Jed Talks #2: Away from the Things of Man

Jed Talks #2

Away from the Things of Man

Jed McKenna

Print ISBN: 978-0-9978797-7-3

E-Book ISBN: 978-0-9978797-8-0

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The world wants to be deceived,so let it be deceived.

Petronius

The Power of Devotion

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. 

H. L. Mencken

In a rather unsettling development, an Indian religious leader has now debuted on the world stage in such a (not quite unbridled) tour de force of spiritual empowerment that I must retract every word I’ve ever spoken or published and go find honest work. My operating assumption has always been If truth be with us, who can be against us?, and now I know. Sorry for wasting your time. In farewell, I refer you to a true spiritual master, ripped, torn, yanked from today’s headlines:

Religious leader called Penis Baba pulls car 100ft using only his MANHOOD while stunned crowds watch

Huge crowds flocked to watch a religious leader appear to pull a car - with his penis. 

The ’monk’ - known only as Penis Baba - can be seen fiddling under his robes while he apparently attaches a rope to his private parts.

After the white rope is tied to the car before he staggers backwards, pulling the heavy vehicle around 100ft.

’Baba’ said: "It is not art. It is the power of God - the power of devotion.

Any person can go to any extent by doing devotion.

Obviously, no one can claim to be an enlightened spiritual master if they can’t pull at least a stacked washer/dryer set with their tethered member. Now that a true spiritual master has appeared in the world, I will retire and not return until I can not only pull a car in so notable a manner, but squat, clean and jerk it as well.

On second thought, I’m not really a big devotion guy so maybe I’ll just stick with the truth angle and leave the Indian rope tricks to the fakirs. Let’s start the book.

____________________

Mirror.co.uk, 10 Apr 2018

Genuine Learning

All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory. It is a process of discovery, in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher.

Mortimer Adler

After a talk I had recently given, a young woman approached and asked me to give another. She introduced herself as Miss Flowers and told me she was a fourth-grade teacher and asked if I would give her class a career talk on the life of an author.

Sure, I said, if you’re sure.

Sure I’m sure, she said brightly. What could go wrong?

So I presented myself at the appointed time and place. Being in a classroom brought back weird memories, especially when I looked above the blackboard and saw the long-despised clock. I might wish time would move more slowly these days, but back then, during my own failed indoctrination, it was painfully slow.

Mr. McKenna has written several books, Miss Flowers told the assembled halfborns, so I asked him to join us today and tell us about the life of an author. What are his work habits, how he knows what to write about, where he gets his ideas, what books he reads and things like that. Mr. McKenna?

I step front and center and lean on the desk. 

Good morning, young people.

I get a few piddly good mornings in return.

So, what have they been teaching you guys lately? I ask by way of an icebreaker.

History, like the revolution and the constitution and the Boxer Rebellion, comes one response.

How to do science, says one.

Long division, says another.

Reading better, like whole books, even.

How to write cursive.

Decimals and fractions and stuff.

How the earth is a ball and goes around the sun, says a boy.

Root words and prefixes and suffixes.

How to be responsible and have morals.

That sounds like fun, I say, fun being a euphemism for the torment of the damned. 

What do you do? one of the little darlings asks me.

Well, I’m not really sure, I say. I kind of write books about stuff.

What stuff?

Well, grown-up stuff, I guess.

Like dirty stuff? 

Lots of giggles.

No, more like spiritual stuff.

What does spiritual mean?

I’m not really sure.

You write books about it but you don’t know what it means?

Yep.

Do you write about religious stuff?

Sometimes, not much. More like practical philosophy stuff.

What’s philosophy?

"It’s like thinking about things, like what’s really going on around here."

They all look around to see if anything weird is going on, but it all looks pretty normal.

What does it mean that it’s practical?

That it’s not just stuff you think about, it’s stuff that actually makes a difference.

Can you talk about the stuff you write books about?

Sure.

Like what’s an example?

Like, uh, how do you know if reality is real?

How can reality not be real if it’s reality?

The same way a dream isn’t real, even though you think it’s real when you’re dreaming it.

So we could be dreaming right now?

That would be something you could ask yourself in philosophy: Are you dreaming or are you awake?

Awake! is the general cry. 

But how can you be sure you’re not asleep right now? I ask. How do you know you’re not just dreaming all this?

I’m not dreaming! shouts a boy.

How do you know you’re not, Tad? asks a girl sitting next to him.

Huh? he replies.

You don’t know you’re dreaming when you’re dreaming. You think it’s real, right? she asks. 

