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2:16:00 AM EDT
Feeling Quiet
The world belongs to ALL of us doesn't it?
Whose world is it anyway?
Did you ever play "Telephone"? It's a party game. You line up ten or more people in a row. Then you whisper a line from a poem, or a sentence out of a book to the first person in the row. That person whispers what he or she thought was said to the next person. And so on until you get to the last person in the row. You ask that person what she or he heard. Invariably, it will be different than what was said originally.
This happens whether the row is made up of third-graders, grad school students or adults of any age or profession. It is just another example of a truth: every human animal lives in a different world than every other human animal. There are similarities, of course. Most of us live in round world about 8,000 miles wide, 25,000 miles around its middle. 75% of it is water and holds living beings like fish, whales, and oysters. The rest is made up of continents, islands, icebergs, atmosphere and clouds. On the continents are living plants and living beings. The trees and flowers; the insects, bacteria, germs and animals.
There are many species of animals: tigers, wolves, elephants, gorillas and other primates including human beings. Us. There are six billion of us on this planet Earth. And each one of us sees the world a little differently than anyone else.
We all hear, see, feel, smell and taste. But - as in the little party game - we never hear exactly the same as others. We may see more yellow in a sunset than others. The touch of a cat's paw may feel scary to us, but reassuring to others. We may hate the smell of bacon frying. Others may relish the aroma. Maybe you loathe the taste of gin, while others love it.
You may see the world as a challenge. Others may be intimidated by it. Or try to escape from it - with that gin, or drugs, or sex, or over-eating, or by going insane, We read the same books, we watch the same programs on television, we're taught by the same teachers. We learn what others learn. But we interpret what we learn differently than others.
And there's the rub. We see, hear, feel, smell and taste the world around us much like any other animal. But we are the only animal who reads, learns, thinks about and draws conclusions about the world around us according to all our experiences, all our friendships, all the joy, sadness, trauma, pain, passion and prejudices of our lives up til now.So no one sees the world exactly as you. Which means there are six billion worlds out there.
No wonder we homo sapiens (thinking humans) can't agree on what kind of world we want for our children. We've tried. Greece did a pretty good job of it 2300 years ago. Rome came close 2050 years ago. The Catholics put the world in chains and people in flames for a thousand years. The British Empire might have brought solidarity to the world. But the humans in its colonies were treated in-humanely. The League of Nations lacked balls. The United Nations may be the only - and last - hope of humankind.
When (not my) President Bush needed a new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, he chose a man who despised the U.N. and wanted to destroy it. Bush's view of the world is different than most thoughtful, concerned humans. His view is clouded by this Christian nonsense. His reality is a 2000-year-old myth about a boy child born to a 15-year-old peasant girl who was knocked up by a guy named Joe. The kid grows up to be a rabii, is a trouble-maker, a virgin (at 32!), lives with a gang of 12 men (no women) for months in the desert, says he's a man and a god, and is executed for treason and his body sealed-up in a cave. Wait. There's more. After three days of being dead, this rabii wakes up, pushes aside a five-ton boulder from the cave entrance and somehow flies up to where his father lives. President Bush - the man who can destroy this world with the push of a button - believes all that!
If that isn't enough reason to move to Antarctica, try this: Bush and his Christian jihad actually believe they will go to where this rabii is when they die. If they blow up the world, so what. They will never really die and they'll enjoy life without end, amen. Meanwhile, we Jews and Zorastrans and Buddhists and Hindus and Humanists and Deists will all die horrendous deaths and be thrown into a river of fiere forever and ever and ever. Isn't that a bitch!.
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8/16/07 2:48 AM
Marie
http://journals.aol.co.uk/mar