First Post of July

I have been absent for some time, not being on vacation or otherwise occupied, but because I did not like what I was writing. I have a vague, horror-filled memory of actually posting something about a female named Coulter. Surely I did not do that.

When Canada was still a Dominion, I attended University at an institution where Marshall McLuhan had taught. McLuhan said " The Medium is the Message". This is clearly true. The message in Ms. Coulter is not truly a factual statement about the beliefs and aspirations of her fellow citizens; it is about her.

Similarly in the case of Mr. O'Reilly and Mr. Tucker and most other celebrity talking heads: the talk is all about the talker, not the country, not the future, not history. Celebrity Talking Heads are presenting themselves and their message is "Here I am". (This is accentuated in our country by the ever-present Cult of Celebrity.) Therefore, if we find their selling of themselves to be attractive, we embrace the message. Along with the message, we tend to accept the statements accompanying their presentation of themselves. These statements are usually political or moral propositions. We mold these into an emotional consistence, though not necessarily a logical consistence.

What we call our belief systems are systematic and consistent only in the sense that they are affirmed by the same person at the same time and are emotionally consistent within the emotion life of that person. To assume that a belief system actually has some other relationship with the external world is a narcisscistic solipsism. I will restrict myself to the heavy topics or the light topics in the future, not the middle-weight topics which are neither fish nor fowl, are neither cold nor hot - the topics of Celebrities of the Media, the Arts, the State, and the Church who sell themselves and whose image we consume in a diseased parody of our religious past.

Truth: 1

I was speaking with a Customs Agent for a Great Lakes Shipping Company and talk veered to the weather. He had seen Al Gore's documentary last night. In summary, we decided that at present, whether Global Warming is true or not seems to be entirely dependent on who is paying for it. Carbon Dioxide emitting industries say no, industries such as Insurance which have to pay for weather claims sometimes say yes. Does this mean that we consider a statement to be true if it is in our interest that it be true? And false if its falsity be in our interest? It seems so. It seems to be true for many situations. We will come back to Truth again, especially when we consider statements about the Holy and whether there exist verification procedures which allow us to assign such statements any truth-value at all, much less True or False.

Butterflies Caught in a Web: 2

I heard from the land where light travels at 55 miles per hour.

It was stated that if someone has done nothing wrong, then someone should not care whether the government mines for data.
I think that misses the point. (And I do wish I could go on and on about this, and write reams and reams of foolscap and lead you by the nose to that proverbial pond of fresh, blue water from which you would not drink!)

The method of data mining described does not seek a wrong done by you. It seeks your guilt by association.

Not by one degree of separation, either. You do not have to have been a drinking buddy of Abu Musab the Z to be under suspicion. You are under suspicion if we can link you up within 7 degrees. In other words, you will be guilty by a tenuous link and you will be delivered to the Trial as described by Kafka where no charge will be made against you and no defense is possible.
You have not committed a crime, and thus are innocent. However, you cannot be free, since there will be a link from you to that crime whose suppression compels us to suspend our freedom. Thus, you will be enslaved. It is already happening at Guantanamo Bay. I do not think anyone disputes that fact. But notice how they all talk about it, pro and con. It is Kafka. There is no exit. It is Caligari: a tale told by a mad man. We will always talk, even though there is no object of our desire worth speech. We will watch it on TV at 11:00. We will be the audience to our own demise.

Temporary Autonomous Zones: 1

Who were the "politicians" in high school? Do you remember them? They were pretty much the puppets of the authority system which existed. They were pathetic toadies for the most

Not everyone can be a politician, thank God. The politicians of the Boomer Generation are the boomers who disgust me. Consider the two boomer presidents. Consider the boomer-led congress: they stick their ethics into the freezer along with their bribes.

I saw this on an anti-war site: To Disagree Silently is to Agree Sign seen at Boston Protest March in 2003
No way.
There is no way that I will allow even those politicians I agree with to incorporate me into whatever corrupt body politic they envisage.
The original Christians withdrew from the pagan society around them. The Shi'a in Western Islam have a history of living in silence lest they be attacked by the ruling power. Arnold Toynbee in his A Study of History describes the process of Withdrawal and Return where an individual or group withdraw from a society , then return to add their own original yeast to the fruits of fermentation. They change Society because they cannot put their new wine into old wineskins.

To disagree silently may imply we disagree with all existing sides and have our own. Your insistence upon our forming ranks with one side or the other right now is your way of silencing us. The Internet works as a Temporary Autonomous Zone whereto we withdraw to communicate with people of similar interests and whence we return with whatever new Boone's Farm we may have. BUT, our Boone's Farm is infinitely superior to the dreg-filled swill offered to us by the political class.

Modern Myths: 1

Brad Pitt has outbid Leonardo DiCaprio for the rights to Max Brook's World War Z, Z meaning Zombie. The novel is set 10 years after the global zombie epidemic and will be published in the fall. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5082358.stm Much worse than global warming. Zombies are one form of the modern and diseased myth of the Resurrection, similar to the Vampire mythos. Since there is no God, we cannot look forward to the day of a glorious resurrection, but we can anticipate living as blood-drinking nosferatu, or as mindless zombies. Suddenly we wonder if there is a difference between zombie-dom and our present lives? Anyway, myths and mythic symbols continue to pervade the World we call Reality. We think we are supremely rational, but we do not understand that Reason is only one part of our nature. The other is Faith. I prefer Faith. If you wonder why I prefer Faith, look at the myths: Zombie resurrection versus Glorious Resurrection. And even if you still think religion is something done in private (sort of Pudenda Fides), then I would yet prefer Phillip Jose Farmer's To Your Scattered Bodies Go than Zombie myths.

The Founding Fathers and Mothers: 1

The President has proposed some sort of Marriage Amendment.
I can only assume that the intelligence is all in and is 100% correct this time.

The problem I have with the politics of Marriage is in the fact that Jesus condemns divorce and this is the only statement on sexual morality in the New Testament. Therefore, when the leader of a nation that (1) calls itself Christian, and (2) has a 50% divorce rate, and (3) seeks to confirm the sanctity of Marriage, yet does not (4) address the matter which contravenes the divine injunction against divorce, I would have to say that once again the intelligence is all wrong.
The crux of the matter are gay marriages. If one believes that homosexuality is against the law of God and bases this belief upon the story of Abraham, Lot, and the cities of the plain, then one must attempt to explain Matthew 11:23: "...If the miracles worked in you (Capernaum) had taken place in Sodom, it would be standing today." Now we may allow that Jesus was using a certain hyperbole here, but the text seems to clearly indicate that belief in Jesus has far more importance than sexual activity.
At this point you may point out that belief in Jesus implies repentance of one sins. True, we answer, once again pointing to the divorce injunction being the only statement on sexual morality in the NT. If you call on St.Paul, the depravity of which he speaks is the result of falling into idolatry. What St.Paul calls depravity must necessarily be the result of not acknowledging God.
Furthermore, the list of ills extends to greed, envy, murder, just to name a few. (I sense no motivation for a Constitutional Amendment against greed.)

Acknowledging God takes you back to Sodom, and then I respond as above. And so on. I suspicion this is why Jesus only had one statement of sexual morality to be recorded: He knew where our interests were and where we would focus and how interminably we would talk and chatter and chew the fat over sex and ignore all other problems. This is what we're doing today. I have friends who are gay. They are good people and good Christians and Muslims. Let them live their lives. Those who wish to bedevil them, crawl back to the stone of obscurity which is your heart.
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Butterflies Caught in a Web

Hamilcar Barca of Tunisia provided a link from New Scientist viewing the Dark Side: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025556.200?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19025556.200 excerpt: "Meanwhile, the NSA is pursuing its plans to tap the web, since phone logs have limited scope. They can only be used to build a very basic picture of someone's contact network, a process sometimes called "connecting the dots". Clusters of people in highly connected groups become apparent, as do people with few connections who appear to be the intermediaries between such groups. The idea is to see by how many links or "degrees" separate people from, say, a member of a blacklisted organisation." Since I go to the mosque to study Arabic, I suppose the only thing I can say at this time is ," See ya in Gitmo!" (I think Stephen King's character of Pennywise in IT is a metaphor for the Present Age: fun and happiness hiding the bloody fangs which will tear and rend.)

Who was Abu Ghraib?

In Bereshit, in Genesis, we read that Moses had a son Gershom so named because he was a stranger in a strange land.

The usual derivation of the name is from gersham meaning stranger. Ghraib means "stranger, foreigner". Abu Ghraib is "father of a stranger". So Abu Ghraib could refer to Moses. If not, who was this Father of a Stranger? Why was his son considered strange to the extent that his father was known for his strange offspring?

