Looking at FLIGHTS OF PEGASUS

When I began this blog a little over a month ago my theme was, “Beliefs which were not put into our heads by other people.” My personal list of such beliefs was short, and I’ve exhausted it unless I think of some more. Now I find myself wishing that this were a dialogue instead of a monologue. I think of a lot more questions than I do answers.

But . . . as I write this I realize that I’m falling back once more on the idea that other people have the answers, that if I could just talk to the right people I would find out what the Source, consciousness, life and life after life, and all the weirdness of the universe is about.

In a way that is a productive thought: If I have attained a few beliefs and realizations on my own, there must be other people who have independently attained some valid self-originated beliefs which go beyond mine. In fact it would be amazing if there were not people whose independently originated insights greatly outnumber my own.

While the thought of looking to others for their direct and original knowledge is productive, it also has its dangers. For one thing, if an individual’s directly intuited knowledge contradicts another’s, there is probably no proof (other than evidence of insanity) as to who is right and who is wrong. (I would say, for example, that the author of the biblical book of “Revelation” was a raving lunatic, and yet his craziness is still providing fodder for sermons and movies and television documentaries.) For another thing – illustrated by “Revelation” and elsewhere – relying on other people’s presumed direct inspiration from God has produced the very “holy books” and “scriptures” which muddle our heads with second-hand nonsense when were are young. Right in this one paragraph we have the recipe for religious wars.

In spite of the hazards of looking to others for truths, I continue to wish that this blog were a dialogue among individuals, restricted to things they learned which did not come from other people.

I can’t remember ever hearing of such a dialogue. If we watch television or listen to radio or read “news and opinion”, we are constantly assailed with reports and comments by one set of people about what another set of people has done, said, or written.

In fact I might have listed among my “independent insights” the one which suddenly came to me one day: Humans are incredibly interested in humans.

Most people are almost constantly preoccupied with what other people are doing. Think about it. Analyze what your news and entertainment providers are giving you in an unending stream of words and images, and it is really amazing. You don’t even need to look that far: Just listen to what is said at lunch, around the water cooler, over coffee, and on the telephone. People are endlessly interested in people, and the shallower they are as thinkers, the more other people’s doings fill their lives.

To round this post out with some semblance of a unified topic, I’ll say that it is sad that for my other blog, VIEW FROM THE MOON -- in which I look at world events and dwell on injustice, hypocrisy, and in particular lies by omission – I’m never at a loss for a subject. In fact each morning I have to choose among competing topics for VIEW FROM THE MOON. But for FLIGHTS OF PEGASUS I often sit looking out the window and wishing something would come to me. What does this tell us about the world – or is it just about me? All the more reason I wish this were a dialogue.

Breaking the Ice

The dawning of a new blog is about as noteworthy as the division of one amoeba in the Okefenokee Swamp, except for whatever excitement it gives to the new blogger and the amoeba. I've come up with a flamboyant title for my first blog, and now I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to get Pegasus off the ground.

I titled this online journal “Flights of Pegasus” because the flying horse made the greatest impression on me of all the characters in “Myths Every Child Should Know”, and because from an early age I loved horses, finding them more beautiful and noble than the tribe of hairless, bickering apes into which I was born. I admired Pegasus in contrast to the human, Icarus, who defiantly flew so close to the sun that his wings melted off. Of all the animals on this planet, we humans are the most confused and defective and sickly, but also the creature with the highest aspirations. And so we keep hoping that, like Pegasus, we may soar high and attain the stars before we destroy ourselves.

Today the human situation is really touch and go: Will that part of us which has reached the Moon and created Beethoven's 9th Symphony prevail over our mad obsession with killing one another? Or if -- as someone suggested -- there are actually two very different species of souls inhabiting human bodies, will the species which loves peace and music win out over that which worships power and violence? This blog will support the peace and music crowd.

I'll end this ice-breaking entry with one of my favorite quotations: "The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, but queerer than we CAN imagine."

See you tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm thinking about this: What's in our heads that somebody else didn't plant there -- and who did they think they were, anyway?