One man moved the furniture around in his house  --
he moved it once –
he moved it twice –
he moved over and over again --
so many times in fact,
that he began having trouble telling the furniture from himself.
 

One man wrote a story --
a story about him writing a story about himself  –
he did it so well in fact that he started having difficulty
distinguishing the story he had written about himself from himself.
 

Another man had a mind --  and there should be no need to carry this any further since his condition includes both of the above situations which we have already covered.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

In their genetic template, everyone has the life long propensity for
some major mental distraction or the other.

   Your attitude toward life is how you are genetically plugged into life.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Said a father to a son: “I look back now and think how good it would have been
if I had known early on in this grand adventure that
the realization and whatever method you use to achieve it
are two entirely different matters.
Understanding things as I do now I do not see how it could have been possible, but still,
it would have been nice."
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Definition Time for: Technology and Culture:
technology is man’s rearrangement of materials for his physical benefit & pleasure;
culture (politics, religion, the arts, and ideas)
is his rearrangement of words for his mental pleasure.
 

        The two primary poles in civilization:
        Religion -- based on models,
        The Law  --   based on experience.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

One chap poses this question: “Why does a man who will confidently, even smugly present himself as being extremely knowledgeable in some particular area
then express such sincere, almost embarrassingly gushy appreciation
if someone else compliments him on his intelligence?"
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A reader writes: “All of my life I have had passionate dreams of succeeding
in a certain creative area;
I began reading your Daily News several years ago, and one day recently
I suddenly realized that the dreams have about disappeared;
for some reason I immediately sensed a connection between the two things,
and intended to write you and sarcastically say, ‘Thanks a lot!’ --
but gradually my feelings have changed, and now I am no longer sure that
the sarcasm part is appropriate.
   Yours,” etc.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

One man ponders: “What’s up with religious people believing that what they call
their spirit (which is actually their thoughts) is capable of driving the
destructive force of evil out of their life, a power that when spoken of in other contexts,
is pictured as being strong enough to overcome even the most righteous of men:
how have brain cells arranged to have this both ways?” --
and another man notes: “I do my best mental work when guided by hard, cold logic  --   tempered by periodic doses of ice cold margaritas."
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

One guy’s theory is that a man working to get to the bottom of things
is just like everyone else, except in some instances --  more so (and in others, less);
he says that even though it is his theory, even he is not exactly sure what it means.
   “Hey look --  isn’t that a rebel camp I see out in the distance?!”
         “You’ve got to look carefully: it could just be the city fakin’ it.”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

On one planet, the Patent Office will not accept ideas for any new cultural inventions
if no working physical model of it can be constructed,
(it is said that Earth originally considered such an approach,
but wanting life here to grow in complexity, and become civilized, abandoned it).
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Two hogs were lying out in the sun, and one of them said:
“How can you tell when humans are blowing smoke up your shorts?”
and when the other one admitted he didn’t know,
the first one said: “Their lips are moving.”

    One man fell into a dream and thought he had swallowed Aesop –
                             but it turned out to just be a verbal hairball.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Spiritual Big Fig of one thoroughly modern city recently said:
“Certainly people less sophisticated than ourselves can have their own idiomatically important fables & myths, the question is  --   Who gives a shit!”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

You can live in the mountains,
and you can live in the valleys,
and you can live too much in either the mountains or the valleys;
there is only one place where you can’t live too much,
   and someone wrote the Neuron Doctor:
   “Do hormones ever die?” and the doctor noted this was not the first time that
    mail had been left him that clearly should have been delivered elsewhere,
         and upon closer scrutiny,
         one man was so taken aback by himself that he almost
         took himself back.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The way to determine how civilized you are is by how much of your life is
taken up with physical sensations, and how much by thinking,
    and someone asks:
   “Is being civilized the same as being in a restricted state of consciousness?" --
    in living a cultured life, you are in a better position than the less sophisticated,
    yet you are in a state that throughout history some have referred to as a “dream?”

How can progress be both progress and non progress?
What kind of man is it that can be both normal and non normal?
What sort of mind is it that can process information in the manner necessary to live amidst civilization, while at the same time recognizing it to be something totally other than ordinary men take it to be.

Everyone consists of a multiplicity,
often of apparently conflicting factions,
but only a few ever objectively see the situation,
thus adding-to while also subtracting-from this oh so human condition,
    and one man asked himself: “Who suffers most:
    a hippo with a toothache, or a man with a toothache  --  who can also think about it? --
    and who is the more civilized: he who says he is and is not,
    or he who says nothing, yet is? --
    and how much,” he finally pondered, “does talk ultimately have to do with it?”