Heartless

Another night at the diner, another run of humanity.  Another thought sparked by one of those who also watch the wee hours go by waiting on the dawn.

She said “society is heartless.”  She’s right, it is.  And the why of that isn't so very hard, although to fully understand the how of it is to understand most of humanity's history as a side effect of that understanding.  

For society to have a heart society would have to be self aware enough, as a discrete entity, to host the functions of empathy, the ability to see in another self aware sentience an emotional state comparable to some state known to its’ self.  So far, to the best of my knowledge, no society has ever been self aware enough to host such a thought.  A simple answer indeed.

Perhaps if enough individuals become both self and self-source aware in time to do a decent job of parenting the emerging collective entities as they mature maybe someday there will be a society sufficiently self aware to actually have a heart on behalf of its’ component individuals. 

What a sweet dream. Merry Christmas world.

Someone's Child

===Originally published July 24, 2011===

We are all someone's child, all of us are.

One very, very good thing to remember is this: time moves forward for our parents just as it does for us. They were not the same people then as they are now, time's flow of events will have changed and grown them as well.

A great deal of unhappiness in our world begins from not recognizing this simple fact of life. Many, far to many, will look back on their childhood and judge the actions of their parents as if their parents were then the same people they are at the time the judgment is made. They will hold the younger parent responsible to the same level of understanding that is seen in the elder parent, a retroactive judgment. Such retroactive judgments are terribly unfair, both to the parent being judged and to ourselves, for when we form negative opinions, when we assign fault and blame as a result of such retroactive judgments many will be inaccurate, and our assumptions of motive (they just didn't care; I must be bad; I did something wrong but they won't tell me what; they loved so-and-so more than I; they sold me out; I was expendable) will likely be just as inaccurate.

We all have events in our past that did us hurt and harm, some unsavory event we would never want to repeat. Those events are history, fixed, they cannot be changed only grown beyond in understanding. All such events cast a shadow across a life, they do. Those shadows may be short, merely a bit of a dimming to our joy, or they may be long and dark creating such pain in our life as to rob us of joy for a time, but still: they are but the shadow of an event gone by, fixed and finite. They will come to an end unless something happens to extend them, to give them new power in the present as their power from the past fades to the light of new events arriving. Such shadows can only endure beyond their original lifespan if in some manner we help them to survive.

As I look out on the world, as I look in on myself, the most common way we help those shadows survive is in those times when a retroactive judgment causes us to assign a motive that is not accurate, that is not true, for those errors do not remain in the past, no, they come forward through the years with us. Every time such an error influences an event in the present the error creates a new shadow to add to the first, extending the shadow of that first unsavory event into times and places and peoples that had absolutely nothing to do with the event that created the shadow in the first place.

Perhaps the most damning form of this error is when we pass a retroactive judgment on ourselves, and allow the errors of motive to apply not to another (where we can separate ourselves from the error in some manner: a falling out, a divorce, a breaking of all ties) but to our younger self. Those, those are the most dangerous errors there are, for you can never be free of yourself. The error applied to another will only impact the parts of life where the other is found, but such errors applied to ourselves will impact any and every facet of our lives for after all, we are in EVERY moment of our own life. Those are the errors that can do more than damage a life, those are the errors that can destroy a life.

Neither they nor we are the same person now as was then, beware the damage retroactive judgment can do to your life, to the lives of those around you. Beware of allowing such errors to extend the shadows. I weep to think of how much misery is caused in such a manner.

Jesus and the Contra Social Blues...

Gaia always sleeps with her back to the city...
the humans built it, the humans can care for it.

Yup… here in the good ‘ole US of A it’s another Thanksgiving holiday.  Today is when, if you honor the tradition, you’re supposed to find something to be thankful for.  I had a bit of trouble with that thought this morning, kind of struggled with the idea.  Not that I don’t have a great many things in my life to be thankful for, I really do, but finding the sentiment to match the status just wasn’t happening.  And Thanksgiving just means Christmas is on the horizon, oh yea, you can hear ‘em bringing the Mighty Merchandising Machine screaming outa’ the hole in yet another totally trite full throttle launch, for those with ears to hear it’s rather deafening.  Before the day was very old at all I was hearing Howard Keel in the background, whisper soft for the time being but sadly certain to get louder and louder for the next month or so.

…You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch…

The holiday blahs, the secret bummed out depressions, nothing in those that hasn’t been spoken of a bazillion times in different places, by different people.   The facades and the fakes and the 100 proof punch that greases the wheels, nothing new, not at all.  So common place in fact they’re well understood as being just part and parcel of the culture.  Flipping this fact around though actually made me feel a great deal better, I found what I’d been looking for.

I’ve been calling myself contra-social for quite some time now, and for the most part it is a fair description that hasn’t treated me badly, not at all.  I make it a habit to commonly reveal this fact about myself in part as fair warning for those I meet, but mostly just to remind myself that being contra-social demands a fair amount of very deliberate care and compassion and empathy for those whose lives are anchored in the social as a safety mechanism for your own soul and sanity lest frustration empower the pathological.  To be contra-social is not to hate your fellow man, far from it.  It is actually to understand the inevitable consequences of what the law of averages compels society to compel on your fellow man, have something to offer him in defense of those discomforts.  What I realized is that the holiday blahs are actually just a fine, fine marker for those who are host and home to some degree of contra-social thought, and allowing for how common the holiday blahs really are that means I’m not nearly as alone as I thought I was, and that?  That, contradictory as it might sound, is actually something to be very thankful for.

End and upshot of it all is that I’m gonna kick back and enjoy the day, tell Howard I’d much rather hear him sing Stranger in Paradise, and continue my own tradition of giving someone something they really need in perhaps July, saying Merry Christmas, and meaning it.  C’mon world, cut all us contra-social grinches some slack, quit the whole psycho-sham faux pity thing.  And the same goes for all my fellow grinches out there, cut the crap and live up to your life not down to their expectations.  Maybe Santa only works out in public one day a year, but I’m pretty sure Jesus was the 24/7/365 kind, and after a century of what Madison Avenue has been hustling on his name? That makes which one has my loyalty a no brainer indeed. 

Yup, I’m contra-social, and the best part of this particular holiday is realizing I don’t need to apologize for it.

A fading...

This post is in memoriam of a truly great woman.   

My world is a bit thinner now. I always knew her as Aunt Bea.  In my childhood she was a fixture, in my youth a reference standard, in my adulthood a power-player in the realms of reclaiming those parts of my childhood lost.  She passed into history on Friday, and she will be missed.

Among many, many things she gave me back was the year of 1968.  It had been lost to folding memory to conceal the events of that year.  Some of them I now have in clear focus, others are still a bit foggy, but they’re there because of her.  It was not a good year for me, but even a bad year is still a year and needs to have it’s place in the chronologies of life.  She and the wife got to comparing notes and realized the truth, between them they convinced me.  What a gift.

There are so many stories I might tell of her, and I know only a tiny fraction of what there is to tell, but this one perhaps gives the deepest clue to the woman.  Once upon a time quite by accident she ended up serving as the justice of the peace for her town.  The fellow who’d had the job wanted to go on vacation and needed a two week stand in.  He took his vacation, while on vacation suffered a heart attack and died, Aunt Bea was stuck with a job she really didn’t want for several years.

