What A Difference a Year Makes

Tags

New Year, retrospectives

We are fast approaching the end of things. That sounds ominous. It’s December 29, and Thursday we will awaken, albeit a few of us with aching heads, to discover that like a bright new shiny penny, the year has flipped to 2015.

This week is all about retrospectives, and I am finding them tiresome already. Turn on any cable news service and hear the refrains:

“Top ten natural disasters of the year, coming up next!”

“Who we lost this year in sports and entertainment!”

“Top five books of the year. Have you read them yet?”

Last year I realized that I was (as I always do) losing track of all these milestones during the year. I created a private blog just to jot down events as they took place so I would have them to turn to to “remember”. That lasted, ummmm, somewhere like a week, maybe less.

As I’ve pointed out at this time of year, nearly every year, I don’t do resolutions, finding them silly, self-defeating, and but another excuse for dragging out the old whip to flagellate my increasingly intolerant body.

So once again, I’m doomed to discover that people I really admired died, and I’d totally forgotten. And there were scientific discoveries that I had peripherally noticed and tucked away in some recess of my brain to which I’ve since lost the key.

About the only things I’ve remembered well are my own name and my address, though I often stop for a moment when asked my phone number or zip code.

Actually I remember a lot of political stuff, and that is probably not a good thing, since most everything that happened last year is eminently forgettable or should be. Given that I am a political satirist of sorts (god, that puts me up there with Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Lenny Bruce, right?), it’s only natural that I should. Remember that crap, that is.

You may wonder why I think of myself as a political satirist, since this blog has taken a bit of a turn away from the day-to-day regurgitation of the crazy Reich-Right (use those Nazi references when you can). Because, even when I don’t technically refer to politics, I’m usually grousing about the people who make politics a living hell by their ignorant interference in things best left to adults with an education that goes beyond “how does a bill become a law.”

I say living hell in the sense that I do care that this country continues to swirl around on the event-horizon of a major black hole of doom. It hurts. And that engenders, as a defense, anger and yes even a modicum of hatred. Epictetus tells me that I ought not to become emotional about realities as such, but spend my energies doing effective things, but woe  is me, it’s so much easier to complain.

A few friends tell me that they avoid politics because it is just too unsettling, and I do respect that. There is no fun in continually poking yourself in the eye with a stick in the hopes that someday, it either won’t hurt or magically you’ll get 20/20 vision for your efforts.

I must admit to a sick sense of fun in all of it too, and that undoubtedly is what drives me to continue. I’m sure a psychiatrist would have a field day in my head, but I do enjoy poking a stick (not in my eye) but through the bars at the caged idiots. For stupid people are caged whether they realize it or not. Caged by their lack of vision, lack of curiosity, and willingness to live a life of dreary ordinariness if only mas’r will give them the illusion of prosperity. Poke I will, with relish, because I enjoy the resultant explosion of racism, sexism, and all the other ism’s they exhibit when blood pressure overcomes what little common sense they possess. There is no knowledge to overcome since the very word suggests elitism to them and they regard education (except good-old fundamentalist claptrap as the work of the devil).

The point really is that a year makes no difference at all. For some this has been a hellish year, one they can hardly wait to escape and start out fresh again. This is balanced by just as many who have had a delightful rich and fruitful year and hope that next year just continues in the same vein. Neither is being objective of course, and no one says they should be. Each operates from a singularly personal experience, much as some men love blondes and others brunettes or as the song goes, “I like my women a little on the trashy side”. Some women love them some nerdis sorts, while some love SOA’s Jacks on his bike.

What’s new under the sun? (Oh I can go on with these all day folks).

Even though I don’t “do” resolutions, I do do intentions. 

Intentions are much milder than resolutions as you can see. They are gentle and express a longing and desire, rather than some fiat imposed with an iron will that will be shown to be all too bereft of any undergirding at all.

So I have intentions.

• To write better. This is of course easy since I am the arbiter of success here. I determine what constitutes “better”. I can’t lose on this one.
• To read more. Again, I self-judge based on my recollection (no matter how faulty) of how much I have read in the past year. Philosophy is my focus this year.
• To continue toward the light, however I define it. There are many paths, and I intend to peek down as many as I’m able in the time yet allotted to me. All knowledge benefits so nothing is lost on the road more traveled as well as the less (eat your heart out Frost).
• To seek truth always. Truth untinged by desire and predisposition requires the constant overlay of critical thinking. We all fail much of the time. I desire to fail less often and about less  important things.
• I seek to be more of what I am destined to be. Don’t we all?

I intend and that is a victory in itself.

