A Shell Game

Now you see it ...

Does man understand the nature of creation? I mean … naturally … from birth? Well … okay … to understand it … by a certain content of experience … by the nature of his locale … culture … outlook … personality. He may view it in his own way … through an expression of the sub-conscious. Perhaps not all of it is expressed … in the standard use of language … and some of it may remain behind in the non-verbal … enigmatic nature of body language. 

 

However … when we stop to think about it … it turns into a shell game … with shells that look identical … and yet only one … accommodates the illusive pea. Its our pre-occupation … the great pastime … and work that we engage in … providing many hours of contemplation … state of mind … social expressions … and that wondrous sense of coming to know about life. Its the activity that drives us.

 

In one way or another … we all engage in it. It is the will of the man of ambition … the redemption of the pious … the motivation of the lover … the concerns of father … and the list goes on. Its fun … but it can also get very complicated … and when it does … we are taken to another stage in our development … for that greater experience of the self. It makes us wonder if there's a way … we can stabilize the experience … to view these activities in an orderly way.

 

Personally … I use the world map … and a good history book. But it helps to engage the schooling experience … as a discipline … for cultivating a daily attention … to lessons … and the many subjects … that knowledge is divided into. It also cultivates … the relation to a teaching source … who may be a person … or an electronic media such as the web. Learning to organize our thoughts … take a test … to establish the understanding we have gained … makes for a useful activity.

 

And then there's the society around us … that engages us in work. Our ways of getting along … interacting … and sharing the usual tidbits about knowledge … ties us to the great social university out there. Our contributions for innovation … understanding social needs … product invention … creates a great contribution to the growth of society. The way that we engage basic knowledge of principles and properties of materials … and adapt them into useful aids for society … indicates a remarkable contribution by our original thinking.

 

While evolution has enabled us to grow from simple to complex experiences … the growth of mind has created a greater focus … on the nature of the individual self. Inevitably we come to occupy our attention with our needs … and the pathology of our concerns. We find ourselves being driven to do that on occasion … and must wonder about the willfulness … that makes of self concerns … and selfishness … a matter of individual responsibility and accountability.

 

But such drives that we encounter … face our own resistances … from the social conditioning we experience … to care for others … and not to be merely self serving. Such imperatives are so powerful … that a man who finally turns to himself … is often a victim of recklessness in social decorums … and engages a break-a-way … only when he has to. In time he may realize why such an injury to his person was necessary … and grows to appreciate the intentions of the creative endeavors.

 

On average … our social activity … raises such a level of excitation … and assurance in us … that we are unable to bear being alone. I estimate that a man ought to undertake some time management … to spend at least a third of the time … attending to his individual needs … and sharing the balance two-thirds with work and family. It makes for a good balance … and contributes to the stability of relationships.

 

In all our discourses … we ought to make it a point to represent in some small way … our original views on an issue … and we can do that by investing some time to find things out ourselves. There's a curious door to another world … that opens up when we bring some quality time … to examine ourselves on issues. It makes the point that … if everybody came to a better management of themselves … there's less need to go around giving good natured advice to anyone.

 

In the Oriental tradition … the teacher Lao Tze asks … about the purpose of government. And answers it as … not the governance of society … but for administering to the organization … with a clear set of common policies … for their common aims. No doubt our views of government continues the habit … of relying on the mass herd of mentality … that we commonly identify with … in the social upbringing … we subscribe to.

 

It wasn't too long ago … that we heard the complaints about the ' me generation ' … before it transformed into the ' X generation.' We worried about social decay … the break-up of families … and the ' destruction of the world.' But in coming to engage the individual experience ourselves … we get into a greater significant relation to issues … see people as individuals … and not a sea of humanity without faces. In perceiving the special nature of the individual … we see all people … in ways that are of greater awareness than we did before.

 

There ought to be a name for that … that records our improvements … even after saying the worst about it. Something like the ' rise of humanity … by the individual ' … seems to fit nicely. Or as John Nasbitt forecasted in his work on Megatrends … ' its the triumph of the individual.' It may take a while for it to refine itself … but we may be coming up with ways … to change the way we manage ourselves and society. As another teacher once said … ' love thy neighbor as you love thyself.' A person would have to know how.

Reviews

[Samuel Pennell]

Very nice, Dayran. This definitely has a grand philosophical nature to it. It reminds me of a line from the movie "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" in which they are talking about counting the stars and one character says to the other "I don't even know what a star is made of" (It was the 1800s), and the other says "Your body knows, it's your mind that forgot." Are human beings intuitively attached, a part of, and aware of everything in the universe? We are all made out of the same stuff. Stars, humans, etc. Transcendentalism. Great read, it got me thinking. I'll see you later.