What would you do first if you had a time machine?
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| this is really happening What would you do first if you had a time machine? | info | |
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What's on your mind? He's a Cub Scout, by the looks of it, this kid in the ad at the top of my Opera window. His salute is with two fingers. Funny thing is, he's looking off into the distance and the only flag visible is flapping right across his chest. No doubt some digital manipulation thrown in for some emotional manipulation, playing off of patriotism to advertise. I find it sad. We have suffered a terrible human tragedy, and yet the main thing on everyone's mind continues to be money. Companies still after that profit, waving a flag to get it. Vowing to wage war on a concept, and appropriating vast amounts of money to do it. We're worried about it more with a limping economy, but we're encouraged to part with what we have to keep that economy strong. Meanwhile, I read too much bizarre news. A strange sequence of microbiologist deaths (see rense.com for more), the questions of chemtrails (see rense.com for that too), the up-and-coming 9-11 conspiracy theories, the alleged erosion of freedom we're all ignoring, killer asteroids and/or comets and/or evil twin stars and/or planets, the Enron scandal, tales of concentration camps for Americans...(see rense.com, Surfing the Apocalypse, Rumor Mill News, and CyberspaceORBIT for more!) Ultimately, I'm not shaken. Every second is a bit of precious now I can't afford to waste worrying about what everyone else is doing. While I'm fascinated by the points of view, the connections, the correlations, real or imagined, I have my own steady ground. I realize that these pursuits of truth have their own sort of value, but that the seekers often miss the Truth pursuing the facts. Sometimes I find that seemingly unrelated words can be pieces of an impromptu puzzle with Truth at the end. Take facts. And then take fax. They sound pretty much the same unless you really e-nun-ci-ate. But fax is used to represent facsimile, a word which brings home the point that what you're getting is like the original. Facts, on the other hand, we consider to be the real thing. We want the facts so we can know what happened. The facts, however are not the whole story. The story involves much more, relationships, roles, players, goals, intentions, and not least, how the story is told. Having the facts (or having a fax) and calling what you have The Real Deal is having a bunch of strings and calling it a blanket. It takes some experience to reconstruct the whole situation from the facts, the fax, or the strings; you can't just pursue the pieces as if they were the whole. And as luck would have it, when you think you're getting close to grasping the whole, you find there's always more. So I don't mind these strange days and the crazy news coming from every angle. I've spent too many hours simply looking up into the night sky to think that what goes on here amounts to the whole. Our manipulations and machinations only go so far, never quite reaching the heart. The multitude of facts can't sully the Truth. We're going in circles, then, manufacturing truths that are facsimiles, exchanging them for other manufactured true facsimiles, thinking we might happen upon the right combination or the right amount to win happiness, success, or power. In the non-ending there, we find cycles and recycling, as we get a raise and get ourselves a new car payment or find stable employment and secure a mortgage so we can settle down. Since it just keeps going, that surely can't be the point. If there be true rags-to-riches and riches-to-rags stories, the point isn't in our fabrications and currencies. It must be a bit below that surface. But what is below that surface anyway? Just you and me and our illusions. We agree to a game, and we play. The game looks like a crazy world right now, but we're the ones playing it. We believe in our Monopoly money, our status symbols, our causes and crusades, although that surface conceals our common humanity and our common ground. We're in this together. Our illusions seem to be carrying us away, but they're still just our illusions. The new world some are looking for, running from, and trying to create is already here, only it's not what anyone expected. It's just below that surface we created, simple and straight-forward when you see the common ground. Generally speaking, we want the same things. We all want the best for our loved ones. We want to do worthwhile things and feel that we have value. We want to have fun and enjoy the company of others. We want time to relax. Unfortunately, the game as we usually play it has us constantly drawing lines in the sand, deciding on an us and a them. There's just a big us. We're making it difficult for ourselves with all these lines, barriers that prevent us from recalling the common ground. We've all got pieces of a huge puzzle, but we tend to hoard those pieces and try to put together incomplete pictures, thinking us and them, yours and mine. The ads that assault our senses, in addition to the culture our media attempts to simulate, reinforce our lines, even draw lines for us. And yet it is a simulated culture, a mediated culture. Culture, in one sense of the word, is an environment with conditions conducive to growth, as in a petri dish. The culture directly nurtures the organism, enables it to thrive. The television programs (look twice at that word - programs), ads, newspapers and magazines that surround us are only our creations, showcases for our handiwork, and are not necessarily conducive to our growth, either as individuals or as a society. So what's on your mind? Are you enthralled by expensive baubles you've been conditioned to desire? Are you concentrating on your puzzle too hard to help others gather more pieces? Are you escaping into the virtual reality of our mass media rather than facing the real people and real drama around you? Are you holding out for cold hard facts? Are you waking up to find more every day, paying no mind to the alleged news, the wars and rumors of wars? Are you working on the puzzle that is the Big Picture, and sharing your progress? Are you looking for what you have to give instead of what you can take or make? Are you seeing glimpses of a better way? Are you ready for the new world that's waiting for you? |
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