I once read…”When All Else Fails, Lower Your Expectations.”

On a HOOTERS sign no less!

“Matter” (the verb), or “meaning” is a human transaction, a phenomenon of our pure consciousness. It is not accessible to physical law or mathematical calculation.

To the kid who drives in the winning run at the city Little League Tournament it may “matter” a lot more than the four run homer does to the major league hitter with several World Series rings on his fingers. This is what I mean by making your own rules, creating your subjective reality, by defining the Universe in your own way, by taking control of the outside world so it works for you, not being its helpless victim.

The Christian martyr torn apart by wild beasts at the Coliseum dies a more meaningful and joyful death than the Emperor fed poison mushrooms by his scheming Queen. Is the Christ the martyr worshipped necessarily real, the Son of God, the Redeemer and Savior? Not necessarily, I certainly don’t believe he even exists. But the Christian chose a meaningful life, and death. Meaningful to him, and that is what matters to him. The Emperor, for all his power, did not.

This is what I’m getting at, that the outside world of electricity and atoms and gravity is not what matters, it’s the inside world we create from those particles and forces. The beauty and value of a painting cannot be determined by the chemistry of the paint, or the weave of the canvas it was brushed on.

As for your example, a comedy skit that fails is at most an embarassment to the comedian, quickly forgetten by both the performer and the audience. No big deal, really. But if it was deliberately composed just to embarass and humiliate someone else, and by extension, to deride and mock all those who honor and respect its target, then it matters very much to those who watch it flop laughably, and it matters very differently to those who wished it to succeed and those who were delighted to see it fail.

The value of an event or an object is not an intrinsic property of that event or object. It is a property of the relationship that object or event has to the human consciousnesses that perceive and interpret it. Is the martyr’s death a hideous, painful waste, or a glorious and transcendent moment of triumph? The martyr gets to make that choice, not the universe.

THe universe does not care. We do. And that’s why we matter.

It really is relative to the observer.

But remember, you have a lot of control of that outside universe, not only can you make things happen, you have a choice on how you respond to what it does to you. And just in case you haven’t noticed, we all don’t see the same universe out there. Everyone you talk to has different ideas about what is going on, and how to deal with it. That’s what TB and I are always arguing about.

What this tells me is that we all create our own universe to a certain extent. Not the universe of gravity and electricity and atoms, but the universe of human relations and community, society and culture, the world the psychologist and sociologist and anthroplogist studies.

Even if there is a “real world”, we all experience different versions of it. And what we experience is what we have to deal with, isn’t it? We decide what is important and what matters, and we even have some say as to the rules we choose to play by.

If you have managed to convince yourself there is only one real universe, and only one way to deal with it, and that you have nothing to do with it or say about it, and that you and you alone have been able to figure that out, then you clearly have no clue what is going on.