Gosh, so many of you have enriched this year for me. I thank you all, whether you ever knew or not. I consider myself among the most luckiest of humans. I live with a man who continues to delight me with a freshness of spirit and wit, who challenges me in a million ways that keep me alive and vibrant while loving me unconditionally. I have the sweet softness of dogs who suffer my failings and limitations while offering a love which they neither understand nor question. I live in surroundings that delight and prick my curiosity and remind me that beauty comes in many forms. I have pursuits that challenge my intellect and patience, and occasionally stamina. I am blessed beyond measure, and have nothing whatsoever to deserve it.

I am humbled for there are those more worthy who have so much less.

It has been a year, and like all such artificial divisions, it has no real meaning beyond what we assign. After all, before us, what was time but a thing yet to be named? Or no thing at all.

A Few Disjointed Ideas Or Why Do They Call It Pi?

As long as people like this are around, I figure I’m safely ensconced on the “sane” side of the room, so you can safely read on, assured that nothing is likely to snap in your synaptic cable system. Really, it’s okay. I’m just eccentric, not a homicidal serial killer.

I woke up this morning with the usual, “oh shit, it’s Monday!” I say that knowing that a lot of you can relate. It’s common enough, the “Monday blues” as they are known far and wide, perhaps as far as Antares for all I know. It seems unfair, hating Monday as I do, since well, I’m RETIRED and so the whole reason for hating Monday doesn’t really exist for me.

But the WORLD keeps revolving around Monday, so naturally we schedule our lives around it even when there is no earthly or extraterrestrial reason to. The fact that I KNOW this, and still hate the twenty-four hours that constitute the “first” day of the week, is well, unfortunate to say the least, and places me in a classification that will be revealed at some later date.

As I noted earlier, it has a nice M to start it off with. M, I point out, is a substantial and stable letter, firmly centered on it’s three point stance. Unlike the L which seems to have forgotten to complete itself, or the U which appears to be ready to topple over at even the merest poof of a breeze.

For reasons that are unknown to any human who thinks, we name all the weekdays with “day” at the end, which is both unoriginal and suggests a certain lack of memory power. And as I’ve remarked before, we completely ignore the “night” aspect of the 24 hours that encompass the “day”.  So it seems we have a bigoted disposition toward day and against night.

But that’s a whole ‘nother issue entirely isn’t it?

After that there is nothing unusual about it. It’s followed by a O and an N. Tuesday, as you can see is followed by a U and E, which makes it a very precarious day all together, with all the letters threatening to fall on their ass, lacking firm foundation. Wednesday starts off okay, but then gets all confounded with letters that you can’t even hear, like D, again the instability fairly cries out for a crutch. Thursday has a H, which is okay at a capital but pitiful as a lower case, having lost it’s base completely, and followed by another U, making the whole day dangerous and not to be trusted. Friday, is well, who can argue with the day that precedes the weekend even if it has a letter that looks like it died on the way to it’s own funeral?

I’m sure you never thought of these things, but they are important.

Why?

Why how else are you to discover your favorite letter? Everybody should have one.

I used to like things like capital D’s for instance, because you could do loops and swirls and make it quite pretty. G had possibilities too, if you notice. But my favorite was always J. You could do a lot with a J if you really worked at it.

Now, back to Monday. You see, the reason Monday became the most hated day of the week, is because contrary to any common sense, humans for the most part engage in work that they dislike. It starts with school, which is disliked by most, but not all, but most. Then we go to college to learn stuff, which is going by choice and not requirement, and still, mostly we don’t study things that we like.

Mostly we study what will make us rich.

But we don’t get rich enough it, so we have to do it a long time, and since we hate it, we hate Monday, which is the day all that work crap begins. It’s called transference. We can safely hate Monday, not so much our jobs, lest we start listing the methods of suicide least messy.

We all love Saturday, because that’s not a work day and we begin to do the shit we like to do. But we only do it for one day, two at most. Some of us feel guilty about having a good time on Saturday, so we go to church on Sunday to beg forgiveness, think of our sins, and promise to do better, which we do at least on the drive home.

Then we sit in front of the TV and drink beer and complain about how life sucks. A bunch of guys beat each other up for our enjoyment while we grouse. Then we nap, because usually we are fairly sleep deprived from worrying about all sorts of things, most of which we can’t do much about, but theorize that if we could, our lives would be a lot better.

We wake up, and grouse some more, because the weekend is nearly over and so we lose ourselves in make-believe lives of real housewives, which are neither real nor probably housewives, until we stagger into bed.

When we wake up, it’s MONDAY! How’s that for the old stick in the eye?

I hope this explains things to you, and convinced you that J should be your favorite letter. After all, it’s easier to be  June and July and that beats out a January, so it’s got that goin’ for it. Unless of course you live in Hawaii where it probably doesn’t matter much.

