everything is so simple

… except that it isn't.

Simple people want every­thing in life to be simple, so they can choose to be for or against whatever it is – political parties for instance.
Irritatingly though: no matter how we twist and turn any­thing, we will always find that it has more than two sides. Some­times it can be really complex and confus­ing, but that is also a big part of what makes life interesting and worth living – at least to me.

I think more people should start practicing with the old Rubik's cube, and translate the experience to every­thing else they encounter. Might work to give them a more realistic grip on life, even if the cube is way too simple an example for most real life issues.

They say that “a little know­ledge is dangerous”, but the solution is of course to gather more know­ledge and insight, and to never be satis­fied with less. It is literally not possible for a wisdom seeker to collect too much know­ledge, although we should remember that no amount of know­ledge guarantees improved wisdom.

What really matters here, is of course that it must be the indi­vid­ual person that is in control of what know­ledge to collect, how to sort it, and what to use it for.
Even if most of us don't really know before­hand where our chosen routes will lead us, letting others make desicions for us isn't gonna help in finding directions. Others can never be trusted in these matters, as they will invari­ably guide and push us in the direc­tions they want us to go.

feeling a bit indoctri­nated lately?

The teaching that there can only be one correct solution for a specific task, is of course seriously flawed. Even so, that is often how not only our children, but all of us, are being indoc­tri­nated to think.
Marks and grades drop severely if one doesn't provide the “right” answers at exams for instance, and “passing the tests” is what it's all about for most.

No surprise that so many narrow-minded, or rather pretty mindless, people are pouring out of our educational insti­tutions every­where, but one may ask what the heck they wasted all that time inside for if their “ability to pass pre­de­term­ined tests” is all they have to show for it.

To be fair: some educators do teach their students to “think outside the box”, and that's good. I'm still not sure what “the box” has to do with anything though, or why anyone thinks there has to be one.

Many act as if they prefer the relative security and comfort provided by “the box”, and some seem to do their very best to make their personal boxes smaller and smaller.
To the rest of us it may be kind of OK that they stay where they choose to be, as long as they don't try to lure others into their often extremely limited and dark spaces.

It should be noted that wide­spread free-thinking can in itself be a form for risiko sport nowadays. Governments may end up with too many inde­pen­dently rea­son­ing, politic­ally incor­rect and poten­tially less gov­ern­able subjects, in their otherwise uniform, unin­volved, well-behaving and mainly con­sump­tion-ori­ent­ed pop­ula­tions.

As an obvi­ous consequence: having increasing numbers of free and unruly minds to contend with, is not being public­ally ap­plaud­ed by those in power.

One “cure” seems to be to distract and enter­tain entire pop­ula­tions with “more bread and circuses”, as in Old Rome only modified slightly to make the most out of modern media and censoring methods – and fear.
This strategy seems to work rea­son­ably well, at least super­ficially. Their “bread” is bad though…

feeling intimi­dated?

There are those who literally make a living out of intim­i­dat­ing others – some as a job and some as a lifestyle. We have all run into those people and institutions at one time or another, and to totally avoid them is near impos­sible the way our soci­eties work.

Why the intimidation game gets played, vary greatly, and shouldn't really make much of a difference. For the most part what you want to do is no-one elses business, so unless you really want and need someone's advices you may as well ignore their opinions and attempts to intim­i­date altogether.

Don't let anyone make you believe that you are unable to do what you set out to do, as with such a nega­tive thought at the back of your mind you won't be able to push yourself to find out what you're really capable of.
It may take a while and take a lot of effort to get to where we, as individuals, want, but the harder and further we push our­selves, the less of a problem what­ever limits we may have will be – at least to us.

feeling help­less?

If there ever was a totally useless state of mind for a grown-up human being, “help­less­ness” must be it. It blocks rational thinking and action, and carries nothing positive. Most of all: it is rarely ever true – we are only as helpless as we let ourselves become.

We may find ourselves all alone in what looks like hope­less situa­tions, and have no-one we can trust to help us out. The last thing we need then is to have a mind-freeze and become irrational, as clearly that won't do us any good.
We have to pull our­selves together and make the best out of any situation, as then we do at least stand a chance.

Our societies may also push us into a state of “help­less­ness by design” – via “social norms” and such, that drains our minds of all that makes us individual human beings with pur­poses, and turns us into “good citizens” that follow the stream … to work, and then down to the shopping centers most likely.

If we take our chances and break out to live our lives more the way we really want – and nature intended, we may find ourselves at odds with some of the main­stream people, but so what…
Deep down most of them most likely wish they could some­how find the courage to pull out from the main­stream too, thus no need to agitate others more than absolutely neces­sary while we're breaking free of the more stan­dard­ized ways of life.

… neither have I…

Naah, the issues mentioned haven't really complicated my life, so far. Main reason being that I for the most part don't worry about what others may or may not think about me and what­ever I do or don't do. In that sense every­thing in my life is extremely simple.

I could have left it at that, but I don't live in isolation and it has never felt right to back off from the compli­cated realities in the world just to keep life simple for myself.
As the saying goes: there has to be more to life than this – and indeed there is!

Maybe the reason I bother to look further, is that I am genuinly curious about human nature and all its inef­fi­cient and super­ficial social and cultural complexity (or maybe it was another way round).
It is amazing what curiosity can bring to the surface.

It feels right to observe, sort and analyse, weigh present against past history, look into the future, and some­times comment on, complex human inter­action and life at large. What may be inten­tionally covered up, hidden away or “myste­ri­ously misplaced”, is of partic­ular interest.

The constant stream of staged, censored and boring reality shows, news releases and other enter­tain­ment, that flows toward us when­ever we turn on a device, does of course not have much to offer truth-seekers – it is all too shallow. Have to look past all that and dig deeper, to at least try to capture some truth in some areas. From that may come some wisdom.

So far I can conclude that I have no clear idea why anybody does anything, and that – if the intent was to intro­duce improve­ments – most of what has been done by anyone any­where should rather have been left undone‽

Yeah, even I am slightly surprised by this intermediate conclusion of mine. It cannot really be that simple, or can it…

Anyway, since we all make mistakes and (at least) ninety percent of every­thing is crud, it is now mainly a question of sorting out the small per­cent­age of every­thing that (maybe) isn't…crud.
That, may take a little longer. It isn't quite as easy as solving Rubik's cube.

sincerely 

Hageland 18.jul.2016
last rev: 16.dec.2017