Thursday, September 14, 2006
My Profile
My daughter has suggested I render a more complete profile.
My nephews scoff at the idea.
Both sides are in agreement that a personal photo is definitely out of the question-unless its one from about 30 years ago when people still wore top hats and had mutton chop sideburns.
All of my present day photos look like DMV photos or Costco photos or any photo taken by contrarian paparazzi who seek out the most unflattering angle and use it.
Perhaps I am coming out of my Winston Smith period.
Perhaps it is time to be O'Brien.
I like the Celtic flavor of the name. I fancy I am the ancient Celtic civilization, torn by storms of nature and empire and barbarians, my back against the wind swept sea, a bulwark for an exotic faith standing in the face of paganism.
Cool.
However, I have wanted to be Montag for a long time also, ever since Fahrenheit 451. I couldn't get it at e-bay for the longest time. I could not get Sonntag either, since Susan Sonntag already had dibs on it.
That left Dienstag, Thorstag, Freitag, and Samtag, none of which appealed to me.
Oh, Mittwoch was also available. Obviously out of the running.
My nephews liked Mittwoch. They suggested Mittwoch von Blatherstein as a possibility.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Cheerleaders in The Charnel House: 1
My brother (my other brother if you've read recent posts and are wondering) told me that Pat Robertson has a new book entitled Death of America.
Something about America and Death.
It all boils down to the Hispanic Flood.
I interpret this as a thinly veiled anti-Catholic tirade. My brother says that it seems to be centered on the disinclination to learn English. I guess I'll never know because I shall never read the rag. I suppose I may pick it up after they've interred me in Gitmo for 4 or 5 years.
Anyhow, so I tell him that Mr. Robertson is a prime example of the Christiano-celebrities who have a Culture of Death: they are unwittingly (or wittingly) viewing events through their filter of Death, Destruction, Armageddon, or whatever extra-Scriptural enthusiasm is in possession of them.
My brother is totally unaware of this Death's Head Culture (Totenkopfkultur) and thinks I'm daft. So I sent him a copy of the Christian leaders of the Middle East statement on Christian Zionism http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=94029 and he will immediately see the ideas I espouse are, alas, hardly original to myself. excerpt:
All of us within the deepest recesses of our being dimly perceive this battle. When we return to the surface world, we try to speak of what we've experienced and we use the ideas we are already comfortable with, so some people see Rapture, some see Armageddon, some see the positive side, others see only the horrid. Similarly, if we read of near death experiences, we find some are inspiring, some are terriffying. Which color filter do you use to view Reality?
--
I interpret this as a thinly veiled anti-Catholic tirade. My brother says that it seems to be centered on the disinclination to learn English. I guess I'll never know because I shall never read the rag. I suppose I may pick it up after they've interred me in Gitmo for 4 or 5 years.
Anyhow, so I tell him that Mr. Robertson is a prime example of the Christiano-celebrities who have a Culture of Death: they are unwittingly (or wittingly) viewing events through their filter of Death, Destruction, Armageddon, or whatever extra-Scriptural enthusiasm is in possession of them.
My brother is totally unaware of this Death's Head Culture (Totenkopfkultur) and thinks I'm daft. So I sent him a copy of the Christian leaders of the Middle East statement on Christian Zionism http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=94029 and he will immediately see the ideas I espouse are, alas, hardly original to myself. excerpt:
The Christian Zionist program provides a worldview where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism. In its extreme form, it places an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ's love and justice today.Sounds just as if I have plagiarized my entire blog from these fellows. In fact, it is beginnning to sound like Lord of the Rings. Perhaps all of recent history may be and will be seen as the fight against the Lord of Death.
All of us within the deepest recesses of our being dimly perceive this battle. When we return to the surface world, we try to speak of what we've experienced and we use the ideas we are already comfortable with, so some people see Rapture, some see Armageddon, some see the positive side, others see only the horrid. Similarly, if we read of near death experiences, we find some are inspiring, some are terriffying. Which color filter do you use to view Reality?
--
The Real World
http://www.btselem.org/English/
is the website of the Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem.
You may read how, since the abduction of Cpl. Shalit, 76 Palestinians have been killed. This is a policy we are supporting. Huzzah!
You may read how, since the abduction of Cpl. Shalit, 76 Palestinians have been killed. This is a policy we are supporting. Huzzah!
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
The Medium is the Morality
I was talking with a moral absolutist.
I asked for an unchanging moral or ethical proposition.
"Do not kill." was suggested.
I asked about his position on execution by the state. He was for it.
I asked about war. He dodged into just war.
Since he was Catholic, I pointed out that the Iraq War did not met the Catholic Church's definition of a Just War. And so on.
If there is actually a position to be described as Moral Absolutist, it must be maintained with mirrors and reflections.
If there is actually a position of Moral Relativism, it must be maintained by those of arrogant spirit. I have never read a paper or book on Moral Relativism-either pro or con-that did not strike me as utter nonsense. In both cases, the true Morality was subsumed within the argumentation, the message. In effect, the Medium was the Morality and Morality was the medium: it was no more than the arguments themselves.
--
I asked for an unchanging moral or ethical proposition.
"Do not kill." was suggested.
I asked about his position on execution by the state. He was for it.
I asked about war. He dodged into just war.
Since he was Catholic, I pointed out that the Iraq War did not met the Catholic Church's definition of a Just War. And so on.
If there is actually a position to be described as Moral Absolutist, it must be maintained with mirrors and reflections.
If there is actually a position of Moral Relativism, it must be maintained by those of arrogant spirit. I have never read a paper or book on Moral Relativism-either pro or con-that did not strike me as utter nonsense. In both cases, the true Morality was subsumed within the argumentation, the message. In effect, the Medium was the Morality and Morality was the medium: it was no more than the arguments themselves.
--
What is the Love of God?
" ...more like a man Flying from something that he dreads than one who sought the thing he loved." William Wordsworth, "TINTERN ABBEY"
Fear and Panic: the Flight response come quickly to us.
Flight is an autonomous response. We have learned to play with it as we watch films of horror, gore, and violence; as we watch news reports of atrocities committed by others and by our own government. When people wonder why there is so much bad news, this is the reason: we are thrilled by the bad news for it titillates our inborn Flight response. This Fear & Flight response occurs universally across a wide range of human behavior.
Is there an autonomous and inborn response that attracts? Instead of causing us to flee and become a fugitive, does it bring us together? Is it universal across the range of human activity? Sexual attraction may come to mind, but it is limited to sexual behavior. It is not universal across human behavior.
The Love of God is the universal autonomous response of drawing-together. It is autonomous as it comes into being on its own. It is universal as it occurs across the range of all our behaviors. It draws the soul to God. I think some people experience when they imagine themselves to be in the proximity of a lovely sunset and thereupon say some tidbit like "Ah, Such Beauty! Thus do I affirm God's existence!" Thus they imagine themselves to have Faith.
That's fine. Faith uses the Love of God to create the structure of Faith. It is not a quid-pro-quo, but it does need the two participants-God and myself-to be fully serious about what we are doing and to be fully committed to it.
When I say it is not quid-pro-quo, I realize that I am disagreeing with those that believe that God rewards with carrots and punishes with sticks according as we obey or disobey. Faith comes into being as the Love of God pulls creation together. As two hands draw together in prayer, the hands create a structure- the "praying hands" of Durer's woodcuts, for example- and there is the space outside the hands and the space enclosed within the hands. We have a three dimensional structure.
When the hands draw apart, the structure dissipates. Each hand returns to solitude.
We are back at Dawn Consciousness of childhood. Love of God creates Faith. It is corrupted soon into the give-and-take, obey and reward, disobey and punish of the family life, of the economic life of mankind. That faith becomes the Universal Abacus of a miserly God. Faith is a structure that emerges into existence at our birth and requires absolutely no particular effort of anyone's part: it is essential to creation. Just as our tendency to flight is inborn-thus preserving our well being-so is our tendency to draw together-thus advancing our growth and progress.
Fear and Panic: the Flight response come quickly to us.
Flight is an autonomous response. We have learned to play with it as we watch films of horror, gore, and violence; as we watch news reports of atrocities committed by others and by our own government. When people wonder why there is so much bad news, this is the reason: we are thrilled by the bad news for it titillates our inborn Flight response. This Fear & Flight response occurs universally across a wide range of human behavior.
Is there an autonomous and inborn response that attracts? Instead of causing us to flee and become a fugitive, does it bring us together? Is it universal across the range of human activity? Sexual attraction may come to mind, but it is limited to sexual behavior. It is not universal across human behavior.
The Love of God is the universal autonomous response of drawing-together. It is autonomous as it comes into being on its own. It is universal as it occurs across the range of all our behaviors. It draws the soul to God. I think some people experience when they imagine themselves to be in the proximity of a lovely sunset and thereupon say some tidbit like "Ah, Such Beauty! Thus do I affirm God's existence!" Thus they imagine themselves to have Faith.
That's fine. Faith uses the Love of God to create the structure of Faith. It is not a quid-pro-quo, but it does need the two participants-God and myself-to be fully serious about what we are doing and to be fully committed to it.
When I say it is not quid-pro-quo, I realize that I am disagreeing with those that believe that God rewards with carrots and punishes with sticks according as we obey or disobey. Faith comes into being as the Love of God pulls creation together. As two hands draw together in prayer, the hands create a structure- the "praying hands" of Durer's woodcuts, for example- and there is the space outside the hands and the space enclosed within the hands. We have a three dimensional structure.
When the hands draw apart, the structure dissipates. Each hand returns to solitude.
We are back at Dawn Consciousness of childhood. Love of God creates Faith. It is corrupted soon into the give-and-take, obey and reward, disobey and punish of the family life, of the economic life of mankind. That faith becomes the Universal Abacus of a miserly God. Faith is a structure that emerges into existence at our birth and requires absolutely no particular effort of anyone's part: it is essential to creation. Just as our tendency to flight is inborn-thus preserving our well being-so is our tendency to draw together-thus advancing our growth and progress.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Faith: 1
As I was depositing my brother in a cheap motel across from the legal offices to which he will go Tuesday morning after Labor Day in order to be accompanied by his lawyer as he surrenders himself to the local constabulary...
[...]
... I talked to him about Faith, Humility, and Charity. His own grasp of the Holy is rather tenuous and reflects much of the childish notions which clutter up our consciousness.
When St. Paul told us to put away the things of a child, he didn't mean dredels; he meant childishly improper notions of the Holy.
What is Faith?
We have already discussed statements of Faith and Truth and Falsity elsewhere, so we will not repeat it here.
What, then, is Faith?
I have heard people in bad situations say one must have faith in God. This seems to imply that God will ride to your rescue like the cavalry in the last reel of an old film thriller. Since this doesn't seem to happen too very often nowadays, it is wide of the mark.
Faith is a two-way street. A person of Faith must adhere to the ideals of Faith set forth by God. Then God will maintain His end of the bargain. Faith is not merely relying on God; it is absolutely relying on God given that you have demonstrated your firm reliance by an exhausting attempt to maintain the standards set forth by God.
