Is I Crazy? You Decide.

Tags

economics, evolution, humans, society

Oh, boy have I unleashed the dogs of war. Offering up such a juicy steak to those incredibly warped individuals who don’t think that I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread. Handing them an eviscerating tool of great power–is I crazy? Twice?

Trust me, letting them think they have me at their mercy is just my way of inviting them into my lab-bore-a-tory said the spider to the fly.

Is I?

As a child, I laid upon my bed and wondered was anyone in the world like me? I feared not, and in the era of peer-pressured sameness that we all strove to reach, I quivered. Was I normal?

Now, at the threshold of agedness ( I shall never be a “senior” or and old person I swear), I lay upon my bed and wonder if there is anyone in the world like me. I fear so, and in an era of eccentricism, I quiver. I don’t wanna be normal.

I think my prayers are answered. Were answered, or were ignored but I was just lucky that my prayers were actually the way things are? One of the above.

I’m a nut. I believe in all sorts of things that you no doubt think foolish.

For instance.

I wrote about this before so bear with me. In college I took a logic course and was asked to write a response to this statement: Would you be willing to pay for the support of an individual whose only requirement was to read? In other words can I fathom a world in which not everyone must work for a living?

Buckminster Fuller suggested an answer:

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

See,  I went to college. But not to think. I went to earn a living. And I did very well, thank you very much. I set myself up for a gentle life, not working too hard, in a reasonably decent setting. I had tons of friends and colleagues. I made good money and enjoyed the perks of professional work. I needed to make a living and by all standards, I succeeded rather well.

But that’s not what should be or could be. Too many good minds are wasted in menial work of all sorts, professional and otherwise. These minds might be better used if we just let them think.

I think it would all sort itself out over time. I mean if you aren’t a good thinker, then thinking would become both boring and well, mindless at some point. One would ache to get one’s hand on a piece of wood or a pie crust. And one would move to that. We would do what pleases us and revs up our juices. It would be sane.

Trouble is, most of us aren’t willing to pay for others to do what seems pointless to many. But thinkers think about things and thinking about things leads to ideas and ideas lead to schematics and drawings and experiments and prototypes, and, well you see where this goes.

New stuff is discovered and people who work with their hands for pleasure make this new stuff. And thinkers and paper pushers and bus drivers enjoy this new thing, which makes their lives a wisp easier or more pleasant. What’s not to like here?

Still, tight asses will complain. They will suspiciously stare at the thinker and want proof that their money is being well spent. No lobster sir, be satisfied with bean soup you grifter! Yes, they will not trust the process, because they are all about making sure they ain’t bein’ ripped off.

Hey nothing is perfect. Somebody is always scammin’ the system. Hell people go to great lengths to set themselves up as pillars of the community when they are stealin’ ya blind. Humans are very human no matter the system.

But if you are of the mind that humans are in a process of evolving, then shouldn’t we pursue avenues that point to evolution in our THINKING as well as in our technology? Shouldn’t we be nobler and kinder in our systems of governing, pushing us mere mortals to be better than we think we can be?

Didn’t Jefferson and Adams and Madison and all the rest focus on the horizon and see a future better than any before them? Didn’t they offer us the messiness of democracy because we would screw it up surely as humans, but we would have something worth struggling for rather than languishing in the monarch-subject model?

Why do we keep beating up on the defenseless? Look, a cursory examination of physical types of human being proves rather clearly that genetics is a tricky and sometimes comical thing. I’ve seen people put together in what looked to be no more than random cutting and pasting of various limbs. Head too small, body growing outward as one descended, legs like stumps without the merest reference to ankles?

If some physical jokes pass as the range of genetic drift allowed within the species,why is it so hard to realize that not everyone has inside their cranium the makings of even a good basic biologist? Some people are dumb. Some are thoughtless. Some are unable to walk and chew gum, or see beyond their own nose.  Why must they be conformed to some job to which they are ill-suited in almost all respects?

Let them find their way, and then make up the slack. Don’t they have enough to contend with? What must it be like to realize that one got shortchanged in the brain functioning department? To think but not to reason well? Ah, that’s the rub.

Out of common decency let these people be! A decent home, nutritious food, medical care, education based on interests. Do this to our less fortunate and embrace them as providing a meaningful richness to the fabric of humanity and move on.

Stop the whine. Yes, uber conservative with your compartmentalized brain and your rigid sense of right and wrong, I’m talking to you. You have worked all your life. Nobody gave you a thing (I know you believe this although it’s far from true). You can’t retire because you don’t have enough of whatever it is you think essential.

But that is not the only model of living available. There is nothing to be ashamed of if for any reason you can’t hoe the row established by the not so bright but physically strong average human. There is a place for us all, and if we do it right, we will be doubly enriched by the offerings of all these oddball humans who contribute to the human family diversity.

Sometimes people just make damn bad decisions. Should they pay forever? Or can you cut them some slack and help them exist in what’s left of their lives? Can ya?

That damn Protestant work ethic and those bootstraps will be small comfort in the grave. It did not serve you especially well quite honestly. There are other ways.

It’s a little bit socialistic I guess. And a bit psychosis.

That is. . . .

We participate in SoCS.

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On the Road Again

Tags

environment, faith, journeys, racism, religion

“Are you Catholic?” Alex asked. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “You know,” he added, “I grew up at St. Genevieve’s, went to school there too. But. . . .” So went another of the ever-occurring reasons for “why I don’t go to church anymore”. I can relate.

