Saturday, March 26, 2011

It wasn't snakes that got kicked out of the garden

It was not snakes that got kicked out of the garden. Yet people act as
if hacking them up will allow the killer back into a certain garden.
Nobody talks about the declining snake population, not even
scientists, yet it is part of the shrinking population of reptiles.
And we desperately need snakes. Without snakes rodents increase in
population, and the two legged types will buy poison to get rid of
what snakes will get rid of without polluting everybody's gardens and
rivers. Leave that wood pile alone. Keep some parts of your yard
unmowed. If you are personally afraid of snakes, keep a walking stick
to poke ahead in your path. Snakes only want to avoid your presence. I
will not mention keeping snakes confined as pets. Nobody that would
read my blogs would do something so contemptible.

And P.S. --just like mysticism is the skeleton of literature, snakes
are the skeleton of man's real awareness.

P.P.S--of course if you live in Belize, ie, already in the garden,
different guidelines might apply.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

What is ignorance

What is ignorance, is a question most would not find interesting, yet
it may be at the heart of a spiritual anthropology.

Most would not find this question interesting because they assume they
know what ignorance is. Here is the typical view of personal
ignorance. All mature persons at some point assume that ignorance is a
measurable commodity.

The idea that ignorance is a measurable commodity, or perhaps,
unquestioned, working assumption that ignorance is a measurable
commodity, explains a lot. From the pathetic, 'I have learned from my
mistakes,' to the spit in the wind, 'our reactors meet all the safety
requirements, ' a picture of operant assumptions about man's ignorance
can be sketched. The boxcar beyond the horizon is big enough to
contain all that we do not know, both as individuals or as a society,
is a metaphor of this working view of ignorance. Or---. If knowledge
is a gumball machine, then ignorance is just one of the gumballs that
is still heaped in the glass dome---that is the view of human
knowledge and ignorance prevalent in society, from university
presidents, to the bottom of the middle class.

Step back though---how could it be that ignorance is something one can
factor in? Does that not assume that we know what we say we do not.
And--Real Ignorance is extant. Real ignorance surrounds,
interpenetrates, and pricks out the horizon, of ---- our thoughts. The
man intent on figuring out wtf is going on, is given in this essay a
big hint, on how to proceed.

If one could examine, and test, one's own ignorance and ideas of it,
one would be on the path to ---someplace interesting.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

A stitch in space loses fine

Scientists rue the crackpots---those with tinfoil clocks. The person who perseveres with the methods of self-observation (to use Gurdjieff's phrase) views the religious, those who pronounce about god, rather than questoining man, rather similarly. Unlike either though, he has no time to rule the obvious.