Human Nature Above Human Systems

  I've been asked what economic "system" do I believe in. Is it "capitalism" or "socialism" or some other such mental contraption? I must say that I do not disbelieve or believe in anything called an "economic system." I don't begin or end with such "ideas" as these,even if I were completely aware of what they meant or certain whether others using the terms meant them in exactly the way I might think of them at a given moment.

  I begin at the beginning,with the fundamental Nature of (Wo)Man. Humans are thinking beings,social beings, and spiritual beings all at the same time. Therefore, we must be free to think,we must be free to live with one another in peace and with whom we choose or not choose,and we must be free to exercise our capacity as partially non-corporeal beings, meaning that our needs and desires are not purely or even primarily material or economic.

  And so we see that Man does not live,in the first instance, within an economic "system." She lives within her Nature as a human being. It is only in the expression of that Nature that we create "systems." These include the economic of course. They also include the spiritual, the legal,the political, the recreational and a whole host of other systems that I cannot think of and would not presume to think of for others.

    The political system we create,what we usually call a government, is simply another one of these systems that is created in response to our nature as human beings. However, it must be said that the political systems and the economic systems we create are closely tied to one another as the former must fund the latter and the latter must in some way be legally sanctioned in such a way as to avoid a kind of anarchy that would make the maintenance of any kind of economy virtually impossible.

  Viewed from this perspective then, we see that the governmental "system" and the economic "system" do not stand OUTSIDE of the society of humans and their nature but firmly within that society and expressive of the common nature of the beings within it. In other words, from my perspective, I do not BEGIN by saying that I want to impose a certain political or economic system on a particular group of human beings or God forbid on humanity in its entirety. No. This is the meaning of the Declaration when it says that "governments are derived among men", and gain their just powers from them. We might say our "systems" are not our creator. The Creator is our creator and WE create, as expressions of our humanity, the "systems" that we believe best facilitate that expression.

  So, to return to the beginning, what "economic system" do I believe in? I do not believe that the economy is a system. The economy is an organic interaction of human beings. People, as human beings, are social. We want to live among each other. We are lost without each other. This means that part of the way we interact with each other is to fulfill each others economic needs. We buy from one another, we sell to each other, we trade with one another, we barter, haggle, negotiate, finagle with one another, sometimes, yes, we steal from one another. The common way people throughout history have done all these things, for better or worse, (and yes sometimes it is worse), is to set up what we call "markets" where people can come together in all sorts of capacities and venues to interact with each other in an economic way. This is not to say, as I said above, that there is a complete separation between the political "system" and the economic "system". They must interact with each other, for the reasons that all humans must interact with each other and because of the special link between government and economics. This is not even to say that something called "Capitalism" whatever that has come to mean as a "system" of economics is good or bad. After all, we must admit that any maintenance of a "Capitalist System" at time requires a strong government. It is to say, however, that any suppression of the activity that occurs within a market by the political "system" is, in general, a suppression of some aspect of human nature. One might say at times this is a good thing and no doubt, at times, you'd be correct. But make no mistake this suppression will be resisted as a matter of course. And if the suppression goes too far and circumscribes Justice, it risks becoming a tyranny and suppressing the very Nature of BOTH our politics AND our economics it ought to be fostering.

  We might say that we begin again with Human Nature. Our minds, our relationships, and our being(spirit) all constitute this Nature. All of our systems are simply our ways of expressing these fundamental aspects of ourselves. From my perspective, any "system" that tries to impose itself into this nature, whether called Capitalist, Socialist or Communist and takes it not into account but attempts to take it into its sway, is pernicious, destructive, and doomed to fail.

Governor Romney's chances/strategy of winning in 2012

President Obama's re-election chances/strategy

The American Revolution as an Advancement of Empire

 It can be asserted, one may submit, that the American Revolution was fought in defense of the idea of an ever expansive British Empire of Liberty. This idea was simply continued after independence as the idea and reality of an American Empire of Liberty.

  The English Parliament never had the universal conception of the British Empire that the Americans, especially Ben Franklin, had. Some of the anti-Monarchical Whigs had such a conception. However, the Whigs were not powerful enough politically in the late 18th-century as to be able to change the nature of the Empire.

  The majority of the English parliament was still Tory and in favor of a monarchical, centralized idea of an empire administered from the Parliament in London on behalf of the King.

Ben Franklin to the Constitutional Convention

The more I learn about Franklin, the more I know that his wisdom and genius and a better understanding of them are a small key to maintaining the fraying tapestry of our Union. He has a beautiful, brilliant, elegant, and lovely mind. I love him like a brother. His writings are intoxicating for those of you of any political persuasion. All humans can benefit from reading his Autobiography. It is the tale of a solitary soul imbibing the world with the fire of his overwhelming curiosity. It shows that a life of "book learning" or "hands on learning" are not opposed to one another but essential in their combination to nourish the soul and create that inner light that, when combined with a generous spirit, can illuminate the world, quite literally in the case of Dr. Franklin.

 Here is Franklin's Speech to the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787. He was a man of 81 years at this point and could hardly get enough breath to speak, but his mind was alight with wisdom, courage and patriotism.

Romney Rice 2012??

 I can't imagine why Mitt Romney would be seriously considering Condi Rice to be his running mate. It makes no sense politically. It is nonsense in terms of practical government if Romney happens to be elected.

  On a political level, Rice has no constituency whatsoever. She is an academic and is very intelligent. However, she has no base of support which will automatically flow into the Romney column by his choice of her. Her race, let's be blunt, is probably at least one thing Romney is considering as an attribute in order to counter Obama's significant and probably growing lead among all racial groups other than whites. But even on the crude racial level, the choice makes no sense. African-Americans, generally, have a distaste for Rice. They, to a large extent, view her as an opportunist who is used by whites as a black-face to put into a white administration. She will be viewed this way even more so while running as vice-President. Whites tend to distrust Rice because she conjures up memories of the   W. Bush administration, by definition bad for Romney.

   On another political level, Rice is viewed as extremely liberal by Conservatives, especially on social issues. She will be viewed as an opportunist pick to "make the minorities happy" and it will further racialize this election which is exactly Obama's goal. The more the election is about race the better for Obama. The residual pride in the election of an African-American President in 2008 still lingers and is flamed up again when race becomes an issue. The choice of Condi will simply keep the election's focus on race, something Romney needs to avoid.

  On a practical governing level, all of Rice's experience is in foreign policy in a moment where the economy is in a state of slow train wreck, and becoming faster. Romney, if elected, will need all the help he can receive in order to solve economic problems and a Vice-President that has all the attributes of a Secretary of State does not necessarily help in that area.

   I can only conclude that the Condi Rice moment is just a moment. It is a story put out by the Romney campaign to gauge the reaction of the Public and of Conservatives to a Rice ticket. I can't imagine Romney will actually choose her. I expect other people to have their moment as "trial balloons" before this long process is over.

Some Business and Ben Franklin

Unbelievably this blog is linked to on an actual rather popular blog run by a rather popular MSNBC "talking head" and thegrio.com journalist and I've been negligent in my thanks. My views tend to be about 180 degrees away from my former interlocutor and "rival" but I thank her for the link especially in this year where it is easier to view our political differences as unbridgeable chasms. The wonderful blog is reidreport.com So, thanks again Joy.

My internal demographics for this blog tell me I have around 5,500 views. That is not a lot considering, however it is quite a few considering the random and deleterious nature of my postings. I fancy that most of the views are readers of the reid report clicking on my site by accident and seeing the politically heretical nature of my opinions recoiling in horror and returning to the decidedly left-leaning views of their favorite amateur turned professional pundit. :) (Oddly, about a third of the views come from Russia, so to my Russian readers, I'm re-reading my War and Peace and starting in on Anna Karenina so brace yourselves for some GREAT reviews!! Tolstoy is the friggin' BOLSHOI!!:) And to any FSB "friends" reading this:stop wasting your time and go blow up some more apartment buildings to blame on Chechens!!

 As an aside, I am finishing up the wonderful Charles Van Doren 1939 Benjamin Franklin biography. It won the Pulitzer Prize that year. It is beautifully written using many of Franklin's exquisite letters to give a real sense of this patient,patriotic,stoic,genius,eclectic,wonderful and wise First American. Franklin's diplomatic engineering of Parliament's repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766 was a lesson in the art of using peacefully persuasive leverage upon a rival in order to patiently and pacifically achieve the interests of one's nation. I can only vainly hope that we modern Americans will study and remember that first great peaceful victory where we united as a nation to boycott British goods until the repeal of the Stamp Act. It is important to remember, perhaps as much for this country as any, that not all "victories" must be bathed in the blood of the innocents.

