Tactical, Vigilante and Succubus...

Ok, if that’s how it lays that’s how it plays. This is a battle, and I’ll no more retreat from evil in my world than in my self.  To retreat is to give evil the victory unchallenged, an act of cowardice and treason.  Seems I recall a quote, not sure from whom, that goes “the only thing needed for evil to win is for good men to do nothing.”  Or words to that effect. Maybe Winnie?  No matter.  Sitting idly by while something eats the foundations out of your world is not a wise thing to do, not when things truly evil attack your chance to live with joy.

Now most will think of battles as between two major powers fighting it out in the physical realm: who has the biggest army, the best killing machines, the advantage of terrain or weather or line of supply.  This isn't that sort of a fight, even though it does share many of the same modes of thought.  This is a conflict between empowered lies and neglected truths, between the realms of ego inflamed and compassion revived, ultimately between the realms of love and hate, and each and every one of us is a battlefield of one sort or another.  Each and every one of us is under attack, and we all must mount some form of defense of self lest in the end we have no self left to defend.

There’s three things you absolutely must know to mount a successful defense. You need to know what it is you’re contesting, you need to know why you have the right to deny it existence, and you need to know what victory will look like.  Those are the strategic things you need.  Now in matters tactical of course it’s helpful to know who and where and how, of course that’s pretty valuable intel as well.  But not as critical as the first three.  There's a great many things I might say spinning off this paragraph, there's a veritable tome of thought this paragraph might serve as preamble for.  But those are not what I'm going to be writing about. 

I'm going to write about one of the enemy's main weapons, a tactical consideration.  This isn't intel comfortably come by, but a full understanding is vital to victory.  The enemy isn't going to lay down just to be accommodating, the enemy is going to continue its' campaign of aggression because bottom line is evil can not support itself in any other manner.  Evil is the inverse of life, it can not exist on its own, one way or another it has to have new victims to consume or it will die.

Control of memories, be they full or fragmentary, is one asset evil greatly desires.  Evil thrives on manipulating memories, calling them back into a false frame of reference to suit the evils' needs.  Why?  Because our memories can be used to influence our emotional environment of the moment in ways that serve evil in that moment.  It is a common tactic, a very common tactic, and a very effective one.

Take me for example.  All my life evil has used one person or another working my memories of the times I was physically abused in the name of love or falsely accused in the name of justice to transform justified anger into a blinding blood lust rage. I have to be continuously and acutely vigilant to deny evil access to my life by that road because should I slip up that rage displaces reality and disables any access to my ethical self.  In those moments I am more than capable of killing, I go vigilante and want to kill, and it isn't hard to imagine how evil could turn untimely recollection of old injuries into the headwaters of an entire river of new misery and injustice for evil to feed from for generations to come. 

In my case it is anger that evil attempts to remold to serve its' needs, but anger isn't the only emotion that can be transformed using distorted non-sequitur memories for a mold.  The insecurities that serve as the foundations for greed work very nicely, the middle monkey syndromes of cruelty are made to order, the scalding lust of misused sexuality has seen heavy service across history, even the seemingly benign live and let live attitudes currently held up as the apogee of civil behavior can be pressed into service when what evil needs is camouflage to allow some deep perversion of slow growth time to spread tentacle roots into many lives in many places rotting out the foundations of a society. 

Beware this most versatile weapon of the enemy, challenge your own memories and your own responses to those memories in the context of enforcing a sanctioned blockade on what evil needs to continue in our world.  Like I said, evil can not exist on its own, we can starve it out of existence if we've the inner courage to disable its' way of life.

Wisdom's Lament

Lay me where the cleft moons rise

Script lay of love in language high

Drawn fluted rune a verse devise

Writ poet's tongue to shallow'd sky,

Till bolder comes the rise and call

Seductress tempered feral sound

Birth chanting chorus begs the fall

A dancers leap lands lover found.

In candled ways cold days rewarm

Fire buried wick flame froth'd a foam,

Sans pain congeals conjoined form

Mold mate of man to forge a home

Entrain'd in woman's begging moan

Plea echoed heart to loins to bone.

Nah, can't happen, don't be a damn fool. You're mature, pragmatic, cynical, immune… you know better than that, you know what dreams like that do to the rest of your life, you know...

She was never more than a dream image anyway,

Some sweet fiction born of base biological urges

According to those sterilize the world in morality.

A man can't lift the weight of a crown off a dreams head,

Lift the heavy mantle of expectations off her shoulders,

Grant her seventy two hours as woman instead of dream,

One hour for every year accorded the life of man

To make love to her, with her, laugh and play,

Set a symphony of delights in the nerves of her body,

Hold her warm while she sleeps, dry her tears,

Give back to her a bit of what she gave so many

Before she has to put that damn crown back on

And go back to being the Queen of Dreams,

Safe sanctuary for the lonely and the displaced…

I won't miss her, not at all.

Yea, right.           

If you believe that?     

Likely you'll believe anything.

For Alex, with love.

