Compulsive texting gives me the willies:
It’s just another form of butt scratching.
Garrison Keillor
The word “bogus” once referred to a device for making counterfeit money and the bogus words that we are referring to in this essay represent phony thinking, counterfeit policies, and the smoke and mirrors of P-B. Simple Reality transcends the intellect and the words that it produces and as we have come to rely on our thinking processes far too much, we have come to rely on our intuition and our connection to the implicate order far too little.
The struggle to contain the oil spill in the gulf [Gulf of Mexico-2010] challenges an American belief that technology can solve any problem. The intellect for some has become the new American religion as Elisabeth Rosenblatt has just indicated in the quote above. In her recent article in the The New York Times entitled “Our Fix-It Faith” she indicates that the American people are beginning to have afflictive emotional reactions called “doubt” regarding the intellect’s ability to solve problems. Oh ye of little faith!
Let’s invite Garrison Keillor to join Ms. Rosenthal to add whimsy and a little comic relief to the dark reality of America’s future. In his column entitled “A great nation immobilized,” Keillor recalls his high school graduation and the words of one of the speakers. “…a commencement speaker told us that we should pursue our education because Knowledge leads to Power to Effect Change…” Bogus, bogus, bogus words, the speaker should have known better. The members of that graduating class were zombies smelling blood, mesmerized by the false-self need for power and control, most having accepted the illusion that knowledge is power. Knowledge without the guidance of our inner wisdom leaves us impotent, disillusioned and unable to accomplish any effective change. Who ever heard of a zombie who was articulate and could focus on anything but his next warm blooded homo-sapien.
Keillor was returning from Washington to Minnesota when he wrote his column and revealed his own mistrust of bogus words that fill the air in our nation’s capital appropriately nick-named “foggy bottom.” “…a lot of high-priced schmoozing and yipping and yapping by thousands of overeducated schtoonks in nicely pressed shirts pumping out hogwash and hokum…” Now those are words that have authentic power to communicate truth—words that have their origin in the heart that sees through the posturing and pontificating of politicians. This is Keillor at his clear-hearted best.
Returning home Keillor also returned to the sanity of P-A for a few moments at least. Turning inward he found the solace of beauty. The language of the heart, if you want to know what eloquent and uplifting communication is, can be heard by listening to the same sound that soothed the frustrated writer from Minnesota—Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B. minor; nothing bogus in the language of the Master of the High Baroque.
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References and notes are available for this article.
For a much more in-depth discussion on Simple Reality, read Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival, by Roy Charles Henry, published in 2011.
