Sad account by a former novice.

http://hocna.info/Testimony-Elias.shtml

Legions of Love

Who are you? I asked myself.
I am not a who; I am a what.
I am a misstatement written into the divine dissertation.
I am an object of scorn and derision,
Fit only for the role of hobble-de-hoi to the mass of
Humans who were turned out perfectly to plan.

Yes, a something to be burlesqued and poked at
And never meant to be part of the whole.
Not from outside, no. But within, which shows without,
A storm; a tempest; a volcano caused by and yet causing
A breach from those whom I long to be a part of.

Yet, I think there is hope, sometimes…but when I try
To make myself like them I fail, for I do not know
Their ways. Truth to tell, I take joy in my differentness,
For I would not change myself one jot nor one tittle.
I walk a different path, a different route,
But not one on which I am the only traveler.

Yea, we are legion, said the evil one.
But, yea, we are also legion, we are the outcasts,
The despised ones. For we are gifted of God
And charged by Him to bring a message…
The message of Love to all who persecute us.

by Frank F.

Note:

Frank and I worked in the same office for several years. He has sent me this poem, and given me permission to post it.

He invites comment.

Frank has not named the poem, but I have chosen the name "Legions of Love"

The Sarlacc Monster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarlacc

I became interested after reading this blog on the brutality in the Old Testament.

Origin of term Good Friday

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06643a.htm

Good Friday, called Feria VI in Parasceve in the Roman Missal, he hagia kai megale paraskeue (the Holy and Great Friday) in the Greek Liturgy, Holy Friday in Romance Languages, Charfreitag (Sorrowful Friday) in German, is the English designation of Friday in Holy Week -- that is, the Friday on which the Church keeps the anniversary of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Parasceve, the Latin equivalent of paraskeue, preparation (i.e. the preparation that was made on the sixth day for the Sabbath; see Mark 15:42), came by metonymy to signify the day on which the preparation was made; but while the Greeks retained this use of the word as applied to every Friday, the Latins confined its application to one Friday. Irenaeus and Tertullian speak of Good Friday as the day of the Pasch; but later writers distinguish between the Pascha staurosimon (the passage to death), and the Pascha anastasimon (the passage to life, i.e. the Resurrection). At present the word Pasch is used exclusively in the latter sense. The two Paschs are the oldest feasts in the calendar.

From the earliest times the Christians kept every Friday as a feast day; and the obvious reasons for those usages explain why Easter is the Sunday par excellence, and why the Friday which marks the anniversary of Christ's death came to be called the Great or the Holy or the Good Friday. The origin of the term Good is not clear. Some say it is from "God's Friday" (Gottes Freitag); others maintain that it is from the German Gute Freitag, and not specially English. Sometimes, too, the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons; so today in Denmark.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/4/messages/1017.html

The Anglo-Saxons used to call the day of Christ's crucifixion Long Friday, an allusion to the length of the church services, and in the Greek Church it is known as the Holy or Great Friday, according to "How Did It Begin" by R. Brash.

The Germans refer to it as Karfreitag. "The Kar part is an obsolete word, the ancestor of the English word care in the sense of cares and woes, and it meant mourning. So in German, it is Mourning Friday. And that is what the disciples did on that day-they mourned. They thought all was lost," Ken Collins, Disciples of Christ minister from McLean, Va., explains on his web site (http://www.kencollins.com/welcome.htm).

But most of us call the day Good Friday. There are several theories about the origin of this term.
1. This is "an archaic sense of good, synonymous with holy." (Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins by William and Mary Morris.)

2. "Some scholars argue that 'good' is a corruption of 'God' and that early Christians commemorating the sad event called it God's Friday." (Sacred Origins of Profound Things by Charles Panati.)

3. "It is possible that the appellative was chosen simply to distinguish the day from all the other Fridays throughout the year." (How Did It Begin.)

And, perhaps the best explanation:
4. "Others claim that 'good' signifies the bounty of blessings - indeed, salvation - Christ won for human kind by his sacrifice." (Sacred Origins of Profound Things.)

Prehistoric Accounting

I found a fascinating introductory tutorial on Accounting, which describes prehistoric accounting, prior to the invention of writing and numbers.

http://www.middlecity.com/ch01.shtml

And the above page refers to a fabulous history of accounting at

http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/FIRST.html

I had a long chat today with my best internet friend in Singapore, and I mention it at the end.

I would post the link to it here, but, Myspace is getting so funny about embedded links. I will repost all this, together with the link at literarytalk.blogspot.com if anyone is curious to read the tutorial on accounting.

Here are excerpts from my side of today's chat:

I can remember so many times, in my childhood, being very sick around easter time

I take ZYCAM lozenges, at the first sign (ticle sniffle), and that seems to shorten the illness

Somehow, it has to do with a zinc compound they contain

Usually, most of my life, I will be dreadfully sick for a week or two
but, zycam seems to shorten it to 2 or 3 days...

