Meaning is ascribed, assigned, imposed.
We are told what is meaningful.
Religion consists of believing
what someone else
has said to be so.
So does education.
The clergy, the teachers,
give to the laity, the students,
meanings that have been ascribed and assigned
to statements by other clergy-types/teachers through the ages.
No clergy-type/teacher ever asks a lay person/student
about the truth of their own experience.
The lay-person/student is required
to dismiss/discount/ignore their own experience
and to embrace/believe
what they are told to experience
by the clergy/teachers.
In all of this, our individual intuition,
our balance and harmony,
our original nature
and our inherent/innate virtues/virtuosities
(The things we do best
and enjoy/love doing most
are discounted,
dismissed,
ignored,
and we are required to live entirely
out of a Left-brained, logical, rational orientation.
We are never told/taught/enabled
to reflect/meditate/consider/contemplate
on something/anything to the point of new realizations.
We are never invited to question anything,
to wonder about what's worth knowing/asking,
to explore the validity of various points of view,
to investigate where the lines might lie
between opinion, belief and conviction,
and where imagination comes into play
in our consideration of truth,
or where meaning comes from,
and who says so,
and how they come to know so...
We are told to take what we are told
on faith
and to not ask questions.
Do you see how empty all of this is?
And the entire world is run
on the assumptions/presumptions
that this is the way
to run the world.
It is no wonder that the cultures
of the world
are based on escape and denial,
and that all that really matters
are drugs, sex, alcohol and money.
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Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 