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?