Substitute, writing for Catholic, and you have my last few weeks in a nutshell.

Confused?

Welcome to my world.

So am I.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had returned to the Church once again, seeking. . .something? Hell if I know what.

I didn’t find it. Nothing bad happened. The priest was okay as priests go. I don’t expect much.

If you don’t know what you are seeking, it’s pretty likely you won’t find it. How would you know?

Writing is just about as confusing. I’ve written a lot over the years. All sorts of writing. Big bold essays of a hundred pages, footnoted to Hades and back. Short, “reflections”. Legal arguments chock full of citation to other learned writings. Notes of books I’ve read. And then all this blogging. Years of it. thousands of posts, millions of words, ideas formed, bent, twisted, reconfigured, spit out. Arrogance, pomposity, mendacity, with a rare humble crumb offered here and about. My guts displayed for any who bothered to note it.

Do I have nothing left to say?

Perish that thought. I’d shrivel up and croke. My enemies (having enemies is a true joy if you think about it seriously) wish I would just “shut the fuck up”. That alone should spur me forward.

I start, I stop, I flounder. As good as I came, I saw, I conquered (veni, vidi, vici) doncha think?

Why are we so three oriented? Tragedies come in three, examples are most often offered in threes. Trinity? Trifecta? Triple creme? Triple crown. Banana split which has little to do with the split banana and everything to do with three scoops.

I’m reading a very intriguing book. What is God? Not Who, but What. It all stems from that flip. Turn a globe upside down and leave it like that. It will make you rethink a few things.

I’m processing faith versus religion. I’m pretty down on religion right now. Composed of fallible humans what would you expect? Is it necessary? Church votes yes. I’m pretty much votin’ no at this point.

I choose to express my faith through some rituals of this faith system. I call it Catholicism. You can call it the Whore of Babylon if you are not well educated. I don’t care. There is too much wrong to defend it. There is more right than I often admit.

I’m pretty sure that God is not what we think. But I am not at all sure. I don’t think I’m supposed to be sure. Augustine said we can only say what God isn’t. That is hardly a recipe for success.

Church is like stopping off at a rest stop. It is good to get out and stretch your legs, relieve your bladder, and munch a snack. But it’s not home. You got to get back at the grueling drive that never ends. Thinking, watching, staying awake. Driving requires concentration  if you plan to do it successfully over time. So is God-seeking.

One premise is that there is always something not quite real about reality. We sense there is more, but we can’t see it. We recognize the unreality. We have become desensitized to unreality. It passes by us with nary a nod.

A man says, “I am going to kill you because you are raping our women and taking over our country.” Another man says, “that’s hate against Christians,” (since the dead are Christians). Whose reality are we talking about?

I don’t reject the Catholic Church because of its theology. There is a Catholic Church here that is “not aligned with Rome”. They love my politics. But I don’t go and sit in the pews there. There is one of those Universalist Unitarians, or something here. There is Bahai here. I am not interested.

I plant my butt in a pew and I sit, and I wonder why I’m there. I count off the various “parts” until we get to communion and then the closing prayer, and then the closing hymn and then. I’m free again.

Why do I go?

I stopped going.

I feel something missing. Vicious and jealous mistress you faith!

Faith and religion. Two separate but unequal things. Faith matters, religion is some bonus at least once upon a time. Ever? Never? I did good once. It does good sometimes, somewhere.

The problem as always is the people. Fallible humans muck up the mud. Turn it ugly and personally motivated.  I hate welfare not because I don’t want to help the poor but because I want to decide who to give my charity to. So they say. What they mean is I can then avoid giving welfare to lazy queens and princes who lay in bed half the day before they saunter down to the welfare store and pick up their checks. As I JUDGE them anyway.

I don’t want the government to tell me how much to give. I bet ya a million bucks you couldn’t come begin to tell me how much the “government is taking out of you in taxes” to support medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and so forth. You couldn’t even give me a ball park figure of what they take. But somehow, you assure me, you would give more if it were voluntary. Yeah, sure ya would.

Religion starts off with laudable goals. Seek God. Take care of God’s people. But your old fallibility rose like the skunky smell it is, and you changed that to “God’s chosen people” however YOU JUDGMENTALLY DECIDED THAT.

I’m for Israel because they are God’s chosen, you utter with perfect surety. Bullshit.

If you believe God has favorites then you believe in an awfully wicked and strange being. One who creates so poorly that He finds one poor slob called Abram and tells him, he will “create a nation” of him. Hope he does it better than the first couple of times. Dont’ forget the whole fiasco of Noah and that damned ark that couldn’t be built large enough to begin to house “all God’s creation”.

Yet you got a passel of morons whose brains are so gucky with sludge that they gotta cling to that stuff as literal and then make it their life’s work to make you take it literally too.

And God is not in that damned Book you fool. PEOPLE wrote the book. They wrote it about the God they were seeking. Since you can’t tell me much about God on your own, why do you think they were any better at it? They’re just trying, same as you and me. Yet you kneel before the freakin’ book.

So here I sit. I read that the Pope has offered up an encyclical on the environment. As sure as it’s June and it’s hot, right wing Catholics are finally letting out what they really think. They really really don’t like this pope at all. Unlike their precious JPII and Benedict however, Francis doesn’t inherit the “God’s chosen” appellation. We don’t have to pay attention to Francis when we don’t like what he says.

