Showing posts with label destiny. Show all posts
Showing posts with label destiny. Show all posts
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Your Song
You find your soul and your destiny by responding to the world's call to you. That's how you find yourself.
Thomas Moore
*******************
Hello Sue
**********************
Did you ever have the chance to open the lid of a grand piano and look inside? You probably have at least once in your life. What you saw was a sturdy metal frame and stretched across it from just behind the keyboard to the back of the piano a row of strings tightly drawn into a state of tension. Each of those strings, when plucked or struck, has a different tone. 88 different tones in fact. A finite number but enough to allow for some of the greatest music in the universe. When a great pianist sits down at the key board those strings rest in calm tension waiting to sing.
Imagine a piano with an infinite number of strings each one ready to sing, play, dance, write, paint, teach, settle disputes, build bridges, design buildings or cars, find new words, explore new worlds, discover cures, and so on, all of them in calm tension waiting for the touch of the master, life, the world, to make the call.
My friend Ernie once said that work defines your life. He's a painter and he knows. A senior in high school complained that he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. I told him to wait, be patient, look around and wait in calm tension for the call to come. And it will come.
The call often comes in unexpected ways. It may be as simple as a finger striking a key and making your string vibrate. It may be a phone call or a letter. It may come as a strong intuition or equally strong desire. Sometimes it comes as the world grabbing us by the collar and throwing us into the middle of our lives. It came to me as the result of a dream.
Troubles some, questions arise, but as I am fond of saying "There's no use asking what you should do with your life. You're doing it." Sometimes what you are doing is a pathway leading you somewhere, or it's a walk in the dark forest with no path to guide you, or it's a trip down a super highway at breakneck speed. But the destination, your destiny, is inevitable if you keep going.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
*************************
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
The Better Life
Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
William Jennings Bryan
****************************
Hello Frosty
****************************
I spend a lot of space in this journal urging people to use their imagination, to have good realistic dreams and to follow them. Why do I do that? Because the future is life. Imagining and achieving a better future is making a better life. Anyone who is self satisfied is denying themselves a destiny that can outshine any light they may presently be holding up to the world. Why miss the opportunity?
I've shut my eyes and am holding my nose while I keep dunking myself in a baptism of character. I'm cleansing and ridding myself of being defined by my past. I am slowly learning not to regret the things I didn't do or the advantages I didn't have. It's a waste of mental energy and it dirties up the future. I can get angry at my current lack of possibilities but feeling sorry for myself is akin to regretting. It's putting on a dunce cap of negativity.
Here I am, stuck in a dead end, drugged up, wasteland of a place desperately trying to get out and back to New York City, my only real home town. The obstacles to doing that are many and some of them huge. But when I think of what I can do there it sweetens the journey. I can be with other artists. I can learn more about painting, more about theatre. I can be with other, better writers. I can make music.
Achieving the impossible is not impossible once you've achieved it. And you destiny is not written in your past or present. It's written in your thoughts when clearly visualized and lit by the fire of enthusiasm.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
**************************
William Jennings Bryan
****************************
Hello Frosty
****************************
I spend a lot of space in this journal urging people to use their imagination, to have good realistic dreams and to follow them. Why do I do that? Because the future is life. Imagining and achieving a better future is making a better life. Anyone who is self satisfied is denying themselves a destiny that can outshine any light they may presently be holding up to the world. Why miss the opportunity?
I've shut my eyes and am holding my nose while I keep dunking myself in a baptism of character. I'm cleansing and ridding myself of being defined by my past. I am slowly learning not to regret the things I didn't do or the advantages I didn't have. It's a waste of mental energy and it dirties up the future. I can get angry at my current lack of possibilities but feeling sorry for myself is akin to regretting. It's putting on a dunce cap of negativity.
Here I am, stuck in a dead end, drugged up, wasteland of a place desperately trying to get out and back to New York City, my only real home town. The obstacles to doing that are many and some of them huge. But when I think of what I can do there it sweetens the journey. I can be with other artists. I can learn more about painting, more about theatre. I can be with other, better writers. I can make music.
