Photos: "Zombie" Ants Found With New Mind-Control Fungi

Photos: "Zombie" Ants Found With New Mind-Control Fungi

Allegory of the Cave by Plato

This to me is a true story of enlightenment. Perhaps, as my German wife pointed out, that Kant's vision of enlightenment was lost to me in translation. Which makes me visualize another entry for my blog.

The Allegory of the Cave. It is making me think too much at the moment. I always think too much anyway.

So right now we are all stuck in our cave of understanding and slaves to our ideas and desires. We see the shadows on the wall that we associate with our reality. The fire is our false light of understanding. We are prisoners to ourselves. We want what is in this cave because we have been told since birth that this is what life is about and what you should do with your life. However, at some point, probably when you have become older and less satisfied with what life has had to offer, your mind opens to the possibility of not needing what is in this cave.

A house is just a house. We have been made to associate owning a house with a successful life. What car you drive makes no difference. The car is just a tool to get you to where you need to be. The“best” of anything is only in how you perceive your current situation. Do the things you own make you who you are? Does your job? Your spot in society? No. Only how you perceive how you are makes you what you are.

So you are stuck in your cave, or in what you know. You have become satisfied by this, until that one day when some “idea” or even a dissatisfaction of some area of your life creeps in. It is a nagging feeling. It persists. You try to shake it off but it won't go away. It is then that you may turn toward the blinding light that exists outside your cave. It is a painful transition. It is painful to you, and to those around you. You are shaking off what has been your definition. You struggle. You want to turn back sometimes and wallow in the misery of where you were before, and you do go back. However, the need for freedom from your ignorance is too strong. You take small steps in the beginning; going farther and farther outside your cave. Slowly you get used to the blinding light of reality. And yes, you are blinded. There is no turning back into the darkness of your cave once you are enlightened. You cannot see in the light, or in the darkness. You, once blind, can only live in what you can touch before you.

My response to Kants, "What is Enlightenment?"

This is not an essay on enlightenment but on freedom. Enlightenment differs from freedom in that enlightenment means to let go of our daily issues concerning ourselves and what we want and think we need. Kant may be a well known individual however after a fairly short time I could not help but feel beaten over the head with his ideas on enlightenment. I think he himself is stifling enlightenment by putting more thoughts than are needed into heads already confused by what social freedom is. In many ways I don't think he is enlightened himself by his attitude toward the institutions he is describing.

I believe we as a society expect, as other past and present civilisations have, that our government and ruling parties know best how to attain and keep our freedoms and ways of life. That is where we go wrong.

First gain enlightenment, and with that will come freedom. When as an individual you let go of your expectations, you will let go of your need of governments and religious orders that claim to enrich your way of life.

In his book "Zen Mind, Beginners Mind" Shunryu Suzuki says, "If you seek for freedom you cannot find it."

By saying man is ignorant of his freedoms, or his enlightenment, Kant is himself stifling freedom by suggesting that men/women must attain something more than themselves to be free. Freedom first must come from within. How would you know what you wanted from your governmet, or religious order without knowing yourself first?

Thoughtlessness....probably not a word.

Yeah, I know.  That word in the title probably isn't a word.  Call me Jesse Jackson then.

I have written quite a bit since my last post.  I haven't felt that any of it has been worth putting up here though.  I am about to go lay down for a nap before work.  I am not liking that.  I feel stuck in drudgery.  I am trying to work through it mentally, and you know I am also using Zen, but I keep hitting a wall.  I am a worker bee.  A slave to a system that I do not care for.  No one listens to anything worth listening to.  Everyone is afraid of what might happen if they speak up. Those that should be spoken to are unaware and if they are aware do not care.  Paulo Freire, says:

"Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in "changing the consciousness
of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them"for the more the
oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be
dominated. "

Exactly.  Any thoughts or ideas presented those that are "in charge" are met with excuses, or in a couple cases, not even a response.  This particular individual just walked away with a blank look.  Also from the Paulo Freire article:

"When their efforts to act responsibly are frustrated, when they find themselves
unable to use their faculties, men suffer. "The suffering due to impotence
is rooted in the very fact that the human equilibrium has been disturbed."But the inability to act which causes men's anguish also causes them
to reject their impotence, by attempting
...
to
restore [their] capacity to act. But can [they], and how? One way is
to
submit to and identify with a person or group having power. By this
symbolic participation in another person's life, [men have] the illusion of
acting, when in reality [they] only submit to and become part of those
who act."
Sounds like politics too.

So at some point when a service worker of some kind doesn't seem that excited about being of service perhaps one should think of why.  We as a society usually dump on people in such professions but our society would not function without them.  Fuck it...that is all I can think of.  Or perhaps I have gone back into thoughtlessness!

Things on my mind that I cannot put words to:
Old rotten logs
Old fence lines
Dogs
Privacy
A forest somewhere
James Tate poetry

Exerpts are from Paulo Freier "The "Banking" Concept of Education.  Read it.  It will make you think.