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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (287907)	1/11/2016 12:42:42 PM
From: koan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542148

As I have posted before, during the 60s we were all engaged in a lot of introspection. We were revolutionaries and we knew it. So we read a lot of the revolutionaries e.g. Saul ALinsky, Herman Hesse, Thomas Mann, Watts, Bertrand Russell and on and on. So it was natural that during this period a person might come to their own realization of just how ignorant they were. And that is exactly what happened to me. I've posted many times that I remember the exact moment, place and time I had a profound insight into my own ignorance. That there was something out there much larger to see and that I wasn't seeing, or understanding. It was about two in the afternoon, on a Winnie the Pooh day, and I was walking past the dorms at San Jose State when I realized I not only didn't know the answers I didn't even know the questions. I specifically remember saying to myself I have no idea why Plato is such an important person. And it was then that I set out to find out why he was so important. Today I'm quite sure I know. And so for the next two years I lay on that white couch I talk about and read every great thinker I could think of. I had no idea where to start and I had no idea what I was looking for. I started with our great thinkers Steinbeck, Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, catcher in the Rye. And while they were interesting and important books they seemed more like just stories, good stories, but just stories and not very profound and didn't seem to me to be what I was looking for. Then I jumped across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe and that's when I really ran into the great thinkers like, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, and Andre Malraux, Dostoevsky, and of course Albert camu, Gunther Grass and the big dog Jean-Paul Sartre. But on the domestic side, we also were actually creating a new philosophy. Bob Dylan, the Beatles and many of the rock bands of the day were singing about this great 60s movement of peace, love and ideas. And of course freedom:" do your own thing"was our mantra. And be creative. And during that period I spent reading countless books I changed as a person. And that change stayed with me my entire life and it is something I built on ever since. Now that I'm an old man I can go to my death easy having some idea of the world I live in, of the virtual reality that has been my existence. I feel sorry for anyone who didn't have the opportunity to discover that.

To: koan who wrote (287907)	1/11/2016 6:04:07 PM
From: elpolvo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542148

koan- tanks for that detailed reply... which i take as a yes to my question: are you trying to trick us into thinking you're one of US?? (it actually was intended to be a yes or no question, albeit tongue in cheek.) i've lived through all that historical stuff and you know it so i take your essay to be directed at those who have not. ...as a map to how WE got to the level of understanding YOU now enjoy. but there are still more windows to crawl through. i have crawled through a few that you haven't and we both have an infinite amount of other windows to open and go through. i've laid out maps to you as well - about understanding the spiritual laws of the universe - and how i got there. those maps were not useful to you to follow. the point i see here for both of us to acknowledge is that no individual can follow another's map to enlightenment. there comes a point in our growth where no "bible", "koran", "i ching", "history of civilization" or "map of koan" is valid for us to evolve further. we evolve from the unknown to the known to the greater unknown through the same forces that govern the evolution of the universe. these days of rapid evolution of climate, technology and civilization are driving our individual evolution by the same powers of the same cosmic energy. we try to create intelligent computer algorithm models to be our maps but they are very imperfect. we go forward with imperfect maps. my course of action is to watch the here and now and react in the here and now to the energy of this vast universe in a way that seems compatible and in harmony with it. i think maybe i learned that skill through years of flying and sailing through the elements of water, sky and weather. your path will vary, driven by other experiences... and your tracks left behind will be imperfect for anyone else to follow. but anyway... tanks for your map. it is one of millions that lay behind us all as tracks to this place and time, now... together and closer as a team. our tracks do not define how to get here to the present moment but our actions define where we are right now and why. i am here, now, watching you. i nurture what feels good in you and in me as we evolve. namasté -grassholehopper (damn. where's sun tzu when you really need him?) <g>