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A Note on Narrative

I constantly use the expression "narrative" and most recently in The Grasses of the Field. I need to make it clear what I mean by it, since "narrative" is a term used frequently in recent philosophy and, as a result, is often used in writing and discourse. Narrative is the conscious expression of the process of the cognitive systems which encode and organize experiences as Immediate Memory, then to Short Term Memory, then Long Term Memory. That is essentially what I mean. Why do I take a good word like "narrative" - meaning "story" ( if it's used in a film, it means we have Morgan Freeman doing the voice-over) - and change it? I mean to indicate that all narratives and all stories - all ordered expressions of consciousness - are based on the above procedure called "Narrative". When you look at and read a story, it must seem rather straighforward and commonsense that events come one after the other in a more or less linear way. You may think that necessarily there is one way to tell a story and this is it: start at the beginning and go through the middle and end at the end. But what I am saying is that if the proverbial Martian were available to comment on this, he or she may indicate that the Martian notion of story is indeed different. If our basic notion of "story" were to be universally true, this would show us that all living beings seem to share similar encoding processes. In summary, the story and the narrative which we read or which we daydream on or which we view at the Cinema Paradiso is a form of human expression based on the encoding of memories of the human cognitive systems. A "story" need not be a form universal to all sentient beings, only to those sharing similar cognitive systems. This is what we mean when we say things like, "There are only 4, or 5 basic plots in literature.", Romeo and Juliet being an example of "boy meets girl". Although R&J would be in essence "boy meets girl", we see that its detail makes it considerably different from the story of Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar in The Jewel in the Crown. We might say that "boy meets girl" is the template within which we place an infinitude of detail. So also is the Narrative the template established by the cognition of human beings. Within these Narratives, we place the infinite detail of personal histories. Notice that this implies that the Narrative ( capital N from now on ) is indeed based upon an experience. In the post "The Grasses of the Field: 1", the use of Narrative indicates that the story of one's relationship with God is actually based upon an experience with God, albeit very early in one's life and almost impossible to recall in everyday consciousness.

The Julia Set

In case you are enthusiasts of Benoit Mandelbrot, this is not about fractal geometry, not about the geometric Julia Set, not about anything at all, actually, since it flips back and forth in my mind like a cheap holographic gizmo.

The word “set” is a red herring, designed to throw you off the trail, and all because I edited a previous post. I had a post previously wherein I mentioned a friend who referred to Ann Coulter as Julia, meaning Julia Streicher, because of the intemperance of her remarks. Now Julius Streicher was, if I remember correctly, a rabid and foul early leader among the SturmAbteilung in Germany in the 1920s. I really cannot approve of throwing Nazi nomenclature around as so many of us do.
I was just reading about opposition to the presence of Iran’s president at the World Cup in Germany. A lady referred to him as the worst thing since Hitler. Well, that’s a condemnation so presto! out-of-the-can, as it were, that it runs the risk of being dismissed as hackneyed by its hearers. I really do not like doing that.

So I removed the passage about Ms. Coulter and my friend. Then she becomes front-page news for being intemperate, foul-mouthed, and generally acting like her namesake, Julius. Apparently she is widow-bashing, upset that 4 ladies in New Jersey have had the absolute good luck to have had their husbands die cruelly in the World Trade Center.
This upset her sense of fairness. People usually say “widows AND orphans” when using old saws about bad luck and cruel villains – like Enron. Surely there must be some people orphaned by 9/11 whom she could rip on. That would be choice Coulter.
I saw her interview with a completely befuddled Matt Lauer, who is apparently not used to being roundly abused by authors of books, who are usually more like Clifton Webb than Roberto Duran. She was wearing a skirt that seemed awfully short, and all in all was sort of a brainy Paris Hilton from Hell’s Cote d’Azur. She was movie star aesthetics right in your face and you definitely felt that the make-up people had mistakenly left her fuse too short again.

However, if The Producers is ever re-done again, she would be a great leading lady in “Springtime for Hitler.”

The Shape of Things to Come 2

A note: I hope to finish what I started in The Shape of Things to Come very soon. However, the more I read it, the more I am not sure I actually know what I have already written. It seems to go in directions I was not aware of. This is what writing does; it bogs you down. Instead of everything being bright and clear as it was when you merely felt those waves of inspiration flow into your head, now you are in a Garden of the Forking Paths. Blast!

The CBC

We were watching Rick Mercer last night. If you do not receive Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) on your cable or dish or intravenous entertainment drip, that’s too bad. Over the years, there have been great Canadian satires and comedy. There’s SCTV, CODCO, The Royal Canadian Air Farce… They have a history of good satire on governments. In the USA, we have to pretty much toe the line of the people who actually own the country: the Organized Religion-Corporate-Big Government-Big Union combine. And that’s fine. But when someone steps out of line, such as Bill Maher did during the beginning of the "Glorious Fatherland War to Secure Oil and Depose a Really Bad Guy and Spread! Democracy" ... ( a cheap shot, I agree. When I hear of spreading democracy across the world uttered by the present power group, I think of some large authoritarian figure looming over a frightened figure captioned Dame Democracy and growling, “ Against the wall!…Assume the position!…Spread ‘em!”) …the Media responds as it should and gave him his walking papers, jeering at him that if he did not like it here, maybe he should go live in Kofi Annan’s hometown! We have people that do satire here. We do not showcase them nearly as much in prime time, however. Laughter is subversive. HOWEVER, laughter is also accompanied by feelings of well being, assuming one is not wearing the top hat that is the target of young rascals’ snowballs. (I never wear the topper after a good snow, even if it is Mozart that is being pummeled at the local Opera.) For some extremely odd and mysterious reason, our primary form of Comedy is the juxtaposition of incongruous images, such as Waging War + 14 Million Dollar Inaugural while people are dying at home with no medical coverage and people are dying in the wars. This kind of Comedy is not accompanied by a feeling of well being.

La France 2

What do the Maquis in World War II France, Sting, Jean Cocteau, and Tucker Carlson have in common? Not much, thank heavens, other than they are bedeviling me at the moment. Somewhere within the confines of this rambling old blogstead, I have recently mentioned Jean Cocteau and Sting, or Sting + Police. Now there is something I can not remember. What was the name of song by Sting or Police for which the video was an exact copy of scenes from Jean Cocteau's Orphee? I can not recall. If you ever wish to see Orphee, you should probably get a little familiarity with France during WW II, particularly the French Resistance (Maquis). Yes. The French Resistance. Frenchmen actually gave up their lives to fight Mr. Hitler and his Vichy pals. And now we are at Mr. Tucker Carlson who recently referred to the French as "surrender monkeys". I am not too upset, since he was obviously quoting Groundskeeper Willie. He also forgot who surrendered to whom at Yorktown, and who benefited from it. However, what caught my attention was that Mr. Carlson's bowtie was gone. Not only was it gone, but the top 3 buttons of his shirt were open, giving him a vague - very vague - Stanley Kowalski of the evening news and commentary look. Or perhaps he has always been dependent on the kindness of strangeness. When he began his show, he sported a bowtie. This set him apart as an independent thinker. I mean, who else wore bow ties? I think Dave Garroway did, although I'm not sure. Robert Q. Lewis definitely did. I can not recall whether H.V. Kaltenborn sported one. I do not recall whether Bill Buckley wore one. When Mr. Buckley spoke, I do not think I was musing on his cravat. And, of course, Mr.Farrakhan wears a bow tie. However, the intelligence of Mr. Farrakhan is not subsumed in the category of his neck apparel. Nor the other gentlemen, mentioned and unmentioned. Now Mr. Carlson ( I'm sure now he'd say, "Call me Tuck!") has lost the bowtie. This puts him back in with the rest of us non-independent shlubs. Visualize for a moment the whole process: Losing the tie is a given. Now, what about the shirt? Shall we open it or leave it buttoned? If we leave it buttoned, Tucker'll look like the President of Iran. Blazer and buttoned shirt is definitely a Shiite fashion statement. O.K. Open the top button. Now he looks like he should be on ESPN. Open the next...and one more for luck (we'll need it!). I have seen the show. I think he could streak during the bloody commentary and I would not miss a meme.

The Visitor

Recently I said that my old blogstead only had one visitor, mostly because we were way out in the country. That was not a correct observation. My daughter said that if she were to read my blog and did not know me, she doubts whether she would leave a note. She reads it now and leaves no notes anyway. I said that an anonymous little scrap that said “brilliant stuff.” might be in order. I believe she made a noise that sounded like “harrumph!” – and not in a pleasant sense. I gathered that she thought my blog was like being in a dream by the painter Henry Fuseli; one never knows when something may jump out at you. And, she said, if you think I’m going to sit there reading the blog with another window open to Google so I can catch some glimpse of what your meaning is, you are seriously mistaken. And this from the young lady with whom I sat for 3 hours on a hot, late summer’s day waiting for a vehicle inspection in our nation’s capitol! (Yes, 3 hours. If you’re a resident of D.C., you’re saying “Only 3 hours…?!” It was a new car she had and we were rear-ended by a cabbie who had fallen asleep in the line. Since he was going at a creeping speed, the contretemps was actually looked upon as great fun, breaking the intolerably hot boredom. Oh, and the credit card machine was not working that day, a fact they informed us of only when we had actually secured a spot and started the inspection process. Everyone was going across the street to the US Post Office to get money orders. Another young lady observed that she had heard from a friend that the machine had not been working for six months. And so on. It’s a tough situation when the activities of stray dogs are your only entertainment for three hours. I dreamt of Cujo and Atticus Finch.) The main purpose of the blog is to leave a testimony of my beliefs for my daughter. I may have mentioned that once returning from a trip to Toronto, she sandbagged me by turning to me and asking me what my beliefs about God were. This was and is important. We love our children and try to protect them from a world often more monstrous than our imaginations can conjure up. We strive to teach Values and Morality and then they go away and we hope something of the teaching will stick. However, what I’ve just described seems to be a process fit for a more rural and bucolic age. The world in which we live – and I include here our own society, our own country: no way do I believe that this country is God’s Little Acre surrounded by a sea of perversity – has become so pernicious that I fear it will chew my babies up and spit out their bones. Do not you yourselves feel in this age of Globalization…the contradictions between “Family Values” and forcing both parents to work, thereby achieving the Brave New World concept of the State raising the children …the absolute love of power…the uncontrolled lack of civility in political discourse…the enthronement of Greed and Constant Consumption... Do you not feel that future monster lumbering toward us? Do you not see the irresolvable darkness of the Watcher on the Plain waiting in mountainous solitude for the last drop of Godliness to drip from our redoubt? I will not go into that night without bearing witness. If I can leave her nothing else, I will try to tell her how the Holy reveals itself to me throughout my own personal history. I hope this will help her make sense of how the Holy reveals itself to her. Organized Religion alone has proven itself not entirely capable of doing so. How could they? They are not her Father. A Dream of a Cross

