Artificiality

[robinturner]

I like the beauties of Nature as much as most people, but I can't understand this thing some people have against "the artificiality of modern life". I just looked round the room and thought "Almost everything I can see was made by someone." I liked that thought.

Comments

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

""Almost everything I can see was made by someone." I liked that thought."
With good reason, and you're in good company; Thich Nhat Hahn recommends it as a mindfulness excercise.
Didn't the young Marx write about how it was becoming increasingly difficult to relate to things as the product of some human process? That is definitely so ... humans as servants of Ba'al.

[alsoname.livejournal.com]

I really REALLY like modern plumbing.

Re:

[solri.livejournal.com]

I could have been subconsciously influenced by him - I read a few of his articles when I was a teenager (about Buddhism, mindfulness and social activism, IIRC) and was deeply impressed. There was also something I read more recently in The Art of Happiness (by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler) to that effect.

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[solri.livejournal.com]

Me too, though I'm not so keen on plumbers. I get on fine with carpenters and electricians, but plumbers always remind me of that Zappa song "Flakes":

My toilet blew up yesterday afternoon
The plumber he said, never flush a tampoon
That great information cost me half a week's pay
And the toilet blew up again the very next day.

We had a toilet that would start flushing and never stop, which didn't make us popular with our neighbours. I called the campus plumber, who fiddled with it for a few minutes then said nothing could be done. After he left, I a moved the ballcock a few millimetres to one side, and the problem was solved.

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[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

I'm sure he was just resonating a "pre-existing connection.

But I'm distracted by something else: "Art of Happiness", you say ... good enough. But, by HHDalai Lama and Howard Cutler?! That goes some way to explaining some confusion I've experienced online, talking about or responding to talk about that title.
You see, one of my constant compaions for something over a decade now has been "Art of Happiness", but by Mirko Fry'ba (I don't know the code of y accent aigue) ... it's subtitled "Teachings of Buddhist Psychology" and was published by Shambhala in 1989.

!!!

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[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

Reads like something out of "Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance".

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[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

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