Call Me Dinosaur…

Well, that's a wrap.  I have one of my answers that I've been looking for.  I don't like the answer, but it is an answer.  And what an answer it was, what an utter and complete insult it is.

For some time now, like say the last thirty some years, I've been wondering what I'm doing so very wrong that I'm a magnet for the debauched and the perverted.  What?  I don't wear a sign, I'm not in their social registers, I don't think I'm on anyone's special high intensity training list.  So what is it that attracts them to me?  I asked a kid down at the diner I know to be part of the bdsm world that question, and I got my answer. 

She was sincere, and in her sincerity she tipped a balance in my head.  Once upon a time she had been sitting in my living room, and out of the clear blue with a look simply dripping malice and contempt said "I could be a dom to you that would make you beg mercy." 

In the moment I went serious, stood to battle stations and stared her in the eye.  "No, you could not," I replied. It was a staring match for several seconds before the moment faded.  I let it pass, figured she was just jacking with me for sport.  But today that moment was explained to me, and a sadder man and wiser I now am. 

I've been called judgmental a fair number of times because in my world there are a few absolutes.  Not so very many, but a few and I live to them.  You don't beat up on the helpless, you don't cheat at cards, you don't try and lie to your God or yourself, and you don't surrender your self respect and dignity to anyone's assertion of authority no matter what they say.

These things are all basic Manhood101 according to the way I was raised. (in post script... I'd said American in the first, hastily written form, but no.  It isn't a thing of nationality, it is a basic thing of uncorrupted humanity... please pardon my moment of nationalism)  But apparently that isn't so very true anymore, not everywhere as it should be.  What she told me is that the effort of manhood is considered an undue burden, and the cure for that burden is to voluntarily subject yourself to enough abuse your spirit is degraded into blow sand to be used in etching your tombstone.  Well, maybe among the bdsm crowd that's how it plays, but not with me. 

What did I say to her?  I said "I don't beg mercy, I shoot."  And then I said goodbye.

She said what attracted her kind to me was seeing me carry that burden at best ability, and carrying on with the intent of doing what I can where I stand for the good of the cause.  She said that's why so many of them over the years have tried to seduce me into weakness and impotent misery.  They thought I needed to be free of the very burden I maintain is my justification for existing.  I suppose that's what I get for NOT  being so very judgmental, for not judging people on their demeanor and being willing to talk to anyone who wants to shoot the breeze. 

Sorry (NOT), I intend to keep right on talking to anyone who wants to shoot the breeze.  But, I think I'd better be a little more careful than I have been, and watch where I go until I've gotten the appropriate hardware and permitting in place.  Sooner or later some well meaning freak is going to decide that if I don't have the good sense to degrade my life voluntarily they'll just be good Samaritans and do it for me, and I'd have serious problems with that idea.

So for now the 12 gauge and little .22 will have to serve.  In a moment of sheer stupidity (and financial crisis) I sold my last hog-leg and M1 some years ago.  Where I really do like the big Ruger and the awesome knockdown power of the .45LC round it really isn't well suited for daily wear.  Automatics are fast firing and prolific, but they're not as reliable as a revolver and you might not have time to jack the action.  So… perhaps a Bulldog, or the likes.  Something ultimately reliable with enough knock down power to qualify as a euthanasia grade self defense weapon at extremely close range.  Something to make a terminal argument in favor of freedom from the worst kind of oppression there is, the kind of self induced degradation some believe is the way we all should live voluntarily.  That's what concealed carry is all about.  Call me a dinosaur, I don't care.  That's why I live in America.

The Ghosts of Gomorrah

First published 11/7/2010

Since the story first broke concerning the mistreatment of prisoners of war in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq I've believed that abuse, particularly the sexual abuse inflicted by female soldiers of the United States military police, was a deliberate open air black op initiated to outrage the enemy beyond any hope of a negotiated settlement.


When the nature of the mistreatment suffered by the prisoners was released my first question was had the Army deliberately assembled an entire unit of MP's around the psychological deformity of sexual sadism? It would take a unit in full consensus for such outrages to proceed on any regular basis. There would be risk to such a plan, the transfer orders to build such a unit would show willful intent to a court of law and the unit would be dangerously hard to conceal if entrusted with the normal duties of the military police.

Still though, such a unit would be an ideal choice to set into history the sort of events that will galvanize a people into maintaining guerilla warfare against all odds, said determination exactly what the Bushites would need to assure their carefully choreographed and most profitable little war would continue unabated for the run of their political power.

Something Bad, Something Sad...

In my last post I spoke of the joys a man may know that support him.  In this post I'm going to tell of the sadness that has re-invaded my life that others may understand the nature of what it is to truly forgive injury and trespass that healing may follow.  I am not claiming I've succeeded in such a work of forgiveness, but it is a work underway at best effort.

