Fear – the most atavistic of our instincts.
Fear of others robs us of our kindness by becoming aggression.
Fear of loss robs us of our freedom by becoming routine.
Fear of death robs us of our dignity by becoming religion.
Fear is why there is nothing more important
than the illusion that monsters do not exist
by the camp-fire in the night.
Don’t make unnecessary choices,
it really doesn’t matter what colour shoes you are wearing today!
Our planet seems to be becoming smaller by the year,
as technology and communications develop, and yet …
When I encounter popular media
with our mediaeval debates about local religions or news
with our primitive tribal politics,
I keep thinking:
“Things are getting better…
most people are still poorly educated…
it is just a matter of time…”
and then I read Mark Twain
and realise that this is how he consoled himself
more than a hundred years ago…
Isn’t it amazing
how signs are so much more efficient at destroying meaning
than at conveying it?
The “seen it” phenomenon almost completely passed me by.
I cannot understand how it is possible to be bored by too much experience.
The more things we see – the more patterns we notice.
The more patterns we notice – the more things we find interesting.
When we pay attention, experience is the act of creation:
of an image out of patterns of light and dark,
of a thought out of words and images,
of a world out of perceptions and thoughts…
One notable exception is the entertainment industry,
where the “seen it” phenomenon happens to me all the time.
Patriotism is a bizarre belief
that we are better than everyone else
because we happened to be born in a particular place or into a particular group.
Sociologically it is maintained by politicians
as one of the cheapest and most efficient methods of control.
Individually, it is maintained by our refusal to examine a premise
that gives us a warm and glowy feeling of being special.
If you think about it,
thinking has a paradoxical quality to it.
It is a process of creating patterns and reducing complexity.
Too much complexity is random noise – it is ugly and makes us think.
We think.
We create elegant patterns.
We create structure.
But too much structure is fundamentally boring –
for there is nothing to think about!
