It seems the rest of the Left has caught on to what I was said in my previous entry. Too many things have gone wrong, so many that you can't tell which issue is most important because the most serious ones have been left to rot by the system for so long.
Say you want a revolution, but when you talk about destruction . . . well, you know . . . if everyone is counted out, revolution doesn't happen. So, how do you have a revolution without destruction?
The only way would be to do what the Occupy movement is doing. Simply camp out and gain membership and support, and with every assault by authorities, it gains more sympathy. I realize it's not the most stirring way to have a revolution, nor is it really, any plan at all, but it avoids the bloodshed that marred previous revolutions in western civilization and made way for the conservative backlashes that always followed. These backlashes were, invariably, international even if the revolutions were local. The violence of the French Revolution made all of Europe and the US terribly conservative for seventy years. The Russian Revolution generated its own antithesis in international fascism.
Warfare and bloodiness traumatize people and make them insane anyway. I'm convinced that Vietnam wouldn't have happened if decisions weren't being made by leaders who suffered through World War II. War, real violence, they do something to people's minds, something that violent video games don't do. Take Vietnam, and Dean Atkinson, who worked in WWII under General Curtis LeMay. The general ordered firebombings of Japanese cities. Those firebombings took far more lives than the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The one on Tokyo alone killed 110,000 civilians. In Fog of War, a film documentary, Atkinson quotes LeMay as saying if the allies had lost the war, they (LeMay and Atkinson) would be up for crimes against humanity.
Just imagine giving the orders that kill tens of thousands of civilians a night, for a year or two. Imagine what that does to your thinking later. Maybe that's difficult to imagine, but I can illustrate it this way: then dropping Agent Orange doesn't seem so bad, even if it might (and did) kill 400,000 people and cause numerous birth defects. That's only one way. There's also paranoia. A people that oppose you look dangerous, even if they're opposing only your presence in their country, not to replace capitalism with communism.
What the Occupy Movement is doing is far better. It avoids the trauma that make people stupid and turns them into monsters. It will avoid the conservative backlash. I hope it continues. And of course I support it.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Idea ramble: the way things seem.
People need fantasy. Religion proves this. The opposition of religion to scientific fact underscores it. In previous ages, people answered broader questions about reality, as best anyone could, by filling it in with fantasy, myth and religion. So, where did the originators of the myths get them? Purely from imagination, with the writer so proud and amazed by his insight that he wanted everybody to read it and believe it.
I can understand that. As a writer, you often surprise yourself. Writers call it a muse for a reason. You sit down with a blank page and when you finish, little or none of it had been in your head at the start. They ancient scribe/myth-maker must have been impressed, and not necessarily with him/herself. With few exceptions, the names of ancient writers did not survive. I have a writer friend that despises the whole idea of a muse. Yes, it is in a way, insulting to the writer. Because if there's one thing about writing, and that is it's work. Even when imaginative ideas are easy, they have to be conveyed in words, which requires rephrasing, correcting, making the right word choice. The muse lore is misleading about that, but if we expunged the notion of a muse from our minds, writers would recreate it tomorrow.
However, so, an ancient writer comes up with the myth, such as the Garden of Eden story (I have to put on In-a-gadda-da-vida now.) How does the myth go from entertainment to religious dogma? Part of the answer might be that people just didn't have a better explanation for how the world came about and how things sucked so badly. However, I think the greater part is mental illness. Where anybody's guess is as good as anyone elses, the one who believed their story the most probably spread the account to all those who knew they didn't guess. The one who acted fanatical enough won, especially if he could make a good show of talking to something supernatural. Then things really get moving when other, more lucid people realize that forming cults is lucrative business that gets you money and power.
Imagine personalities like L. Ron Hubbard, David Koresh, Jim Jones and Leonard Jeffs in the ancient world, where science was non-existent and where the idea of empirical fact was theoretical at best. Such people had have existed then, too, and they would have been competing in making cults.
