The ancient, honorable, on going and apparently unstoppable censure of man
is divided up like this:
the religious say that man does not live in accord with the will of god;
politicians say that man does not face up to the world’s ever present dangers;
philosophers say that man does not live as would be
rationally in his own best interest;
educators say that man does not live up to his potential;
psychiatrists say that man lives in conflict with himself,
mystics say that man lives in a dream, and the guy in the street simply says that
most of the time men act like idiots.
Never has man suffered a shortage of self reprobation, but what does it mean?! --
--  if anything --   (well, of course, everything means something,
but that does not mean that it means anything pertinent to your desire to see to the bottom of things  –
.....other than it maybe being something that is lumbistictly blocking your view,
     .....[the ten ton imaginary elephant in the seat in front of you, thing]).
 
 

To routine men  --  it is no joke;
whether or not at any particular instant a man be speaking in such terms or nay,
this eternally overcast sky of self admonishment is like a specter that dogs him
day and night.
It is in all of his customs, his rituals, his social structures, his art, music & literature --
in all of his spiritual beliefs & intellectual perspectives;
the entire culture of man on this planet centers around: ”We are not doing right”  --   and a man who cannot recognize this is one of them,
and is, doing-right by his race.
 

An ordinary man’s predictable response to this would be that it is merely the reflection of man’s eternal struggle to  --  improve himself  --   to do better,
but as is life’s wont, the mind again acts confused in non essential matters,
and refers to man’s continuing manipulation of the outer world to improve his physical conditions, and do better in the sense of reaping more material benefits for less effort, but after eight thousand years of him noting his history,
he has in no wise, improved himself, and is, doing-better;
he passes an ever increasing number of laws in an effort to more tightly restrict innate tendencies, dangerous to communal living that remain in him – unimproved, and can say that thereby he is, doing-better in that his society now prosecutes,
and condemns a larger number of people than ever before.
 

This is itself no assault on man and the existence he pursues, although note, that language & thoughts based on words affords no direct escape from it sounding thus --  consider that one fact,
that anything you say about man (save a compliment) sounds like an attack on man –
ponder: the only species known who can talk,
cannot talk about itself without the talk sounding like a censure of himself;
it is indeed another stroke of life’s genius --  but to what end?!
(Well, sure there is a point to everything that happens in life, but that does not mean that everything, [or actually, much of anything] has any specific relevance to an individual person’s stroll
over toward the spot where you can see what is really going on).

If you are a human --  and sane --  and fairly normal, then no matter your religion, culture, nationality, educational level, social status, or financial position  --
you feel you should --  do better, and if the matter comes up in conversation,
you will even say that you think you should be (which, with thought,
is always an after thought --  a subsequent cortical/vocal expression of a previously experienced feeling).
As natural as is breathing is the feeling in an ordinary, conscious man that he should do better --  do better in any and every thing, from moving up in his profession,
to cutting the grass more often;
the possibilities are exactly as numerous as are the activities other than
the minimally essentials ones men pursue;
“If it does not involve my eating or sleeping, then whatever it is –
I should be doing it better”  --  this is the world wide, secret maxim of man.
 

How could anyone be against this attitude  –  what is there about it not to like?!
For a man trying to see through all the normal human stuff,
about the closest thing there is to something, not-to-like
is in finding himself penned up in the stockyards, and as he waits is played encouraging, self-help tapes, painting verbally bright pictures of the morrow
(figuratively speaking of course, Mr. Meyer).
Men’s brains have the capacity to have thoughts,
which the brain and its person find agreeable, (and at times profitable);
men’s brains are subject to a never relenting barrage of piped in propaganda
passing for information and useful instructions;
the few men who discover internally how to push a stool over to the window,
and step up on it and look outside,
realize that the messages they are receiving in their little cramped cells
bear but a passing resemblance to what they see for themselves
from their unexpected perspective.

The thoughts life feeds the collective herd of man serves them well,
(truth be, best we can say is they serve him as well as life wants him served),
but as known and firmly ignored by all men:
not realizing the full truth about a matter is not necessarily disadvantageous  --   and if we are speaking strictly of matters in man’s inner reality (which obviously we do here),
--  it is never so.
It makes no difference to anyone if they had always pictured Snow White as a blonde, and it turns out she is a brunette.
Unquestionably, the single greatest, yet totally overlooked feature of
man’s inner reality is that in there  --   you can never be wrong;
in that arena you cannot do better, and you cannot do worse;
you do not need to know the, full-truth about anything
to have the right-idea about it;
the complete facts on a matter are never required for you to understand it;
ergo be it possible for man --  via his inner reality --  to be told and made accept
that as he is --  however he individually is --  he is not enough;
he must do better, and not just in physical affairs, but in the intangible ones.
(One man long gone & forgotten, once proposed at a secret Thinker’s Banquet,
                         that the purpose of this is to keep man from stupiding to death.)
 
 

But a keen eyed glance by the super alert few readily reveals that
whatever be the reason, the circumstances supra scribed subsist;
a man developing his ability to see above water level finds himself to be a shark
in an ocean of sharks, with all the other sharks claiming that by tomorrow they will be
whales  --  or angel fish  --   turtles or eels,
and all of them just as happy as larks (who insist they will soon be eagles or piper cubs).