The Discovery of the Future 🔮

LIFE ON URTH - Episode 089

When There Were Still Dragons 🐉

Our ancestors saw the sky as a beautiful dome, with the stars arranged in meaningful symbols.

The world was a disc, from whose edge one could fall into chaos and corruption—at least catching a glimpse of the giant on whose shoulders the Earth rested.

Unexplainable natural events (including one’s own life) were personified as the works and reflections of gods.

These beliefs were not merely thoughts—they were reality.

Real-Life Worldbuilding 🌏

Even today, our beliefs determine the world we inhabit in a deeply personal sense.

What we believe about the world and our role in it shapes what we perceive and how we act.

If I am convinced that my worth depends on performance, that belief can create a world in which pauses are dangerous and mistakes are threatening.

We don’t just play a character in the world—we believe ourselves into both.

Music Is Always the Solution 🪉

The good news: perspectives remain flexible throughout life. But the longer they rule unchallenged, the stronger their reign becomes.

There are many ways to train shifting perspective:

Giving someone a loving gift or compliment
Paraphrasing another person’s argument as strongly as possible
Reflecting on what you yourself could do to improve a relationship

Art can also help us enter other belief systems. Novels, films, music—they allow us, for a moment, to be someone else.

A simple exercise: Listen to a song and imagine someone who fully and completely enjoys that music.

What inner attitude would such a person have?
What beliefs about themselves and the world are embedded in it?
What does your world look like from that perspective?

The Changing Room 👗

You can try on alternative attitudes like clothing.

But keeping them comes at a price: the loss of the old self, an uncomfortable transitional phase of instability in which we must learn to navigate the new world.

Imagination is like a fitting room. It allows us to explore possible worlds and scenarios without putting ourselves in real danger.

Like in a simulation, we can send virtual versions of ourselves into confrontations with saber-toothed tigers.

This immense evolutionary advantage that consciousness gives us is not free: greater predictive power requires more explicit knowledge about the future—and that brings suffering.

One of the most striking insights of my mindfulness journey is this: In the here and now, there may well be pain—but suffering only arises from the imagination that there will also be pain in the next moment.

Everything Is Gardening 🌳

For our ancestors, the discovery of the future was also the discovery of suffering. What a traumatic awakening that must have been for those Adams and Eves.

One moment, you are picking apples from a tree, fully immersed in the scents of the forest, the songs of birds, the warm breeze in your hair.

The next moment, you realize you are a finite creature, naked and vulnerable.

Mortal 💀

The space around you seems under control, like a walled garden. Yet you know that even here, snakes could appear at any time.

Back to the Cradle 🫆

Mindfulness does not contradict this truth.
Yes, I am finite.
Yes, I am mortal.

But in moments of successful meditation, one can recognize that even this “I” is only an energetic pattern of consciousness.

It is a flicker in the space of awareness—one from which we can withdraw attention at any moment.

Mindfulness is the path back to the evolutionary cradle of our psyche. It is neither right nor wrong.

But in our modern daily lives, it is an indispensable counterweight to the exaggerated strength of the self.

✒️ Quote of the Week: “When you have accepted your own death in the midst of life, it means that you've let go of yourself, and you are therefore free.” -Alan Watts

🎧 Song of the Week: Ezequiel Arias - Limbo #041 Warm Up for Hernan Cattaneo @ Jurerê

📺 Video of the Week: PANSPERMIA: The Radical Theory of Life's Origins

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All the best,

Adrian / Urth

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