Reading: 1

I am reading some character sketches by Ben Hur Lampman, published in a small book for the troops in 1943. My wife asked about his name and I said that I thought his parents had been admirers of General Wallace’s historical novel. (General Wallace had fought under Grant at Shiloh Church. That’s where Albert Sidney Johnston died. When writers or orators have said that the flower of youth has passed away in this war or that, it was no hyperbole nor flight of fancy. It was true. It still is true. A country looses the gathering wave of newness and bright faces and love and passionate involvement…and must settle for the greys of middle-age who know everything and have all the answers already. So ever will Empires pass away as long as humankind sees fit to spread the ideals it holds dearest with sword and fire.) I become tangential and meiotic from my intension. Reading is a craft. Reading is a form of consciousness to which we must try to return. I read everything under the sun. When I was a young, I would rise from my bed at night and sit reading by the night-light in the bathroom. I cannot remember why I did not get my fill of reading during the day. Perhaps Kindergarten wore heavily upon me; perhaps my parents disapproved of too much solitary pursuit. And let it be truly said that although we sing paeans to reading as an part of education, yet it is too solitary by far; it removes the reader from the bosom of society; it turns your head from the event planning procedures of the daylight brain, diverting you from that straight thoroughfare lined with sunlit buildings, regularly spaced on either side, and sends you down a hidden fork in the road: suddenly, suspiciously, filled with shops and stores with exotic wares – Calle Desconocida, I think, in Borges’ poems. Reading is way too much of a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). If we are not on guard, those TAZs could become PAZs (Permament Autonomous Zones). Autonomous Zones are really not consistent with Consumer Culture, which by definition is a Permanent Dependency Zone. I try to give a chance to every author. I will read at least something of their writing. I have tried to read Anne Rice 3 times! I have tried to read Danielle Steele. I failed. I do not mean to imply these authors are somehow beneath my august level of falderol. I literally could not read them. I made it through 2 pages of Anne Rice and about the same in Ms. Steele. Not giving up once, I came back and tried again. But no success. There is a certain structure and logos that grab my attention and these ladies did not have it. They have it for many others, however. The point is that, even though a particular book or blog or broadside or pamphlet may not be to your liking, there is something. There is an author out there for you. Give everything a test. Always try at least a paragraph. My usual rule is five pages. If someone can’t get my attention in five pages, another 200 won’t do it. To be conscious needs more than Music. To be conscious needs more than Images. It requires a grasp of language, too: spoken, written, and read. My name in Montag and I am of the readers. We maintain culture against the firemen who burn the consciousness of what has gone before.

The Shape of Things to Come

A long time ago, I worked with a man who began to assiduously study the Book of Revelations, or the Apocalypse, and the End of Times. We had many long discussions about it. His intuition about the future was correct because his way of life suddenly ended. His young wife had a stroke and she required a long rehabilitation. They had three children at this time, the eldest being no more than 10. He continued to work. His life turned upside down.
Then within two years when she was much better, she suddenly decided to live with some other man, divorce my friend in the wake of her departure, and contest child custody tenaciously.

I would say that his intuition of the future, the End of Times, was essentially correct. He used the wrong conscious imagery, however, to bring it into the light of his everyday mind. I once had a dream that I did not recall upon waking. I read the comic strip Doonesbury and in the last frame, the expression “sea snakes” occurred, referring to the sea off the coast of Vietnam. Suddenly a memory of a dream unfolded. I assume I had it the night before because it had the smell of newness about it. My brother and I were swimming at my paternal grandparents cottage when we began to be bothered by fish with large teeth. These fish began to bite at us, there was a bit of a struggle, and…print it. That’s all there was.

The connection between reading the comic strip and the dream memory was so vivid that I have always considered it to be a premonitory dream of the future, only backwards, because a premonition warns you of future danger whereas this dream was a past danger forgotten until invoked by a future image.
Intuitions of the Future are a very interesting subset of cognitive events. There is much that is not-conscious that seems to act like fields of probability and potentiality, bearing no characteristics of consciousness but very much able to do so. Suddenly we find the right type of conscious behavior and what was only possible becomes visible to consciousness. It “pops into your head”, as it were.

In my dream, whatever state of potential existed put on the clothes of “sea snakes” and stepped into the street. However, I feel that that potentiality could easily have put on a different type of clothing if I had not read Doonesbury that morning. I had a mental state that had characteristics of conflict, fear, etc. Suddenly it had a face: the face of piranha.

Now what does this have to do with the Holy?
We have a great many people who believe the End of Times to be imminent. What does this mean to us? Millions in the past have had similar beliefs and those beliefs played out as wars, famine, disease, catastrophe, and eventually their individual deaths. The concept of Death is within us. The fact of Death is not. Yet it is believed and demonstrated that Prayer and Meditation seem to lead to Good Health.

So if the conceptual act of Praying affects the actual fact of Being-Healthy, then it seems obvious that the conceptual act of Death will affect the actual fact of Being-Dead. There is an old saying, “ Be careful what you pray for, for you may get it !” which points to this type of connect between mind and world.

In our society, there are at least two streams of thought; one ties together the mind and reality and believes the mind, remaining as mind – not being translated into physical activity- may affect reality. The other denies this, saying mental events such as desire to go for a ride must be translated into physical events (pick up keys, get into car, turn on engine) before mind affects reality. Most of us assert publicly the second view while affirming the limited application of the first view as well in the privacy of the secret garden of our own thoughts.

If the mind affects reality, the mere act of believing in the End of Times may hasten its approach. HOWEVER, the actuality of the End of Times need not be as you imagined it. There may be a link between mind and reality, but there is no NECESSARY link between your mind and reality. For example, a pandemic of the Avian Flu would seem to pretty much fill the bill for an End of Times for a hundred million people or so. Thus we would see that the intuitions of a future End of Times were correct in general, failing only in the catastrophic details.

At this point, I will end today. This discussion will form one of the bases of the more complete discussion of what this blog was set up to do: discuss the relationship of mankind to the Holy. A great deal of our mental life in relation to the Holy uses the Future Tense.

Memorial Day and Funes the Memorious

I made it through the holiday weekend without redundancy. This is a covert way of saying I had no M and Ms from my mother’s shop for greedy children. Since the M in M and Ms is doubled, it is redundant and I am able to escape it on syntax alone. Elements of Style, man. Elements of Style. (This is to be spoken as David Clennon playing Palmer in John Carpenter’s The Thing: "Chariots of the gods, man. Chariots of the gods.")

Interestingly enough, my three evil nephews have a different approach. They consider M and Ms, or more properly, the name M and Ms, to be an oxymoron! In a mind-numbing display, they pointed out my mistake. This had been prefaced by a rather fast paced discussion of Ozzie and Harriet and its connection with Umberto Eco’s literature. “…the symbolism of Darby and Doc Williams…” “…Joe Randolph’s despair…” “…and everyone knows that it was Thorny!”
“Was what?” I said.
“What was what?”, nephew #3 inquired with the face of an angel.
“What was Thorny…don’t you mean who played Thorny?”, I replied.
“No…The Name of the Rose!…it was Thorny.”

This was followed by a laughter that you might expect would be the immediate prelude to a particularly unpleasant end of the world as we know it, with Hieronymus Bosch as the guy recording it on video. It was their opinion that in the nanosecond between the utterance of the first M and the second M, the atoms comprising the Ms were disentangled – across light years – and they became contraries.
For them saying M and Ms was like saying “Jumbo shrimp”.

At this juncture, it was an exquisitely small step to Jorge Luis Borges' story Funes the Memorious. Instead of being merely "M", the first M received the new name “Lavande de Valensole” and the second M “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off”. At this time, my mother put on her apron to prepare dinner (the M in “mother” becoming “Mystery Clock”) and gently shooed us from the summer kitchen with a kindly “retro, daimones!”
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On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts: 3 Death…Live…

Read this as:
“ something-something DEATH, killed, tortured, maimed…(pause)…LIVE at 11:00”

as if it were on the evening news.
What?, you cry in consternation.
You have the audacity to use those obscenities and say they are spoken as if they were on the evening news, the very same evening news that comes into the privacy of my home, within the very intimate fortress of my family?

Why, yes. It seems a pretty good description. Yes, that’s what I’m doing. Let’s apply it to, oh, say terrorist beheadings…LIVE at 11:00!
Or bombing wedding parties in No-one-gives-a-rip-ostan…LIVE at 11:00!
Or our government involved in third party torture schemes…LIVE at 11:00!
Or criminality and violence and gore all night long, then the real stuff...LIVE at 11:00!

O God! Let us not die unwatched and unwatching!

So remember that in our Brave New World Order, no one dies alone and unwatched, by the grace of the media gods. Because...it’ll be LIVE…at 11:00!

ps. the smoking gun between viewing violence and the collapse of civilization takes 50 years to manifest. it remains dormant, like HIV. we will only be able to prove it as we are about to be slaughtered by the barbarians in our midst. I think that's how the wonderfully rational Cicero died.