Close to our home town is an Indian reservation, and the Indian folk were the most peaceful of people when sober, and some of the rowdiest when drunk, needless to say Aunt Bea as justice of the peace saw a great many of them in the state between, which is to say hung-over.  Now Aunt Bea was first and foremost a pragmatic woman, one of the last daughters of the frontier, and she was a most tidy woman.  Litter just did not sit well with her.  If the crime was simply being embarrassingly drunk in public she really didn’t believe in fines, her standard was to make an apology by cleaning the town square and park.  When both were immaculate you were done, go home.  Within the first year she had them pretty well trained: it didn’t matter if you’d been in trouble or not, come Saturday morning pretty much the full crew of drinkers showed up midmorning to help clean the park… so their buddies would get loose earlier in the day.

Probably her biggest gift to me though was a phrase, and the attitude that goes with it:  “Do what ya’ can where ya’ stand…”  I do try.

Farewell, Sunbeam.  

AP: Her Gaze...

You'll paint 'ore me what you wish my boy,

...see mother mistress lover toy...

and smile to think you've seen my all

...warm woman fertile fair and tall... 

who'll heat your midnight winter dreams 

...caress of fire spill'd sugar'd creams... 

but I say to you oh handsome lad 

...proud man of Athens logic clad... 

think not to sway my siren's heart 

...conniving bold cruel Hera's part... 

with deeds of war and hoarded gold 

...tokens torn from Hades' hold... 

of these I've borne a gluttons fill 

...as empty echo, sterile shill... 

so reach for me if think you must 

...make safe your heart, safer trust... 

in honest hope of hearth and home 

...adventure sated ne'er to roam... 

where we might dwell in cottage walls 

...and laugh my love for all who call. 

It still happens, from time to time... it's always such a treat when it does.  This was inspired by an image on DeviantArt [link].  It all but wrote itself in 30 minutes, and that included cooking lunch.  I wish to express my gratitude to the photographer Mark Daughn and his model Ms. Chrystal Lee for their gift so appropriate to a housebound snowy day. Thanks guys, until you've actually met Erato you can't know what a delight it is to find an image such as yours that awakens the gift of the muse.

By way of comment…

I offered this in a comment to an artist on DeviantArt.com who spoke of not really knowing the difference between erotic art and pornography.  The tone of their post was they had been beat up by the question to the point of not really caring.   I’m reposting it here because this is about as succinct a definition as I’ve ever managed to capture.  I feel this is an important thing to care about since in truth the subject runs a great deal deeper than simply the realms of art.

***   ***   ***

In your journal you pose a most pertinent question concerning the difference between erotic art and pornography.  Please, allow me to offer for your consideration the definition I've found that fits observable reality without contradiction.

As you say, there is sex, and there is death.  From nature's perspective there is one absolute demand placed on all life: make more life so life will not end with your ending.

From this it then follows that the erotic arts are all things, sexual or otherwise, that celebrate the ability to make more life.  The erotic arts are in fact quite wide ranging, but always share several things in common: they imply fertility; and, by literal or implied content are taken from a binocular perspective, more than one, for it takes more than one to create new life. By way of example, for those who truly understand the erotic an image of a fruited orchard is just as erotic as an image of a man and a woman sharing sex, for the end result is the same... more life.

The pornographic is however all things, again sexual or otherwise, that abdicate the responsibility of creating new life to replace the current life that death will, ultimately, set non-living.  There are many forms of pornography, sexual pornography being the most recognized but hardly the most damaging.  To my thought the defining characteristic of pornography is a monocular perspective, the perspective of one and only one, and in that lonesomeness ultimately sterile, and in sterility doomed.

Since pornography presents a monocular focus it, like the erotic arts, is indeed a wide ranging thing. Pornography of any form presents to the world the lie that some single point of focus can create the life desired rather than the truth which is that any single point of focus can but reflect the content of the life already existing.  To those who truly understand the pornographic there are so many forms of pornography: pistol porn, power porn, pain porn, money porn... the list just goes on and on, our world is saturated in pornographic thought.  But in common to all of them is the implication that this one thing is what validates life to continue.  To understand pornography is to understand the mechanisms of death, and death is always faced... alone.

The erotic arts reflect the courage of life determined to live on, pornography reflects the fear and despair of death.

Hooters and another Lovely Lass...

As is not so uncommon I’m once again indebted to one of the kids crewing my favorite little diner for the thought source beginnings of a post.  I’ve had my head off in me own little world(s) for a while now writing on the stories, hadn’t really been paying much attention to other things, not really.  Anyway, early this morning the lass in question was involved in a chore that put her across from me (sitting at the counter sucking down coffee waiting on the day to begin), and rather than focus on the chore she was rambling a bit.  She’s a good storyteller, an intelligent young woman who’s easy comfortable company, easy on the eyes, end and upshot was directly she’d sparked a thought.

She was telling the story of the time she applied to work at a Hooters.  You know, Hooters, the place where they cater to all the misplaced bottle babies of the world.  She had the job if she wanted it, no issue there, but the manager who interviewed her said he was afraid she might have trouble fitting in being as how she was to intelligent.  Of all things... to intelligent to work where stereotype sexy is the defining job requirement.  As the story went she sat in with the other girls for an hour at a slow spot in their shift and in the end agreed with the manager.  She came to the conclusion that if the most intelligent comment heard in an hour involved a new shade of eye liner then no, probably not an enjoyable place for her to work.  She took a different job, like I said, she is an intelligent lass.

The thought she brought to focus doesn't have anything to do with eyeliner, or Hooters for that matter.  It has more to do with the cultural cliché of sexy dumb, blond or otherwise, and what that says about a significant fraction of the culture.  

Sometimes the mask does slip...
 when she doesn't think anyone is looking

Once upon a long time ago I knew a sexy blond, and yes, she was sexy, I mean drop dead gorgeous sexy, queer check sexy as we called it back in the day (queer check: walk her through a crowd of fifty boys and forty four of ‘em start dropping IQ points for lack of blood supply and the other six are confirmed gay), and she was anything but dumb.  Unless of course there was a strange male in the picture at which point you’d have sworn (if you didn’t know her) that she’d need help unwrapping her bubble gum.  It was so solidly part of her culture it was foundation deep in her personality, all but automatic. It’s the reasons behind this odd cultural convention I’m spelunking in today looking to see what’s to be found, a new rabbit hole if you will.

And the band played on...

I knew the phrase as an old folk euphemism for a long time before I found a source from history that made sense.  From the context folks used it in I’d assumed it meant doing the same old something in defiance of the fact it wouldn't do much good for anything, just force of habit, but since it was what you knew how to do you kept on doing it.  Like the dance band on the doomed Titanic, you know? What else do you do until it’s your turn to die?

For a couple of days now I've been wondering in light of how rapidly things change in this digital day just how much of what I see in the public domains is actually a case of some band that plays on, and what are the consequences of their music?  It feels like simple habit is an ever increasing power player in what I see.  I suppose I shouldn't say habit, that’s an unkind way to put it, habit is something personal.  I should say social momentum and try to be just a wee tiny bit politically correct.

