Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

Everything's Fine Right Now

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

November 9, 2016
"Oh, come a little closer to my breast, I'll tell you that you are the one I really love the best, and you don't have to worry 'bout any of the rest, 'cause everything's fine right now."
 ... The Incredible String Band, Everything's Fine Right Now 
This essay, Everything's Fine Right Now, is the one thousand two hundredth in this Conversations For Transformation internet series. That doesn't mean anything. It's just what's so.

It is also the fifteenth in an open group with titles borrowed from Songs:

"Something's wrong!" she said righteously. "But isn't there always?" I inquired empathetically, "instead: how about 'Everything's fine right now'?". "Oh no it isn't!"  she exclaimed defensively. I realized without a context  for it, she would only hear my "Everything's fine right now" as shallow, superficial, even as avoiding, unrealistically.

You and I are here, yes? From my side at least, there never was a clear-cut intention  to be here (that came much  later) or even to have come this far. One day I was riding my bike, and I had a thought that it would be nice to post one or two pieces of my scattered writings somewhere on the internet ... and now there's all this: the Conversations For Transformation website with its one million one hundred and sixty thousand views so far, with this one here being the one thousand two hundredth essay in this Conversations For Transformation internet series of essays. Who woulda thunk?  I intend this to be a celebration. But it will not and should not gloss over anything, especially what she said. There'll be no whitewashing here. The kind of celebration I envision is one which honors the entire package we are, evenhandedly.

Like it or not, our inherent skew  or pull  (if you will) as human beings, is toward "Something's wrong!" (she was  hearing it clearly). It serves a purpose. It's an early warning alarm system which ensures we'll have time to react so we can survive. In contradistinction, we have no  inherent pull whatsoever  toward "Everything's fine right now" for example. Sure, we have a kind of a wishful thinking  in that direction. But we have no inherent pull toward it which even comes close to matching the velocity, the voracity, and the tenacity with which we're pulled totally and disproportionately toward "Something's wrong!". There's no escaping that. We're built  this way. So if you want "Everything's fine right now" in your life like a possibility, since there's no inherent pull toward it, you have to conjure it up into play for yourself.

See, I'm not talking about us becoming more positive  like developing a new attitude. It's much more fundamental than that. If you're expecting this essay to be about positive thinking rather than negative attitudes, stop reading now because this is not that. Rather we're talking about machinery  ie all the underlying hardware and the software (if you will) which drives us human beings. We're constructed to survive. That's the basic design. And it's this basic design ie it  that determines "Something's wrong!". That  is how inherent the pull is. You couldn't not  be that, not even if you wanted to (that is, you couldn't not be that, and yet still remain a human being).

So there is "Something's wrong!" like our underlying built-in design for survival ... and there is "Everything's fine right now" which is available but only like an invented possibility. That's how you designate them. Each is a totally different order of things. If you think the latter can ever replace the former, you're naïve. You can't replace all the nuts and bolts and transistors and circuitry of your underlying human machinery. And if you are  trying to replace them, you're like a dog trying not to be a dog. The difference between dogs and human beings however, is you and I are empowered to invent possibilities ie to generate contexts for our lives. Dogs aren't. And as a generated context, "Everything's fine right now" is both pragmatic and (in the way I intend it) sublimely delightful, not to mention touching and moving and inspiring.

It's in generating the context "Everything's fine right now" (and be 1,000% sure it's the context you're generating, I said, not the attitude, not the hope, and especially not the wishful positive thinking), then generating it again, and then again, then again and again (and again, and again) that "Everything's fine right now" like a future, becomes ongoingly available, a future into which living is worthwhile (in other words, living a life you love  becomes possible), rather than a future of simply ongoingly automatically duplicating whatever is required for your survival, looking good, and winning ie being barely more than a stimulus / response, no-choice machine, I said.

Background soundtrack: The Incredible String Band: Everything's Fine Right Now - wait for 3.41M download

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