The Lessons of Children
Here's a good lesson in self-trust: take a look at children, or babies, or
even the few remaining uncivilized peoples of the world. Study their faces,
their behavior. Their minds aren't divided and rebellious like ours! They
don't automatically discard ideas like we do when our mental computer
calculates too much opposition to it.
Since their minds are whole, their eye hasn't yet been conquered, and when
we look in their faces we are disconcerted.
Infancy doesn't conform to anyone—
we all conform to it!
It only takes one baby
to turn all the adults in the room
into four- or five-year-olds.
The baby's magical charisma could be available to all of us in youth,
puberty, and even adulthood if we'd just let it shine through us,
unadulterated.
Don't think teenagers have no power because they can't express themselves
the way we might like. Listen! You can hear them expressing themselves loud
and clear in the next room. They can speak perfectly well to their peer
group. Through silence or shouting, they know how to make us adults very
unnecessary.
The casual sense of entitlement kids have when they know where their next
meal is coming from—their princely refusal to acknowledge that you might be
doing them a favor by feeding them—is just healthy human nature.
A boy in the living room is like a heckler at a show.
Independent, irresponsible, a spectator of the people and events that pass
by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, swiftly and
unceremoniously: good, bad, interesting, silly, cool, trouble. He never
worries about consequences, about special interests. He gives an
independent, genuine verdict. You have to court him! He doesn't court you.
We adults are thrown into jail by our consciousness. As soon as others
applaud one thing we say or do, we're committed.
>From that moment on,
we're forced to factor the approval or hatred
of everyone we know into everything we do.
There is no unlearning this.
If only we could go back to that naive way of being! Imagine if someone
could put aside all his attachments, seeing life once more from that same
unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unafraid innocence. He'd be terrifying!
He'd comment on whatever happened, giving opinions that wouldn't seem like
mere points of view, but like the absolute truth. His words would stick like
darts in people's ears and inject them with horror.
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/votm.htm
Free newsletter! Visit Meme Central at
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf
Of Jim Callahan
Sent: Thursday, October 08, 1998 10:34 AM
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: Re: virus: Level three
A child of say eight to ten is not. They have only started to build the
boxes and walls that the rest of us fight to escape. And is not living
without the boxes the idea behind level three?
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Brodie <richard@brodietech.com>
To: virus@lucifer.com <virus@lucifer.com>
Date: Thursday, October 08, 1998 10:40 AM
Subject: RE: virus: Level three
>A child's mind is at level 1.
>
>Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/
>Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
>http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/votm.htm
>Free newsletter! Visit Meme Central at
>http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf
>Of Jim Callahan
>Sent: Thursday, October 08, 1998 6:57 AM
>To: virus@lucifer.com
>Subject: virus: Level three
>
>
>Is a child's mind at level three? I do think it is. As we grow we learn and
>we construct boxes. We move further away from level three. In these boxes
>most people spend their lives. It is the spreader of the virus who
>constructs the next better box.
>In my line of work I am paid well to deconstruct the walls for a short
time.
>The effect on people is amazing. For a wile they are that six to nine year
>old kid that we all carry around with us. And for a few moments the walls
>are gone. They come back of course. But for a moment .......Jim
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk>
>To: virus@lucifer.com <virus@lucifer.com>
>Date: Thursday, October 08, 1998 3:29 AM
>Subject: Re: virus: Lateral thinking (was:More virian propositions)
>
>
>>In message <361C46B6.F130E128@qlink.queensu.ca>, Eric Boyd
>><6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca> writes
>>>I suspect that our minds are incapable of operating without "walls".
They
>>>are what keep us sane.
>>
>>They're what keep us on level 2, Eric. Which for some
>>people is "sanity". Level 3 is not a big box, it's the
>>limitless space within which all boxes exist.
>>
>>Right, Richard?
>>--
>>Robin Faichney
>>
>
>