Yesterday, I found myself trying to reorganize @cosmictriage's and my own bookkeeping systems to accommodate new information.

When you're self-employed in a bunch of tiny but quite separate and distinct ventures — aka "professions" — you also need to make at least a rudimentary attempt at keeping track of how and where everything is going. We need to know how little money we've managed to make, both for our personal edification, as well as to keep the tax authorities/government happy.

Clear as mud? Good!

Late afternoon sun on a nasturtium in our garden...

As Part of the Process...

... I emptied a 3-ring binder previously labelled "Stamp Collections," so I could keep track of Mrs. Denmarkguy's newest credit card account as we continue to try our best at skirting that fine line between being completely outside the system, and having just enough fingers in the pie that we can still use the systems of officialdom, if we have to.

'Nuff said...

It was a milestone, and also a bit sad in the sense that I did used to have some stamp collections, and they were quite extensive.

Originally, they were going to serve as a backstop for our retirement years, a store of value... but due to changing declining economic conditions over the past decade, they were gradually sold off to supplement our shrinking incomes so we could simply afford to live.

I am grateful that I was able to spend 40-odd enjoyable years assembling those stamp collections, and have much gratitude towards myself for having heeded the words of my father who always suggested that "whatever you collect, always buy the BEST QUALITY example you can get your hands on!"

In a stamp collector's market of declining prices (basically an oversupply/underdemand situation) that has been in evidence since email became a mass market thing), the values of my old stamps held up remarkably well.

Selling the stamps was a right thing to do... as we have often reflected on, it's best that I sell them myself, as a expert in the field, rather than have them end up on a yard sale table in 20 years for $5.00 per album.

And so — with a tip of the hat to "progress", and some mild ennui — I consigned many pages of carefully typed documentation to the "Shred This!" box, all the while pondering the way humanity's tastes and values evolve over time.

Intangibility, Invisibility and "Existence"

Then I pondered what I often consider a deeper conundrum: In a world that's increasingly virtually based, where will future historians find the anthropological and archeological evidence for "the existence of something?" For the existence of anything?

If something never actually existed — except as a thought or concept in the minds of one, or many, in a virtual world — does that even count as "existing?"

Leading to the next logical question:

"Does it even MATTER whether or not something EXISTS, anymore?"

Red poppy

You might be thinking "So what? Who cares?" but I ask you to pause and consider this for a moment: We know that Bitcoin doesn't actually "exist," but we're still compelled to depict BTC as a golden "coin-shaped" OBJECT with a B and some engraved circuitry on it. Why?

Are we trying to immortalize our ideas by giving them form? Are we trying to leave "things" for people in a far future to look at and remember their past?

In Space, We Have Digital Art...

Then I thought about Digital Art, which also doesn't "exist."

Even as I write these words, people are making, buying and selling it, right here on the Hive blockchain. And yet, if some major geological/geophysical disaster takes out everything, that art will not be recovered from the ruins by a 27th century geologist. Because there's no "thing" to recover.

And yet, it makes sense.

As we move towards long-term space travel, and even life in space, all the art around us will be virtual. Volume and weight limitations will preclude us from bringing the physical versions of anything but the tiniest and lightest of trinkets.

And so, I find that I have circled back to the original inquiry as to whether the entire notion of "things" is becoming obsolete... and we are slowly blending into a world of non-existing.

It's an interesting thing to noodle around, in an era where more and more people seem to be using such buzzwords as "enlightenment beyond the body" and "Ascension."

I just can't get beyond that little "problem" of all the stories of voyagers arriving in a new land — whether right here or on an imaginary planet in another galaxy — and inevitably looking around for PHYSICAL signs" of the native civilization, it's story, and its art.

Whereas I can't disagree with the philosophical tenet Ram Dass expressed as "Be Here NOW!" can we really function and thrive if we never look back, and never look forward at some-THING?

And what will we LEARN from, if nothing even "exists?"

Thanks for reading, and hope your week is going well!

How about YOU? Where do you think our increasingly virtual world will take us? To what extent will be give up the need for things to physically "exist?" Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 20201001 00:32 PDT
0115/1342