If you do not visit the sick, it is problematic whether you should rely too much on divine favor. Similarly if you take oaths, if you do not honor your parents, if you remain stiff-necked and arrogant, if you do not minister to those in prison..all of which MUST be done so that your left hand is sublimely ignorant of what your right hand is doing. (It must be done quietly and without fanfare.), then it is not clear that God will provide. (As soon as I write this, I am aware that I subtly propagandize my efforts for my brother. I never said I was perfect.)
FAITH requires firm effort to maintain the standards set out by God. Before you ask God, He has already asked you. How difficult is it? You probably say, I always do what God wants: I go to church on Sunday, I tithe, I contribute to zakah, I observe the high holydays, etc. etc. etc. There are many stumbling blocks.
We are called upon to turn the other cheek. Do we? We are told not to ask what we shall eat, what we shall drink, where shall we sleep, for our Father will provide. Do we? The demands of Faith cannot all be met at the same time. Within the personal history of the individual there is a progress along the way from darkness to light.
We must maintain our intention to fulfill the demands of Faith as best we can within our lives. This is why we are given our three score and ten; it takes time to fulfill our commitment to God. God does not demand this. It is the nature of the relationship between God and Man that it is two-way. If God reaches out to me, I need to reach toward him. If God offers me and I refuse, do I ever experience that blessing?
[...]
... I talked to him about Faith, Humility, and Charity. His own grasp of the Holy is rather tenuous and reflects much of the childish notions which clutter up our consciousness.
When St. Paul told us to put away the things of a child, he didn't mean dredels; he meant childishly improper notions of the Holy.
What is Faith?
We have already discussed statements of Faith and Truth and Falsity elsewhere, so we will not repeat it here.
What, then, is Faith?
I have heard people in bad situations say one must have faith in God. This seems to imply that God will ride to your rescue like the cavalry in the last reel of an old film thriller. Since this doesn't seem to happen too very often nowadays, it is wide of the mark.
Faith is a two-way street. A person of Faith must adhere to the ideals of Faith set forth by God. Then God will maintain His end of the bargain. Faith is not merely relying on God; it is absolutely relying on God given that you have demonstrated your firm reliance by an exhausting attempt to maintain the standards set forth by God.
If you do not visit the sick, it is problematic whether you should rely too much on divine favor. Similarly if you take oaths, if you do not honor your parents, if you remain stiff-necked and arrogant, if you do not minister to those in prison..all of which MUST be done so that your left hand is sublimely ignorant of what your right hand is doing. (It must be done quietly and without fanfare.), then it is not clear that God will provide. (As soon as I write this, I am aware that I subtly propagandize my efforts for my brother. I never said I was perfect.)
FAITH requires firm effort to maintain the standards set out by God. Before you ask God, He has already asked you. How difficult is it? You probably say, I always do what God wants: I go to church on Sunday, I tithe, I contribute to zakah, I observe the high holydays, etc. etc. etc. There are many stumbling blocks.
We are called upon to turn the other cheek. Do we? We are told not to ask what we shall eat, what we shall drink, where shall we sleep, for our Father will provide. Do we? The demands of Faith cannot all be met at the same time. Within the personal history of the individual there is a progress along the way from darkness to light.
We must maintain our intention to fulfill the demands of Faith as best we can within our lives. This is why we are given our three score and ten; it takes time to fulfill our commitment to God. God does not demand this. It is the nature of the relationship between God and Man that it is two-way. If God reaches out to me, I need to reach toward him. If God offers me and I refuse, do I ever experience that blessing?
Intelligent Design: 4
My nephews say that perhaps I should say ID is polytheism, not idolatry.
I think they're right. However, one Greek word is as good and as impenetrable as another, so idolatry stands. (If you were an ID supporter, you would say "Idolatry Rulz!" in the inner sanctum of your boys' club of spiritual depravity.)
In 1975, David Foster had a book call The Intelligent Universe. It was published by G.P.Putnam's Sons, New York, 1975. Mr. Foster was a scientist. Mr. Foster was postulating a universal intelligence based on data and information. This all hung on the analysis of the term intelligence. I quote:
There is a subtle point in all this ID that 30 years ago Mr. Foster got and we in our benighted generation cannot; that if you mix God and Science, you will either get bad Science or monstrous Religion or both.
In a era of scientific achievement, God will be reduced to a human scale: a heavenly draftsman.
In an era of religious achievement ( few and far between, alas) , science will be reduced to Scholasticism.
I mean, just how comfortable do you feel with a scientists who says, I've come across a situation I can't understand fully. I could either experiment and investigate, or I could retreat into some obscure idolatry. Suppose this scientist was your medical doctor. How comfortable would you feel? I don't understand your symptoms. I could run more tests, or I could sacrifice a chicken.
--
I think they're right. However, one Greek word is as good and as impenetrable as another, so idolatry stands. (If you were an ID supporter, you would say "Idolatry Rulz!" in the inner sanctum of your boys' club of spiritual depravity.)
In 1975, David Foster had a book call The Intelligent Universe. It was published by G.P.Putnam's Sons, New York, 1975. Mr. Foster was a scientist. Mr. Foster was postulating a universal intelligence based on data and information. This all hung on the analysis of the term intelligence. I quote:
"There is a classic argument for the existence of intelligence on a fairly universal scale based on the thought that a human design can only be created through intelligent human means, and therefore if we witness pattern or design in nature, it is highly suggestive that this is the result of intelligence. The idea is that you cannot have design without a designer..."
"But such views...are really beliefs of a quasi-religious nature, and while I do not dispute the possibility of their validity, nevertheless, they are hardly capable of proof in a scientific sense. The postulates are too simple and to inferential to be satisfactorily convincing, and even suggest that ' God is made in the image of Man. ' "
There is a subtle point in all this ID that 30 years ago Mr. Foster got and we in our benighted generation cannot; that if you mix God and Science, you will either get bad Science or monstrous Religion or both.
In a era of scientific achievement, God will be reduced to a human scale: a heavenly draftsman.
In an era of religious achievement ( few and far between, alas) , science will be reduced to Scholasticism.
I mean, just how comfortable do you feel with a scientists who says, I've come across a situation I can't understand fully. I could either experiment and investigate, or I could retreat into some obscure idolatry. Suppose this scientist was your medical doctor. How comfortable would you feel? I don't understand your symptoms. I could run more tests, or I could sacrifice a chicken.
--
Lassitude
I have not posted for a while.
I suppose this undermines blog status. One can't really have a blog-web log- if one doesn't actually log things in.
SO maybe I have an Intermittent Blog. It is not due to the exquisite languor of unemployment in which I find myself. It is not due to my slothful nature. I have started a novel. It's coming along. If you've never done this, you won't understand what its like, so I'm not going to waste your time. What good is a blog so brief?
People find my blog like a summer rain storm over Espanola being watched from the heights of Chimayo: it is brief and even in its brevity there is little solace since the heat evaporates the rain drops before they reach the valley.
SO maybe I have an Intermittent Blog. It is not due to the exquisite languor of unemployment in which I find myself. It is not due to my slothful nature. I have started a novel. It's coming along. If you've never done this, you won't understand what its like, so I'm not going to waste your time. What good is a blog so brief?
People find my blog like a summer rain storm over Espanola being watched from the heights of Chimayo: it is brief and even in its brevity there is little solace since the heat evaporates the rain drops before they reach the valley.
Son of Fascism
Please inform Major Embarassment that WWII is over. Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation won it.
I'm sure they don't begrudge us having our own little wars to make the world safe for democracy, but the big one ended in 1945.
The expresssion "Islamo-fascism" does not make sense; it does not make sense immediately when it is spoken nor when it is heard; it does not make sense after a period of reflection.
It does not make sense on a beach, it makes no sense in a speech.
(The only thing that seems to come close to Fascism was the Christian Phalange Party in Lebanon, founded in the 1930's. The time is right. The nomenclature is correct; recall General Franco was a Falangist supporter. The political views accord. Everything sort of points to a fascist group.)
The fact that certain people make statements like: "Herr Hitler was right! Such and such and so-and-so..." is in itself NOT proof of a fascist philosophy.
Do you have any idea how embarrasing it is to have a government that has not yet learned that policy should not be based on fantasy? What important link to reality is missing from that group?
What I mean is, I may as well go out an make a speech and accuse Muslim terrorists of being "Islamo-White Supremacists" or "Islamo-Aryan Brothers" and it would make as much sense as what Major Embarassment says.
The important distinction is that I am not the leader of the most powerful nation in the history of the world!!!
For heaven sake, what is the matter with this country?
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Intelligent Design: 3
I find it time to repeat the initial message of this blog: the theory of Intelligent Design is idolatry.
You will notice that most sites for or against ID go into great detail. I do not think it necessary, since the very logic in the manner it is argued implies more than one God.
Intelligent Design: 1
Advertisments?
My nephews say that I should place ads, adverts, or advertisments on my blog so that, in their words, "some good may come of it."
Well, given the Name of the Blog ( do I hear an Eco of some other writer?) I don't think that would be a good idea. Oh, I know organized religion does everything but grab the worshippers by the heels, turn them upside down, and collect the currency that falls from their pockets. I just don't think I have enough familiarity with you-know-who to go about collecting money in His name.
In the first place, there's this business of tithing. Well, who gets the tithe? If I give it back to myself, is it really tithing?
In the second, what the the advertisers don't like what I write? Do I treat them as if they were Midianites?
Finally, in my own household we are considering seriously letting the Cable TV umbilical cord be disconnected. There are way too many commercials. I have been with people who have spent 2 hours looking at TV, during which there was about 1.2 hours of programming and 1.6 hours of complaining about the commercials.
It has gotten so bad that I now only schedule TV watching of commercials that are superb. I watch Chrysler's Dr.Z at 6,6:20,6:45, and 8:00. Then there's the cellular telephone commercials that present various objects construed as the strength of signal display - 5 boats on a river, 5 combines in a field, etc. - which I TiVo.
Am seriously considering making a TV Guide-type thing for commercials since they are the wave of the future.
Humility: 2
Many people have called saying they have found those loose screws I seem to have been leaving as I walk about.
My definition of Humility is not well received. Well, if it isn't the way I told it, what is it? By stopping the recycling of everything around the self, you are not left alone; you are left in the presence of God. Q.E.D.
The loss of self where the Holy immediately picks up the baton - as it were - is a blessing.
"It's a gift to be simple, it's a gift to be free."
I point out that I am not talking here about those people who have been beaten so greatly and so often that they lose their sense of selfhood. I'm not sure what the therapy is here. Let's see how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict plays out over the next 60 years and check back.
My definition of Humility is not well received. Well, if it isn't the way I told it, what is it? By stopping the recycling of everything around the self, you are not left alone; you are left in the presence of God. Q.E.D.
The loss of self where the Holy immediately picks up the baton - as it were - is a blessing.
"It's a gift to be simple, it's a gift to be free."
