Memory Lane - Think Outside the Box: How Hard Can It Be?

The box of chocolates that I live in says, 'Chocolate Blues. Blueberry flavored with a drop of intolerance toward the intolerant.' That's right Forrest... at least now you know what you're gonna get. Or do you?

If I had to make a guess, I'd say there are quite a few people out there who are scared of anything that doesn't fit their way of thinking. And we all know that if it doesn't fit our way of thinking, chances are it is either nonsense or morally wrong. At best we just don't like it. And strangely enough, when the opportunity presents itself and we've somehow managed to stay put as well as calm, ignoring our inner-instinct that tells us to get the hell out of there when we're faced with something strange, something that isn't part of our system, something that is diametrically opposed to how we see the world, we can pull a whole lot of reasons out of our magic hat that serve to prove beyond a reasonable doubt what we think we've always known: that we are right about its wrongness, whatever it may be. We are political beings through and through.

When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools (now who said that?), and when

         we grow 

                                      and grow 

                                                                         and grow 

like a Texas springsweet onion luxuriating in the Indian sun, our minds are installed with a set of facts and fiction—and funny things in between known as our beliefs—that we nourish and resort to when the world around us seems to have gone loopy... to feel safe again. I call it cultural brainwashing and I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with it.

But...

...maybe we should try and think a little bit more out of the box when someone says 'living together is wrong' or when blond Little Chloe doesn't think a career in marketing is all that important and decides to live in a hut with a big fat black woman ('Bye, Mom!'). Or when your friend Nishi refuses to eat beef but doesn't mind giving head to Billy Bob, whose pet cow Loretta walks a bit funny in the afternoon. Or when I tell you heaven may not exist . Or when your Daddy has been contemplating human cryopreservation for a while and is about to contact the Cryonics Institute. Or when you tell me interracial relationships are wrong, wrong, wrong, and your neighbor Henry kisses the ground the new Pope kissed only five minutes ago. As in the exact spot.

Well, we could at least try.

P.S. It seems to me my old friend Plato may have been right about that crazy cave-box of his after all. What am I talking about?

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April 6, 2013