Trust No One
not because they are bad but because they are mechanical
I harbor a personal trait that mingles idealism and foolishness.
I do not check out people before I meet them and I do not βkeep recordsβ or files on those who violate agreements or projects. If I get burned, I have little to stand on.
A person is either good for his word, or not. No degree of vetting or backpedaling alters that. In my experience, most peopleβwithout nefarious intentβare not.
Because of this, seeing oneβs self-image in anotherβs actionsβas I doβis the most depleting of cycles. It risks your life.
This is not because people do not feel noble things. But because they cannot act on them.
Feelings and thoughts die in the machinery of being, on both individual and macro scales. Words, sentimentalities, claimsβthey are levers with no attachments. Man is in pieces.
Were that not so, humanity would be saved from itself many times over. We have the Gospels, the Dhammapada, the Tao Te Ching, Confucius, the Vedas, Marcus Aurelius, and on and on.
None penetrate.
Not because these teachings are wrong or because the human community disputes them. But because what I have written is the truth.
