JAN'S
DAILY NEWS
Getting To The Bottom
Of It Since 1898
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CONVERSATIONS
& CONVULSIONS
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July
15, 2002
©
2002:
JAN COX
“Think
how much happier everyone would be if people would only listen to me.”
“Would they really?!”
“Well
-- I
would be.”
“Why,
in your assumed role as a social commentator
do
you employ the ad hominem, insult approach?”
“Because I do not understand well enough what
is going on in life
to do it any other way.”
“Hello,
our host pointed you out to me, and I have long wanted to meet you:
I
am Dr. XZY, and as you may be aware, for the last several decades I,
along
with a group of distinguished colleagues have been searching for the ultimate,
unifying theory to explain everything, and after stumbling upon your writings
and considering them for some time now, I have a quite strong suspicion
that you may actually know what it is we are looking for.”
“For a moment, let us pretend that I do, and I say so,
but then tell you that it is not information that one person can convey
to another --
of what use is
my knowledge to you?”
"So
you are saying that even if there is an understandable explanation for
everything,
the
description cannot be put into words."
"That is not the problem -- it is not transferable."
It
is like man is born with a special examining apparatus whose lens seems
originally
clean, and by looking at things through the device he is able to understand
their structure and workings to a depth that would be otherwise impossible.
At
times when they have nothing particular to examine,
men
begin trying to examine the examining apparatus itself,
but
a quirk appears that zips right past men’s awareness:
for
some inherent reason they are unable to realize that they are looking at
the apparatus, and have coined various pseudonyms and stand-in-phrases
to
describe what they are doing,
and
while this does not necessarily interfere with their continued examining
of
other
things, it does cloud their attempts to examine the apparatus itself.
Calling
their efforts in this regard, something other than what it is,
acts
as an apriori, smudging-of-the-lens they must look through;
in
a way most subtle and unrecognized, the situation then is not unlike a
scientist
who
undertakes to examine an unknown process,
but
goes in with partial preconception of what he will discover --
but
in this case the damage is worse in its uniqueness, in that biased examinations
of
things are subject to having their bias spotted by others and corrected;
a
flawed description of a physical object can be refuted by
the
mere physical reality and existence of
the object,
but
in man’s oblique and smudged examination of the examining apparatus,
which
has no physical reality outside of itself -- no such self correcting
occurs.
Apart
from flea bites and famines,
all
that troubles man comes entirely from this situation:
his
native inability to realize when he is looking at his examining apparatus;
every
complaint & confusion registered by man, not a direct result of a physical
ill,
is
an improperly identified whine arising from his examining of the examining
apparatus while being forced to say/think that he is examining something
else.
If
we lived in a different universe (and elephants could
thread needles, and drummers do their taxes), men
would realize that apart from physical ills and injuries,
every
complaint they have with life, with other people and with themselves
is
due entirely to their failure to recognize when they are looking at the
examining apparatus in them through which they examine life, other people,
and themselves.
“Just
imagine how much smarter the world would be
if
everyone would just think like me.”
“Is that what would really happen?”
“Well,
maybe not, but it sure would make me happier.”
“Are you even sure of that?”
“......No,
but I do not know what would,
and this is the best I can come up with.”
J
“Does realizing
what-is-going-on
deserve such names as: ‘waking-up’ & 'being-enlightened’?”
“Yes, as does also: 'finishing-the-milk-run’.”
“Uhhh.........I
don’t get it.”
“Can you conceive of that being the
point?”
“A real man, even when dying, would refuse to admit it.”