As of this writing I have no foundation under my life.  None.  I'm floating my life on the attitude control jets like a landing spaceship riding the rockets.  Fortunately for me I taught Sulu how it's done, as long as I don't have to do it for so long I run out of fuel I'll set it down flat and intact.  But this is totally nerve wracking work from which I can allow no rest, there is that fuel gauge to be considered. 

There is a folk saying that goes 'men are what their mother's make them.'  I hope, I pray to God that is not the literal and absolute truth.  Why?  Because in the last weeks I've been compelled to admit what I never wanted to admit concerning my mother, and deal with a lifetime's worth of ramifications for my self and my siblings. 

After forty some years of searching I'm compelled to admit the most likely answer for the cruelty I and my siblings suffered to the will of our mother is that she was a practicing member of the bdsm lifestyle from the late '40's coming forward.  As I've said in a recent post in the months past I've actually gotten to know several who are members of that world, and as my understanding of them has grown so have the inescapable comparisons to my mother. 

In every essence of her persona she was a perfect fit to their world of brutality and secrecy, their world of misery enshrined as justification for misery reflected onto all around them.  The fit is to perfect to deny.  There was —something— she confided to my wife as my wife was attempting to comfort her in her dying deliriums that Barbara would not tell me, said she refused to remember it lest she use it against her with cruelty.  There was the time my Uncle opened his mouth to say something, something rough enough to put his face into an expression I knew well as his combat mode, and my Aunt shut him down hard.  The hints have been there.  There were several comments heard from my father during my childhood  in a voice so cold as to burn that very well might have been his reaction to knowing as fact what I can only speculate as a forensic reconstruction.  In re-reading my personal journals I've realized I'd deliberately ignored this possibility at several points, I didn't want to think so low of my own mother.  I'd approach the obvious, and then back away.  My mistake, I should have had more courage.

The question now is do I have enough courage to forgive what was done in the name of love perverted?  There is a rage that has lived in me for many, many years.  Since the second grade to be specific, which is when the first of the blatant assaults occurred.  It has always been a submerged rage to hot to touch, to hot to acknowledge, a rage that tormented my dreams for years.  It has never been more than half a heartbeat away from taking control of my life and actions.  It is submerged no more, it is now full in the open and demanding satisfaction.

Satisfaction.  If my life has taught me one thing it is that there is no satisfying such rage.  Oh, the temptation is there in spades, the temptation to use any and every thing I've ever learned of the physical world to extract a blood revenge from the modern iterations of the same sort of perverts.  Twenty plus years working industry and I know plenty of ways to work wholesale lethal intent.  It would be so easy, so very easy.  But it would not satisfy the rage, all it would do is feed it and set me even lower than the most pathetic of the creatures I'd be ending.  After a whole lifetime of denying that rage I'm going to gamble what's left of my life, and theirs, that I'm strong enough to leave it on the surface and convert all that hatred and contempt, all the utter revulsion and bitter disgust into something non-destructive, hopefully something to be called positive.

How?  By always remembering that if my eldest brother Jesus was able to forgive the complete and entire fucked up mess of humanity then I should be able to forgive the minor percentage of perverts who worked harm on my family.  Once I'm convinced my strength is adequate to the task it is my intent to wage war on that perversion, not with lethality but rather with compassion and honesty, to walk among them and expose the lie that holds them to misery as a way of life.  To kill them would be to easy, to help heal them is by far the more demanding challenge, by far the more powerful stroke against the wickedness.  May God Almighty grant me to cool my rage using it to warm my compassion, that I might work such healing, may he grant me the wisdom to bring this intent to reality in His sight.  Such is my intent for whatever is left of this life.

Something Happy...

It never fails, at least in my life.  If some new joy arrives right along with the joy comes some source of sadness.  I’ve had a good woman come into my life as a friend, a woman and a child and the return of life to be lived.  And with something living came something dead back to life to be a torment and a torture as balance opposite.  I’ve been getting beat up by my past taking advantage of my present, and I’m tired of it.  I’ve been on the defensive long enough, it is time to give battle and counter attack. 

The question is of course how does one attack sadness?  To attack is to impose suffering, even death.  But more of the same does nothing to remove the first source, it may be superceded by the more powerful sadness inherent to the attack, but that is simply sadness replaced by that sadness, sadness remains.  No, you must dismiss sadness with happiness holding a more powerful place in your head.

What happiness's do I know that can overwrite the wounds of a lifetime gone by?  Oh, there's a few I know, a few…

To sit of an evening with a little one on your arm, cuddle the young one close and rock them to sleep, feel them go limp in your arms as sleep takes the day away and delivers them into dreamland… to see them smile, and curl into you… yea, that's a serious happiness that runs deep into your soul every time it happens… just like it does when you do the same thing for the little one's mother after she's gifted you those soft sounds of ecstasy as you were taking the needing from her with soft hands and kind eyes, set her into that place where the glow of her contentment will light the room around her… yea... 

