In yesterday's news post I included the following:
"Why, he asked, does [the question "how can we be sure that the world we think we know is the real world?"] matter? Do we really have to waste our time dealing with such an intractable and convoluted question, or can we find a way to put it aside and focus on what is really important?"
This is a perfect encapsulation of an issue that annoys me greatly: people focusing on tiny, irrelevant details, rather than what matters. Typically, I notice this when people focus on gossip, or minor details about people rather than their character (especially politicians etc) - I wrote this story partly as a send up / illustration of that. Another example is the moronic focus on one aspect of transition, which is a small portion of TGD people's lives, when discussing an action that those 97% of people who are not TGD can take be supportive.
Gaining a broad sense of perspective - including, and perhaps especially so, becoming aware of social conditioning is something i have been working at since I started meditating in my early teens.
To illustrate why we need that, there was someone I knew decades ago, an adult woman, who "thought" things like teaching me to leave the tap running while bushing teeth was important . . .
I fortunately do not have anything to do with that fool now, although I tolerated her peccadilloes and more blatant bigotries for some years.
Now, for a quote that I came across on social media:
". . . for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." "Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life" by Mary Anne Evans (aka George Eliot)
Yes - absolutely, yes!
To some extent I have written about this previously (see here and here), but the quote above broadens the above and helps show the importance of doing what one can to contribute to this world being a better place.