Achieving the impossible is not impossible once you've achieved it. And you destiny is not written in your past or present. It's written in your thoughts when clearly visualized and lit by the fire of enthusiasm.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
**************************
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Dear Brutus
Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
***************************
Hello Rose
***************************
One of the most amazing things about the human race is the intricate and imaginative ways we have of justifying ourselves. If you ask a man what his goal in life is you will probably get an answer, but the answer will most likely have more to do with his purpose in regard to what he does. A life's goal is a deeply held secret thing that is hard, and perhaps impossible, to put into words. It is the unspoken and invisible challenge that motivates but continually frustrates us. It comes from a consciousness we are only occasionally aware of. It is a matter of personal achievement, of finding and filling one's true destiny.
A man can describe himself as a craftsman of some sort. He may say that his goal is to be a better one, a master at his craft, but that brings on the question of why he isn't. And the answer to that question is so elusive it seems to be outside of himself. It's a mystery.
Gradually appearing on the mental horizon comes the nasty four letter word FATE. Yes, there is no doubt in his mind there is something, some unexplainable thing that keeps him from achieving his purpose in life. He has an urgent need to find and understand that thing, that force from beyond him, that keeps him down.
Ancient priests used to sacrifice sheep and read the entrails to find answers. In Asia they would cast the I Ching by reading the lines on the belly of a tortoise. Astronomers could chart the future of men and nations by reading the stars. It is written that the mother of Alexander the Great held off giving birth to him until the court astronomer said the stars were in the exact proper location for greatness. His success was "in the stars." But what does Shakespeare say? "The fault, dear Brutus, in not in our starts but in ourselves that we are underlings."
The search for the mystical truth got more personal with palmistry, gazing into a crystal ball or a circle on the ground, reading tea leaves or coffee grounds. And then there are the cards. The mystic can read your destiny in the cards. Which gives you an ample excuse for failure. If it's "not in our stars" and "not in the cards" where is it?
The emergence of a new kind of religion in the early Middle Ages gave us the answer. It's Satan, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, the Devil. "The Devil made me fail." That's a good one. It lends itself to all sorts of colorful self justification and ritual confession, sacrifice and cleansing. We all know what the Devil does. Satan is responsible for all tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis, for all non Christian religions, for murder (the illegal kind), for illness, insanity and death, for noisy neighbors, disobedient children and snakes, for Communism, Hollywood and the Democratic Party. Or so we have been told by one pastor or another.
If we could just get the Devil out of our lives our destiny would improve, success would be possible and happiness assured.
But wait. The Devil has been replaced. There's a new crystal ball, a new circle on the ground, a new deck of cards, a new zodiac. DNA. Instead of the Devil it was "my DNA made me fail." The modern mystic can chart your destiny by reading the DNA leaves. It provides a solid scientific reason for self justification
How long will it be before they find a way to alter your DNA, before we decide who lives and who doesn't based on their DNA and thus their probability of success or failure, of benevolent or criminal behavior? When will chemistry take the place of ethics?
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our DNA.
William Jennings Bryan wrote "Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up.
**********************
AUTUMN QUESTION
What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?
Only 3 answers so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answers.
DB
********************
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
***************************
Hello Rose
***************************
One of the most amazing things about the human race is the intricate and imaginative ways we have of justifying ourselves. If you ask a man what his goal in life is you will probably get an answer, but the answer will most likely have more to do with his purpose in regard to what he does. A life's goal is a deeply held secret thing that is hard, and perhaps impossible, to put into words. It is the unspoken and invisible challenge that motivates but continually frustrates us. It comes from a consciousness we are only occasionally aware of. It is a matter of personal achievement, of finding and filling one's true destiny.
A man can describe himself as a craftsman of some sort. He may say that his goal is to be a better one, a master at his craft, but that brings on the question of why he isn't. And the answer to that question is so elusive it seems to be outside of himself. It's a mystery.
Gradually appearing on the mental horizon comes the nasty four letter word FATE. Yes, there is no doubt in his mind there is something, some unexplainable thing that keeps him from achieving his purpose in life. He has an urgent need to find and understand that thing, that force from beyond him, that keeps him down.
Ancient priests used to sacrifice sheep and read the entrails to find answers. In Asia they would cast the I Ching by reading the lines on the belly of a tortoise. Astronomers could chart the future of men and nations by reading the stars. It is written that the mother of Alexander the Great held off giving birth to him until the court astronomer said the stars were in the exact proper location for greatness. His success was "in the stars." But what does Shakespeare say? "The fault, dear Brutus, in not in our starts but in ourselves that we are underlings."
