What Goes Around

The Quick Study Series : VI

To the surrounding areas … that building with the large glass windows … and car park in front represents a place of manicured lawns … and efficient daily upkeep. It looked the same everyday … and not a single strand of creeper or dried leaf littered its immaculate facade. It was a computer company that produced the latest design of laptop that was a hybrid briefcase.

 

Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had commented on the foreboding nature of technology … that was housed in such immaculate buildings … behind a high fence … that created an alienation of the ordinary man from his physical surroundings. That however … was the beginning … of the science of mass production.

 

It was also a time when man came to be introduced to new concepts … he had never encountered before … in centuries of civilization and the growth of societies. In a capsule … it's a bit of Beatrix Potter's character ... old Mrs Rabbit … doing her shopping in a supermarket … complete with electronic screens … for advertising and price displays … and then driving home … in the GPS equipped ... audio video navigated car to her home.

 

By the time she reaches her cottage … she'll have the coffee boiling … the heater on and warming the home … and the computer listing the mail she received for the day. All that from her cell phone … and voice instructions … to the smart home computer console in the house.

 

In an age when we are still … dressing up as bunnies … to hunt for Easter eggs in the countryside … it occurs to us that … we have a need to bring such disparaging contrasts in our lifestyles … to a common balance … so it no longer makes us feel like two persons living the one life. The internet makes references to Indic Vahanas or flying vehicles … which despite the claims to pre-historic flight … may simply be viewed as that which transported the early Indic imagination … to the possibilities of life in the future.

 

Like the ever popular Jetsons series on TV … it is a product of the mind … as it takes a long view of life's possible achievements. However … when that future is here today … we need to ask ourselves … whether we are going to continue to take the long view. The first step in a long journey of reconciliation between … our manly arts … and the arts of living … begins with the linking of our dreams … with their achievement. The creator God is now the living God.

 

If we fall apart these days … at the simplest chores or activity … it may be because we find ourselves … doing it with the lame foot of bravado. But in having done it … where we take a moment to verify … whether such actions are founded in the nature of our dreams … leading us to them thar places ... we come up with a surprising result … yes we did dream of it … but our imagination? … turning into reality? … really? … how?

 

It brings man to a new appraisal of himself … and to inquire into his nature. We break traffic rules all the time … but the one time with the lights still at amber … we get ticketed. We can manage that in a few ways … but in relating to our concerns … for law and order … we sometimes stop fussing … and accept the ticket for ' similar offences ' incurred. It brings together what we imagined about ourselves … with our actions … and it answers our questions with ' wow … that was almost like real!'