About matters that men say matter most; everyone listens to idiots.
The matters that men say matter most are not matters to which you can put a wrench: ‘Tis not a man’s car that really matters to him, but his picture of him driving it. Thus, what a knowledgeable mechanic tells him about the machine is not as important as what his thoughts do about his feeling of self, relative to it. He merely hears the mechanic, but he listens to the idiot.
Men say they dread and do not understand death, and seek advice regarding its avoidance. Their mind, which will never comprehend, says this: their body, on the subject, is already knowledgeable, and thus uninterested in discussing it. Their mind leads them to consult with the minds of other men with no experience in being dead. Idiots listening to idiots.
A man wanted a frail table repaired; he consulted a cabinetmaker, who told him it could be made right. The man asked if, once the work was done to the table, it would then always be laden with an inexhaustible feast. The cabinetmaker wondered what kind of idiot the man had been listening to.
To periodically give his attention the yapping of someone else’s dog to distract it, one man would read. Someone recommended that, instead of flimsy fiction, he read something substantial such as History. He did so, but then realized that everything written down concerning things that can’t be SAT down is all fiction anyway. Upon recognizing that he had listened to one idiot’s recommendation of another idiot’s work, he asked himself: “What kind of idiot am I?!”
J.