.. "fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water" do not matter.
"I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers
words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him.
He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see
them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time.
Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he
knows them in the naming.
— Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"

Two kinds of people in this world: Those that use facts and figures as a refuge, and those that use them to take flight.

I’ve been dealing with some annoying distractions with regard to
small minded people who would rather bog down in
rules/specifications/legaleez than actually pretend to know the spirit,
the higher method to the legal/bureaucratic nonsense that surrounds us.

It’s funny to note that some people are particularly good at
mimicking the "letter of the law", but there are few who actually chew
it or understand on a level that doesn’t just make it a talisman of
protection from the unwashed masses.

I’m talking about empathy, passion, earnestness, idealism, facts as protectors and ideas as
enablers. East egg West egg, new wealth, old
wealth, the separation of classes from those that "get" it and those
that only imitate it. I am fully convinced that the assumption of power
or old money (however ugly it can otherwise be) represents a natural
relationship with the things we "know" as versus the scandalous whip
that learned facts and deludes and concludes that it is all there is.

Knowledge is NOT power, never was and never will be. Knowledge is
the great liberator that lets one off that little ledge upon which
we’ve holed up. Would you hurl stones from your nook and laugh at the
ignorant or perhaps put yourself to flight and risk falling?

Before we put someone down for ignorance we should ask ourselves
whom do I serve: Do I serve my place, my space, my territory, or am I
an agent of the Truth, the essence of a thing and the spirit.

And it all comes full circle doesn’t it? Pick any idea from the New
Testament, Leave your belongs and come with me, Believe in me and you
shall have eternal life, let he who is without sin cast the first
stone. We could quote all day, but if we only see them as stones, we
end up with nothing, tucked into our nook, huddled clinging to our
knees in the cold and out of the light.