From time time I was 1 year old, I got sick all the time, very poor resistance

My resistance got better around puberty time
I mean, all those chemical changes in the body

But I used to miss 1/3 of each school year, until 8th grade
It made me self-conscious, to be like a freak, absent so much

Once or twice, the school sent authorities to my mother's house, to argue with her, that I should not miss so much
It was always like bronchitis, ear infections, fever...
But, it was not something people could LOOK at and see, and say, oh, he is really handicapped...
I mean, if I were in a wheelchair, or something obvious

I think my childhood of sickness and absenteeism negatively affected my personality, my ability to relate to others


(regarding bar codes)



in the beginning, 2 years ago, I told him he would need barcode, and he laughed
but, then, certain customers demanded it, so he was desperate for me to do barcode so, I set up the whole thing, which means signing up with the one agency that controls all barcode and paying $1500 and you get software that connects with their site, and issues you a unique UPC-A and ITF-14 code for each product

I had to scramble to get hold of a scanner
so, a computer repair person came one night, and we paid him for a WASP scanner which came with barcode software which we needed, to print barcode on AVERY labels and, I spent $100 with ELFGIN to get their UPC-A fonts.... which I wound up not using, because I had the WASP label software

But, last week, I realized that ELFGIN gave me an EXCEL spreadsheet model, with the vba to produce the barcode IN A SPREADSHEET CELL
except, it only shows up if your machine has their special fonts installed
AND, they have a licensing requirement....
So, if you give their stuff away, you could get in trouble. They have a way to mark several bytes of each font to indicate piracy

If you buy one of their products for $99, then, if you want a 5 user license, you pay and additional $99 and they have a whole chart, which shows what you pay for up to 10,000 users

But, if you write them, they will quote you on a developer's license to distribute their stuff with your software product
But, they have to quote you,... and they will ask the nature of the product, the cost, the potential user market, and I suppose whether you register
AND, they sell special fonts to let you legally include their barcode in a PDF

Now, the WASP labeler, lets me produce a jpg image of the barcode
no one mentioned the legality of my distributing those, or making downloadable pdfs

I tried to build an Excel spreadsheet with those jpg images right next to the barcode but, such spreadsheets are unstable, no matter what I do
you cant really control a huge number of jpg images

BUT, I notice that if I use the ELFGIN vba with their fonts,,.... then, the barcode is a piece of cake and stable and if you print it, it is scanable but, I cant send anyone such a spreadsheet, unless I find a way to legally let them install the fonts and, most companies are too cheap to run out and buy their own package for $99

it is $99 for UPC-A,E .... and another $99 for ITF-14 (which I just recently learned stands for interleaved two of five)
UPC-A (or E for super tiny, like a stick of gum), goes on the product that passes over the counter scanner
while ITF-14 is for things like the shipping carton, or pallet/skid
so the carton with 10 boxes candy, would have its own ITF-14, while each box of candy inside would have the UPC-A
and, your mfg would put them on the packaging at the factory

Oh, and, if you are doing private label for someone, and you use YOUR upc-a, then, it is traceable to your company.... in a public WHOIS type of site
part of the upc is a code for the company

So, you have to be smart enough not to do a private label with a barcode, unless you tell your customer to go register for their own barcode

Now, anyone can make up their own code 3 of 9, or other type of code, for their products,.... but UPC, must be controlled by GS1US, which you join for $1500, plua $500 each year because, that is the only way that every product in north America will be unique

Well, in Europe it is EAN: European article number
and, they have their own European not for profit code organization
but, obviously, if something is in the stores in a market place.... with many cash register scanners...then, it must be unique

and, if you private labeled, then, your customer could provide barcoding
historically, the very first product to ever be scanned at a cash register, with barcode, was Wrigley Spearmint Gum. The Wrigley Gum company pioneered the technology

And now, for example, Walmart is so large, with so much clout, that it can demand that its suppliers use those frequency emitting beads
so, you dont have to scan each carton...You just walk through the warehouse, and a computer analyzes all the radio transmissions and you know product and quantity

I dont really understand it too well
but, that is the general idea

The US government did not have enough clout to force Microsoft to change something about Windows,.... BUT the European Common Market DID have enough economic clout, so, Microsoft conformed to some demand
it was a show about the history and future of the European Common Market
which in some ways resembles, but in other ways differs from "The United States of Europe"

French Guiana, in South America, is the largest area under the European common market, but not in Europe. They use the Euro for their currency.... and they are under France's Prime Minister Sarkozy but, they have their own governor

I think Fr. Guiana has a very small population, and vast tropical forests

We sent one small shipment there, and I got curious

The government WANTS to keep competition in the market place

I think Microsoft once did something to help out apple, just so they could steer clear of anti-trust

A vertical monopoly would mean, lets say, that ALL sandpaper, or chewing gum, or whatever is controlled by one company where as horizontal would mean that you are into agriculture, food processing, wholesale, and distribution..
I am guessing

So, a Google on horizontal vertical monopoly antitrust would yield some interesting stuff

Search engines and internet has really change life dramatically

When I was a kid, starting 6th grade, my mom forced my father to buy an expensive encyclopedia (World Book), just so I could do my homework
and it had to be new enough to have stuff about modern things like missiles... because thats what we were doing

It was either home encyclopedia, or go to the library... and libraries were a long car drive, with limited hours,.... and in small towns, were poorly stocked
but, now, all a kid needs is internet

I would never used an encyclopedia even if I had one

But in the 1950s, encyclopedia salesmen would go door to door
My uncle was one of them selling encyclopedias door to door