“He’s not a scientist. He’s just giving his opinion on a subject that he has no expertise in.” So the upshot is to ignore what he says. He’s a dupe of some libtards in the Vatican who haven’t explained to this poor illiterate fool that words matter. “He’s a marxist, anyway.”  If you tried to continue the conversation say about women priests, they would tell you. “Pope John Paul has spoken on that issue and we will not allow further conversation because he says it is a closed issue.” Some personal opinions count. Oh yeah, the one’s you agree with.

Whose reality are we talking about?

Everywhere I go, I see the same thing. Distinctly different takes on reality. Both can’t be right. Or perhaps they can.

God is in the mysteries of life.

Oh, seeking Him there is not as easy as sittin’ in the pew. Reading and thinking and meditating, and working out the details. Only to realize that each and every insight provides fresh mystery, new questions, and potential conflicting yearnings.

Open your eyes, and your ears. But mostly open your heart. Take little if anything for granted. Seek serendipity, and sweet harmony. Enjoy the sugary taste until the bitterness creeps in. Seek further, and never stop. Ever.

That is human becoming.

Whistling Through the Clover of My Mind

Tags

ironies of life, life in the foothills, lifestyle, the GOP clowns

I’m not sure when it happened exactly. I don’t recall anything especial about the day.

What day?

Oh, the day I realized that I had the answer to most everything. When I got it all figured out, and knew that the remaining puzzle pieces were all gonna fit. In my picture of the world.

It should be a national holiday, shouldn’t it? And I know, now you are grabbing a blanket, some snacks and sitting down to listen carefully as I explain the answers  to all your hearts questions.

Sarah Palin continues to bring down the IQ level of the planet simply by breathing. She interjected herself and her simpleton daughter into the Duggar fray. She uses big words of which she knows not. Pedophilia comes to mind. Sarah, coming to a supermarket opening near you.

I ponder how profoundly the world changes. I mean, one doesn’t have to be a genius when it comes to history to understand that Jews and Arabs were natural allies for a good many HUNDREDS of years before they weren’t. Jews found some safety in Arab controlled lands at least when it came to the Christians who often slaughtered entire towns of them during the Crusading years. Muslims allowed them safe haven and allowed them to practice their faith largely unhampered.

And let us not forget that Jews fled places like Spain, often ending in Muslim held lands, to avoid  Torquemada and his forced “conversions” of Jews to Christianity. Muslims fared no better.

Yet today, we have a Middle East Muslim population determined (rationally or otherwise) to eradicate “Israel from the map”. Actually I think that refers more to the physicality of the state rather than all people Jewish, but still, a hell of a turn of events wouldn’t you say?

Is it in the water? No. It is the result of trying to pretend you’re holier than thou, when you are not. That’s why the GOP continues to find itself mired in the cesspool of sexuality wrongdoing virtually ALL the time. Hastert and the Duggars are simply the latest examples. We ain’t talkin’ your garden variety adultery ya know.

Like wrap your brain around the fact, that while wringing his holy hands in shock and dismay at Clinton’s adultery with Monica, the Speaker (Newty) was busy on his third serial adultery himself (and treating his ex in the despicable manner only a man who thinks of women as disposable arm candy can).

Newt stepped down in favor of Bob Livingston, who stepped down even before he formally took the gavel, having played around with as many as four women not his wives.

And then they settled on Dennis Hastert.

Well you know how that turned out. And then there was that guy who was pantin’ after pages. And the prostitutes, and the gay liaisons. And plenty of regular old adultery. It’s not that the Dems don’t engage in bad behavior, but it seldom flies in the face of their public hypocritical stances on gay rights, and the sanctity of marriage and all that other rot.

This sign should have been posted back in the fifties and sixties to most of the mothers giving birth to people like Santorum, Carson, Trump, Cruz, Walker, and so forth and so on and so on.

If I hear one more Republican strategist talk about the “wonderful field of candidates” we have this season, I’m gonna vomit.

Seriously do you paint crazy glue on your face so as to not crack up when saying that shit?

I read this and it seems accurate. The song says, “only the good die young.” That might well be true. I’m living proof. I ain’t good by design that’s for sure. My heart leads me to places that seem to rail at inequality, injustice, and all manner of dickish wrongitude, but it’s from no desire to be good. Just how it turned out. Education is a powerful teacher.

Speaking of which, living well is the best revenge I’m quite sure. And once I learned that, I spent my time trying to live well, which made living well much easier I gotta say. And knowin’ that the people who dislike me the most live these narrow mean little lives, well that’s my frosting.

My husband and I chatted the other night about how in our darker days (before we met or otherwise) when one sits and daydreams about the “perfect life”, well, reality caught up with us both. We are living it now. Both of us, rather blissful, sober in our assessment, very very aware of how lucky and blessed we are.

We love where we live (it ain’t called land of Enchantment for nothin” folks). We love our home and fitting it to our needs and desires as perfectly as possible. We love our companion pets whom we are privileged to care for. Most of all we love each other. After nearly sixteen years we still are never bored, and seldom disappointed. We laugh, and almost cry occasionally at how lucky we are.

I recall my father saying very sarcastically as he sat in his chair, his life fading away before his eyes, “And they call these my golden years.”