*Part 372 of the on-going series: homo sapiens–why you are better off being a salamander.

Oh Say, Can You Hear Me Now?

Tags

corporations, hacking, privacy

Seriously, have I got this right?

First Sony’s emails get hacked and the bodies are strewn across America from sea to shining sea.

Then Sony produces a movie about Kim Jong Un and it  is cancelled because North Korea hacked into their system and threatens to pull out all their fingernails and toenails if they don’t.

I saw the interview with Seth Rogen on the Daily Show, and even I’m scared that they will come after me.

But Sony, what in the hell did you do in a previous life that is bringing down all this upon your corporate shoulders? I know the corporation is suffering, since the SCOTUS has explained to me that corporations are people too and can have religious opinions and political ones, so no doubt they can feel pain and fear as well.

Is this just karma?

Or is that blasphemous itself and really the great white beard in the sky getting back at Sony for some perceived failure to bring good Christian movies to the screen? I mean, I suppose THAT movie, The I N T E R V I E W, (that should confound any hacker), could be considered Christian, but then again, maybe not, since I have not seen it. But I must say that Seth Rogen, (who is an awful interview by the way with a horrid giggle that is super annoying) doesn’t strike me as someone you might see at the local Baptist Church, being Jewish first of all. Maybe it’s his Canadianishness that is the problem, though I don’t recall the Good Lord speaking about Canucks in the New Testament at least, though they maybe those Canaanites with just a spelling error.

By the way, why DO you think that God sports a beard? Did Gillette not get the franchise in heaven?

So anyway, let me just say a word or two about all the hoopla.

First, what possessed Sony to think it was a good idea to make a movie about assassinating a living person? I mean that is really the issue of first import here. I’d be the first to tell you I think His Special Imperialness Kimmy is a screw loose and on the run. Giving that man a nuke is probably not on anybody’s wish list. Still and all, he does qualify genetically speaking as a human being and as such has a right to not expect his very life is made sport of. His life may be supercilious to be sure, but still, it’s the only one he’s got (apparently).

I mean seriously folks, we make sport of crazy people all the time, and we make movies about them, but we call then Prince Crazypants of UZ-beki-beki-Uz-stan. We don’t call-em by name and country. Did Sony fear we couldn’t figure it out?

All would not have happened had they just called him “Jim”.

Beyond that, well, opinions are rampant on both issues. Fear reigns supreme at the present. Sony is “corporately speaking” hiding in the closet, George Clooney is asking why everybody is being such a lady part and having no manly parts? And most normal people go about their business and don’t have much of an opinion, unless it has to do with somehow it being Obama’s fault and therefore a nuke delicately placed up Kimmy’s arse is the ONLY proper response.

Which all begs the second issue, personal chit.

Sony’s other issue deals with hackers who exposed a lot of emails between Sony personnel. They were as you might expect, rather unkind to some people and made jokes at others expense.

What’s new?

I mean that seriously.

We live in a time when the government can hack our phones and listen to our conversations. Corporations regularly have their credit card banks violated. Facebook and my computer monitors everywhere I go, and everyone I talk to, and presents me with “other things I might like”.

While it might be fruitful to make some acts criminal, and a lot more actionable as “violations of privacy”, they cannot be termed unexpected by any sane person any more. They are business as usual.

Whether the government should listen in, it will or somebody else will. And like the rung bell, it cannot be unrung now. The same people who work for the government work for themselves and rogue governments and will do it anyway. If there is a means to profit, people will do it. That has always been the case, and will always be the case.

The fact is, that really smart people choose to do criminal things for either more money, or more thrill. You can’t change that, and so you pretty much gotta live accordingly.

Big brother is watching and so is big sister, and big daddy and mommy.

It’s no use lamenting that fact or pining for the good old days (as we have pointed out, they had plenty enough of their own problems whether you remember or not).  Don’t write down what you don’t want published across public domains. Simple as that. Save your salacious remarks for in-person conversations and check your lunch dates for wires (okay that may be too far).  PS: microphones of any kind are a tell-tale sign that what you say may be heard by OTHERS.

If you are like me, I pretty much don’t care what you know about me, though I would rather you didn’t have my credit card numbers. But I gave up information just a week ago and had to cancel a card and change my passwords, because I acted before thinking it through and was taken in by a website that looked perfectly legit yet on second thought, made no sense. It’s part of life, and with each episode you learn a bit more how to protect yourself.

So, let the media rant and rave about all this business of hacking. Some day, people will find it so normal that we won’t talk of it any more. It will undoubtedly spur new technology to develop “zones” of privacy which will then be the subject of new hacking efforts. And we shall survive it, and on to another level we go.