It's close, to close to risk a shift, you reach for that last 1000 rpm and it's there for you, that minor key scream as your garage sweetheart pulls hard passing redline giving back to you all the hours of massaging parts and agonizing over split thousandths you spent building her… you don't have to believe you did it right, you know, it's a proven thing and that is a sweet thing as well…

The sun is riding the western horizon, you stop and look back on your day, what a day, and you see it is done and well done.  You turn for home weary, aching, the sweat dried to an abrasive on your skin.  You walk in your door, and are greeted with the smell of fresh bread baking, you don't even get your boots off before your woman is on you, her hands on you and she smiles as she helps you undress, silencing your thanks with a finger across your lips and a promise in her eyes… "no baby, no, tonight it is me for you because you earned it for both of us…" 

Yea, I've known a few of the joys of manhood, and it is those joys recalled that allow a man to stand on his own ethic and his own faith against what the darkness' of the world will throw trying to drag him down.  It is the good things that make it all worth the effort.

Neo Victorian Expanded

This continuation is being written in a quite different frame of mind than the first segment posted in mid 2011 (which has been moved to display just below this one).  In the months since I've actually gotten to know a few of the members of the bdsm community, heard their stories, observed their lives.  The first installment was written from simply observing and analyzing their offerings of art.  It was a bit to the intellectual side, somewhat emotionally aloof.  This segment is much closer to personal, I now know names and faces and hearts, aloof is an attitude I can no longer maintain on the subject no matter how much more comfortable such an attitude might be.  I closed the first installment of this subject with a question I can now take a reasonable guess at answering, at least in part.

Concerning those who are living in "the lifestyle" as the practitioners of bdsm often call it I asked myself "…why these individuals who do indeed seem to be fairly intelligent and a bit introspective would have chosen to reprise the qualities of a culture that in all fact was failing, dying, unable to muster the strength and flexibility to meet the needs of a changing world.  I do not know if this was simply naiveté on the part of these youth, or if they were seduced with malice into a misplaced romance with a failed culture to serve some other entities purposes..."

The Neo Victorian

Words tend to stay the same while the functional meanings of word often shift with the years. Take for example the word "pimp." In my youth I learned a definition for this word-symbol, it referred to the lowest form of humanoid life walking the planet, an abuser and a user, a heartless and cruel creature that preyed on destitute and desperate women compelled to sell sex to survive, a parasite robbing them of what they earned in the worlds oldest, and most damaging, profession. To the standards of my youth a pimp was well below human, vermin of the sort where the correct action was to puree its' innards with a large caliber round of hollow point and leave the carcass for the vultures. Now? Now the word has migrated in many places, particularly among the young, to mean anyone who sells things, simply a salesman, albeit a rather flashy one. Of course the word pimp is just a symbol, it has no morality beyond the definition people attach to it. My only objection to this change is that now there is no finite symbol to represent the vermin, they continue to operate, just as cruel and worthless as ever, behind the camouflage of the expanded meaning, at least until a new word is set to represent their evil excluding all other meanings.  Another place I've noticed such a migration here of late relates to two words currently in service among a growing counterculture, the various forms of the words "dominate" and "submit."

Marked...

see here world LOOK at me

see the way I am

bolted marred the open scar

wounds by mine own hand

REFLECTING what I think of you

your ways set sad as sand

scattered on an icy road

before my day began…

watch me world at my play

games of pain and shame

some feed my INSANITY

and some just hang a name

on moves among the HOPELESS

drones conforming to the lame

AFFLICTIONS as the coin earned

that buys a claim to fame…

oh doctor lover make me well

you with dirty hands

slice away with scalpel LIES

cut future failures stand

mantra molded to the SHAPE

of pauper parents bland

DESPAIR cinched tight as any wire

bound blood vain virgin clan…

NO… fuck you world go away

you'll never get it right

pale horse a-riding painted up in white

blindfold captive HOPE of love

will penance serve each night

in gleeful SINS of dirty sex

scream cum alone cum fright

pay terror for the children's HURT

your world deals for spite.

Harvested from among nightmares...

I've been re-reading my most private journal, the one where I record the range markers of my personal inner quests, the journeys of the soul usually conducted during episodes of lucid dreaming, and came across this little passage, thought I'd share it here,  since for the moment I don't feel quite as alone as I usually do...

From the first flickering of awareness in the womb the infant is not alone.  The sound of a heartbeat is always there.  There is the other, the one who is not me, and the other is all about me and keeps me warm.  And love is as guaranteed as it can be,  the system providing love with every calorie, every gram of calcium, every flicker of the endocrine telegraph.  And then, in a remarkable foreshadowing of old age, the universe becomes to small, and motion is reduced, and there is a time when pressure breaks the bond and we are alone in the cold.  So much like the end of the life we live on middle earth, here between heaven and hell.  The universe is to small to hold the deterioration of aloneness, where there is no umbilical to bring in the nourishment and the love to hold us in place.  And so we waste and wither and fail, slowly or suddenly, and then once again there is a narrow passage, with no certain knowledge of what lays beyond.  Does the infant have a clue that there is a life, an awareness beyond the vagina?  Probably not.  There has been nothing in the (to our perspective) little one's life experience to let it know for sure that there is more.  Perhaps muted sounds, dreams telegraphed from the parent, but little more, and no perspective to place them in.  Is this why we so soundly believe in an afterlife?  We all remember that first passage, and confidently expect the next to be much the same?  No knowing, not for such a little one as I.