Well, they are truly golden for me, and I wake with such anticipation and such eagerness each day, fulfilling all my dreams and hopes for how I would live and do in these years after the working was finished.

But I’d still like a spare million should you have it. I can do more.

I Likey, You More Better, Capisce?

Tags

Catholic Church, faith my style, Humor

When all else fails, I can always talk about myself. It’s my favorite subject after all. Okay, like three dozen people just ran off to call in this story to their editors. . . .hot off the presses, Sherry is gonna talk about herself. Cheeky? Arrogant? Full of self? Oh yeah, all that.

Who does she think she is?

I said it before. Like her, or not, there are few other alternatives. She ain’t tepid oolong or Earl Grey.

She is me, and I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that you probably got that.

I’m like a cat on a hot tin roof.

Or not. Mostly not.

If I were an animal which one would I be?

Polar bear mama?

Ponder that with your swayt tea. Yeah, we get that down here in New Mexico. I frankly hate that stuff. Sugar in tea? Are you mad?

People make me wonder. I mean take Bobby Jiggles Jindal. That man has no more chance of winning the GOP nomination than I do of winning a best in show at Madison Square Garden. Yet he twattles on.

Twattle, is a word conceived in sexual confusion. A cross between cunt and flapping lips of the face. See? Now you get it.

It’s a hell of a thing when your spiritual guru is a gang banger.

Well, not really, but sorta.

Yesterday I was a sittin’ in the pew when I noticed a young man with the usual accoutrements of style. . .ear-ring, sleeves cut out of the t-shirt. jeans, sneakers. He was sittin’ a few pews to the front of me.

Which made it convenient to watch.

So instead of concentrating on my own sinful self, I was bemused by this young man’s spiritual methodology. A very long time on the kneeler. No singing of entrance hymns. No murmuring of the “profession of faith” which is such a convoluted rattling of various Council pronunciations as to be indecipherable to all but the most religiously stringent of the faithful.

When that Gloria came along, oh good grief. It’s so badly written as to leave a normal believer astounded that given the whole of the Roman Catholic Church, no better rendition can be rendered but this? A squawky, akin to the Star Spangled Banner inability to keep the tune, sort of music that is painful to the ears and the senses.

My gangbanger, stands stoicly.

Mostly he sits with his head down, as if he’s there to beg atonement for a laundry list of crimes too numerous to mention. “Sorry God, but I shot somebody in a drive-by, and then celebrated with some blow, while threatening the mama of my baby for not having my dinner ready.” In the next breath, more sinful conduct is extruded.

Is any of this real? Oh probably not at all. The dude is probably a pediatrician, just out in his hoodie regalia which helps him calm down from the high intensity life of savior of children.

I jest?

Mostly.

It provided a handy excuse for not paying attention as Father explained all about the Holy Spirit and how we neglect it in our prayers.

Is that true for you too?

Do you pray to Jesus or the Father or the Holy Spirit? All the same yet different as they say.

Is it reasonable that Christian theology must be so convoluted? I suspect it works for theologians who like to think of themselves as pretty smart folks. And they are for the most part. Least they sound that way.

So, I’m sittin’ in the pew, figurin’ this guy is really doin’ it right. Most people don’t if you noticed. They are rushin’ around front to back, always with the obligatory bow to acknowledge that Jesus is layin’ on the altar, while we are talkin’ to our neighbor in the pew about a meat sale at the Carniceria.

So, I’m not talkin’, just praying me some Rosary until the bells ring and they remind everyone to shut the phones off. And I’m watching my mentor. I watch him with his own style of reverence, again on that kneeler when most everybody else is standing, because  the whole consecration thing is something to be knelt about.

And I wonder what the hell am I doing here?

Trying to recapture what once I had, yet which has so thoroughly departed. The devotion, the intensity, the It fuckin’ matters syndrome, it seems ephemeral after all this. Yet, I turn attention back. Jesus, I am not worthy to have you “under my roof” which is another of those John Paul/Benedict changes that is just change for change’s sake.

And he goes up for communion, but he is ahead of me, and I don’t realize until I get back to my seat, conveniently marked by my purse (what do men do to find their seat again?), that he has gone.

Guru man, you are of that ilk, (which I have never been) of those who in the confusion of people traipsing from pew to communion and back again, against the backdrop of a couple of hundred faces, working out their salvation with a wafer and sip, chooses to keep walking to the back and out the doors. Done! Got what I came for. Jesus is digesting in my belly and I’m roaring off in my Mazda to new Saturday night adventures.

I’m a bit chagrined by this turn of events. I wanted him to remain pious to the last second. Maybe be one of those stalwart types who continues laboriously to sing the closing hymn while people jostle  to get by and into the aisle, seeking the fastest route of escape past the priest who is taking a stand outside hoping to catch every last hand as it passes.

Alas, he has escaped and I’m chagrined, yet I’ve spent exactly three minutes of the sixty actually contemplating my own salvation. I don’t account all that bunk for much actually. I am, as they say, more of a Matthew 25 person. Get on with feeding the hungry and tending to the sick.

My spiritual guru seems made of common clay after all.

I sigh.

Whatever I’m here for, I seem to find. Not sure what exactly that is. But I feel better about everything somehow.

