I am spending an increasing amount of time with podcasts. I listen to this american life, radio lab, selected shorts and a few others. While I've been listening to these programs, I have also been reading the last two books in the original Dune series and listening to Chris rile himself into a justifiable rant, fueled by Derrick Jensen, aimed at the failure that is civilization. Also, I have discovered a hilarious, unwittingly paradoxical myspace community all excited for the collapse of civilization. All these spokes seem to have spun together into a musing discourse in my head regarding the state of our decadent, cruel, relentlessly power-hungry civilization.

My place in this equation seems to fall somewhere between cynicism, endless amusement and welcome revelatory surprises. I guess I just don't think of myself (my constructed, imagines self) as a true part of it though I am deeply devoted to various, unsustainable aspects of being civilized and various completely magical aspects of the "natural" / "cosmic" world. I suffer no allusions that we, humans dedicated to the cult of individuality, are going to be here forever and am much more interested in humans' involvement internally on a micro level and then, on the giant, macro level- how will we disperse? Where will our consciousness and energy go when were gone? Will it be gone too? Does that matter?

I honestly am not that concerned about the planet. I find it's placement in the galaxy and the galaxy at large to be a monstrously mind-blowingly beautiful thing out of range of my comprehension and I think I have developed a personal kind of faith based on that incomprehensibility. This universe doesn't need me, I'm just lucky to be here for a second to admire and tap just the surface of it's insane, exciting, unexplainable complexity. And really, I just need it- I need our universe to fuel my self constructions. I need light and air and the movement of molecules to shape experience from and to continue to imagine my life. I need it, it doesn't need me. And if it does need me, I really don't think I could handle that level of responsibility. But really, if I weren't here, busily blogging and interpreting any and all phenomenon I have decided I have experienced, would any of it be there? Who knows? I hope that humanity can shake itself just a little free of itself to admit it's dependence on the universe. Then maybe we would be more properly concerned about our tenuous positioning here.