I point out that I am not talking here about those people who have been beaten so greatly and so often that they lose their sense of selfhood. I'm not sure what the therapy is here. Let's see how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict plays out over the next 60 years and check back.
Let's Play CONELRAD
CONELRAD was the name for a system of civil defense communications which was in place to assist our sorry souls in case of a nuclear war and to provide information as to aid and assitance after the lethal strike.
There used to be a website called CONELRAD. Check it out and see the wonders of the threat of nuclear annihilation.
My favorite memory of Armageddon: The TV Series was a cute little ad that started with the mournful wailing of a civil defense siren. It wailed like a banshee through the commercial: Oh, cry for mankind. The day of wrath has come! It frightened then and the memory frightens me now. This was all caused by a notice I picked up in Terra Daily in the sub-heading Space War .
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_Makes_Nuclear_Missile_Data_Secret_Again_999.html
"The administration of US President George W. Bush has begun reclassifying information about the numbers of US strategic weapons during the Cold War, even though it had been once provided to the Soviet Union, The Washington Post reported Monday."
And so on. Well. Where's Matthew Broderick when we need him? In War Games didn't he choose to play Thermonuclear War? I have said before that the USA and the world has already played MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, put out by Nuclear Armageddon Gamers Inc.tm I do not believe that it is a good idea to play it again. I mean, why would any sane society decide to sit down on a rainy day with nothing else to do and decide to play Nuclear Jumanji ? Talking heads and Pro and Con, talking heads and Pro and Con... What it comes down to is that when the USSR fell apart, the unique opportunity of total nuclear disarmament presented itself. It is now being buried. There once was a brief springtime when the threat of Atomic War seemed to stop. People came out of their fall-out shelters and blinked.
It was a new day. We are entering the darkness once more.
My favorite memory of Armageddon: The TV Series was a cute little ad that started with the mournful wailing of a civil defense siren. It wailed like a banshee through the commercial: Oh, cry for mankind. The day of wrath has come! It frightened then and the memory frightens me now. This was all caused by a notice I picked up in Terra Daily in the sub-heading Space War .
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_Makes_Nuclear_Missile_Data_Secret_Again_999.html
"The administration of US President George W. Bush has begun reclassifying information about the numbers of US strategic weapons during the Cold War, even though it had been once provided to the Soviet Union, The Washington Post reported Monday."
And so on. Well. Where's Matthew Broderick when we need him? In War Games didn't he choose to play Thermonuclear War? I have said before that the USA and the world has already played MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, put out by Nuclear Armageddon Gamers Inc.tm I do not believe that it is a good idea to play it again. I mean, why would any sane society decide to sit down on a rainy day with nothing else to do and decide to play Nuclear Jumanji ? Talking heads and Pro and Con, talking heads and Pro and Con... What it comes down to is that when the USSR fell apart, the unique opportunity of total nuclear disarmament presented itself. It is now being buried. There once was a brief springtime when the threat of Atomic War seemed to stop. People came out of their fall-out shelters and blinked.
It was a new day. We are entering the darkness once more.
Monday, August 21, 2006
The Emotion of Certainty
There has been criticism of my title "The Emotion of Truth". Surely, Truth is not an emotion, it has been pointed out.
No, I suppose not. I should have said the emotion of certainty based upon one's perception of what the Truth is. Or not. Too late now.
Most of our life is a ship on the sea of emotions, waves of hormones, winds of neuro-chemistry.
Our concepts are wolves who have lost their parents and we adopt them and raise them in a Christian home in a middle-class neighborhood, they learn to play soccer and not snap at the opposing team, go to college, get a job, marry, reproduce,and die.
I was reading a column by David Limbaugh.
He uses the term "Islamo-fascist" so I had to pretend to understand what he was up to here. I don't understand the tag "Islamo-fascist" unless it applies to Benito Mussolini's Syrian nanny, Fatima.
However, the column was of interesting construction: a bite of fear, a bite of indignation, a bite of defiance, a bite of outrage...all assembled in a feast.
A switch thrown here, a switch thrown there. No particular substance to the column, just incredible sailing of the neuro-chemical sea.
I believe that Jesus' injunction to Humility was advice to turn off these switches.
You will point out, then, that a truly humble person would be totally withdrawn from society and exist in a remote anchoritic existence.
No. The great command to Charity must prevent us from falling into solipsism. Charity is what binds us to others and creates a centrality of performing good acts for others., whereas Humility turns our understanding from the confused fury of an emotional storm to the eye of the hurricane, which is God.
Presidential Respect and Respect for Others
I was reading the Daily Mail when I stumbled across the following:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=401414&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source
Blair 'feels betrayed by Bush on Lebanon
By SIMON WALTERS 22:57pm 19th August 2006
The quaint charm of rich Texans. In re: respect for others, I see that a Muslim doctor from Canada was kicked off an airplane in Denver ( rather like Mr. Gandhi being kicked off the train in South Africa, eh?) on the accusation of a fellow passenger that he was acting suspicious. The doctor was performing evening prayers. That was suspicious. Could be. Now I'm sure you have all seen pictures and videos of Muslims praying in a mosque. They stand, they kneel, they perform numerous prostrations.
But, you ask, how do they pray when they are not in a mosque? Indeed, how do they pray when find themselves in a sardine can with wings, nowadays referred to as an airplane, and there is no room to rest both elbows at the same time, much less room for prostrations and such? Well, they pray sitting. Some may use bottled water to perform a rudimentary ablution. Some will bow their heads instead of kneeling.
In fact, in such situations, the prayer resembles greatly Jewish prayer which involves a rhythmical bowing of the head. Everyone is different. The story adds that the accusing passenger appeared drunk and he had threatened the doctor previously during their trip. The doctor may have been trying to get back at the drunk by praying him down.
Perhaps the drunk was also praying and they were competing to see whose God is greater. I like this last explanation. It just seems more real.
--
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=401414&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source
Blair 'feels betrayed by Bush on Lebanon
By SIMON WALTERS 22:57pm 19th August 2006
The alliance between George Bush and Tony Blair is in danger after it was revealed that the Prime Minister believes the President has 'let him down badly' over the Middle East crisis. A senior Downing Street source said that,privately, Mr Blair broadly agrees with John Prescott, who said Mr Bush's record on the issue was 'crap'. The source said: "We all feel badly let down by Bush. We thought we had persuaded him to take the Israel-Palestine situation seriously, but we were wrong. How can anyone have faith in a man of such low intellect?"Now I believe Mr. John "Bloody" Prescott is a deputy Prime Minister or some such thing. Where does he get off criticizing our President? I have half a mind to cease reading English language newspapers. I mean, I know I criticize the poor, daft Prez, but that's my right as a citizen. He is actually a charming man. And that's why we elected him.
The quaint charm of rich Texans. In re: respect for others, I see that a Muslim doctor from Canada was kicked off an airplane in Denver ( rather like Mr. Gandhi being kicked off the train in South Africa, eh?) on the accusation of a fellow passenger that he was acting suspicious. The doctor was performing evening prayers. That was suspicious. Could be. Now I'm sure you have all seen pictures and videos of Muslims praying in a mosque. They stand, they kneel, they perform numerous prostrations.
But, you ask, how do they pray when they are not in a mosque? Indeed, how do they pray when find themselves in a sardine can with wings, nowadays referred to as an airplane, and there is no room to rest both elbows at the same time, much less room for prostrations and such? Well, they pray sitting. Some may use bottled water to perform a rudimentary ablution. Some will bow their heads instead of kneeling.
In fact, in such situations, the prayer resembles greatly Jewish prayer which involves a rhythmical bowing of the head. Everyone is different. The story adds that the accusing passenger appeared drunk and he had threatened the doctor previously during their trip. The doctor may have been trying to get back at the drunk by praying him down.
Perhaps the drunk was also praying and they were competing to see whose God is greater. I like this last explanation. It just seems more real.
--
Festung Europa and Fortress America
I apologize for the recycled terminology of Hitler, but Festung Europa is not original with me. It originally was applied by Hitler to Europe under Nazi control being a bulwark against the arms of Britain and the USA.
Mellila and Ceuta, Spanish enclaves in Morocco in North Africa, have been attacked recently by hundreds of immigrants from Western Africa seeking to get to Europe and escape the desert of poverty in their homelands.
Spain is doubling the height of the fence to repel future attacks.
However, there are other ways. There are smugglers. You can go by boat or inflatable raft for less than 1,000 euros, dig a tunnel for a price, and the cheapest is to have a local Moroccan contractor/smuggler cut a hole in the fence.
Does this sound familiar? Of course it does.
This is what happens when there is a great disparity of wealth between regions and peoples: it is the tropical low pressure system creating a whirlwind.
The problem is exacerbated if you constantly propagandize the situation. By emphasizing how great it is here - even if it isn't always - and how terrible it is in your wretched, little, scruffy back yard, I guarantee that my grass will seem greener to you and you will no longer make an effort to tend to your patch of earth.
Festung Europa and Fortress America are known as El Dorado, the golden. As we devour more and more resources and accumulate more and more wealth, this problem will increase.
What we see happening between Festung Europa and its illegal aliens and Fortress America and its aliens is also happening within Europe and America as the lion’s share of wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few.
And just what does an elite do when it has accumulated 99% of the wealth of a country or of the world?
Why, the elite rules over an enormous plantation of the poor, kept separate by fences and armed patrols.
We are all Zanj then, and the Zanj rebellion will again be whispered on the wind.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Humility: 1
Every generation thinks itself to be the hub of the Universe.
All great truths and issues are circulated through the lungs of me, mine, us, and they come out enriched by the oxygen of our self-centeredness and self-awareness.
I first came across Nostradamus in the 50’s. Most of the quatrains were interpreted as referring to mediaeval events or World War II or the Cold War. Indeed, so great was the impulse to interpret Nostradamus through the eyes of the present that I have often come across people who interpret the word “Hister” as “Hitler”. Since “Hister” was an old Latin word for the Danube River, the new interpretation was pretty much impossible before the 1930’s, at which time it became clear that the simple, uncomplicated, facile name of a river “Hister” was actually something else and old Nostradamus suffered from myopic far-seeing and prophecy.
Over the years, the interpretations of Nostradamus have changed to keep up with the times, the interpretations ascribed to events of WW II being changed into events of the Cold War or Vietnam War or whatever was in the mind of the translator/interpreter. Similarly the Book of Revelations, or Apocalypse, has been read and understood to apply to the reader and his or her generation and the end was coming soon. It is understandable since the language in the New Testament itself leads one to envisage a Second Coming not far off. How many generations have thought they will witness the end? Just about every one, I should think. Consider the concept of the Anti-Christ. At the present day, many have beliefs formed by scenarios of the Rapture and being left behind and the regime of the Anti-Christ. This would lead one to believe that the coming of the Anti-Christ is in the future. However, in 1552 Michael Servetus writes in his Christianismi Restitutio,
Humility is not other-centeredness. Humility is the silencing of the processes of the mind that see everything as centering about itself, the hub of the Universe. We have spoken before about a generation which believes in its own destruction. This belief is based on their own self-love and self-centrality. This belief is not based on the word of Jesus. It is not a revelation from God. It is their own self-love not able to let go of anything, even something as horrible as destruction. These are the arrogant; those who cannot let loose of anything. In the Magnificat we read that God will cast the mighty from their thrones and raise the lowly. The lowly, who could not hold anything, will inherit the Earth.
