AND WE KNOW THAT HOW?

Blog number 339 **** 10 November 2009

"Conditioning" is a term coined to denote cultural myths disguised as truths. "Dogs, cats and horses are pets, never food," is one of the common myths in our culture. We have been conditioned by our culture to see these animals in this way. It is not logical that these animals not be food while cows, for instance, are. It makes no logical sense. It is an emotional sense. A conditioned sense. It is not a fact that horses are not food.

Another myth disguised as truth in our culture is the "fact" that everyone by law is innocent until found guilty. I am not a lawyer, so I don't know if this is a law or not, but if it is, I have heard Judge Judy - a lawyer, say to defendants and plaintiffs, "being found not guilty does not mean that you are innocent or have been found innocent." So how does this jibe with innocent until found guilty? Is a person not found guilty, innocent or not? Let's be consistent.

And are not tens of thousands of "innocent" people in the United States jailed every day even thought they have not yet been found "guilty" of anything? Do we jail the innocent? Of course not. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

The means of this conditioning is very subtly done. Someone tells us something, or we read it, or it is insinuated, or we interpret something to mean something, and it goes into our "belief basket." We never think to check the "fact" out. We simply accept it. And it has to be that way, for if we checked everything that came to us as fact, we would never get anything else done.

Buddhists say that life is suffering.

A recent song lyric says, "I am pain. You belong to me. You'll be with me for a hundred and ninety four years. I am pain. You are all I want."

That last about the number of years might not be exactly correct.

So sue me.

No, please don't.

I don't want to go much further with this, but it is my personal opinion that people take way too much umbrage at death, and those whom I feel take that umbrage is to whom this Blog entry is pointed. I don't think it is too far from the truth to state that the afore-mentioned umbrage comes from cultural conditioning and not from looking at facts. Facts such as the ones insinuated in the five and six lines above this one.

And of course, I am right.