Everything man does physically has a premise: survival  –
everything he does mentally/spiritually/culturally also has a premise: story-telling;
the former, everyone understands,
the latter, no one even acknowledges;
this leaves only the certain man to tell his own story to himself,
and he arrives at this position by first recognizing story-telling when he confronts it  --  then by abandoning the stories life feeds to all men’s mind via their nervous system,
and finally by producing his own original story-telling to explain everything --
including the explainer.

Even with the assistance of alcohol, religion and drugs,
most men would still find it difficult to make-it-through-the-night-of-life were they not able to believe that they are personally in someway, somehow  --  special,
(this in fact is such an integral part of human existence that in the opposite corner
of their mind they simultaneously condemn the excesses of individual pride,
[and be more vigorous in your condemnation than the norm,
and be considered just that much more special]).
 
 

In one reality, it is cheaper to change your name than to get a face lift,
and regardless of what you thought they said,
neither Buddha nor Socrates owned a mirror.
Everyone dreams of Cinderella,
but scarcely anyone is satisfied until they are married to the step-sisters.
 
 

A father said to a son:
“Whenever anyone offers you counsel, they have  --  no matter how well disguised  --  a vested interest in the advice they give,”  and after a second, the boy said:
“And that’s your advice for the day, aye?!”
and after maybe a couple of seconds the elder replied:
“Well  --  life told me to tell you that.”
 
 

Over a period of time, one man developed a standard response to all
meaningless inquiries directed his way (which he estimated as 99+% of the total),
he’d say: “Boy! --  you got me on that one!”  --   which proved so useful
that he began saying it to people even before they spoke to him.
 
 

A son asked a father: “When you once told me that the best way to catch fish
is to teach them to say, ‘I’ and then they’ll simply drown,  were you referring to what occurs when a man’s mind   -- speaking as though it alone is him   --   speaks OF him
as being an intangible entity somehow separate from his physical environment?”
 
 

Men's common quoting of others is an unrecognized attempt to erect a firewall
to protect them from the fact that all of their cultural reality is but story-telling.
 
 

A father advised a son: "Ease up kid  --
people who express dumb ideas are just puttin' you on to see how you'll react."
   "Really?.........really?.........aren't you going to answer?"
 
 

The normally unrecognized relationship of spatial proximities is such that
one unusually keen eyed sort instead of seeking a patent on his post hole diggers
went after one for feet.

One fine day a king brought out the Royal Band, marched out the Honor Guard,
had the Palace Planes fly in intricate formation over the city,
then took to his regal balcony and declared to all his subjects:
“Ah!  my dear and loyal subjects  --  the good news is:  I am still alive!”
(The people later split up into small working groups to come up with some fresh forms of sarcasm.)
“Pa pa, does every mind have a king?”
    “Yes  --  by birth, but its position is not due to the forces its subjects believe,
      nor is its power what they perceive;
      it is as much controlled as seem those under it;
      only the certain few born with a mental state of latent rebellion
      have the potential of ever grasping this nervous system situation in its entirety,
      and thus (in a way unique-to and only of interest-to them)
      do they slip out from under what they find to be the stifling weight of this
      irrelevant, mostly ceremonial form of neural sovereignty.”
“So your referrals to our genetic family branch as rebels
is not mere romantic hyperbole.”
   “No, but the supreme inner-terrorist trick is to realize what you should be
     privately rebelling against.”
“Certainly not illusory foes?!”
 
 

Soon after surgery, a man noted:
“Having now but one eye certainly changes your perspective,” and someone asked: “Are you saying: ‘eye,’  or: ‘I’?”
 
 

More Re How Mind Works In City Conditions.
Those who volunteer to be DJ’s on non commercial radio stations
(whose desirable distinction they define as being of this status) soon begin doing all they can to make their shows sound as much like the commercial ones as possible.
If you ever want to grasp how the transmissions operate in man’s
nervous system, broadcasting & receiving network, you under-esteem the power of
his collective mind and temperament at your own dear expense.
Even cows with stripes still want to fit in,
and only the-man-who-knows can be an internal outlier  --  yet not feel left out.
 
 

A father inquired of a son:
“Are our individual personalities no more than the sum of our mental operations?” --
and the lad replied:
    “Should I not be the one asking you that?” –
and the elder reflected for a moment  --  then said:
“I don’t know  --  should you?” --  and the boy then pondered for a bit, then answered:
    “I don’t really know  --  what do you think?”
and the father said again that he wasn’t sure either.
More Re How Mind Works In City Conditions.
It is the ticking of genes you hear whenever you look at a clock – or glance at the past.

A neural king so pronounced:
"Let me remind all of my subjects of our Court's long honored axiom that states:
'Equity follows the law' --  that is: Fairness in our land must always comply with the inalienable principles of compassion, uniformity and transparency  --  except where insensitivity, unpredictability and  fraud would be the better approaches."

In one reality, after each successful campaign,
one army would play as their March de Triomphe, the Battle Hymn of their vanished foe.