Wednesday, January 25, 2006

The curse of certainty

If we never aged or changed and if we lived in a world that never changed, there would be little call for religion, no compulsion or need to believe any particular explication of the mysteries. It would be unlikely in such a world for us even to notice that there were any mysteries.

If the world were like an ever shifting terrain of sand dunes, would your religions and traditions serve you as compass or as lane lines spray painted on the sand?

What makes you so sure of your answer? Do you know how hard we try to see changelessness in the flow of existence?

2 comments:

Davoh said...

From your choices, a compass. Remembering, of course, that the 'compass' is an invention. The sun and stars, while still mutable, remain steady indicators of direction. The sea and sand are never certainties.

GreenSmile said...

I think that they are meant to be a compass but they stop working for people who don't want to take responsibility for their own lives.
The compass metaphore means you know better from worse choices, you know in which direction you should head but beyond that, it is up to you because a compass can't tell you "you are here" nor can it tell you "this way looks good but its a box canyon, a dead end". Some folks just want to follow the white line (and we won't get into the matter of people driving on the wrong side of that line ;)