Third Reality of Man Ch 6: Who Mourns Adonis?

The myths and legends concerning deities, the Gods and Goddesses, have been part of the human condition for a very, very long time.  Upon rational inspection these stories, be they fossil remembrances of actual events or simply projections of imagination, are quite often found to be where a people and a culture store the accumulated wisdom of their lives.  The richer mythologies, such as the Greco-Roman or Indian pantheons, clearly reflect these peoples understandings: of themselves, of their times, of humanity in general.  Some deity comes to represent a common trait of humanity, that element of the human condition then set to motivate mythological flesh as a dominant personality trait while some other trait is represented by say that deity’s sister or cousin or consort, the story of the relationships and motivations for those relationship between the two that carry down the generations as legend give the host culture’s understanding of the associated interpersonal dynamics, ultimately the social dynamics,  commonly found along the interface between the traits. 

Even in this age of exponential advancement in the sciences and technology these entities are still power players on the stage of human affairs.  How is it these entities, ancient as they are, still command such power?  From a functional perspective obviously these entities must still provide some needed service to still have value within the lives of those who offer them their fealty.  For all that science can now explain the mechanics of human life with an appreciable degree of fidelity it is obvious science cannot even fully duplicate the true functionality of these entities much less surpass them or they would not remain the powers they are.  To rational observation it is apparent there must be things these entities provide which science simply cannot. 

What do these deities of antiquity provide to humanity that assures their continuance?  What do they provide that science cannot?  A deep question, a very deep question, and yet the answer is not so very hard when the simple minded arrogance of fact  is set aside: they provide a needed service in places where science does not, because it truly cannot, operate: the realms of ethical choice and aesthetic opinion, the issues of self definition and self judgment that exist exclusively within the inner first reality of each individual’s self perception.  The Gods and Goddesses, the realms of the supernatural, exist and persist on the value of a vocabulary pertinent to the most absolutely intimate of things, the matters of heart and soul from which are derived the motives and ambitions, the dreams and the nightmares that power the totality of a life regardless of where or when that life might be lived.

I will assert these thought structures built upon perceptions of the supernatural, evolved and inherited as they are, are evidence of mankind’s oldest involvement with collective entities and those entities’ place in the human condition.  Examined from the perspective of an ongoing effort at self definition all of human history easily becomes  a testament to the effect of some collective entity expanding out of the inner first reality of the host individuals to become a consolidated force vector impacting the common second reality where originates the history of the race.

From antiquity the works of mankind have all, each and every one, shared one trait in common: they ultimately originate from someone’s desire to make the second, external, reality match some specific element of their internal first reality.   Perhaps little commented on, but true.  Any and every change mankind has with deliberation introduced into the environment of life began with a precipitating vision that at some point existed nowhere save in the inner first reality of some one individual’s imagination.  (appended 6/8/15... this thought belongs here, not later)

In all of my wanderings across the landscape of the human I’ve not found a more powerful phenomenon than the one just mentioned: the expansion into the second (common) reality of a collective entity originally evolved to serve the needs of its’ hosts individual and private inner reality.  The story of these migrations across that first and most primal of frontiers is the story of the human race, a full understanding of the motives involved, the alliances formed between the various collectives both inner and outer, the running river of blood and mortality for both host and collective is the story of the human race.  Oh yes, a collective entity can die, it can be killed, the collective entities know war just as do the individuals.

Convoluted and contradictory as the answer might be the question must be asked: what motivates, what could possibly motivate, these migrations whence originate so very many of humanities miseries?  This thought will be continued, and expanded, in the forthcoming chapter “Dancing All Around Me Hat…”

Oh, and just as an IMO footnote?  Who Mourns Adonis?   That’s easy.  He’s mourned by every lesbian lass who from time to time desperately wishes she had his truly divine  beauty to inspire her and give her permission to reach out with her heart open to the other half of the world.

...to be continued...

Something Very-Very Fishy Here...

I’d thought about calling this post “General Motors and the Quest for Corporate Communism” but somehow that seemed just a bit premature given the evidence at hand.  The evidence against General Motors and John Deere is still a bit, ummm, suspect shall we say but the ramifications of any major corporation succeeding at what they’re accused of attempting are profound to say the least.  This one is important, it deserves a dedicated microscope and a crew on duty 24/7 to keep an eye on what transpires, with appropriate counter measures ready to launch on a moments notice.