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Miscellanea: 1

(1) The Leaders of the English Speaking World met in Washington. There was no ANZAC contingent present.
 “In Iraq, mistakes were made.”
I am positive that this is an example from some sort of grammar from my past, some English instruction manual. I cannot remember if it is The Elements of Style by Strunk or Modern English Usage by Fowler or some other book. Those are the two I’ve read. I continually read Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Do not read an updated version. Both books were published around 1918 or so. Our use of English has changed so greatly that all of Fowler’s examples of incorrect usage appear to me to be correct. That isn’t the important point. Fowler will show you how to wield an English of the utmost precision and brevity. No one else will do that.

In Prep School we had an example similar to “mistakes were made”. “Sitting at the table, coffee and doughnuts were served.” was a favorite of Fr. Hamilton to demonstrate an ambiguity of the present participle used in a something-or-other clause. So we took it with us to Latin class where it became: “Sedentes circum mensam, coffeus et doughnutae servabantur.” and once we became familiar with ablative absolutes: “Sedentibus circum mensam, …” and so on.
These things sound better in the passive voice. I myself always say, “mistakes were made” instead of “I messed up.” I notice it sounds even better in Latin: “In Mesopotamia, errores facti sunt.” and I am off the uncus ( a large iron hook ).


(2) I have heard it said that once you begin to dream in a language, you are well on the high road to mastery. Good, I think. I had a dream. I do not think it was in Arabic. However, the memory of the dream came to me as: ‘aHlum bi shakulata ( using H for the emphatic “h” ) which means “ I dream in chocolate.”

Since I was not dreaming of, not to mention in, chocolate, it was mystifying. I did catch a glimpse of Gene Wilder as Willie Wonka the other day. That may be germane. I do not actually believe dreams “mean” anything at all. I think that there are steps that the brain uses to change experiences from Immediate to Short Term to Long Term memory and dreams are the first conscious step in the process. The preceding steps are like the beatings of the heart; you do not notice them.
So we may link up memories to experiences if that’s what you mean by Meaning. We’ll get into linking up memories to FUTURE experiences a little later when I have the nerve to write about intuitions of the future.


(3) As Memorial Day approaches, I need to buy some more geraniums for my parents. His “parents” you say. How old must they be?! I mean, this guy is old enough to go to the same gym as Methusaleh. Well, that’s as nice way to start off the holiday.
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Walls

To quote Robert Frost, something there is that doesn’t love a wall. Walls reminds me of mediaeval ghettoes. The Berlin Wall was never very popular, except to those who yearn for those lazy, hazy, crazy days of Stasi. The Berlin Wall is gone. Israel is now building a wall. The rationale is impeccable and there is a real fear of a population that cannot be assimilated into a Jewish state. However, it is a wall around an entire country. The division now must be made permanent and enduring. The Berlin Wall is gone. The USA wishes to build a wall along their southern border with Mexico. It is understandable why the USA would want to become the world’s largest gated-community. The fears of the people in the USA are real. The abuses have been going on a very long time. Many employers in the USA have knowingly aided and abetted illegal workers. How many presidential appointees within the last 25 years have caused embarrassment when their childrens’ nannies from Latin America were discovered to have no green card or to be working in semi-servitude? Perhaps the new story of immigration will be the diseased form of the melting pot; not a freely willed coming together, but the image of Terminator 2 in a crucible of molten iron. No one will smile. No one will feel redeemed. No one saved.

Googling the DaVinci Code

My daughter says that I am not writing about religion the way I actually speak about it. She thinks I’m trying to be friendly. Let’s do some housecleaning first: this is the last thing I will ever write about The DaVinci Code, hereafter referred to as TDC. The film is out and people are being interviewed. Some say it is a work of fiction, a profound observation. Some say they are rethinking religion, a profounder observation. Meanwhile, here I sit in what I take for the Real World and there are no albino monks running around killing the Ron Howards of the world. So how real is it? At this point you answer, “ Is what?” and I say, “Exactly.” And this brilliant conversation is somewhat clearer than the discussion in TDC. The real members of Opus Dei may be creepy, but they are our creeps and they do the works of mercy we are too good to do. They are the illegal immigrants of the spiritual world. As far as being a work of fiction, remember that To Kill a Mockingbird and Hostel are both works of fiction. One inspires, the other is murder considered as a fine art. Work of fiction is a shallow observation. But what is there about TDC that is not shallow and superficial? The condemnation of TDC is not that it is a work of fiction, but that it is Mass Market Consumerism fiction. In other words, it is crap. It was devised as crap. It was executed as crap. It was printed as meretricious crap. It was sold as crap… and we love it. Crap is cheap because it does not require 30 years of spiritual quest on the author’s part! There is an excellent Return on Investment on crap. The Last Temptation of Christ by Kazantzakis actually handled Jesus as Man and as Divine. It was a most original work of art. You have not read it because it was not designed for the mass consumer market. You never will read it. TDC is fodder for Hollow Men and Women, which is what we are. The simulacra of ideas contained within TDC (more like idea-bots of a malign and weird-wired nature) get within our hollow heads and rattle around, we spit forth gum balls of opinions from our oral dispensing unit for media-drones holding microphones, asking “ Did the film change your life? Do you feel its memes coursing through your mind?” We do not have a clue. Neither the sacred team nor the profane team are on the real playing field, a field which is not level by any stretch of the imagination. It is more like a battlefield. We prove that we are clueless every day in war zones where our fellow countrymen and innocent civilians are dying in a war based upon premises which were fundamentally unsound. We pretend. We pretend to have morals. We pretend to worship something other than Mammon. We pretend to talk to God. Ask the people outside the theater, rather, “Did this film change your view of the divinity of Money? of the divinity of Power? Did it strengthen your belief in eventual despair of all good acts?” “Did this film inspire you to charity?” This is a country not yet ready to put aside childish notions of the Holy and Morality. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child. ... Oh, the Googling bit. I have opened a search engine. With a trembling hand I type: “ DaVinci don’t live here no mo’ ” and with a trembling hand, I press the Enter button. Thus, do I Google The DaVinci Code out of existence. May 18 2006 May 17 2006 May 13 2006

Culture Wars and Kulturkampf: 1

One often sees expressions like “culture wars” these days. I suppose they are derived from Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf directed against the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. I think it is usually translated as “culture struggle”. We have so many “wars” these days. War is one of our favorite idioms. Of course, once one has a war, one needs a “Czar” to be the top guy in waging the war on whatever. If things really get desperate, one must have recourse to a “Manhattan Project” and all will be well, except the wartime housing in D.C. will be in very short supply. When I see my neighbors, I think I shall say, “ Good day. Beautiful day…let’s war on feeling poorly!” And they will respond heartily, “And may you be the Czar of good-feeling!” Or, “May you head the Manhattan Project against the blues!” Anyway, the idea is the idioms are our favorites and by using them we are once more able to evade anything remotely resembling “deep thought”. I noticed that someone recently called for a Manhattan Project to end our dependence on foreign oil. The only problem here is that the scientists involved in the actual Manhattan Project did indeed “have a clue” of where they were going and how to get there. “Culture War” is another good nonce idea. I like the Bismarckian connection and the expression “culture war” itself reminds me strongly of the song Lili Marlene: ...schon rief die Posten, die blasen Kulturkampf... and I think of jerries, the RAF, white cliffs of Dover, John Wayne, and GIs sitting around in some USO hall, the air thick with smoke from Luckies in the green pack. I will talk about culture. I do not believe in culture war. I mean, it is just too easy to identify boogey men and point one’s finger at them. Culture war is an idiom that lets us off the hook. We can identify the bad guys. Therefore, we are innocent. At worst, we were duped. We were brainwashed. Nonsense. It also assumes that since we may identify someone or a group as the bad guys, they do bad things intentionally. At this point we cross into Conspiracy Theory. Anyone who reads books by the “culture war” group will notice that there is a slippery slope to conspiracy. There is a conspiracy of the liberal media, for one. There is a conspiracy by the entertainment industry. There is a Hollywood conspiracy to subvert morality, and so on; yards and yards of the conspiracy cloth. Actually, as demonstrated by the eager reading public for fantastic religious fiction, the enemies are ourselves.

May His Polls Increase

My daughter knows a young man who is running for some political office. She went to a meeting for him and it began with a prayer led by a proper young lady Republican. In her prayer, she prayed for the President. I assume she prayed that he be wise, tolerant, and understanding. However, she did most definitely ask that his polls numbers increase! From all decreasing polls, libera nos, Domine! From fire, flood, and famine, deliver us, oh Lord! Since the poll numbers have gone down since then, I hope the young lady’s faith has not been shaken. There is the old saying: Give a president good polls and he will most probably be re-elected; Teach a president how to be wise, understanding, charitable, and to have breadth of vision, and he will probably be a leader of men for the rest of his life. Presidents Eisenhower, Carter, and Reagan observed this maxim.

DaVinci Don't Live Here No Mo' 2

I was referred to boortz.com the other day. Mr. Boortz talks about the great issues of the day and states, “Somebody’s gotta say it” and proceeds to do so, mistaking his sense of urgency to be good sense. Somewhere he says this country was conceived and born in adherence to the law. He apparently has forgotten that little unpleasantness with King George. He speaks of The DaVinci Code and received emails, some of which he shares: http://boortz.com/nuze/200605/05162006.html#davinci

Quote: “ There were several emails like this one: I've only two words to say about the DaVinci Code (and yes, I've read it) - It's FICTION! ( name removed ) Well ... there's a nice little dodge around the issue. Sure, the main characters are fictional, and the narrative is a fictional one, but dismissing The DaVinci Code by simply stating that "it's fiction" is like trying to disclaim World War II and the actions of the Third Reich by saying that Hogan's Heroes is fiction. “

Unless I am mistaken, the writer here is asserting that one cannot argue against the truth of an event by stating some subsequent work based upon that event is a work of fiction. Or, Hogan’s Heroes was fiction, but we affirm the basic truth that WWII occurred.
Therefore Mr. Boortz seems to be taking the position of the foremost conservative spokesperson for the ultimate veracity of The DaVinci Code. He seems to be saying that we may have gotten some details wrong, but The DaVinci Code is true is its main thrust. Using his example, he could say that Hitler ruled Germany even though General Burkhalter did not share that stein of beer with a fraulein while Sgt. Schultz was chasing LeBeau and Col. Klink was stuck in the meat locker of the Hotel. A truly intricate path of reasoning back to old WWII.

