Snakes!!
Albert Einstein once said the most important question a human being can ask is “Is the universe friendly?”
Think of that for a moment. How would you answer? If you think the universe is truly friendly and supportive of you, this obviously has a huge effect on your perceptions and behaviour. The same applies if you think the Cosmos is hostile - or just indifferent to your fate.
On a first reading, Einstein’s question is trivially true. If you’ve decided, consciously or unconsciously, that the universe is friendly, your positive outlook is likely to be mirrored by positive responses from others, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about your world being fundamentally good. You are likely to have more friends, job offers, etc.
Conversely, if you are suspicious by nature, or walk around with a cloud over your head, you’re not likely to be much fun at parties, although you may win nodding approval from fellow grumps. At the very least your life is likely to seem a series of disappointments.
This is pretty self-evident stuff. From Ralph Waldo Emerson to Dale Carnegie to Wayne Dyer, most of us have heard the drill: life is what you make it.
Well, as they like to say in political circles, perception is reality. Sometimes we need reminding how much our expectations drive what we experience.
Sci-fi author Michael Crichton supplies an amusing example in his 1988 memoir Travels. In the early seventies, flush with success from spinning his novel The Andromeda Strain into a critically and commercially acclaimed film, he bought a home in the hills of Los Angeles.
A friend asked him if he was afraid of the snakes. “What snakes?” the author asked. The rattlesnakes, of course, which his friend told him, come out in force during the dry season.
Crichton returned to his magnificent new home in a complete funk and didn’t have any fun at all. He just looked for snakes.
“I worried that snakes were sneaking into my bedroom, so I locked all the doors every night to keep the snakes out. I thought snakes might come to the swimming pool to drink the water, so I avoided the swimming pool, particularly in the heat of the day, because the snakes were probably sunning on my deck.
I never walked around my property, because I was sure there were snakes in the bushes. I walked only on the little path on the side of the house, and I peered around every corner before I turned it. But, increasingly, I didn’t like to go outside at all.
I became a prisoner in my own house. I had altered my entire behaviour and my emotional state purely on the basis of something I had been told. I still hadn’t seen any snakes. But I was now afraid.”
One day he saw his gardener tramping fearlessly around the property. The author asked if there were any rattlers in the area. Sure, his gardener replied, especially in the dry season.
Wasn’t he worried? The gardener shrugged and said he’d only seen a rattler once in over six years. He simply went and got a shovel and killed it.
Only one snake in six years? Crichton’s mood brightened. In rational terms, there was really nothing to be worried about. He sat by the pool for the rest of the day.
As the gardener was leaving, he told the author he could be sure there were no snakes on the property, because Crichton had so many gophers.
Gophers! The very critters that the recent homeowner had spent weeks setting traps for, trying to poison, and taking potshots at with his air rifle. All to no effect whatever. “Each morning fresh gopher burrows crisscrossed my lawn. It was extremely frustrating. My house looked like National Gopher Park.”
Crichton began to rethink how to deal with the tunneling terrors, and eventually the gophers’ mortal enemies came to mind. “Was there anything I could do to attract rattlesnakes to my house? Put out some favourite rattlesnake food, or some dishes of water?”
Thinking back on his conceptual gymnastics over pest problems, Crichton realized he went through a whole series of changes without ever actually seeing a snake. “I felt different only because I had shifted perspectives,” he noted, at one moment hating gophers, the next fearing snakes, the next hating gophers even more and wishing for more snakes.
“Each shift in perspective was accompanied by a total change in my attitudes, the physiology, my behaviour, my emotions. I was immediately and wholly modified by each new perspective that I adopted.”
If a person can change their mind-body state that radically over something as mundane as snakes and gophers, imagine what choosing between a friendly or unfriendly universe might mean to their state of being.
Your "neutral" scribe;
Allan W Janssen
Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) www.God-101.com
Think of that for a moment. How would you answer? If you think the universe is truly friendly and supportive of you, this obviously has a huge effect on your perceptions and behaviour. The same applies if you think the Cosmos is hostile - or just indifferent to your fate.
On a first reading, Einstein’s question is trivially true. If you’ve decided, consciously or unconsciously, that the universe is friendly, your positive outlook is likely to be mirrored by positive responses from others, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about your world being fundamentally good. You are likely to have more friends, job offers, etc.
Conversely, if you are suspicious by nature, or walk around with a cloud over your head, you’re not likely to be much fun at parties, although you may win nodding approval from fellow grumps. At the very least your life is likely to seem a series of disappointments.
This is pretty self-evident stuff. From Ralph Waldo Emerson to Dale Carnegie to Wayne Dyer, most of us have heard the drill: life is what you make it.
Well, as they like to say in political circles, perception is reality. Sometimes we need reminding how much our expectations drive what we experience.
Sci-fi author Michael Crichton supplies an amusing example in his 1988 memoir Travels. In the early seventies, flush with success from spinning his novel The Andromeda Strain into a critically and commercially acclaimed film, he bought a home in the hills of Los Angeles.
A friend asked him if he was afraid of the snakes. “What snakes?” the author asked. The rattlesnakes, of course, which his friend told him, come out in force during the dry season.
Crichton returned to his magnificent new home in a complete funk and didn’t have any fun at all. He just looked for snakes.
“I worried that snakes were sneaking into my bedroom, so I locked all the doors every night to keep the snakes out. I thought snakes might come to the swimming pool to drink the water, so I avoided the swimming pool, particularly in the heat of the day, because the snakes were probably sunning on my deck.
I never walked around my property, because I was sure there were snakes in the bushes. I walked only on the little path on the side of the house, and I peered around every corner before I turned it. But, increasingly, I didn’t like to go outside at all.
I became a prisoner in my own house. I had altered my entire behaviour and my emotional state purely on the basis of something I had been told. I still hadn’t seen any snakes. But I was now afraid.”
One day he saw his gardener tramping fearlessly around the property. The author asked if there were any rattlers in the area. Sure, his gardener replied, especially in the dry season.
Wasn’t he worried? The gardener shrugged and said he’d only seen a rattler once in over six years. He simply went and got a shovel and killed it.
Only one snake in six years? Crichton’s mood brightened. In rational terms, there was really nothing to be worried about. He sat by the pool for the rest of the day.
As the gardener was leaving, he told the author he could be sure there were no snakes on the property, because Crichton had so many gophers.
Gophers! The very critters that the recent homeowner had spent weeks setting traps for, trying to poison, and taking potshots at with his air rifle. All to no effect whatever. “Each morning fresh gopher burrows crisscrossed my lawn. It was extremely frustrating. My house looked like National Gopher Park.”
Crichton began to rethink how to deal with the tunneling terrors, and eventually the gophers’ mortal enemies came to mind. “Was there anything I could do to attract rattlesnakes to my house? Put out some favourite rattlesnake food, or some dishes of water?”
Thinking back on his conceptual gymnastics over pest problems, Crichton realized he went through a whole series of changes without ever actually seeing a snake. “I felt different only because I had shifted perspectives,” he noted, at one moment hating gophers, the next fearing snakes, the next hating gophers even more and wishing for more snakes.
“Each shift in perspective was accompanied by a total change in my attitudes, the physiology, my behaviour, my emotions. I was immediately and wholly modified by each new perspective that I adopted.”
If a person can change their mind-body state that radically over something as mundane as snakes and gophers, imagine what choosing between a friendly or unfriendly universe might mean to their state of being.
Your "neutral" scribe;
Allan W Janssen
Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) www.God-101.com
Labels: friendly universe, perception, snakes, unfriendly universe
posted by Allan W Janssen | 11:40 a.m.
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