OK, I'll come out of the closet -- I think things are indeed getting better.
And I agree with Rich: just live in Joy, there's no sense in anything else. I
wear an ear ring that has a tiny bell in it. It's a Buddho-Christian stunt,
brought to the USA by Ticht Naht Hahn, a Buddhist monk during the Vietnam war
resistance. You hear the bell several times a day and when you hear it, you
reflect in joy and gratitude.
Beer so far has been the greatest improvement in joy, a gift to me from Fr.
Jerome at the cathedral. Our family attempts to be frivolous at least once a
day. My work at Sun paid me to be a fool at least once a day, otherwise I
wasn't trying hard enough and keeping my peers on their toes.
So: It's simple: jump out of you now and again and wow, what a world. Fun
definitely seems central.
However, I do not know how this can be learned easily. But if you spend at
least 10-15 minutes/day dropping all Your Stuff, you indeed can be a fool too.
Fools are the happiest. Friends help a lot. Just feel the energy and joy as
you tromp into Friam. You don't mind at all being wrong there, maybe its your
meditation!
Concretely, in Sun Labs we had a motto: Do Not Let The Urgent Interfere With
The Important. It is Sooo Easy to get involved in the daily grind and our
personal grind, leading us to focus on the urgent, rather than the really
important stuff, from Complexity to Friendship.
End of sermon.
-- Owen
On Jan 19, 2011, at 11:50 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Rich,
>
> Your faith in progress brings tears to my eyes. I don't think the world is
> one ounce better than it was when I was a kid. It is DIFFERENT, but we have
> given up at least as much as we have gained. Nor do I expect it to be any
> better in a hundred years. Thus, the sole rational defense of the neophilia
> that characterizes FRIAM is that new stuff is FUN! In making a decision to
> seek out new stuff or not, it cannot be evaluated by lofty ideals, but
> simply balanced against other forms of FUN!
>
> I am not sure where this leaves me for a defense of higher education. It
> used to be defensible on the ground that it was a place where you could tuck
> away smart people so they couldn't get their hands on political power,
> social influence, money, or things that explode. Now even that has gone
> away.
>
> [sigh}
>
> Nick
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