Yes. Social momentum.  What happens when the liberals can’t believe there might  be a solution for a problem the conservatives can’t really  believe exists... and the band plays on.

To Castrate a Balrog...

This is actually a reply to a most excellent comment offered by my friend Alapip on my post “Tale Bobbing a Checkerboard CueBall” below.  Where this will stand on its’ own it will make more sense if you read what prompted it first.

  ===   ===   ===

Indeed, the trusted messenger who carries the deception.  Brings to mind Sauron, Sauron the deceiver ( JRR Tolkien’s classic example from his truly epic fantasy fiction... cited so as not to play favorites among the religions/mythologies currently working). 

In the days when Sauron seduced the Numenorian’s into such arrogance as to enact suicidal folly he still wore the body of a man, would appear fair to beautiful in the eyes of the world, and of course was still a Mia (empowered servant) of the fallen first Ainur (primordial spirits from before the world was made solvent) Melkor who was later renamed Morgoth, “Dark Enemy” (read “Devil” as is used today).  Point is, Sauron (at that point in the tale the conquered captive of Numenor) seduced the once noble Numenorians using exactly the same tactics, fears and divisive lies that were used to seduce the once noble American Conservative. 

The question before us is “who in the modern world is in the role of Sauron?”  With a total salute to Professor Tolkien’s genius I’m going to use the name of his character to represent the enemy of today, the forces and powers who in our world reprise the actions of Sauron in the service of his master Morgoth.

There is a reason the Conservatives (~Republican) were attacked first... they’re the homogenous core culture of America.  The Progressive, the Liberal (~Democrat) are not, they are the various offshoot cultures, the sum of them approximately equal in numbers to the core, and yet internally not one but rather several cultures who form alliances and coalitions to represent the various agendas sponsored by their varying motives.  Where they cooperate they do NOT truly trust each other internally, their motives are to disparate for full internal trust... net result being no ONE line of persuasion/propaganda would be effective against all of them, and their internal distrust would make it likely any one seduced would be set upon by the others.  The common culture Conservatives were near bulletproof to any external source, but being naively trusting internally totally vulnerable to a Sauron trained operative who once accepted was able to emulate their culture while corrupting it (dare I say Ronald Reagan?... oops, I just did...).

Since the core culture of America is predominantly Christian the churches became both victims and contagion vectors of the attack.  Sauron skillfully exploited the contradictions, the rationalizations inherent to any religion to disable the internal ethics of those he attacked.  Once the rationalizations had been in place for a generation or three they’d migrated into the culture, and the political structures  of religion that validate the ethical content of any culture embracing their belief structure became autonomous allies in his cause, ever more compromised and corrupted in any comparison between the ethics of the modern and the theologies evolved across the ages. 

Of course Sauron worked malice on more than simply the Men of Numenor, his malice was directed at all the free peoples.  In many places across the ages of middle earth he built alliances between essentially estranged peoples focused against some single group using the very lies he’d foisted on the one group to unite the others against them.  He was actually very, very good at letting others do the dirty work for him so that when his Orcs marched against them all they’d all been weakened.

Which brings me to my greatest fear in the present.  As I said earlier, the Liberals are not one culture, they are in fact several cultures and as with the speaking people’s who were Tolkien’s characters quite often quite estranged one from another.  Looking at the modern world objectively I am afraid Sauron is again using his old tactics: having corrupted the Conservatives is now using that corruption to unify the Liberals to the point they are terribly vulnerable to being deceived and seduced by some singular lie based on the focus of their alliance (most probably a lie impacting the spiritual, the theological elements of their lives that serve as the reference standard for ethics and the morality those ethics enable... convince them that the corruption they see is the result of Christianity and they're not likely to remember say the deeds of Zeus in his control of Olympus, or the actions of Loki or Spiderwoman... all the religions have equivalent characterizations of the same modes of thought, and the best way to get people to ignore the teachings of their own religion is to get them convinced “that only happens to those damned Christians/Pagans/Jews/Hindus/Muslims... ).

For those who might read this who are of the Conservative mindset (~Republican) I implore you to understand how it was your very strengths demanded Sauron attack you first, and how those strengths are not lost, the metal of them still lives among you and may be re-forged into new understandings beyond Sauron’s deceptions even as Anduril was re-forged from the shards of Narsil to arm the Dark Lord’s most feared enemy!

For those who might read this who are of the Progressive or Liberal (~Democrat) persuasion I implore you: beware, and be wary!  The next stroke of Sauron’s war will fall on YOU!

Tail Bobbing a Checkerboard Cue-ball...

Sometimes I really am just plain dumb.  I should have understood this decades ago.  Oh, well.  No time like the present to correct the situation. The focus of my fubar has to do with the ongoing covert cultural warfare being waged against my nation, to be specific a class of cultural mutagens being used as weaponry by those who wish to degrade a culture evolved in and from democracy to the point it will accept any of several possible forms of totalitarian tyranny. 

 

It’s a fact of life that people carry grudges (grudges, for lack of a better and more precise word) against certain things.  The grudges people carry but never really recognize for what they are, the ones that aren't fully acknowledged, the ones that float right there at the top of the subconscious are some of the most powerful.  Any shrink will tell you that, a great deal of their work is in exposing that sort of grudge to the light of day so someone can deal with it in a rational manner rather than let it beat up their life and the lives of those around them. 

When you back up and look at people as a whole what is to be noticed is the focus of those grudges fall out into categories: with the parents, their elders, a church, the education establishment, the other gender, the law and the social order it represents, the boss and the drama politics of the workplace.  Categories.  There’s only so many basic categories of course, the count of those categories will be close to the count of the authority figures present as folks grow up.  Why?  Because it is authority misused that creates a grudge, but more on that later.

Have an individual feel wronged by some member of any of these categories, a wrong never set right, and you've got a good chance of them forming a grudge with the whole category.  If this were an essay on mental health I’d have appended “with all the attending problems to be expected as a consequence of an irrational bias against an entire segment of life rather than the actual villain of the scenario” to the previous sentence.  But this is not an essay on mental health, this is an essay on how what has been learned of mental health has been bastardized into the weapons of cultural warfare.

An interesting tidbit of a coincidence?

The book of Revelation in the Bible is a fascinating read, it really is.  If you start from the assumption the ancient prophet and sage really did see the future then the issue becomes understanding how he would describe give or take our now using the words available to his times and experiences.  The segment about the number of the beast has always been of particular interest to me, being as how his understanding of numbers was really rather primitive compared to ours... he didn't even have the concept of zero to work with.  Anyway, for some reason I've always felt that the number of the beast was actually an attempt to give a population value for Planet Earth, perhaps a warning about how many people can live on Earth before population pressure would cause things to start degrading into barbarism... say perhaps 6.66 billion or so?

But tonight a different thought occurred to me: what if it was indeed a population value, but one that marked when mankind would hit a certain level of technology?  A level of technology sufficiently advanced for mankind to be at serious risk to a technology greater than his wisdom?  Tonight I grabbed the big calculator and started playing with some numbers relative to that thought.  Guess what... if you take six sixes, thirty six, and then raise that value to the sixth power guess what you get?  Ok, you don't have to guess, you could work it out for yourself on your big calculator, but just to save you the trouble what you get is 2,176,782,336... two billion and some change.  Would you like to guess when the population of planet Earth hit that value?  According to the 2010 United Nations estimates courtesy of Wikipedia planet earth passed that value somewhere around 1940... just about the time of the first atomic weapons.