It is all ancient history now

I found a paper on accounting, its history and like around 5000 bc.... when they shipped oil or wine or grain

They would take little toy symbols, which represent each barrel of oil, or bottle of wine...
and they would bake them into a large clay ball
so, the ship master, or caravan master, would take that, and deliver it to the customer the customer would break the clay ball, and look at the symbols, to see that the shipment was complete

It was a bill of lading. That was before writing, numbers, etc


They figure that one day, a wet clay ball must have rolled over a small figure, and left a mark which gave people the idea for cuneiform

I have the link to the paper, and I will blog it on Myspace


I blog about interesting things, whenever I find them


Blogging distracts me from my sorrows...
I mean, that is kind of what I use Internet and blogging and chat for

D.H. Lawrence - Sons and Lovers

Here is the link where I found the entire novel on line.

http://www.fullbooks.com/Sons-and-Lovers-by-David-Herbert-Lawrence-D.html


When I tried to embed this link at my blog on Myspace, it was instantly disabled and the message that appeared was kind of unprofessional, talking about "head lice".

I guess Myspace has problems with malicious links, so this is their solution.

Perhaps, programatically, certain words like "lovers" trigger link disabling.

Anyway, I do not think I will be embadding any more links at myspace. I will embed links here, for anyone who is interested.

Some Friends on Myspace

Hanuman (Geetanjali)

Cheryl Lynn Brown

Just An Irishman (Rich Merritt)

Scott (Nebraska)

Krishna (Singapore)

Falstaff

Lynn

Father V.

Rebecca

Jackie

Dream girl the realtor

Aloyisius Grant

Stephen Pitkin (Music)

Ami

InMemoryOfTheSurvived

Dennis

P (St. John's Alumna)

Judy

Cee, Southern Lady of Color

Jaz

Ceasar

Camarque

Bryan

Jim

Hell Hendonzer (very funny)

Old Bearded One

Deepam

Grinnin Sinner

E.P.

Dalibor

English

Lauren

Patrick Brogan

AUM

Kumar

Pearl The Mime

Bertram

Nakia

Che

Katelynn

Pharmakon

Kumar

Algeogoddess

Dragonsita Wolf

Doubt, Alienation and Heresiology

I mentioned in a previous blog that I would be posting upon the following book. I found it germane to post this in reply to someone else's blog, but I shall take the liberty to repost in my own blog, so that I may more conveniently continue this important topic.



If we stand back and consider the phenomenon of alienation in its broadest possible abstraction, whether it be on the basis of religion, ethnicity, gender, or some other basis, then our inquiry leads naturally to the construction of orthodoxy and heresy, which is dealt with in great depth by John B. Henderson:



[By the way, with regard to ostracism on the basis of doubted virtue, someone has written regarding the similar accounts of a virtuous woman slandered in Hinduism (Sita), Christianity (Mary), and Islam (Ayeshia). ]



JB Henderson- Constructing Orthodoxy&Heresy
The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy

By John B. Henderson - SUNY press

ISBN 0-7914-3759-0

I stumbled across this slim volume by accident in a used book store.

I am certain it is still in print, but will have to check.

This book is very helpful in discussing Elaine Pagels books on the Gnostics and the Nag Hammadi manuscripts.

This book is a real eye-opener, for it takes as its topic the fundamental and ubiquitous process of heresiography in four very different religions; neo-Confuscian Taoism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

Here are two excerpts which demonstrate how valuable this book can be in understanding current events.

From Ch. 1, Preliminary Overview of Heresy and Heresiography, Page 10



Despite its undeserved reputation for monolithicity and conformity, Islam is among the most fractious of the world's great religions. According to the great Islamic heresiographer, al-Baghdadi (d. 1037), the Kharijite sect alone split into twenty different sub-groups. Nor were the various Islamic sects reluctant to enter into theological conflict with one another. Thus polemic is one of the most widely represented genres in the history of Islamic religious literature, to the extent that “Theology in Islam, more perhaps than in other religions, is a contentious science."

Not only was Islamic theology often quite contentious, but much of it was formulated in the first place in the process of refuting or rejecting heresies. (i.e. it is the HERESY which appears first, and THEN the ORTHODOX view is formulated to combat the heresy.) According to al-Ghazali (d. 1111) account of the origin of theology in Islam, God brought into being the class of theologians and moved them to support traditional orthodoxy with the weapon of systematic argument, by laying bare the confused doctrines invented by the heretics, at variance with traditional orthodoxy. But theologians were not the only heresiographers in Islam. As the great modern student of Islamic heresiography, Henri Laoust, has remarked, “All Muslim thinkers, whether they belong to the category of canon lawyer, dogmatic theologian, traditionist, or philosopher, are also in their own way and to some degree heresiographers."

By Islamic lights, the heresiographical roles was by no means a mean one unworthy of a great philosopher or theologian. For the heresiographer was the heir of the holy warrior of yore, though he might conduct jihad “more against heresy inside the world of Islam than against the infidels outside its territories. In Ghazali's words, heresiographers were the protectors of religion through proof and demonstration, just as warriors were through sword and lance. In medieval Islam, where sectarian identification, as opposed to ethnic, cultural, or even political associations, provided the chief means of understanding human differences, the heresiographers who determined and explained these differences played a vital social role. Their presence in each region and locale was so important that if such a person comes to be lacking in a region, the inhabitants ought to all clamor for one just as they would if they lacked a doctor or a lawyer.

