Conference hydra::dejavu

1425.0. "an ordinary human's solution to all problems" by ENABLE::GLANTZ (Mike 227-4299 DECtp TAY Littleton MA) Tue Feb 05 1991 16:08

  The following appeared in the latest Desperado (which you may or may
  not get). It's a list of solutions to all problems, written by a
  fairly ordinary human being. I thought it might be of interest to
  other readers of DEJAVU. (Desperado is an irreverent electronic humor
  magazine compiled and distributed by Tom Parmenter. Send subscription
  requests to COVERT::DESPERADO-REQUEST).



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                       THE SOLUTIONS TO ALL OUR PROBLEMS
                                 (GUARANTEED!)

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The following is "Michael Ventura's handy list of 34 simple (but not easy)
solutions for everything that ails the world".  Ventura is a novelist.  The
list originally appeared in his column in the L.A. Weekly, followed by Utne
Reader, and then somebody typed it into a file and now it's going
everywhere, including here.  Tom Blinn sent it to me.
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    It's happened once too often.  Somebody says or writes to me, "You talk
  about what's wrong but you don't offer solutions."  And maybe they're
  right.  Maybe to merely detail one's vision and let readers take it from
  there isn't enough.  Maybe there *are* solutions, and maybe I *should*
  know them.  So I sat down and thought about things real hard, and here,
  numbered for your convenience are my solutions to everything.
    
  00.  Indulge in secrets.  Without one or two major secrets, your life
  will surely fade.  (If you're over 40 and don't understand this...you're
  in big trouble.)  A conundrum:  secrets aren't lies - they're mysteries,
  havens, passageways.  Lies wreck your life; secrets can save your life. 
  But sometimes you have to lie to keep the secret.  Uh-oh.
    
  1.  Make mistakes.  As jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins said, "If you
  don't make mistakes, you aren't really trying."
    
  2.  Stop lying about yourself.  To yourself.  To your friends.  To your
  family.  To your business associates.  Maybe even to your enemies.  (Your
  enemies can oppress you just as much by forcing you to maintain fidelity
  to your own lies as by any other means.)
    
  3.  Stop tolerating in your leaders what you wouldn't tolerate in your
  friends.
    
  4.  Tolerate impurity.  Trying to be pure about *anything* is a way of
  setting yourself up to fail.  Asking other people to be pure is a way of
  setting them up.
    
  5.  Read one book a month - a book that you didn't find out about in a
  magazine or newspaper.  Browse an independent bookstore and wait til some
  book says, "Read me," and then read it.
    
  6.	Listen to the voices.  The wee inner voices.  (The voices make
  mistakes sometimes, but they don't make *boring* mistakes.)
    
  7.	Leave people alone when they tell you to leave them alone.  (Note: 
  This rule applies to grownups only.)
    
  8.	Don't make the "sophisticated" error of thinking that a negative
  voice is automatically smarter than a positive voice.
    
  9.	Eat healthy food but don't be a fanatic about it.
    
  10.	Don't be a fanatic about *anything*.
    
  11.	Do only exercises that take you somewhere.  Walk, ride a bike,
  roller-skate, swim.  All other exercise is ego- and/or fear-driven, and
  if you listen to ego and fear you will drown out the voices you most
  need.

  12. Don't run.  Really, *don't*.  America likes to run because running
  from (fill in the blank) is what we do best.  Everybody who runs is
  running away from something terrible.  Stop running and find out what's
  behind you.
    
  13.	Eat Italian food.  Italians went from being oppressive Roman
  conquerors to being the inefficient, wonderful Italians they are today. 
  It's probably the food.
    
  14.	Order my novel _Night Time Losing Time_ (Simon & Schuster, 1989) at
  your local independent bookstore.  (This won't solve the world's problems
  or yours, but it'll do wonders for some of mine.)
    
