“Folks, it’s time to evolve. That’s why we’re troubled. You know why our institutions are failing us, the church, the state, everything’s failing? It’s because, um – they’re no longer relevant. We’re supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right?”
― Bill Hicks
We evolve as people and as cultures. The dance is ever continuing. We live in an age very different from our parents and our grandparents and our kids are growing up in an even different age. Yet so many of our societal institutions stay the same. Our public educational systems are still basically the ones set up to teach a generation of factory and office workers in the 1950’s. Oh they have newer technology yet the techniques are basically the same. Yet kids raised on the internet and modern gaming systems are very different than the ones that were not raised on them. The statistics for kids with learning difficulties (i.e. kids who just don’t learn the way that teachers are taught to teach them) are increasing and yet the educational system has not caught up. The same can be said for medical systems, welfare systems, religions, care for the disabled and almost any other system that you can name. Yet by and large modern society is so invested in these systems that they would rather fight over the money to fund them than come up with new ways of doing things that fit the way we live and learn.
Political budgets grow thinner and thinner. They have to find a way to fund the additional costs of keeping these moribund systems going and about the only budget that seems to increase is the salaries of the politicians. This has the result that every one of these systems fight for their slice of the budget and end up having to do more with less all in the name of keeping things going.
It’s all very good to point out the problems. There has been study after study saying what I am saying here and yet people fear change even when they know it may be the best thing possible for ourselves, our children and for society. Maybe if enough people realized the need to change and demanded it, our systems could evolve to match the pace of our culture. Until then, it seems we slide down the slope. Because ultimately there is only one alternative to evolution. One way or another new systems will come. Even if they are built on the ruins of our current ones. Wouldn’t it be better if we decided to consciously change things?
Blessings, G
“The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules—but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them.”
― Aleister Crowley
In my junior year of high school I learned that once I understood how a system worked then I could get away with a lot more. The prep school I attended had scheduling rules for everything and everyone knew where they had to be at any given time. Because I showed myself to be skilled mathematically they wanted to ease me into the more advanced class so they gave me a choice. I could go to the easier class third period and have a study period right after or I could go to the advanced class fourth period and have a study period first. I chose to tell the third period Math teacher I was going to the fourth period Math and the fourth period teacher I was going to third and gave myself two study halls. That worked well for three months. I hadn’t come up with a contingency plan for what happened when the time came to turn in my grades and they talked with each other. After my suspension I still ended up with an A in Math for the year.
In any system the better we know the rules and more importantly their reason for existing in the first place, the easier it is to shape them for our benefit. In the tarot, once you learn the meanings of the cards and how they balance each other out, you can break away from the established meanings and see the complete reading as a gestalt of forces balancing each other out. This doesn’t work quite as well until you learn meanings and placements of the cards.
When dealing with people you have to learn the niceties of manners and social protocols of whatever social group you find yourself in before you can play fast and loose. Then if you do it in the right way, you are a hero. If you do it awkwardly you end up the buffoon. In my life I have done both.
Within ourselves, we have our own set of rules and occasionally we come across one we didn’t know we had, usually when someone we know and trusted inadvertently breaks it. The better we know ourselves, the better we can learn how to handle it when our rules get stepped on and the better able we are to edit the rule book.
Blessings, G
Greeting the Visitors by G A Rosenberg 
Inter-dimensional Impressions by G A Rosenberg 