Dogma in Islam, as enshrined in creeds and doctrines, did not occupy such a central place as it did in Christianity. Nor in Islam did there exist any time-honored central ecclesiastical authority for determining and enforcing such dogmatic orthodoxy. In comparison with early Christianity, Islam was more a religion of practice than belief, of law more than theology, of orthopraxy more than orthodoxy, as illustrated by the fact that only one of the five pillars of Islam focuses on matters of belief.



As in early Christianity, the most general and abstract Islamic heresiographical schematizations were numerological. In fact, the leit-motif of the heresiographical genre as a whole is the famous Tradition (or hadith) in which the Prophet predicts a division of the Islamic community into seventy-three sects, seventy-two of which are destined for Hell and only one for salvation. As the pioneering Western Islamicist, Ignaz Goldziher, remarked, this hadith "formed the basis for the history of religion and of sects in Muhammadan literature." Most of the Sunni heresiographers, including al-Shahrastani (1086-1153) and al-Baghdadi (d. 1037), deployed the seventy-three-sect schema in their heresiographical works. The Ash'arite theologian Adud al-Din al-Iji (c. 1281-1355) went so far as to identify the one "salvation-giving sect" as the Ash'arite. This schema, however, appears not only in Ash'arite literature, but also in Hanbalite creeds and professions of faith, such as that if Ibn Batta (d.997).

Having declared their allegiance to the seventy-three-sect enumeration revealed by the Prophet, the heresiographers were left with the daunting task of dividing the world of Islamic heresy into precisely seventy-two units. In some cases, they made "convulsive endeavors to squeeze ouf the required number," particularly by "cutting, inserting, and combining, till they reach the number of 73." Among the more curious devices used by Baghdadi for arriving at the canonical number is "regarding each of the more important Mu'tazilites as head of a sect and, when he had too many sects, stating that some were so heretical that they had ceased to be Muslims. The procedure of ash-Shahrastani is somewhat similar." The noted Hanbalite traditionist and theologian, al_Jili (d. 1166), adopted the more economical strategy of simply counting some sects twice, under two different rubrics, in order to produce the canonical seventy-two. Such heresiographical manipulations were facilitated, and even perhaps partly justified, by the fact that some Islamic sects were neither very discrete nor stable. In fact, the Arabic term "firqa" is used to refer not only to a sect proper, but to doctrinal tendencies within sects and even to lone individuals."

Verizon Cell Phone Photo

I just started using a cell phone (Verizon Wireless). I practiced taking this photo, of scissors on a desk, and then sending it to Verizon's PIX PLACE. I used Microsoft PAINT to crop the photo and show only a certain portion of it. I guess the quality is not so bad. It takes a while to figure out how to sign up, log in, upload, and access a photo from the cell phone. And, supposedly it costs 0.25 USD to send each photo.

Genocide In A Different Light

Sitaram: Since we all must die one day, therefore, all things eventually pass away. It is hard for people to recognize the benefits of a frame of mind which desires the respite of death. If one fears death, and desires to live forever, then they are doomed to disappointment

Krishna: One should accept death

Sitaram: Whereas, if one welcomes the relief of death, then, one is guaranteed that their wish shall one day be granted

Krishna: True

Sitaram: Even though it may seem an eternity away

Krishna: I personally try to live life like there's no tomorrow for I might die even right now

Sitaram: I suppose the greatest tragedy of every childhood is the deception that we are special, unique, loved unconditionally,.... but we mature to discover a world that is indifferent to us

Krishna: Sigh

Sitaram: A world in which we are not special, but, rather, disposable. That is one of my recent insights into what seems the tragedy of my childhood

Krishna: well I could share that sentiment, but everything in my course of life had its purpose for happening

Sitaram: well, without each and every experience in life, we would be someone slightly different than who we are

Krishna: its only when you reflect upon the past to understand its purpose that you tend to progress in the future

Sitaram: without the Nazi Holocaust, there would be no "Schindler's List", no Viktor Frankl, and perhaps no independent state of Israel

Krishna: yes

Sitaram: so, everything is interconnected in some fashion

Krishna: yes, certainly. I had a discussion with a friend of mine with regards to Hitler and all the other evil(s) in the world and I would suppose everything has a purpose and despite its accidence in occurrence

Sitaram: this weekend, we rented a DVD of a German film entitled "Downfall" (with subtitles, and a commentary in English), of Hitler's final weeks and the actor looks EXACTLY like Hitler, it is freaky

Krishna: hahaha
well they never found Hitler's body

Sitaram: when I watch such things, I always feel intense admiration for the perfection of the German military machine. My father was present the day the German army surrendered. He looked over a vast sea of soldiers

Krishna: wow

Sitaram: and thought "this was the finest army that ever marched the earth
to this day, the German style machine gun is in use a miracle of simplicity and reliability

Krishna: yes

Sitaram: in the 1960s, an American senator of German ancestry wrote " years of the German High Command" in which he demonstrated that, decade after decade, battle after battle, even in defeat, they were superb, with enormous kill rates. Of course Nazi ideology was monstrous

Krishna: yes

Sitaram: oh that movie documentary mentioned that only ONE person in the German high command, during his trial, admitted that what they did is wrong he did not apologize, but he stated that it was wrong all the others sought to escape blame...

