outer and/or inner journey?

Which was the more life-changing and lasting journey this summer -- the outer or the inner?

My trip to China for 3 difficult weeks...with that glimpse of Mao in his anti-Feng-shui Memorial? the crowds of the forbidden in the Forbidden City? thoughts on the politics of the aesthetics of decor in the Great Hall of the People? my visit to Confucius' home? that day's ordeal to reach the top of desecrated sacred Mt Tai? ...

My soon -- in our jet-age -- enduring again, with an attempted smile, the thoughtless mental state in the Heart of Dixie? the nervous excitement on "hiking out" on one pontoon for those high wind moments on my Hobie Wave? the emergency beaching of the boat, in fear, as lightning struck too near? the great fried crab claws?...

Or the insights and comprehensions of our human story via reading through When China Rules the World, The Idea of the West, The Adventurer -- The Fate of Adventure in the Western World, Inventing Europe, et al?

the inner mask

It is the acting, the necessary outer smile, the inner "smile", ie the obligatory positive attitude in the voice, the control of the face as an outer mask, the genuine or fictitious interest in a topic, that makes being in the South a trying, inner ordeal of acting on a foreign stage that exhausts a "Steppenwolf".

Southern Gentleman vs Steppenwolf

Journal extract:
people do not think here. they are awake enough to do their how of living, and perhaps a few other aspects -- but that "God died" some century ago, they still have not heard. God is called in on Sundays, or sometimes to bless meals. or as an explanatory guidance behind exceptions in disasters. God may be their ultimate concern -- to adapt Tillich -- but they 'live and move and have their being' in a very penultimate, this-worldly state of mind and life. a "Steppenwolf" studies questions and seeks answers 'they have not dreamt of in their philosophy' -- or only known in their forgotten sleeps' dreams.
they live absorbed in the how of this world. not the why of this, or an other.
plus, thy are most all so encouched in society, as to make a strong individuality appear anti-social. each time I come here, it is like going into a world of those asleep in their waking lives. Nietzsche's madman proclaimed the void at the heart of life. i am too polite, or see no point, here.
Southern Gentleman vs Steppenwolf

Put on your body?

Reading in Inventing Europe, and reflecting on China. Do people put on cultures, languages, even psyhologies, like they put on clothes. The answer would seem to be otherworldly.

Sumptuary social identity

A minister and his assistant walk up to the coffee shop where I sit from the nearby Episcopal Church where I went as a child -- called Carpe Diem, they would rather offer carpe aeternitatis. Wearing their white collar and black shirt, they thereby distinguish themselves via dress from others. Social definition by dress was once-upon-a-time law, but few people are comprehensible by clothes today.

The sky as silent audience?

Alone on a balcony deep in the night, with no one at all aware of one's presence, thoughts and feelings there... Speaking, if only inwardly, to the sky, to "the world"...which may or may not be a silent audience.

Two too safe souls?

Yestereve, in an old-style southern home, with pleasant wine and delicious seafood, I talked to two old friends who seem to have known no strong passions, illusions, dreams, confusions,...in their lives. How shall they understand why in my search I went to eg Concord, Dornach, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Mt. Sinai, Varanasi, Down House, Tintern, Weimar, Qufu, Mt Tai, et many al?

Not in "The 21st Century?

Those many who unhesitatingly talk about how this and that cannot be possible in "the 21st century", are really unconscious and/or ignorant of the cultural and social realities that the date -- in a post--Christian, post-European? post-"Western"... -- time, has little reality of meaning. Most of that was destroyed in the devastations of "the 20th century".
Such speakers are like somnambulists, talking in their waking sleep.

Inadequate to the tasks

The levels, the perspectives, the mentalities and psyches of public "discourse" -- often rather just emotional arguing (a kind of mud wrestling with ideas, passions and emotions) -- in the USA, are not near adequate to the tasks America(ns) and the world face. But most argue so unawares.

"The USA" as Cosmos?

It seems to me there is a tendency -- amidst the general sleep of, as I see them, most of American minds -- to not recognize that the USA itself, viewed as a whole social-political entity, is less than life and world, thus they tend to reason, moralize, dream, idealize...as if America(n) was a sufficient world. Life and world are more than the USA. Obvious? Most do not seem to reason so.

Steppenwolf in (spite of) the heart of Dixie

Desperation, with a smile.

Petty passionate politics

The passionate pettiness of much, if not most, public discourse on the TV in the USA allows little to no hope to a serious mind and personality for improvement in the American "body politic".

Equality?

In social, cultural, mental and other aspects, hierarchy is the actual fact of life and society.

Insightseers, Insightseekers

Goethe commented to Eckermann on a letter he had received from Rome in which some visitors from Germany were more interested in themselves and enjoying than education, enhancement...in a German word: Bildung. Studying the history of travel I found that in the late 19th century the idea, if not expression, "been there, done that" more broadly arose.
If I were to try to summarize the mentality of most tourists I have seen in the world...it could be sightseeing. Those of interest to me would rather be insightseers. Better: insightseekers.

Hegel Who?

Looking thru some of a sister-in -law's old family papers last night, from her great grandmother who had been a missionary in China in the 1880s, came upon the name "Hegel" in her great grandfather's extracts --apparently from Durant's History of Philosophy. Neither she nor my second brother knew the name at all. They didnt even mention having 'heard the name, but forgetting who he was'.
Nice successful people who have little, verging on no, idea of our human story. (The etymology of nice helps explain this.)

TV as window

In China in July, watching TV on many channels in a language I knew two words of was quite interesting. Being "down South" allows a similar opportunity. One could compare the windows onto society and the psyches of the very contrasting people by closely studying both.

Deep Sleep in the Deep South

The Heart of Dixie is not the primary problem for an inner, educated, seeker like a Steppenwolf. Nor are the manners , or seafood. But the Mind of Dixie shows how people in the South prefer their traditions' waking sleep. And a thoughtful, thinking, observant "Steppenwolf" cannot but feel he is surrounded by a kind of popular stupor.