Public Aspects of Attention

So much attention lately after the death of a pop icon-- Michael Jackson. It is not clear to me why exactly. I still say if it were for the greatness of his music you could ask why James Brown's death did not provoke the same storm.  Another of the students of Jan Cox told me the other night that Jan had admired Michael Jackson stressing his creativity.  A good perspective, but if creativity were the reason for the dimensions of the public outcry, then we would certainly have seen a bigger commotion when Jan Cox himself demised. I do recall what Jan said when the last pope croaked. He said the crowds were not converging on Rome because of the Pope, but because other people were going to Rome.

 

And changing the subject, a bit---some commentator said the black people knew the police had it out for Jackson and that is why the legal charges.  Here is a tricky way binary thought works.  Even though I can easily imagine the cops were happy to arrest Michael Jackson, that doesn't mean he was innocent. (I am of course merely pointing out an example of binary thought, not addressing the facts of which I know absolutely nothing. I am just saying, contra the logic of binary thought, that saying the cops have it out for you, and if they do, does NOT mean you are innocent.

Stalking the Stock Market

Stalking the stock market Of course for what can be learned about life. Jan Cox told his students decades ago to stay away from it,  Though he did not elaborate, (to my recall) my guess is he perceived there was not, nor ever would be, any kind of level playing field. Which came to mind after hearing the denunciations of Madoff as "evil." First off, these words are from people who did not investigate who was getting hurt as long as their own dividends were being paid. Secondly to label anything evil just means you are asserting your own self worth, and that is a dangerous position for anyone to take. As Jan said: do not pray for justice, pray for mercy.  This whole idea of evil may have evolved to bolster the mechanical personality.  For using such a label means you can see clearly (you assume you can see clearly) that the world is divided into two, and that one of these parts is not good. Not going into at this moment the whole ignorance of a third of reality in such maps.  What I might end with is the stunning inability of ordinary consciousness to perceive how the mechanical operations of nature, of everything, accounts for any so-called problems of evil, as long as the quester appreciates, remembers, that the mechanical personality, is not isolated, and not a source of knowledge, ---which does not mean knowledge does not exist.  It exists----just not at the level of verbal maps.