Krishna: hmmmm

Sitaram: but, they all knew that defeat meant standing trial

Krishna: yes

Sitaram: the movie emphasized that Hitler was never mad, but always knew exactly what he was doing even when he seemed to have rages of temper violent temper he used everything as a tool to influence, manipulate and his charisma was astonishing the German people worshiped him, and called him "Uncle Addie" Addie being a nickname for Adolph

Krishna: yes, being in absolute control of himself

Sitaram: and his affair with mistress Eva Braun was kept a secret
They interview people who were still alive, who had been with Hitler in their attempt for accuracy. One elderly woman had been a secretary to Hitler. They interviewed her, and she said "I did not HAVE to take the job, but I was curious..."

Krishna: ah

Sitaram: She now feels or rather sees, the sinister evil of the entire enterprise

Krishna: Yes

Krishna: but its something that much of the world cant fathom, that the German people actually loved this man

Sitaram: well, but, stop and think, whenever we are in the midst of something like slavery, or Japanese internment, or Guantanamo, or Iraq, it all seems to make perfect sense it is all righteous and justifiable.... or at very least, a necessary evil you know, that rock star who converted to Islam, many years ago... before 9/11 and all that...

Krishna: hmmm

Sitaram: was interviewed in some documentary,.... and when questioned regarding death sentences prescribed for those who insult Mohammad, answered "well, yes, they should be killed"


Stevens was his name with some first name like spike, or rip,... cant remember
oh, Cat Stevens, of Greek descent, most likely, raised Greek orthodox Christian


I read about one preacher turned civil war hero, after the civil war, who then became an Indian fighter

Krishna: ohhh

Sitaram: he was the one who killed all the women and children in one unarmed village... and said "Nits make lice" (meaning, kill even the infants the women came out of their tee pee tents, and opened their dresses to show their breasts, that they were women not to be killed and they hid the infants in the bushes

Krishna: God!

Sitaram: but, the soldiers sought out the infants, and smashed their heads on rocks
but.... consider the Hutu Tutsi genocide in Rwanda

Krishna: hmmmm

Sitaram: but... they would slaughter innocent people with machetes

Krishna: its heinous

Sitaram: my point is, in each circumstance, at that moment, people felt justified
think of those in Africa who might still poach ivory,... or Brazilian entrepreneurs who continue to cut down rain forest

Krishna: yea

Sitaram: they see it as survival, or some right

Krishna: the concept of rights and freedoms

Sitaram: I was thinking of writing a curious hypothetical scenario

Krishna: needs much elucidation in modern times

Sitaram: imagine that you are a native American Indian, living in the 13th century, long before the white European really began to explore the new world and your tribe gains the knowledge and foresight that there is a continent filled with a race of people who will come and destroy your entire way of life as hunters and food gatherers and, they will ultimately destroy the entire ecosystem

Krishna: hmmm

Sitaram: furthermore, imagine that your tribe discovers some means to commit proactive genocide, and destroy the entire continent of Caucasians now, in your mind, your way of life represents everything that is good you need no medicines or health care, because natural selection means that all who survive are most hardy

Krishna: ok

Sitaram: perhaps they live only years, but those are years of vitality, and a meaningful life

Krishna: hehe I see where your question is going

Sitaram: so, you see the alien nations of Europe as some disease the coming industrial revolution ultimately destroys the planet, and all life forms

Sitaram: so, you see the Europeans as the camp of Satan

Krishna: what would you do?

Sitaram: not only are you justified in genocide, in your mind, as a defensive measure
but, it seems to you as your moral duty to annihilate all Europeans and Asians because you must defend the environment itself and all the animals

Krishna: well.. I would suppose my approach would be different

Sitaram: so, your tribe sees European and Asian civilization in the same light as Marxists see capitalism. They are your ideological enemy


Krishna: Kill them all right off the bat???

Sitaram: well, genocide only works all at once and right off the bat, while one has the window of opportunity

Krishna: and perfection only lies at the balance of both I wouldnt.. participate in genocide

Sitaram: now, I am not saying that this scenario makes things right or wrong. I am simply pointing out how genocide might seem the only choice to those native Americans

Krishna: yes but I realize humans the fallacy of mankind has been throughout time to take a camp and try to stick to it and not appreciate the balance of both

Sitaram: the most foolish comment I have ever heard in my life was one fellow on the Internet who insisted that war was not necessary during World War II, but that the Nazis might have been dealt with in a more peaceful fashion

You see, your horror at genocide, or anyone's horror, is a product of cultural conditioning Americans see the death penalty as necessary and justified...
whereas the European Common Market will not admit any nation who imposes capital punishment

Krishna: I simply dont have the right to take another's life.. even forcibly wouldn't convince me until it comes to a point where I have to for my own interests life is at harm


Sitaram: and in America, you see conservative protestant Christians, who pay lip service to love of ones enemy, ... and yet they thirst for the justice of an execution

Krishna: that's hypocrisy

Sitaram: but, don't you see, those native Americans, in that hypothetical scenario, see their fate and the worlds fate in a crystal ball so, for them, there IS not choice

They MUST deploy their weapons of mass destruction NOW, to prevent the future enslavement

Krishna: well this was exactly what I was talking about with my friend days ago
if the British empire had ceased to exist would we be still here?