I first came across Nostradamus in the 50’s. Most of the quatrains were interpreted as referring to mediaeval events or World War II or the Cold War. Indeed, so great was the impulse to interpret Nostradamus through the eyes of the present that I have often come across people who interpret the word “Hister” as “Hitler”. Since “Hister” was an old Latin word for the Danube River, the new interpretation was pretty much impossible before the 1930’s, at which time it became clear that the simple, uncomplicated, facile name of a river “Hister” was actually something else and old Nostradamus suffered from myopic far-seeing and prophecy.
Over the years, the interpretations of Nostradamus have changed to keep up with the times, the interpretations ascribed to events of WW II being changed into events of the Cold War or Vietnam War or whatever was in the mind of the translator/interpreter. Similarly the Book of Revelations, or Apocalypse, has been read and understood to apply to the reader and his or her generation and the end was coming soon. It is understandable since the language in the New Testament itself leads one to envisage a Second Coming not far off. How many generations have thought they will witness the end? Just about every one, I should think. Consider the concept of the Anti-Christ. At the present day, many have beliefs formed by scenarios of the Rapture and being left behind and the regime of the Anti-Christ. This would lead one to believe that the coming of the Anti-Christ is in the future. However, in 1552 Michael Servetus writes in his Christianismi Restitutio,
" With the heavenly kingdom restored to us, the wicked captivity of Babylon has been ended, and the Anti-Christ with his hosts destroyed.”This may remind us that for a long time it was held by protesting Christians that the Pope was the Anti-Christ and the Church the whore of Babylon. If the Anti-Christ was destroyed 460 years ago, we should not be awaiting his coming. But we have to. We cannot control our self-centeredness. Humility is the opposite of self-centeredness.
Humility is not other-centeredness. Humility is the silencing of the processes of the mind that see everything as centering about itself, the hub of the Universe. We have spoken before about a generation which believes in its own destruction. This belief is based on their own self-love and self-centrality. This belief is not based on the word of Jesus. It is not a revelation from God. It is their own self-love not able to let go of anything, even something as horrible as destruction. These are the arrogant; those who cannot let loose of anything. In the Magnificat we read that God will cast the mighty from their thrones and raise the lowly. The lowly, who could not hold anything, will inherit the Earth.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Emeril of Ideas
We all like having people speak well of us. I, however, find it troubling when they choose to punctuate their remarks with guffaws.
Of course, I am writing of my nephews.
They started out lunch with things like, "Read your blog today. Good point on wiseguys." Guffaw. You get the idea. To them, I am "The Emeril of Ideas" -guffaw-and I should "kick it up a notch"-guffaw. Sometimes they say something nice, then "I don't think." This is similar to saying "Not", such as, "Your remarks were insightful...not!", but the expression they use comes from Laurel and Hardy's Chumps at Oxford. They prefer the original.
They also say " 9 day wonder " instead of Warhol's "15 minutes of fame". Same reason.
On another blithering topic, for my birthday we went to a Japanese restaurant. I picked up my brother and his wife in front of their high rise, took a left, went 600 feet, took a left at a cul-de-sac ( or, what appeared to me to be so ), then straight into a parking garage. There were towers and brownstones and parking garages and culs-de-sac everywhere.
It was like driving in Alphaville. And I was Eddie Constantin. And my VW was a Ford. And a mechanical voice ( a voice filled with the sadness of the transmission shop ) repeated endlessly...
There was a large atrium being landscaped with trees and flora and rocks looking out on the real world through Buckminster Fuller compound-fly-eye panes of glass. I felt a great responsibility on my shoulders, looking bleakly and very much like Bruce Dern at the last trees of an Earth destroyed by whatever it was in Silent Running. I wondered if people could spend their lives within, never going outside. I thought Logan's Run. I asked if there were a cinema. The answers came in the past tense: was, were, used to be. The people could not support one. They had to go outside and drive a mile to the Cinema Paradiso. A guy in the elevator told us a joke about Adam and Eve. So I said that women were like ribs, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em! My wife became nervous that I had found my doppelganger and when the two of us unite our jejune stories, it would be like joining the Key Master and the Gate Keeper and Zool would be unleashed.
They started out lunch with things like, "Read your blog today. Good point on wiseguys." Guffaw. You get the idea. To them, I am "The Emeril of Ideas" -guffaw-and I should "kick it up a notch"-guffaw. Sometimes they say something nice, then "I don't think." This is similar to saying "Not", such as, "Your remarks were insightful...not!", but the expression they use comes from Laurel and Hardy's Chumps at Oxford. They prefer the original.
They also say " 9 day wonder " instead of Warhol's "15 minutes of fame". Same reason.
On another blithering topic, for my birthday we went to a Japanese restaurant. I picked up my brother and his wife in front of their high rise, took a left, went 600 feet, took a left at a cul-de-sac ( or, what appeared to me to be so ), then straight into a parking garage. There were towers and brownstones and parking garages and culs-de-sac everywhere.
It was like driving in Alphaville. And I was Eddie Constantin. And my VW was a Ford. And a mechanical voice ( a voice filled with the sadness of the transmission shop ) repeated endlessly...
There was a large atrium being landscaped with trees and flora and rocks looking out on the real world through Buckminster Fuller compound-fly-eye panes of glass. I felt a great responsibility on my shoulders, looking bleakly and very much like Bruce Dern at the last trees of an Earth destroyed by whatever it was in Silent Running. I wondered if people could spend their lives within, never going outside. I thought Logan's Run. I asked if there were a cinema. The answers came in the past tense: was, were, used to be. The people could not support one. They had to go outside and drive a mile to the Cinema Paradiso. A guy in the elevator told us a joke about Adam and Eve. So I said that women were like ribs, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em! My wife became nervous that I had found my doppelganger and when the two of us unite our jejune stories, it would be like joining the Key Master and the Gate Keeper and Zool would be unleashed.
Get Pat
There is a great juxtaposition of events sometimes.
At the present, I am reading Elmore Leonard's books and about the ceasefire in Lebanon.
So, why does Pat Robertson come across like a wiseguy?
Why does Pat Robertson think the war in Lebanon ended too soon? Not enough kill? The right guys weren't whacked?
So, I'm sittin' with Pat Roberston in Scarelli's, the little pasta joint down by the docks, ya know?
And Joey the Gimp comes up and sez, hey, Sticky Thumbs! Like, ya know, they call Pat Sticky Thumbs from when he used to count the collection money after services. He would throw the collection money in the air and say, What stays up, Lord, is yours. What falls is mine!
So Pat sez, You talkin' to me?. Right from Taxi Driver, this Robert de Niro thing. So the Gimp gets legs, quick. And there's Sticky glaring at him.
So he sits down. It's a shame, he sez. It's a shame. No respect. Like in the Middle East. A bunch of schmarters and towelheads and they can't even get Armageddon right.
So I nod like I know what the hell he's talking about. The pasta's good, so what the hey?
Now me, he sez, I'd nuke 'em all, get J-Town ( what Sticky calls Jerusalem ) and kick all the bastards out, Arab and Israeli both. They're both Semites, he sez.
He sits backs in his chair, smilin'. He beamin' like a lightbulb. Then he points at me with his fork and gets all serious, like, and sez, We gotta go to the mattresses! Show 'em what war is!
So I sez, what's my vig?, figurin' that if we go to the mattresses, what's in it for us?
So Sticky's eyes sort of glaze over and he goes all quiet. The biggest pay-off ever, you small minded schmuck! The Second Coming!
O.K. So I'm thinkin' who's backing Pat on this? The guys in Chicago? Or New York? Maybe the D.C. mob.
When did Christiano-celebrities start being Wiseguys ?
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
The Sturmabteilung's Place in Modern History
This headline is a pretentious display of pseudo-knowledge, creating the impression that something weighty will be discussed and all that will happen is that I will trot out my trained dog entourage of opinions.
My nephews say that my display of opinions and comments resembles old TV clips from the old Ed Sullivan Show of the acts of acrobats from China balancing dinnerware on sticks.
I am not clear whether this is pro-me or contra-me. I had not the heart to ask for clarification, fearing some further analogies, perhaps to Floyd the Barber this time.
I was reading The Nation again, this time:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/buchanan
which is an article entitled Locked and Loaded
written by Susy Buchanan and David Holthouse
It deals with a Mr. Simcox who apparently was the guiding force behind the founding of the Minutemen, a quasi-vigilante group who patrolled the borders in the absence of government patrols.
The article ends:
1) paramilitary groups take over when and where governments cannot function. This may be totally unbelievable for present day US of A, the most powerful country in history, yet there it is. Parallel: Germany post World War I.
2)even though our President refers constantly to Islamo-fascism, it is not clear to me what that concept means. I gather he means to point a finger at Bin Laden and say something like " He and his ilk !" but that does not seem to be what is being said. "Fascism" appears to be a term meaning "Really, really, really bad guy." and could be applied to Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
However, then we would have to apply it to General Franco also, and there would be a difference of opinion on that score. Fascism, whatever it is, requires the ARMY for external violence, the RICH and LARGE BUSINESS CLASS for economic activity, and ORGANIZATION for internal violence.
The Internal Violence group will bully and beat up internal dissent. This is a job the Army has no taste for, nor do the politicians wish the Army ( possibly with its own ideas) operating within national borders. Parallel: the Sturmabteilung in Germany.
3) The populace must be compliant. They do not have to be insane. They merely have to be operating at the usual insanity level most of us operate at.
4) Fascism requires a propaganda of fear and violence to justify the workings of the group performing the internal violence.
Now this we already have. The histrionics of various right-wing ideo-poltroons seems to be a reality show entitled "Who Wants to be Julius Streicher?" We have mentioned the phenomenon of Coulter and outrageous comments that seem to incite to violent acts, specializing in the language of violence and discord, catering to the fears of her auditors, relishing the dismay in the faces of the damned as she pricks them with her sulfurous trident. Perhaps she wishes to be a theoretician; the Alfred Rosenberg of the neo-cons.
Note that in the New York Times diatribes, there was a comparison to the other Rosenbergs. I always had trouble with Jewish names beginning with the letter "R". For all I can recall, Arnold Rothstein lost the plans for the atomic bomb to Uncle Joe Stalin in a poker game. Parallel: Alfred Rosenberg, Uncle Joe Goebbels All interesting developments.
I do not mean to imply that Mr. Simcox has any such intentions. I would firmly expect that his organization - if it were to form the nexus of a Sturmabteilung - would be stripped from his control and he would disappear in a "Night of the Long Knives".