 So, as always, I say remember American history and remember the peaceful victory of 1766 where Franklin cultivated friendships in the very bowels of our future enemy and helped unify our country for peaceful and noble ends: the defense of our ancient Liberties brought down to us by the very nation trying to abrogate them.

The Four Parts of "Seeing" (Introduction)

  There are multiple ways of thinking about the idea of "seeing" an object. It is too simplistic to say that when when we see an object with the eye, that it is the eye doing the "seeing." This would be like saying the view we see through a clear window is the product of that window.

   Seeing is a mental activity much more than a visual activity. Every glance, even if we try to avoid it, conjures up a hundred thoughts, a thousand ideas. For the eye is no instrument, but simply a lifeless vacancy, save for the mind that guides it both in its direction and depth of vision. The ability of the human eye to see depth is unparalleled in Nature. The human mind's corresponding ability to imagine a world, a "vision" beyond the world that is perceived by the physical eye, is unmatched and scarcely imagined by other beings.

   There are four aspects to "seeing" an object. First, the object being seen is actually in the eye. It occupies space in the eye. This is true both in the functioning of the eye as an organ doing the "work" of seeing AND it is physically true. It is physically true in that the light from an observed object, the product of that object, literally occupies space in the eye. Our observations are, in this sense, the physical acquisition of at least some elements of the object being observed. (As an aside, this physical occupation of the eye by an observed object is why we receive a rush of emotional pleasure when we see a loved one after some time of absence. It is an emotional thrill because that person has literally entered our mind through our eye and occupies a portion of it. For instance, observe human behavior at an airport when loved one's greet each other off of a flight.)

  The second aspect of vision is that the observed object is correlated by all of one's senses.This means that sight becomes related to the other senses. For instance, when we see a triple chocolate ice cream cone with a cherry on top, we can taste and smell the chocolate on our tongue and smell it in our nose even if we cannot physically approach the ice cream and imbibe it into our senses. Therefore, through vision and the mind, all the senses can be molded into one. So that when we see an object it becomes a complete object, not just a vision but a fully formed object in our mind.

   In this instance of the correlation of the five senses around an object, they unify into what might be called "human sense." The five senses become one, briefly, in relation to the object being observed. The object becomes a unified whole that exists not only in space, but in time, and in one's mind.

   The third aspect of vision is that the envisioned object is fixed in space-time at a given point. In this sense any changes taking place to the object cease to be observed, temporarily, because time is fixed by the mind in relation to the object. Likewise, any movement the object may be doing is temporarily disregarded as the mind fixed the object into a given point in space.

  The fourth aspect of vision is that the envisioned object is fixed in the space-time of the mind. This is generally called one's "memory" of an object. Memory, among human being and perhaps some other being, can be conjured up spontaneously or through stimuli. Stimuli are usually other perceptions such as auditory or smell that one experiences at the same time that the object is envisioned. So, here we can thus understand the terms "smell of death" or "sounds of battle."

  In the context of the unity of the four types of vision through the integration of all sensory experience, we can understand the close relationship between perceptions and memories. Perceptions are both "over there" in the world and "over here" in my mind at a given moment. In the same way memories are both "in the past" AND "in the present." Their existence in the past is brought forward into the present by the actions of one's mind and through action can affect the future. So, we here see the existence of what one might describe as the "past-present." This is the melding of the transitory moments we exist in with the depth of our memory that is constantly enmeshed and intertwined with past events, people, ideas etc. We can thus imagine a present that is much deeper than the superficial flashes of meaningless sights and sounds we often lament it to be. We can live in a past-present, integrating our memories and those of others into a deeper, more meaningful, and more fulfilling present that thus propels us into a future that is at once more challenging and more hopeful.

  This "past-present" is, I suspect, a field of existence that human beings tend to forget and then remember in the oscillations of time and change that our species has lived through. In periods such as the one that we can sense is now ending,where we live in the present only, technology is viewed as something we "interact" with, but it exists in a fundamentally separate way from our minds. This creates a disconnection and disruption between the present of the technology that we are using and the past that our mind is constantly inventing, rearranging and remembering. Thus technology tends to do the work for our mind, in many instances, tending to enervate it.

  I suspect we are moving into another age of the "past-present." We will remember again that technology and mind are one and the same thing. They do not interact so much as act in concert. If one is off key, the other creates disharmony, no matter how sophisticated or enlightened it imagines itself to be. The mind, through its ability to connect to a past, can bring technology up to a level that can allow it to be the tool of transformation for the individual it potentially is. Technology, with its ability to master the present moment in an astonishingly powerful wide range, can propel this transformed individual into the broad sunny uplands of a boundless future.

Dominus Vobiscum

 In the light of day
I saw the world as it would be when night befalls
And when dusk fell
The wail of a thousand voices pierced the air
And prepared the spirit for the coming trials

Had the pleasure of reading recently.....

The famous history by Jacob Burkhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. This is an excellent study of Italian culture between about 1350 and 1550. I begins with Petrarch's brilliance.

  In Petrarch we see a man who was the first person since classical times to ascend to a mountaintop and describe what he experienced. For Petrarch, nature became Nature. Nature took on a beatific and aesthetic quality. It became sublime.

  Also Niccolo Machiavelli's two greatest works The Prince and The Discourses on Livy. Machiavelli's most sincere warnings in both works were his admonitions to avoid the implementation and use of a standing mercenary army. He especially uses the Carthaginian example in this. The mercenary army of Carthage turned against its patron city after its defeat at Zama by the Roman legions of Scipio.

Random Ramblings

  The State of the Union is fraying and tarnished. It seems in every election year we say this. However, I don't think it is just that. There is today a lack of understanding among people that my trusting and naive nature fails to grasp.

  The people of this age seem to think that society can continue to function without any upkeep, without any new ideas, thoughts or plans. It has never been and will never be thus. A society is really a continual renewal, like an ancient city with layer and layer built up over centuries. Our job, as inhabitants of the present, is to make our contribution to our layer. In this sense, it is our interest and our obligation to have SOMETHING to contribute, some passion, some feeling, thought, or interjection that breaks the monotonous rhythmic patterns in order to create new patterns that move in the direction the human spirit needs to go at that particular point. When so many people stagnate, when they fail to strive, to think,, to be curious, to challenge and rise and dream and stand up for themselves, this has a cumulative negative effect over time and distance. It leads to stagnation. The stagnation in our souls translates into a stagnant society. A society is nothing without the spirit of humanity electrifying and animating its core. It becomes a congeries of seething fears, recriminations, paranoia, and petty interests. It settles into a conglomeration of menacing mediocrities glowering at one another across imaginary divides.

   I remember other times and other people. In the past I enjoyed having discussions with people much older than myself. They were freer and more spontaneous in their thoughts, broader and deeper in their knowledge, and didn't give a flying damn about what other people thought of those thoughts and ideas. They seemed bolder, more spontaneous, like a spark was continually igniting and illuminating parts of their mind that they wanted, NEEDED to share with you. And they didn't think this way of being at all unusual because it wasn't. I once, when I was younger, subscribed this behavior to their older age. This is the way "old people" act, talk, think, behave etc. Now, as I get older, I am not so certain of this. I think people have changed from the inside. There is a fear in people today of all ages; a circumspection, an enervating self-consciousness that continually asks for the permission, approval, and attention of others; any others, anywhere.

   We seem to have regressed as a species. I don't like this change. I admit I am conservative by nature and tend to venerate the past, perhaps a little too much. But I also remember. I remember everything. And I know, I am certain of the changes I speak of above and I just don't know the cause. It is an issue of disturbance to me. We are all and only human and beings. We live and love and hate and hope together. But we must never forget that all we do together is meaningless and empty if our individual souls have lost the bright, burning thoughts and passions that enlighten and envigorate an otherwise dark and barren world.

   We are brilliant and good created and creative beings with hearts and minds electrified and sparked by a soulful fire. That is the human in our being. That is the essence that will reinvigorate our humanity into the pillar of wisdom and strength that will reanimate and uplift ourselves and our society.