I don’t find it makes me kinder to stupid drivers though. I still yell at them from the safety of my car seat, taking satisfaction in the fact that I’m not stellar driver, but I am damn well better than that!

And I put it all aside, as I do every Saturday evening. Done! Mass obligation met. No need to think about that until next Saturday.

Which reminds me of the old guy at the pool, who apologized so deeply and long for not being able to sign my petition to open the pool at 8 because as he said, he could never come early, since he’s at Mass every morning. Alex, who recites the Rosary while he walks the water channel, did sign. No morning mass for him.

Too much piety for me. Except when I was in formation to be a nun.

Oh that’s news to you?

Fancy that. I prolly should yak about that sometime.

But not today. I don’t like to brag, unless I have a captive audience. God I know, I’m such a bitch. Which makes you even madder doesn’t it?

Remember this: happiness is the best revenge.

We participate occasionally and poorly in SoCS.

 

 

Wisdom of Ages, or the Aged

I often quote a friend of mine because I consider her wise. In some ways she’s wiser than I, and her remarks generally strike me as more right than not, and always worth a listen. She’s a good bit younger than me, and I was surely not as wise (nay not wise at all) as she at that age.

That suggests that wisdom is not a function of age entirely. I guess there are a number of ways to go as one moves from running to striding to walking to hobbling down life’s hopefully long road of destiny.

One can become everyone’s favorite auntie and grannie, always ready to play a game of Chutes and Ladders keeping the little ones out of the adult’s hair. One can be the always helpful always ready to drop everything to babysit, run an errand, bring a dish, drive a friend, sit by the bedside of the dying. One can go through a second childhood, with a long bucket list of “things to do before I die.” One can specialize in not giving a shit, or in giving too much a shit by championing causes. There are several thousand permutations of all these and more.

A lot of choices, I suspect are not made consciously. Only in the rarefied atmosphere of eccentricity does one start to see really conscious choice. The rest tend to be continuations of personal bents just enlarged with extra time allotments.

Wisdom seems to fall fairly equally along this spectrum, but the type may vary depending on the persona. I suspect the ever helpful grannie is considered most wise when it comes to child rearing and things that have to do with keeping households running smoothly. Some become wise in how to game the system, and do pretty much what they want  with as little bureaucratic interaction as possible. “Honey, here’s what you do to get around that Medicare donut hole.” If you get my point.

But I prefer myself the sort of wisdom that is Socratic in nature, not as in method, but as in, the reason people of his time sought him out and listened to him. Because he had something to say, a new way of thinking, a better way of deciding, a new evaluation of how to live. So did Aristotle for that matter. I guess it’s why I love guys like this, and the women who forever will probably be nameless but also pushed  the world forth. People who think about really eternal questions are my idols.

This sort of wisdom, I think comes from examining yourself first. Socrates said, that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” And he was correct. And he was in a minority of people who actually did it and do it. To not know why we do what we do is to be nothing more than a fairly dumb animal with a slightly bigger brain. Who wants to go down in history as the creator of the hula hoop? I’ve watched shows that show a factory in full operation making plastic spoons. People stand at their stations, gathering up groups of spoons and stacking them for boxing, or some other functional equivalent. I imagine doing that for a living for thirty years.

I cannot find the sense of accomplishment somehow. Other than one has shown incredible patience and stick-to-it-tiveness. A legacy of something I guess.

At least one has all the time to examine one’s life during the eight hours of stacking spoons, but I doubt much examination is going on. For if it were, the only thing to do is walk away, and quickly.

As I said, most people don’t do it. If they did, we would not see generation after generation re-enacting their parents lives with the same scenarios of working, grass cutting, fishing, knitting, raising kids, being grandparents, and onward, with no variation on a theme. Or we would see those re-enactments, but they would be real choices and not default, “what else is there?” surrenders.

I wrote a few days ago, that as I grew up in a household peopled by parents I did not understand nor much like in the end, I often wondered who was the alien, them or I. I’m still not quite sure of the answer. It depends on from what perch you examine the question. We were of different species attempting to ignore our blatant differences and pretend that this is what we bargained for.

They never examined the question clearly, but I did. And that forced me into examining me in-depth. It is not a difficult process in one sense, and requires no education in anything. It’s simply asking “why did I” to the enumerable stupid things we do and sticking to that question. “Why did I say that stupid thing at the party last night. Why do I never think before I speak?” That’s where it starts.

Then you answer the question. But beware the first five answers are never true. That’s the part of you that tries to defend the ego and blame it on something/someone else. With every answer comes the response, “Really?” And then the realization that you are just excusing the behavior not finding out why you did it. “My old boyfriend wasn’t supposed to be there, and I was so angry that I spoke without thinking.” Nope. Nobody “makes” you angry. You control how you feel. Keep going. “I was nervous because I didn’t know many people there.” Yep, that is a fact, you were nervous, but was it really because there were strangers there? What about strangers should make you nervous?

The process can take a lot of time, and you must be ruthlessly honest with yourself. Most people stick with the “old boyfriend” excuse and renew their anger, and that leads to a rehash of old pains, and nothing is learned. But if you take the time, you will get to the bottom of it. An answer that will no doubt leave you feeling vulnerable and raw but at least free to figure out a solution. The truth is you are unsure of yourself, feel inadequate, and feel you have to put on a pretense of being popular and witty and smart in front of all these “new” faces. That makes you nervous, and when nervous you can’t think wittily or smart.

