I saw this quote today and had to clip it.
Along the same lines, Frank Oppenheimer (brother of Robert and creator of the Exploratorium in San Francisco) once said: "Just as present technology had to await the explanations of physics, so one might expect that social invention will follow growing sociological understanding. We are desperately in the need of such invention, for man is still very much at the mercy of man."
That sociological invention exists. The problem is that people enslaved to a false sense of self (ego) can't see it. Very often, the more intelligent you are- the more difficult it is to find.
We live in a world of narrow minds, skeptics, false selves, and ego. Most people think that if they have not personally discovered something- it cannot or does not exist. And yet they yearn for something better. They yearn for something that they cannot find because they have not been given the gift of desperation. They cling to those old faulty beliefs that the planet gave them. The ones that don't work.
Instead they seek short term solutions that pay off now, distractions, emotional pain killers. That's reality as they see it. The only viable emotional solution currently available to more than half of our society either comes in a can, a bottle, a capsule or a pill. Maybe a joint. Or they whine and act like victims- find some enablers to commiserate with. That's not acceptance- that's avoidance.
I became comfortable with the world and everyone in it- right here on these pages. This was my journey. Calm, serene, day after day- years worth. It's not all perfect. But bouts of depression or negative emotions are processed quickly and dispelled. I am comfortable in my skin- and the journey is not impossible. But the path is only available to those who refuse to practice contempt prior to investigation. Very often I find that everyone wants to be a teacher rather than a student.
In my desperate days, I was a student. I was willing to find anything that would help me resolve all of the issues in my mind. Isolation, fear, rejection, anger, loneliness, financial insecurity. I found a solution for all of those things. That solution would never have become available to me until I accepted the role of student. To this day, I consider that my primary role.
I am not kidding when I say this. I have often thought that if Christ were ever to return to this planet, the end result would not be much different. His credibility would be attacked. He would be castigated, ridiculed, and ignored. Perhaps he would be spared some tortured death here, but I cannot say how he would fare in other places. Emotional evolution at a glacial pace.
Odd, that something so simple has always been available, tangible. Yours to find given the right set of circumstances.
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"We live in a world of narrow minds, skeptics, false selves, and ego."
ReplyDeleteThis is what the entire American education system is built around right now. Children come in to elementary school with wide open minds that are gradually narrowed more and more until they graduate college as a specialist in a particular field of study. They are not taught to look at the greater picture and learn how to apply it to their area of focus. Instead they are taught to further narrow their mind in pursuit of some sort of greater knowledge.
Then, when someone with a broad perspective comes along, these narrow-minded people are incapable of comprehending the broad view since they are looking at the world through a microscope. This leads to well-educated people that can't connect all of the dots in order to understand how their knowledge fits in to our collective existence.
I think this is part of the resistance Jesus ran in to. Few people could understand his broad viewpoint on humanity and he was ridiculed for having such unique understanding. But things are changing. The internet is the most broad comprehension of our existence that man has ever conceived, and I have a lot of hope for the social change that will come with it.