The Agenda
March 22, 1989
AKS/News Items = None
Summary = See Below
Diagrams = None
Transcript = exists but needs edit before posting
Summary
#472 ** Mar 22, 1989 ** – 1:22
Notes by TK
“Make ‘them’ do your agenda”. This Thing is the refusal to do anyone else’s agenda; to seriously do anyone else’s agenda, even if you apparently have to. Consider: is the supreme use of This Thing to get deeper inside oneself, or to get a wider perspective of outside yourself? Don’t be too sure of the prevailing conviction that the inside direction is the answer. Reality vs. metaphor are the only choices in the City for explanation of external vs. internal reality. This Thing offers a third possibility: why take either for either?
Are human problems common and public or private and personal? It would be very inefficient for problems to occur in only one or a few individuals. But note that everybody is forced to treat their problems as unique and personal: to examine for what specific point the problem originated with them.
Connected with the refusal to do another’s agenda: “get free of the moment—this moment”. Cf., City idea to “live in the present moment”. You are doomed to do other’s agenda as long as you are surprised, and ordinary intelligence is continually surprised. When surprised and off balance you’ve no choice but to dance to another’s lead. Surprise is almost always generated with a question.
There is a Revolutionary preparation against being surprised, a way of planning to refuse to seriously do another’s agenda: ask the first question and go from there forward. To be surprised is to be trapped in the present moment of time, trapped in Life’s agenda. The Real Revolutionist is not surprised by the routine, happening again and again. Connected to being the first to say hello and goodbye.
The “tarbaby” is inanimate, not the real foe; the real foe is the fox (read Life) hidden behind it.