Writers on writing

The State and the Government

The Three Freedoms

Machiavelli

The vastly misunderstood Niccolo Machiavelli writing to Ricciardo Becchi: January 31, 1515

"Anyone who might see our letters. my dear friend,, and might note their diversity would be very amazed, for at one point he would think that we were very serious men, involved in weighty matters, and that we never entertained a thought which was not lofty and honest. But then, turning the page, he would discover that these same serious men were frivolous, inconstant, lustful, and occupied with trifles. This manner of ours, although to some it may be disgraceful, seems worthy of praise to me, because we imitate Nature, which herself is various, and anyone who imitates Nature cannot be criticized."

  The tragedy and necessity of the present age is that we must know much about one or a few things. Compartmentalization of knowledge is all around us, especially in social media. This has created a psychological condition that leads us to see other people as what they are in the moment. Everything we do is supposed to be a "representation of who we are" from our clothes to our looks to what we read, listen to, write....this leads to a lack of creativity, spontaneous thought, and innovation. All we do is now "seen" by someone and that creates an unavoidable self-consciousness in all our actions that is something new in it all-encompassing pervasiveness. When all we do and write and say and sing and think is SEEN constantly, we cannot help but internalize the gaze of others into a vice of self critique that can be stifling if we are not careful.

  Of course, we choose for all of it to be seen and heard as well. This is a choice born of the urgency and necessity of the present and is understandable and unavoidable. But a small place must still be saved, I think, for the fearless state of just pure, brilliant, joyous, uninhibited experimentation in thought that a too pervasive self awareness caused by the audiences we seek out might stifle. It is this freedom that belonged to people like Machiavelli who were free to experiment in thinking about a whole range of topics without fear of being placed into a category by his thought and musings in the moment. Now we are expected to be on one "side" or the other, one camp or the other. Those expectations can be the tragic death of innovative thought and the stifling of possibilities that might preclude solutions.

Nabokov's Lolita Compared to Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Terhan

  In both Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran there is a general overriding conflict. That is the clash between the world one creates in her own head and the real world of actual things and events that never ceases to intrude upon the private world that one creates for herself.

  Literature and reading enable one to both know more about the actual world and to build upon one's own private world through the use of fiction. In Lolita Humbert is constantly alluding to the world of mythology when discussing his desire for young girls. Humbert also displays an extensive knowledge of actual past societies when he describes common sexual practices between adults and children in times past. In Reading Lolita in Tehran Nafisi's girls use the fiction of Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and Henry James to try to create worlds within their minds that are ameliorative to the everyday indignities and cruelties they live through as women in the Islamic Republic of Iran. These fictitious worlds, however, are constantly being intruded upon by the actual world and so a blend of the ordinary and the cruel world is created. This is referred to as "posh-lust" by Nabokov. The Islamic Republic also builds its own fantasy world through the use of popaganda and ideology in order to justify its seduction and rape of Iranian society. The Islamic Republic uses ideology to shape its own version of the actual past in which the government of the Shah was entirely Evil and so the structure of society must be torn away.

   In the same way, Humbert often uses references to mythology when attempting to explain or justify his lust foir and rape of underage girls. Humbert uses his concept of the "nymphet", a clear reference to mythology. Humbert describes nymphets as maidens between the ages of 9 and 14. The nymphets, in the warped world of Humbert's mind, live on "an enchanted Island....surrounded by a vast misty sea." This clearly is a reference to the mythical Sirens who tempted sailors at sea with song. Humbert depicts the nymphets as non-humans there to simply serve blind lust and satiate his "super voluptuous flame permantly aglow." If a nymphet is simply a myth and not a person, then to have sex with her is not the vile act of rape and the theft of a young girl's future, but the playful act of a carefree Pan or Puck, dancing through the forest having his little mymphs as it pleases him. Afterall, a myth has no past, no future and therefore no present meaning, no reality. In myth one is free to play and act upon impulse.

   Humbert not only uses mythology to justify his actions but also references to the past and present real worlds. He states Virgil, "probably preferred a lad's perineum", referring to the Greco-Roman world's instances of man-boy sensual relationships, although more common among the Greeks than the Romans. From the relative present, Humbert mentions the Young Person's Act of 1933 in England where the term "girld-child" is defined as a girl beteen the ages of 9 and 14. Here we see Humbert cloking the outrageous action of the rape of a young child in the respected cloak of English Common Law!! It is the combination of the horrific and the banal, posh-lust to the extreme.

  In Reading Lolita in Tehran Nafisi's girls use fiction, especially that of Nabokov's Lolita to try to build a private world that explains the public hell they live in the Islamic Republic. Nafisi states that her girls (her students) discussed Lolita and the "discussions were colored by my students' hidden personal sorrows and joys." The girls, as stated by Nafisi, had not LOST a normal life, they ALWAYS lacked a normal life. The girls had never lived before the Islamic Republic. Therefore, they lacked any real-life reference points to the make-believe reality portrayed in Lolita and the other novels they read. The world they read about in the novels, "would turn into something more pure and golden than it ever was or will be." This is the reason that Nafisi is quite adamant that her girls are not like Lolita. These girls could never imagine living life in the consumerized nation that the USA had become even by 1947 (the year Lolita is set).

   So, the reality of the Islamic Republic is never separate from the world of the novels that the girls read. To fully place themselves in the world of the novel, as the reader can do in a sane nation not driven by ideological fantasies, is impossible for the girls. The pervasive nature of the regime makes this impossible. This is shown when one of the girls goes on a Caspian Sea trip with her girlfriends. She is castigated by her own family for doing this. The regime has so embedded in the peoples' reality that they become its willing enforcers and executioners. A simple road-trip to a beach, part of a normal life that one might see in a novel, is not possible. The regime, through its lack of respect for the Rights of its citizens, has invaded not only the girls' real lives but also any world of the imagination they had created for themselves through fiction. The ideologically horrific mixes with the normal and Nabokov's posh-lust oozes forth. As John Stewart Mill understood, societal conformity is a stronger and more pernicious force than legal conformity. The State could wither away but the People would still chain themselves to its corpse.

  The Islamic Republic busies itself creating its own myths to justify its subjugation of the Iranian people. The myth of the Islamic Republic is best represented in the mind of Mr. Bahri, a radical Islamic student leader. In the Islamic Republic, "a philosopher-King ...had decided to impose his dream on a country....to re-create us...." Mr. Bahri has completely bought into that vision, even though he is intelligent and young. He tries to shape Nafisi into the kind of person he thinks an "Islamic teacher" should be. In the person of Mr. Bahri we see how not only the ignorant are influenced by ideological myths, but the intelligent as well.

   The Islamic Republic uses old-fashioned real-world ideological propaganda in addition to its dreams and myths. When the Iran-Iraq War began the Ayatollah Khomeini state, "this war is a blessing for us." "War" and "blessing" being related to each other only makes sense in an atmosphere where ideas have become ideologies. The idea of war is its reality: killing and human suffering. The ideology of war is the advancement of the Islamic Revolution. The killing and suffering is but a means to an end. War is the health of a State in permanent revolution.

  We can thus see clearly the difference between ideas and ideologies. The former is promoted through the normal institutions of a free country designed to separate the world of the mind and fantasy from the world of reality. In such a country fiction is possible. Living in one's own mind is possible and therefore Art is possible. This writer can think of no better definition than this of a "free" society. In a totalitarian society, like the Islamic Republic, ideas become solidified into ideologies, the Tyranny of the Idea. The great flowing river of conversation that has a past, future and therefore a present is dried up in the mass chant of the unquestionable "truth": the ideology.

  It is Lolita who desperately seeks to maintain the idea of herself and not to succumb to Humbert's ideological notion of her as the nymphet chained to his loins. It is Nafisi's girls who vainly to maintain the idea of themselves as independent women as more of their fellow Iranians fall to the ideology of the Islamic State.

  Ideas are the great product of the power of the human mind. Ideologies are the great perversion of that power. It is this notion of the perversion of power through the seduction of ideology that is the common thread of Nabokov's Lolita and Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran. It is this perversion that twists the individual person into a category, ready to be counted, collated, questioned, and if necessary destroyed all "for the greater good." Perhaps this is the common thread that in many ways renders our modern world so tragic.

A Literary Analysis of Three Short Stories

  In Alexie Sherman's "This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix,Arizona", Russell Banks' "Sarah Cole:A Type of Love Story" and Kate Braverman's "Tall Tales From The Mekong Delta" we see the contemporary absence of God or the spiritual realm in modern life. We are turning to new gods such as consumerism, narcissism and drugs.

