From: "emily.ma...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2014 8:01 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Humor and Self-Deception
O.K. Get ready.......do you mean "controlled foolishness?" I've gotta
take my dog for a walk. Trying to take my JRT on a walk through a neighborhood
replete with squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, and even deer at times is
foolishness on my part, so I think we'll head to the lake. She's not much of a
swimmer. :)
Good question. Without looking it up, I find that I do not consider 'folly' a
synonym for 'foolishness.' Looking it up, I find that the first definition I
find on Google disagrees with me, and does:fol·lynounnoun: folly; plural noun:
Follies
- 1. lack of good sense; foolishness."an act of sheer folly"
- a foolish act, idea, or practice.plural noun: follies"the follies of
youth"
| synonyms: | foolishness, foolhardiness, stupidity, idiocy,
lunacy, madness, rashness, recklessness, imprudence, injudiciousness,
irresponsibility, thoughtlessness, indiscretion; informalcraziness "the folly
of youth" |
| antonyms: | wisdom |
- 2. a costly ornamental building with no practical purpose, especially a
tower or mock-Gothic ruin built in a large garden or park.
>From the *outside*, many things can be considered 'folly.' IMO, *most* of the
>historically-recorded actions of *most* spiritual teachers this planet has
>ever known can be put in that category.
But were these actions 'foolishness?'
So I guess I'm gonna go more for definition #2. 'Folly' can also be doing
something that has no practical purpose -- like living and trying to live as
cool a life as you can manage -- but doing it while knowing full well that most
people on earth are going to consider your efforts nothing but 'ornamental,'
and thus the actions themselves 'foolishness.' :-)
There are whole spiritual traditions on this planet who consider 'folly' to be
synonymous with the word chosen in this definition as its antonym: 'wisdom.'
:-)
The Beatles - The Fool On The Hill
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| The Beatles - The Fool On The Hill |
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---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
From: "emily.mae50@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
The ability to laugh at oneself typically increases with age and experience. I
thought you would appreciate this. Absurdity is everywhere in the human
condition, but there are those that can't objectify (at least to some degree)
or pick up on the often subtle nuances of a situation to see it as a reflection
of themselves or said human condition. I have found that those that
personalize everything are particularly unable to do this. Of course, I have
made the mistake also of living the approach of "absurdity" to such a degree
that I clean forgot how to take my life seriously and also how to ground the
"absurd" within in a way that shows respect for life and others.
Relating this to Carlos Castaneda again, he spoke (and occasionally eloquently)
of this dance along the razor's edge of absurd and serious as "controlled
folly." I always loved that term, and that concept. It kinda describes my life.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
Great article and great concept, Emily. Thanks for posting both.
I don't talk about my time with the Rama guy much here because some are averse
to it and freak out, but one of the things I'm most grateful to that teacher
and that whole trip for is that my time there taught me to laugh at myself a
lot more. Relating it to this study, the more self-importance (and thus
self-deception) I managed to drop, the more in life I found funny, and the more
I laughed. In a way it was very Castanedan and his suggestion that one of the
reasons his characters don Juan and don Gennero were such funny guys was that
they had gotten past their self-importance.
From: "emily.mae50@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2014 6:51 PM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Humor and Self-Deception
I've been thinking about humor - how some things strike some as so funny and
others as not at all. I had to be taught by others in early adulthood to
appreciate the absurd, for example, as that element of humor was lacking in my
upbringing. This article is from 2012 so may have crossed here already.
It’s No Joke to Self-Deceivers
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| | | | It’s No Joke to Self-Deceivers People who fail to see the
absurdity in themselves may also fail to notice absurdity more broadly. | |
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