The Wiser Course?

[Aminka Ozmun]

Originally Posted by lycan

How do you know it wasn't?

It's not that I know it wasn't; it's that some are claiming to know it was!

Besides, it sounds like a contradiction in terms right there: how could there have been 24-hour periods before everything was created? Even allowing for "God" to be outside of that "everything"...and no, as a literalist/fundamentalist one shouldn't just cheat and then say oh *that's* just figurative there....

Originally Posted by lycan

That assumes I believe there is such a thing as great evil which you can cause others.

It assumes that there is something you'd wish were different about people, either other individuals or all of us as a species. Are you saying "it's all good?"

Originally Posted by lycan

Parables are mnemonic devices. They are not a secret code.

Zen parables seek to "induce reality" and are only "secret codes" insofar as we insist on reading them (often reading *into* them) instead of experiencing them, thereby making nonsense of things.

IOW, you can't be literal with them -- or, rather, must know when not to be!

And for that, it's like riding a bicycle...peddling for you on a tandem ain't the same as you riding and maintaining your own balance.

[Books]

How much is this car worth?



Many people would say that owning that car would contribute toward having an abundant lifestyle. The problem of course is that car costs a million dollars. So if you make 30 thousand dollars a year it's unlikely you could legally acquire that car.

Most people know that a VCR used to cost a 1000 dollars. Now you could get one for 5 dollars. My point is the question of abundance is one of perception. If someone were to give me 500 VCR's I would have a lot of something that most people don't use anymore.

But it goes even further than that. The only reason anything in the world has a value is because of a lack of abundance of something. Time,materials, etc.

Let's say in 20 years that technology changes and that it's possible to build a fully automated plant that is able to build Ferrari's for 2000 dollars each. So now I have the same car that I had before for 1/500th the cost.

So maybe the real answer is that everything is really worth nothing in the right situation. I can eat lobster everyday if there enough of them. I can own a 1000 foot boat if I can figure out how to build it for less of what society perceives as costly.

[lycan]

The value of things is their value as prop aids in helping us play a particular role. Sensations are meaningless without context.

[Aminka Ozmun]

I do know what you mean, Books (and what Tim/Mounds was talking about before) -- I'm just a little uncomfortable with this "computer-programmer-speak" which is so reductionist....

I mean, I'm like a pseudo-geek myself and believe in the Scientific Method and all, but I feel like it's easily misapplied by spiritual hucksters who are simply marketing a different spin on traditional spiritual wisdom, dressing it up in the business/programming-speak of our modern times, making it look like something new -- and simply trading on people's hopes and fears....

That's what's really got me. The business of spirituality, this "prosperity gospel" thing where instead of talking about social injustice it's simply about getting new cars, an ideal mate, and all that other "abundance" teasing (I'm a girl; I know about being a tease! )...because God/The Universe wants you to!

Anyway, back to your question of worth: I just think it's dangerous applying a business notion of value to human beings and human lives. In fact, I'd say that that's been the sad record of human history all along, and that it's the one constant theme of our species' evolution from beasts to something more: what is our fellow man and woman worth? What is their time worth? Their blood, sweat, and tears?

In other words, what are we ourselves worth?

The miserly mindset Lioness originally inquired after, trying to square that away with the Calvinist foundations of LOA/IM theories (they're really nothing more than modern-day Calvinism and Social Darwinism if you study your history), seems to me a sad comment on those people by those people themselves. They really do hold themselves cheap, and therefore try to accumulate much.