~C4Chaos

I’m not a big fan of The Killers, but when I tuned into VH1 Top 20 countdown this morning and heard the song Human, I liked it. Check out the video and the lyrics.

The hook of the song is the lyrical koan, “are we human, or are we dancer?” Pop culture is confused with the lyrics, dubbing it as nonsense. But the first time I heard it, it made perfect sense to me.

I’m not sure what The Killers mean but I have my own interpretation. I think you too would have a similar interpretation if you’ve read The Dancing Wu Li Masters.

Subatomic particles forever partake of this unceasing dance of annihilation and creation. In fact, subatomic particles are this unceasing dance of annihilation and creation. This twentieth-century discovery, with all its psychedelic implications, is not a new concept. In fact, it is very similar to the way that much of the earth’s population, including the Hindus and the Buddhists, view their reality.

Hindu mythology is virtually a large-scale projection into the psychological realm of microscopic scientific discoveries. Hindu deities such as Shiva and Vishnu continually dance the creation and destruction of universes while the Buddhist image of the wheel of life symbolizes the unending process of birth, death, and rebirth which is a part of the world of form, which is emptiness, which is form.

Imagine that a group of young artists have founded a new and revolutionary school of art. Their paintings are so unique that they have come to share them with the curator of an old museum. The curator regards the new paintings, nods his head, and disappears into the vaults of the museum. He returns carrying some very old paintings, which he places beside the new ones. The new art is so similar to the old art that even the young artists are taken aback. The new revolutionaries, in their own time and in their own way, have rediscovered a very old school of painting.

So, are we human, or are we dancer? I say dancer and the dance.