  The course of the 20th century in the United States has moved away from the mainstream spirtual traditions that guided the country at its origins. In the 1880's Nietzche declared that "God is dead." He was not simply referring to the God of Christianity that had been in decline for at least 100 years. He meant the outlook and focus of intellectual thought had lost its center, its logos, its guiding word and spirit. The outlook had crashed to earth, into the jumble and chaos of the world of things and away from the Platonic and Kantian spiritual realm. In order to fill the spirtual realm, new "gods", perhaps even a new religion, would have to be created. The new religion was supplied by the State in the form of totalitarianism in Germany and Russia. By the middle of the 20th century these had been discredited, the one by fire-bombing and Auschwitz and the other by Stalin and the terror of famines and gulags.

  After this we might have expected a return, especially in the US to a more traditional God. To some extent we saw this in the perversion of the religious Right, however, for the most part we have seen an increasing escape into personal "gods" be they consumer goods, self-love or drugs.

  This worship of "brave new gods" is understandable in the context of the bankruptcy of statism and the seeming confirmation of God's non-existence in the smoldering radioactive rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the simmering flesh-filled ovens of Auschwitz. If Man can do THIS to Man without God's intercession, then there must be NO God. As Voltaire's Candide eventually learned, we must simply tend our own garden in the end.

  Man's greatest discovery, the splitting of the atom, spelled his spiritual descent into post-modern angst and chaos. The intellect in its timeless tumult with the soul stood gawking and dumbstruck at the soulless inferno it had wrought and looked forward in horror to the soulless being who would inhabit the dead and earthly realm, untethered from its spiritual sustenance, like the Blue Devil frozen in the depths of Dante's Hell.

   Sherman, Banks, and Braverman, in their excellent stories, examine this new world and the new gods that we have created to fill the spiritual void.

   "This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona" is Sherman's tale of Victor's loss of his father and his journey to recover the body accompanied by Thomas. They are American Indians living on a reservation. Thomas is a spiritual man who tries to teach his people through the use of stories. Nobody wants to listen to him. When they are seven, Thomas tells Victor that he senses his father is sick.

  When he was a boy Thomas believed that he could fly and he jumped off a roof to prove it. He actually flew a bit. However, the world caught him and he fell to the ground and broke his arm. The spiritual had defied the concrete and secular for a few moments. But the concrete firmly and harshly reasserted its dominance. The other boys watch could simply taunt Thomas about the broken arm.

  As they are driving back to Washington through a dead Nevada landscape devoid of all spirit, Thomas and Victor hit a Jack-Rabbit, the only living thing they have seen. Ironically it is the spiritual Thomas who is the driver after Victor had driven all day.

  As they arrive back at the Reservation the two men see the rising on a new day. The people are arising and praying to the secular gods of work, breakfast, and the paper, "just like everybody else does."

  Thomas professes his philosophy of "take care of each other" and "nothing stops." These profoundly spirited statements express the Amerindian spirit of the circular pattern to life where actions and reactions rebound together in a perpetual path of Being. In response to this Victor reflects that the most he shares with his friends is a beer bottle. In the end Victor and Thomas cannot remain friends. After one brief acquaintance the earth and spirit must separate again.

  In "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story", we see the narcissistic love of self replace spiritual love and existence. Ron is the self-described handsome man who becomes the lover of an extremely fat and ugly woman, Sarah Cole. Sarah is in love with Ron's physical appearance and approaches him in a bar. Ron objectifies Sarah not in the usual sense of wanting to possess beauty, but in the warped sense of wanting to possess the ugliest person he had ever seen.

  At one point Sarah asks if Ron wants to make love to her. Of course he does. "What could be be simpler", he thinks. Here the self-loving and loathing aspiritual attitude of Ron is at its most obvious. He equates sex to a simple mechanical process in which it is obvious he and she both want it. Ron seems to see it as similar to munching a bag of chips. It is the ultimate victory of the long sexual revolution of the 20th century that has culminated in a world where sex is relatively easy to find, without consequences if we are careful, and more an act of soulless self-love than love. This triumph in some ways has been a godsend, as we can quench our loneliness in the soft and moist body of another. In the short-run much pleasure has been gained from this. In the long-run many lives are broken and ruined by the suppression of the soul that results. It becomes impossible to love.

  By the end Ron experiences this inability to love Sarah. "Go on and leave you ugly bitch", Ron says to her during an argument. He describes Sarah as wrapped in a golden light. He is left alone with his beautiful hands in his beautiful face, spiritually dead.

  Kate Braverman's "Tall Tales From The Mekong Delta" is the story of a woman's (let's call her Kate) descent back into the morass of drug addiction. Her gods are cocaine, cigarettes and booze. Lenny, a drug-dealer and cocaine addict, becomes Kate's anti-Moses, leading her back into the bitter land of the slavery of drug addiction. Lenny is shorth, fat and rude. Kate surrenders to the only temptation Lenny can offer: the forbidden fruit of this exciting, fast, soul-killing and ultimately suicidal world.

  Lenny has money and he reminds Kate of her love of material things. "Want a rolex?" Lenny asks. This gets Kate's attention.

  Like the color of Dante's Devil, blue is the prevailing color in the air. China Blue is the drug Lenny sells. "The air was a pale blue, bleeding into the horizon taking the sky." The oxygen is being sucked out of Kate and blue death is being injected into her. For Kate it feels good and comforting. It is a structured environment, as Lenny says. Never mind that the structure is rotten and infected where mental anguish and pain is not confronted but smothered by chemical concoctions that kill the pain but dull the mind. No matter, a mind is superfluous in modern Los Angeles where pleasure and ease are what is desired. The drugs deliver this comfortably and painlessly for Kate.

  Eventually Kate gives Lenny the sex that he craves. She opens her lips and legs to him as the Santa Ana winds howl. She is left wedded to her god of drugs, addicted again and floating in a blue haze, dead spiritually and perhaps soon dead physically.

  In Sherman, Banks, and Braverman we see the world of soulless creatures that we have become. Sherman shows the secular embraced at the expense of the spirit. Banks shows how narcissism can twist love inward rendering it unable to reach out for another. Braverman demonstrates the dominating aspects of drug abuse demanding the submission of the soul in obeisance to a mind dulled to a flame flickering out.

   Commonality, narcissism, and drugs are just three of the many post-modern gods that we have embraced in the Nietzchean world of "God's Death" and the atom bomb. It seems that there are as many gods as persons and they have become death, the demons within us squeezing the life from souls screaming in agony, ultimately to be our destroyers. Living Being cannot long inhabit a dead world. Either we regain our souls from the depths into which we have buried them or we ourselves, humankind, will descend into the recesses and catacombs from which nothing emerges save the darkness of lost souls.

  Have a good Sunday...wherever you might be, John.

Fear As A Political Weapon

  The oscillation between "reform" and repression is the common practice of all totalitarian states. In Soviet Russia Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, followed by Stalin's purges, followed by Khruschev's reforms, followed by Bhreznev's repression, followed by Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's reforms, followed by Putin's repression.
  In China we saw Mao's "Hundred Flowers" movement, followed by the Cultural Revolution, followed by the opening to the West, followed by the massacre in Tiennamen Square.
  The common thread in such states is fear in both times of reform and repression. In times of repression the fear is political, present, and real, taking the form of violence. In times of "reform" the fear is psychological as the People still remember the slaughter of the time of repression. They are kept in line not by actual violence, but by the memory of it; not by the bullet from the gun, but by the smoke which still emanates from the last shot. Fear is a potent weapon.
   Let us work for that weapon to never be turned upon the American People.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Oration on the Dignity of Man

"impatient of mediocrity, we pant after the highest things...."

Walter Pater's Biography of Mirandola

Fearing Hoping

And when we embarked it was already dusk
Stumbling silently, intently, fearing and hoping
Blackness enveloped us in its raven wings aloft
Groping, grasping always peering ahead
Daybreak
Golden drops of air awash in color faces beaming

Obsolescence

The last argument of the scoundrel is to say that his opponent's ideas are "old" or "obsolete." Its not an argument, but it generally gladdens the addled,hypnotized brains of the ignoramuses in a chanting crowd who replace self-dignity with a worship and reliance on the supposed infallibility of their leader.

Words Naturally

Words

Build a world unto themselves

Rolling on the mind

On the tongue

Building blocks of worlds to come

Words Always

Ceaselessly haunt and pain

Is life really in vain?

