“ Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good. ”
— Soren Kierkegaard
I like listening to the various TED talks. I get surprised about which talks I'll like and which ones don't have the appeal I first thought they would. This link is a list of all the talks available for the last few years:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks
This morning I listened/watched a couple of designers talk about what they do. I'm not so attracted to designing stuff, but some of my friends are, and it was for their sake that I listened to a couple of designer talks. I didn't like them very much. The first one I sat through, but the second one got a little too cutesy, and the video audience twittered as if on cue, so I moved on before it got halfway through.
I watched this one video where a guy from MIT demonstrated a new technology that incorporated the idea of smart blocks he called Siftables. He had a group of these blocks that were programmed to work together with other blocks, so that when they were put together they interacted in predictable ways. He claims, and I believe him, that technology of this sort is going to change the way education happens.
He took these Siftables to an elementary school and merely put them on a table surface in front of a bunch of kids around 6-7 years old. The only instructions he gave them was to ask them to see if they couldn't figure out what they did or could be used for, and started filming the results. Sure enough, the kids figured it out, and then some.
A surprising number of people that are chosen to give these talks figured out what it was that got them there without any formal training about the topic they became intrigued by. If they had a bunch of formal education it was usually in some other subject than the one they became obsessed by.
I read the letter I got that invited me to another class reunion again this morning. I had forgotten when it was supposed to happen in case I decide to go. One of the reasons I might not go is based on my lack of ability to account for how I've spent my life in a way my former classmates might understand.
I've talked to a few of them and the ones I've talked to react with contempt. No blame. They're not the only ones who respond to how I've conducted my affair in a negative manner. Most people do. All my blood relatives and ex-wives.
I could lie. Many, if not most of the people I attempt to communicate with would prefer that I lie or at least be less colorful in my description of the blatant, unvarnished truth. They don't seem to think I ought to enjoy being plain-spoken.
Some say the nomad is mad,
but they don't understand...
People in general don't seem to think about the not-mad aspect of nomadism. So-me nomadic types keep moving to avoid madmen. Since madmen are merely the flip side of nomads, it does appear to be futile to keep trucking.
I've been studying the Gospel of Thomas with an e-mail discussion group now for over five years on a near daily basis. Some scholars seek the Gnostics beginning in Greece, and others seem convinced it came from Egypt. I choose the latter. Since there's no proof either way, I figure my opinion is as good as anybody's, and so I think the Jews were the literati of the Pharaohs culture of Egypt, and when it got so crowded there they felt like they were living in their own shit, they moved on.
I get part of that idea from what has been supposed to have happened in the slash and burn cultures of Middle America. The Mayans that built all those pyramids around Mexico City had to move on for the same reason the Egyptian Jews made an exit they called and Exodus. The warrior culture like the Aztecs took over a ready-made cultural situation, but they couldn't manage it after the Mayans moved south and east of there. The Aztecs didn't have no Rosetta Stone to make sense of all the hieroglyphics of the creators who had left the premises.
Gnosis moves. As Dylan wrote, "The first ones now will later be last." Sometime the docetic spirit ain't there when you decide you need it. Why would it bother with you when it doesn't know you have a personality. There is no "you" for it. It comes and goes as it pleases, and what you "think" about it doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