In post script: or was the triggering technology of that vision Eniac... the first truly digital computer developed and built at the same time as the first atom bombs?  Project PX (the government code word for the work) didn't predate the Manhattan Project by enough to matter, considered against the centuries between those works and the work of John...

Things that make you go hmmmm.... and think about it.

Mommas, don’t let your babies...

...grow up to be cowboys... They’ll never stay home and they’re always alone... even with someone they love.  Country music the way country music should be, truth set to a tune you can whistle, how could it not be a hit?  Of course it was, still is, probably always will be.  That’s pretty much what makes country music country, a truth that ain’t gonna change so you might just as well sing along and get used to livin’ with it.

Am I a cowboy?  Not really, not anymore.  Was at one time for a time, sort of.  But not so much anymore.  I’m not, but she is.  It’s soul deep in her, a barrel racer with five saddles and thirteen belt buckles and a horse she probably loves more than the last three boys she took to her bed.  She’s cowboy, the song fits her perfectly.  Don’t give me any damn libber crap about gender either, she... is a cowboy in all the ways that matter and them that love her just have to understand.  And I do, I’ve still got enough genuine cowboy in my soul to understand.  Via con dios sweetheart.

Keeping company with her was good for me.  Like I said, for a time I was cowboy, it’s my heritage: a daddy and two uncles who rode saddle bronc and roped, one crazy uncle who rode bulls, a family that at one time had give or take five thousand head of cattle on open range in southern Idaho.  She reminded me of where I come from, the things I learned there and then that built the foundations of who I am now.  Some of ‘em had been getting a little dim with the years, seeing them afresh was good for me.  Don’t think she meant to, doubt she knew she was doing it, but she brought those days back to me, let me look at what could have, would have, been my life turn north instead of south fifty years ago.  But that’s just what a good woman does for you, bottom line... her being her shows clear the you ya’ really are... good women do share a lot with good music...  truth that don’t change, you know?  Good women, real women, the kind who might only look at you once a day and you know what’s all wrong will be alright... but that ain’t Waylon, that’s Neil and a different song entirely, except... for some reason Kentucky is on my mind, has been on my mind and she put it there.  Kentucky... what do I know about Kentucky?  Not a damn thing. 

Smack... duh.

Oh gentle reader, contemplate if you will the state and fate  of the world, so very changed.... a sixteen year old punk with a smart phone really does know everything, his sacrifices to the Gods of Google give him that, and that in the end does nothing more than illuminate the lack of wisdom that only the years and the tears can truly impart.  Wisdom... there's no app for that.

A Lass and Two Mechanics –OR- It’s Just Water Dear...

To begin with let me say right up front this story is true, and most likely it’s not the first time you’ve heard something similar.  But like all stories there’s more than one side, and the point of this post isn’t the first side, nor even the second, but actually the third side of the story I’d like to bring to focus: the third side that’s actually responsible for the story in the first place even though to seldom mentioned. 

Anyway, the story goes like this.  Once upon a not very long time ago a comely young woman was having trouble with her automobile, it was overheating, not a happy machine at all.  Aghast at the price a local shop was asking to engage with the problem she took a gamble on a friends’ advice and allowed a retired industrial mechanic to take a look.  He (correctly) diagnosed and changed out a defective thermostat.  Not a big job, not at all, a common inexpensive part and most generally no more than an hours work even just goofing around. Coolant flow restored her ride went back to being a happy machine.  The veteran checked a couple of more things, just to be certain, and satisfied her car would remain a happy machine sent them on their way.  He took lunch money and a thank you as his reward, it wasn’t much of a job.  Story told?  Not quite.

In a White Room...

...with black curtains near the station...

Not really, it doesn’t have any curtains at all, black or otherwise, it’s surrealistic southwestern art deco marble, tall, aching empty and echoing... and sure, feel free to get out the old Cream, it’s their song set the mood of the moment.

It’s really just a little local running across Oklahoma and part of Texas,  but it’s still a train with a name, and that gentle reader?  That is something I wish I saw more of.  Anyhow, one morning a couple of weeks ago I took a buddy of mine to the city to catch the train.  Of course I went to fetch him from the return trip, that’s just how it’s done where I live.  The departure was early in the day, but the arrival was at night and the difference was most literally night and day.  You couldn’t really feel them with the morning sun shining, the echo of all the souls that had passed through the place, but at night it was all but unavoidable.  No one stayed downstairs to listen to the whispers and the echoes, most everyone was up on the platform waiting on the Flyer to pull in.  Everyone that is but me, I did stay downstairs for a time communing with the past.  Ghosts, yes, but they have their story too.  I did them the courtesy of listening for a bit.

...I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines
wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves...

They look at the empty room and ask what has become of their land, their people.  They ask where is everyone?  It was hard trying to form them an answer.  So many of them passed over well before television had come into it’s own, the world as it is now is a total mystery to them.  All they know is the feel of those few souls who wander through for one reason or another, and they do wonder what has happened.  They wonder at the emptiness and the fear.  I think a few of them are convinced Hitler must have won the war.

...platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows.
I walked into such a sad time at the station

As I walked out, felt my own need just beginning...

How do you explain to souls who out lasted the dust bowl and the depression, who bested the war machines of Hirohito and Hitler, how do you explain to them what has happened to their land?  The answer is you really can’t, the truth is (mercifully) beyond their comprehension.   I did the only thing I could think of I knew we’d likely share: I started whistling Amazing Grace, trying to set a pitch and pace to make a harmony against the echoes.  Amazingly, from around the corner came a voice taking up the song, a woman’s voice clear and clean rising up to shatter the silence of the place with lyrics of faith and redemption.  I shut up, and so did they, the whispers faded away, you could feel peace fill the space. 

...I'll wait in the queue when the trains come back
Lie in the dark where the shadows run from themselves...

I went up the stairs to the platform with the others to wait for the Flyer. She was only twenty minutes late, these days the freights have priority.  She arrived looking a trifle way worn and weary, in need of a bath really, but still... if you’ve ever met the train you know what I’m talking about: the throb of those big diesels resonating in your chest beneath the whine of the dynamos they drive, the motion and the mass of the thing that will not be denied, her cargo of humanity stepping down onto the platform as they have since the days of steam... yea.   For so many, many reasons trains with names are a good thing.

Lyrics excerpted from the 

1968 “Cream” song “White Room” 

written by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown

An Abandoned Paper...

You find them often enough, the newspaper someone was browsing while getting around a cup of java.  They get up to go on their way, leave their newspaper behind and someone like me comes along and goes “aha... reading material!”  Over the years I’ve found such abandoned papers are one of fate’s better ways of pointing out something in need of attention.  I always take a look, and I always leave it where I found it.  After all, fate might have had more than one person in mind when it tickled reality to have that paper laying there in the first place, you never really know.

Last night such a paper found its’ way to me.  Burned out on drawing, tapped out on the fictions, totally bummed out by the diner drama (have you ever noticed how the less there is to fight for the more ferociously people fight for it?) the paper was sanctuary.  I dove right in.  A couple of pages in I found what I’m thinking fate wanted me to take a look at, and look at it I did.  Then I thought about it, went home, slept, and got up to think about it some more.