If at some future time Hogan's Heroes were to be the sole item of our age remaining which mentioned WWII, future historians might actually have to recreate things this way. Then we could have important issues, such as The Quest for the Historical Klink. (Of course, we could interpret Mr. Boortz as saying, "The DaVinci Code is fiction, but Jesus did live." And we should be grateful to him for his acute vision.)

What is its main thrust, anyway? Jesus is still with us through descendants of the Merovingians? They have been a lot of help over the years. Jesus married? So what? I have read everything in that book over the years in various places. It did not strike me to the core, nor does it now. The further this generation wanders from the message of God, the more compulsively will it pay attention to signs and wonders, DaVinci Code and Bible Code and other forms of obsessive displays resembling a black sabbat of lunatics held in the slough of despond. May 17 2006 May 13 2006

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The New Philosophie, The DaVinci Code, and Frankenstein

As Europe emerged from the mediaeval period, the new natural philosophy came into being, which we know as Science.
John Milton wrote of it. John Donne said, “ The new philosophie calls all in doubt.”
The verities of the past were called into question. Many old truths were rejected. Still, every society has had it myths of the creation of the world.

Even though the old Faith was called into doubt, the new philosophers could not dispel the stories of how the Divine interacted with the World and Mankind.
Even today we see the clash between the Narratives of Creationism and Darwinism, for Darwin’s victory was nowhere nearly as complete as that of Newton. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s story Frankenstein concerns a scientist and his creation of human life. Brian Aldiss refers to Frankenstein as a diseased creation myth.

In what sense diseased?
I get the idea that the humans who begin to usurp the place of the Holy within the ancient mythic narratives are diseased by their arrogance.
The human scientists give life, but not quality of life.
The human scientists give power, but they cannot add wise use of power.

God creates within a total framework of creation, life and quality of life and everything you need to sustain it.
This age of ours, this Brave New World, has many new stories which are variants on the ancient ones. We have given them our industrial age twist. Dracula is a diseased Resurrection myth. The DaVinci Code is a story that supplies a misplaced focus for mankind’s inherent impulse to the Holy.

Ours is the age that worships Power. The religious leaders with the greatest following parley their popularity into votes. We have created a new Gospel, a diseased story of the Sermon on the Mount. The humble and lowly are contemptible. No one dare cast the mighty from their thrones. Our Gospel is one of Power, Power inherited along a bloodline. We cannot wait for the End of Times. We stand at the stable door and whip the four horsemen on. DaVinci Dont Live Here No Mo'
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Writing: 2

I edited my profile. It had been viewed 8 times. I found that I had viewed it 7 times, so a cucaracha must have stumbled on a idle mouse somewhere and pressed View. It's rather small for a profile. Let's call it a snippet, a tatter, a patchwork, a gumbo file of personal history. I have no pictures here. I mean, its rather like one of those immense white rooms with astronomical windows that people who are rich & clueless have in their houses: something like those scenes from the Matrix where Morpheus sits in an armchair and the floor, walls, and ceilings are white, white, white - accentuated by his rich mahogany skin. But I do not do pictures well. Writing is difficult enough. I have come across blogs by people who bemoan their lack of writing ability in prose that makes me want to cry in envy. Then they say they think they'll put up some pictures to cheer up the old blogstead. And there stands my blog like some monument to the 21st Maine or the 32nd Pennsylvania, classic and marmoreal, but lacking that little touch of Bella Abzug that makes you think of home and hearth and a warm kitchen with fresh blintzes. writing 1

A Dream of a Cross

My daughter passed the bar. She lives in a southern border state she loves, inhabited by people of the quaintest habits. I remember her telling me that people always thanked the bus driver when they reached their stop. Men tip their hats to ladies. (I mean Mason-Dixon Line border, not Rio Grande border. We are infusing our writing with ante-bellum fragrance. And by ante-bellum I mean Civil War, not whatever war we are waging right now.)

The bar was becoming an obsession with her. We feared lest she fail it. She would have seen her life as a failure and her search for a job would have been hampered. It was a great onus lifted from our souls. She called at 5:00 in the morning.
Well done, brave heart!
She related to me a dream she had had two days earlier. She was with a friend. They went to visit another friend who handed my daughter a cross. My daughter woke up with a start and felt a profound sense of peace pass over her soul and she no longer worried about the outcome of the bar exam. The cross of the dream was the cross which hung on a necklace we had given her.

I told her never to forget the dream.

The dream is an experience of the cognitive system that informs our experience of the Holy.
Our experience of the Holy is not derived from emotions.
It is not wish fulfillment.
It is not fear, not anger, not desire.

The experience of the Holy is a complex of conscious and not-conscious behaviors, which are not derived from nor are reducible to other forms of consciousness, such as Emotion. Emotions may accompany the experience of the Holy, but emotions also accompany our experience of Music, and this does not lead us to believe Music is Emotion in its essence.
The experience of the Holy is a a part of each human being and is as fundamental as Language, Emotion, Music, Imaging - the conscious behaviors of humanity. It is very different from these, however, in a way we'll talk about later on. When God speaks, we have to try to interpret this inspiration.
We use common images and concepts and we actually dress our experiences in the vestments of everyday usage. Perhaps when we were children, before we could master language, while we were innocent, God’s words came to us everyday. As children we are innocent: when we play cowboys and Indians, no one actually dies forever. We get up and play on. The villains of play return home as children forgiven their evil deeds.

The consciousness of children is a dawn consciousness that is very different from that we use everyday. The change of Consciousness from the Dawn Consciousness to the Adult Consciousness of language, logic, and economy is the basis for the Narratives of loss of innocence, loss of a Golden Age. Try as we will, we cannot recapture it. Except when God finally pushes in through all the barriers we’ve set up. And there He is. And we are innocent again. And peace reigns. Amen.

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I Like Ike: 2

Excerpt from President Dwight David Eisenhower's Farewell Address " Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield. Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war-as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years-I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight. " Can we have any glimpse of the ideals which motivated such men as recently as 50 years ago? Have the heroes all disappeared, leaving us with the Trimalchios of self-engorgement, the Alcibiades of self-interest, the Jay Goulds of pagan greed, the Chryses of those blinded by their wealth? Has our keen sense of morality turned us into Reverends James Andrews of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, so dear to us the wealth coming from part of humanity held in our thrall?

DaVinci Don’t Live Here No Mo’

"Is Shaniqua there?"
Shaniqua don't live here no mo'.  
Little T

Instead of Shaniqua moving away, it should be DaVinci that packed up and moved his digs to places unknown. We need another 300 year breather from Leonardo. I notice that Catholics in Mumbai are protesting against the film. There is something about using religion for entertainment that makes me think of Broadway Danny Rose being turned to the dark side.
I never read the novel, but I did hear about its story. It seems to be a compendium of theories and storylines and plots I have come across over the years. Mary Magdalene was very close to Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ by Kazantzakis. ( The novel, that is. Under no circumstances let your eyes be afflicted by the film version. It is hard to find a film worse and more pretentious.)
I read that book in the 60’s. The Knights Templar are old hat. Everything in that book is old, old and hoary. Mr. Brown’s genius lay in putting it all together into a good read. I should look into doing something similar: a book about commonplace things (to me) which no one in America has paid any attention to (everyone else, apparently).

I have not heard whether there is a connection in The DaVinci Code between the Templars and the Ismailis. I could write about that at the risk of a Rushdie fatwa. For example, I am sure I have heard somewhere some sort of rumor or scuttlebutt - probably in the Café des Esseintes – that THE bloodline of Jesus was actually passed along by James, his brother! And so on. However, James was probably strict and orthodox, so he would not have been in flagrante cum meretrice, so to speak. He and his wife were faithful, no doubt. So there would be no chance for the taint of scandal with James.


What I do not quite comprehend is why we are so accepting of scandal with Jesus? Is it because he himself said his message was aimed at sinners, because the non-sinning portion of the population (according to polls, a whopping 92% of the populace) had no need of his message?
Now mark this closely: The greatest publishing phenomena of recent years treat our religion as if it were a street mime: The DaVinci Code and the Left Behind series. What fault do I find in Left Behind? The concept of Rapture is not scriptural to my mind. In Matthew 13:30, “ First collect the weeds and bundle them up to burn, then gather the wheat into my barn.”
Notice we do not first gather up the wheat, and then let the weeds wage a series of herbal wars with each other. No, simple old Day of Judgement. No innovative twists of theology. No new dispensational kinks and turns. Even though we may need to explicate a parable, we don't have to straighten the parables out.

Explaining a parable does not include saying, "This isn't what Jesus really meant to say." I like my religion simple, for my simple mind. I find that a religion that requires charts, graphs, and audio-visual aids to explicate the change of God’s covenants over time to be a bit like walking into a wall. It ignores the Sermon on the Mount. I mean, can’t you visualize Simon Peter (the go-to guy) yelling at James(the backpack guy) to get those charts, graphs, overhead transparencies, and display boards up the mountain before the sermon ends? If you emphasize the goal: salvation, but neglect the means to attain it: the Beatitudes, then I wouldn’t bet a nickel on the good outcome of that particular enterprise.

