A flatlander's song sung in Plato's cave (part 1)

To be or not to be 

That is the question

Whether t'is nobler to be more inclined to be inclined on the incline

Or must we decline to be declined too declined?

Whether t'is nobler to consolidate the solution to the problem

By taking up arms against the enemy.?

Or must we always suffer to understand the consequences?

These then are the questions

And the sight of victory has no end

Because we can see no end of victory in the fight.

Victory becomes the mere sign of victory

So in our timidity we reframe the question and ask

Whether tis nobler in the mind to slow the descent of time to a halt?

Or to resolutely quicken our pace so as to hasten the arrival of the inevitable?

Leaning into, or against the shoulder of another incline or decline,

I see the silhouette of humankind endlessly striving or diving

Always between the curves of an endless sine wave, 

always oscillating between zenith and nadir In the unceasing push and pull of life. 

We are Sisyphus without the rock.

It’s bullshit basically!

Yet in this state of 'no thingness',

The completion of the task we have set for ourselves

Is postponed rather than abandoned, or deferred.

And I find that even in the depths of my timidity, 

I still have the temerity to ask, 

'To be or not to be?'

For only then do I see in the same light of immaculate perfection that Hamlet saw

To be or not to be

The root of his own musings and his own dilemma.

The choice was always as hard for him as it was for me.

This is the case now, as it was then, as it forever will be.

Yet when we turn away from the present,

What forms of fantasies or nightmares will come in that undiscovered country

That we are always sailing to.

Will we  face the same problems there as we do here. 

But this time with either more ornament and less brutality than before? 

Or more control and less brutality and ornament?

They are the same problems in other words (always)

A thousand times amplified but equals in the same measure

An endless cycle of endless taking and giving;

The stuff of both nightmares and dreams, dreamt almost at the same time.

Boredom.

But for now I grow tired

Aye and there’s the rub; because in spite of all the respect that understanding can bestow, 

It is, in the final analysis, is the very same disrespect.

That through our interest or obedience makes fools of us all.

And yet it is also in the disrespect that life shows itself to itself

As death shows itself to itself in the contempt for everyday things and human sized problems

Every time a victory is won in one arena, 

a defeat is registered in another.

And thus the net reduction in suffering in any scenario is reduced to zero.

‘we were made to suffer, it’s our lot in life’

But tor whom or for what would I want to bear the whips and scorns outrageous fortune, endlessly and outrageously?

I may just prefer lose myself in the jungle gym of some narcotic oblivion

Or chase down the endless shock corridors of madness in some asylum.

‘bashing in veins or brains for some kind of peace'.

(for the good of humankind and all that)

The endless search for an inevitably elusive destination is the very definition of seeming. 

And I am still won’t to mistake the mirror for the horizon; the map for the territory; the unified theory of everything for the truth and walk determinedly backwards into every future imaginable.

So then the inquiry must once again turns again inward.

To be or not to be.