The search for the mystical truth got more personal with palmistry, gazing into a crystal ball or a circle on the ground, reading tea leaves or coffee grounds. And then there are the cards. The mystic can read your destiny in the cards. Which gives you an ample excuse for failure. If it's "not in our stars" and "not in the cards" where is it?
The emergence of a new kind of religion in the early Middle Ages gave us the answer. It's Satan, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, the Devil. "The Devil made me fail." That's a good one. It lends itself to all sorts of colorful self justification and ritual confession, sacrifice and cleansing. We all know what the Devil does. Satan is responsible for all tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis, for all non Christian religions, for murder (the illegal kind), for illness, insanity and death, for noisy neighbors, disobedient children and snakes, for Communism, Hollywood and the Democratic Party. Or so we have been told by one pastor or another.
If we could just get the Devil out of our lives our destiny would improve, success would be possible and happiness assured.
But wait. The Devil has been replaced. There's a new crystal ball, a new circle on the ground, a new deck of cards, a new zodiac. DNA. Instead of the Devil it was "my DNA made me fail." The modern mystic can chart your destiny by reading the DNA leaves. It provides a solid scientific reason for self justification
How long will it be before they find a way to alter your DNA, before we decide who lives and who doesn't based on their DNA and thus their probability of success or failure, of benevolent or criminal behavior? When will chemistry take the place of ethics?
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our DNA.
William Jennings Bryan wrote "Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up.
**********************
AUTUMN QUESTION
What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?
Only 3 answers so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answers.
DB
********************
Friday, June 3, 2011
I Am, I Think
When your heart becomes a sea of secrets you will come to your destination.
Rumi
*******************
Hello Bali Indonesia
************************
"I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see."
(Robert Louis Stevenson)
Years ago I knew a photographer who told me one day that she had mounted an exhibit of her pictures at a photography gallery in lower Manhattan, and that they were self portraits. I thought that was intriguing so I went down to see it.
It was a nice big gallery with some beautiful pictures. In one large room there were films and videos. One of the videos consisted of people cavorting around in very active and suggestive ways. But the video screen was very small. I went over to it to see what they were doing and as soon as I stepped up to the screen the image changed to a single person in a very lonely scene. I shrugged and walked away, and as soon as I did the original scene returned. So I stepped back and again the video changed to the lone individual. It seems there was a switch which would change the video whenever anyone came close to the screen.
In another room there was a very large print of a photo taken with a camera obscura. That's a technique in which one frame of film is exposed over a period of time. In this case the film was in a box with a pin point lens using ambient light. And what the artist had done was to set up nine chairs in a row across a room and put a model in each one of them. Every ten minutes, from one end or the other one of the models would get up and leave. At the end of ninety minutes the only model remaining was the one in the center. The resulting photograph showed her, very clearly, and those on either side of her gradually becoming transparent as your eye moved along the surface of the picture.
Finally I found my friend's self portraits. What she had done was to go all over the city on a sunny day and take pictures of her own shadow, on the sidewalks, on the grass, up against a wall and so on. Those were her "self portraits."
I could have left the exhibit simply having spent an entertaining two hours. But those three exhibits, the changing videos, the slowly disappearing models and the shadows, all pointed toward the same thing and I had to think about it.
There's an existential carpet there. But is it a magic carpet, does it fly or is it only to sweep confusing hair balls of thinking under. "Cogito ergo sum." I once knew a philosopher who paraphrased that Cartesian axiom by saying, "I think therefore I am, I think." Carefully setting under the carpet for today the possibility that I may not exist in the form in which I think I do, is the fact that I am a thinking creature irrefutable evidence that I exist? It can be a fearful thing to face one's own thinking if it is honestly and conscientiously done. Where do my thoughts come from? Are they a product of the passionate love affair between my imagination and my reason, are they the product of some phylogenic process, are they the intellectual merchandise of some tyrannical brain seeding, are they (heaven forbid) mental weeds which grow out of nature's chaos to fill a vacuum? How many of the thoughts that twirl and bounce around in my head like a bunch of lottery balls can I claim to be my own. The fewer of those there are the more transparent I have become. The sooner I have stepped away from what might record my existence.
What is the reluctance we have for facing the clear light of reality? Is it fear, indifference or ignorance? It doesn't hurt to turn one's attention to ideas and experiences greater than one's own. It shouldn't hurt to explore the open fields and mountain tops of one's own thinking. Why then do we habitually look away from the light and define ourselves by our own shadows when we could let ourselves be defined by the brightness that is hiding in us like a frightened creature in a cave?