But no, but not at all

Castaways long for a friend

Songs of thought bring comfort on the wind

Words Always Come

In a trickle of truth

In a river of doubt

Unexpectedly brilliant

Predictably bland

A herald across the land

Flaming embers of mind burning in blood

Words Always Come Naturally

A friend gone but never forgotten

Love once whispered but never forsaken

Once begotten, can never be lost

Gifts for the mind, for the seeking heart eternal

Calming the roiling seas of prejudice

Inflaming the passions of love, lust, beauty,truth

A treasure born from the solitary soul internal

Follett

An interview with Ken Follett a very good popular author whom I have recently discovered but who has been around for ages.

The Solidity of Constitutional Principles

An Atheistic Ethics

From what I can gather, this is the basis of an Atheistic Ethics and one can undermine the atheists' position by understanding their logic. I will now channel my inner Atheist and write and think as an atheist for 10 minutes. Then I will return to my normal, confused, dirty, grimy, messy, irrational, theistic, metaphysical, unattractive, disappointing, confusing, and confused selves :)

We too often go through life stumbling blindly forward in the mundane haze of existence day passing after day. But in order to live, above merely existing, we must live justly and well. This is what ethics allows us to attempt. This attempt is made more rationally when we know from whence ethics comes. This question is both one of the authority of morality and its history.

Examining the Hobbesian social contract theory and the Christian will of God theory provide a different insight into the origin of ethics than simply studying the history of ethics. This is accomplished in two ways. First, focusing on the authority of morality allows us to answer questions about morality regarding why we should obey ethical rules in the present. Second, this focus forces us to imagine a future in which these moral values have ceased to exist. Would the future be better or worse? Simply studying the history of ethics gives us a window into the past but does not necessarily focus on the present or future.

The study of the ethical authority of Thomas Hobbes' Social Contract Theory and Christianity allows us to focus on the present and the future. Hobbes postulated a social contract that regarded Man as a power hungry, selfish being grappling with anyone in his way, subject to his animal passions. Christianity postulates that Man is made in the image of God. These two views provide us with the obligations and duties that guide our actions. But if their assumptions regarding the authority of ethics, namely a social contract or our God Soul, are wrong then those obligations and duties will be an ethics not commensurate with human nature and therefore unsustainable.

Our ethical principles are not rooted in any mythical "social past" or irrational notion of a Logos, or God as the progenitor of humanity. Our ethical principles are rooted in our natural animal dispositions. When these natural dispositions are coupled with human reason then our ethical principles are formed and the authority upon which they rest is established.

ok, back to my old fashioned metaphysical Lockean, Burkean self. :)

The Beauty of an Illusion

A Racist Constitution?

A Political Review of the Hunger Games

The United States: A Republic If We Can Keep It

sorry for the intercom interruption at the very end of the video! :)

Sleep Walking

The problem with election years is that the biggest issues facing the country are covered in the pink slime of the emotion, obfuscation, avoidance and cynicism of the competing campaigns. "Issues" are brought into the focus of the public by the media professionals hired by the campaigns. They are designed to bridge a way of avoidance around problems that hover like a sword of damocles over the vitals of the nation.

15 trillion dollars of debt, unsustainable military commitments in almost every part of the globe, and an economy only barely able to sustain a trickle of economic growth even with reckless, bordering on insane, fiscal and monetary policies promulgated by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are the issues facing the country. This is the case if by issues you mean parts of reality that literally threaten the system of markets that facilitates the movement of goods that ensures the survival and protection from starvation of 310 million people, the very unity of the country, and its protection from its enemies.

If by issues you mean distortions of reality designed to "outrage", titillate, and tranquilize the voters just enough to turn off their minds but get their butts to the polls on election day, then we are engaged in the greatest debate in the history of the country, one that will uplift it and shower it with the honor of future generations as they contemplate our devotion to their future. Then our future well-being depends upon whether we are frightened by hooded african american males, believe that birth control for women is a threat to their eternal souls,and lights must be turned off and our cities descended into the voluntary darkness of our barbaric pre-technological past in order to "save the planet." If these are the issues then rest assured we can be sure the American People will make the right decision come November.

We wallow in the trivialities and passions of the momentary present while the near-future hurtles toward us like a brick wall.

Hamilton's Contributions to the New Nation

Alexander Hamilton's contribution to the early Republic was that of ordering the nation's finances so that it's debts could be regularly and orderly funded.

First, he used the prosperity, or potential prosperity, of the new nation to sell bonds backed by gold. Next Hamilton advocated a tax on imports to gain revenue for the federal government. Third, Hamilton advocated subsuming the debts of the states into that of the federal government. This was achieved by political compromise with Jefferson and Madison to move the new federal capital to the south. Last, Hamilton instituted a program to refund the federal dollars in circulation at only 1% using a central bank established in 1791.

Hamilton's policies allowed the new nation huge new sources of income through an increase in tarriff revenue. This was especially true after Jay's Treaty in 1794. This treaty removed British forts from American territory and opened the Ohio Valley to settlement. Also Pinkney's Treaty with Spain in 1795 opened the port of New Orleans to American exports thus allowing the trade of 3/8 of the new nation to flow freely south down "the father of waters" to all parts of the world. Devasting inflation that ravaged the new nations of Latin America in this period was avoided by the funding of the debt.

So we see how political compromise, sound diplomacy, and stable economics put the early Republic back on a path to economic prosperity after the dislocations and devastations of the Revolutionary War. It was no accident. It was about the decisions made, the compromises reached, and the unshakable belief in the unbounded potential of the country and using that potential as leverage to fund debts, and play off the great powers of Europe against one another in a bid for our attentions and favors.

Memories of a "Friend"

This song has been a guilty pleasure of mine for a few weeks now...it is best played at HIGH volume and right before going into a stressful situation where you need to kick some friggin ass verbally or intellectually. The lyrics are BRUTAL so leave your sensitivities in a deep grave :)

This song brings to mind an incident a "friend" :) related to me. Making love to a beautiful woman, in the after glow hearing the front door slam shut, angry, loveless boyfriend tramping down toward the bedroom yelling incomprehensible rantings. She is crazy and laughing saying "I will call later!!" Pulling up, zipping up, OUT the sliding glass door of the bedroom into the backyard and VAULTING over the back gate into the front yard!! almost breaking a leg, FLYING into the car parked on the street, START THE MOTOR GO!! :) AWAY!! This song blaring on the radio racing down the street. Yelling, laughing, pounding a fist into the car ceiling :) She calls later laughing her ass off at the incident :( you are NUTS girl!!

At least that is the way "my friend" tells it :)

Hatred

Another time was when we were told not to hate. The day was supposedly good, the night supposedly bad. The light and dark were opposites. But one day they began to blend, our eyes could not adjust to the odd light. We began to grow slowly blind. As we sit in this bland twilight of today our eyes deteriorate by the minute. Sight is a blur. What used to be well defined is almost now unknown to us. We stagger on, unable to see even the footprints we make in the shifting sands beneath our feet. Somewhere above we hear a whirlwind and a tempest brewing, increasing in sound and furry yet symbolizing nothing to us. Shiva begins to dance, we stand transfixed in fear and fascination. Our blindness increases till we are unable to look inward. We forget our souls, and come not to believe in them. They were only a child's dream, we convince ourselves. Now we require "proof" of their existence and our very blindness precludes us from it.

Blindness turns to blackness. We fall to our knees, gasping for breath. The whirlwind descends and the blackness turns to Hate. We devour our neighbors flesh with our teeth to gain strength from their agony. It is our last measure of sustenance. That is Hatred. That is the End.

Information and Ideas

This is an example of the kind of conversation that is absolutely urgent now in many aspects of our lives, it was urgent 20 years ago, it is perhaps now simply an anachronistic talk between two "old men who don't understand the new world" that some will simply dismiss as unimportant because it was conducted in 1988 which is before much of the technology that they think has shaped their ideas was invented.

But, as is a tendency of the mind, they confuse the result with the cause. Technology is a result of ideas and thought and the mind. It ultimately depends on it. Any system, be it philosophical or political or even scientific, whose premise is that it rests upon new technology is a system that will ultimately crumble to pieces. All "new" technology will be old very shortly. Those who build systems that posit some "new" way of thinking or living based on some supposedly "revolutionary" technology will ultimately be buffeted by intellectual chaos as the "new" technology they thought their culture was based on becomes obsolete. Or they will resort to the pseudo-progressive presentism that currently reigns among many "new atheists"(see between minutes 2:10 and 2:20) and they will elevate current scientific ideas and theories to the panacea of all human wisdom, never to be surpassed, thereby stultifying true scientific progress for future generations who must first smash the false idols of "high technology" before they can breakthrough and CREATE through ideas, the higher technology of the future that will dwarf anything that exists today.