That’s my take on all this stuff. Sony, I know this will embarrass you, but dude, you were just stupid. Do you feel the pain?

 

 

 

 

Is It Part of Growing Older?

Tags

aging, good old days, illusions, life in the foothills

I’m greatly afraid that my generation has lost its collective marbles. I take comfort in the fact, that every generation at some point is spoken of this way. If I’m right, then we are doomed as a society, and that would displease me quite a lot. I’d hate for civilization to end on my watch.

A friend suggested that he thought we got a “pretty good high school education.” I spent more time in social studies and literature and thought the offerings mediocre (looking back from of course the lofty position of “higher” education), while he spent time in math and science and thought he got a rather good effort from his teachers.

The problem is one of perspective of course. Those that have nary opened a serious book since they paraded around the gymnasium in their blue gowns and little hats rather think they were “well-educated” since they have managed in most cases to chew gum and walk at the same time, which is, albeit for some a herculean effort.

Those that either attended a reputable university (all the TV preacher colleges excepted please), or those motivated by someone or something to learn on their own, have a better  perspective I would argue to decipher the puzzle.

If you mean, did I learn to read and write a simple enough declarative sentence, read road signs and interpret them correctly, follow the directions at the polling place (and be there in the first place), stand when I heard the National Anthem (unless I was flirting with Marxism at the time), and pay my taxes on time  even while cutting every corner I thought I might get away with, then yes, I was well-educated in high school.

If you mean, on the other hand, was I taught to read carefully, discriminatingly, and with a critical eye, was I taught to evaluate arguments, avoid straw men (what the hell were they?), reserve judgment until more facts were accumulated, heck define a fact from a feel-good facsimile, then no, I was not well-educated in high school.

The fact is that education, publicly at least, has probably always been the former, more or less.  We are required to attend school to accomplish this: (1) become “good” citizens however defined but including being law-abiding, honest (on the big things at least), voting (again at least on the big things), and willing, oddly enough, to offer one’s life up for the entity known as “one’s country”, and (2) to fill out simple forms and read directions such that one can do the above as well as become a good cog in the economic machine.

A certain number of those being so groomed are culled from the herd as “college material” and will go forth to don the white collars and supervise the rest, or provide other medium level services, such as accounting, teaching of the young, druggists, and so forth. They may at will also participate in low-level political jobs such as school boards, city councils, mayoral duties in smaller towns, and so forth.

The malady of which I speak or was alluding to in the title seems to affect mostly those who rather blithely go through life, thinking themselves both learned and intelligence with nothing but a faded high school diploma to assure them of their abilities. The malady?

Thinking that things were better “back when”.

I belong to a forum or two dedicated to the high school I once attended, and it is fraught with this sort of talk. The old neighborhood has “gone down”, it’s not longer “safe”. All the old hangouts are “torn down”. Many a sentence begins with “when we were kids” and then goes on to explain how we were safe, happy, well-fed, drug-free, healthy, robust, patriotic, god-fearing, obedient, polite, mannerly and so forth. By contrast today’s youth are none of the above, except  one’s own grandchildren which are all perfect and the best ever produced.

Of course there are myriad causes for the “decline”, but it usually breaks down to one of several causes: (1) Democrats, i.e., liberals, (2) Republicans, i.e., conservatives and tea party adherents, (3) lazy people, i.e., people of color including immigrants, (4) crime and drugs, attributed to number (3) and condoned by (1).

The life seen in retrospect was akin to Donna Reed and Leave it to Beaver rolled into one.

We seem to have forgotten a lot of real truth here. More than a little I would say. In fact while we remember the “good” we have forgotten the bad. In the 50’s and 60’s most children who contracted leukemia died.

Most African-Americans were trapped in ghettos in the north and Jim Crow lives in the south. But at least we could boast that the tax rate on high incomes was upwards of 90% something which causes gasps today as we have been taught that asking the rich to pay any taxes somehow inhibits their ability to “create jobs”. They created plenty back then. Today big agribusiness has driven most small farmers out of  business, while they reap farm subsidies alongside the natural resource people  adding to their billions of profits each year, but it’s somehow really bad to give people food stamps to eat. Those are handouts and wrong. Business subsidies are good. Those things remain with us from our youth.

Women made less on the dollar than men than they do now, back in the 50’s.

(The ad denotes that a man wearing these pants is so amazing that a woman can’t wait to be walked on by him). This is how our mothers were thought of. It is the role model many of us grew up with. We looked to “marry well” and have kids, and keep a clean house. My mother and her sister-in-law waged a silent battle to out do the other at Thanksgiving and Christmas meals and my grandmother joined in for who could be-ribbon their gifts with prettier and bigger bows.