I like to point out to Christians that in Classical Rome, Christianity was the Scientology of its age. If you go ahead 2,000 years from now maybe Scientology, or its successor, will be dominant, and Christianity would go the way of Mithraism-- extinct. (I don't want anybody to think I hope this is true.) They can't accept the notion. They hate to think that the principles of evolution and extinction could apply to their faith, and really, to all human thoughts and myths. Of course, their main objection would be that Christianity is the real truth. When declaration fails, they'll insist that it must be the truth, because without "the truth" humankind would fall into immorality and chaos. What they fail to grasp is that if God doesn't exist, then people have living without God for millennia. In fact, always, and we have fallen in and out of chaos. World War II was an example of chaos and strife on a truly colossal scale.
I will concede to the Christians one thing: yes, perhaps there is one truth. But what is it isn't Christian? What if your belief about it doesn't directly effect your destiny? Once more, what if it's a truth your mind isn't adapted to perceive? That's the way the universe looks to me.
There may be something that you could gods, or something I can call God in this universe, that of course, I can't perceive. I'm limited in space and time, and I have only so many senses. Gods would be superior beings, ones that could say, move planets. Whereas God would be a supreme being, something that created the universe.
I strongly doubt there could be a creator, though, and I there's no way that creator could be anything like Yahweh/Jehovah in the Bible. Why? Because he's too small-minded and ignorant to create anything like this universe. Maybe the character worked when we thought the heavens were above, and the sun rotated around the earth, which was flat. In that universe, all he had to do to create the universe people thought they were in was separate light from darkness, separate waters, put the plants and animals in place. He could concern himself with the geopolitics of a single faction of humans and give his approval to their crimes and power or punish them for their disobedience. God the Father fits in a small flat world. However, along in the 19th century, once "the world" became the universe and we realized there were no heavens up there, and we determined we're on one of a trillion worlds in an expanding universe, the idea becomes untenable and those clinging to it look like buffoons who take themselves and their own cause too seriously.
So, let's look at the Old Testament God. He's totally ignorant of what he's purported to have created. Instead of telling them about sanitation, he provides them Kosher Law. Instead of telling them about bacteria or viruses, he eventually sends his Son to heal people, for three years out of four thousand. He doesn't describe any stars for us to later discover with telescopes, and thus prove his knowledge. He receives blood sacrifices when really, blood isn't any different than any other animal tissue. That and much more.
My opinion is: whatever, if anything created this universe is nothing like a human mind, nothing we can communicate with like a Father or a human being. In fact, most likely it wasn't created. Creation is a human notion, and we do it with our mind. All a human does to create is find something in the world, or some notion derived from the world and alter it. This concept cannot be applied to creating something from nothing. I know Christians will say that's because God is so much better. No, that's because their divine notion of creation is false, does not exist in this universe.
Declaration: no human being has ever encountered the Supreme Being or anything that "created" this universe, and it's going to be a long time, if ever, before any human being knows where it really came from..
And "belief" isn't going to change those facts.
I can understand that. As a writer, you often surprise yourself. Writers call it a muse for a reason. You sit down with a blank page and when you finish, little or none of it had been in your head at the start. They ancient scribe/myth-maker must have been impressed, and not necessarily with him/herself. With few exceptions, the names of ancient writers did not survive. I have a writer friend that despises the whole idea of a muse. Yes, it is in a way, insulting to the writer. Because if there's one thing about writing, and that is it's work. Even when imaginative ideas are easy, they have to be conveyed in words, which requires rephrasing, correcting, making the right word choice. The muse lore is misleading about that, but if we expunged the notion of a muse from our minds, writers would recreate it tomorrow.
However, so, an ancient writer comes up with the myth, such as the Garden of Eden story (I have to put on In-a-gadda-da-vida now.) How does the myth go from entertainment to religious dogma? Part of the answer might be that people just didn't have a better explanation for how the world came about and how things sucked so badly. However, I think the greater part is mental illness. Where anybody's guess is as good as anyone elses, the one who believed their story the most probably spread the account to all those who knew they didn't guess. The one who acted fanatical enough won, especially if he could make a good show of talking to something supernatural. Then things really get moving when other, more lucid people realize that forming cults is lucrative business that gets you money and power.
Imagine personalities like L. Ron Hubbard, David Koresh, Jim Jones and Leonard Jeffs in the ancient world, where science was non-existent and where the idea of empirical fact was theoretical at best. Such people had have existed then, too, and they would have been competing in making cults.
