The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.
John Maynard Keynes
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I like rain. When it rains most people run inside and hide. But I like the rain, especially in the summertime, not just because it cools everything off, but because it cleans the air. It's like Mother Nature giving one of her children a bath. After the rain everything looks so clear and clean. It creates a fresh look at the world.
Many people also don't like the bathing that makes them take a fresh look at themselves, their lives and the world around them. A fresh look implies the possible necessity of changing things. People refrain from taking up and considering new ideas or seeing old ones in a brighter light.
Why adopt some new idea or some new way of doing things if it hasn't been tried before? Because if we don't, it will never be tried. Why hold on to old ideas and old ways of doing things even though they have proven to be ineffective and incorrect? Because they are familiar. That kind of thinking is like the serpent swallowing its own tail, slowly poisoning itself to death. The focus is in the wrong direction.
We always have a chance to bag up all the trash and take it to the dump. It's not a new beginning, it's a new look, without all the clutter, at the same things that hove been going on ever since there were humans walking the earth.
I know there are people who disagree with me, even in this email/journal land, people who will say the rain only brings mud, but I say let the rain come, let the bathing begin and let's have a fresh look at this strange, unpredictable, mysterious thing known as the world we live in.
DB Vagabond Journeys
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Midweek puzzle: STEW
change Internet provider (6)
switch from off to particle (5)
Calloway born old (7)
auto rust (6)
pan to the office (6)
crush a hotel unit (8)
vigor for each )6)
sounds like a basement type thing (6)
worn around the neck down south (8)
southern California jungle beast (8)
answer to exist (5)
drink to the king (4)
beer joint to the left end, yes (6)
bad humor afoot (4)
Enjoy your dish.
DB
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 6 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
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Showing posts with label new ideas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new ideas. Show all posts
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Monday, March 2, 2009
Weird Ways 3/02/09
One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing.
Morris West
???????????
Here we go.
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One of the strangest places I was ever in was a small city in the Southwest that was built literally in the middle of the desert. There was a road that came into town, but it didn't go through it. I walked to the end of the road and I was on the edge of the city, There was a sidewalk. Houses were built along the side walk. It turned a right angle and there were more houses, with back yards, trees. bushes and children playing in the yards But when you stepped off the sidewalk you stepped immediately into the desert. If you turned your back to the houses all you would see in front of you was desert. I don't remember the name of that city or what state it was in, but I imagine it has expanded out into that desert by now.
I often think of that experience of taking a single step from civilization into wilderness. To me it was the same as taking a step from the safe and known into the dark world of ignorance. Ignorance is not a bad thing. Stupidity is bad, ignorance is not the same thing. When able to admit my ignorance about something, I am poised to step into the wild world of darkness and doubt. If I take that step it could be scary. What some people call foolishness, other people call courage. One has to agree to walk in darkness before one can see the light.
If some did not have the courage to peer into a telescope or a microscope, to crawl around in dark caves or on the ocean floor, or peek into the machinations of the human mind, we wouldn't know anything.
I once visited a Museum of Philosophy. In it there was a computer program that asked me a series of questions about my beliefs and opinions. Then it came up with a list of philosophers whose writings, more or less, conformed to my own philosophy of things. I thought, how nice, I can read the works of great writers who agree with me. I could bask in the easy sunshine of coordinate thinking.
It didn't take but a few days before I became bored with that idea, and went searching out the rare and troublesome works of thinkers who were antagonistic to my easy, sunny, back porch studies and who posed ideas that were difficult to understand and even harder to harmonize with what I thought was true. I began to grapple with new ideas. Some of them were very ancient, but they were new to me. And I found dark and doubtful places in my own thinking that needed to have a microscope trained on them.
Oh, I'm still ignorant. Who isn't? But that part of my vagabond journey has been fascinating, fulfilling and infuriating. And I won't stop until I know something.
DB
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May you hear the silent, distant winds of Spring.
Morris West
???????????
Here we go.
--------------
One of the strangest places I was ever in was a small city in the Southwest that was built literally in the middle of the desert. There was a road that came into town, but it didn't go through it. I walked to the end of the road and I was on the edge of the city, There was a sidewalk. Houses were built along the side walk. It turned a right angle and there were more houses, with back yards, trees. bushes and children playing in the yards But when you stepped off the sidewalk you stepped immediately into the desert. If you turned your back to the houses all you would see in front of you was desert. I don't remember the name of that city or what state it was in, but I imagine it has expanded out into that desert by now.
I often think of that experience of taking a single step from civilization into wilderness. To me it was the same as taking a step from the safe and known into the dark world of ignorance. Ignorance is not a bad thing. Stupidity is bad, ignorance is not the same thing. When able to admit my ignorance about something, I am poised to step into the wild world of darkness and doubt. If I take that step it could be scary. What some people call foolishness, other people call courage. One has to agree to walk in darkness before one can see the light.
If some did not have the courage to peer into a telescope or a microscope, to crawl around in dark caves or on the ocean floor, or peek into the machinations of the human mind, we wouldn't know anything.
I once visited a Museum of Philosophy. In it there was a computer program that asked me a series of questions about my beliefs and opinions. Then it came up with a list of philosophers whose writings, more or less, conformed to my own philosophy of things. I thought, how nice, I can read the works of great writers who agree with me. I could bask in the easy sunshine of coordinate thinking.
It didn't take but a few days before I became bored with that idea, and went searching out the rare and troublesome works of thinkers who were antagonistic to my easy, sunny, back porch studies and who posed ideas that were difficult to understand and even harder to harmonize with what I thought was true. I began to grapple with new ideas. Some of them were very ancient, but they were new to me. And I found dark and doubtful places in my own thinking that needed to have a microscope trained on them.
Oh, I'm still ignorant. Who isn't? But that part of my vagabond journey has been fascinating, fulfilling and infuriating. And I won't stop until I know something.
DB
---------------------------------
May you hear the silent, distant winds of Spring.
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