Paso Robles looks like a ranching town trying to re-brand itself as a wine region, with western wear stores and wine tasting shops. Downtown, trim shops ring a grassy square with the old public library building in the centre. A small newspaper box on the corner advertises for a Tea Party convention: "Our government is trying to redesign our society by redistributing our income."
Trying to redesign our society. This is indeed the prerogative of government. Redistributing our income. Indeed, this is why government exists. Perhaps the Tea Party members, alarmed by the change they see, imagine that they could never need government services, neither welfare nor emergency services nor medical treatment. Such a position surely springs from a belief that one is in control of one's life: in control of whether one gets fired, or ill, or lost. But life experience suggests this is not so true (although it's an obviously appealing idea).
Buddhism suggests that the apparent coherence of the narrative of our lives is an illusion. It seems as though our lives unfold as a story; but in fact that's a trick of the mind. We seem to be in control, but there is no 'we.' We're good at interpreting the events of our lives as the fruit of cause and effect; we're not so good at exerting coherent control.
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