Underneath all the fast-moving surface political/geopolitical, cultural, and linguistic flutter these days, I notice a long-running conundrum. Plus: I find that even any attempt express this conundrum spins out another conundrum. But let me take a stab.

Basically, it seems to come down to the “fact” that everyone I know is either pro Trump or against Trump, and that I continue to be surprised by who is who! The Trump divide has split into two factions those whom I love, and with whom I assumed wrongly, that we shared a set of assumptions, connections, a long-term and deeply rooted fabric or texture of understanding.

And, I wonder about myself. I’m not pro-Trump, though I’m not agin him either. On the other hand, I am rooting for him. Rooting for his higher self, his larger self. Asking him to “rise to the occasion,” and become not just a battering ram, which he is, clearly, his swashbuckling cowboy personality just guarantees it, but a conscious battering ram. Asking him to know full well what he is doing, and to begin to draw to himself those who can advise him wisely.

Am I a fool to wish for such a thing? Maybe. Hard to say. Does it just show how deluded I am, to think that we can “fix” this sorry world, plus, that one man can lead the way? Maybe.

On the other hand, I personally, am showing up, paying attention to what is right in front of me and how to center myself enough so that I can bring to bear my own full self in helping to shift my little corner of this culture from consumer/competitive/corrupt to conscious/creative/cooperative. And I am asking everyone else to do the same. To look around you. What in your area needs to be done? What are the skills you can bring to bear in helping to shift the culture in your area?

Another strange division that has been repeatedly brought to my attention lately, is that between those who think they know the earth is a spinning ball and those who think that it’s a flat plane. One reader, David, has been emailing me, asking me to look into the flat plane theory of the earth. Over and over again, he’s been politely and insistently asking me to really delve into this idea. Then yesterday, he called me. I was outside tending to plants. But I picked up the phone, and talked to him as I was busy watering the two hugelkultur mounds in the front yard. Again, he asked that I please look into it, because of my alt-epistemological position (on the edge of just about everything; and taking off conceptual helmets whenever I detect them), he thinks that I will make the switch if I do.

So last night, during my 2 A.M. awake period, I began with the first video he suggested, a 17-minute introduction, which was mostly aimed towards those who already “believe” in flat earth and how to connect with those who don’t enough to bring them into this alternative view of the world.

Then I went to the next video he recommended, a two-hour compendium of 200 proofs of flat earth. And, I must admit, after about the 5th proof, which left me confused, I guess I must have taken the opportunity to fall back asleep.

But I don’t want to be closed minded! And obviously, this flat earth theory is, if “true,” a complete switch in world-views! Hard to imagine, it feels so foolish. But then what about all those who are convinced? Are they fools? I doubt all of them are. But what has put them over the edge? Whatever it is, frankly, I don’t want to go through the rest of the 195 proofs to find out.

In a phone call this morning with my son Colin Cudmore of the Garden Tower Project, I asked him what he thought of flat earth, and of course he poo-pooed it. I asked him if he knows of someone that might help me let it go once and for all. He suggested a Clif High video, which I will put at the end of this post.

One hour later, riding home with Craig, the driver from the garage where I take my car to be serviced, I mentioned flat earth to him. And he started in poo-pooing, of course, but then, given the way he talked, I realized he knew something complex about the way the earth works. I can’t repeat what he said, because I didn’t really grok it, but it did make me ask him how he knows all this. Well, it turns out Craig has a brother who was an international pilot, and who also was in the Air Force flying the planes that hold huge amounts of fuel for other planes. “He’d say to me: ‘Yep, we’ve got enough fuel to go around the earth three times.'” I asked him if his brother went around the earth as a pilot. Yes, many times.

I found this synchronicity — of happening to meet up with someone who had an international pilot for a brother — interesting, given today’s preoccupation with figuring out how to disprove the flat earth theory. My poo-poo side is amazed that I would even consider needing to disprove it. But my “stay open to any possibility” side doesn’t want to just toss it aside without another thought.

Well, well. In watching this video, I see that Clif asks his readers to tell him why his top 5 reasons prove that we don’t live on a flat earth. He says he’s tired of fending off those who want to bring him into the fold of those who think they can prove that we do.

If you’re at all interested in pursuing flat earth theory, check out this website:

www.theflatearthsociety.org

I discovered several interesting comments when considering existential implications of flat earth on that site.

But as I said before, I’m just not that interested in pursuing this gigantic conundrum. But others, more mundane, do interest me, like for example, at least according to today’s headlines, how the Comey testimony yesterday inspired both left (those who hate Trump) and right (those who love Trump, and/or hate him for other reasons?) to assume that their side “won.” Geez!

I think it’s about time that we realize we cherrypick everything. We are always automatically looking for what will meet with what we already think we know. That inside our minds is a unusually unnoticed, more or less fixed or pliable or changeable filter; our filter decides what, of the gadzillions of inputs possible, we will pay attention to. Our filter, in turn, creates our conceptual helmet, that beyond which nothing is allowed. Otherwise, it would be all too much! Otherwise, we’d constantly suffer from that “booming buzzing confusion” that William James spoke about in reference to newborns whose filter, he assumed (incorrectly?), is not yet in place! There’s just so much impinging our senses every single second! And that’s just the narrow spectra that we humans are attuned to. Imagine what reality is like for a dog, his acute sense of smell alerting him to sensations beyond what we can even contemplate. Imagine what an eagle sees, that mouse scuttling so very very far below. Indeed, imagine how this Earth feels, to have someone call her flat!

In any case, what’s interesting to me is not so much the inputs, but our filters/helmets, and how they both divide us and try to keep us sane. And I’m still very very curious as to how we’ve managed, at this point in human history, to have Donald Trump as “president,” a man whose filter appears to morph. Or does it?  In any case, with this big lumpen in the driver’s seat, who knows what will happen next.

P.S. I write this on the very morning that Jupiter turns to go direct just past the Sagittarius Full Moon. What better time than to (briefly) explore flat earth theory, an out-there philosophical perspective on the whole shebang that even my shallow contemplation of which makes me dizzy. So thanks David, for the opportunity. I think I’ll spin around a few more times and then fall down.