Sitaram: there was a British Television series in the s called "Dr. Who" in many episodes he battles the evil Daleks, who are like Nazi robots but, in one episode, Dr. Who has found a way to touch two wires together, and complete a circuit, which will destroy all Daleks in a kind of genocide

Dr. Who hesitates, and his companions ask WHY, why do you hesitate? Why not destroy this hideous Dalek enemy?

Dr. Who says "Well, two reasons...
1, I would become just like my Dalek enemy, who seek genocide

but, 2, I know the future, of how so many adversarial nations unite to fight the common Dalek enemy so, all that unity and harmony would never come to pass, should the Daleks be destroyed NOW

Krishna: ah

Sitaram: so, Dr. Who never touches the wires to complete the circuit and annihilate the Daleks well, the native American tribe in our hypothetical scenario might have TWO crystal balls in one, they see the future of enslavement, and the destruction of the ecosystem in the other, they see some THIRD possible human society, which is superior to both European and native American

Krishna: hmmmmm
or perhaps even some future in which humans become extinct, but, consciousness persists in their cyborg AI creations much like those aliens who visit the earth in Spielberg's A.I. movie

Krishna: hmmmm

Sitaram: where the robot child, David, has survived frozen for millennia, on the dead planet

Krishna: yes

Sitaram: but, the aliens who visit, are possibly (i cant remember), the products of a similar AI technology and they seek to study the original organic human life forms.... to understand something of the spirit which existed in such creatures

Krishna: hmmm

Sitaram: and which now no longer exists in cyborg consciousness. So, from one point of view, true and sincere pacifists should choose slavery or death over violence
and were the western societies truly pacifist, they might all convert to Islam, simply to achieve harmony and peace. Yet we know that if all the world was Muslim tomorrow, the Sunnis, Shias, Sufis, Kurds etc, would most likely continue their slaughter and mayhem, fueled by doctrinal disputes

Krishna: hmmmm
well slavery in the form of religion

Sitaram: we might gaze in that OTHER crystal ball, and see, or seem to see, the greater good in aggressive measures which transform the Islamic world into a world of secular humanists now, the destruction of a culture or way of life is reckoned as ETHNOCIDE, even if the people remain alive

Krishna: hmmmm

Sitaram: an example of which is China's ethnocide of Tibetan culture

So, in a sense, the west contemplates the ethnocide of the Islamic Umma Sharia way of life. They do not desire to annihilate/exterminate the people, but only through Internet and Nike and McDonalds, to annihilate the cultural values and way of life

Krishna: yes

Sitaram: since technology, prosperity, and pleasure is quite seductive to the youth

Krishna: ok I like this perspective,interesting

Sitaram: so, Islam is defeated by ipods and hotdogs, and Netflix
but, it is STILL a form of ethnocide,

Krishna: hmmmmmmm

Sitaram: so, you see, now in our dialogue, I have sketched out what I was hoping to write/blog

Reading at sentence level

This looks promising! It holds my attention.

I must slowly re-read this.

No big deal but, this sentence caught my eye:

"I followed the quieted sounds in the rooms ahead. "

I question it, grammatically.

Perhaps, "I followed the faint sounds from the rooms ahead."

The sounds are faint to the listener, but no one has "quieted" them in a transitive sense.

The sounds come FROM the rooms ahead.

The hearer is not IN the rooms ahead, following the sounds.

They say DeLillo rewrites a sentence or paragraph anywhere from 10 to 50 times and keeps all the versions in notebooks, which he eventually sells to archives.

And this sentence:

The actually adult, imperious attendees eyed me with reproach.

Perhaps you might try:

The real adults in attendance imperiously eyed me with reproach.

A Literary Discussion

Friend: I paint, write music, short stories, screenplays, and am generally "creative"
since creativity really has no more to do with those activities than business or what-have-you and have had an abiding interest in the creative process which tends to be my filter in most conversations - picking through the information for further insights

Sitaram: Robert Ornstein and Charles Tart describe consciousness as a moment to moment process of data reduction if we were equally aware of all internal and external stimuli at once, we would go mad

Friend: or enlightened!

Sitaram: and schizoprenia is involves a breakdown in the normal moment to moment synthesis of ordinary consciousness

Friend: which is something that the schizophrenia bit you mentioned reminded me of somebody said that madness was made up of lots and lots of bits of sanity and it occurred to me on a tonight-show introductory standup routine by the host how he connected one news item with an incongruous one to form an absurd, fictitious, third news item that it's good to have topical comedians because they show us how insane news is all these highly diverse bits of urgency assaulting you and often extremely difficult to assimilate

Sitaram: I saw on tv, one comedian in a greenwich village comedy club.... who got booed, for making a sexual joke that involves a minor in the joke, he is in the men's room, with a young nephew

Friend: how did he take it?