How far back to you want to go?

Not as far, I gather to the great depression?
Not so far as World War II? Let’s skip that part about Russia and the Cold War, and practicing duck and cover under the desks. Let’s skip the Cuban Missile Crisis when even us kids walked on egg-shells knowing something awful was afoot.

If you stopped at the high school level, then you know so damned little about the reality of this country that you’re bound think that the 50’s were great and should be returned to.

That’s why when people who have some knowledge of the unconscionable things this country has done in the name of “security” or its economic interests”, naturally point out those evils, you feel attacked. You then come with your misunderstood “history” which was never really  true in the first place but was fed to you to make you a good obedient citizen.

You tell us your distorted recollection of the founding fathers, now lacquered with Christian fundamentalist fervor. You tell us of “unfettered free markets” which never were in the first place. You tell us of all the bullshit you’ve been fed since by a propaganda machine that claims it’s “fair and balanced” so you trust it. It’s all crap, but now you’re defending your “way of life” which was nothing like reality in the first or last place, but makes you feel relevant once again.

The fact is you don’t know the real world and don’t want any part of it. It makes you feel uncomfortable because it goes against all you remember from the past plus what Fox has told you to fear and blame. So you do, and you wail for the “good old days” when life was perfect, although it wasn’t, and you’re neighbor was beating his kids, and another was raping his daughter, and another was suffering with knowing he was attracted to other guys and had no one to confide in, and this family was fighting over money every day and night, and that mother was a secret drunk, and the lady across the street took pills to keep from screaming.

That’s real life. And it’s a damn shame that you are in your sixties and still have no clue. And you won’t learn because shit, it’s just way to easy to pretend, and blame somebody other than your little group. And the beat goes on, my friend, and you never grew up and you never will.

And that’s why your education sucked in high school, because nobody ignited the spark of curiosity in you, and you didn’t have it naturally. At that’s most of you. Thank god, apparently society functions like that. Or maybe it would be better if it didn’t.

I just know I’m not like most of you. Not better in a lot of ways. In a lot of ways worse. But man I cannot live in a dream world created for comfort. I cannot. It will not be part of growing older for me.

 

Violence and Pacifism, An Either Or Proposition?

Tags

morality, torture, War

Let’s be clear. I have no answers here. I have questions and beliefs, and that is all. I’m not suggesting what we should do, other than have this conversation, no matter how unpleasant and uncomfortable it makes us.

Anyone who suggests there are easy answers, or who whats to “leave it to the experts” and sweep it under the rug of “not my pay grade” be damned. You can’t avoid your complicity by refusing to be a part of the issue.

The discussion of war/pacifism, torture, rules of war, and so on, have confronted the human mind since the beginning of human interactions. While a certain defense of one’s personal integrity seems genetically normal, beyond that, we argue through the ages about how much is too much, when, and how?

As I said, there are no easy answers. It is for instance easy for me to come down on the side of pacifism, since it is my natural proclivity to choose life over harm to every and all creatures. Yet as a carnivores, I am immediately confronted with my hypocrisy, though I can respond quickly with “well exactly what do you propose to do with pigs and cattle, turn them out to fend for themselves as easy prey for predator animals?” Not your problem?

The world consists of very few individuals who will willingly stand still in the face of a direct lethal attack, and say, “do what you must,  I will not lift a hand to defend myself.” And by doing so, do you contribute to the violence of another?

Both these are acts of violence whether you accept them or not. A strict pacifist can neither consume meat nor defend themselves against attack.

Trying to cut them out of the mix, and then say, well all else, I come down on the side of no violence is just as fraught with exceptions. One can, and I do, argue that I will not kill 2 to save 10, but figure that fate must be allowed to play out as it will. But turn that figure into killing 10 to save 10 million, and you see the dilemma. Now it looks quite a bit different. Surely Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified on such grounds.

The Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strike proved a disaster and surely violates in principle and act, the idea of “just war” theory. The Bush Doctrine might prove workable in the hands of a bright, moral being, but proved horrific in the hands of a stupid man egged on by arguably evil men at his side.

Just war “sounds” right, and surely has the imprimatur of the Catholic Church, but is it really just? How about all that talk of “rules of war”? Does not tidying up the killing to MOSTLY the perpetrators just prolong what would otherwise be so horrendous as to cause cessation? Do we appease the warmongers by pursuing military targets and not civilian? Was not some of the reasoning behind the US entry into WWII the magnitude of the killing? Was it not motivated in part by the inhumanity of the German war machine with its blitzkriegs, and the indiscriminate unfairness of the Japanese “surprise?”  Would it all have been better if they had followed the “rules?”