I grew up in a threadbare family; no father, a difficult and demanding mother, a brother and sister who were a whole decade and more older than I. I suffered a great lack of the feelings and experiences of a family life. Hence I tried to make a family out of whatever theatre company I was with. I tried thinking of them as my fathers and mothers, my sisters and brothers and, eventually, my sons and daughters. Of course it didn't work. They all had families somewhere, and other lives. When I retired it was my circumstance to live alone and lonely. But it was also the time to start learning about, understanding and appreciating myself. The party is going on, the games are being played and the crowd may be fun to be with, but you won't find yourself there. You will find yourself as a thing that exists in the vast, bright, mysterious, secret and sacred cathedral of your own mind. There is the real destination and I believe it's ultimate reward must be a certain, quiet bliss.
DB - The Vagabond
(Never give up)
***********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
Come on. 11 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Rumi
*******************
Hello Bali Indonesia
************************
"I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see."
(Robert Louis Stevenson)
Years ago I knew a photographer who told me one day that she had mounted an exhibit of her pictures at a photography gallery in lower Manhattan, and that they were self portraits. I thought that was intriguing so I went down to see it.
It was a nice big gallery with some beautiful pictures. In one large room there were films and videos. One of the videos consisted of people cavorting around in very active and suggestive ways. But the video screen was very small. I went over to it to see what they were doing and as soon as I stepped up to the screen the image changed to a single person in a very lonely scene. I shrugged and walked away, and as soon as I did the original scene returned. So I stepped back and again the video changed to the lone individual. It seems there was a switch which would change the video whenever anyone came close to the screen.
In another room there was a very large print of a photo taken with a camera obscura. That's a technique in which one frame of film is exposed over a period of time. In this case the film was in a box with a pin point lens using ambient light. And what the artist had done was to set up nine chairs in a row across a room and put a model in each one of them. Every ten minutes, from one end or the other one of the models would get up and leave. At the end of ninety minutes the only model remaining was the one in the center. The resulting photograph showed her, very clearly, and those on either side of her gradually becoming transparent as your eye moved along the surface of the picture.
Finally I found my friend's self portraits. What she had done was to go all over the city on a sunny day and take pictures of her own shadow, on the sidewalks, on the grass, up against a wall and so on. Those were her "self portraits."
I could have left the exhibit simply having spent an entertaining two hours. But those three exhibits, the changing videos, the slowly disappearing models and the shadows, all pointed toward the same thing and I had to think about it.
There's an existential carpet there. But is it a magic carpet, does it fly or is it only to sweep confusing hair balls of thinking under. "Cogito ergo sum." I once knew a philosopher who paraphrased that Cartesian axiom by saying, "I think therefore I am, I think." Carefully setting under the carpet for today the possibility that I may not exist in the form in which I think I do, is the fact that I am a thinking creature irrefutable evidence that I exist? It can be a fearful thing to face one's own thinking if it is honestly and conscientiously done. Where do my thoughts come from? Are they a product of the passionate love affair between my imagination and my reason, are they the product of some phylogenic process, are they the intellectual merchandise of some tyrannical brain seeding, are they (heaven forbid) mental weeds which grow out of nature's chaos to fill a vacuum? How many of the thoughts that twirl and bounce around in my head like a bunch of lottery balls can I claim to be my own. The fewer of those there are the more transparent I have become. The sooner I have stepped away from what might record my existence.
What is the reluctance we have for facing the clear light of reality? Is it fear, indifference or ignorance? It doesn't hurt to turn one's attention to ideas and experiences greater than one's own. It shouldn't hurt to explore the open fields and mountain tops of one's own thinking. Why then do we habitually look away from the light and define ourselves by our own shadows when we could let ourselves be defined by the brightness that is hiding in us like a frightened creature in a cave?
I grew up in a threadbare family; no father, a difficult and demanding mother, a brother and sister who were a whole decade and more older than I. I suffered a great lack of the feelings and experiences of a family life. Hence I tried to make a family out of whatever theatre company I was with. I tried thinking of them as my fathers and mothers, my sisters and brothers and, eventually, my sons and daughters. Of course it didn't work. They all had families somewhere, and other lives. When I retired it was my circumstance to live alone and lonely. But it was also the time to start learning about, understanding and appreciating myself. The party is going on, the games are being played and the crowd may be fun to be with, but you won't find yourself there. You will find yourself as a thing that exists in the vast, bright, mysterious, secret and sacred cathedral of your own mind. There is the real destination and I believe it's ultimate reward must be a certain, quiet bliss.