  15.	If you're living in a place (like Los Angeles) where driving is
  necessary, learn to drive.  You may think you know how, but my experience
  of the way you drive is that you probably don't.  So here's how: Drive
  for space, not for speed.  Space in front of you is the safest thing you
  can have with a car.  Darting in and out of traffic doesn't change
  anything, it just makes you older.  You can't beat the average traffic
  flow on any given street or freeway by more than five minutes, which only
  makes a difference if you're having a baby.  And don't you feel like an
  idiot when you've passed six cars and they pull up beside you at the next
  light?
    
  16.	Dance.  Jesus said, in one of the Gnostic gospels, "He who does not
  dance does not know what happens."
    
  17.	Don't worry so much about being fat.  Fat feels great in bed.
    
  18.	Look into people's eyes when you talk to them.
    
  19.	Have candlelight in your life.
    
  20.	No matter how rushed your schedule is, spend at least five minutes
  in the morning quietly in bed with your loved one just being gentle
  together.  Perhaps drinking tea.
    
  21.	Tell your mother and father, individually - and your children, if
  you have children - what you *really* think.  Once a year, minimum.  If
  more people did this, it would save more lives than arresting drunk
  drivers.
    
  22.	Do not avoid the eyes of the homeless.
    
  23.	If you think something's wrong - at work, in your family, in your
  self, in your country - agitate for change.  If you won't do that, it
  doesn't matter how tan you are.
    
  24.	Tape this quote to your bathroom mirror:
    
  "One can only accept in others what one can accept  in oneself."  - James
  Baldwin

  25.	Don't talk down to kids.
    
  26.	Don't chicken out about sex.  Given that you're with a consenting
  adult, do whatever you fantasize.  This is much more important than
  quitting smoking.
    
  27.	Watch at least one black-and-white film per month.
    
  28.	Regarding number 6:  Entertain the notion that there are...voices. 
  Some come from within, some from the plants and objects and such around
  you, and some come from what I call, for shorthand purposes, the
  Infinite.  If you don't listen for them, your life will be more difficult
  than it has to be.
    
  29.	Pay more taxes - and insist that those taxes, and the taxes you
  already pay, go for education.  Giving the young a lively, thorough,
  truthful education is the most important *environmental* issue today,
  even more important than acid rain, tropical rain forests, and ozone
  holes.
    
  30.	Let me make that a lot clearer.  Recycling and shopping
  ecologically are almost pointless when one-third of California's
  high-school students drop out, and most who graduate can't read much. 
  How can these people inherit a world?  Even if we give them a greener
  world, are they equipped to keep it that way?  You want a solution, so
  here's a solution:  Take to the Streets for the Education of the
  Children.
    
  31.	Pray
    
  32.	Stop looking for other people to supply the solution.  *You're* the
  solution.  If you're not, there is no solution.
    
  33.	Be aware of the Network.  We live by a network of connections and
  links.  Your connection to yourself, to your intimates, to your place, to
  the collective, to the planet, to the Infinite. (Each is a distinct
  connection.)  Equally powerful are the collective's connections to you
  (not at all the same as yours to it), to groups of intimates, to itself,
  to the planet, to the Infinite. All the links or connective points of
  this network (call them the acupuncture points of our universe) both take
  and generate energy.  Any link out of sync weakens the others.  (The
  West, for instance, has concentrated too much on the individual, the
  East, too much on the collective; both approaches have been catastrophic
  on every level of the network.)  This network, from you all the way to
  the Infinite, is a living whole, ceaselessly changing.  Some of these
  changes take millions of years.  Some happen instantaneously. May the
  links of the network shine.

    Wow.  Both funny and true.  Especially the part about Italian food.
    The ordinary man is the genius of the 90's.  Thanks Mike !

    Thanks!
    
    C-2

    We need more of that kind of problem solving!

    
    
    Words to live by!
    
    Marilyn

    
    Yes, I already read those wonderful solutions, and the more I read 
    them the more I find them very true and deep.
    
    Rita.