Transcription of Dialogs on Meaning, part 1 / 9.

- Complacency. If you take the issue of complacency for instance, I get really motivated. Saying “I am completely comfortable!” Yeah. Sure, you know. If that’s the way you style your way of life, then you can maybe keep yourself into believing you’re completely not attached to anything. But everything shows that you’re completely disappointed, frustrated and don’t know a way out of the life you find yourself in.

- What would be… For me, I see complacency…
- Who says the things the way they are, regarding to how you thought they were, only personally to you. So that there is something universal that can be said about things you think are personal. Which they aren’t. They aren’t personal. They are very, very universal. Everybody who behaves that way and ignores what is actually happening feels the way you feel. So don’t kid yourself you know, there is nothing unique about you. You are that same idiot. If it wasn’t so sad it would be funny.

Through the ages people have taught and told themselves that they are different from other people. The setting is maybe different and some of the connotations that they have but in the overall emotional and mental actuality they find themselves in, they’re all the same! And it is good that it is like that because otherwise the whole idea of communication between human beings would be impossible. We’re all referring to the same reality in the way that we experience this. We are all humans in the way that our senses and our thoughts give meaning to situations and there is this range of mental states in there that we all come from. So complacency is death incarnated. It is not life. It is an avoidance of what life really is. It is the avoidance of all the insecurities, the risks that are involved, all that kind of stuff. People can choose to be complacent and choose not to pick up the challenge that’s in there, but the only way that that can be done responsibly is by doing it in a way that you not hurt other people in the process. And that is pretty impossible as long as you’re dealing with other people.

- What do you mean, in the sense of…
- You cannot not hurt other people with your own complacency if you’re dealing with them. The only way you cannot hurt or influence other people negatively is by non existing. But you already exist in the heads and the minds of people that know you’re alive. So there is no responsible way out. Complacency is a responsibility.

- When you say “complacency…”. What do you… I can associate with a lot of things.
- Well, complacency means that you say “Oh, it is not that bad!”, or “It is not that important!”, or just doing away with reality by simply ignoring part of it or the whole thing doesn’t really matter.

There are these old people and if you come to know them than you feel like you want to meet them more and more. They are old, but they are alive. There is something in their eyes, you know. And there is old people who are complacent, they are not alive anymore. When you see the two together, it’s like you see a young kid and a retarded old… creature.

- My father in that sense.
- Yeah. Well, your father was a kid in a lot of things.
- Yeah, in some ways…

- It’s funny because complacency isn’t necessarily seen as complacency by the individual.
- I don’t know. They see it as realism. As being in line with reality or something. But the whole thing is, that you can decide what is in line with reality. Being in line with reality is an experience. It’s not a thought, it’s not a conclusion. It’s a discovery, it’s a joy ride. Which is not always very joyful though, but still it’s… Reality is always more than what you think it is. You think you know reality is complacency. It’s arrogance.

- How do you address somebody, you know… We create the video now, I think to myself… If I… If I look to someone who is… I see like five people in my head that in my life. Older and mature… I felt to be… I respected them because they succeeded in a lot of ways but by the same token I always noticed that there was always sort of lifelessness about them.
- Yeah…
- How would you.. How would you reach someone like that?
- Well, the funny thing is, the way you speak already contains the conflict that you’re in. Because you speak about “them” as having achieved something and “them” as being complacent but where the actuality is that there has been achievements and those are the things you respect. Not the people that are achieving. It’s achievement that is being respected. So, how do you address people like that… No, what you have to say or what you have to look at, or could be looking at is: what is it that I respect, what is it that I don’t and how do I address that? Than it doesn’t really matter who they are. It is the whole picture of what you see and the inconsistencies in there and then you bring that forward and that is how you contact “them”, whoever they are. They are only the name or the image you give to the… How do you call that?
- Persona? Or…
- No, no persona… The manifestation! That they represent. They are a manifestation of a mind in a certain state. With a certain past and a certain potential. And that manifestation we call “them”. Or you call “yourself”, or whatever. But the manifestation, that’s the real thing. That’s always dynamic and complex and never really the same. Although you look at the surface, it looks the same. But every step they take, every breath they take, changes them irreversibly. It’s like they say “I don’t know the exact data but every so many years all the cells in your body have been replaced. No molecule is the same. How can we say that somebody exists?

- You brought a pretty big concept in now.
- Yeah, sure! But I’m just showing to you that in order to solve the issue that you are raising, you would have to at least consider that maybe the concepts you’re using are causing you to have the problem in the first place! And for normal situations you don’t need to go this deep but if you, within the context you are thinking, you cannot solve the issues that you are addressing, then possibly you need to reconsider the concepts. And the context. Maybe the limitation is in your thinking!