See how it works?

You do this process relentlessly. Why do I always pick that type of friend, significant other, boss? Why do I always take that position in the office hierarchy? Why do I get into a fight with Uncle Mike every Thanksgiving?

Then when armed with the real reasons you do what you do, you can make intelligent choices to do what you choose to change the outcomes. That’s a wise thing to do.

Why do I believe this? Why do I feel that? To understand the answers is to understand why others don’t believe as you believe and why they don’t feel as you do. That broadens you in some ways, and explains a good deal in any case. You begin to see the fallacies that dog others that you are now free of. You admit your own negative proclivities and allow them theirs. You can view others engaging in blame and excuses and know the probable deeper motives at work.

If nothing else it gives you an edge. Used poorly it’s manipulation of the worst kind, used well, it can be the best of mentoring.

Me? I’m very sure that I am not patient enough to help people undo the tangles of their self-explanations. I point out the errors, and this is met often with anger and the charge of “you think you’re so smart”. That’s okay. I do think I am “so smart”, in fact I have the IQ testing to prove it, although that is not at all the point. The point is I’m smart enough to know that I don’t know a hell of a lot of things, but I can learn what I need and want to know. I don’t have to be like the herd and merely have “opinions” based on filmy desires, hidden fears, and ignorant  misinformed conclusions of what’s best for me.

I’d like to be eccentric, and wise. That’s what I’m shooting for. I prefer to give a shit a lot about life and humanity, and not give a shit about what anybody thinks of me, because in the end, the only thing that matters is that I cared about something important. I want to wear bright yellow and red because I want to be noticed. I want to laugh loudly, and curse magnificently, and be quotable often. I want to poke a stick at stupid people as I DEFINE THEM, and torture them endlessly with logical arguments that make them cry uncle. I want to be absurd about absurd things. I want to call out bigotry and shame those that hide behind false doctrines that allow them to feel good about hating.

I’m very secure in me, the only one there is. For that reason alone, I’m a good thing. I won’t come along again.

I will organize me as I choose and never give a damn what you think, but rather laugh at your “fitting in” however you define it.

And I applaud those of you who do the same. We are dancing, albeit a bit stiffly these days, down the lane leading to who knows what. We are not going kicking and screaming, but rather noting everything along the way, savoring every instant, nodding to fellow travelers, and thumbing our noses at the sleeping hoards. If I piss you off, well that’s a plus.

Now that is what I call being self-indulgent, and many will read this that way. But to those of you who are young and thinking, you just got a bit of a blueprint for living the good life. I’m sure you’ll use the information wisely.

 

 

Chit I Learnt on the Facebook

I am all for learnin’ as much as possible. I figgure it all works for better job placement in heaven. I aim for something big like Minister of Silly Walks. Or maybe Heavenly Math. I am purdy sure it’s a damn sight easier than Earthly Math.

Anyways, I’ve taken to the Facebook for extrE-curricular learnin’ and boy I ain’t a been let down a smidGeon.

I am gonna share some with ye all, so you ain’t quite so dis- un- (one of those) informed.

Firsty, go to the “Wall” of the people you are seekin’ in enlightenment from. The Wall is where they post personals about theyselves, like height, weight, eye color (no that’s the drivin’ card shit).  Anyways, they share stuff.

Like, relationships: some say “none yer bizniss”. This means it ain’t but that just makes ya try all the harder to find out if they are gay. If’n that matters to ye, well, they got “pages” where you can be against that sorta thing or for it as the case may be,  and argue with people who just like to argue about everything.

Beware of relationships that say: complicated.  They ain’t actually no complicated about it. They wife kicked them to the curb and says they are dirty dogs, but they are hoping to stop drinkin’ long enough to win ‘er back, sumday in the near future, if the price of beer goes up too high and TVLand stops showin’ reruns of Andy Griffin.

Then look at they EduKashun: Some just tell ya flat out, “hell I gave it all up after the state stop makin’ me go.” Others write a laundry list of letters and high-falootin’ universe-ities. You can look ’em up I guess, but most don’t bother I don’t think.

If it says, “studied at” then ya know they took a couple courses at the local community college that they needed for their job. Like “hey Fred, can you try to do the books too? I hear that the col-lage here has a bookkeepin’ class.”

I mentioned “pages”. There be thousands of those I think. They are usually about specific things, like stamp collecting (always a good subject to know when you can’t find a stamp. Collect ’em and you’ll never have to be late on that ‘lectric bill agin. (I like to give ya tips along the way folks. Just an added pleasure of mine and a bonus for readin’.)

Anyway, you can find pages on most anything. Like how to cook better brats and how to make a better mouse trap (sit real quiet by a piece of cheese with a hammer works darned good) TIP #2.

I been to some that invites Godly people with UnGodly people. Those are a hoot. The Ungodly people call the Godly people names like “insane believer in pretend imaginary friend” and the Godly people pray for ’em and warn ’em they is headin’ for HELL. These folks never tire of the back and forth.

I had one on one of them pages tell me that according to his Atheist Starter Kit, it was dang impossible for a believer in the Sky God to also believe in evo-looo-shun and the old universe. He said that was insane. If that there Bible ain’t true in one little part, it ain’t true in any part. So says Atheist fil-loss-ofe. That must have come as a shock to that there Monsenior Georges LeMaître, a Catholic priest who sorta discovered the big bang theory. The Atheist,  he dint believe me, cuz that fundamentalist mind wouldn’t let him.  Can’t be shatterin’ illusions no way.

