Sunday, October 10, 2004

The Journey...in a Blind Machine?

I like this parable because it applies to spiritual monists and materialist monists at the same time. So you have the atheistic leftist kooks as well as the spiritual leftist kooks too. Parables, they seem best.

Once upon a time there was a group of boys. They were going to begin a journey up a mountain. They came across a sign...and wondered at it. Oh, they wondered quite a bit!

One said, "I wonder...hey, it feeels wonderful to wonder! So then, let's just sit down here and look at this sign so we can feel wonderful!" So they did. They felt wonderful!

They sat there a long time. But some began to not feel so wonderful anymore. Eventually one said, "Hey, maybe we should try actually reading the sign?"

But everyone else replied,"No! Then it won't feeeel wonderful anymore!" So he went silent. Then he said, "What IS that smell, anyway?" Everyone else replied, "Be quiet! We feeeel wonderful, don't you?!"

He replied, "Well, a little bit, I guess." Everyone else said, "Well, you better. For weee do! For can't you see that this is our wonderful sign!" They looked at eachother a bit, just to make sure everyone looked like they were all feeling wonderful.

Then, a man who had journeyed up and down the mountain quite often reading many signs happened by. He said, "What in the world are you doing sitting there?!" They replied, "Well, weee all feeeel wonderful...can't you tell weee do?" He thought, "They don'tlook all that wonderful to me. They seem a bit insane, in fact."

Then he easily read the sign, for it was a simple pattern of symbols:

"Do not sit in your own excrement. Get up, begin the journey and go up the mountain to the next sign!"

Yet when he read it to them some replied, "You ruined our wonderful sign! How can we feeel wonderful now!" Then some of them threw their excrement at him. So he dodged it! He was smart like that.

But then he began to build another sign next to those that stayed, so that others would think they needed to sit down in the group and go insane too.

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