Ball in hand...

That’s what they call it, the folks I’m playing pool with these days.  To be specific it’s cue ball in hand, put it down on the table where you’d like, where it suits your needs.  How do you acquire such an advantageous situation?  You get ball in hand when your opponent scratches, drops the cue ball in a pocket by accident, fails a shot in some particular manner pursuant to their rules. Ok, rules of the game the way they play it.  One player’s goof becomes the other player’s gain.  Fair enough.

It’s a good game, and like most good games it’s accepted because it echoes some fact or facet of reality beyond the game.  Not that those playing the game recognize such similarities intellectually, most often they won’t, don’t, they don’t have to, that’s why it’s a game.  But still a fact, and watching the way the rules of a game influences the play gives solid clue to the way those playing will deal with what they don’t consider a game. Considered beyond a pool table ball in hand translates as a fresh initiative, a new line of circumstances and causalities, the goof broke an old line and allowed someone else a fresh start.

It’s pretty common knowledge that our society is now and has been for quite some time  pretty well polarized, two camps feuding for political power to support their vision of the future.  The question of the day is in the game of brainwashing America (ok, not a full washing, not really, just call it a light rinse) into behaving as someone else desires just exactly what is it that constitutes a scratch? If the digital spying and media manipulations of the last decade or so isn’t a scratch then just what is? From what I see one thing after another has been taken off that list to the point it just isn’t all that common for someone to scratch, not anymore.  One by one the things that enable a new line to begin have gone away to changing times, changing moralities and changing standards. I’m starting to think it’s not very likely that was anything to be called an accident. Seems to me the rules (that live in the minds of the general public) have gotten so loose as to hardly matter.

Watching the pool players watching their respective games has left me wondering just what would it take to get them to watch the world around them with even half of the intensity they watch billiard balls rolling around and vanishing off a railed table.  If, if only, they’d pay as much attention to what’s really going on in the world it would be such a fine thing, such a gain for humanities ultimate chances of maintaining real freedom.  Of course, them being them if they did pay that much attention to things the first and most likely thing to happen would be a bar brawl, and given the last thirty years of history it’s pretty obvious that’s well and fully accommodated within the tyrants strategy: once they start brawling you can kick them out of the bar where they don’t get to play at all.  Democracy... one rail, corner pocket.  *clack-thump*  Freedom, where it sits...

Portrait of Cassandra...

No, she’s not a real woman, not that I know of.  That is if a fictional character is held as being unreal by reason of being a work of imagination.  Cassandra is a character who will appear in the forthcoming Sundown story All the Colors in the Box, a pivotal character actually.  As the story has been in the works, as the character has been evolving to play her role in the plot I’ve had to do a little practical origami with my own psychology where she’s concerned.

The essay Art of the Dreamweaver speaks to the skills of someone who helps turn a half formed imagining into a full dream for someone, someone who can craft a full simulation of reality for someone else.  What I’ve realized (as a work of introspection) is that ever since I had the distinct privilege of keeping the company of a full dreamweaver (Hi Alex... muah! {{  }} ) I’ve been trying to build a semi-isolated version of those skills within myself, an inner dreamweaver who keeps company with my inner child to appear in the metaphorical corner of my eye to help hold things stable when imagination fades at the edges of some constructed vision. (side note, joke to become obvious once you actually meet Cassandra... Pandora serves up the classic Animal’s tune “House of the Rising Sun”... is random play really so very random?)

And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy...  Is Cassandra she?  Not sure yet, but she’s showing good potential, very good potential.  I suppose the question is this:  Am I sane enough to have a full dreamweaver living in me head?  It’s getting to be an interesting question the more I get to know her...  I got one foot on the platform, the other foot on the train... she is one hyperfox hot work of wickedly wise womanhood... and I’m goin’ back to New Orleans... oh well, the song never does name his crime, perhaps he like I was convicted by the court of macho masculinity of conspiring to empower his feminine side to the status of dreamweaver... to wear that ball and chain (go for it, no pun penalty on this one).

There ya go world, for those who are ever more convinced I’m totally insane Cassandra should make you a fine and timely exit off this freeway leading to Hotel California.

Third Reality of Man Ch 5 Warp Four... Engage

The title of this chapter is, of course, taken from Star Trek: The Next Generation, a massively successful work of dramatic imagination, the universe as it might be or become somewhere in the foreseeable future.  The course is laid in, the ship knows where she’s headed.  The Captain pronounces the word engage, the helmsman touches a control and the almost unimaginably powerful engines of the mighty starship begin imploding matter into energy, focusing the implosion in such a manner that time itself dilates in proximity to the reaction creating a region wherein time is not the same value within as without.  The dilation expands until the boundaries are beyond the confines of the massive vessel, the ship is now it’s own self created universe, a sub-set of normal space-time, subspace, and time equalizing to normal along the oh-so-slightly asymmetrical shape of the new universe causes the new universe to move through the old universe at many times the speed of light carrying our gallant crew to next week’s adventure.  Science fiction of course, but not beyond the possible, Einstein never set a speed limit on one universe moving through another.

A warp drive is still science fiction, perhaps barely, but officially still fiction.  However many of the concepts Star Trek introduced fifty years ago are now anything but science fiction, not anymore.  Hardly a new thought, it has been put forward many times in many places, nor is it a new thought to say the consequences of these technologies becoming part of daily life have quite significantly changed the human dynamic in ways the humans have little understanding of. 

To focus on the facet of these changes most pertinent to the theme of these essays?  Show of hands: how many once owned a Motorola flip phone (that bore a striking resemblance to Captain Kirk’s original communicator) capable of establishing a real time communication link with some similar device half way around the planet when a scant century before such communication would have been impossible for anyone, much less the common man?  How many have followed the advances in technology as they’ve occurred, faithfully integrating each new advance into the fabric of their life?  Of course that would be most of us.

What a massive gain, what a massive advance.  Indeed.  The world within reach of something you can carry in one hand.  The world and all its’ knowledge for all intents and purposes riding in someone’s hand.  What an intoxicating thought.  Such presence, such power, such potentials.  Such an absolutely seductive dream.  But power has its’ inevitable price, and I will assert to you humanity has yet to even begin really understanding the price that will be paid for such a dream brought to reality.

An astute observation...

IF the engineers could harness the spin CNN puts on the news?  The fastest race car in the world wouldn't stand a chance.  But IF they ever managed to harness the spin FOX network puts on the news into workable power?  Folks, we'd have time travel.

I can't claim this one, it belongs to my brother.  Good point, bro!

Fire and Water...

Fire and Water make you steam

...and steam is power strong...

Yet love the only engine human built

...can human race prolong.

I don’t normally follow astrology, but then again that’s not saying much, on a daily basis I don’t normally ask the Bible for answers any more than I consult the I Ching for comparable motives.  I’m just not all that much on oracles, if you’ll allow that a rational understanding of the momentums of reality projected into the future isn’t an oracle, just an imagining serving as a simulation.  But still, oracles do have their place in the world, for an oracle has a unique property in the human condition that falls somewhere between the glass of an optic lens and the function of dilithium crystal in a warp engine: a respected oracle has the ability to focus a thought in more than one person, and the focusing of thought is a decidedly delicate operation with an immense power potential to impact the human condition.