True scientific progress depends not on the elevation of "science" and certainly not technology into a guiding beacon for every aspect of our culture from laws to art to education. Science depends upon human creation and creativity leading to ideas. To elevate CURRENT technology and science, which is by definition transitory and hypothetical, into a position of influence under which it was never designed to labor, is to ossify science into its current place and ultimately destroy it as if turning a roaring river into a stagnant, stinking, tepid pool of filth.

And here is the great Carlin seeming to argue with me and agree with all at once!! I love him for both errors :) and a collection of serious thinkers on the topic....

The beauty and ultimate reality of mind as opposed to brain is that it operates on so many different levels at once. It is true that physical stimulants directed at the brain cause physical reactions in the brain. But is this stimulus/response the end of the story? This is the data that we can measure and collect scientifically. But what occurs within the mind after the brain has collected the information and the physical response within the brain has been recorded?? If the brain is just like any other physical organ, like the liver say, why is it that brains react in such different ways to the same stimulus?? If the brain is simply a piece of matter whose reactions can be perfectly measured and predicted like any other bodily organ why is it that brains can resist impulses created by stimuli at all? Why is it that no two people, virtually, act the same way when they feel love, or hate, or pain, or hunger?? If it all was simply stimulus response then individual identity would be virtually non-existent. But we know empirically that individual identity exists.

The answer may lack strict definition. But we must say that the brain and the mind are not the same thing. The brain is the physical matter in your head in which physical reactions can be recorded. Mind is the process by which one assimilates all of those reactions into patterns corresponding to the needs and desires of the individual person. This process perhaps can be observed physically by observing reactions in the brain. But simply knowing the reactions of the physical brain does not tell you how the individual person will mentally assimilate and arrange all those reactions. It would be like recording the stone's impact on the pond but ignoring the ripples and movements of the water after its impact.Like the movements of water, the "knowing of thyself" cannot be measured because it is in continual movement. It is this movement of Mind, this pattern that is shapeless but directional that is the essence of your individual being

Sometimes the mind just needs to rest and let go....retreat and advance, retreat and advance,.....drift, drift drift, then imagine a pattern it wants to create and let 'er rip!! Wait, wait wait and then smash the paradigm and bring on a new one. I still love this song after alot of years. Life is about moments not events. Moments are internal, events are external. Moments are the mind's response to events.Rage, as long as it is controlled, is an underrated emotion.

watch me crash and burn in various ways on twitter as I systematically destroy what is left of my vocabulary in a sea of trite comments, irrelevant info, and silly acronyms, and loads and loads of the most mindless YET MODERN AND TRENDY bullshit :) @jhog667

There is no website more dedicated to the dissemination of useless, irrelevant information designed more to obfuscate the truth than reveal it. Other than perhaps this one :) It's amazing to me so many on there are the most literate intelligent people and they just bathe themselves in that trite, warm feeling of separation masquerading as togetherness and friendship. What porno is to sex twitter is to words. But I am a hypocrite so both have their uses :)

To Begin With (I)

The universe began 13 billion years ago in the so-called "big bang." The event was less an explosion than an astronomically rapid expansion. The universe expanded from the size of an atom to the size of the present Milky Way in a fraction of a fraction of a second. If one had been looking at this atom from the outside and blinked one's eyes, a realm the size of a galaxy would have appeared before one's eyes.

After about 300,000 years the universe had cooled to the point where matter and energy separated. It was then therefore possible for solids (matter) and radiation (energy) to exist in separate and unitary forms. (free matter and free energy). It was not until about 1 billion years after the "big bang" that the first stars began to form.

The first, most simple, elements in the universe were hydrogen and helium. Hydrogen atoms made up about 74% of all atoms and helium the other 24% in the entire universe. The first stars were simple formations formed by hydrogen and helium matter collapsing in on itself. As the gravitational field of the matter pulled the hydrogen and helium together it created an explosion. In a sense, a star is simply a continuous controlled explosion with the explosion of the collision of the atoms being constantly acted upon by the opposite force of the gravitation pulling the atoms back in on themselves and continuing the controlled explosion outward.

The implosive force created by the gravitational fields of the atoms and the explosive force that created by the collision of the atoms created a chaotic yet stable balance in which a star was born sending out photons of potentially life-giving radiation in all directions.

We can thus perceive that the two basic interactive forces in the universe are the original explosive force of the "big bang" and the implosive forces of the gravitational fields of solid bodies of matter. In this way, the creation of one star is similar to the creation of the entire universe in microcosm. The same basic forces continue to operate to this very moment in the present.

Continuing with more soon....

Here......When the explosive forces of a star are just being born, it gives off debris matter which begin to form orbital patterns around the star. These pieces of matter begin to crash and coalesce into large chunks of rock. Some of these bodies generally, eventually become planets.

In the beginning of a planets life there is usually a large amount of gaseous matter forming the bulk of the planet. Young suns give off solar winds. These winds blow off the gassy excesses of the inner planets but those winds do not reach out to the outer planets. Therefore, the inner planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars became rocky. Gaseous atmospheres were blown away. The outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune were too far out from the solar winds for their gaseous atmospheres to be blown away. So, they are now huge gas balls with a small, hard inner core. Pluto is a rocky planetoid (formerly considered a planet) In that far orbit out with Pluto there are thousands of planetoids that lazily orbit the sun, some of which are bigger than Pluto.

Getting now to Earth, the first life on Earth were called Prokaryotes. These were one-celled organisms with no nucleus that could hardly even move. They did not come into being until 3.8 billion years ago. That is roughly a billion years after the beginning of Earth.

More soon...........

Debates on Religion

Penn...... and here is a short debate I had with an intelligent Atheist interlocutor on an atheist woman's youtube channel in the comments section....I'd say I got bettered, but not cuz I am wrong!! :) just dumb....but right lol.

and an unexpected yet quite moving and poignant video on the death of a mother and mental illness......

Hitchens v Hedges

A smashing good debate, Atheist v Theist. Anyone up against Hitchens in a debate is in trouble because of his ability to think on his feet and adjust his argument mid-stream. Hedges is diligent but not as quick.

The "Jupiter" Symphony Mozart

I haven't heard this in a couple of years. This first movement has the power of a freight train and the beauty of a meadow. It lights my mind on fire, rips my heart out and tosses it on the flames.

And there is something about music that evokes a certain resistance to suffering that I am still glad I don't completely understand (but I'll keep trying to) because it might not then have the same effect :) faith has been broken, tears must be cried, let's do some living after we've died.

It is why humans generally play music in preparation for an activity or event...weddings, wars, sporting events, just before a politician speaks(usually some twangy awful country thing, at least in the US, oh god!!) to drown out someone's annoying voice before you have to listen to it :) (did I equate weddings and wars??!!) uh oh hehe they have averted some wars in history....and started some....although Paris running off with Helen wasn't really marriage I guess....call it consensual coital bondage leading to carnage :) (good band name)

On The Advantages to IT of an Integrative Technological View

YONK 1220-Taking The Gloves Off, Putting on the Brass Knuckles

The Kony 2012 video is the most ridiculous piece of government-media propaganda ever made. Its style is childish. While it purports to be so respectful of the "Milennial Generation" at whom it is targeted, it talks to them like they are 80 IQ sub-morons. The powers that be are counting on the ignorance of the younger generation to support every US military intervention anywhere using this cheap, silly propaganda piece that is produced like an episode of Sesame Street.

Now, the US intelligence-media complex is getting its ass handed to it by members of the Millenial Generation as they are proving themselves to be not as gullible, dumbed down and stupid as the Frat-boy and sorority girl cabal that runs the government thought they were.

Their "Manchurian Generation" of teen and twenty somethings that the public school system has been practically breeding from birth to be aliterate, good little global citizens who follow orders when they are texted and tweeted to do so is not proving as pliable and subservient as these rat fucking bastards thought they were going to be. Maybe there is hope for humanity after all.

This guy is abrasive as hell I know, if you can't deal with him skip ahead to the five minute mark as a Ugandan-American girl verbally kicks the ass of the corrupt intelligence-Africa Command propaganda purveyors.....

And Here.........., and here is my token white girl.

Vonnegut Interview 1991

book recommendations for Vonnegut, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" and "Mother Night", I just love this guy,believes in the power of words, iconoclastic and unpredictable, fearless, tells the world to stick it,....when warranted :) again don't agree with him on everything but.....it would be a strange world if artists all conformed to my personal opinions!!