--
My nephews say that my display of opinions and comments resembles old TV clips from the old Ed Sullivan Show of the acts of acrobats from China balancing dinnerware on sticks.
I am not clear whether this is pro-me or contra-me. I had not the heart to ask for clarification, fearing some further analogies, perhaps to Floyd the Barber this time.
I was reading The Nation again, this time:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/buchanan
which is an article entitled Locked and Loaded
written by Susy Buchanan and David Holthouse
It deals with a Mr. Simcox who apparently was the guiding force behind the founding of the Minutemen, a quasi-vigilante group who patrolled the borders in the absence of government patrols.
The article ends:
Yet these days, what really fires up Simcox is something other than nativist paranoia. Delivering his spiel at Wild Bill's on that Saturday night in June, Simcox looked and sounded almost bored by his own message--until he started extemporizing about Arizona Senator John McCain, that is, and how McCain's immigration reform plan amounts to a "shamnesty." "We need to keep that man away from the White House!" Simcox boomed. The Georgia Republicans cheered and hooted. And when Simcox got carried away enough to declare, "I may just run for his seat in the Senate," their adulation became a roar.The points of interest for me are:
1) paramilitary groups take over when and where governments cannot function. This may be totally unbelievable for present day US of A, the most powerful country in history, yet there it is. Parallel: Germany post World War I.
2)even though our President refers constantly to Islamo-fascism, it is not clear to me what that concept means. I gather he means to point a finger at Bin Laden and say something like " He and his ilk !" but that does not seem to be what is being said. "Fascism" appears to be a term meaning "Really, really, really bad guy." and could be applied to Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
However, then we would have to apply it to General Franco also, and there would be a difference of opinion on that score. Fascism, whatever it is, requires the ARMY for external violence, the RICH and LARGE BUSINESS CLASS for economic activity, and ORGANIZATION for internal violence.
The Internal Violence group will bully and beat up internal dissent. This is a job the Army has no taste for, nor do the politicians wish the Army ( possibly with its own ideas) operating within national borders. Parallel: the Sturmabteilung in Germany.
3) The populace must be compliant. They do not have to be insane. They merely have to be operating at the usual insanity level most of us operate at.
4) Fascism requires a propaganda of fear and violence to justify the workings of the group performing the internal violence.
Now this we already have. The histrionics of various right-wing ideo-poltroons seems to be a reality show entitled "Who Wants to be Julius Streicher?" We have mentioned the phenomenon of Coulter and outrageous comments that seem to incite to violent acts, specializing in the language of violence and discord, catering to the fears of her auditors, relishing the dismay in the faces of the damned as she pricks them with her sulfurous trident. Perhaps she wishes to be a theoretician; the Alfred Rosenberg of the neo-cons.
Note that in the New York Times diatribes, there was a comparison to the other Rosenbergs. I always had trouble with Jewish names beginning with the letter "R". For all I can recall, Arnold Rothstein lost the plans for the atomic bomb to Uncle Joe Stalin in a poker game. Parallel: Alfred Rosenberg, Uncle Joe Goebbels All interesting developments.
I do not mean to imply that Mr. Simcox has any such intentions. I would firmly expect that his organization - if it were to form the nexus of a Sturmabteilung - would be stripped from his control and he would disappear in a "Night of the Long Knives".
--
Henry Ford : 2
Reading an essay in The Nation about Natural Capitalism.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060717/cubelic
I believe this is what Henry Ford had in mind with his vision of town and "cottage" industry.
It has been ignored because the Return on Investment isn't rapid enough.
We need that Return; not our grandchildren !
( That's why we pass along the increasing debt to them.)
Monday, August 14, 2006
Henry Ford
I am reading a paper by Nicholas Humphrey and this act is a great pleasure. He reminds me of Voltaire. ( Having said this, I immediately flash on Talladega Nights, having seen it recently, and laugh at the satire on our deprecation of Frenchy things.)
He repeats an apocryphal story about Henry Ford ( there is only 1 Henry Ford, so I do not require roman numerals or other indicators as to which person I refer) wherein Mr. Ford sent fellows around the country to scrap yards looking for remnants of his Model T to determine whether any parts were still serviceable. They discovered that the kingpins of the vast majority of Model T junkers they found were still in extrememly good condition. Mr. Ford immediately wrote a memo stating that all parts used in their cars be of lesser quality and not last for such a long time.
This is a tale of the present age, not of Henry Ford and his time. It is not only apocryphal of Mr. Ford, it is a complete fabrication and misrepresentation. The present day auto companies would do this in a second. Not so Henry Ford.
We make a grave mistake when we try to re-draft the history of the past in the misguided lineaments of this, our present day. My wife and I just read the memoirs of Mr. Ford's chef at Fair Lane. The man's son is a neighbor of my parents. He attended elementary school in Greenfield Village, if you can imagine such a wonderful Tom Sawyer type of existence. Mr. Ford was interested in food and health, expending efforts of soy products with Dr. G.W.Carver. Mr. Ford's insistence that his workers not smoke and not drink used to be considered quaint and intrusive. Now it appears to be enlightened and a fringe benefit.
We want to take a one or two day trip in the area of the Huron River in Michigan where Henry Ford dreamed of small village industry: a factory to make certain auto components located in one village, power being supplied by hydroelectric dams across the rivers and creeks. Not factory towns. Towns with a small factory, on a human scale, with clean and renewable energy.
Some of the dams still exist. Portions of some of the factories exist in truncated form. It is a vision of America which is enchanting and just too much like our memories of Twilight Zone's Willoughby or Ray Bradbury's Rocket Summer to be real.
If you visit Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum, the trip would be complete with a visit to Mr. Ford's vision of American industrialism, an industrialism which would have attempted to avoid the worst of the evils of the industrial systems up to his time. Henry Ford built his cars to last. It is attested by many that Model Ts were notoriously long lived.
Hence,the apochryphal story above is nonsense. Henry Ford's memory has been corrupted by the present day which recalls only what it wants to recall: that is, a picture of itself seen within the soul of a truly great individual. The Ford Company of the present bears no semblance to Henry Ford's vision.
He repeats an apocryphal story about Henry Ford ( there is only 1 Henry Ford, so I do not require roman numerals or other indicators as to which person I refer) wherein Mr. Ford sent fellows around the country to scrap yards looking for remnants of his Model T to determine whether any parts were still serviceable. They discovered that the kingpins of the vast majority of Model T junkers they found were still in extrememly good condition. Mr. Ford immediately wrote a memo stating that all parts used in their cars be of lesser quality and not last for such a long time.
This is a tale of the present age, not of Henry Ford and his time. It is not only apocryphal of Mr. Ford, it is a complete fabrication and misrepresentation. The present day auto companies would do this in a second. Not so Henry Ford.
We make a grave mistake when we try to re-draft the history of the past in the misguided lineaments of this, our present day. My wife and I just read the memoirs of Mr. Ford's chef at Fair Lane. The man's son is a neighbor of my parents. He attended elementary school in Greenfield Village, if you can imagine such a wonderful Tom Sawyer type of existence. Mr. Ford was interested in food and health, expending efforts of soy products with Dr. G.W.Carver. Mr. Ford's insistence that his workers not smoke and not drink used to be considered quaint and intrusive. Now it appears to be enlightened and a fringe benefit.
We want to take a one or two day trip in the area of the Huron River in Michigan where Henry Ford dreamed of small village industry: a factory to make certain auto components located in one village, power being supplied by hydroelectric dams across the rivers and creeks. Not factory towns. Towns with a small factory, on a human scale, with clean and renewable energy.
Some of the dams still exist. Portions of some of the factories exist in truncated form. It is a vision of America which is enchanting and just too much like our memories of Twilight Zone's Willoughby or Ray Bradbury's Rocket Summer to be real.
If you visit Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum, the trip would be complete with a visit to Mr. Ford's vision of American industrialism, an industrialism which would have attempted to avoid the worst of the evils of the industrial systems up to his time. Henry Ford built his cars to last. It is attested by many that Model Ts were notoriously long lived.
Hence,the apochryphal story above is nonsense. Henry Ford's memory has been corrupted by the present day which recalls only what it wants to recall: that is, a picture of itself seen within the soul of a truly great individual. The Ford Company of the present bears no semblance to Henry Ford's vision.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
The Battle of Algiers
While in Toronto recently, I saw the film "The Battle of Algiers".
This is a great film and has a great history, being the fight of colonial France to hang onto power in Algeria. This is a chapter of history most of us would greet with blank stares, knowing little and caring less about such historical bunkum.
I also saw Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" which title must explain the director's attitude to the audience, for it took the concept of boredom to new heights. Even the presence of Brigitte Bardot could not save it. Even the presence of Fritz Lang could not save it. It was evocative of Fellini's "8 1/2" . But it was "8 1/2" done by a monk suffering from accidie or terminal ennuie.
Jack Palance was in it. Get the picture?
Fritz Lang seemed to do nothing except say wise old sayings. But we must remember that Lang was a great director, not an actor. This was Godard's homage to Lang, get the old guy out of retirement, slap him into a poorly written film that had no plot, shoot the damn thing and slip out of town. Now, what does the film "The Battle of Algiers", dealing with the confrontation between a western society and a militant society of predominantly Muslim people, have to offer us today by way of insight? I suppose you'll just have to see it.
I also saw Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" which title must explain the director's attitude to the audience, for it took the concept of boredom to new heights. Even the presence of Brigitte Bardot could not save it. Even the presence of Fritz Lang could not save it. It was evocative of Fellini's "8 1/2" . But it was "8 1/2" done by a monk suffering from accidie or terminal ennuie.
Jack Palance was in it. Get the picture?
Fritz Lang seemed to do nothing except say wise old sayings. But we must remember that Lang was a great director, not an actor. This was Godard's homage to Lang, get the old guy out of retirement, slap him into a poorly written film that had no plot, shoot the damn thing and slip out of town. Now, what does the film "The Battle of Algiers", dealing with the confrontation between a western society and a militant society of predominantly Muslim people, have to offer us today by way of insight? I suppose you'll just have to see it.
A Christian Jihad
I have learned how to write headlines that mean nothing but have an incredible amount of traction and pure got'cha-ness.
What could be the meaning of Christian Jihad, you wonder, especially since the founder of Christianity said something or other about warfare. (Or, did He?) Perhaps Jesus said all wars are bad except just wars, just wars being those you clear with God first, just as our own leaders cleared Iraq with their outrageous golden calf or barrel of oil.
I'm sure we would prefer Queequeg's little idol to the God who winked at the start of the Iraqi Attacki. So, the headline doesn't mean anything. It is outrageous and eye-catching. I pulled a Coulter on you! Or a Krauthammer, or whatever oddball intellect is in fashion today.
What we do have is an interesting discussion on race, Green vs. Connally in 1971, and the birth of the religious right: http://www.ird-renew.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=fvKVLfMVIsG&b=470197&ct=2868677
I do not take this article as an indictment of the religious right. The overarching desire for power expressed by their own lips is an adequate self-condemnation of those who set their own intemperate desires up on the altar and worship them.
