The NOW! People

In my travels and readings upon the Intertubes, which proceed in fits and starts, I stumbled across roughly the same term — The NOW! People — used in completely different contexts and with different meanings. Worth some unpacking for idle consideration.

Meaning and Usage the First: The more philosophical of the two, this refers to those who feel anxiety, isolation, estrangement, disenfranchisement, and alienation from the world in stark recognition of the self-other problem and/or mind-body dualism. They seek to lose their identity and the time-boundedness that goes with being a separate self by entering a mental state characterized by the eternal NOW, much as animals without consciousness are believed to think. Projection forward and back more than a few moments in time is foreclosed; one simply exists NOW! Seminars and YouTube videos on radical nonduality are offers by Tony Parsons, Jim Newman, Andreas Müller, and Kenneth Madden, but according to my source (unacknowledged and unlinked), they readily admit that despite study, meditation, openness, and desire to achieve this state of mind, it is not prone to being triggered. It either happens or it doesn’t. Nonetheless, some experiences and behaviors allow individuals to transcend themselves at least to some degree, such as music, dance, and sex.

Meaning and Usage the Second: The more populist and familiar of the two, this refers to people for whom NOW! is always the proper time to do whatever the hell they most urgently desire with no consideration given to those around them. The more mundane instance is someone stopping in a doorway or on an escalator to check their phones for, oh, I dunno, Facebook updates and new e-mail. A similar example is an automobile driver over whom traffic and parking controls have no effect: someone double-parked (flashers optional) in the middle of the road or in a fire lane, some who executes a U-turn in the middle of traffic, or someone who pointlessly jumps the line in congestion just to get a few cars lengths ahead only to sit in yet more traffic. The same disregard and disrespect for others is evident in those who insist on saving seats or places in line, or on the Chicago L, those who occupy seats with bags that really belong on their laps or stand blocking the doorways (typically arms extended looking assiduously at their phones), making everyone climb past them to board or alight the train. These examples are all about someone commandeering public space as personal space at the anonymous expense of anyone else unfortunate enough to be in the same location, but examples multiply quickly beyond these. Courtesy and other social lubricants be damned! I want what I want right NOW! and you can go pound sand.

Both types of NOW! behavior dissolve the thinking, planning, orchestrating, strategizing mind in favor of narrowing thought and perception to this very moment. The first gives away willfulness and desire in favor of tranquility and contentedness, whereas the second demonstrates single-minded pursuit of a single objective without thought of consequence, especially to others. Both types of NOW! People also fit within the Transhumanist paradigm, which has among its aims leaving behind worldly concerns to float freely as information processors. If I were charitable about The NOW! People, I might say they lose possession of themselves by absorption into a timeless, mindless present; if less charitable, I might say that annihilation of the self (however temporary) transforms them into automatons.

The sole appeal I can imagine to retreating from oneself to occupy the eternal moment, once one has glimpsed, sensed, or felt the bitter loneliness of selfhood, is cessation of suffering. To cross over into selflessness is to achieve liberation from want, or in the Buddhist sense, Nirvana. Having a more Romantic aesthetic, my inclination is instead to go deeper and to seek the full flower of humanity in all its varieties. That also means recognizing, acknowledging, and embracing darker aspects of human experience, and yes, no small amount of discomfort and suffering. Our psycho-spiritual capacity demands it implicitly. But it takes strong character to go toward extremes of light and dark. The NOW! People narrow their range radically and may well be the next phase of human consciousness if I read the tea leaves correctly.