Oh, I forgets. Back at that Wall thing. Peoples sometimes write a little short ditty about themselves, like “mom to two frolicky kiddos and  wife to a super handsome husband, and maker of ceramic angels, for sale on my Etsy shop.” Stuff like that. If you see the word “conservative” or “liberal” don’t get into no conversation with them. They is gonna talk you ear off.

But beware of the conservative more than the other one. The liberal loves them some of that ed-U-Ka-shun and will just load you up with sites you never knew existed! They loves them some FACTS. So you cans act-tuly learn ya somethin’ from them if you can get ’em to shut up long enough to go look. The conservative likes to conserve they brain cells (being mighty short of them in the first place), so they just tell ya shit and hope ya will buy it. They make it sound purdy, which is a tip-off they is lyin. (Tip #3)

Most Conservatives tell ya stuff they remember hearin’ on Fox. Even though everybody smart knows that Fox just lies, Conservatives don’t know that or don’t care and it’s not important which, cuz it all leads to the same end. They hates them people and things that don’t fit their world. See, long ago, each and every one of them Conservers looked about at the big old world and got scart as hell. And they created a safe place with people who looked like them, talked like them, acted like them, and thought pretty much like them. That made them feel safe, even though it didn’t make them that way.

So anyway, if anything is different it scares the bejesus out of ’em and they start shootin’ at anything they see. Natcha-ly they are sure to make guns easy to git! You can unnerstan that now can’t ya? Why one of them Conservers told me, he’d a damn sight rather have common sense then a “librul arts edgy-kashun”.

Now you may wonder what this common sense is. Well common sense is to us folks, that which as I like to say, keeps a body from peeing on the potted plant in the front parlor as ‘pposed to the rightful place, the privy. But to a Conserver of the past and the way things never were but coulda been without all them others, common sense is the  magical ability to run most anything without knowing hardly anything about anything.

See, to us, common sense is given to most everyone, cept the really really stupid that would pee in the potted plant, but the Conservers it’s sumpin God gives to thems that don’t have no edgy-ka-shun in place of actual smarts that makes ’em “feel” better about their lack of knowin’ about stuff. They gets them some in-2-ishun about how to do stuff and figures it works just fine. So they can spend their extrE time fishin’ and bowlin’ and making ceramic angels rather than readin’ them a book about say, astro-fizics.

They do ‘ppreciate them some smarts in a few things like doctors and such though. And they are might happy for ‘lectricity and planes that fly them fast from one place to ‘nother and so on. Practical science they calls it. Cuz their God said that was okay, practically speakin’.

I guess we could do okay even with these funny Conservers, if’n they didn’t vote. That’s the kicker. They vote and some of theirs run which is way worse than votin’ I tell ya. This years crop is full of the usual stuff that makes them happy conservin’ away. It’s just hard, cuz the smart people just wanna help fix ’em and they won’t allow nobody to, cuz it’s safe where they are and they ain’t a gonna let nobody upset that shinin’ lamp they got stuck on they imaginary hill.

Oh beware most of all anybody who posts a lot of “if you love God” post this stuff. They are always thankin’ God for everything. I mean not that God shouldn’t be thanked of course, but I thinks that Jesus suggested  one do that in the privy of one’s own “closet” though why I gotta go in my closet I never been quite clear on.

I noticed that a whole bunch of those people who are all Godly now, well, I never heard ’em once when we were kids ever talk about that stuff. Never mentioned, “oh gosh we had such a good sermon yesterday”. Never saw the hint of a prayer before lunch neither. But they got some Godly now. Which means God mostly must be talkin’ to old people cuz the older ya get on Facebook, the more Godly ya get it seems. God is prolly dying for some good hip-hop conversin’.

Anyway, I say beware of ’em because I think they post that stuff as a way of trickin’ God. Cuz they sure are against things that would seem to be God’s ways, like feedin’ the hungry, and tendin’ to the sick. They don’t like the gov-mint to do it that’s for sure. And since the church ain’t be able to do it for better’n 2,000 years, well there’s a lot of hungry and homeless and sick folks that aren’t bein’ tended to.

That’s all I’m sayin. They talk real God-like, but they sure don’t act very much like God. Least as how I figure a good God would act if He wasn’t ‘spectin’ us to act for him. that is.

Anyway, that’s some of what I been learnin’ on the Facebook. What have you been learnin’?

Metaphors and Analogies Galore

Tags

American Exceptionalism, GOP insanity, love of country

My friend Mimi asked an important question that inevitably got me to thinkin’.

Rudy 9/11 Giuliani opens his gums and spouts off as to how this President, really doesn’t love America as we do. Rude then goes on to explain that Obama was raised “diff-rent” from you and me, and none of that stuff is racist cuz ya know he had a white mama.

Rather than pick apart the blatherings of a has-been irrelevant hack, let’s look at the whole concept of what it means to “love one’s country.”

I’m not sure exactly what it means myself. I have no idea what it means to love a thing like that. I mean the concept is quite foreign to me, and I suspect it is to most people of they were pushed to tell exactly what they meant by it. Most people work from metaphor, taking it to mean that they support what the country was framed to stand for, and they think voting is a requirement of good citizenship.

