Independance Day, you say?

On an American holiday that so many people use as an excuse to drink the canned and fortified fermented corn products mistaken for beer while temporarily replacing vocational stress with shared celebratory indulgence in socially acceptable audiovisual stimulation, I like to meditate. And ask questions.

This year in particular, it seems prudent to take every opportunity to consider where we as a people stand, where our meaning is placed, and how to proceed from here into an uncertain future.

Here's an article, via cryptogon, that takes on some of the issues associated with even attempting any manner of consideration in our present context. To me, this seems important, as it focuses on some of the increasingly relevant challenges to clear thinking that we face.

For some time now, there's been quite a bit of talk (in the "progressive" and "intellectual" circles I often run in) about transforming the "independence" ideal into one of "interdependence" in order to more accurately reflect our individual positions in an inevitably connected world. Though such talk, and more importantly the motives behind it, is maybe good and valuable in many contexts, it can make it all too easy to gloss over the continuing importance of independence in thought.

Reasserting the importance of independent thinking seems fitting on independence day, so I would like to do precisely that. We've become very good at repackaging old symbols and standards of archetypal interaction, but in doing so, tend to lose sight of the timeless value of authentic originality. The unique character of truly original symbols, whether new for an individual, community, or larger social body, can make such symbols appear frighteningly alien or too subtle, mundane, or unworkable for us to allow ourselves to give them their due. Without creating for ourselves the space for independent thought, we mostly can't even see things that are new or different. And it's these things, these qualities of genuine newness and unfamiliarity, that allow us to truly move forward.

Of all the questions I ask the universe today, "what am I not seeing?" seems like the most important one of all.