Sitaram: and the nephew says "your member looks DIFFERENT from mine"

Sitaram: so, the punch line is, "that is because mine is erect"

Friend: haha! hilarious

Sitaram: well, in a sense, we laugh but, many are also morally outraged

Friend: yes - humor often involves shock

Sitaram: because, laughing about sexuality and minors is quite taboo, and illegal

Friend: yes - I've noticed George Carlin has done it with fiercely unapologetic mannerisms and perfectly evil glee

Sitaram: I once commented that many start out as child molesters.... but they are children themselves

Friend: God - how true

Sitaram: I mean, when we "play doctor" at age 6 or 9
There is a funny movie "Little Miss Sunshine"

Friend: yes, and our patient might be a few years younger
I saw it

Sitaram: with an old grandpa, who asks the teenage boy, "are you getting any"
the boy says no

Friend: or the same age, of course

Sitaram: grandpa says "you are jail bait, she is jail bait, THAT IS THE BEST KIND" meaning, you fool, you SHOULD be trying to get some but, the most profound shot in the entire movie is in the car journey... a 20 second shot of the little girl, trying to manipulate a puzzle, that has a smiley face but, it is not quite solved and you realize that everyone in the movie is metaphorically working on that smiley face puzzle I mean, trying to find happiness

Friend: yes - I thought it was all a bit too obvious

Sitaram: but, many might not even notice

Friend: it's a good illustration movie I mean, one where you can discuss its elements

Sitaram: my wife was a CPA, but, she did not notice

Friend: to make points

Sitaram: I mean, she is not stupid but, she is not trained to make such observations

Friend: well, sometimes you block things out because they are so embarrassingly obvious

Friend: anyway, the audience should feel it. I think it won for best screenplay

Sitaram: Abraham Heschel said, in his book "The Prophets" (about the old testament), "we must learn to understand what we actually see, rather than to only see or find that which we understand

Friend: and I read an inspiring interview with the guy who wrote it

Sitaram: Annie Proulx was brilliant to think up the phrase "stem the rose"

Friend: yes - good quote - could cure a lot of anxiety

Sitaram: as a euphemism for anal

Friend: focusing on what is instead of what might be

Sitaram: I googled and it occurs nowhere else
and in the movie,... there is a scene, of the two men, years later, at a camp site, drinking "Old Rose" whiskey which is an actual brand

Friend: yes - I prefer, driving the hershey highway

Sitaram: but, that was not in Proulx's original short story

Friend: how is the phrase brilliant?

Sitaram: so, the director decided to enhance that image/metaphor

Friend: because the aureola on the sphincter is rosey?

Sitaram: BECAUSE, it obviously fits, yet, she coined it yes,.... there are references to "rose" previous to Proulx

Sitaram: but no one speaks of "stemming the rose" plus, she is a female writer

Friend: its horrible. absolutely horrible. lol

Sitaram: well, but, wait, look at the brilliance of Nabokov's lolita but, he never won a Nobel, because it is a taboo subject

Friend: I mean, stemming the rose is any number of times more obscene than some other things one might say

Sitaram: and, there is only ONE slightly prurient sentence, where Humbert speaks of "his shaft/lance" something like that yet, Nabakov masterfully crafts each sentence
The same with Proulx

Friend: Humbert's language was wonderfully giddy, but its brilliance also showed his ineffectual foppishness

Sitaram: but Proulx is not at the level of Nabokov So, it is like artistic "brinksmanship" You see how close you can come to the edge of the cliff of taboo, yet, not fall into the abyss of obscenity Same with "Brideshead Revisited"
Evelyn Waugh

Friend: there are instances where euphemisms are more offensive than blatancy

Sitaram: and, yet, all of Brideshead Revisited is an elaborate illustration of Cardinal Newman's coined phrase "illation illation means...

Friend: damn, I didn't read it or maybe only a few pages of it

Sitaram: years of experiences, which subtly bring someone to some conviction of faith
try to see the hour PBS production in which EVERY SINGLE LINE of the novel, becomes script there is NO page in the novel, no scene, which is not PRECISELY represented by that hour movie

Friend: but doesn't such a movie seem redundant?

Sitaram: well, for me, the movie was breathtaking....

Friend: I mean, they're two different animals

Sitaram: and years later, I purchased the novel

Friend: fascinating

Sitaram: some people love Tolkein,.... I cant stand Tolkein
Sitaram: I could not stand Tolkein when I was a young teenager

Friend: why not? I haven't read much of him
Too many precious brain children?

Sitaram: I tried, and his prose seemed juvenile

Friend: what is juvenile prose? didactic? watered -down vocabulary?

Sitaram: well, look at any page in harry potter, and compare the sentences with proulx, nabakov, virginia woolf.. childish, immature

Friend: but how can prose be immature unless it's the ideas behind it that are?
Carver or Hemingway, by contrast

Sitaram: I mean, once you acquire a taste for somone like, say Milan Kundera, you cannot easily go back to Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan series sentence structure and style can be immature

Friend: so the overall picture the author presents is trite and condescending

Sitaram: vocabulary can be immature

Friend: instead of humbly searching

Sitaram: plots and characters etc, can be immature

Friend: a lot of great books begin with apologies to the royalty who might be reading them

Sitaram: well, if you want to go for things like "humbly searching", then michael jackson is a poet, and mohammed was a saint, and the new york post is journalism

Friend: whereas one of these snoozy books might talk down to the average reader
no, I don't think so one who proclaims he knows the answers

Sitaram: I mean, one may take any mediocre author, and say that they are "humbly searching"

Friend: is often irritating

Sitaram: so, are you saying that every book in print, is a great book

Friend: but they're not! they're hacks who work a formula I mean, it's something you sense and usually they're humbly searching for better meanings

Sitaram: so, for me harry potter, and tolkien, are hacks that work a formula

Friend: not just how to write a complete sentence

Sitaram: I cant remember that one novelist, that recently sold his manuscripts for millions to an archive in texas but,.... DeLillo I remembered for years, he reworks a paragraph as much as or times Don DeLillo...

