How To Be Human

Peter Sis

What you say of your neighbour, how you talk, how you walk, how you look at the skies, at the birds, how you treat people, how you cut a branch — all these things are important, because they act like mirrors that show you as you are and, if you are alert, you discover everything anew from moment to moment. — J Krishnamurti

“If you’re out of your mind in another culture or quite disturbed or impotent or anorexic, you look at what you’ve been eating, who’s been casting spells on you, what taboo you’ve crossed, what you haven’t done right, when you last missed reverence to the Gods or didn’t take part in the dance, broke some tribal custom.

It would never, never be what happened to you with your mother and your father forty years ago. Only our culture uses that model, that myth.” — James Hillman

Every culture has an ideal successful human. Ours is a little stupid, in my opinion. It’s superficial in the extreme, based on how we look to others, how much we own, how well we can sell ourselves to the highest bidder.

Marketing detached from scruples is the norm in our ethos. Those who can successfully accomplish this trick are held up as paragons to imitate. It’s a fairly rarified talent, though. If it were common, maybe there would be fewer homeless and poverty stricken people wandering our streets.