Ideological Competition As A Source of National Progress

One of the paradoxes of American history is that the competing ideas of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson worked interdependently with and against one another as a stimulant to national power. New Yorker Hamilton's idea of the importance of industry and cities and Virginian Thomas Jefferson's vision of filling the continent with yeoman farmers, loyal Americans all, acted as a facilitating "hidden hand" guiding the nation toward a powerful and prosperous future.

If Hamilton's idea of teeming Eastern cities had fully prevailed in the 1790s it is likely that as Americans moved west they would have formed separate nations. A continental nation would have never come to fruition. If Jefferson's idea of a nation in constant revolution and mass numbers of yeoman farmers had prevailed, it is unlikely the U.S. would have ever developed the industrial base that ultimately provided the great markets for the farmers and led to industrial expansion and the global power of the United States. So the two founding philosophies of the nation,in many ways opposites of one another, in their competition advanced the interests of the nation and increased national power. Hamilton's ideas provided the markets and industrial muscle upon which the creation of wealth is based. Jefferson's ideas provided the raison d' etre for the nation and a source of its political stability. People WANT, DESIRE to be part of a nation where they are recognized as rightfully pursuing happiness. Such people had no reason to form new nations as they moved West. The stability and power reinforced one another as the decades passed.

If either the Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian ideas had fully prevailed in the 1790s the nation would most likely have fragmented into separate nations. It was PRECISELY then the willingness to share power with others whom one might disagree with and the willingness to compromise and accept political defeat, that unified the nation. This willingness was fostered not by any benevolence toward one's political foes but by two uniquely(at the time) American political characteristics. Those were, first, the regularity of opportunities for political change in the form most notably of bi-annual congressional elections. Second, most importantly, the diffusion of political power in American life allowed for ambitious men and women to fulfill their political ambitions in others avenues besides the Federal way.States were recognized as having purview in some constitutionally stipulated jurisdictions which federal power had no, or little, authority.

Perhaps it is the increased centralization of federal power in American political life that has led to the greatly polarized and sclerotic American political universe. Politically ambitious elites are less willing to take their ideas and energies to the local or state level, knowing that there is an increasing irrelevancy to them as power and money is coagulated in the federal head.

Last, as a slight aside, it may be the case that the ultimate reason for the Civil War by 1861 was that Hamiltonian policies had almost completely prevailed in the north and Jeffersonian policies in the south. The two regions increasingly saw each other as separate nations that threatened one another.

No ideological victory by a party or faction will advance the interests of the nation. In a democratic republic all political victories must only be temporary and partial or the nation will cease to be a republic and the democratic faction that takes power will ultimately declare itself the majority and extinguish democracy as well. For political victories to remain temporary our elections must continue at short regular intervals AND they must be truly fair and not rigged. For political victories to remain partial, not total, the integrity, concurrent jurisdiction and shared sovereignty of the 50 states must be preserved. Competing jurisdictions are not important to satisfy the parochial concerns of some state's rights fanatics. They are essential to the maintenance of a pluralistic, ideologically diverse democratic republic because they allow for at least the partial fulfillment of the avarice for power so common, especially today, among political elites.

To try to promote an artificial harmony and concord of ideas in this country by legal coercion or social pressure is only to make the divisions in the country worse. The solution is not to limit or diminish the competing ideas but to increase the vehicles by which those competing ideas can not only be heard but can at least partially share in political power. Ideas like these will only come from our localities, up through the states and finally to the federal government. Any move in the opposite direction will only promote the idea that power must be grasped firmly and perpetually because the opportunity to wield it may never arise again. This is the way to friction, faction, and disaster. It is the way our founders warned us not to travel and then lit a constitutional path by which later generations could avoid this unhappy state.

Bees Do It, Fleas Do It??

Fly?, conjugate verbs??....this is my favorite version of this by Ella even better than the Cole Porter, in my opinion....

The Dangers of Using A Blog as a Bumper Sticker

For me, I choose to not use a blog as a pure representation of all my views. All I put up here, even some of the things I say verbally, are not necessarily my final thoughts on a topic. And often I will post something that I, to a small or large degree, disagree with because I find that I tend to strengthen my thinking and arguments by playing off their arguments. (And well, hell, sometimes I learn something or even change my opinion God Forbid!! :)

This is similar to judo in which you use the force of your opponent against him by constantly deflecting that force off of you and thereby wearing him down. This was also at the heart of Ghandi's Principle of Satyagraha or "truth force" usually called non-violence. One often can win an argument by simply allowing your opponent to speak. This, to my mind, is the best argument for free speech, from a utilitarian standpoint. (its as well why I don't understand the Left's giddiness about the supposed downfall of Limbaugh)

One defends his or her rights by exercising them and simply refusing to accept their curtailment. If silence satisfies our sensitivities that is all well, but it will only be a cacophony of voices rising in vociferous indignity and anger that will defend OUR liberties when WE are silenced. We depend on each other to defend each other rights, even those we disagree with. A nation of atomized individuals is an inert mass awaiting its enslavement.To betray one another to the highest bidder that promises the maintenance of order in exchange for the liberty of our political opponents will ultimately betray our own liberty. In the end that bidder will come for ours as well and then who will speak out for us?? We must have each others backs, as they say, even those we might detest.

As a general rule the music I post(if not lyrically then melodically) and my personal writings are things that are genuinely part of my philosophic outlook.

It irritates me when people automatically assume that a blog is like a bumper sticker or a t-shirt in which every little item within it is a pure representation of the thoughts or views of the author. To me, that would be to imprison oneself in an iron casket impenetrable to the giving and living oxygen of others minds, hearts and thoughts.

To that end, here's a writer I often disagreed with but learned much from......

Buddha and Sinatra :)

One and a half good one's from Johnson and a Sinatra/GuysnDolls Classic :)

Seasons Turning

Two Leading Thinkers on the Link Between Power and Knowledge

A Thomas L. Friedman piece and wisdom from a flawed genius....

The Candidate

The scene from the film "The Candidate" of 1972 that still tells you so much about US politics....it is the vast and growing gap between the entertainment culture campaigns we have now in which the campaign tries to turn the candidate into the "trend choice", the guy "everyone is voting for", and the reality of governing a nation that is hurtling apart ideologically. We all say we object to these kind of campaigns, but in the end we all want them so we can be "entertained."

Its time to crush the culture of video vanity that has built up since the early part of the 20th century and replace it with more substance...it is poisoning politics (this coming from an extremely vain person :) But it won't change, the image culture is too seductive, too easy, and we all want to be seduced, or do the seducing.

Anyway, this scene says it and more. It was true in 1972, it is exponentially more true today. By the way, its the very last scene of the movie before the credits roll. Notice the fawning crowd, adoring their "new leader." or Senator in this case. Redford played a liberal senate candidate from California in the 1972 or perhaps 1970 elections, its not specified during the film.

Panetta Speaks to Military Props

My former Congressman from the Monterey Bay, California speaks to a group of rather skeptical looking soldiers almost certainly forced to stand there mute for the cameras. I disagree with the headline of disgracing the flag, I don't quite understand that one. However, Panetta does look rather ridiculous in a light blue Air Force Falcons football windbreaker, like he's attending a sports event.

More to the point, Panetta here speaks of "the international community" putting pressure on Iran. And today, in his congressional testimony Panetta asserted that the President already has the potential authority to use the military in Syria by the authority of potential UN resolutions, presumably under the erroneous argument that treaties, in this case the UN Charter, are "part of the Constitution" and are therefore obligatory in there function upon the actions of the US government. This is a false assertion. Treaties have never been judged to be "part of the Constitution" and therefore Constitutional Law. No, treaties are TREATY LAW, not Constitutional. Therefore, a UN resolution under the UN Charter does not negate the Constitutional obligation of Congress to approve of the force AND the funds to pay for it, that is clearly granted by the existing Constitution itself in Article I.

Treaties have been judged to supersede the authority of statute laws passed previously to the enactment of the treaty which interfere with the terms of the treaty. Treaties have never been judged to take away the power of Congress to enact statute law passed subsequently to the enactment of the treaty that is in pursuance of the Constitution.

The Constitution in Article VI states, "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States, which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land...." This clearly separates out the three types of law; Constitutional, Statutory, and Treaty. It does not state that a treaty is Constitutional law but clearly puts it in a separate category. Is one to argue then that treaty law is obligatory over the Constitution itself when the clause clearly does not give treaty law this authority? It states that Congress has the right to make all laws IN PURSUANCE OF THE CONSTITUTION.