What could be the meaning of Christian Jihad, you wonder, especially since the founder of Christianity said something or other about warfare. (Or, did He?) Perhaps Jesus said all wars are bad except just wars, just wars being those you clear with God first, just as our own leaders cleared Iraq with their outrageous golden calf or barrel of oil.
I'm sure we would prefer Queequeg's little idol to the God who winked at the start of the Iraqi Attacki. So, the headline doesn't mean anything. It is outrageous and eye-catching. I pulled a Coulter on you! Or a Krauthammer, or whatever oddball intellect is in fashion today.
What we do have is an interesting discussion on race, Green vs. Connally in 1971, and the birth of the religious right: http://www.ird-renew.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=fvKVLfMVIsG&b=470197&ct=2868677
I do not take this article as an indictment of the religious right. The overarching desire for power expressed by their own lips is an adequate self-condemnation of those who set their own intemperate desires up on the altar and worship them.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
My Friend and Ally
I saw my friend and ally on the TV last night.
Imagine my surprise. I had been his friend for most of my life...still am for that matter, but I have other friends, too, not to mention that I am more friendly to the Truth than I am to any one particular friend.
Anyhow, my friend and ally had bombed a refugee camp, killing a couple of people.
He defended his act by saying he was after a really bad guy ( not, however, Saddam Hussein this time) who had a house there. It was also said he had bombed a number of families' houses because they had rather large missiles concealed under their breakfast table.
Residential buildings have been destroyed by this madcap rascal because (and you'd laugh if you could hear him tell it) because another really bad guy (no, not Saddam Hussein) - a really, really bad guy was visiting his aunt in the building. Actually this bad egg was lobbing bombs at my friend and ally and it was all about something so long ago you'd think they would have forgotten about it.
He was at least as bad a guy as my friend and ally.
What do I think about how this will all come out? We have not had the vision, charity, nor determination in 60 years to amend this situation. In that time we had moral leaders, so... No way today.
--
Imagine my surprise. I had been his friend for most of my life...still am for that matter, but I have other friends, too, not to mention that I am more friendly to the Truth than I am to any one particular friend.
Anyhow, my friend and ally had bombed a refugee camp, killing a couple of people.
He defended his act by saying he was after a really bad guy ( not, however, Saddam Hussein this time) who had a house there. It was also said he had bombed a number of families' houses because they had rather large missiles concealed under their breakfast table.
Residential buildings have been destroyed by this madcap rascal because (and you'd laugh if you could hear him tell it) because another really bad guy (no, not Saddam Hussein) - a really, really bad guy was visiting his aunt in the building. Actually this bad egg was lobbing bombs at my friend and ally and it was all about something so long ago you'd think they would have forgotten about it.
He was at least as bad a guy as my friend and ally.
What do I think about how this will all come out? We have not had the vision, charity, nor determination in 60 years to amend this situation. In that time we had moral leaders, so... No way today.
--
Saturday, August 05, 2006
The Emotion of Truth: 3
People ask me how can I hold that religious statements cannot be true nor false.
Well, I do not think you can prove them to be true or false. Truth needs a process of verifying whatever it is you're talking about.
I have Faith. I hold things to my heart and feel a sense of certainty. I do not have a set of beliefs that I can post upon a church door. I have Faith. Since my Faith is not dependent upon some arbitrary process of proof or argument, it cannot be undermined by someone else's poor opinion of it.
I can speak the name of Jesus without feeling like a wimp, nor feeling some overwhelming divine epiphany which makes me speak in tongues. I am tolerant not because it is the fashion, but because that I know that everyone else has the same sense of certainty about their Faith as I do about mine.
--
Well, I do not think you can prove them to be true or false. Truth needs a process of verifying whatever it is you're talking about.
I have Faith. I hold things to my heart and feel a sense of certainty. I do not have a set of beliefs that I can post upon a church door. I have Faith. Since my Faith is not dependent upon some arbitrary process of proof or argument, it cannot be undermined by someone else's poor opinion of it.
I can speak the name of Jesus without feeling like a wimp, nor feeling some overwhelming divine epiphany which makes me speak in tongues. I am tolerant not because it is the fashion, but because that I know that everyone else has the same sense of certainty about their Faith as I do about mine.
--
Lebanon on August 5, 2006
I have lost track of the days of the Unpleasantness in Lebanon, so I'll just go by dates.
I'm not trying to be supercilious by calling it an Unpleasantness, because I must resist the temptation to add my voice to the chorus of outrage. The perpetrators of such horrors will not amend themselves by angry confrontation. In such confrontation, they find support for their own anger and destruction.
Remember General Dyer and the massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh, or Amritsar. " How shall the dying children apply for aid, General Dyer?"
If you have seen the film "Gandhi", you will recall that following this question, there was a close-up of Edward Fox as General Dyer and there was silence for about 8 seconds. 8 seconds of silence in a film of 24 frames per second makes even the most entranced come out of their involvement with the story and begin to ask "What's going on? Why has the movie stopped?"
When will we ask what is going on? When the WTC was attacked, we had Bin Laden to apprehend and capture. One man. Perhaps a few followers. Now we have created a disaster in Iraq which is a School for Terror. Now we have countenanced the bloody charade in Lebanon which will be a University of Terror. I feel much less safe than I did in late 2001.
--
I'm not trying to be supercilious by calling it an Unpleasantness, because I must resist the temptation to add my voice to the chorus of outrage. The perpetrators of such horrors will not amend themselves by angry confrontation. In such confrontation, they find support for their own anger and destruction.
Remember General Dyer and the massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh, or Amritsar. " How shall the dying children apply for aid, General Dyer?"
If you have seen the film "Gandhi", you will recall that following this question, there was a close-up of Edward Fox as General Dyer and there was silence for about 8 seconds. 8 seconds of silence in a film of 24 frames per second makes even the most entranced come out of their involvement with the story and begin to ask "What's going on? Why has the movie stopped?"
When will we ask what is going on? When the WTC was attacked, we had Bin Laden to apprehend and capture. One man. Perhaps a few followers. Now we have created a disaster in Iraq which is a School for Terror. Now we have countenanced the bloody charade in Lebanon which will be a University of Terror. I feel much less safe than I did in late 2001.
--
Friday, August 04, 2006
The Devil
Sometimes it is hard to know what to make of the Devil, whether the concept means an entity or some sort of metaphor.
I am usually brief, if nothing else, so I will give a brief answer. The Devil is ourselves.
There is no being that is more knowledgeable and intimate with what's going on in our minds than we ourselves. There is nothing capable of more harm to those we love than ourselves. The notion of Devil comes from our incessant attempts to deceive ourselves as to our intentions, motives, and actions.
We project our evil "somewhere out there" as Captain Kirk would say. So we end up searching for the Devil "out there" so we may defeat him.
Since he's not "out there", we never really discover his hide-out.
We have a similar, yet different problem with God. We do not try to conceal our so-called "godly" acts from ourselves, much less from others. We try to emphasize what we take to be our good acts. We create an entire stage-play of how tight we are with God and let it run for everyone to see. We hide from the Devil, who is us. We conceal God with posters and billboards proclaiming how great we are.
No wonder...
--
I am usually brief, if nothing else, so I will give a brief answer. The Devil is ourselves.
There is no being that is more knowledgeable and intimate with what's going on in our minds than we ourselves. There is nothing capable of more harm to those we love than ourselves. The notion of Devil comes from our incessant attempts to deceive ourselves as to our intentions, motives, and actions.
We project our evil "somewhere out there" as Captain Kirk would say. So we end up searching for the Devil "out there" so we may defeat him.
Since he's not "out there", we never really discover his hide-out.
We have a similar, yet different problem with God. We do not try to conceal our so-called "godly" acts from ourselves, much less from others. We try to emphasize what we take to be our good acts. We create an entire stage-play of how tight we are with God and let it run for everyone to see. We hide from the Devil, who is us. We conceal God with posters and billboards proclaiming how great we are.
No wonder...
--
Sunday, July 30, 2006
The Pomposity of Colonel Blimp
My nephews doubt I shall be able to continue my blog much longer, since the end is approaching for OPEC.
For them, OPEC if the Organization of Pomposity Exporting Clowns ( or Countries if you like) and they find the deposits of Pretentiousness and I-know-better-than-you as deep and as vast as my own are sure to run dry. Ha!, I say to that. I say that I am the President G.W. - Global Warming Bush of Pomposity.
I got his insight and the ring-tailed nastiness of Cheney. I am the roughest gaucho of all the Pompous. They used the image of Colonel Blimp, which image brings the notion of pomposity and irrelevance and too many kippers for breakfast. It is an old image no one today is familiar with. I think that they are the pompous ones. They threaten to insert my likeness into their clip of Coulter being chased by Wesley Snipes. This is serious. I must find a stargate.
--
For them, OPEC if the Organization of Pomposity Exporting Clowns ( or Countries if you like) and they find the deposits of Pretentiousness and I-know-better-than-you as deep and as vast as my own are sure to run dry. Ha!, I say to that. I say that I am the President G.W. - Global Warming Bush of Pomposity.
I got his insight and the ring-tailed nastiness of Cheney. I am the roughest gaucho of all the Pompous. They used the image of Colonel Blimp, which image brings the notion of pomposity and irrelevance and too many kippers for breakfast. It is an old image no one today is familiar with. I think that they are the pompous ones. They threaten to insert my likeness into their clip of Coulter being chased by Wesley Snipes. This is serious. I must find a stargate.
--
Lebanon Day 18
I believe it has been 18 days. I may be off.
The Lebanon operation is certainly looking as if it was planned to be very quick, clean, and effective.
Since the enemy refuses to lay down, it is becoming down and dirty and drawn out.
It begins to resemble Iraq.
How Long Will You Live?
I am going to briefly touch on quality of inner life issues.
The most important thing to remember is you will have the same identity. And here the pertinent question is: Can you live with it?
Life can be tricky. Every mistake you make may or may not be remembered.
Can you look at yourself in the mirror every day until you’re 90?
If you get rid of all the mirrors, what memories will disturb you in the dark of night?
Just like the film Match Point…but few are so lucky. And even being lucky to escape the law does not mean lucky to escape the memory...as evidenced by the apparition of the dead women in the kitchen at the movie's end.
Always act in a way that you’ll never regret…ever.
Be loyal and truthful, be brave and courageous, be honorable and faithful.
Respect life in all its forms.
Respect the word of God.
Friday, July 28, 2006
My Nephews
I never really paid too much attention to my three nephews, nor did they to me, until that fated day when I sent them a note for a graduation party. We had had some light-hearted stationery made up and it featured the drawings of a man, under whom was my name, a woman, under which was my wife's name, and so on. You get the idea.
The last picture was a dog and under the dog was the name Carl. This was my idea of a joke. We did not own a dog. We were allergic to dogs. We had never owned a dog. When we visited people who did own dogs and the great brute mastiffs jumped up on us or did that leg thingey, we did not gleam with delight.