It is alleged that General Motors and John Deere are petitioning the Federal Patent and Copyright folks to invoke provisions of legislation passed in support of international copyright treaties (intended to protect the intellectual property rights of those producing software and entertainment) in such a manner as to allow them to revoke and render meaningless the very concept of ownership of any modern machine incorporating “computerized” control systems (yes, that means your automobile) and substitute in the place of “ownership” a “life of the device” lease agreement similar to that found in the EULA (End User License Agreement) of say a modern computer operating system.

So what’s the big deal you ask?  In a word, the maintenance and upkeep of such machines.  The intent of their petition is to by law  deny the general public (which means any mechanic not specifically employed by GM) access to the specific technical information needed to maintain such machines, effectively establishing a monopoly not based on exclusive production but rather on an exclusive ability to maintain such machinery.  Since it is already well known by those who work with such machines that they incorporate very sophisticated engineering guaranteeing device failure within well known and quite deliberate time spans the potentials for blatant abuse are obvious. 

The focus of their claim is the firmware incorporated into their new “drive by wire” offerings.  In case you didn't know drive by wire is the severing of all mechanical connection between the operator and the various subsystems of the machine… for example, lose power steering on your way home from work and you don’t have difficult steering, you have NO steering… a massively dangerous concept so utterly idiotic it can’t even be blamed on Al Gore! And that’s saying something.  They are attempting to claim that the necessary diagnostic devices for performing effective maintenance on such machines constitute a violation of their copyright protection on such firmware programming, and therefore all such devices should be illegal unless specifically owned by a GM sanctioned shop (read that as extortion city far beyond any Mafia protection racket!).

Having invested in such lunacy General Motors is now attempting to protect themselves from the obvious legal liabilities of such stupidity by establishing a system whereby they can financially entrap anyone naive enough to invest in such a machine into a situation where they MUST pay whatever General Motors demands to maintain the machine or purchase a new machine at intervals determined by General Motors (such that to protect their initial investment they must return to GM or forfeit any accrued equity!) when GM is no longer able or willing to counter and contradict their own built in failure modes!

(just a heads up for those who know their ass from a hole in the ground… in the late ‘90’s GM took to wiring their ever more electronic dependent offerings with wire where the physical properties of the insulation of that wire degrade to unusable in a matter of ten years or so… boy howdy, random cross circuiting just does wonderful things for reliability!)

I’m not even gonna get started, in this post anyway, on the human travesty of utterly destroying the livelihood of every independent mechanic in the nation, nor will I speak to the ultimate social consequences of being denied by law the right to be personally and fully competent in any part of such a primal function of modern life as the operation of an automobile!

Folks, this one?  This one isn’t the American way.  Not even close.  I’m sure somewhere Lenin and Chairman Mao are sharing a drink and laughing their asses off.  The Americans, so stupid as to think that only government can inflict and enforce communism on the masses.

Promoted...

I don’t know what I’d do without the stream of folks who come through the diner.  Well, I do know, but it would be terribly boring by comparison.  I’d be reduced to living on movies and internet computer games and such like, and I’m sorry but those just don’t really cut it where I’m concerned.  Far to contrived and simplistic for my taste.  As is so often the case the thought of the day began from a snippet of someone else’s conversation that drifted and echoed and bounced into my ears sitting as I often do in the little booth in the back corner where all such echoes converge.

If I were going to describe them I’d have to call them successful people.  Attractive and wholesome, and somehow they carried that understated air of genuine success about them: works accomplished that had shaped their history, works underway shaping their dreams and ambitions.  No doubt academics of one sort or another, they left me no clue as to their chosen focus of study.  There was an air of easy intimacy about them, they were comfortable in each other’s company.  Could have been man and wife, could have been just coworkers pulled off for a bite of midnight breakfast before going back into the fray, might have been a pair of young lovers enjoying a fine affair in the height of its’ glory.  Since I’m a dirty old man at heart I’m gonna go with the third assumption and wish them five dimensional fireworks for a lullaby and a quicky at dawn just to help jump the eighteen hours until there’d be another chance.  If you were going to make a movie about them you’d likely set it in Paris and cast Meg Ryan opposite a young Cary Grant to portray them.  Yea, first impressions they just felt like that kind of people.