DB - The Vagabond
(Never give up)
***********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
Come on. 11 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Creative Construction
If you don't like the road you're walking on, start paving a new one.
Dolly Parton
*********************
I have an easier time following other people's advice than following my own. That's probably because my own gems of worldly wisdom emerge out of my own molasses mentality. One cannot live without facing confusion, bewilderment and doubt. Sometimes, some people manage to tie those together in a bundle, toss it into a back pack and get on with life.
The implication I read in this quote from Dolly Parton is a challenge to me and to others. It is easier to take a different road if life is not going where you want it to than to actually prepare your own way. And yet we have the right and opportunity to make the road go where we want it to go, to decide on a destination and make a way to get there.
William Jennings Bryan wrote "Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved." I think too many people go through life just accepting what comes along and calling it luck, the will of God, circumstances over which they have no control, destiny. And I have certainly been guilty of that lackadaisical hallucination in my past.
I sometimes think of myself as suddenly plunked down in the middle of a jungle with nothing but an axe. I cut down trees, split logs and stank them up to make a dwelling to protect myself from the elements and the wild beasts. And once my creature comforts are taken care of I start to cut a trail through the jungle to get - where? Ah that's the problem. Where am I going?. Am I going to spend the rest of my life in the jungle, like Tarzan? Or am I going to get out somehow? And is the only goal I have to get out? Or is there a reason for getting out? And if so, what is it? That's when I start thinking about destiny. And that brings me ultimately back to the big and most important fundamental question: Who am I?
Am I what I look like? No. Am I what I eat? No. Am I what I do for a living? Not necessarily. The human being is a very complex creature and it probably takes a score of lifetimes to figure him out. I'm glad I'm not in the jungle. I do know a lot about myself that I didn't know before. The way to go becomes clearer every day. My destination is my destiny. And as long as I am not completely self-satisfied (heaven forbid) I have the right and freedom to make a better man of myself, in as many ways as I can.
I'm paving.
DB - The Vagabond
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
OTHER VOICES
Next weekend there will be a special Vagabond Journey about the Art of Acting and the Actor's Life with special contributions from as many of my actor friends as I can inspire to write their thoughts and feelings, their experience and wisdom.
That's next weekend. Don't miss it. Tell your friends. Post a notice in all the crooks and nannies around town.
DB
Dolly Parton
*********************
I have an easier time following other people's advice than following my own. That's probably because my own gems of worldly wisdom emerge out of my own molasses mentality. One cannot live without facing confusion, bewilderment and doubt. Sometimes, some people manage to tie those together in a bundle, toss it into a back pack and get on with life.
The implication I read in this quote from Dolly Parton is a challenge to me and to others. It is easier to take a different road if life is not going where you want it to than to actually prepare your own way. And yet we have the right and opportunity to make the road go where we want it to go, to decide on a destination and make a way to get there.
William Jennings Bryan wrote "Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved." I think too many people go through life just accepting what comes along and calling it luck, the will of God, circumstances over which they have no control, destiny. And I have certainly been guilty of that lackadaisical hallucination in my past.
I sometimes think of myself as suddenly plunked down in the middle of a jungle with nothing but an axe. I cut down trees, split logs and stank them up to make a dwelling to protect myself from the elements and the wild beasts. And once my creature comforts are taken care of I start to cut a trail through the jungle to get - where? Ah that's the problem. Where am I going?. Am I going to spend the rest of my life in the jungle, like Tarzan? Or am I going to get out somehow? And is the only goal I have to get out? Or is there a reason for getting out? And if so, what is it? That's when I start thinking about destiny. And that brings me ultimately back to the big and most important fundamental question: Who am I?
Am I what I look like? No. Am I what I eat? No. Am I what I do for a living? Not necessarily. The human being is a very complex creature and it probably takes a score of lifetimes to figure him out. I'm glad I'm not in the jungle. I do know a lot about myself that I didn't know before. The way to go becomes clearer every day. My destination is my destiny. And as long as I am not completely self-satisfied (heaven forbid) I have the right and freedom to make a better man of myself, in as many ways as I can.
