um...I often feel like we are progressing further and further down the road of babel. Soon everyone will speak their own language, and communication will be chaotic and embarassing. More noise= more misunderstandings= more arguements with no resolution. Each man SHALL be an island, truly.
Or maybe I'm just wack.
Does this sound familiar?

Agree with you both, except that I'm of the belief that there is an even spread of positive, tragic, ridiculous and absurd. Chaos was defined by the Greeks and it's one of the few concepts besides mathmatics that has sustained. We can strive for all the order possible that humans can devise,,, and then a hurricane like Katrina hits and chaos rules once again. People outsmart themselves everytime.

In my personal life I do feel very out of place, out of synch. I don't surround myself with friends and I've grown to like it. So, I have become one of Ben's islands. I can't help being a cynic, jaded, out of step with the mob. Cursed, if you like. But the odd part is that I know I'm not alone.

When you say that you come across people that tend to be extraordinary, with no common theme, could it be that they have just tapped into a baser or fundamental realization? Is chaos a religion that keeps drawing us back in? When you understand that you can smell sunlight, have you tapped back into a saner reality than man has created? The only constant is change, and the majority hate change because they like feeling in control.

Modernity has solved nothing. The ancient cultures of the Chinese, Japanese, and American Indian didn't have to complicate the world. They knew that less is more. Instead of trying to tame the world, they communed with, and knew their place in it.

As Cole stated, "Often the highly irrational thought processes of the people that I come across is so clear and transparent." Can I overlay that onto the 10,000 people who thumbed their noses at Katrina and won't leave their homes? The Sioux and other Indian peoples were masters at logistics and could move the entire tribe with every member acting as one entity. Modern Americans are clueless because they're too smart for their own good. So the communication breakdown that Ben brought up is already in place.

I believe in a parallel universe theory, living simultaneously with a million other ME in them. I believe that I'm in the wrong one here, or the surreal one as you say. I stopped believing that when we die we go to heaven, hell or purgatory. This is purgatory, here and now. No divine power could have conceived a more just punishment for people than what this planet serves up so perfectly,,, man's inhumanity to man! We are our own worst enemy!

This happens to me also. I think it is because I am willing to make eye contact and converstion with anyone from the business man to the prostitute to the homeless man to the street evangalist, I sometimes ask myself why I didn't just tune them out and go on my way but I sometimes can't resist, it is better than a good book sometimes, and who doesn't have something to teach? Just don't follow anyone to isolated areas to check anyting out, that is usually a bad scene.