TurqB, everyone's off soybean tofu now. Too much estrogen. Even for men. Man boobs resulted.
________________________________ From: turquoiseb <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 6:27 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Quotes that really cry out for a graphic --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea <no_reply@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > > > > > "Ah, yes, your hostility to ____ is all about your concern for > > > > others. How noble of you." > > > > > > > > [https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/385606_389352564440058_55858606_n.jpg] > > > > > > Lol, very funny and so true. Barry, I really learned something > > > from you in this regard, and that it is to simply lean back and > > > laugh. It's so simple, but such a great thing. > > > > It is, in my opinion, the highest way to honor life. As > > G.K. Chesterton said in the link I just posted: > > > > "Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but > > a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is > > a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking > > one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to > > do...For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter > > is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. > > Satan fell by the force of gravity." > > Great quote! Isn't it? I love Chesterton. Even though he was a strong Christian and I am anything but, and even though he was writing his best stuff 100 years ago, there is a lightness and a humility to his writing and to his insights that I really groove on. Other favorite quotes of his that I keep in my ever-handy Quotes file include "All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it" and "Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese." :-) > One may think of the British what one wants, but they have > given the world at least two great gifts: one is tea (of > course!), and the other their unique sense of humor and > irony. And what is best, they always include themselves > in their humor. Just look at Monty Python or Little Britain, > can't beat that. It is good to remember, at least about Chesterton, that he was as "typically British" as the Monty Python gang, meaning not typical at all. Much of "Orthodoxy" is a railing *against* the tendency in British clerics and philosophers to take everything so damned *seriously*. One of the other quotes I loved in the set of excerpts from "Orthodoxy" that I posted a link to recently was this one: "The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved." I *love* this, and find it as applicable to Hinduism and its slavish devotion to "Mother Divine" or to TM and its equally slavish devotion to "Mother Nature" or to "the *Laws* of Nature" as it was to Chesterton in his time. He obviously identifies more with the playful 'tude of St. Francis towards nature than he does the solemnity and the sense of awe and almost *fear* that many of his contemporaries had towards nature. It (she) *doesn't* run our lives; it (she) runs with us through the world, as a fellow child laughing on the playground. All the difference in the world. > One of my mentors used this expression with regard to a > friend, lets call him Fred: He said, Fred just laughs off > everything. I have come to appreciate this attitude. Me, too. Clearly, as you go on to point out, this is not a universal trait. "Laugh off" some people's attempts at seriousness, and they have to project their own solemnity and seriousness onto you, and claim that you're laughter is "false," and that you are "really" reacting defensively to what they said. You'll have to forgive me if I interpret this as self importance on their part. I similarly interpret people who take generic state- ments personally, as we saw happen today. I never had the slightest intention of presenting Robin as "worse than Charles Manson." The thought never even entered my mind, if for no other reason that Robin will be completely forgotten by history, if he hasn't been already, and Charlie will live on in infamy. :-) But Robin "heard" me say that. I didn't. My comment was just about the *lack of discrimination* and *low standards* used by groupies when choosing a groupie- master or groupie-mistress. But he not only took what I said personally, as if I was talking about *him* and comparing him to Charles Manson, he went through yer classic samskaric reaction to the afflictive emotions he felt about it. He described all the emotions that went through him, over an insult *that was unintended*. I honestly don't CARE enough about Robin Carlsen to insult him; it strikes me as "coals to Newcastle," and unnecessary. As that great Monty Python gangster John Cleese once said about someone *he* was trying his best to ignore, but who kept trying to sucker him into a debate or a fight, "His very presence here is depriving some village of its idiot." :-) John did in this case what you describe your friend Fred as doing. He "laughed it off," defusing the bomb of self importance and giving the affronted person the importance he really deserved, which was none. > Actually, many Indians do this, as I have observed recently. > You say something critical, maybe complain, they just laugh. > They laugh it off. Laughter here is not to be mistaken as > arrogance. It's just, as I see it, a release of tension and > energy. I see it also in a Taoist context. Laughter is a sign of having achieved resonance with the Tao, or the larger flow of life. Drama queens can't laugh, and hate it when others do, in response to their attempts to suck them into drama. I much prefer those who can "take a step back" and see that the drama is the "small shit," and that it's time to get back to focus on the "larger shit." As another of my favorite philosopher/clowns once said, "Life is a tragedy in close-up, but a comedy in long shot." That was Charlie Chaplin speaking. He managed to make millions and millions of people laugh in his lifetime. I consider that a much higher achievement than helping one individual to realize their enlightenment. > This is especially important, when a person is in some kind > of emotional lock. > > Laughter here means, to release the energy, and let go of > the situation. Exactly. Those who get uptight at the sound of laughter CAN'T let go. They want to hold on to the seriousness and the solemnity and the drama that they are indulging in, and the sound of laughter fucks with that attempt. > Not cynical at all. It also means to not take the situation > so seriously. Not ones's own emotion, but also not the > emotion of the other. If I perceive a strong emotion in the > other, I can just laugh it off, I don't have to go into it, > justify myself etc., the usual circling around. Exactly. Feeling that one has to "defend one's self" means only that one has a self that is so strongly entrenched that one feels compelled to defend it. > And yet I am free to give my own opinions about any situation, > not as an emotional need, but rather as my right of free > expression. Exactly. > I am sometimes astonished at the emotion projected to you > and me. After seventeen years, I am no longer astonished by it. I tend to laugh it off. :-) > I guess some people have a tendency to project their own > emotions onto you, and then mirror their own negative > aspects in you. You become the ultimate evil, unable to > have a good intention, positive thought, or compassion. I think that's silly, naive, and childish. I am not the ultimate evil. The ultimate evil is Kim Kardashian. :-) > It's clearly a projection o sorts I guess. If there is > anything to the word '1st person ontology', then it is here, > that no other really KNOWS, how you are feeling toward > another, that everybody looking at you is just following > '3rd person ontology'. Yet you see this mind-reading as an > inevitable and almost constant reflex of some people. Yup. > OTOH the same people will be most sweet, most friendly, in > a holier-than-thou-attitude, towards people in their own > support group, or towards the objects of their very groupie- > ness, as if to sort of balance out the negativity they > project onto others. Yup. > Personally, I feel, that if a person here is unable, to > congratulate another person here, let's say for birthday > or new year, whom they usually oppose, in a sort of pseudo > self-righteous attitude, there is something seriously wrong > with their EQ. A few years ago someone proposed an "FFL get-together" in Fairfield, where we could all sit down over drinks and see what we were like in real life. As I remember it, only one person said that she would definitely not attend if I were there. I always thought that spoke volumes, both about "holding on to one's drama" and about "resistance to change." What would have happened, after all, if the event had happened and I'd said something funny, and she got caught laughing at it? Can't risk that. :-) Great chatting with you. I like doing so, BTW, not because you're any kind of "Barry groupie" or me an "Iranitea groupie," but because we both seem to like cutting to the chase and dealing with the *ideas* that underlie things. The individual personalities and their individual dramas are like the layer of fat on the outside of a great slab of roast beef. The real meat is inside, in the ideas. I like doing on FFL the same thing I do when having a good steak -- I cut off the fat and discard it, and chow down on the nice, tender meat inside. [ Note: If you're all vegetarian and all, and offended by my metaphor, make up your own about preferring the juicy interior of your soybean faux-meatloaf or whatever. ] :-)