It is not as ugly to push buttons from Colorado to kill convoys in Yemen, where yes, we allow for “collateral” damage? Would it not be better to force humans to face up to the bodies they produce? Was not part of the argument about pilots the nicety of not having to see the mangled flesh they produced by their bombs?

Torture has been in the human playbook for as long at least as recorded history. We burned and drew, quartered, and stocked, long before waterboarding came along. Technology brought us advances which brought electrodes, cattle prods, chain saws, drills, and a host of other household items to the torture table. We justify all this of course by the need for intelligence.

We do the unthinkable because it is necessary to protect the greater good, so we tell ourselves. Our television screens are full nowadays of “heroes” who regularly break, stab, beat, human bodies in the quest for the information necessary to “save lives” and protect our way of life.

What way of life are we protecting in the end? The life that condones and is willing to survive as a result of such human acts?

Where is the line? And who calls it? Is Jack Bauer the one you want to decide? Or a feckless Congress who measures everything by political leverage and opportunism, all too often limited to their own personal professional lives? Do you want to throw the dice on an individual you vote for when the entire game is now rigged by the rich and powerful whose interests are almost never going to be yours and who live by the credo, that the birds do not consider the interests of the ants they eat?

Are we any better than they when we do what they do in the name of stopping them? Do we want to be better than they? Do we care beyond our own hides in the end? If not, then we need to stop flooding the world with our proclamations that we are moral and they  are not. We need to stop accusing them of violations when we are committing them at an even faster pace.

There is a reason we armed the Taliban against the Russians and then proclaimed them our enemy after 9-11. There is a similar reason interred the Japanese during WWII. We arm the bad guys all over South America because they agree to our long-term goals, while their peoples writhe in agony from the tortures they employ. We enlist countries with “softer” rules to be our locations where we can avoid our rules of law, and mistreat humans in the name of saving democracy.

I say all this and then I sit with my head in my hands because I don’t know where to come down on the oft used scenario: you have in custody the man who knows where the hydrogen bomb has been planted in NYC. You have six hours to find it. If it goes off, millions will die, and the country may well fall. Well? torture him or not?

Perhaps the scenario is unfair, perhaps using the worst-case scenario is unnecessary and unfair. But once you allow for it, then how about Springfield? Or Kalamazoo? How small does the scale have to get before we say, too far?

Does justice demand something else? Does it demand an all or nothing? Or does it ask us to submit to a conclusion unpalatable but possibly real? As long as humans care about living, we have to admit we are natural killing machines, and do it as efficiently as possible with as little collateral damage (innocent death) as possible?

Is there a philosophy that can cut through all this and make it a simple argument that cannot be denied?

I surely wish for one, but so far, I have not found it.

I remain sickened. I know what I would stop, but I can’t give you a logical play it out to the end answer that works for all things in all times.

If you can, please tell me.

But damn don’t avoid the issue, for we all are complicit whether you like it or not.

From Whence Came We?

From an early age, I wondered about where I came from. Perhaps it is why fairy tales failed to trigger my imagination, for I took such things literally and soon discovered that they didn’t live up to logical expectations.

Take Santa Claus. I loved Christmas more than any holiday as a child, and of course I believed in Santa as all young children do who are raised in the Christmas culture. I was not plagued by older siblings who told me it was phooey, or well-meaning adults who “slipped” and brought that belief to a screeching halt.

No, I figured it out all alone, one pre-Christmas night as I lay in bed, trying to will Christmas morning a more hurried arrival. Ignore all that problem of reindeer and flying, and just how much any sleigh could carry, the time just made no sense. Even with a full 24-hours across the globe, Santa would have to travel faster than fast to visit all us boys and girls. I started with just my own “neighborhood” of about one square mile. Why it would take at least an hour, but even it only took 15 minutes to visit a few hundred homes, why there was the city, and then the state, and then all the states, and then ALL of Canada, and then Europe, and even those awful Ruskies had children, and that was a BIG country too.

Well, that is one story, but eventually that grew to all the other questions that needed answering about how the earth came to be, and how the moon came to be, and how humans came to be. I systematically investigated all these things from childhood to adulthood, getting more and more sophisticated answers surely. I became a student of sorts of astronomy and later cosmology, and paleontology. I read books about these subjects for fun, marveling at great mysteries.

I became of course no authority, and understood only up to a point, for sooner or later much of this turns into mathematical equations far beyond my learning. But I got the scientific answers for the most part. As I matured, and developed some sense of a spiritual life, God entered the equation as well, and over the years I discerned that these are really two questions. One demands reproducible proof; the another a philosophical elegance of argument.