The Bible Code: 1 Bibliomancy

I was discussing the relative merits of religion with my boyhood chum. Since he is a priest, he took the side of Christianity, heavily weighted towards Roman Catholicism. Since I am the only one of the two of us who has set foot in a mosque, I was on the side of Islam. Thus do the vagaries of Fate inform the World. So we reached the point where we were to end, and I said something like, " Say what you will, at least Islam has the good sense to end the line of Prophets. " He seemed to know what I meant. He thought about it. He said he'd get back to me. What impressed me was the fact that it seemed to be familiar to him. I had expected to have to explain what I meant. Perhaps he is a member of Opus Dei and it means something to them. I have run the risk of angering him by referring to some of the Church's bigger gaffs as Opera Buffa Dei. ( opera is the plural of opus in case you've forgotten.) This is the type of smart-aleck remark one hears from emeritus members of Latinum Auxilium. Modern Christianity has opened the door to new Prophetic activity. We do not mean "prophesy" in the sense of St.Paul, we mean "Prophesy" in the sense of receiving a new Dispensation - a new covenantual agreement with God. We have new mantic activity also that allows us to see across space and time. Let us consider Harry Potter. Many people did not take kindly to Harry Potter, Professor Snape being one of them. The major rub was the divination, witchcraft, and various types of mantic behavior going on. I viewed the most recent film and my wife and I turned to each other in wild surmise and wondered how the story had become so dark and so creepy as to merit that initial rejection of parents concerned for young minds. Nonetheless, I know some people who as Christians reject the necromantic imagery of Harry Potter, yet they seem to be very positive over the so-called Bible Code. If you wish to refer to the Bible Code properly, you must call it Bibliomancy. This is literally divination from a book, not just the Bible. Islam does not countenance any form of divination. Yet, a portion of mainstream Christianity seems to have embraced bibliomancy. And, as mentioned, bibliomancy means divination by a book. This goes far beyond those forms of prophesy permissible to Christians mentioned in the New Testament. This is exactly how a deceiver would deceive the faithful: turn against them their own holy writings in which they already believe without question. Ask yourself this, " Did the old types of mantic activity, oneiromancy, necromancy,etc., not satisfy their practioners? Did not the the ancient haruspices make a good living from inspecting the entrails of sacrificial animals to tell the future?" Did not the most abased Pagan believe himself justified in his belief? So also do we who turn to divination and feel an inflation of mantic frenzy as our souls puff up with our arcane knowledge of God's hidden plans. However, "who has known the mind of the Lord, or has been His counselor?"

Lost on a Desert Isle:1

This is a version of a well known game: Which desert island would you like to read about if you were marooned in the Library of Congress?

15 Minutes of Hubris

Hubris, as in the book Imperial Hubris, actually does not mean arrogance.
Hubris is Greek and is recently imported from Philology and Classics into common use. Thus we still use the "u" instead of changing it to "y", as in "dynamic" from the Greek stem "dun-" . Thus, "dynamic" was a wprd borrowed from Greek long enough ago to have undergone that "u" to "y" change.

Hubris is a reversal of fortune attributed to Fate or Moira.
The higher the flight, the more precipitous the fall.

Oedipus experienced hubris. It was through no volition of his, no intentional sin. The mere fact of success prepares for its own demise: hubris.
Hubris works a lot faster nowadays. If Andy Warhol were alive, he would say that we all will have our 15 minutes of hubris. Only sometimes it lasts longer than 15 minutes. And sometimes we weren't flying high in the first place. No. Hubris is like the end of the dinosaurs: it just was time for them to go.

A lot of the history of Life is similar to a Wolfram Process to which various Darwinian Algorithms may be applied. But what is evident in certain Wolfram Processes (cellular automata applied to evolutionary processes) is that sometimes it is just written, it is fated, it is the next step of working out the underlying code.
Scientists look for the end of the dinosaurs in a comet impact, climate change, changes in predator-prey relationships. There is no smoking gun, however. It was just time. Sometimes things just happen. Period. Look at some of Wolfram’s Cellular Automata. Look at the ones that are chaotic and create areas of order which endure and endure, then they abruptly end. Whether a step in his cellular automata represent a second, a day, or a thousand years, when the code plays out, it’s a wrap.

Our end is already written.It is noble to redact the writing with acts of as much honor and godliness as possible.

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The Sublime and the Beautiful

Edmund Burke's essay The Sublime and the Beautiful makes me think about the fearsome side of the Holy. The Holy is Awe-inspiring, but it is also Awe-full in the sense that it inspires terror in the minds of many throughout history. As I drove home today, I saw a sign on a church which said that one could not look at the beauty of nature without thinking of the hand of God. This assumes that we are in a good frame of mind and are looking at some prospect - say, the setting sun or rising moon with a glad eye - and feel God's in His heaven and all is right with the world. I mean, do we ever extrapolate from the horrors of the world to God's creation? Yes, we do. People with depression do. They don't put it up on a sign, however. God, the Holy, is a complex conceptual structure and may be hard to encompass with a holy haiku on the sign in front of the church. Not that I disagree with the sign approach. I just feel that while we dwell on the awe-inspiring, we neglect the awe-filling. There are these two aspects to God. It is apparent in accounts of visionary experiences. When anyone says that they are speaking to God, or that they know God's mind, no one can ever be sure what to expect from that statement. For example, if someone were to ask God whether one should go to war and God says, "Bully good idea!" like Teddy Roosevelt, one should really anticipate at least a smidgeon of horror.

The New WMDs:1

A WMD (weapon of mass destruction) has been discovered in Iraq.

It is a telephone in one of Saddam's old palaces.

 With cameras rolling, the telephone was activated and proceeded to ring off the hook for the next 6 hours with calls from telemarketers and lesser forms of life.
My parents, who are in their mid 80s, are constantly bedeviled by phone calls and telephones themselves. When I visit - once a week minimum - there are about 70 messages on their telephone electronic dustbin.

My mother is very conservative and very Republican and would not harm a fly. However, I have caught her sitting on the couch, looking daggers at the telephone, and reading the works of Mikhail Bakunin. Last week, as we were watching their television, she drove me to distraction by surfing the 100 channels. So I suggested we look at the tv book. The tv book consists of program titles plus Linear Matrices of channels, the columns of the matrix being the letters A through K, and the rows being what appear to be the best guesses of the tv book as to which number the channel might be today, ordered from best guess to worst guess. On the average, surfing the channels took 2.1 minutes to complete whereas the tv book required 6.7 minutes plus the 3 minutes required to rip it up and toss it.

 I sense that the people responsible are the same who wrote up the new Medicare program. And when my mother needs a new cellular telephone, she wants one that will just place calls and receive calls - nothing else. She hasn't caught on to the infinite number of useless amenities available in this Brave New World.

Intelligent Design 3: Idolatry Once More

Someone suggested that my interpretation of ID (Intelligent Design) as Idolatry was only true for the particular case wherein it was argued that the Designer need not necessarily be God. So I said, do ya think, duh? (And then the snake of ID did a few twists and shot away in the twinkling of an eye and went home to ID Central to be re-defined. The theory reminds me of the villain in Harry Potter films, a villain of many faces.)

The point was good and I am sorry (I'm pronouncing "sorry" as if I were Canadian, which is equivalent to having my fingers crossed behind my back). My wife says no wonder my so-called friends often resemble vengeful villagers from the early Frankenstein movies, carrying torches and pitch forks and what not when they visit.
My Bible says God created the heavens and the earth. If there were any "design phase" in the process, it seems to be totally implicate within the "Let there be..." I mean, God said let there be light. My Bible doesn't say let there be such-and-such light following my exact specifications which I have set forth in documents Alpha through Omega, and so on and so on. I ask you whether you actually mean that it is IMPOSSIBLE that God create without design? I ask whether you hold it absolutely NECESSARY that God do things the way you say he must? I ask you whether you are asserting that God the Creator is SUBSERVIENT to the laws of Nature and to your reading of those laws?
I find the whole discussion somewhat difficult, since my Faith centers on the Gospels. I feel absolutely no need to use Science to render my God more properly God-like. I mean, I don't really feel the earth tremble beneath my faith because I can't see God's fingerprint on everything in nature. In fact, if I could see God's fingerprint on everything, then the earth would tremble, for then my Faith in God would be subject to possible falsification, as are all scientific theories.

Now, from a philosophical approach: 1) I reject any argument about teleogy based on Aristotle or Aquinas dealing with this particular situation. Amicus Aristotelis sed magis amicus veritatis. 2) The argument from Irreducible Complexity does not compel. I appeal to Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. I refer to the phenomena he deals with as a Wolfram Process. I believe it to be the case that a Wolfram Process has the ability to demonstrate several, well-matched, interacting parts without the ID concept of design. 3) Mr. Dembski's argument of Specified Complexity does not compel. Again, I believe that a Wolfram Process underlies much of the phenomena being discussed; i.e., evolution, and such a process has outcomes which cannot be assigned a probability at present. 4) The arguments deal with concepts which cannot compel assent based on logic alone. The presentation of ID strongly resembles Science and Religion for Dummies. In the present day, I would rather see a discussion whether any of the phenomena are Wolfram Processes and whether they possess Computational Universality (hence, whether we may predict future states).
Lastly, it has been a matter of policy for ID proponents to disguise their agenda. I have no problem with creationism. I do have a problem with disguised creationism. If someone feels compelled to disguise their motives, then their real motives are suspect. Who is beating the drum to which they march? intelligent design 2 intelligent design 1

Mercury Theater of the Mind:1

We are sitting around the wireless set, listening to a Fireside Chat. It came on right after Fibber McGee. Our elected representatives will debate giving us a $100 rebate to compensate for the high price of gas. The leader of the Senate sagely counsels us to get a tune-up and drive slower. Since mechanics only charge $2 a hour, this will be a great deal. Most of us will be able to do the tune-up ourselves since we all have diagnostic computers purchased from the Sears Roebuck catalogue. The skies of blue are here again!