I like to point out to Christians that in Classical Rome, Christianity was the Scientology of its age. If you go ahead 2,000 years from now maybe Scientology, or its successor, will be dominant, and Christianity would go the way of Mithraism-- extinct. (I don't want anybody to think I hope this is true.) They can't accept the notion. They hate to think that the principles of evolution and extinction could apply to their faith, and really, to all human thoughts and myths. Of course, their main objection would be that Christianity is the real truth. When declaration fails, they'll insist that it must be the truth, because without "the truth" humankind would fall into immorality and chaos. What they fail to grasp is that if God doesn't exist, then people have living without God for millennia. In fact, always, and we have fallen in and out of chaos. World War II was an example of chaos and strife on a truly colossal scale.
I will concede to the Christians one thing: yes, perhaps there is one truth. But what is it isn't Christian? What if your belief about it doesn't directly effect your destiny? Once more, what if it's a truth your mind isn't adapted to perceive? That's the way the universe looks to me.
There may be something that you could gods, or something I can call God in this universe, that of course, I can't perceive. I'm limited in space and time, and I have only so many senses. Gods would be superior beings, ones that could say, move planets. Whereas God would be a supreme being, something that created the universe.
I strongly doubt there could be a creator, though, and I there's no way that creator could be anything like Yahweh/Jehovah in the Bible. Why? Because he's too small-minded and ignorant to create anything like this universe. Maybe the character worked when we thought the heavens were above, and the sun rotated around the earth, which was flat. In that universe, all he had to do to create the universe people thought they were in was separate light from darkness, separate waters, put the plants and animals in place. He could concern himself with the geopolitics of a single faction of humans and give his approval to their crimes and power or punish them for their disobedience. God the Father fits in a small flat world. However, along in the 19th century, once "the world" became the universe and we realized there were no heavens up there, and we determined we're on one of a trillion worlds in an expanding universe, the idea becomes untenable and those clinging to it look like buffoons who take themselves and their own cause too seriously.
So, let's look at the Old Testament God. He's totally ignorant of what he's purported to have created. Instead of telling them about sanitation, he provides them Kosher Law. Instead of telling them about bacteria or viruses, he eventually sends his Son to heal people, for three years out of four thousand. He doesn't describe any stars for us to later discover with telescopes, and thus prove his knowledge. He receives blood sacrifices when really, blood isn't any different than any other animal tissue. That and much more.
My opinion is: whatever, if anything created this universe is nothing like a human mind, nothing we can communicate with like a Father or a human being. In fact, most likely it wasn't created. Creation is a human notion, and we do it with our mind. All a human does to create is find something in the world, or some notion derived from the world and alter it. This concept cannot be applied to creating something from nothing. I know Christians will say that's because God is so much better. No, that's because their divine notion of creation is false, does not exist in this universe.
Declaration: no human being has ever encountered the Supreme Being or anything that "created" this universe, and it's going to be a long time, if ever, before any human being knows where it really came from..
And "belief" isn't going to change those facts.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Now this more like it!
Finally, life is perfect! I have my own private place. Everything, so far, is where I need it to be, and the things I haven't got yet will soon be where I need them too. Now, I can get up and start writing immediately and continue for as long as I want, as long as I need to.
My parent's house was noisy, messy, and in chaos constantly. What's more, there was nothing I could do about any of it. At least not while I was there and on edge. I couldn't sleep. Turning to writing, I did the best I could there. I'm not knocking my family here. My life had collapsed. I had fallen into a serious depression. If it weren't for them, I would have been homeless, and obviously, my conditions would have been far worse then.
However, I also remember going to friend's houses in college and feeling unnerved at things being so quiet and orderly. The beds were made, the children behaved, belongings put away, things were clean, and everything was quiet. I was disturbed that the television did not compete with the stereo, and that records (vinyl remember) were not scratched up. None of that existed where I lived. In an odd way, I was judgmental of it existing at their houses, thinking that it showed a conformity or lack of life. That might be true in other ways, but no, what I experienced growing up was not the joy of living nor nonconformity.I wasn't envious of my friends' homes. The silence alone disturbed me. A horrible sound of silence.