Of course the argument rages on, with fundamentalists entering where they do not belong, and atheists peppering them with irrefutable logic at most turns. Both are wrong, because as I said, one does not really relate to the other except when one (the fundamentalists) demands that the Bible be used as a scientific text, and the other (the atheist) insists that all believers are fundamentalists.

Science, in the area of cosmology does posit that there may be unknowables, forever unknowable. Brain scientists question the ability of the brain to know itself in all it’s complexity. There may be limits therefore to human knowledge. If there are, then God has the place of “unmoved mover” as Aristotle suggested.

Fundamentalists fundamentally don’t understand or don’t choose to understand things like the 2nd law of thermodynamics for instance. Sooner or later, in an attempt to sound scientific, a fundamentalist while draw herself up and point out that Darwin’s evolutionary theory violates it. Now, if pressed, she would not have a clue as to why, but she read it somewhere in one of her “how to stump your evolutionary friends” and prove Darwin wrong. Of course it does not, because entropy only works in closed systems. The earth is not a closed system because it is being bombarded continuously with solar radiation (energy).

This is only their second best argument, for their first is always, “if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” Well, my fine airhead, it’s because we didn’t evolve from monkeys, and nobody ever said we did, except another uninformed fundamentalist. First, we are related to apes, not monkeys (and there is a rather big difference), and second we are not evolved from them, but actually share way way back, a common ancestor. We both branched off in different directions (picture the fork in the road), one leading to life in the savannah and mountains, another covering the earth and developing bigger and more complex brains.

Why do I rehash all this?

Why because there has been a significant breakthrough as of late. And it’s worth your time to learn about it. The results are far from in, and it may not prove to be what the author thinks it may be. But it has the scientific world of evolutionary biology and probably physics as well in a tizzy as other research facilities begin the wonderful process of devising experiments to test out the new hypothesis.

As people like myself, and hopefully you as well know, evolutionary theory does not purport to explain “how life began” a common mis-argument of the fundamentalist sort. Such a thing is called abiogenesis. Evolutionary theory has to do with how species change over time due to natural selection. However, a rather smart guy has offered an explanation of “how life began” in a sense, and it involves that 2nd law we talked about earlier.

He posits, by way of mathematical equations, that replication of cells may be a response to infusions of energy (the sun) into the primordial soup. In other words, life arises as a methodological answer  to the desire to “even” out or reduce the heat of the energy. Because the 2nd law suggests that energy dissipates across the spectrum of the system seeking equanimity, replication of cells actually fosters that law England claims.

If this is true, then it is the underlying foundation of Darwin’s theory, and of course it means that life is what is to be expected in the universe, and not at all a rarity.

Of course, not everyone agrees that Jeremy England is right.

That is what science is all about. There is and will be, as I said, plenty of testing and experimentation to determine whether his hypothesis is correct. But it’s exciting news to anyone who, like I, is always wondering and asking “how and why”.

*Do read the article. It’s not that long.

 

I’m Not Nice, and I Don’t Intend to Change

When I read this article, it kind of all became clear. What article? This one.

It’s another of those that I have read recently that redirects the finger back at the liberal establishment for the perpetuation of racism.

Not in the way you damn real racists believe. Not in your stupid, we are post-racial and I’m not a racist, and if you play the race card, you, damn libtard, are. No, not in that way.

Some one suggested to me a week or so ago that liberals are the real racists, and she meant it. I admitted that that was a possibility in some sense, but in reality that would be an oxymoron of sorts. Liberal by definition excludes judging whole classes of people on the basis of some preconceived and wrong notion. Find me an overtly racist liberal and I’ll tell you to try again to go find me a liberal, cuz honey you ain’t got one.

I no more think all Republicans are scum-sucking whack jobs than I think all Democrats are destined for ambrosia and petal-laden avenues in heaven. I come closer to the “all” epitaph when it comes to white men, but I can rattle off several dozen to whom it doesn’t apply starting with my own husband to really mean that either.

Liberals, according to the psychological and sociological testing done by a myriad of smart people in a variety of institutions of higher learning, are people who are more adventurous when it comes to the great unknown, would rather try something new than use something old, see a symbiotic relationship that extends to all peoples of all places and includes animals and the environment. Our tribe is humanity, so we naturally don’t group people into cells of otherness. We like facts and logic. We have values but we know that facts and truth trump our parochial notions, and values can and should change as we accumulate more knowledge about ourselves and the world.