I am not a boundary person you see. I look at maps and say, “oh dear, that makes no sense. Why is that line there?” Most of that stuff arose from long ago times and most dealt with wars. A bit of it is due to natural features of the land. Most of the lines throughout the Middle East are arbitrary and stem from meddling from the West, and truth be told, it’s why things are in such turmoil there today.

I do love humanity, which I think is quite natural being a part of it. I figure I’m one of the lucky ones, and I figure I’m no more entitled than anybody else. The accident of birth landed me in a land that allows me to pretty much do as I wish and do it fairly pleasantly. Someone’s being born in Bangladesh should entitle them to no less. So I’m all for making things a lot more equal. I’ll happily give up some if I can improve the lives of people who have almost nothing.

I recognize everyone doesn’t believe like I do, because they have been raised by parents, governments, businesses, and media to “want it all” with fine phrases like “work ethic” and “bootstraps” and “survival of the fittest”, to name but a few. They deserve more because they work harder and they judge their value and others by what’s in the garage of life.

If ever a metaphor was made for the GOP it’s the black hole. The GOP is on the event horizon. That’s the spot on the edge of a black hole from which there is no return. Destruction is inevitable since the gravitational pull is stronger than any known counter force to pull out. Yet to the observer, the person or thing poised on the event horizon seems to remain there forever. It’s basic astrophysics.

Or one can use the analogy of catch 22. Either works fine.

You see the GOP is always damned either way at this point. It is all of their own making, so there is no desire to rescue them. They are caught in the black hole of the tea imbibing community of dunces. They must feed the tiger lest the tiger eat them alive which of course it inevitably will since one must go mad under that sort of pressure eventually, and thus falter and succumb to the fangs.

The GOP cannot get away from the tea crazies. So they invariably make remarks such as Rudy did. And the Walkers of the party will continue to be non-committal in rejecting such tripe. One cannot poke the tiger, after all. Meanwhile, they remain mired in place at the event horizon while in reality, bit by bit they are eaten alive.

There is no meaning to “loving my country” any more than there is to “supporting our troops”, wearing flag pins or saying loudly that America is Exceptional! Similarly, the idea that one must confess one’s Christianity in order to be viable is without merit. The latter particularly is egregious, since there is a no religious test clause in the very constitution that these flag wavers so profess to be willing to die for.

In reality, constitution protectors don’t really mean it at all. They mean the constitution as they interpret it, and with the parts left out that they don’t like.

Do you love your country or only the ideal of it? Do you love it in spite of its true history or do you doctor that up to meet some standard you have erected to satisfy your personal needs and wants? I read where one woman in talking to her right-wing relatives learned that they opposed the current state of teaching American history because it “just wasn’t necessary to rehash all that old stuff. Sure slavery was bad, but we ended it. We should concentrate on what makes America great.”

Does anybody have a clue where that sort of nonsense leads? Well, not to  go into that of course, but it does, you have to admit, lead to all sorts of entitlements based on “we’re just so damned superior” and “you can’t manage without our guidance.” Anyone smell the odor of Arian purity and world domination in there?

President Obama has less than two years left to serve, and the Republican day care school replacement brigade still can’t talk of much else. Meanwhile it would appear that Jebbie  hasn’t read a newspaper in six-plus years, since a big chunk of his foreign policy team is made up of his brother’s fine collection of idiots that led us into the morasses of both Afghanistan and Iraq.  He doesn’t know that Wolfowitz was one of the architects of the Iraq policy with his pre-emptive strike crap? He doesn’t know that along with Cheney and others, the Iraq foray was something these fools had wanted to do for a decade or so and found 9/11 a good excuse for? They are liars and arguably war criminals if we collectively had the stomach to clean up our own shit behind us.

Yet this is where we live today. In a world steeped it seems in a party which is caught between the tiger which is devouring it, and reality which it can only spit niceties  at as it throws yet another bone in the other direction.  Stop being the party of stupid, Bobby Jindal said, while being stupid. We welcome everyone, except not Log Cabin Republicans to CPAC. I’ll take a pass on that evolution question if you don’t mind, I’m not a scientist.

We live in a world where David and Charles Koch, family owners of Koch Industries, owners of subsidiary ALEC, writes the legislation word for word of the bill their CEO Scott Walker of their other subsidiary Wisconsin, signs into law regarding “right to work” (which is really nothing but right to work for next to nothing), causing  even old timer Republicans who still have some shred of decency left in them, to say, “this is just fucking wrong.”

Is this love of country? They would surely say yes, the country they want to have, wherein all decisions are filtered through the prism of “is this good for the bottom line?”

Love my country?

Only an insane person would love this. Place that constitution, the preamble will do, against the fabric of stupid today and see how well that fits. A person could stand on a stump and recite non-stop this bundle of crazy for weeks without end. Today, we will pass a law that says sex education must never allude to the possibility of enjoyment but only procreative elements that are of course abstained from by good little girls, and winked at by bad little boys. Today we will ban yoga pants, cuz damn I wanna do what’s right for Merika. Today I’ll suggest that good education money is wasted on them blacks who just collect welfare anyway. Today, I’ll work hard to make sure only “our sort of folk” can vote. Today, I’ll cash that check from Exxon-Mobile and vote to let them drill baby drill in your fucking front yard.

Love my country?

Are you serious?