When the owners said, "Rover, come on. So-and-so doesn't want you jumping all over him.", we did not contradict this observation. Sometimes I gave one of those sickly smiles and said, "Indeed. Indeed, Rover."
When conversation turned to pets, I would say things like, "Ah, that's all right for you doggie-types to say.", or "You probably do know more about mediaeval Europe, living with the animals in the house as you do...". And so on.
Well, I had the dog placed on the stationery because I liked comic books. When someone were to ask me ( they never did) why we had a dog on the stationery, I would say, " Carl barks." This meant the artist, Carl Barks.
My nephews did not ask. They saw the letter and drawings and went into gales of laughter. I mostly enjoy the way they watch Fox News and talk and laugh at the screen. Bill O'Reilly is a favorite target. They have compiled a file of Ann Coulter clips which they play with disturbing frequency. I ask if they think she is becoming insane. They answer they do not care. They think she bears an uncanny and humorous resemblance to the monster aliens of the first season of Stargate: Atlantis. So they play the recordings as sort of a monster-alien-armageddon-brave-new-world news broadcast.
Or, it is a preview of the futuristic Vampire news which they've intersperse with Blade cuts. Of course, they stole the idea for the Coulter destroying Tokyo sequences from South Park, at least I think so. Then Takashi Shimura and Raymond Burr versus Coulter-zilla... You get the notion of this. I would like to say they have too much time on their hands, but they actually have time for charity work on the sly..don't say I told you so.
The last picture was a dog and under the dog was the name Carl. This was my idea of a joke. We did not own a dog. We were allergic to dogs. We had never owned a dog. When we visited people who did own dogs and the great brute mastiffs jumped up on us or did that leg thingey, we did not gleam with delight.
When the owners said, "Rover, come on. So-and-so doesn't want you jumping all over him.", we did not contradict this observation. Sometimes I gave one of those sickly smiles and said, "Indeed. Indeed, Rover."
When conversation turned to pets, I would say things like, "Ah, that's all right for you doggie-types to say.", or "You probably do know more about mediaeval Europe, living with the animals in the house as you do...". And so on.
Well, I had the dog placed on the stationery because I liked comic books. When someone were to ask me ( they never did) why we had a dog on the stationery, I would say, " Carl barks." This meant the artist, Carl Barks.
My nephews did not ask. They saw the letter and drawings and went into gales of laughter. I mostly enjoy the way they watch Fox News and talk and laugh at the screen. Bill O'Reilly is a favorite target. They have compiled a file of Ann Coulter clips which they play with disturbing frequency. I ask if they think she is becoming insane. They answer they do not care. They think she bears an uncanny and humorous resemblance to the monster aliens of the first season of Stargate: Atlantis. So they play the recordings as sort of a monster-alien-armageddon-brave-new-world news broadcast.
Or, it is a preview of the futuristic Vampire news which they've intersperse with Blade cuts. Of course, they stole the idea for the Coulter destroying Tokyo sequences from South Park, at least I think so. Then Takashi Shimura and Raymond Burr versus Coulter-zilla... You get the notion of this. I would like to say they have too much time on their hands, but they actually have time for charity work on the sly..don't say I told you so.
La France: Les chats et les chiens
I was talking to a fine new lawyer who is domiciled south of the Mason-Dixon line. We spoke of our interesting friendship with the French.
I believe Bill O'Reilly had made some penetrating remark. Well done, Mr. Bill! ( And where, oh, where is Mr. Sluggo when we need him?) Or perhaps it was Mr. Tucker Carlson who seems to be still searching for his lost bowtie.
Since both of us have had some experience with cats and dogs, we decided to try to use animal metaphors to describe France and the USA.
Well, that was just too simple.
I mean, the French are cats and the Americans are dogs.
You know how remote cats are. They are indeed inscrutable. They do not enter into our comraderies. They have their own secret sciences and religions.
Whereas we might very much expect dogs to gleefully join our worship, cats obviously make pilgrimage to some secret fane and participate in rituals not meant for human eyes.
We might expect dogs to study physics and give a high-five all around when they engineer a better water bowl, but cats - we think - would look at our knowledge and say something like:
"This species is where we were 2,000 years ago...but for the Prime Directive, we might assist them."
Dogs would watch sports on ESPN and debate sports topics. Cats would consider even PBS to be a bit too infra dig.
Politics at the Pseudo-End Times: 1
I do not like writing about politics. There are so many other people who do it. They speak about it, too. Endlessly. And the standards for entry into the field are so very low.
I was at my parents place, painting the outdoor furniture, hurrying to beat the rains.At night they listen to Fox News. This evening, Bill O'Blabs-a-lot was talking to fellow media-monger Gretta Van Chatterbox. The very odd Alphonse-Gaston routine they were doing caused my father to yell at the TV, " Let him talk, for goodness sake!"
I chortled to myself, secure in the knowledge that I would never descend to listen to Fox News, even when the TV volume was cranked up to the maximum. I sometimes think of my parents sitting in front of the TV with their hair blowing behind their heads, as if the audio were a wind machine blasting in their faces.
I will restrict Politics to areas where it mixes with Religion; that witches' cauldron of Western Society from its beginning.
From Cairo's Al-Ahram Cairo Review of Books:
Elsewhere in the same section, US historian William Polk, in a piece dated March 2003 ( Une sombre affaire / A Sombre Affair ), reviews the arguments given by the Bush Administration for the invasion of Iraq. Dismissing these as fantasies, he outlines the "hidden agenda determining American relations with Iraq: the new strategic conception of American world domination; the messianic faith in Christian fundamentalism; and the connection between Christian fundamentalism and Zionism."
This is a statement of enormous range.It is not my intent to argue about the truth or falsity of such a statement.
It is my interest how such statements come about.
I believe that a human being is so complex that all the above motives could exist without the individual having them all grouped together in a coherent belief system.
Words and Reason help us to create such a coherence. However, this coherent belief system is not absolutely necessary for an individual to act. The belief system expressed in words is more like a description of actions.
Actions and words, actions and words.
I disturbs me that a writer could discern the features of the face of our new neo-conservative Interregnum of 2000 to 2008 so early on. This is all a part of our Narrative of End of Times. We differ in the details, but almost all of us believe we are headed for destruction.
What happens when a majority of a society believes in inevitable doom?
We'll find out.
The Emotion of Truth: 2
Previously we said that two people may feel certainty about statements that appear to be inconsistent. The example was from my youth when I was taught that Protestants could not enter Heaven and my neighborhood chums, who were Protestant, were taught that they would have no such impediment merely because their beliefs were different from the Roman Catholic Church.
This is a good example. Both sides use the same Holy Book. We concluded that even though both sides feel certainty, this feeling cannot imply the truth of the statements made. We have a procedure of verifying statements which is heavily influenced by our history of scientific work over hundreds of years.
What was Aristotle's verification procedure? We do not really know. When Aristotle affirmed certain things about sea creatures, he made some howling mistakes. However, he must have thought them correct.
How did he go about verifying propositions about sharks, let's say? Did he walk down to the harbor, talk to the fishermen, who in turn winked at each other and proceeded to give the old professor an outrageous cock and bull story?
Perhaps.
We do not know. We know his Logic, but the basis for the truth of some of his statements about the world is a mystery. We have procedures for verification. We test, we re-test, we insist on third-party reproducibility of the tests, and so on.
I have heard it said recently that Science can prove anything.
Not really. Let us assume that you and I attend a Cure concert. Not the original Cure, the later Cure. I say it rocked, you say it sucked.
Consider the statement: " The Cure concert was great." There is nothing apparently odd or paradoxical about this statement, "The Cure concert was great." Is does not strike us as funny, unusual, nor a play on words. Yet if a scientist were to try to prove it true or false, he would run into problems. If a scientist said it was true, we would present your contrary opinion. If he said it was false, I would state my opinion.
The scientist would have to formulate a new statement and a procedure to implement it. He would say, "Let us set up a survey and we shall ask the opinions of all who were at the concert." Then we would have a result such as "51% liked the show and 48% did not and 1% was getting high."
This has a great deal more information than did the original statement, "The Cure concert is great.", but it is not the original. It has been transformed out of recognition into a form which science can actually act upon.
So how do we verify my childhood quandary where the statement might have been "Protestants will not enter Heaven." I said the statement is true, my friend Christian Johann ( he was indeed my friend) said it is false. We cannot appeal to the Bible, for we already have done so. There is no verification procedure for such a statement. ( We could wait until Judgement Day, but then we probably won't be arguing such niceties.)
Well, after a long time of looking at Truth and how it is used, it finally dawned on me that statements such as "Protestants will not enter Heaven" cannot be given a truth-value. They cannot be judged to be true nor false. As paradoxical as this sounds, it also indicated to me the meaning of Faith.
In brief, faith is the way we deal with all statements which cannot be called true nor false, and FAITH is the way we deal with religious statements which cannot be called true nor false.
Notice that Faith or faith is not some garbage dump of the indecisive. Faith is not some second-best alternative for things that are perplexingly not proveable as true or false. Beyond our normal understanding of Faith, it is a concept which ties Logic to Emotion and Belief. As shown by our example, "The Cure concert was great.", the algorithmic nature of language allows us to spin out an infinity of such statements.
I can propound as many such statements as I want, using the template: "The X is Y" and "I believe Y" and "Someone else believes not-Y" and Y is based in our emotional life. In this instance, "believe" becomes close to "feel".
And you say, of course, it is a matter of individual taste and everyone knows that all people differ in such things. However, people also differ from each other in much the same way in their religious outlooks.
Am I saying religion is a matter of taste?
No. I am saying that religious statements cannot be proven true or false. Since this is so, we have Faith, or not, as the case may be. If religious statements were proveable, the concept Faith would be totally unnecessary. So the Cure was great, for me. And this looks suspiciously like the language of Moral Relativism wherein we hear such oddities as, "If I indulge in certain actions, they are good...for me...even though most people find them appalling."
Before we go any further, let me remind you of where I am coming from. I worship the one God. I do not require an Intelligent Designer, which I hold to be Idolatry. I do not require proof of God's existence. At a certain point, I have learned to shut my mouth, be silent, and act according to my sense of the Holy; to visit the sick, those in jail, to honor one's parents... I need no diagrams of the prophecies of the End of Times. I want no visual aids. I want to be charitable, truthful, loving, and loyal. And if I never spoke about metaphysics again, it would not bother me in the slightest. I do not admire St. Francis for his metaphysics. I do not respect Abraham for his proofs of God's existence. I do not admire the Caliph Omar because he published theories of the Holy. These people reflect the Holy in their lives.
And actions are always true.
--
This is a good example. Both sides use the same Holy Book. We concluded that even though both sides feel certainty, this feeling cannot imply the truth of the statements made. We have a procedure of verifying statements which is heavily influenced by our history of scientific work over hundreds of years.
What was Aristotle's verification procedure? We do not really know. When Aristotle affirmed certain things about sea creatures, he made some howling mistakes. However, he must have thought them correct.