Anyhow, their conversation came into focus as they were discussing a common acquaintance, someone it would seem they’d both known but from different beginnings, set in a different time frame than their relationship.  There was a subtle tone of warning to the fellows comments, I don’t think he really trusted this person.  Judging by the point by point nods and soft sad smile I’d say she was likely in agreement with his assessment, but it wasn't a happy thing for her, not really.  In the end she closed the segment with the statement that popped the thought for which I’m indebted to them.  She said “Yea, I knew him before he was Doctor…”

She’d known him while he was still human, before he was Doctor So and So of something or another.  Her comment became an edge, a guarded frontier, the fall of the guillotine.  As Doctor So and So he was judged by a different set of expectations than normal folk are.  Empowered by the whole Doctor thing what she’d once known as simply endearing or annoying quirks of personality became dangerous anomalies for those who dealt with him from the same perspective as the fellow who didn't seem to really trust him.  From her tone of voice it would seem it was the whole Doctor thing that had precipitated a set of less than happy changes. 

Their gift to me was the realization of how very often this happens, and a perspective opening onto an expanded understanding of the consequences.  For those who live in society (unlike myself who lives beside society) the various ranks and positions within create quite different degrees  of expectation burdened on people.  Since the expectations people live with, societies or their own, play such a major role in the ultimate state of their happiness I’ll call it a gift to have a little illumination on the subject.

If you've only known someone at some given level of “success” within society then of course there’s no point of comparison to what they were before, or what they might become later.  It’s only if you know someone as they cross some social boundary that you get to really see the full price of success.  You know, Joe was a good dude until he got promoted into management and all his old friends drifted away because he turned into an asshole just like the rest of them.  Did Joe really change that much?  Who knows.  What is certain is that Joe transitioned into a new environment where the Joe that was had to adapt to survive, and those who had held Joe in their sphere of empathy found that the old motives for including him just didn't seem to apply anymore.

The thing that pings on my thought is how if you were one of the ones who supported them in their quest for some success above your personal experience you’re terribly likely to be blindsided by the consequences of success, get to share in the cost but not the value, seems I’ve heard so many whispered stories where that was the underlying motive.  Most of them were not happy stories at all.

From the perspective of actually understanding Happiness it seems to me that each such event is the proverbial pebble falling in the pond creating ripples that intersect and overlap and all to often it would seem Doppler themselves right out of existence leaving the overall system no richer in happiness than it was.  One of those hidden functions of the human condition that promotes the status quo rather than improvement in the quality of life.  One of those things that if it were to be fully understood from the perspective of the common humanity could be promoted out of the status quo to be a thing of genuine value justifying the cost of success. 

But how? How do impart such an understanding to those who’ve yet to cross such a personal boundary if indeed they ever will?  Damn good question.  Another damn good question to join the ever growing pile of good questions on the subject of happiness.  This may take more than a year.  A lot more.

Cowboy Departing...

Yup, it’s that time again, time for the great diaspora at the end of the school year, the end of the semester coming into summertime, them that aren’t in despair over finals are getting ever more euphoric at the prospect of parole from the dungeons of academia.  Needless to say there’s a lot of celebratory beer flowing in this town right now, and nowhere more than out at an oversize country dive known as “Tumbleweeds” where they’re currently hosting the umpteenth edition of what has become a bit of a local tradition.  

Officially it’s the calf fry, that’s the official name of the yearly party, but what the locals call it is the testicle festival where the cowgirls take the cowboys to celebrate the emasculation of the bovine, their descent from proud bulls into docile McBeef to be herded off to the butcher.  Maybe someday someone will convince me they aren't flocking to the affair wearing their very best raggitty “Daisy Duke” hot pants and cowboy boots as a show of solidarity with their soul  sisters among the bovine to celebrate the triumphs of feminism.  Maybe, but not likely, because when they get back to town to drunk to hide their hearts most of ‘em are wearing that look so common to the fashionably feminist who spend their days whining about how they just can’t find any men worth their time.  Poor fools.  You’d think that after all this time they might have figured out the relationship between castration and contempt.  But, it hasn't shown up on the cover of Cosmo so even if they do have half a clue they hide it dark and deep.  Oh, well.

Anyway, the whole crew of ‘em is leaving town (yea!) and I wish them all a safe road to where ever they’re headed, a great summer, and hey… don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way by.

Continuance of Characters

Soap

---originally published 2/25/2011---

Think of all the people you've known who don't really exist.  You know what I mean, all those characters the writers invent.  We get dropped into their life, they entertain us, educate us, distract us from our mundane worlds, they become our heroes, our role models, our villains.  But what do they do when the show is over, when the actors and actresses take them off and go back to their real lives?  What becomes of Picard and McGee, where will you find Mrs. Peel or sweet Abby?  Somehow I think they settle into lives not so very different from ours, they live with us and in us after all, and somehow I don't think anyone ever interrupts Abby's favorite soap opera. Well, not twice anyway.