as if that’s okay.
It’s reminiscent of the philosophical/psychological question of whether fish know they’re in water. It’s likely fish have no conscious awareness of being in water. They’ve adapted to their aquatic environment, thrive in it, and lack the cognitive ability to conceive of their being in water, to imagine any other environment, or to perceive water as a medium with which they interact. They probably experience water as an integral part of their environment, inseparable from it, perhaps in the same way we experience air as invisible, largely intangible, and as much a part of us as we are of it.
Maybe we’ve lived in an environment of corruption for so long — divided, pandered to, devolving into lesser versions of ourselves, judging, fearing, hating, and killing each other — that corruption is like water to the fish. It’s undiscernible to us, and we’re inseparable from it. If that’s the case, it’s as sad as it is wasteful and dangerous.
Plan B
Maybe we can start to recognize and free ourselves from the divided, pandered, devolving versions of ourselves in which we judge, fear, hate, and kill each other by taking personal responsibility for keeping our houses clean. In so doing, maybe we can free ourselves from the negative effects on our physical and mental health like feelings of stress, anxiety, lack of control, and even depression. The fact is I don’t know. But I do know, unless we try, none of us will ever know. We all have to share this third stone from the sun. We don’t have to expose extraterrestrials to the distress we’re inflicting on ourselves.
And we don’t have to compel them to ask, “What the hell?!”
Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/
