May 22, 2002                                                                                                  © 2002: JAN COX
 
When you do not know why you are like you are, you feel the need to explain why you are like you are. This is man’s most popular form of entertainment; it is inexhaustible; always possible, and apparently free.

After a man pays the farmer for the corn he may ask him: “Why did you become a farmer?”   “To have something to eat, you nit wit.”

After a man pays to see the play he may ask the star: “Why did you become a performer?”  --  and the actor has no idea why, and will leap instantly into a vigorous attempted explanation, (it will actually more meet the definition of, justification than, explanation: and note that the word, justification, by connotation, is now used by many in a condemnatory sense, which ignores its proper intention:
justification is the explanation of yourself when you cannot explain yourself, [civilization and man’s so-called sanity needs it to function.])

Men will commonly and off handedly offer an explanation of themselves physically; “Yeah, I’ve always been overweight -- it runs in my family. Sure it bugs me, but what’re you gonna do?!  --   it’s in my genes?! -- end of conversation!” -- but men have no such ready responses with which they are comfortable concerning themselves non physically, thus do they endlessly try to explain, justify what they are psychologically. Some even claim they have come to understand why they are like they are, (their strict upbringing; their mother’s drinking), yet everyone, including the claimant knows that such are hollow and unsustainable, but having no apparent present alternative, by tacit agreement, everyone generally nods their head knowingly, and plays along. These conversations never come to an end; they go on incessantly among men publicly and in each man’s thoughts privately, and never to a satisfying conclusion.
May 22, 2002
 
When you do not know why you are like you are, you feel the need to explain (justify) why you are like you are. Once the corn crops are in, everything that civilized men do after that can be seen as their attempts to explain why they are like they are: that is what mythology is: that is what religion is: that is what history is: that is what fiction is: that is what gossip is, and that is what all day dreaming is up to; none of it succeeds or has ever done so, and none of it makes any progress, and no one is permitted to make public note of the fact.

The distracted daze that is an ordinary man’s routine state of consciousness under non threatening conditions is the result & reflection of his mind’s on going, futile effort to explain to itself
why it is like it is, which becomes translated into human-speak as
the attempt for the man to explain why he is like he is.

The extraordinary state of realization mused on by some is nothing less or more than the full realization of the above, (to wit): When you do not know why you are like you are, you feel the need to explain why you are like you are, and no one’s ordinary mind will ever know this.
SECOND MOVEMENT
When you do not understand why life is like it is you feel the need to explain why it is like it is. This is man’s most popular form of mass entertainment  -- along with the other supra flagged one, the two being constantly so commingled as to be constructively indistinguishable, but they do have their own individuality.

When a bacteria blight infests a corn crop a man may understandingly say that such is the way of nature, but when he has cancer he will, in a tone of total bewilderment say: “Why me?!” -- (and when it rains a man may note that it is because corn crops
and other plant growth on the planet requires it; but when thereby his new suit gets wet and wrinkled he’ll say: “Why the hell’d it have
to rain today!”). This is not due to some flaw or childish whim of man  -- this is merely how man  --  the creature with thoughts --  is.
May 22, 2002

What he does not understand --  he attempts to explain, for in physical matters, a relentless attempt to explain something can ultimately lead to him understanding it  -- enough so that he can then manipulate and use it to his advantage; but his effort to understand things which have no physical reality by constantly trying to explain them, leads to no such gratifying finality.

Sufficient to be useful, can men gain understanding of why a material substance behaves as it does --  why it is like it is, but in matters whose only substance is in the electro-chemical activity of men’s brains, nothing equal is possible, and the reason for this, as simple, obvious and transparent as it be -- remains a, deep, clouded mystery to mankind collectively.
Coda
Those who do not know why they, man and life are like they are feel an instinctive need to explain why they are like they are; no amount nor type of explaining done by ordinary minds will ever produce the actual knowledge of why they are like they are; from the perspective of the few: the more explaining you do – the further do you move yourself from potential knowing. There is a knot which the mind dearly wants to untie  --  but cannot; the knot is the mind.