I’m not in love...

No, I’m not.  And as of last week the Pope stopped being Catholic.  Oh well. *grin*  Down the rabbit hole again.  I’m not in love, but I do love her.  I feel... alive... again.  Yea.  Alive.

Give or take two weeks ago I took a woman and her child into my home to give sanctuary, it was needed.  I was fond of her, fascinated by her, well before this went down.  She can power the gift of the muse for me and in my world that is a huge thing of great value.  In many ways I am transparent to her, and she to me, the intimacy between us of surprising depth allowing for no longer than we've known each other.  We’re not lovers of the body, we’ve agreed that will be our farewell to each other when it is time to part.  What we trade are perceptions of each other, and benefit by what we share, ours is a strange affair of the heart.  She calls me her mentor, and I chuckle.  I’ve learned more from her than she from me, I’m sure of that, at least by the numbers.  But I do have twice her years, and from time to time that allows me perceptions of value to her as well.

While she was staying with me she did everything she could to earn her keep, she did far more than I would ever ask or expect of anyone.  Besides cooking some of the most delicious food I’ve had in a long time she stepped in as soft momma for my niece, doing in days what us clumsy boys hadn’t accomplished in years.  Sometimes it just takes a woman’s touch, you know?

She can’t stay, it’s impossible.  She has her man, she loves him.  Even if she didn't I'm to old for her, it would be unfair to her to ask her love what would be lost before its' time in her life.  Yea, I'm in one of those.  But... for what it is while it is I treasure her company.  And, when it's over I'm calling in several favors and throwing one hell of a drunk.  Just to give myself permission, you know?

Of Chopsticks and Bigotry...

It’s funny how sometimes things can lead you from odd into the obvious into the obscure.  I was sitting in the diner the other day, just vegging out of an afternoon when I wandered into one of those, been thinking on the event for a couple of days now.  One of the lasses on the crew was sitting across from me and eating the lunch she’d brought in.  Now that wouldn’t be anything of note under most circumstances, as a matter of fact I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary for a couple of minutes.   It was Chinese type food, and what was unusual for the setting was she was eating with chopsticks.  Perfect posture, perfect etiquette,  plate on the table, but using chopsticks.  No problem at all, except of course for the train and chain of thought the event initiated.

I make no bones about it, I really don’t like the oriental cultures.  They always feel like slavery to me, a tyranny so deep the enslaved have no concept of just how deep their slavery goes.  They feel more than brainwashed, they feel soul bleached.  I really can’t remember a time I didn’t feel that way.  The funny thing is I’ve never really searched this lifetime to try and understand why.

Flying Wing for each other...

From the "Life at My House" series... No. 42

A magic man and a major muse

Went out to lunch one day

And over the tea and strumpets

One heard the other say

"Sweetheart we've a lot of power

In how these children think,

They who live within the walls

Their shamans twist and shrink

Until the little darlings crouch so low

In misery and drink

Crying for the faith they lost

Before they learned to think...

So lover shall we take a hand

In helping them to see

That all the things they're pining for

Are generally quite free?

Should we put it on the street

And dare the merchant man

To try and claim a copyright

On verse pen’d God’s own hand?"

*chuckle*  If I were to allow vanity more than 50 milliamp to work with I might come to the conclusion this poem was a tiny bit precognitive... and no, I'm not going to explain.

Concerning Steers, Queers, and the Catholic Clergy...

For more than a few years the debate has raged:  is it nature or nurture sets the most basic attitudes and orientations of humanity?  Is it genetics or upbringing that ultimately defines who we are, what we become?  I’ve never officially taken a side in the debate, I’m in the same position as the combat correspondent who gets close enough to the action to hear things flying by his head, but no, the pistol riding in my camera case is strictly for looters.  I’m just documenting the battle, not really taking part in it.  There was an interesting little firefight crossed my perception the other day, and it resulted in a small but potent tidbit of a thought I’d like to share with you.

IF (huge little word that one is!) there is some degree of validity to the nature side of the argument THEN there are some interesting commonalities created between rather unlikely components of society.  Consider what the three groups named in the title have in common.  What do the Steers (voluntarily childless hetero) and the Queers (homosexual) and the Catholic Clergy (celibate) all have in common?  They do indeed have something in common, as a matter of fact what they have in common is an error that could have destroyed an entire timeline, an error I first heard of concerning the awesome Ambassador Spock back in his youth when he served as science officer aboard a Federation starship.

