I Am The Problem

I thought I would become wise by reading and repeating wise words.

Please excuse me for the interruption if you can bear it: I inherited delusions of grandeur from a father whose persecution complex rendered him grandiose. I aspired to wisdom, to be the greatest author ever known. And then, after 80 years on Earth, I woke up, or so I believe, to realized I am a damn fool!

I thought I would become wise by reading and repeating wise words, but I did not deliberately act on them. What good is wisdom without experience? Had I acted on those words, I may have discovered they were not as wise as advertised. Now AI has exposed me! I am an insignificant bookworm! AI does in seconds what it takes me weeks to do. AI results are ambiguous and lack depth, but the grunt work is done, and it will not be long before HAL 9000 will be eying us.”

I had been left behind because I had put myself behind by centuries, rummaging through old books in libraries in search of wisdom, only to regurgitate in different forms what I had read, and, one day, I struggled to write this:

“Facts are events, and animals including human animals, depending upon facts as they are for continued existence, could not help but to notice certain regularities on which existence depends. Wherefore the obvious relationship between astrological movements and regular events on our own planet became a fundamental guide for prognostication in some parts of the world. After all is said and done, we do not have enough knowledge of complex events to always make accurate predictions based on obvious experience with causes and effects, yet subconscious expectations we call intuitions arise. Such intuitions led to intermediate means of divining the intentions of presumed superior beings whose will we endeavored to comply with to our best advantage…” (et cetera ad infinitum)

“Stop trying to re-explain everything!" I shouted out loud.

"I am an author, an originator, not a mere writer, but what is original in my restatements of what learned people know? Really, what is my opinion? What do I advise? Nothing, and then I excuse myself for knowing nothing by saying Nothing exists? How absurd!”

Now everyone is too busy to care about me whatever I am. I am left all alone with myself, whatever the self is, and who is the I of that self? That is the question we asked back in the day after going off the deep end. We altered consciousness, delved into mystical literature, went on peace marches and so on. Our friend Billy read the Secret Doctrine and jumped out of a window to visit Madame Blavatsky. I have not heard back from him yet, unless he has somehow prompted me from the Other Side to read Krishnamurti again. Theosophists adopted Krishnamurti and cultivated him to be their great spiritual master. He became an atheist instead. I had not thought of him for many years. So, I did my Shaker thing: I found one of his books, opened it at random and my finger pointed at this:

“Self-Knowledge: The problems of the world are so colossal, so very complex, that to understand them and to resolve them one must approach them in a very simple and direct manner; and simplicity, directness, do not depend on outward circumstances nor on our particular prejudices and moods,,,, the solution obviously lies in the creator of the problem, in the creator of the mischief, of the hate and of the enormous misunderstanding that exists between human beings. The creator…is the individual, you and I, not the world as we think of it…. So, you and I are the problem…we are the world…. To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves….”

And that is the problem.

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