On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts: 2

I watched the first Bombing of Baghdad with interest. I could not get enough of the instant re-play of smart bombs. Somewhere, they said, a hospital was being bombed. Somewhere a wedding party was mistakenly attacked. Miles of vehicles destroyed and bodies strewn in the sun. Never did the vultures praise Nekhbet as they did that day. Then the second Bombing of Baghdad. Wasn't this the greatest TV you had ever seen? This was "American Idolatry" and all the right buttons were being pushed and no one got voted off, except the ones in war's way, and they were voted off with finality. No come backs on the last show for them. How will God ever forgive me for standing and watching and not saying anything? I had a friend who was staunchly against the re-election of President Bush. Her neighbors and friends made fun of her for being against the war, which was all but won, they said. They made a bet on the election's outcome. She lost. They made her pay up by choosing the most expensive restaurant they could find. Now no one says anything. No one says they wished they'd listened to her. And she says nothing. She has changed. The killing tomes have displaced the literature books on her shelves. She accepts that she cannot do anything and she is quiet, not with the silence of humility, but with that sharp-eyed calm that cuts like a sword and whets itself with tears and runs with lonely wolves. murder as fine art 1

Writing:1

It is hard to write. It goes beyond the usual slothfulness of writers who much rather watch the Big Show in the Times Square or Piccadilly Circus of their mind's eye than force themselves to put pencil to paper and push that graphite tipped ploughshare back and forth on hardscrabble paper under the blazing hot sun. (I'll be back after a quick breather...)

I never realized how hard until I began to learn Arabic. I suddenly remembered how much work we had put into learning English! We studied Vocabulary, we had Reading Class, we diagrammed sentences, we had reading to do at home; we even 'sounded out' unfamiliar words. There is a website for an organization called 'adala which is a legal aid organization which helps to look after the rights of Palestinians in Israel. Palestinians form about 20% of the population of Israel. Now 'adala has its site in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. So I had the brainy idea of using the Arabic alongside the English for study. The outcome, however, was a surprise. Even though I am reading the short stories of Zakaria Tamir, I could not make any sense whatsoever of the articles in 'adala. I knew the meaning of the words. I had an English translation, so I knew what they were trying to say. But I could not figure out how they were trying to put their Arabic together. I was amazed. However, upon reflection, I may have found an explanation. 'adala is a legal association.
The main work of lawyers is not necessarily to write intelligibly for non-lawyers. We are so used to our native language that we are actually able to understand a wide range of people, even those who have a slender grasp of English. And we can probably read legalese. But not Arabic legalese. In Business writing, people write " I am in receipt of your letter." as if "receipt" were a state of being. I am in a "funk", I am in a" state of rage", I am in a "state of having-received-a-letter". Terrible. Surely, "I have received your letter" is preferable, but that is not what they say. Another instance is " per your instructions..." as if "per" means "according to". Not really. Not in this galaxy. Not under Augustus Caesar, not under George Bush. We read it and we understand it. Think how difficult it would be for someone new to the lingo, however.

I'm afraid 'adala's articles in my mind were like those magnets with words located on certain refrigerator doors and which one can push around to create poems with double entendres; just a bunch of words with no particular logical web connecting them. Think how wonderful it is to be able to write. Not only to write, but to write in such a way that other minds may actually follow your trail of words to whatever enchanted forest you choose to lead them. Not too shabby.

At this point we may have reached a Narrative and this concept, much used in recent Philosophy, may be much more than a trifling with words and a run at a story. I think a Narrative is the end result of Concept-Generating Intelligence experiencing the world about them. Narrative is the result of taking experience, creating Short Term Memory, and eventually creating Long Term Memory. ( Remembered dreams are the first conscious processing in this. The dreams and their structure may seem weird and wired, but they do exhibit structure and this structure is the first bit of consciousness on the way to Narrative.)
Narrative is not just writing, because we could be writing nonsense. It is writing which compels, writing which moves the soul, writing which makes us laugh, writing which reminds us of where we come from. The great bond of sympathy create by Narrative comes from its being common to all mankind. (note: narrative also exists in other conscious behaviors other than Language.) I will say that I believe writers have a great responsibility to their readers. All people have responsibility to each other. But the great artists have a greater burden. Their ability is truly God-given.

Now, I have read that Ann Coulter has recently run afoul of decency again by calling for someone to be killed with rat poison. She says she was kidding. Perhaps she and Pat Roberston can put together a new Kings of Comedy show: What's up with Hugo Chavez? Just kill 'em! " Bodda-bing. " What's up with the President of Iran? Nuke 'em." Bodda-bam. Every society has unstable people. If someone were to act upon this immoral urging, would Ms. Coulter disavow responsibility? Sooner or later, if the tenor of public discourse continues to be conducted at a level appropriate for thugs, a violent act in conformity to the spoken or written "thugese" will occur. Then what? ( There has been a Godfather Marathon here on TV. I have seen and heard that the criminal element has changed into legitimate businessmen over time. I believe some of the Godfather pictures trace this process. HOWEVER, what you do not frequently hear is that businessmen have also changed into being more like the criminal element. Enron comes to mind. Similarly, certain people in the media have adopted a manner of conversation which is strongly redolent of the underworld. I know an individual who refers to Ann Coulter as " Julia Streicher", not due to her politics but due to her intemperance.) A writer should never have to wake up with a moral hang-over. No one should. Maintain the bonds of Morality and Godliness.

Mea Culpa Friday

Today is Mea Culpa Friday. My wife said my tirade against Boomers ignores the sacrifice of those who died in Vietnam. Yes it does. Forgive me this. In every generation there are those who give all, those whose honor is unstained, those who are loyal, those who are godly, those whose very actions keep the world in existence by what they do. Our soldiers are among these souls. In the Book of Numbers, I believe, there is a short description how a returning soldier is to purify himself before returning to his people. A state of ritual impurity was recognized for those who killed. A soldier fighting for his country was not subject to the strict prohibition against killing, but he could not escape ritual impurity. The re-integration of soldiers into society was a large issue after their return from Vietnam. The ultimate job of a soldier is to kill on behalf of those at home who will not bear the burden of killing. To be in the face of great violence and to be compelled to violent acts injure the soul. We should have provided a more effective passage from war to home, for many Vietnam soldiers faced neglect at best and active disapproval at worst. I was talking, or,rather, listening to Fahd last night. He had not been to Arabic class since last fall, praise be. Last night, we had not secured the strategic railways in our rear, so to speak,and we were stuck between Fahd and a hard place. He said that he had spoken with numerous personnel who had been in Iraq and had been rotated home and they were pretty negative about what they had to do there. I realize Fahd is not the most dependable source. However, we may see the same problem as this war comes to its end: as it becomes more and more unpopular, soldiers returning from Iraq may run into the same wall of silence and opprobrium that greeted those Vietnam vets. Or, it might be worse. That's what surprises me about the present age: there's always a new wrinkle that's worse. We have seen people traveling about the country staging protests at the funerals of the slain, ostensibly protesting whatever tolerant and benign disposition has escaped solitary and become part of the public forum: gay rights in this instance. So even in death, these soldiers whom we asked to go to war cannot be at peace. This cannot be the result.

The Ministry of Democracy:1

The government of Palestine has been formed by the Hamas party. A number of people who are not franchised to vote maintain that the Palestinian voters have seriously erred - a failure of democracy, in short. Ideally, Democracy should lead to results that make us happy. It says so in the Federalist Papers, does it not? The elections in Iraq were recently held, but they were not held until the reverend Ali As-Sistani sent his supporters peacefully into the streets demanding a vote. If an election were held at an inopportune time, the wrong type of people might be elected. There is a National Endowment for Democracy which provides funds for democracy, but always with the proviso that the ends MUST justify the means: if we send you money, we must have a compliant government. It would be good if the government were elected lawfully, but... I digress. (When I was young, I never thought to see the dark, dystopic visions of the future contained within the less cheery yarns of science fiction come true. Who could imagine pyramids of naked prisoners and gleeful soldiers? I have been thrown off balance by the present. Forgive my digressions.)

What the uncomplicated minds of our theoreticians of democracy do not seem to be aware of is the history of Democracy. Observe the concentration of wealth into the hands of the few in our country. Observe the growth of the permanent poor. Be mindful that basic health care is not available for all and multiple cosmetic surgeries are available for the rich. Now, in what process did Democracy arise in Ancient Greece? How did it arise in Athens? It came to fruition in a struggle between the rich and the not-rich, the Oligoi and the Demos, the few and the many. We could use an old term and call it a class struggle. This struggle occurred in almost every city state in Ancient Greece. Athens had one outcome, Sparta had another.
It is apparent that Democracy to our government means a continuation of what we see before us: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I do not mind the rich getting richer. What I find totally unchristian is the acceptance of the progressive degradation of the poor - OR the soon-to-be poor. Everything that flows from the present leaders, whether in government or not, is another face of the selfish, corrupt Proteus of a capitalism which in its essence rejects Christian charity. Capitalism is not constrained to reject Charity; WE have chosen to do so and have chosen to accept this disgusting form of Capitalism which I am sure even Adam Smith would view with abhorrence if it were to lumber drunkenly into his chambers!
Democracy was born in sharing power. And just as wealth means power, so does power mean wealth in an equivalence of social well being. We may be creating a situation in our own country which will lead to a civic contest for Democracy. What we are trying to spread throughout the world is not Democracy. What is it, then? I am not sure yet.