Spock was there the first time a human vessel ever successfully emerged intact from a time warp.  Well, to be more precise he was there the first time a human vessel ever successfully emerged intact into its’ own time returning from such an adventure, there are always the legends concerning Leonardo DaVinci.  In the episode a twentieth century human ends up spending a few days aboard the twenty third century Enterprise.  He was a prime specimen of his vintage, he was the fighter pilot who had gotten entirely to good a look at the massive Enterprise fighting her way back into orbit from a dangerously low dip into the atmosphere, they had to beam him out of his cockpit or let him return to base and report what he’d seen.

Intelligent, well educated, physically and psychologically fit, orphan and unmarried, few  connections to his time beyond those he served with in a calling where it is known that sometimes someone doesn’t make it home and no one ever really knows what happened to them... if ever there was a candidate to make a successful jump three centuries into his future he would have been your man.  They almost made the mistake of taking him with them as they attempted what most would have called suicidal, a deliberate attempt to drive a starship though such a torture folded form of space as to emerge three centuries into the future.  But then Commander Spock realized their almost fatal error in time to avert it, he realized why he had to plot a trajectory where they could return the pilot to his own time a split second before he’d first laid eyes on them, closing the potential that could have resulted in there being no future of their own for the Enterprise to return to, leaving the great starship and her crew orphans of the universes.  Did you see the episode?  Have you figured out what the three groups have in common with that fine work of fiction from four decades ago?

Of course.  The issue at stake is in genetics, the unique pattern of DNA that results in more than any one individual human, it equally defines every potential human timeline that might ever come of that pattern blended with another equally unique pattern.

Steers, queers, and the Catholic clergy... what do they share in common?  What they share is that they are all voluntarily sterile, they choose not to reproduce.  With their choice they are essentially casting their vote in the nature/nurture debate.  If they believed that nature had any  major influence on what a person turns out to be they’d never choose sterility of their own volition, it would be counterproductive to their prime agendas.

All three of the groups in question are, in point of fact, genetic black holes consuming for all the eternities the patterns of those who comprise the groups.  Regardless of how you might feel about the relative ethical and moral status of these people the fact remains: they are each and every one of them the utter end and destruction of who can say how many possible futures based not on their actions but on the potential deeds of those who might have come into existence from their contribution to the human genome. 

Seriously.  She was a nun in the seventeen hundreds, a beautiful woman who retreated from the psycho-sexual-social manipulations of her world to hide her beauty beneath a habit in a cloistered convent.  But had she not retreated, had she stood up to her father and married the man of her choice from her loins would have come the line from whence came the man who touched the heart of Adolph Hitler’s grandmother in her youth before the bitterness and the cruelty became a matter of her habit.  How different might our world be?

Anyway, like I said in the beginning of this post, I’m just a combat correspondent and I think it is time for me to move.  I’ve got a serious hunch where I’m sitting on this issue is right about where a serious skirmish is likely to go down since there’s a counter attack due any old time now.  Frankly I really don’t want to be this close to the action when that goes down, once a bullet is in flight it doesn’t give a damn how many possible futures might be decided by where it happens to hit.

The Third Reality of Man Chapter Three: Tools, Bartered and Borrowed...

If you ask a stranger “who are you?” several times in a row you're likely to notice a strange pattern.  Try it sometime.  Ask someone “Who are you,” and take note of where they find their answers.  For example, who are you?

“I’m John Doe.”

“No, that’s just the name your parents hung on you.  Who are you?”

“I’m a design engineer for an aircraft company.”

“No, that’s how you earn your money.  Who are you?”

“I’m an American.”

“No, that’s the nation you live in.  Who are you?”

“I’m a Conservative Christian Republican!”

“Sorry, but those are all political groups supporting your vision of society.  Who are you?”

“I’m me!”

“Of course you are,  but who is that?”

The length of the list will vary, person to person, but the majority will offer quite a list before they’ll offer something defined from within their own self, something they created of their own thought.  If you watch their eyes you’ll likely see them get angrier with each repetition of the question, and a quick hot anger at that. 

What is provoking their anger?  The usual reason for anger of course, which is fear of one form or another.  They're  frightened of the nakedness you're compelling on them.  Their anger is in response to being stripped of the symbols they've always used to define their self  within the context of their society, and even more critically in the context of defining their self… to themselves.  As each component of their self definition shifts domains from being part of their self  to being part of their social environment they feel the foundations of their identity becoming weaker and more vulnerable, less complete, less secure... of course they’ll be angry. 

Consider the more subtle implications of what you’ve just seen.  You asking such a question is perhaps a bit rude, but still essentially harmless, and yet you frightened them.  In point of fact you are most likely totally powerless within their life, have no potential to do them any harm at all, and yet you still frightened them into anger, a deep anger.  Why?  What fear has such a secret grip on them?

What they fear is an entity who does have power in their life asking that question.  Consider what might happen if that entity not only asked that question but demanded a correct answer?  What if the consequence of a wrong answer meant being denied the right to continue to claim that part of their self identity? I'll assert to you that is exactly what they fear, even though they don't recognize their fear for what it is. 

