A small place in a large place, and the other way around

Last summer, I took a four day trip to nearby Guang'An, to report on a few projects that my organization is helping with.  One of the people that we visited lived in a fairly isolated area.  As in, "Well, the main road is under construction, so instead taking you on a 45 minute motorcycle ride to the ferry across the reservoir and then hiking up another half hour from there, we're going to drive another hour to the back side of the mountain and hike for just over an hour to get there instead" kind of isolated.  But not that I was complaining - coming up through the woods and cresting the ridge of the mountain, this is the view that I got:



Right around the bend was this building, which turned out to be a small temple, build and maintained by the farmers in the area.




Here is a small hint of what it looked like inside, minus a feeling of dust, dim light, and the feeling that something was still happening that had been going on for a very very long time indeed.





I'm not going to pretend like I know very much about what was going on inside, or even if the temple was Buddhist, Taoist, a combination of the two, or something predating both.  I'm even reluctant to post the photos, but am doing so because, um, why?  The word 'continuity' comes to mind...

I'm not an introvert, but I play one on TV...

An interesting post about me, as well as 25% of the population. And it mentions brain chemistry, so you've gotta love it.

10 myths about introverts

Happiness engineering

An enlightening reminder about happiness, and how to find it, from Scott Adams (the creator of the Dilbert comic strip), of all people.

A few good quotes:

"When you feel agitated, try eating some carbs. They're like a miracle drug. I suspect that anger is evolution's way of telling you to go kill something so you can eat."

" Many people make the mistake of incorporating negativity in their humor and thinking the outcome is a net positive. That takes the form of reflexively commenting on what's wrong with, well, everything. I used to be that guy. It was a habit I picked up from my mother. I thought I was being funny. An ex did me the favor of pointing out that I was actually just being an asshole. All the time."
(Whoops, this one is me sometimes... )

Tubes and You

An interesting quote from the philosopher and activist Alan Watts*

"[L]iving organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd."

*Who, I must admit, I didn't know very much about until I did a little internet skimming just now. More to learn about all the time...

Doubt is better than certainty

Ran into this interesting quote about doubt from the designer Milton Glaser this morning:

"Everyone always talks about confidence in believing what you do. I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being sceptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between scepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins. And then in a very real way, solving any problem is more important than being right."

It's from a talk entitled Ten things I have learned,which sums up his experience working in the world of design, but I think it applies equally well to life in another culture. Or just Life in general...