Masters of Illusion and Ships in the night
by Bob on February 21, 2997
Well, I don't really believe in coincidences. Prof. Keith Critchlow of the Royal Academy of Art in England, who's now with the Prince's Trust, taught me that when I was studying Sacred Architecture and Sacred Geometry with him. Dr. Critchlow said that one never opens a book to a random page. Now, admittedly, he is a neo-Platonist. But Keith is incredibly intelligent, well-read, and insightful. So I took his point. I think it's true: there is no such thing as opening a book to a random page. It was meant to be read. So many times I have opened a book and it turned out to be something very immediately relevant. The random-horoscope-in-the-paper syndrome ? Unsure in the final analysis.
Nevertheless, I always find it fascinating to listen to the snippets of conversations whilst walking on a crowded city street. And to see how wise and relevant they are or totally silly. You'd be surprised how interestingly relevant they are. Just snippets. Also, visually, things show up in my visual sight which says something to me. Today it was a book a woman was carrying on Boylston Street in downtown Boston. The title was "Between Two Worlds". And that's just how I felt before looking.
So we get to a statement someone made a while ago to me and it stuck.
They said "Watching TV a lot a is like paying someone else to live your life for you".
And there are corollaries. Any kind of serious distraction from our actually living our lives ourselves. Occasionally is fine. When it's taken over our functioning, then it's a serious problem. And that seems to have happened between TV, hand-held video games, video games, etc. And instant messaging. And, yes, even MySpace. The virtual friend.
Spells trouble. When I saw kids a couple decades ago playing video game basketball instead of actually getting up and going out and playing physical basketball on the idle local court, I knew Orwell and Huxley were on target.
So, some people call the makers of these items, "masters of illusion". Like the Wizard of Oz and the illusion he was pulling off by cranking it all behind the curtain.
So, again, we have ships in the night. Everyone passing each other and nothing sticking.
Elevator romances.
Like the 1976 film "Network" which pre-saged all this. People screaming out of their windows (which was filmed in my neighborhood in NYC): "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore". But no one screams this now. The soma has had its effect. Instead, it's the evening movie. So it goes. Everything in moderation.