I will assert to you that each and any element of society John or Jane Doe uses as any portion of their self definition is in fact a collective entity, a discrete and separate  entity whose life is hosted on a set of individuals defined by a common thought or activity, some common element of belief in their lives.  Should such an entity as that ask them a such question it could have impact on their life, for they are dependent on that collective for a portion of the definition used in the cause of self definition, the  critical ability to recognize the self from among the multitude in the perspectives mandated by abstract intelligence.

Each of the individuals included in such a group who incorporates some collective  definition (grammatically expressed as “we”)  as a part of their own self  definition  (grammatically expressed as “I”) is in fact a node within that collective entity participating in a symbiotic relationship where the collective provides a critical component of self definition to the individual, the individual in return providing  continuance and cohesion to the collective in the form of compliance and loyalty to the common definition in preference to the other collectives offering common value.  Just as the lives of the collective entities are hosted on many individuals any given individual will host several if not many such collective entities in their self definition, an interwoven structure of balance and compromise between the components defining the personalities of both individual and collective. 

To understand the human dynamic in full is to integrate an understanding of the structures and interactions of these collective entities in parallel with an understanding of the individuals, for while they are totally interlinked and interdependent they are in fact each a unique life form struggling for survival within their respective environments.

In that the collective entities are derived from, and composed of, individual humans many of their life functions are in fact analogous with each other, for both must meet the same three primal demands of life.  Since both are living entities both must procure sustenance, both must provide security, and both must arrange for procreation since both are mortal life forms that suffer attrition to biology.  There are many comparisons between the individual human and the collective entities created by the humans' answer to the challenges of hosting both imagination and an abstract intelligence.

In point of fact they are constantly trading with each other, borrowing or bartering to acquire the resources required for their respective survival.  Even a short contemplation of the thought will give a bewildering surplus of events to stand as examples.  In fact, even a short examination of the modern world can be confusing to the point of traumatic for the rate of exchange between the two life forms has been accelerating exponentially for approximately the last quarter of a century, which will be the focus in Chapter Four of this series, "Awakenings in Utero…"

…to be continued…

for convenience all essays in this series are collected on the page titled

"The Third Reality of Man"

On the Tour... like us?

The sixty four thousand millinea question might be "just how many branches of humanity have had reason to establish a tour, of one sort or another, to keep track of the children of colonists lost into the immensity of space?" 

All in the Family...

This post began as a comment I'd intended to offer to Anne of Carversville on her post "The Cult of True Womanhood and Female Cardinal Virtues" .  As it ran out though the thought got a bit to large for a comment block, and while inspired by her posts on feminism actually ranged a bit far to be an appropriate comment for that environment.  So I'll leave the full thought here where she or any others who might have an interest may read the thought in full. 

The majority of my focus in such matters is understanding the ongoing evolution and interactions  of the collective entities, those social forces so omnipresent that with the aid of modern communication technologies (serving as synaptic connection between the individuals who function as neural nodes of the collective mind) they have for all intents and purposes achieved the status of a self aware sentience in their own right. 

The 19th century writings and publications mentioned in Anne's posts would be among the first glimmerings of such consciousnesses awakening, a common thought distributed by technology to be hosted by many individuals as a portion of their self definition.  Such individuals loyalty to and dependence on the definition provided becomes the life force of the collective entity, and like all living things a collective entity must, first and foremost, assure its' own survival.  From that understanding it isn't so very hard to see how the irrational assertions printed to chastise any woman who ventured beyond the boundaries of the prescribed definition would be evidence of the collective entity using technology to defend its' host base from a competing collective. 

Of course ceReligion, the underlying authority cited in the  "Cult of True Womanhood" was undoubtedly the first and still among the most powerful of the social constructs to evolve into this new life form.  Among the collective entities ceReligion would have to qualify as Mother Eve, the original source setting the template for all who evolved from her lineage.  What Anne’s post brought to focus for me was the thought of parentage among the collectives, the linear descendents that in their maturity become allies, or competition, with the original collective for the same group of hosts.

The “Cult of True Womanhood” is an ideal example of such parentage. From the content of Anne’s post it would seem the same demographic of women who at one time were most likely to embrace the cult were in later generations the same women who would form the core of the Feminist movements. The transition from ceReligion's "Cult of True Womanhood" powered by the promise of heaven to ceFeminist's self willed existence powered by the thought of independence from any need for patriarchal justification makes an interesting case study.

At this point ceFeminism is a fully mature and powerful collective, many generations old and well defined.  Many women form a major portion of their self definition in structures defined as feminist thought.  For significant numbers of women what religion was feminism now is... the primary source of the vocabulary they use to define themselves to themselves.  How the women who host ceFeminism as their primary self definition fare as the collective continues to evolve will tell a great deal about the life cycle of a collective entity.  It will be interesting to see how ceFeminism responds when her daughters begin to challenge for primary control of the hosts.  It will be interesting to see if ceFeminism will follow the example set by her mother ceReligion and attempt to widen her definition to allow her to dominate rather than guide the lives of the men folk, as ceReligion did in the latter half of the twentieth century bartering her influence in the political arena as a means of shoring up a shrinking host base, or if ceFeminist will ally herself with the younger entities her life enabled and accept a position of lesser power but more stable tenure among the hosts.  It will tell a great deal about what kind of woman ceFeminist really is.

