End Of Act One
February 20 , 1989
AKS/News Items = None
Summary = See Below
Excursion / Task = See Below
Diagrams = None
Transcript = None
Curation = 4D Science
Summary
#0460 Feb 20, 1989 ** – 1:26
Notes by TK
Why does man have “euphemisms”. Why does Life create a perfectly descriptive, functional word like “death” when it knows it will subsequently introduce all manner of softer variants of it? It is not merely for the expansion of language. Everyone has a “second language”.
REAL strangeness is complex info/energy leaking out into man, giving a weird kind of hit-or-miss familiarity, a half-knowledge of more complex reality. Real strangeness is when a man will say “I sort of knew that, but I’m not sure it’s all that important that it be known”. Yet this is what many men will say to the following complex fact: if something is not important to you, then it’s not important! It’s meaningless, cosmically! This half-known complex reality is the basis of the terrifying aspect of an unrepentant killer (“it can’t be true” yet his crimes are obviously unimportant to the killer when he won’t even express remorse, let alone look so).
It is unknown in the City that to say “I don’t care about such-and-such” is, by the fact of merely expressing it, untrue. It’s mathematically impossible for something not to be important, to be meaningless to you, if you think about it, if you are moved to say anything about it. Examples of how strange this is: people are tied in knots trying to explain how Khomeini’s edicts can be meaningless to them when to the Moslem world of millions his words mean everything. Words can serve to make importance when they are used to reveal the impact/connection between Khomeini’s edicts and one’s personal life (price of gasoline, etc.) Another example: how can the question of the importance of crime be meaningful to the affluent yet the poor are apathetic about it? Note that the poor have relatively little to lose to a thief (which is the major form of crime), thus it’s not important. Where importance is not immediately obvious, or words cannot serve to create it, Life has wired men to feel such-and-such should be important to them, and suffer guilt, whereby all bases are covered.
Like the poor with few possessions to fear losing, New Intelligence is an enriched poverty, lacking meaningless, unimportant possessions, i.e., “should-be” and “could-be” important. What if you saw for yourself that anything that is not important to you is not important, period, that no “should-be important” exists? The true sacrifice is the sacrifice of the meaningless. To think about something is for it to be important (including “should be-s”).
1:18 end of public tape.
Excursion
Excursion/command: Within two weeks close up a chapter in your own life, that you find meaningful. No matter how small it is. Don’t tell anybody, just do it.