BRAVE NEW OLD WORLD
The best of times the worst of times the best of times the worst of times the best of times the worst of times.
Act I was about our founder, theater, and WHO CARES. Act II was about things that are meant to find each other, our other founder, and how THERE IS NO ONE LIKE YOU. Act III is about how all of this makes sense in a world that makes no sense, infinity possibility that forces us to focus, and NO FEAR. Welcome to Act III, the final act of the launch of Sublime 2.0.
A time to dance
There is a version of this essay where we simply tell you to close all other tabs and give twenty minutes of your attention to a dance piece turn sound on.
A recording of Crystal Pite’s ‘The Statement’ performed by Netherlands Dance Theatre.
The piece relates to this essay only insofar as all things are related.
Nevertheless we recommend the watch.
Because tangents are sublime, dance deserves more virality, and the piece is something extraordinary.
The best of times, the worst of times
Welcome dear reader to our times. The offspring of the age of information. The only time we have. We are IN it.
Where an age lasts as long as a moment of virality, and by the time you’ve wrapped your head around the next big thing it is already inconsequential.
A time where multiple timelines run alongside each other, and we can tune into whichever with a simple swipe. A time of so many times, and yet no time at all.
These times have been predicted and prophesied in vague and literal ways for centuries.
In the bible it says:
Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.
—Daniel 12:4
In ancient Indian texts it is stated that what in other eras had to be achieved through copious amounts of spiritual labor, in our age can be attained through “simply” chanting:
As madness increases, the stark contrast of that which is holy, true, and beneficial is easier to identify. Thus, what seems like our demise is actually the most accessible avenue to awaken.
Any desired information is at our fingertips. The possibility to lose our minds is imminent, the opportunity to rewire an entirely new one, too.
By definition what is real and what is fake is changing in such a way that it may not even matter anymore what is and what isn’t.
In this holographic world, reality takes on a permeable, shapeshifting quality. (Many psychonauts, spiritual people, and physicists would say this has always been the case.)
You have a body. True. You use machines (if you are reading this, that is certain). The machine does not have a body. True. The machine is using us as we are using it, one no longer exists without the other. The rest is up to our:
Brave New Old World
If you’re into “woo” or astrology you may have heard our times described as the shift from the Piscean age into the age of Aquarius.
Or maybe you’ve heard the hit 60’s song that goes like this:
… Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation, Aquarius …
The Piscean age being what we are moving away from. Where most systems were centered around a leader or “guru” in a position of authority, deciding binary true and false for everyone else.
The Aquarian age that we are moving towards is a shift from the hierarchy of leader and led, to personal and collective power. Where truth is up to the discernment of each individual, and the collective is more important than “superior” people and ideas.
A shift of power from the leader and answers being “out there” to within each one of us. Less importance on outcomes and chasing the future, and instead embracing infinite possibilities and living the questions now.
¿Por qué no los dos?
Our suffering comes from needing to choose, our freedom comes from getting to choose.
The etymology of the word paradise is a walled-in garden.
Without boundaries—walls—there is no paradise. There is only us, lost in the woods. Lions, Tigers, Bears, oh my.
Choice turns our wilderness into paradise, and turns the source of our suffering into the source of our delight.
The irony is that the critique in tech over the last decade is that “walled gardens” like Twitter and Facebook have ruined the internet. Referring to the fact that these platforms are closed ecosystems that exercise control over how its participants use it.
Which brings us to our weapon of choice for this age of transformation—discernment.
It is not the technology, but how we use it. Or rather, let it use us.
The internet is a web. Like the spider that feels pain when its web is broken, the internet is an extension of us.
The repressed dark corners of our psyches = the deep, dark web.
The collective restlessness of the people = the dopamine casino that is media.
The parts of ourselves we like = the stuff that makes us go “I f***ing love the internet.”
As far out as the internet goes is as far in as we go. Terrifying or mystifying—we get to choose. There is nothing to fear out there when it is us.
The difference between medicine and poison is the dose
The poet Ariana Reines writes1,
The world always sustains the maximum suffering it can bear, according to the nature of its age.
There will always be the maximum possible destruction in a given time.
The idea that the chaos of our world is part of a grand, divine order. Deadly, yes. New, no.
The earth has seen it all, and then some. These times do not ask us to try to even the scales of insanity by swallowing our own intensity.
Reines continues,
This is why the other world
has always needed to be created.
Instead, these times ask of us: make something.
Knowing that the world has always sustained and will always sustain the maximum of destruction possible
is why the other world has always and will always need to be created.
MAKE SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!
Consider Tinkerbell:
No fairy dust + Belief = No flying
Belief + No fairy dust = No flying
Belief + Fairy dust = Flying
Technology + Belief in humanity’s beauty = flight.
Throughout history, people have questioned and feared the very advancements they helped create.
Maybe the information overload is here for us to know that we’re never going to know it all. Maybe our ancestors feared the unknown so that we no longer have to.
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't—you're right.
—Henry Ford
Whether you think these times are a living heaven or a living hell—you’re right.
We compiled a Sublime collection for this piece. Full of contradiction, messianic stories, and truths for you to choose.
The quotes in this section are drawn from “MOSAIC,” the closing section of Ariana Reines’s A Sand Book (Tin House Books, 2019). The words form part of a series of messages the poet channeled on the streets of Manhattan in October 2014.
I like to talk a lot about how an Apocalyptic Fantasy is inherently a fascist one, but it makes people uncomfy when I bring it up……………
we are only in the beginning of the dwapara age (age of energy) of the yuga cycle (one cycle is 24,000 years)