The Fashion of Freedom...

I'm currently doing something I very rarely do, to wit browsing the offerings on a fairly major fashion blog.  Fashion is something that is a non sequitur in my life, I'm about as far removed from that world as it's possible to be.  But fashion is a major power player in many people's lives, sets attitudes, defines directions, and as a philosopher I can't let the person I am limit the scope of my thought concerning the rest of the world. (ok, that one's a keeper, her eyes don't look like the others, and the hat is cool...kieiping a copy of a magazine cover… omg, is this stuff contagious?)

 

 

Anyhow, what I'm noticing most is a serious dichotomy between the primarily feminism inspired text and the commonalities in what seems to be reflected in the model's eyes, the message riding out to the world on their glance.  The feminist dialog is all about woman as a free creature, self willed, self reliant, responsible for her own actions and her own fate, and yet to my eyes the ladies in the pictures are usually projecting some mixture of a thought formed on a line running between the pathos of "help me, help me please, I'm being crushed by this endless meaningless charade"  and  the irresponsible arrogance of "I can do as I damn well please because you can't see me, I'm invisible, I'm safe, all you can see are my clothes." 

Seems like a pretty damn good jump between the two, the attitudes of feminism and the attitudes of fashion.  Yea, the kind of a jump even old Evil Knieval would have thought twice about.  Makes me wonder if fashion has become the foil of feminism, makes me wonder if the feminists of the world are totally exploiting fashion, and the women who are the slave victims of fashion, as the ultimate negative example of what feminism says a truly liberated woman is supposed to be all about.  I mean really, how can a woman feel herself a free and liberated creature if all society has to do to enslave her thought is have someone say "this is how you should look" and she is compelled by a lifetime of compliance into overhauling her wardrobe?  Hmmmm...

But then again, I don't suppose the jump between fashion and feminism is any more severe than the jump between the old male establishment's desire to marry a virgin so her ignorance will allow him to keep a veteran lady of the evening for his mistress.  Looks to me like the two contradictions run a very, very similar wave-form and polarity, all things allowed for.  People.  Give me a hatful of hot nitro glycerin, I know what to do with that.  But the contradictions society impresses on people are substantially less stable, and a whole lot trickier to work with. Oh, well.

Mitt Romney is who Dwight Eisenhower was worried about…

Social Recon Droid
by CDM.MMX

The first presidential debate of the 2012 election is in the history books.  I watched most of it, read all of it, and my conclusion?  Romney is the antithesis of what a genuine conservative is all about. 

Just for the record, I don't really subscribe to the established political stereotypes and so I call myself a pragmatic idealist.  In other words, do the most good you can with the resources you have to work with.  That's do the most good mind you, not do the most good for this group or that group, but just the most good across the board.  An attitude closer to good parenting than the conventional template of governing.  This usually puts me leaning a bit more towards the conservative side than the liberal, but not this year.  Romney doesn't represent what I call a conservative approach, I find him just an echo of the radical evil that exploited the internal naiveté of the conservative segment to attempt an economic rather than military coup on the United States of America.  The Republican's are not fielding a conservative candidate this year.  Their man is as radical as they come, in radical denial of reality if you want it defined.  In point of fact the actions and attitudes of President Obama come much, much closer to a genuine  conservative stance than any of the half formed, undefined pie in the sky emotional  euphemisms being offered by Romney. 

If I were an old school liberal I'd most likely be rather upset with President Obama, after all, all he is promising is that with forethought and diligence it is possible for America to pull itself out of the hole left in our history by an almost successful attempt to convert the nation into a wholly owned subsidiary of the global corporate establishment being used and misused as their  mercenary army.  He offers no miracle cures, no miracle programs, no glitz and glamour special effects on behalf of a few to blind the eyes of the many.  As a liberal President Obama is at best kind of mediocre.

But that is fine by me since I am not an old school great society liberal any more than I'm an obsolete soldier suffering the consequences of the victor's paranoia the world came to call the cold war. I find his pragmatic approach to restoring and maintaining the well being of the nation  quite in keeping with my own attitudes.  I think he's done a good job and see no reason at all to change managers at this point in time.  That is after all the job we hired him for, management. 

If I were being asked to elect a puppet king or an almost benign tyrant I'd vote for Romney, he'd be better suited to those jobs than would Obama, but thankfully those jobs aren't up for grabs, at least here in the United States.  I'm looking for a truly gifted manager, a finesse job blending fiscal wisdom and acute people savvy who can double in as an effective commander in chief.  That's the job of the President and there is no doubt in my mind President Obama is by far the better qualified.  He has my vote.  I'm willing to bet he'd get Ike's as well.