Ah, thank you for the enlightenment. I'm not sure if I've been deliberately diverted from such a habit, I couldn't accuse anyone around me of it directly. Rather, for me it is a culture that thinks it already knows all the answers to questions posed.
I was fascinated by something in the story that is difficult to describe. So someone asks a rhetorical question, but the person asked actually ignores the rhetoric and tries to consider its true content. Here, you can't really feign interest in a question unless you actually experience it. Where one ignores an insult in a question or statement, but practices actual wondering. Without strategy.
As a child, I grasped the humorous stories of some writers in this way, and instead of being annoyed that those around me seemed incapable of practising such humour, I felt only the sheer inspiration of what was written take hold of me. I imitated the authors and wrote my own, naturally childlike stories.
The ability to retain a certain naivety, to wonder authentically, is potentially always there. But I always spoil it when I think that nothing needs to amaze me any more. Cynicism is then around the next corner and I might be tempted to give it preference.
For me, irritating someone means interrupting the moment of the usual and breaking out of the usual trajectory of how one communicates with each other. Of course, someone who stops to wonder can only be offended.
So, I assume, that you may not only have been shocked, but delighted as well?
Just the opposite, in fact.
If the solutions are so simple, but the people so set against them, there is little hope of escape for those of us that know the truth.
All that exists for us is the hope that the masses reject their illusions at some point.
How people continue to have faith in gov't as savior when gov'ts killed 100+ million of their own
citizensslaves last century is very disheartening to me.I know I will never reach 100k people let alone 6 billion.
Perhaps I can reach the few that can, though.
So, I keep going, one post at a time.
The fantastic thing about the story is that it's simple, but at the same time totally unrealistic. You don't even find eight people who can agree on a restaurant. Since there are restaurants and a gazillion things to decide about, nothing gets decided, for there are too many materials and places and interests.
They way I think, there are many more people who do realize this truth of a matter, they just let themselves being distracted by too many choices to make.
Only, also the many cannot see that they can refuse to make a choice.
The way I think, the truth to the matter for me is that I will not experience that all people around me come at the same time in the same space to the same conclusion. For if they would, that could be the very end of story.
This maybe sounds too strange. So the only thing I can do, is to make my peace with what is. For what it is right now, is, that I am sitting on my balcony and typing. :)
Yes. I think they will, otherwise "end of world"
we may not witness the official impact of it, only a fading out, I assume. That happened to all disastrous (and make up) events, they come and they go. For how long, is another question. So far I had a good life, cannot complain. I wish the rest of the "not me s" well being but if they refuse to be well, I can't help it. It's none of my business ;-)
I've been concerned by this thought, too.
It's a terrible what if to give a seeker.
I'd think peace and harmony would be worth it, at least until it was boring.
But, I don't get to decide for others, they have to come to the same conclusion, or not.
The rub is too few of them give me the same courtesy.
C'est La Vie.
I'm in from the garden for today.
It's almost weed free.
Now I have to make a high effort post,...
Have a perfectly peaceful day.
Oh, it really gets me often by surprise that you see the things so much differently. I felt consoled by that book and relieved to find such wisdom and humor. If all people unite on earth at the same time and space, that would be a cosmic event and I think I would not care any longer for anything. It is impossible to be united in time and space, a thing of utmost impossibility. They time differences and generations and cultures are too huge to be overcome, even within the same family, everyone experienced a different form of reality, so how on earth can we all be united other than by a cosmic event? Of course, that could also be a gamma ray burst or a crash with a flying comet or anything of that sort. Pooof and Banggg, and gone we were, together with good old Earth!
Until no cosmic event happens, there will be no total unity. And that's fine. Total unity may be the boredom you spoke of.
In the Hindu tradition, if I remember correctly, the drama is for the bored gods and goddesses who play hide and seek with the universe. At least, I have understood Alan Watts that way.
Yes, C'est La Vie, mon amis :)
P.S. oh, that is really a nuisance: I miss the courtesy, too! ... but wait a minute... I receive it. Here and there but not everywhere.
P.P.S. do you have a picture from your garden for me?