I’d be the first to tell you I didn’t start out that way. My parents weren’t particularly political, in fact my mother could not have told you a single fact about any important issue before the body politic. My father had opinions, but they were such a mishmash of conflicting direction, that I gained little insight into the world of conservative vs. liberal from him either. What he was was a racist, and he made no bones about it, though in his later years he learned the correct “words”, no longer using the “N” word and substituting “black” uttered with an guttural blah at the beginning that left little to the imagination about his true feelings.

He learned that a distant cousin’s child had married an NFL player who happened to be African-American and he took great delight in announcing “that’ my cousin” as the player ran down the field. It was not meant as praise nor as puffery. It amused him to be considered “family” with a person of color. It was a joke you see.

It took me getting to college and beyond, and later working and living in close proximity to people of color before I began to see the light of reason. At first it was a bit of a surprise to realize that all people pretty much are the same. African-Americans became my friends, my best friends in some cases, and lovers in a few too. They became mentors and people I came to admire for their values and principles and accomplishments. The point was, African-Americans were just like me, just like you, possessed of all the grandness and foibles that are the lot of humans.

I’ve always been good at seeing the bigger picture. I soon realized that Asians and Hispanics, and all the Pakistanis, and Arabs were all the same too. That happened a very long time ago, and I’ve learned a good deal since then. I’ve been, to a small degree, a part of the continuing struggle to bring justice and equality to this country.  I’ve learned the ins and outs of strategy and the uses of the NAACP versus SNCC, versus the Panthers, and others as the means to the equality that we all see as necessary and inevitable.

What I have learned in my dotage is that being “nice” doesn’t work. I have talked to a lot of racists who tell me how they are not. They tell me about their black friends. They tell me that their black friends are like them. Bullshit. When you tell me how wonderful Ben Carson, Herm Cain, Alan West, Alan Keyes, and people like that are, and in the same breathe tell me that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are racists, well, you need say no more. You have no black friends. You may have African-Americans whom you work beside, but trust me, they think you’re a racist and probably call you a cracker behind your back. If you are trying to impress them by telling them that you would sure vote for that Ben Carson fellow, then they surely know what you really are.

There is no nice about this ugliness in America. And those of us who are white, well we have to stop the “please don’t riot, be nice like Dr. King taught you.” We don’t run this show. We only have a right to offer ourselves as “hands” to do whatever tasks need tasking. We must encourage other white folks to speak up and be loud too, but our task is not to lead but to confront racists and poke them continuously with the stick of recognition.

The fact of the matter is that a travesty is occurring in this country and has been going on for EVER. Young black men die because police and others can get away with it. And they know this. We cannot fall for the explanations and excuses and the sanctimonious “advice” offered by people who don’t live this experience, and don’t deal with people who do.

It is NOT enough to agree that people shouldn’t destroy property, and sympathizing about what drives people to extremes. That is bait, set out to deflect the conversation away from injustice to excuses for why the police can’t be blamed for the poor upbringing of black boys. Keep focused on the reality of black men being abused daily on our streets. Keep focused on women being pushed around and assaulted by men because they can. Keep the focus where it belongs.

I don’t give a damn whether Bill Cosby’s career is ruined. I care about the women who have come out in droves to repeat the awful things he did to them. THEY ALL CAN’T BE LYING.

I don’t give a damn whether A woman lied about being raped. I care about the thousands who have been and who are afraid to face a condemning society that till tries to make it her fault.

I don’t give a damn what the grand jury testimony was in any of these cases. The fact remains a trial should have ensued because trials ensue in 99% of all the cases they hear as long as cops aren’t involved as potential defendants.

I don’t give a damn if many, or even most cops are good and risking their lives every day. They chose the career after all. I care about every damn dirty one who uses his/her power to push around others because they feel ineffectual everywhere else.

Some of you have told me that I’m not nice. You are supremely right. I’m not. I’m not nice to hate and injustice and inequality. I’m not nice to power used against people to keep them small and beaten down. I’m not special. I’m part of that great sea of decent people who mostly are nice, because they don’t want to offend. Well I want to offend. And I’m not going to be the least bit shy in telling you that you are a damned racist when you use the words and codes that announce it to the world.

It just happens to be the penalty you pay for watching that shit-“news” show Fox. You don’t even know, that based on what you do say, you might just as well use the “N” word, we all know what you mean.

And when more white people stop being nice, as the article suggested, well, then we might just cause you to go inside your tiny little mind and slam the door and avoid the public where you don’t belong. And we can get on with the work of building a decent society where people come first, ALL people, not just your lily-white group.

PS: And all that crap about “I am not against immigrants just ILLEGAL ones” (oh the crime!) We get that too. It’s just code you idiot for all your fears and your real cowardice to state the truth of your bigotry.