How did he go about verifying propositions about sharks, let's say? Did he walk down to the harbor, talk to the fishermen, who in turn winked at each other and proceeded to give the old professor an outrageous cock and bull story?
Perhaps.
We do not know. We know his Logic, but the basis for the truth of some of his statements about the world is a mystery. We have procedures for verification. We test, we re-test, we insist on third-party reproducibility of the tests, and so on.
I have heard it said recently that Science can prove anything.
Not really. Let us assume that you and I attend a Cure concert. Not the original Cure, the later Cure. I say it rocked, you say it sucked.
Consider the statement: " The Cure concert was great." There is nothing apparently odd or paradoxical about this statement, "The Cure concert was great." Is does not strike us as funny, unusual, nor a play on words. Yet if a scientist were to try to prove it true or false, he would run into problems. If a scientist said it was true, we would present your contrary opinion. If he said it was false, I would state my opinion.
The scientist would have to formulate a new statement and a procedure to implement it. He would say, "Let us set up a survey and we shall ask the opinions of all who were at the concert." Then we would have a result such as "51% liked the show and 48% did not and 1% was getting high."
This has a great deal more information than did the original statement, "The Cure concert is great.", but it is not the original. It has been transformed out of recognition into a form which science can actually act upon.
So how do we verify my childhood quandary where the statement might have been "Protestants will not enter Heaven." I said the statement is true, my friend Christian Johann ( he was indeed my friend) said it is false. We cannot appeal to the Bible, for we already have done so. There is no verification procedure for such a statement. ( We could wait until Judgement Day, but then we probably won't be arguing such niceties.)
Well, after a long time of looking at Truth and how it is used, it finally dawned on me that statements such as "Protestants will not enter Heaven" cannot be given a truth-value. They cannot be judged to be true nor false. As paradoxical as this sounds, it also indicated to me the meaning of Faith.
In brief, faith is the way we deal with all statements which cannot be called true nor false, and FAITH is the way we deal with religious statements which cannot be called true nor false.
Notice that Faith or faith is not some garbage dump of the indecisive. Faith is not some second-best alternative for things that are perplexingly not proveable as true or false. Beyond our normal understanding of Faith, it is a concept which ties Logic to Emotion and Belief. As shown by our example, "The Cure concert was great.", the algorithmic nature of language allows us to spin out an infinity of such statements.
I can propound as many such statements as I want, using the template: "The X is Y" and "I believe Y" and "Someone else believes not-Y" and Y is based in our emotional life. In this instance, "believe" becomes close to "feel".
And you say, of course, it is a matter of individual taste and everyone knows that all people differ in such things. However, people also differ from each other in much the same way in their religious outlooks.
Am I saying religion is a matter of taste?
No. I am saying that religious statements cannot be proven true or false. Since this is so, we have Faith, or not, as the case may be. If religious statements were proveable, the concept Faith would be totally unnecessary. So the Cure was great, for me. And this looks suspiciously like the language of Moral Relativism wherein we hear such oddities as, "If I indulge in certain actions, they are good...for me...even though most people find them appalling."
Before we go any further, let me remind you of where I am coming from. I worship the one God. I do not require an Intelligent Designer, which I hold to be Idolatry. I do not require proof of God's existence. At a certain point, I have learned to shut my mouth, be silent, and act according to my sense of the Holy; to visit the sick, those in jail, to honor one's parents... I need no diagrams of the prophecies of the End of Times. I want no visual aids. I want to be charitable, truthful, loving, and loyal. And if I never spoke about metaphysics again, it would not bother me in the slightest. I do not admire St. Francis for his metaphysics. I do not respect Abraham for his proofs of God's existence. I do not admire the Caliph Omar because he published theories of the Holy. These people reflect the Holy in their lives.
And actions are always true.
--
Thursday, July 27, 2006
The Emotion of Truth: 1
I heard from some friends about the King David Hotel story. I can only say that in my view, not all Israelis are good and not all Arabs are bad. That's the point. If it is beyond your comprehension, too bad.
The simplicity of the view in the USA that all Israel: good; all Arab: bad; verges on being simple-minded.
This results in today's story about the British Foreign Secretary protesting the US use of Prestwick Airport in western Scotland to transport bombs to Israel while the rest of the world is trying to limit the strife.
Recently I spoke to some people who were discussing religion. They were of the opinion that Islam was too violent and possibly a bit infra dig for them. So was Christianity that had its history of religious wars to drag along like Marley's chains.
They thought the best bet was a Far Eastern religion, such as Buddhism. They were obviously thinking of the Dalai Lama.
I pointed out that our experience of Islam comes through the western media, our experience of Christianity is our own, so we intimately know all the dirt of the Christian churches, but our experience of Buddhism, say, is solely restricted to writings and speeches of university educated people to whom we are already sympathetic.
I mean to say, we do not read the works of the Dalai Lama to prove that he is a scoundrel and his faith a sham, a process some of us indulge in when it comes to Islam.
Not all Buddhists are smiling.
The point of this is that when we have sought Truth, and we have diligently applied ourselves to a verification of Truth, and finally are convinced of Truth, we feel an emotional conviction and surety of that Truth.
So the truth of X leads to a feeling of certainty associated with X.
But the converse is not valid. A feeling of certainty of X does not imply that X is true.
(note: I do not include propositions of Faith in this discussion. )
The process to which we are subject is a lifetime of propaganda from our elite and media used to train us to certain beliefs. Since there is not thoroughgoing verification of any of this, the aim is to instill a feeling of certainty.
Once we feel the certainty, we conclude that the propositions must be true.
By feeling certain that the USA and Israel are always correct, that Israel is God's nation and our country has a special relationship with the God of Israel, we accept these statements uncritically.
I know this process is faulty and is a result of invalid emotional logic.
As a child, my religious education included the propositions that everyone who is not a Roman Catholic is destined to Hell.
I found this hard to accept, particularly since my neighborhood chums included Protestants, whom we referred to as "publics" , meaning they attended public schools.
The earliest blessing of understanding I can remember was when I realized that my emotional state of truth and conviction and certainty in my own redemption by being a member of the RC Church must be duplicated, almost entirely, within the lives of my Protestant friends.
In other words, if my certainty implies the truth of my beliefs, the certainty felt by Protestants must imply the truth of their beliefs.
The logic of it all was overwhelming.
The validity of this insight, or gift of understanding from God, was reaffirmed by the fact that the only source of verification was the Bible and both sides had recourse to it, so this was not an unambiguous verification procedure.
So we firmly believe, then, statements which cannot be proven true nor false, and we do it based on the basis of previous beliefs. These previous beliefs bestow the feeling of certainty as they encompass unproveable statements into their emotional one-ness.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Bombing in Jerusalem!
On July 22, 1946, the Jewish “Underground” group Etzel planted a bomb and blew up the southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
91 people were killed.
The area was under the control of Britain in 1946 and of the 91 killed, 28 were British.
The Israeli power elite resists any attempt to label Etzel as terrorists. Rather, they were an underground group, and “underground” has a positive connotation.
On July 22, 2006, a new plaque was placed on the site commemorating this bombing as a great act.
Perhaps understandably, Her Majesty’s government is demanding the removal of this plaque, saying that such an act of “Terrorism” cannot be so honored.
I’m sure this was all covered in the evening news. I’m sure you all knew that there were Jewish terrorists 60 years ago, bombing and killing in the Holy Land.
Or perhaps we must say Jewish “Underground” groups.
If you actually wish to read about this, read it in Haaretz, one of the great Israeli newspapers:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741434.html
This way, you will not be reading some anti-Israel propaganda.
To understand how this bombing is viewed, the ex-Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu, was present and addressing the crowd.
When I was young, I would thrill to the exploits of the Israeli Army.
I read Bernard Malamud and Isaac Singer, and saw “Milk and Honey” and “Fiddler on the Roof”.
The 1967 war was a triumph in which we all felt we shared.
Only later did I discover that I had been a dupe of a concerted effort to portray all Israelis as good, and all Arabs as bad. And this is still going on today.
Read the article in Haaretz if you doubt it.
I found it difficult to get over this deception when I was young.
I heard a Mr. Rose, I believe, on Imus in the Morning today. He used to be an editor of the Jerusalem Post.
He said that there was a great irony in the fact that the UN members were condemning Israel while Israel was actually trying to enforce a UN resolution calling for the disbanding of Hizbullah.
It did not seem to this man unseemly that Israel is enforcing a UN resolution by indiscriminate slaughter in Lebanon.
Does he actually believe the UN intended that the resolution be carried out by bombing Beirut, Tyre, and Sidon?
He is a good man, but his vision is severely skewed and there is no empathy for the Arab Other who lapses into a sub-human level in his mind.
We even have a group of Christians who feel it is the obligation of this country to support Israel with no questions asked.
Religious Celebrities Falwell and Hagee believe this.
" Pastor Hagee, the main organiser, said the event was the first of its kind.
"For the first time in the history of Christianity in America, Christians will go to the Hill to support Israel as Christians," he said. "
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Evangelical Christians plead for Israel
BBC News
I do not pretend to understand Pastor Hagee.
Notice that the event was very close to the King David Hotel anniversary.
I have said that I consider such beliefs to be greatly mistaken. I believe these gentlemen are worshipping the products of their own minds, not God.
This is one reason I am re-establishing relations with the Roman Catholic Church: I sense a religious battle approaching in the USA as we watch our home-grown religious celebrities try to establish their own fundamentalist idolatry.
Pope Benedict has spoken against the fighting in Lebanon. Our home-grown celebrities applaud the destruction, the more killing the merrier.
I have nothing to say about the people in the administration. I am not sure that we should actually consider the current state-of-affairs as a Presidency, rather an interregnum filled with the sleep of reason.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Lebanon as Jallianwalla Bagh
My nephews asked me what I thought of events in Gaza and Lebanon.
I paraphrased a scene from the film "Gandhi" as best I could:
"General Dyer, exactly how does a Lebanese child victim of a bombing raid apply for aid?"
If this is unclear to the reader, I suspect that there is much that is unclear.
I achieve a certain level of clarity and understanding if I believe that 60 years ago someone decided that genocide should change its target from Jews to Palestinians. Truly, the Narrative of Blood Sacrifice is a scenario from which we cannot seem to escape.
Therefore, we struggle within its grasp and change it every possible way we can, but it is still the same destructive way of viewing the world. The victims change; the perpetrators change; the onlookers change; but the underlying process does not.
The Intuition of future disaster - end of times or whatever - is an intuition that we cannot escape the Narrative of bloodletting, and Isaac or Ishmael must ceaselessly be sacrificed in an obsessively-compulsive ritual from which we find no exit.
What dark god compels us?
Saturday, July 15, 2006
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.
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.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
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.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
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.
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.
Friday, June 16, 2006
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.
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.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
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.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
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.
--
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.
--
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?
--
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?
--
Saturday, June 10, 2006
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.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
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 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.”
Sunday, June 04, 2006
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.
Friday, June 02, 2006
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
Thursday, June 01, 2006
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.
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