Yeah, Tad says, I guess.

So how do you know you’re not dreaming now?

Uh, because I’m awake now. If I were asleep then maybe I could be dreaming, but not if I’m awake.

Maybe you should try thinking about it, she says, instead of just yelling out stupid answers.

That’s okay, I say, we’re all a little stupid sometimes. So that’s the kind of stuff I write about, like how you know if you’re dreaming or not.

And people read stuff like that?

Some.

Does anyone else write about it? 

People have been writing about it for thousands of years.

Smart people?

Some.

*

Okay, I tell the plainly bored kids, "so let’s say your life is like a big video game, but instead of just watching it on a screen, you’re actually inside the game. You don’t control your character with your thumbs, you actually play your character, the same way you’re playing yourself right now. You’re actually inside your character so it feels just like you, okay?"

Like virtual reality, exclaims one boy.

Exactly, like virtual reality.

So we see the game all around us? asks the boy.

Yes, and it all seems so real that you forget it’s just a game. Wherever you go, you’re always right in the middle, so the gameworld is always appearing all around you.

So we can move around in it like we’re inside it?

Yes.

And it just goes on forever, then? We can just keep going and going.

Maybe. You don’t know how far it goes because you’ve never come to the end of it. The world and people keep appearing wherever you go and disappearing wherever you leave.

How would that even work?

I don’t know, I say. Maybe the real you is the part that watches everything so that even your thoughts and feelings are a part of pretend you, not real you.

That causes a minor uproar.

"Or, maybe you’re not just in the game, maybe you are the game. Maybe you and the game are the same thing. I mean, your brain is a very powerful computer, it’s just made of different stuff, right?"

They’re not sure they agree.

And this is the kind of stuff you write books about?

Yep, like what if you found out right now that you’re inside a game or a computer or a dream? What if you woke up and realized that nothing in your whole life has ever been real?

"Then what is real?" asks Tad.

Congratulations, I say, you have just asked a very good philosophical question.

*

What about when we die?

I don’t know. Maybe death isn’t real either. Maybe instead of lives, we have different games, like we just play one character in one game and when it’s over we start a new game as a different character.

Cool!

Pretend you’re sitting alone in a dark theater watching a movie, and suddenly the power goes out. You were really getting into the movie, but now there’s nothing playing so you’re just sitting alone in the dark. But then the power comes back on and there’s a different movie playing, so now you watch the new one and forget the old one. One minute you’re a teenager in love running on a beach, and the next minute you’re a soldier or a nurse in wartime, and then the movie changes again and you’re a kid sitting in a classroom talking about how life is like the movies, but you don’t remember those other ones, you only know about the one you’re in. Maybe that’s what life and death are like; you’re playing one level in a game and you come to the end, and then you’re at the beginning of the next level, and the same way it’s hard to remember dreams, it’s also hard to remember your other levels.

Sometimes I don’t dream at all, says one of the boys, and my daddy says he never dreams.

Maybe he just doesn’t remember, I say. We don’t know what memory is or how it works, so if we don’t control it, maybe it controls us. What if you controlled someone else’s memory, think of what you could do. You could turn off real parts and put in fake parts, right? You could make them believe anything. You could make them forget who they are and think they’re someone else, and they wouldn’t know, right?

They kind of nod and think about it.

Then how do we know that’s not happening to us right now? asks the girl next to Tad.

That’s another very good philosophical question, I say.

*

Miss Flowers gently reminds me that I’m supposed to be telling the children about the career of writing, not undermining their concept of reality.

*

What about radioisotopes? asks a girl dressed like a pop star. Dr. Fischer says…

Who?

He’s an eighth grade science teacher, Miss Flowers informs me. He visits us once a week for a science talk. Last week he told us about gravity.

"Okay, so Dr. Fischer might be a very smart man, but he’s not very good at thinking. That’s an important thing you can understand if you try. Trying to understand, instead of just believing what you’re told, is good thinking. We believe that people who are very smart are also very good at thinking, but very smart people can be very bad at thinking, and not-smart people can be very good at thinking."

Which one are you?

I’m a regular person who is very good at thinking.

But not because you’re very smart?

No, because I try very hard. So the good news is even if you’re not super smart, you can still be a very good thinker.

But we don’t have to just think hard, says one internate.

"Right, we have to think better," says another.

And we have to be honest, says a third, we can’t just pretend-think, we have to really do it.

Very good, I say. "You guys came up with that just by thinking a