While it is true that I don’t follow astrology it is equally true there is an astrologer in the frame of my perception.  I introduced her a few posts back, “Go Ask Your Mother...” to be specific.  Pending her permission to call her by the name she shows the world here she is identified as Sig, just to protect the lady’s privacy.  Sig is an astrologer in the true sense of the word, her writings make it obvious that for her the geometries seen in the heavens are more a pallet of potentials from which to speak to her perceptions of the human condition than a long running mechanical tyrant dictating the nature of life for those who observe the wheels in motion.  It is my perception of Sig that she comes from a line of women who have on more than one occasion provided the world with an oracle to focus the thoughts of humanity on some particular point in need of attention.

In the last few days Sig has put forth a concept that is all but unheard in the modern spheres, she is imploring the world to turn their focus to healing the Divine Masculine, a plea for balance in the way the world approaches apportioning the efforts of humanity to meet the challenges of a world now full and under compression.  This is an effort I support not because I am male, but rather because the logic of a balanced dynamic demands such an effort for humanity to endure with any degree of dignity.

It is time, and high time, for humanity to stop degrading and debasing the primal concepts of Masculine and Feminine as just another form of us and them, it is time for humanity to recognize that where yes, the masculine and feminine are in some things mirror images of each other the truth is those things are the lesser count of what is.  It is time for humanity to understand how those mirror images are necessary balances to absorb the asymmetries of life and allow the human race, which is in fact nothing more and nothing less than the sum of the love between the genders, to continue into future building deep joy as a heritage rather than bitter despair enshrined in confusion.

I hold that the universe we see, the reality we live, is the product of the love between the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine, those two ultimate forms of life whose union is called God Almighty, and I equally hold that it is time for we humans to learn from the example of our ultimate and original parents and grow beyond the petty squabbles of childhood if we are to continue growing at all.

Find for her a man and mate

Of noble gentle mind

To complement the fire she throws

That lesser eyes would blind...

On Being a Man... Part Three

The last time I visited this subject I was using the analogy of rebuilding a machine, a rebuild on the engine of manhood. If memory serves I closed with the idea that man was going to have to overhaul himself optimized for the world he’s built if both he and that world are to survive.  Not a hard idea, not really, it’s just common sense.  But common sense isn’t really all that common, it takes a good amount of thinking sometimes, and this is one of those times. 

If you’ll agree the world today demands a different set of skills, a different  repertoire of strengths than the worlds of yesteryear then defining the nature of what is truly needed now is step the first.  Not such an easy question, and to even begin to answer it the first thing needed is an understanding of what actually constitutes a masculine thing as differing from a feminine one as differing from things where gender is more of an illusion of influence than of any real consequence in the first place.  That is going to take a while, but you got to start somewhere.

On Being a Man... Part Two

*originally published 11/18/12*

In the first installment of this subject I closed with the idea a man can no more define himself in terms derived from the world of woman than a woman can define herself in terms from the world of men.  For a great many reasons it just doesn’t work.  Not a terribly complicated thought, and yet in the confusion plaguing both genders a terribly common error by both.  The unisex fiasco of the sixties attempting to homogenize the genders as a means of resolving gender conflicts only succeeded in further muddying the waters of evolution with socially inspired confusion. 

On Being a Man...

originally published 12/26/11

It is an old truism you'll never see something in someone else that you can't or haven't seen in yourself.  It's a bit of an unsettling thing, a bit of a frightening thing, to fully realize this but still, it is the truth.  What we see in others is mostly the things we see in ourselves.  For the modern world even more than the world of yesterday this has become the jaws of a trap holding far to many in confusion, and in confusion vulnerable to falling into the ways of sin and wickedness if not outright evil.  Why you ask?  How could that statement carry truth?  The answer winds a bit over the terrain of a life, curves a bit around the hills and through the valleys, but there is road that leads from here to there.

A Bedtime Story...

That’s how the name began, as a bedtime story I made up on the fly for a little boy who really wasn’t all that keen on the idea of sleep.  The story of the crackerbush, that is, a mysterious magical thing that only grows right at the very edge of dreamland.  To find the crackerbush is a quest only the very young may attempt, it is beyond the reach of those older and less innocent.  To find the crackerbush is to understand how to keep the happiness of the very young for ever and ever, it is a high prize indeed.  There are a few who did find the crackerbush when they were young, you’ll see them from time to time among the grandma’s and grandpa’s, those who glow oh so slightly when you look at them out of the corner of your eye.

A year and some later the name got recycled, just because it really is kind of a neat name, just because being a thing from a bedtime story it implies dreams, and a dream is what it now represents.  The Crackerbush Community is the dream of a friend of mine, the hope of restoring the American dream as it began to those for whom the dream has most often been betrayed, those who survive into adulthood from the foster care system.  In the last few days I’ve been entertaining her dream, and the longer I consider it the more worthy a dream I find it to be. 

Save the Changes?

From the days of learning to use the editing software...
thanks guys, whoever you were/are, for the images that fit so well

It’s turned into Sunday again.  It kind of snuck up on me this time, somehow it seems like arrived a day or two early.  Oh well, they tell me such things are just part of getting old, time starting to go plastic in some regards, and crystallizing hard as steel in others.  No biggy, just a change.  But, fact is it’s Sunday again, and in my traditions Sunday is the Sabbath, the day to reflect and consider and talk to God if those reflections generate a thought worth a conversation.

Everyone who’s ever used a computer to write a letter has seen it, the little pop box that comes up when you’re ready to quit:  “Do you Want to Save Changes Y/N”.  Most generally everyone says yes without really thinking about it.  In the context of computers the worst this generally does is load up hard drives with a bit of drizzle that really doesn't take that much room, on a modern machine a human typing 16 hours a day can’t really make a dent (working with nothing but formatted text) in the storage capacity of the drive.  Eh, no biggy then.

That habit is no biggy in the context of a computer, but I’m gonna say it’s more than a biggy in world of real life, way more than a biggy, it’s freaking huge.  To live is to change, and each change produces a new state of life, state of being, but are all changes a good thing?  Of course not.  Some cause what is just downright dreadful.  So how is it that so many will let ego cause them to save all their changes, even those that produced something atrocious?  How many will defend having saved the atrocious even to the extent of allowing the atrocious to remain in play and in power for the sake of foregoing the experience of admitting a mistake? 

Take a good look around, take a good look inside.  How many things can you find in ten minutes that when examined with the wisdom of hindsight turned out to be a change that really should not have been saved, something that should have run for a bit and then, when fully understood, have been discarded to return to the original point of departure and pick a different direction?   Give that a bit of thought, and then if you will contemplate the full mercy found in the words renounce, and repent...

Just a short little sermon, it is Sunday after all.

Go ask your Mother...

I don’t think my son really likes fireworks.  Somehow I think he inherited some memories from his grandfather, and somehow I think fireworks and flak were a bit to close for comfort for his grandfather.  For the last couple of years he’s taken a most British attitude on the Fourth of July, the American holiday called “Independence Day”.  He’s taken to referring to it as “treason and sedition” day, accurate to the perspective, but not exactly a popular sentiment where we live.  But that’s not what I wanted to write about, just a tidbit to the times.

retitled "Dark Mother"
in honor of Sig... painted Dec. 2013...
not sure what to do about that
prescient paintbrush of  mine.

