Sunday, January 20, 2008

What's funny?


We’ve all been conned. We are all victims of the big con, perpetrated in the Garden described in the allegory written in the Book of Genesis[1].

We’ve been deceived into believing that we are separate.

I don’t believe in any thing. Thing. What’s a “thing”? Maybe later I’ll reach for the diction-ary, that big book composed by Dr Johnson. There are good on-line dictionaries you can refer to, if you are reading this.

For now suffice to say, a thing is an object, not possessing consciousness or personality, or “sentient being-ness”, a set of sensory information rolled up into enough definition that I may consider it a “thing” discreet and separate from other “things”. Plenty of people can compose definitions better than that, but there you have it.

Someone said that after many years of sitting meditation practice, it became apparent that all he had previously considered as “self” and all that he had considered “other-than-self” are in truth one in the same.

Another writer put it thus: “There is no externality of relations.”

So how can I “have” any “thing”, or believe that I do? How can I possess any “thing”? How can anyone take any “thing” away from “me”, or do any “thing” to “me” when there is no “me”, nor any “thing”, only a trick of my own brain/nervous system?

I guess that pretty well puts fear in perspective- there is nothing to fear…but fear itself.

Fear was a great band, though, and funny.

This year is an election year. I’ve been exposed to an array of Professional Party Politicians on TV, Radio, Print and other media, and they all seem to want us to buy fear, their brand, which they say is better that the other brands. That’s not very funny.


[1] Take that, Phil Collins- you used to be a good drummer, now you’re…nothing.

(Bart Simpson, paraphrased)

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