When you have a psychotic mother (and I'm talking about in the clinical sense if you're tuning in now), an aloof, detached father, and a brother with a serious, rare, birth defect that causes him to get loud and destructive, things can get pretty disorderly. When you're also the youngest kid in your class, (a Leo) and sometimes kids in the previous grade can bully up on you, then you need to escape, mentally, and escape all the time. But then what if you're psychotic mother doesn't allow that? What if the kids in school won't leave you alone?
I knew in junior year of high school what I know now: I can't last alone. Yes, it's required for the writing, but even Asperger's people don't actually like being alone day after day their whole lives; they just can't solve the problems that being social throws at all of us.
My parent's house was noisy, messy, and in chaos constantly. What's more, there was nothing I could do about any of it. At least not while I was there and on edge. I couldn't sleep. Turning to writing, I did the best I could there. I'm not knocking my family here. My life had collapsed. I had fallen into a serious depression. If it weren't for them, I would have been homeless, and obviously, my conditions would have been far worse then.
However, I also remember going to friend's houses in college and feeling unnerved at things being so quiet and orderly. The beds were made, the children behaved, belongings put away, things were clean, and everything was quiet. I was disturbed that the television did not compete with the stereo, and that records (vinyl remember) were not scratched up. None of that existed where I lived. In an odd way, I was judgmental of it existing at their houses, thinking that it showed a conformity or lack of life. That might be true in other ways, but no, what I experienced growing up was not the joy of living nor nonconformity.I wasn't envious of my friends' homes. The silence alone disturbed me. A horrible sound of silence.
When you have a psychotic mother (and I'm talking about in the clinical sense if you're tuning in now), an aloof, detached father, and a brother with a serious, rare, birth defect that causes him to get loud and destructive, things can get pretty disorderly. When you're also the youngest kid in your class, (a Leo) and sometimes kids in the previous grade can bully up on you, then you need to escape, mentally, and escape all the time. But then what if you're psychotic mother doesn't allow that? What if the kids in school won't leave you alone?
I knew in junior year of high school what I know now: I can't last alone. Yes, it's required for the writing, but even Asperger's people don't actually like being alone day after day their whole lives; they just can't solve the problems that being social throws at all of us.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Move finished
It has been a long time since I posted. I guess I planned this move starting in February. In between time, I bailed my Dad out of foreclosure and buried my mother (pitching in with the rest of my relatives).
And the place I settled on was a bit of a fixer-up. It not longer smells of gas. I no longer fear for my life when I enter. They still have to replace the furnace, but it doesn't leak, and it does work, if I can qualify that. It does work if I can get up and shut the blower off every night. They are supposed to replace the furnace, soon. The blower doesn't shut off as it should, but it doesn't leak, regardless.
My cat is asleep under my desk, looking terribly content. I envy her. I unpacked the last of the boxes today, collapsed them and took them to the recycle dumpster. I declared the move finished and tabulated the receipts for figuring the final cost. But tonight I find myself drunk. Drunk from loneliness. The taste of grain, hops, and yeast. I wanted the relief that semi-consciousness grants in altered states. I hear joyous people outside, slightly threatening. I have to admit, it might all be hallucination.
I've switched to water from beer. I expect things to clarify, but I don't expect a return.
And the place I settled on was a bit of a fixer-up. It not longer smells of gas. I no longer fear for my life when I enter. They still have to replace the furnace, but it doesn't leak, and it does work, if I can qualify that. It does work if I can get up and shut the blower off every night. They are supposed to replace the furnace, soon. The blower doesn't shut off as it should, but it doesn't leak, regardless.
My cat is asleep under my desk, looking terribly content. I envy her. I unpacked the last of the boxes today, collapsed them and took them to the recycle dumpster. I declared the move finished and tabulated the receipts for figuring the final cost. But tonight I find myself drunk. Drunk from loneliness. The taste of grain, hops, and yeast. I wanted the relief that semi-consciousness grants in altered states. I hear joyous people outside, slightly threatening. I have to admit, it might all be hallucination.
I've switched to water from beer. I expect things to clarify, but I don't expect a return.
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