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Back to the Forum Archives How can you explain to a person who has taken a life position and has the mentality of that position, what it is like to be on a path? Of course the answer is, you can't. Yet that is the dilemma of a traveler trying to communicate with most people. I find that too many people, especially those who represent special movements or organizations, have taken a fixed life position. They live in a space of limited boundaries and can only operate within that space. Literal, they cannot think or communicate outside the box. Thus, for a person outside of their box, communication become impossible. As to the box, I believe I am one of the outs. I do not fit into any of the boxes that I know about. I do not know exactly when I realized it, but I do know that my life is a process. It is an adventure of discovery. It is a process of seeking, of following a path wherever it leads to discover whatever truth lies along the way. So, I am a traveler on a path seeking new truths. This idea of being an out is not a new thing for me. It has got me into trouble and beat up a number of times. Even as a kid before I could articulate my thoughts I often found myself on the outside. No matter how loudly people shouted at me or how angry they became, I could not make myself see what they insisted was true. For sure, when I was just a kid this caused me to doubt myself, especially when they laughed at me. I don't know why, but I was never completely subdued. I think part of my salvation was the realization that I could not fight the people in power. Instead, I had to pretend. I had to agree, but not really. that kept me from getting beat up and ridiculed, but it also made my self doubt more palpable. Even so I survived. A part of my mind remained secure. As I grew older, that part became stronger. Now I have reached the point where I must spell this out for my own sake. I need to be very clear on what my life is about. First I must express what being outside the box is like. The most important point of this is, outside the box there are no absolute truths. I am not quite a sophist wherein I will insist that nothing is true, I only say truth is relative. That allows me to function like everyone else. There are things we can treat as true for the sake of convenience. Gravity still works and North is still North, but the entire universe is a bit fluid. It can and does change. The strength of this idea is adaptability. When new truths appear, they are more easily accepted. In addition, that is a two way mental process. It is also easier to discover new truths when I don't have a mindset about reality. One nice thing about seeing life as a process or a path of discovery is the ability to let go of a useless behavior. I need not be consistent. I don't have to keep doing something if my thinking reveals it as a misdirection. I can discover new truths about myself. I can change direction when I see I am on a false trail. That is how I have come to the point of trying to articulate what I am about. I recently realized I was dumping too much energy into something that did not work for me and was never going to work. Thinking about dealing with that caused me to begin thinking this whole thing through. My immediate thoughts about my path had to do with publishing. For those who do not know, I write and publish all of my own books. Along with that, I have membership in two marketing organizations. Marketing says it all. They are not about literature, or philosophy, or anything except selling products. In this case, the products are books. That by itself is not right or wrong. It was me who was wrong. My mistake was in the notion that selling was what I should be doing. I should be selling my books and I was beating up on myself for not putting more energy and time into it. Over time, I finally came to realize that marketing is not what I am about. In fact as I learn and grow, my whole mentality about writing has changed. Me rambling path has lead me into becoming a humanist philosopher. I am currently writing about that in two different series of essays. One is The Gaffers Philosophy. The other is History and Evolution. Thinking about that, I have concluded that I cannot spend time trying to do something I cannot do well because I hate it. That is marketing. I can write my books and put them out there for anyone who is interested. I would like people to be interested. However, I cannot invest a great deal of my time in trying to make people want these books. Either you will or you won't. I believe my books will eventually be read. Meanwhile, I have more important things to do. The truth is, I went down a false trail after a false model. I bought into what I now call the fraud of writing and publishing put out by these marketing organizations. There are many people in these groups who will tell you they make money writing and publishing. I'm sure they do. The problem is, when I look at the books they wrote, I find that in general most of them have no literary value and have very limited practical value. I conclude these people are hucksters. They might as well be selling pet rocks. They may be publishers, they may be good mechanics, but they are not literary people at all. That is not wrong, especially in America with its capitalist economy, but it's not what I want to be. So, recently, when the marketing organization renewal notices came I simply did not respond. I have decided to discontinue my association with these two groups. It is not about the money. I can afford the fees. It is about pretending to be something I am not. I am not a huckster. I will never be a huckster. In my heart of hearts, I believe huckstering is an unsavory behavioral pattern. Now, sooner or later, someone in these organizations is going to want to know why I did not renew. They will probably ask me what is wrong. Thinking about how to answer that is how I came to having to spell out what I am and what I am doing. Now, as I said in the first paragraph, there is no way to explain it to them. I am on a path and they are at a position. They have the marketer's mindset. They are not going anywhere else from there. At one time on my path, I passed very near to that position, but now my path has diverged radically. Now, we have nothing to offer each other. I may not be finished with this. I believe there has to be
a way of marketing without huckstering and advertising as we
currently find it. I think a myth may be very close to what I
want, but the myth must be ethical. It cannot be like some that
I have noticed lately. It cannot be misleading or dishonest.
It must contain a true moral concept. It must be based in my
own ethics. There has to be a way of creating a solid image without
spending millions of dollars and tricking people. Ideally, I
would want a story, true or not, that would make a positive connection
between my products and the classic ethical values. I speak of
values like truth and integrity. Perhaps in my next incarnation
I will give some time to the understanding and creation of ethical
myths. For now, I'll just continue to put my work out there as
best I can for whoever wants it.
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