I am still feeling that all of this is life 101 and getting pretty monomaniacal, obvious and predictable… which is partly why nothing new has come up here for some days.
The general maps are pretty predictable, but when I look, I still find that looking at how it all plays out in real life is not so obvious and predictable, so there is still some interest there. And it is always real life that sparks both the looking into what is happening here and now, and also generates the impulse to take it to maps…
For instance, I listened to a story about Laika, the first Earth being to orbit the planet, and how the world reacted with outrage of letting a poor innocent dog die in space.
The irony here is of course that nearly all of these outraged people happily eat meat from animals whose living conditions are often awful and are bred only to be killed and eaten, and use products tested on animals under equally awful conditions.
It is a given that these inconsistencies happen. We easily compartmentalize our lives, and see patterns in one area that we are blind for in other areas.
But what gets more interesting is to take a closer look at how, specifically, it happens in my own life, and in my own culture. Where do I find patterns that are OK for me in one area, and are an outrage to me in other areas?
And how does this happen right here and now?
Well, I judge those folks for being inconsistent, while doing the exact same thing myself. I judge them and don’t see my own inconsistency, in that moment. I see myself as right and them as wrong, just as they do, and I do exactly what I only see in others, just as they do. We are all in the same boat here.