Burning Books

A moderately to seriously deranged pastor (Jones) in Gainesville, Florida got the world's attention by threatening to burn the Koran. Everybody from Obama on down paid attention to this pathetic pastor. Why?
Why should burning the book be any more worthy of the world's attention than our killing of more than a million people in Iraq to get their oil?
Because it was a symbol. We are not a rational race, we operate off symbols. We scream in delight at football games, we pay exorbitant sums for cars that will go fast on roads that are choked with traffic that won't let us go fast.
We live by symbols. The Koran is such a symbol.
So when we wish to make a change in our life, one of the things that works best is to make a small symbolic change. If you want to stop procrastinating, do one small thing you've been putting off.
If you know the Enneagram, do one small activity that is typical of your stress or security point. For example, if you are a Two, your connecting points are 4 and 8, so do one small aesthetic thing that is self-nurturing: buying flowers or decorating your office or learning to knit. Abstract resolutions like "I'm going to take better care of my self," are useless. New Year's resolutions usually fail for this reason.