No, the thought that has the stage this morning is a consequence of a new acquaintance here in the pixel forest, a young woman from about as far around the globe of perspectives as it is possible to get compared to me, and yet to all indications a good woman of strength and compassion.  She is Hindu, reveres the Goddess Kali, practices astrology with the finesse of one for whom the stars simply set a comfortable framework around her perception, has to her credit an impressive grasp of customs and beliefs not native to her own.  As is my custom here I’ll never name her, but rather give her an alias appropriate to her place in my perception.  In my writings she’ll be identified as Sig, short for Sigrdrifa the Valkyrie.

As you might expect since Sig reveres the high Goddess she champions the feminine, faces the world very much from the feminist modes of thought.  Given the woman she is that is quite appropriate, very understandable, and in truth of great value.  Those who’ve followed my ramblings know that I support the feminist cause as an ally rather than an inductee, to restore the feminine to her proper place is to equally restore the even more subtly damaged masculine forms of thought, for in all truth the repressed in many ways suffer less damage to their selves  than do the repressors when the situation is examined objectively from beyond the consequences of the scenario.  We share the objective of restoring the genders into a state of true and compassionate balance, the balance so desperately needed if the whole of Humanity is to survive the challenges of a planet now full and loaded to the limits of what it can be asked to support.

The thought of today is drawn from the perspective of balance as that balance is measured in matters spiritual.  I’ve never seen (not to say it doesn’t exist, just that I’ve never seen it) an accounting, a worldwide census, of the respective numbers of those who revere a masculine deity, a God, and those who revere a feminine deity, a Goddess.  In that for many if not most humans the form they recognize the Divine is a subtle but powerful influence on the attitudes they carry, and through their attitudes an influence on their decisions, I should think it a valuable tidbit of knowledge to have particularly when approaching the study of the societies of mankind, the economic and the political.  There are some things where the masculine is the better approach, in others the feminine, that balance is intuitive in a good family and the Human Family is in desperate need of such wisdom just about now.

I have no real idea how to go about effectively assessing such a measurement, but as time runs on I’m going to hold this thought active in the margins, add it to the parameters of evaluation when looking at the news of the world, perhaps something will turn up.

The Cannon and the Lady

From the Dreamweaver archives…an exploration…
originally posted June 5, 2011

They were just snapshots, really, the first few were, taken with a good camera but still more snapshots than anything… maybe with just tiny touch of naughty to them, the playful kind of getting away with it in public since the only person who saw anything was this very old man who'd been staring anyway, the one who got a bit of a laugh for the expression on his face after he'd blinked twice and got his eyes uncrossed only to discover what he thought he'd seen wasn't to be seen anymore. You know, the kind of pictures a couple of high spirited girls bring home from a holiday by the sea. I glanced over the first few, and smiled, my friends were having fun.

The setting for this good humored mischief was a place I'm sure had seen its' share of drama over the centuries, most fortresses have. There were stone battlements, and a huge cannon pointed out to sea, a monster of its kind. Just from looking I'd say in the ratings of the day at least a forty pounder, a big, big gun. Early on they'd been climbing on the cannon, playing on it, but later in the set the tone of the pictures changed as the girls went to work to say something serious. They sparked a thought in me, they are way good at doing that, a deep thought having to do with the nature of the world we live in, a possible answer for that hardest of questions… why?

Sitting in...

Sitting in: to observe what you’re not really a part of, to play with a band not your own.  A lot of things are sitting in when you get right down to it, in the most technical sense of the thing a whole lot of modern entertainments qualify.  I listened to a radio show this morning hosted by two ladies who, it would seem, are members of slightly different facets of the Native American pagan community speaking out to others whose beliefs don’t descend from the tent of Abraham.  The content of their talk covered a variety of subjects where there might be common ground between them.  The soon to arrive solstice commonly marks a time for celebrations and rituals in many belief structures, it seemed an appropriate time to sit in as it were and hear what they had to say. 

Just for references sake, I am an ex-patriot Mormon who does not really subscribe to any of the formalized belief structures but rather simply acknowledge that there is a consciousness beyond that known to the humans.  I am, in simplest terms, simply a deist. There is an entity known to humanity through the ages as God, a self aware immortal thought force that intersects with our reality as a single omniscient and consummately benign being to whom I offer my allegiance in the common cause of survival as self.  Since this entity abides in realms beyond the limitations I perceive concerning my own thought and perception it then follows there is a valid possibility for a progression of other points of that thought force structured in varying degrees of complexity and motive which may well exist in part or in total beyond the limits of my direct perception. For me matters of a spiritual nature resolve to an ever more delicate quest to determine an answer to a most simple, and in that simplicity exceedingly deep, question: could this be true?

There is no doubt in my mind that whatever might be revealed concerning the literal and absolute truth of what exists in the realms of the spirit it is a true statement that humanity uses the thought of the spiritual as a screen against which it projects its’ perceptions of itself.  The personalities seen in the interactions of the various Gods and Goddesses one with another, one or the other with the humans, the totems and talismans, the rituals and the ceremonies, all of these things are clearly of human construction.  They are, to borrow a concept from Dr. Asimov’s awesome work of imagination The Foundation Trilogy, variables defined within the algebra of humanity  that mankind uses trying to reduce the equation of self  into some meaningful and useful form.  I am not belittling these efforts, far from it.  Each system is a branching of mankind’s efforts to understand, the history of the peoples and cultures who embrace each such effort a test platform for discerning any truth carried within that structure, for as it is said several places in the Bible: “By their fruit you will know them...”

No matter the (meta)physics involved there is a primal polarity involved with all changes to a life, and for my purposes that is by far the more critical understanding.  Regardless of the mechanisms involved all things show the ethical polarity of motive.  Yes, I did, I just paired the word ethics from the humanities with the word polarity from the sciences.  Sue me, it’s a valid concept the ladies also touched on in a most interesting, and actually rather optimistic, manner. 

Their approach to the thought involved the Native American meaning to the word “medicine.”  To the world of science medicine is an external thing brought to bear against some affliction, some disease, while if I understood correctly (no promises, just best effort) to the Native American traditions the word “medicine” also includes influencing internal perceptions, attitudes, designed to effect the psychology of the soul.  The concept is fully valid, science is documenting ever more evidence that the deep levels of psychology, the deep levels of conflict induced stress do indeed play major to massive roles in the overall health of an individual.  Most likely the Medicine Man of the old ways actually understood this before the Medicine Man of the modern had a clue.  Modern medicine is very powerful, and yet the medicine of the old ways has the potential for it to be needed far less often than is commonly seen. 

What the ladies said concerning “medicine” is that it will impact health for seven generations.  This factoid of their beliefs caught my ear, for I’d always associated the number seven to the generations, to be specific I’d (mis)remembered the Bible verses concerning the sins of the father would reach out even to seven generations.  But no, when I looked up the verses they all said four generations.  I find it a strange coincidence that my error equaled their belief.  That “medicine” in their sense has a seven generation range while the sins that most likely gave rise to the need for such medicine are reported as only impacting four?  Hmmm.... an interesting difference, that one is.  It implies that at the deepest levels the wholesome will out endure the profane, and I find that a fine thought indeed.

