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Edited on Sat Aug-06-05 01:01 AM by Psephos
Yes, I did grow up in the 60s.
These forums can be a hard place to state one's thoughts so that they're received with the same intentions with which they were expressed. I intended no slight to anyone with my post - I think you figured that out. :=)
Cycles do repeat, although each time has its own zeitgeist, its own defining problems. The actors change, and so does the scenery, but the play remains the same. Over the years, the more history that I read, the more I became convinced that the current times are not so different from those of decades and centuries past. Not so different at all.
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. - Cicero, 50 B.C.
Somehow, the world will survive; it always does (even if Rome did not). Meanwhile, we can and must do our part to improve things, but those improvements are better done with our hands than with our tongues. Politics is part of the answer, but not the only answer. Also, once our politics become principally a proxy for hating those with opposing views, the amount of good we do diminishes. Energy and time are all we have. I hope to spend them in ways that increase the supply of good feeling in the world.
These times, like all times, are the best of times...if we but know what to do with them. - Emerson
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. - Emerson, again
At the end of my life, I would like to say I succeeded on almost exactly these terms Emerson describes.
>I don't believe I have an "extremely-held view" at all.
I agree. You seem like a gentle but strong soul aided by good conviction. With a bit different choice of phrasing, I could have made that more clear...There are some here who have moved beyond the pale, and it was to them I suppose I was speaking. I was tilting at windmills, as it were.
>My eyes are open and they see what they see. >"Opening yourself to your senses" sounds like you >mean "looking" but not "seeing."
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (The Little Prince)
My point is that our senses are almost infinitely more reliable than someone else's words, but the strongest sense of all is what we sense in our hearts. My problem with strong politics is the same as my problem with strong religion: at some point we begin to surrender to the authority of others in matters of what's true. Fundie Christians, fundie Islamists, fundie wingnuts, fundie far-lefties, all utterly convinced they have received the Truth. At the extremes of the spectrum, there are more similarities than differences. Have you ever read Arthur Koestler's famous essay, The Yogi and the Commissar? Please do, if you haven't. And check out Eric Hoffer's The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. It's stuffed with insight.
Well, I've spent more time here than I planned. I don't believe we can share wisdom; we have to distill our own from the material of our own lives. Something tells me you won't have much problem there. Especially if you continue to hold on to the powerful realization that life is what you make it.
These are my opinions, nothing more, nothing less.
Peace.
EDIT: Added a sentence I left out.
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