Most people, most of the time, don’t give much consideration to truly basic conditions, processes and meanings. And I guess this is as it should be. From an evolutionary perspective, evolution doesn’t move at an accelerated pace without there being external pressure applied. In the wild, this manifests as predator/prey relationships. In modern civilization, the predator/prey relationships are sublimated into things like business competition, parody, and other such relationships.
The singer, Gordon Lightfoot, in his song Sundown, wrote: ” Sometimes I think it’s a sin when I feel like I’m winning when I’m losing again.”
I came across a very interesting and apropos story related to this at http://surfingthetao.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html . It’s a story I heard back in college, and it felt nostalgically good to find it here. Here’s my telling of the story:
There once lived a farmer – a poor but seemingly contented farmer. He and his family had few possessions. A few small animals, a little plot of land upon which to work and from which to feed his family. One day, a horse came upon his propoerty. No one knew from whence it came, so the farmer made it his. The neighbors exclaimed, “How lucky you are!”
The farmer merely replied, “Could be.”
His son loved to play with the horse, but accidents happen, the boy was thrown and broke his leg.
The concerned neighbors told him that this was too bad; a real misfortune.
Again, the farmer merely said, “Could be.”
The very next day, soldiers came, conscripting boys into their army. But they had no use for a lad with a broken leg, who would eat more than he was worth to them. So they left the boy and marched off to war.
The very sad neighbors told the farmer that he was so lucky that the Gods had foreseen things and arranged for his son to break his leg.
To which the farmer merely replied, “Could be.”
I’ve said that Wow-Fields designate situations, conditions, things, etc. that compel us to say Wow! with two thumbs up. But as we see from the above story and the singer’s lyric, “two thumbs up” may not be obvious.
So we find a wrinkle of sorts in the construction of Wow-Fields. Perception is a huge component, and all the neurological, psycho-logical, and epistemological factors, etc. that go into the process of perceiving play roles in the emergence of Wow-Fields.
And yet. There seems to be something transcultural – human-structural? – that lets people encounter things that take their breaths away. Let me give you just one small, somewhat common example: You’ve been couped up in a skyscraper at work all day. When you went to work this morning, it was raining hard. And you know it’s going to be more of the same as you put on your coat and head out the door. Instead, you open the door and step out to a spectacular sunset with a sky peppered with puffy clouds. And you let out a whoop of joy!
I’m guessing you can relate to this; there’s something in the unfolding events themselves that is almost universal amongst people of any culture. And it’s something that doesn’t appear to happen to hamsters or cats.
There is so much more to this, but now it’s time to dream of sunsets and dragons and star surfers who get the girl as they ride comets to new worlds.
Good night.