I'm paving.
DB - The Vagabond
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
OTHER VOICES
Next weekend there will be a special Vagabond Journey about the Art of Acting and the Actor's Life with special contributions from as many of my actor friends as I can inspire to write their thoughts and feelings, their experience and wisdom.
That's next weekend. Don't miss it. Tell your friends. Post a notice in all the crooks and nannies around town.
DB
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Cosmic Capabilities 8/16/09
What is truly permanent in human nature is not any condition in which it once existed and from which it has fallen, rather it is the goal for which and toward which it moves.
Ernst Cassirer
*****************
Happy to see you.
_________________
Hurry and get your note book ready because September....
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
In his book Anthropology From A Pragmatic Point Of View, the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote "Physiological knowledge of man aims at the investigation of what Nature makes of man, whereas pragmatic knowledge of man aims at what man makes, can, or should make of himself as a freely acting being."
What is the destiny of the human race? To blow itself up? Maybe, if the ignorant, bigoted, prejudiced, racist, exclusionist, haters have their way. Some religions will tell you that these are the last days, that judgement day is coming and we're all going to heaven or to hell. But they've been saying that since the Middle Ages. No one is about to push the button to trigger the apocalyptic Armageddon because there is no such button. Life is continuous.
All world religions are in their infancy, and will remain so as long as they worship physiologically, claiming that God sends hurricanes to punish sinners, rushing off to see the face of Jesus in a tree stump or claiming they hear the word of God in their deranged brains.
So what is the destiny of the human race? I am amazed at what has occurred over the past 50 years. Marvels have happened. The rockets that were initially designed to fire nuclear warheads became the ones that sent satellites into outer space. We "beat out spears into pruning hooks."
Now it is being contemplated and designed to land on asteroids, moons and other planets. It will happen during the next 50 years. Like many seniors, I wish I could be around to see it. But there is an even greater achievement to hope for.
As we venture further into outer space a schism is being revealed between what can be described as earthbound mentality and cosmic mentality. We have the opportunity, the obligation, the destiny to look past our purely physiological roots and peer into an infinite intelligence, We can silence the fear, suspicion and superstition that has tethered the human race for centuries and begin to understand what creation is all about. We can challenge the theologians of the future to redefine deity by looking up, not down, forward, not back. We can build better governments. We can discover new science. We can create new forms of art. We can, and will, become citizens of the universe.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
____________________
I wish you an inspiring day.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ernst Cassirer
*****************
Happy to see you.
_________________
Hurry and get your note book ready because September....
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
In his book Anthropology From A Pragmatic Point Of View, the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote "Physiological knowledge of man aims at the investigation of what Nature makes of man, whereas pragmatic knowledge of man aims at what man makes, can, or should make of himself as a freely acting being."
What is the destiny of the human race? To blow itself up? Maybe, if the ignorant, bigoted, prejudiced, racist, exclusionist, haters have their way. Some religions will tell you that these are the last days, that judgement day is coming and we're all going to heaven or to hell. But they've been saying that since the Middle Ages. No one is about to push the button to trigger the apocalyptic Armageddon because there is no such button. Life is continuous.
All world religions are in their infancy, and will remain so as long as they worship physiologically, claiming that God sends hurricanes to punish sinners, rushing off to see the face of Jesus in a tree stump or claiming they hear the word of God in their deranged brains.
So what is the destiny of the human race? I am amazed at what has occurred over the past 50 years. Marvels have happened. The rockets that were initially designed to fire nuclear warheads became the ones that sent satellites into outer space. We "beat out spears into pruning hooks."
Now it is being contemplated and designed to land on asteroids, moons and other planets. It will happen during the next 50 years. Like many seniors, I wish I could be around to see it. But there is an even greater achievement to hope for.
As we venture further into outer space a schism is being revealed between what can be described as earthbound mentality and cosmic mentality. We have the opportunity, the obligation, the destiny to look past our purely physiological roots and peer into an infinite intelligence, We can silence the fear, suspicion and superstition that has tethered the human race for centuries and begin to understand what creation is all about. We can challenge the theologians of the future to redefine deity by looking up, not down, forward, not back. We can build better governments. We can discover new science. We can create new forms of art. We can, and will, become citizens of the universe.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
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I wish you an inspiring day.
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