On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts: 1

On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts was the title of a pamphlet by Thomas DeQuincy of Confessions of an English Opium Eater fame. I never read it entirely. At the time I came across it, I was in a quandary as to how to evaluate the morality of Art and individual expression. I was stuck in a mire and my analytic neurons were beginning to look for work elsewhere. I have heard that Art is subservient to the State, to a Class, or it is above and beyond such things and is independent of earthly concerns. Certain tasteless representations of religious objects in proximity to waste products, I think, were in our view at the time. When I read the title of DeQuincy's essay, there was an immediate "ah-ha!" I realized that anything under the sun that a man can do may be considered to be Art if only enough of mankind believes it to be. Even Murder may be a Fine Art if there are artists of Murder, and if there are critics of Murder, and IF there is an audience for Murder. And there is. Murder is a Fine Art. The audience is ourselves. There is an Industry which caters to our perversity. From the Bombing of Baghdad and Son of Bombing of Baghdad to the Unpleasantness in Aruba, Murder is an Art which ranges from High to Low and intrudes into our homes.

We Don't Persecute Other Religions

I was talking with the nurse who was taking my height and weight. I seem to have decreased in height, not in weight. There is always a decrease, a diminution, a thinning, a weeding out, a certain sparseness, a diminuendo of those things which I fancy render one attractive and a corresponding accentuation of the characteristics we share with the troll species.

So, we were speaking of religion. (We seem to be a lot like those inhabitants of Constantinople Gibbon talks so much about: if you ask the greengrocer how much are leeks today, he answers that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, and so on.)
We spoke of Christianity and Islam. She said that whatever one thinks of Christianity, at least we here in this country do not kill people for their religious beliefs.

Now, interestingly enough, this was the day when about 6 Branch Davidians who escaped the bonfire in Waco were to be released from prison. I mentioned them. She was silent. I was embarrassed over being so combative. I'm usually not so quick, either. I think this was also the day when the Chinese leader was received at the White House.
I know it is difficult to believe that the good old USA killed people over their religious beliefs. The Branch Davidians' religious beliefs must have been secondary to some other beliefs which rendered them outside the rules of civilization. And the tragedy must have been a mistake. While we are about propping up the indefensible, Abu Ghraib was an aberration and reflects nothing about the people in whose name that war is fought. The intent of an evil act changes homicide to manslaughter.

However, the end result is the same from the victim's point of view. If you were to formulate a legal canon and a philosophy of morality strictly from the viewpoint of victims, not the intent of the perpetrator, the distinction between homicide and manslaughter might disappear. It is not clear whether God shares our forensic distinctions.
--

I was speaking to a nurse who was drawing blood from my arm today. She spoke of the Roman Catholic Church. Coincidentally, I am feeling more sympathetic to the Bishop of Rome recently. The Nurse trusts all men of good will. However, when it comes to Power, she trusts the RC Church. She trusts the Church because it has already learned many lessons about the abuse of power. The Church has seen itself corrupted by worshipping Power in its 2,000 year history. It has had valuable experience. Not so for the Christian Right. They desire Power more than Charity, she thinks, and they are yet to learn the hard lessons of placing desire for Power before God. Amen. I never thought I would live to see the day when we became the icon of torture and abuse. I hope I am spared the day when the Christian Right is learning that Power tends to corrupt and the absolute Power of the mightiest nation on earth corrupts absolutely.

I have gotten in the habit of reading the BBC News when I rise. Then, if time allows, I look at news from some corporate outlet, such as The New York Times.

I can not get over the incredible lemming rush to war in 2002-2003 where no opposition was expressed in Big Business News. The BBC remained independent and committed to covering the news. How often do we hear, " Everybody got the intelligence on WMD wrong! It's no one's fault. Everyone was wrong."? This would be one thing if it were true.

However, it is patently false. The UN inspection team, headed by Hans Blix, was in Iraq and was saying that there were no WMDs. I followed Hans Blix on the BBC. Now, how can something that purports to be a News Organization get this wrong?
Last night, I heard that the price of oil was skyrocketing due to global instability. Part of this instability was Hugo Chavez of Venezuela who constantly threatens to cut off the oil shipped to the USA. Mr. Chavez appears to be democratically elected. He has mentioned cutting supply IF the USA continues to try to destabilize his government. That is a big IF. And the government of Venezuela is referred to now as a regime in the US media.

There is a hint of the underworld in regime. That is why regime change is good. Thus, News Organizations get this right, but they then distort it and strain it to a different meanings. In that passage of the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus forbids the taking of oaths, He adds that we should let our yes be a yes and our no be a no. The News Organizations of the USA would respond like Pilate: " Quid est veritas?", but they would do so with that sneer which displays the higher wisdom of Mammon worship.

I Like Ike

In a previous post, " Conservatives and St.Paul", I said some things about the Boomers and their parents. Some of my more clever friends have disagreed with my opinion. Since they are Boomers themselves, they feel that I have injured them. They cannot believe I think the whole Boomer generation is a convention of the Fisher Kings, so terribly maimed in soul. Too bad. I do.

I will provide a brief summary. World War II was horrendous. Remember Sherman's "War is Hell" remains true except for the present government who found war to be a photo-op on an aircraft carrier. How many boomers had fathers who would wake up from nightmares from the memory of the violence? There wasn't a lot of psychiatric understanding of post-traumatic syndrome. There is now, but we choose not to fund treatment. Back then, we offered the brave ones who fought a good life, a quiet life, a life wherein they could forget how awesomely horrific the world is. And they had the intelligent man who lead the war as President, Dwight David Eisenhower, or Ike. Ike provided the quiet and tranquil illusion for the men who had served under him in the war which was the creator of all holocausts.

When it became obvious in the 60's that certain issues had to be addressed, the War generation did not wish to face it. After all, they had fought enough. They'd seen Pearl, the Bulge, Iwo Jima, Auschwitz... So rightly it was the burden of the younger generation. In time, this generation could not find God without drugs, could not find being in the world without violence, could not find the True Charity that first moved them. So they quit. They went into the world of business, but they did it in a particularly soulless way, for they did not feel comfortable with God. So we had incredible wealth and growth accompanied by incredible poverty and degradation...and we have the present state of affairs where the Attorney General of this country argues for torture in front of elected representatives who are owned by lobbyists. We still do not have the Charity we lost.

Listen to public discourse. Charity has been mugged and dragged into a forgotten alley. I prefer FDR, Harry Truman, and Ike. (Of course, there's still Jimmy Carter, thank heavens.) The era of Ozzie and Harriet was a breather for those who had given all. Now we have the era of those who have given NOTHING and have gleefully taken everything: the Boomers. When I speak of Boomers, I mean the whole generation. We tend to think of Boomers as being somewhat liberal. No, these distinctions of liberal and conservative are invalid here just as they are in most of the places they are used. For even the very conservative religious leaders feel unnaturally empowered by being in this generation, so much so that they will counsel assassinations, they will affirm that they know the mind of God, and they will promote Idolatry under the guise of the Intelligent Design Theory.

The Gift of Democracy

I study the Arabic Language and am reading the short stories of Zakaria Tamir. My teacher has a number of courses with many more students. Since my teacher is Syrian, the desire to suppress any specific personal information has been expressed. So when I speak of my Arabic study, I suppose I will have a lot of strange constructions, such as " it has been indicated" and "it was said" and various uses of the passive and the subjunctive , as IF I WERE a journalist with a source to hide.

I decided to study Arabic in 2002. When I tell people I am doing so, they give me a funny look, as if it were the most outrageous waste of time imaginable. Even more inane than the landscape design around developments. My teacher had a student who was perplexed that some Iraqis were incapable of appreciating the gift of democracy we in America had so thoughfully given them. He considered it a precious gift and could not understand their attitude. We have heard similar expressions on the BT ( boob-tube ) and the bt ( boob-transistor, or radio).
We have given them this gift. It's up to them now whether they appreciate it or throw a slipper at it. ( If you don't get "throwing slippers", you have not been paying attention for the past three years or so.) After all, the United States and George Washington's Army were handed independence as as gift by the French who so thoughfully intervened and did all the fighting against the British.
Or did I get that wrong? And, surely, the United States, in great gratitude never ever descended to waging a civil war. Or did they? Independence of mind and soul can not be a gift. A people have to struggle for it. It may be bloody, such as the War of Independence, or it may not, such as Gandhi-Ji's way. ( Of course, India had its blood: Jallian Walla Bagh.) Which people has been given democracy? Vietnam? The USA? If the idea of the Gift of Democracy is contrary to the obvious, what purpose does it serve, except to try to salve the Conscience of a people who have forgotten morality?

To Bill

 Don Imus

Listening and watching Imus in the Morning. I began watching because it reminded me of my brother-in-law, Bill. He passed away in the fall of 2004 and September became the cruelest month.

He had listened to Imus forever. When my wife and sister-in-law and myself viewed The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, we loved it. Our friends seemed to merely tolerate it. They thought the characters were over the top and not at all life-like; they had o.d.ed on The Royal Tenenbaums and were not receptive.

 Well, they had never spent any time with an individual like Bill, who forced Life to spread out in order to encompass his great zest for life. They believed people like Steve Zissou to be outrageous figments of the imagination. We had the good fortune to have known such a person. If Nikos Kazantzakis had known Bill, he would have written Zorba about him. God bless you, Billy.