If a man takes his boat across a lake, and in the process runs into another man in another boat, they shout at each other and shake their fists. If the man notices that the boat is empty, he shrugs his shoulders and continues. So as you traverse across this life, let your boat be empty.
~ Chinese proverb
Though it's an honour just to be nominated, it's a shame to be involved
Oscar night raises the issue of the importance of small shiny chrome statuettes. It also raises the issues of ego and identity. Who won is incidental to the process and the effect. Some one had to win, & like they say, it's participation that counts.
World's largest pep rally highlights disturbing tendeny towards school spirit
1) Ego is how we define ourselves - the quest for personal power leads to self limitation! In show business they call that typecasting. "He's the best character actor in the business" also means "but he's no leading man". At least he has something reliable to work with - that means his continued employment, and a quelling of existential angst about his personal significance & individual value as a man adrift among 'the stars'. Besides not everyone has what it takes to be a high school hero on a global stage!Note that in the Old Testament God told Moses "I AM". It's when I am gets amended, qualified, and conditioned that you start to run into trouble. "I am this" as opposed to that. Vedanta would call that 'conditioned being'.
Zen and the art of motionless wisdom:
Something might be anywhere, until it's somewhere. Then it defines a specific point in space. It is spatially limited.
Join in, get involved, and become part of the problem
2) From resistance to resonance - revolution now obsolete! If violence is the struggle for identity then one cannot be both enlightened and violent. Ahimsa becomes indispensable. If violence is a successful way of determining identity, then it becomes self limiting. Note Gandhi's passive resistance. The only necessity for the triumph of evil over good is for good men to do something - the sum total of evil in the world is reduced when good men learn to sit quietly doing nothing - zazen. Action is only practical in theory. In practise it's a disaster. Even physics teaches that actions create equal and opposite reactions. Physics teaches other things too, like the impossibility of pinning down sub atomic particles. They're not really particles for one thing - but 'trajectories' or 'probability patterns'.Lick this
3) Heisenberg, uncertainty, and the identity crisis: The quest for identity is a quest for a sense of personal power - it is inherently violent. It begins with a psychological trade off. The person will admit that they are not something in order to be something else that they assume is useful to them. "I know what I've got, and what I don't have" It's gives them something to work with. The example is the high school student who admits to not being an athlete, but that they're a good scholar, which will get you farther in the long run. For 100 years Canada was a country without a flag - but we stupidly threw that away (A flag is a national security blanket, as the phrase 'wrapping yourself in the flag' might denote. Superheros with their secret identities and alter egos usually come flag wrapped. They are personifications of national identity - 'truth, justice, & the American way' for instance). "Just be" might be responded to with "Be what?" "What" is you problem. It was McLuhan who pointed out the folly of attempting to hold a fixed point of view in an inclusive field.The human condition and political situations
4) War games: The process is much like fencing off a piece of property to clearly define what's yours, and what's not. While good fences create good neighbours, borders make wars. As the war on terror has shown, it's hard to have a good war without clear borders - how could you pick out the players? America is clearly defined, but fights an undefined enemy. You've got to be careful about the possible. Sports for instance begins with a clear demarcation of teams, and progresses to competition. Competition is sublimated violence, as teams struggle to establish their identity as winners, and the right to define opponents as losers. Sports are also an important form of social conditioning. They teach people to sublimate violence in socially acceptable ways. They very neatly perform the function that organized religion was supposed to. Hence they have become a religion in our society. Can a spiritual man also be a sportsman? Provoking a person into conflict is to provoke them into a position of self betrayal. To defeat an enemy it is first necessary to corrupt them. Victory comes from the enemy, defeat from one's self.Incidentally inhibition is also a form of action since it is an actively holding back. Let whatever happens happen, since what will be will be.
Questions are a burden, answers are a prison; wonder is the beginning of wisdom.
PS: Mocksure's message is in it's medium - content is incidental.
If you're a regular reader of this blog then you probably realize that show biz gossip isn't about show biz gossip. It's a way of (satirically) examining who we are, the way we live, and the value system/mass delusion we have created - the ultimate fantasy of power, and of the structures that men create out of power. Where better to begin than with Hollywood, where perception is reality and fantasy is power?
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