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11/5/10

Geography of the Mind

There are no road maps...

Navigating the challenging new culture that lies before us is a new adventure because the old roads don't guide us to the best possible places since they are not yet mapped. The maps laid out by the cartographers that planned the social path people were once supposed to take, are not highways and byways or planes, trains and automobiles, that curve nor head straight on, into the directions society is now going.

Whether with machetes or bulldozers, we're blazing new trails and creating new highways "using ideas as our maps" [apologies to Dylan] in a new economy and culture in ways that could not have been anticipated. All around us are gold mines of thoughts alongside poisonous gasses for the mind. If there were traffic lights on these paths, they'd be flashing cautious yellow, which is not a "stop" but a "go" after looking in all directions.

The most difficult, yet most important thing to keep in mind, is to view the Chinese proverb "May you live in interesting times," as an exciting challenge and not a curse.

1 comment:

  1. I really like your idea of the flashing caution yellow...these ARE weird times but I can't accept the idea of yellow leading to red. Who knows what is going to happen? Nobody.

    I think it's admirable to press on with life in times like this. I also think it's necessary. Those terms would seem to negate each other but I don't think they do. I think interesting times, like Walt Whitman's contradictory self, contain multitudes. I think that's a good thing.

    And with that, I'm off to talk endlessly about "My Back Pages", maybe... thanks for this post, too, though, JR!

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