Therefore it cannot sensibly be argued that a UN resolution, especially since it was not part of the original UN charter, removes the right of the Congress to pass and enforce laws that are in pursuance of the most fundamental powers that the Constitution grants it; that is the power to authorize force and the power to decide upon the funds for it. All of these powers are not simply Congressional powers. They are powers of the American People through their Representatives!! To say that a UN resolution can allow or worse FORCE!! a President to engage United States forces in war is a legal abomination and quite simply a denial of each American a representative voice in his or her government, thus violating a fundamental precept of Article I, the necessity of representation in Congress.

To say that a UN resolution obligates the US to use force or somehow "grants" the President the authority to use force is absurd on its face. Both choices are laughable and illegal. Under the former presumption our obligation to follow a UN resolution would require us to send US forces into war not only without the approval of Congress BUT ALSO even potentially without the approval of a President!! as the President is not allowed to violate the Constitution either. Under the latter presumption the President HAS THE OPTION to follow the treaty or not, clearly an absurdity. Thus we see the twin twisted arguments in their bald-faced lunacy:the first asserting the President is a Constitutional eunuch in the face of Treaty Law, the second asserting the President is a super-statutory potentate whose will can supersede the flaccid parchment of a mere treaty.

Beyond the legal arguments, to assert that a UN resolution, an organization set up to preserve peace, can oblige the American military to go to war is at best a dubious moral conundrum.

The Congress must regain its will to use the authority it Constitutionally possesses, not on behalf of a particular political party or even of itself; but on behalf of the People of the United States who are still the constitutional sovereign in this country. If not, if Congress continues to hide behind the curtain of the fiction that executive power is in all ways superior to it, then it deserves the unpopularity and increasing anonymity in which it wallows and whines.

Here is a portion of, in my opinion, nearly unbelievable testimony by Secretary Panetta to queries by Senator Sessions. To those of you on the Left, try to reverse the picture and have a liberal Democrat questioning a right-wing defense secretary backed by hawk-face generals. In other words, don't attack the man(Sessions) attack his argument if you like, but don't give me some line about "southern right-wingers" or whatever, that is not the issue here and I think you know it. Deal with the ISSUE not the personalities that you like or dislike.

Allen and Buckley

Liberals and Conservatives coming together :) Woody and W.F. Buckley in their prime....

Whiskey, Cigs, and Jefferson

The old Trotskyite at his best; bloated, sloshed, unkempt....and brilliant as usual. May he rest in peace, and continue to think and write with passion, if not in the next world he did not believe in but through others in this one.

The Assassination of President Garfield; E-book Preservation

Candice Millard......

Doctorow on e-books and other stuff.....

Lehigh Valley Tea Party Teach In

Professor Alan Charles Kors......

A Working Analysis of Fear As Hindrance and Facilitator of a Successful Life

"Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once."

unknown author aka Billy Shakespeare :)

"Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?" perhaps fear??

same author, "King Lear"

"we all have wings, but some of us don't know why." Michael Hutchence

Like so many other words "fear", the word not the thing, is a catch-all for a whole host of related yet different emotions. The key in life is not to do the impossible and banish fear from one's life. This is to become less than human, an automaton, it is to swallow pills to keep away the inner doubts that fear can bring during the paralysis it can cause.The key to a happier life is to find the aspects of fear that thrill you, exhilarate you, and motivate you and to banish those aspects of fear that enervate you, paralyze you, and cause you to see life as a frozen mountain to cower before instead of a sea of wonderment to cast off into.

This will be an ongoing attempt at an anatomy of fear. Ultimately it will be unsuccessful as are all attempts to put emotions into words. But words, as I often say, are still the best and most human way we have to deal with all aspects of our lives, from the sublime to the terrible. Every word one writes is an act of creation within oneself and in one's reader. It creates thousands of different thoughts and emotions in yourself and the reader. So combat fear, in the first instance, through acts of creation. Initially let words be your theorem, your poem, your sculpture, or your skyscraper. To not make the attempt simply because it will fail is perhaps my first example of a negative aspect of fear; its power to enervate. To combat that one must learn to love failure, to look at it from the outside in, to learn from it.

Discussing Iran In 2009: Zbig

Zbig usually gets it about right in my opinion. When an outcome in foreign affairs turns out to be in the US interest everyone says that US policy "worked." And vice versa. Everyone disregards the fact that there are thousands of factors that go into whether revolutions succeed or fail, mainly internal to the nation involved that have nothing to do with US policy. And here from 2008 in part discussing the man who just became Russia's new President......

Marshall Eakin on the Revolutions of Latin America

A brilliant teacher on a too much neglected topic

City of Angels

This song almost got me through my early 20s....almost :)

Haydn Symphony #42

Haydn speaks for himself....the best symphonies flow like great conversation.....great conversation flows like a symphony....this one shows Haydn's brilliance in musical form and blending

US Attempts to Balance off Eurasian Powers (I)

US Attempts to Balance off Eurasian Powers (II)

The Syrian Cat and Mouse Games

Russian naval flotilla just off Scotland. Some months ago

Cicero's Concept of Knowledge

Marcus Cicero had an interesting way of describing a human being's attempt to grasp and gain knowledge. He said to think of your left hand and your right hand. First, feel the right hand. That is the sensation that is the bedrock of all knowledge: the senses. Second, feel the right hand beginning to form a fist. That is the grasping at understanding, or the ascent to knowledge. Third, squeeze the right hand fist tightly into a ball. This is your comprehension of ideas and facts. Last, true knowledge comes when you firmly grasp your right fist with your left hand and join the two together.

Cicero, like John Locke, believed that all knowledge comes to us through the senses, it is not innate to us. But our senses are configured in a way that allows us to use the data they collect in unusual and creative ways, this is called reason, centered in our brain but not exclusive to it. In Cicero's analogy, this is the left hand grasping the right:the force within us that orders the facts and ideas we perceive, our Reason.

In this light, we might say reason is simply another form of sense like touch, taste, sight, or smell. But it is the sense that integrates all the others when they arrive in our bodies. For instance, when we hear music why don't we just hear a jumble of sounds? What is it that perceives patterns in the sound that move us to tears, anger, love, or war? It is not the ears, they are merely the conduits. What perceives or "senses" the pattern in the sound is our reason, which is centered primarily in our brain but also partly in our heart. This is why our heart rate can rise when we hear music we enjoy, or hear the voice of someone we love.

Now think of a night sky in the country filled with thousands of stars. What do our eyes perceive? Thousands of dots of light. If we simply believed our eyes why should we assume that they are anything else but little lights in the sky? If a dog or cat looked skyward at night and saw the same little lights what would he/she think it was seeing??....little lights, nothing more. For us, a being that is also human, our reason tells us something about those little lights is more interesting than what we simply see. They must be gods, or planets or stars or something. That part of our reason is called our imagination.

So we see that our reason and imagination are simply the same perception in different forms. Our reason in its pure form is the ability to see or detect patterns in sight, sound, etc. Our reason in its Imaginative form is the ability to discern the possibility that a pattern may exist even when we do not see it. Related to this, it is also the ability to CREATE patterns that do not exist yet. This is called art. It is our reason, through the power of our imagination that allows us to be creative, to create patterns......in painting, architecture, music, politics, business, cooking, writing, medicine, acting, engineering, computer science, or any number of human endeavors.

Discovery and invention are the healthy children of reason and imagination. It is not necessity that mothered invention but imagination. Indeed, we often imagine a necessity to justify an invention. We seek to cloak our passion to imagine in the proper homespun of utility while secretly sporting the more garish garments of whimsy and spontaneity of which our imagination adorns itself.

So, imagine this: was fire discovered or invented? Of course both. We discovered that it existed through simple reason that it might be useful to us and not simply something to avoid. But we invented those uses through our imagination. The fire did not create its uses, human beings created uses for fire through imagination. Imagine that next time you are roasting a marsh mellow by a campfire.

Aldous Huxley

A prophetic interview.....

The Old Master

There is something mystical about music that puts a smile on your face. When Ray sang, music herself could not help but smile :)

Wandering Through History

A short and informal examination of the concept of multi-coastal national purpose in World History.

Wondering Through History

A short and informal examination of the concept of multi-coastal national purpose in American History

Multiple Intelligence I

Multiple Intelligence II

Gentle Government

A short, inadequate attempt to explain the concept of "gentle government."

Syria

News from Syria

Security at the Library