No. 91 Humans are just tubes
No. 91 • 1/6/2023
Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to 2023.
Seeing aging body parts as old friends needing assistance
Aging with any sense of grace requires a better appreciation of and more intimate relationship with my body. Yes, as an integrated, holistic organism. But, also as an individuated network of unique body parts.
In other words, I need to have a more intimate relationship with my eyes, my feet, my hips, my shoulders, my thumbs, my wrists. If I only relate to each one as they make noise and cause what could be perceived as disruptions to my daily life, then I'll get frustrated, despondent, and angry. But, if I see each part as an old friend in need of assistance as they age, then the relationship becomes more empathetic.
On-ramps need off-ramps
When it comes to information management (taking in, storing, retrieving "content"), every on-ramp needs an off-ramp. Information that comes in, after internalization, needs a way to get out. Creative minds need ways to express creatively. To only consume fascinating material, radical ideas, stories of mystical experiences, but to never put them back out into the world, creates feedback in the mind.
This is not to say that others will want to read or otherwise engage with your output. That's an entirely different discussion. I am not the person who tells you that the world is dying to hear your latest, greatest idea. The world mostly doesn't care. Your voice is just one among eight billion others. Expression is first and foremost for you.
You need to express yourself, that's is "externally scaffold" your thinking, so you can get to know what you believe, so you can make room for new ideas, so you can see what it is you really believe.
How does that book fit into the society?
When it comes to reviewing books and films, I'm less interested in the content, and more interested in how the piece situates itself socially. In other words, I'm interested in how it functions in society rather than the plot (although, the plot is often a major factor in that functioning). This means I sometimes end up giving books/films positive reviews even if they're total crap. ie A terribly written book w little in the way of novel ideas can still be highly valuable if it jars my thinking / if it gets me talking. High social value usually bests craft.
Humans are just big, thinking tubes
I once had an anatomy teacher who referred to human beings as large tubes. It's an image that has never left my mind.
Garlic
It's a known fact that whenever I eat garlic (and specifically something with garlic power in it) in the evening, I am bound to have nightmares or an otherwise disturbed sleep.
Related:
- Garlic as a "passion food" in Vaisnavism and general Hindu dietary philosophy
- Garlic as deterrent of vampires
Try working with a person's spirit
From Paul:
"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come...." (2 Corinthians 5:16–17)
Statements like the above tend to be interpreted in amorphous, toothless ways. It's the watered down vapidness of commercial "yoga-speak." "Relate to a person's heart." "Speak to people on a soul level." By and large these are meaningless to most people, since most people have no direct experience of what the heart or soul is.
One way to put Paul's advice into action is to really get to know what the heart is. HINT: It's a vessel, a container that is filled by what a person puts their attention on.
Another way is relate to a person based on the quality of their spirit.
Our spirit can be either quickened, dampened, or at rest. The quickened state can manifest as excitement, agitation, happiness, anger. It's not only positive. A dampened spirit usually manifests as lethargy, depression, malaise. And, at rest, is usually contemplative, meditative, or, sometimes asleep (though, the spirit can certainly be quickened in sleep).
When I'm trying not to relate to people according to worldly standards, which is far-less than always, I try to relate to what they've filled their heart up with and how their spirit is manifesting. And, then I work with that. A person who comes at me with an agitated (quickened) spirit with dismissiveness in their heart is dealt with one way. A person who comes at me with a contemplative (resting) spirit and kindness in their heart, is deal with another way. Ideally, both are handled with love, but that love can look a lot of different ways.
Cities are service economies
People upstate tend to hate the NY gov, whereas in the city the NY government is more or less ignored.
The city is a service-driven economy where most of the time you're buying the services you need. You hire a contractor. You hire a cleaning lady. You call the super. You go out to eat. You order in. You call an Uber. etc. These economies, while certainly existing with government oversight, are experienced as independent of government. So long as the government allows you to AirBnB your apartment (and you happen to be white and liberal), you mostly don't notice your local government exists.
Outside the city, however, people are more likely to depend on their own skills to get things done, because the services that the city economy is based on are not so readily available. This is why Right to Repair is such a huge issue in rural environments, and why Hochul, the lobbyists, and the NY government that recently killed the R2R bill by passing it with zero provisions for farmers, is so terrible. And, part of why rural communities hate liberal governments.
Here's a video on what just happened to the bill:
We need to get bored again
Couple quotes:
"People who turn to social media to escape from superficial boredom are unwittingly preventing themselves from progressing to a state of profound boredom, which may open the door to more creative and meaningful activity, a new study of the Covid pandemic shows."
"There are definite styles of boredom. The Zen tradition in Japan creates a definite style of boredom in its monasteries. Sit, cook, eat. Sit zazen and do your walking meditation and so on. But to an American novice who goes to Japan or take part in traditional Japanese practice in this country, the message of boredom is not communicated properly. Instead, if I may say so, it turns into a militant appreciation of rigidity, or an aesthetic appreciation of simplicity, rather than actually being bored, which is strange. Actually it was not designed to be that way. To the Japanese, Zen practice is an ordinary Japanese life-situation in which you just do your daily work and sit a lot of zazen. But Americans appreciate the little details — how you use your bowl and how you eat consciously in zazen posture. This is only supposed to create a feeling of boredom, but to American students it is a work of art." —Chogyam Trungpa
Rando Pone
And, that's that! See ya next week.
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