I keep thinking about all the certainties I read about; all the people who know
- everything that is being plotted;
- the secret levers behind every news story;
- the “real” history that has been hidden from us;
- the true secret intentions of this or that person in the news.
I lose patience. My thoughts go roughly like this.
Let me see if I have this straight.
- You never studied economics or political science or the history of our own time, let alone the thousands of years it took to get here, but you know the inner workings of banking, lobbying, and backroom deals.
- You haven’t studied philosophy or psychology or religion, so you don’t really have any idea why people believe various things or act various ways, but you can infallibly tell me who is good and who is evil, and your take on the existence and nature God (whether pro or con) is, of course, infallible.
- You don’t read biographies or memoirs or histories and compare people’s stories, but you know the villains of the piece and you know for sure every mistake anyone ever made.
- You haven’t run for office, or even so much as folded envelopes in a campaign, but you know all about the inner workings of politics.
- You don’t read the literature of your own country, let alone that of other countries, let alone literature in a foreign language, but you know all you need to know about the meaning of life.
I think I understand, and I don’t know quite how to express my gratitude. Well, yes I do. I have a request. Kindly lower your volume and reduce the number of things you are certain of. Otherwise, please shut up. Know-it-all-ism is one thing not currently in short supply.
Very good said indeed Frank.
It is a “Universe of Worlds”(a book by Robert J.Grant).
And sitates a reading by Edgar Cayce:”The earth is only an atom in the universe of worlds.”
All-in-all a remarkable existence of us to be.
I am still reading 4 books at the same time. Especially caught up with “The Unobstructed Universe.”
The husband is watching “Flags of our Fathers” on TV tonight(the WWII battle of IWO JIMA). I have watched it once before.
This may be a Taoist saying but I’m not sure.
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool; shun him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a child; teach him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep; awaken him.
He who knows and knows that he knows is a master; follow him.
(And of course, I’ve forgotten half of whatever I’ve learned, and the rest was useless anyway!)
I think it is Taoist. i like it.
But of course the ultimate master is within, and the trick is distinguishing the master from the ego.
I have often wondered how “we” as human beings stuck on a planet in the middle of cosmic nowhere, can actually “know” anything at all beyond human experience. As a philosophical skeptic (not a cynic) I find your thinking refreshing. As a composer, I often write things and then forget them and then I hear them and I wonder where they have come from and then I am reminded that I wrote it. There is a certain division between the corporeal and the spiritual which is both obvious and subtle, simultaneously. When I worked around construction in the late 80s we would get memos that “experts” were coming to look at the site; that meant, for us, that WE put on our hard hats and steel toed shoes as we just knew that some “expert” was going to tug on the wrong thing and put everyone else’s life in danger. Again, I like your thinking. Let’s open a conversation. I am still on this side, but I think I can be interesting enough.
“I am still on this side, but I think I can be interesting enough.”
I’m smiling. I do talk to corporeal beings, you know. my email is muddytracks@earthlink.net