Sister...

GET YOUR THUMB OUTA THE WAY OF THAT SLIDE!!!

Filler out of the can...

The Test Question:

As thoroughly as possible, explain Hume's argument for being skeptical of the idea that all good humans or dogs for that matter go to Heaven. In expressing this argument of Hume's, you will need to explain his philosophical perspective with respect to human knowledge and understanding as clearly and completely as you can. (Hint*, if you think you can do this well without explaining how Hume thinks of causality then you are the only one between us who thinks you can). Provide examples from the text and be sure to express what you think are the strengths and weaknesses of his argument(s).

To speak to the subject of “going to Heaven” from the perspective of David Hume’s philosophy is, in my opinion, to sacrifice the ultimately human qualities of hope and dignity on the alter of a logic which places no value on either, an ironic and futile sacrifice of the very sort the consummately skeptical Hume would likely point to as solid reason to not build alters of any sort.  Be that as it may, the toxic task at hand is to explain Hume’s philosophy while using it to construct an argument he might have used to introduce the greatest possible degree of doubt into anyone holding a belief in a post mortem awareness spent in a state of consummate peace and satisfaction, what is commonly called Heaven, as reward for the effort of a mortal life lived to any code of ethics more demanding than the approval of one’s fellows concerning some expediency of the moment.

To approach explaining Hume’s skepticism concerning any human going to heaven, or even the existence of heaven and all thought associated, one must first frame in an understanding of how the boundaries and limitations Hume enforced on his own thought, the often rigid and mechanistic logic by which he defined human existence, would impact on such concepts.

Distracted...

Just in case you're like me, and really want a why to go with the what.  When you need a reason for something that reason doesn't need to be something real as long as it is something that makes it worth doing.

The Coldest Master of them all...

I am a capitalist, and yet I offer you this thought concerning wealth: wealth is a dangerous ambition, for wealth is a predator that all but destroys all who embrace it as their life’s desire... understand the true nature of wealth and you will understand the motives of those who have most repressed and misused humanity across the eons.  Wealth does not free anyone, not really, for wealth is a concept based on the deepest of insecurities.  To have surplus resources is to have security, and in security the freedom to look beyond the superficial, but that is not wealth.  Wealth is a master hard and cold and conniving, heartless and cruel, wealth is the comparison of one person as of greater worth than another measured against the narrowest of standards.  Wealth thrives not on creating the surplus resources that enable freedom but rather by rationing who has access to any resources at all, a barter system where the most primal elements of the common humanity are the expendable elements of commerce.  Be wary of wealth and guard well your soul, for nothing, not nation nor race, not religion nor culture nor gender will protect anyone from the consequences of the attitudes and ambitions that wealth demands of those it takes for its’ own.

In the Shadow of Mata Hari =or= A Very Ugly Suspicion

A few years ago I wrote a post called The Ghosts of Gomorrah that spoke of the “perversion in uniform” revealed by the Abu Graib incident during the occupation of Iraq.  I fell into conversation with a couple of kids the other day (well, not really kids, just folks a lot younger than myself) who put that thought back on the horizon from a different perspective, a different line of approach, but still, the same thought I’ve never felt quite full completed.

I’ve said it several times before, I’m gonna say it again:  only an idiot assumes the buoyancy of perversion in the ocean of humanity is the same as the buoyancy of ice floating in salt water.  Some things simply do not float at the surface, they find a common density well below the surface and are never seen unless some unusual force causes an upwelling, a shift in the relative densities.  When you synchronize the analogies war tends to stir the deep waters of humanity to reveal a great deal, some things noble, other things not.  I’m thinking it quite likely the Abu Graib incident was a temporary shift that may well have revealed something that normally rides the inversion layer 300 fathoms down as it were.

Sanctuary sanctorum...

They’ve been part of the human legend for a long time now, and if they’ve been part of so many different people’s legends then it’s fairly likely some elements of those legends are truly part of the human condition.  I’m talking about those with the strange abilities... the psychics, the prescient, the empowered and the aware.  All the things of the mind that defy a full explanation in trial by causal logic, and yet equally defy a full acquital and dismissal by the same court.  The mysteries as they’re called.  My thought today has to do with the life experience of those who are the source of those legends, they who superlatively sane or shattered soul crazy must live with such  perceptions as part of their life.   A couple of posts back I was speaking of my favorite character in the Matrix movies, The Oracle.  I suppose I’m still wandering a bit in that thought, trying to fit my version of reality into some perspective to allow me, limited to five senses and an imagination, to actually have some idea of what it would be like to live with six senses, or seven, or perhaps so many they just blend beyond counting. 

What would it be like to try and grow up with such things part of your world? To be all of two and a half the first time you perceived your parents having sex, not with your eyes or your ears, but with some sense that echoed both momma and daddies’ physical responses through your body?  It didn’t really hurt, but, then maybe it did?  There ya’ go Siggy, why don’t you and L. Ron  work out the dynamic on that one.  Come on Jung, step up to the plate, don’t let them sex maniac perverts beat your time, why don’t you tell us how far back you’re supposed to pull after the time when you were almost four and riding in the grocery cart hoping for lots of tasty little fruity things in the big colorful box when you looked across at the momma type looking the other way and her fear of what the daddy type does to her at night hits so hard you piss your pants for the first time in two months? Try and imagine being a little child the first time you’d perceive such things.  Try and imagine how hard it would be to deal with such things when you’d have such a small amount of understanding compared to such a huge amount of raw data.  It’s totally intimidating, really.

But at least you got an early start on understanding, that might be easier in some regards than say getting to be twelve like any other twelve year old kid and then finding out that hey, not only is there this brand new thing called the hornies, but every time they show up the whole fucking sky might as well be paisley pop tarts because dammit, you saw it there and then just three days later there it was on the ground for real and it’s happening more and more and it’s always three days, never two, never four, always three... soon enough you’d be going no, I don’t want to know that, or that either, and would you stupid fuckers please be careful before... nope, to late.  Likely enough soon enough you’re hiding in anything and everything you can find that has half a chance of shutting down the damn ticker tape in your head because when the ticker tape has been running for to long then really strange shit starts happening and the other folks are starting to notice it only happens like that when you’re around?   How long before you’re literally blowing in the wind rather than be in any one place long enough to cause someone harm?

No, I don’t think being one of those whose life crosses up with the mysteries would be all that enjoyable, not after ten, twenty, forty years blowing in the wind before you feel yourself being called into some odd place and she has such strange eyes and fuck, you can’t feel her at all, not even a smidgeon, hell, while she’s looking at you everything goes silent, and she smiles at you so soft and tender and that smile is suddenly the most terrifying thing of them all because it’s then you hear the winds of limbo in your soul ripping at what’s left of your sanity and you know, you know that of all the people you’ve ever met she’s the one who knows what she’s looking at.  Then she holds out her hand and that’s the most terrible moment of your life while you’re looking at the warm comfort she’s offering and trying to decide if you’re brave enough to follow her in or strong enough to walk away.