An alien sees a planet with water, assumes it houses life, and lands in your backyard. Then the alien, approaching you as you drink your morning coffee on the patio, says in your language, “Take me to your leader.”
Taking a sip of the coffee while it is still hot, you, as a native Earthling, say, “I don’t have one. I am my own leader.”
Would you say that? Really? I hope so, but in what context would you proclaim to be self-led? You are, as you must surely realize, a product of inculcations beyond your ability to recognize or count: Influences from crib to current age both subtle and overt.
Listen today to the voices of your fellow Earthlings. Many around you proclaim their “individuality.” What do we Earthlings mean when we say we are individuals? What constitutes the individuality we seem to cherish and defend with our mental, emotional, and physical tools? Once defined, does that individuality ever succumb to disintegration, to dissolving like sugar in hot coffee? Are there people who are not “individuals”? What’s that you say? Yes? But you are different, right?
If you recognize in others a “dissolving like sugar in hot coffee,” can you recognize in yourself that same process, an absence of individuality in a solution of society? No? Not even a little dissolution? Be honest here.
When you try to pin down your exact individuality, you run into some difficulty and maybe into some frustration. Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you; rather, I was just posing the question asked by a hypothetical alien. “To what degree would you insist, “I am my own leader”? Regardless of what you thought before you started to read this, that self-leadership is not 100% YOU, and you, living on a water planet where substances dissolve, are not a dry lump of sugar in an arid land. There’s hot coffee all around.
Chances are that no alien will approach you to ask for directions to your leader. Just forget that I ever mentioned this. Enjoy your coffee—with sugar.
Taking a sip of the coffee while it is still hot, you, as a native Earthling, say, “I don’t have one. I am my own leader.”
Would you say that? Really? I hope so, but in what context would you proclaim to be self-led? You are, as you must surely realize, a product of inculcations beyond your ability to recognize or count: Influences from crib to current age both subtle and overt.
Listen today to the voices of your fellow Earthlings. Many around you proclaim their “individuality.” What do we Earthlings mean when we say we are individuals? What constitutes the individuality we seem to cherish and defend with our mental, emotional, and physical tools? Once defined, does that individuality ever succumb to disintegration, to dissolving like sugar in hot coffee? Are there people who are not “individuals”? What’s that you say? Yes? But you are different, right?
If you recognize in others a “dissolving like sugar in hot coffee,” can you recognize in yourself that same process, an absence of individuality in a solution of society? No? Not even a little dissolution? Be honest here.
When you try to pin down your exact individuality, you run into some difficulty and maybe into some frustration. Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you; rather, I was just posing the question asked by a hypothetical alien. “To what degree would you insist, “I am my own leader”? Regardless of what you thought before you started to read this, that self-leadership is not 100% YOU, and you, living on a water planet where substances dissolve, are not a dry lump of sugar in an arid land. There’s hot coffee all around.
Chances are that no alien will approach you to ask for directions to your leader. Just forget that I ever mentioned this. Enjoy your coffee—with sugar.
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