Friend: yes - I remember him compared to Pynchon

Sitaram: now, there is a book called "Critics Manifesto" which bashes DeLillo and Proulx and some others

Friend: and the import Haruki Murakami

Sitaram: Pynchon is an obvious craftsman, as is Rushdie I have not acquired a taste for DeLillo, I have not tried, but, I imagine he is a craftsman

Friend: can "obvious craftsman" imply pretentious? showoffy?

Sitaram: but, I disagree with that "Critics Manifesto" criticism of Proulx
and he picked the ONE passage, that I wrote pages about, in praise, analyzing it

Friend: do you have a favorite Proulx novel?

Sitaram: somethin about "furious dabs of tulips, stuttering"
I think it was in that .... oh, there goes my memory again, the fellow who fails in the usa, and goes to NewFoundland.... and writes

Friend: I started a novel by DeLillo - Underground or something like that

Sitaram: ah, Shipping News

Friend: just to sample the prose

Sitaram: you see how my memory fades

Friend: ok - I'll take a look at it
it comes back in the right circumstances

Sitaram: I mean, E.B. White is a master of what he did....

Friend: it's just that I must read slowly - these thick novels never seem worth their weight

Sitaram: Charlotte's Web is charming, thought provoking but, it is not supposed to be the prose of Nabokov

Hemingway whittled prose and dialogue down to the bare bone...

Friend: and often the novels only solve with bursts of inspiration the tedium they created in the first place

Sitaram: and received a Nobel for it Robert Rouarke, "Something of Value", was bashed for imitating Hemingway's style

Friend: I wonder what you think of the Fantes like john and his son dan

Sitaram: now, no one could pull off being an e.e. cummings, or a james joyce's Finnegan's Wake

Friend: did you think Rouarke was justified in his so-called imitation alleged, I mean

Sitaram: those people created something unique,.... but it becomes no-mans land
because they would by joyce wannabes or cummings wannabes

Friend: it becomes a signature and a trap for a lot of worthy successors who happen to be similar

Sitaram: yet.... didnt joyce invent stream of consciousness..... and one CAN employ that technique

Friend: it's amazing how many forgotten composers made works nearly equivalent to the quality of much of Beethoven

Sitaram: I mean, there were innovative things with st person, rd person, narrative, that do suffer emulation

Sitaram: which is NOT considered imitation

Friend: right

Sitaram: but then, there are things which are inimitable...

Friend: emulation is insightful

Sitaram: simply because the signature is too unique I mean, Plato was the first with dialogues

and Thespius, the ancient greek chorus leader, was the first to innovate a soloist dialogue in between the antiphonal choruses

Friend: humbly searching - an homage to his friend Socrates, right?

Sitaram: which is why actors are called Thespians yet, such stage or dialogue innovation suffers emulation perhaps Lady Murasaki, circa ce, was the first novelist, "Tales of Genji" but, it suffers emulation

Friend: look how many people don't want to watch Chaplin because Gilligan's Island has made them wary of slapstick or Marceau because street mimes have a bad name

Sitaram: we do not point at every subsequent novelist and say, "oh, look, a Murasaki Wannabe"

Friend: maybe any good novelist has to reinvent the novel

Sitaram: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner had their feuds, regarding what is literature, vs what is prostitution but, they all had to put bread on the table, as well

Friend: and has to cunningly fight off his rivals like a lot of rappers do in their lyrics Anais Nin's delta of venus contains such an apology

Sitaram: Nabokov took a big gamble with Lolita, and in some senses, won big time, and in other senses lost

Friend: about how the stories were commissioned by a pervert

Sitaram: the first person to "rap" probably seemed like an idiot Yes, now, everyone accepts it as a vehicle

Friend: it's the most obvious of its intentions of any art form that I know of...
"I want money. I want women. I want those sucker MCs who are taking my money and women and drugs dead"

Sitaram: times, they are a-changin

Friend: which to a lot of people is fairly refreshing

Sitaram: Bob Dylan's songs ran 10 minutes, when everyone elses singles were barely 3 minutes Dylan didnt care He just did his thing Emily Dickenson did not care, nor thoreau...

Sitaram: Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald cared in a significantly different fashion

Friend: this caring-not caring balance seems the essence of creativity

Sitaram: Camus speaks of "that paltry infinity called posterity"
in his "myth of sisyphus

Friend: and Borges distinguishes his aims from those of newspaper journalists
writing for posterity and not for oblivion like they do but Dylan cared intensely
so that he could appear not to care.

Sitaram: I mean, in Homer's Iliad, Diomedes and Glaukos meet on the battlefield, and have long speeches.... regarding how a generation of men is like the leaves which fall and are forgotten well, Dylan wanted success.... but he was determined to do it his way

Friend: Like Matisse organized his messes very secretly

Sitaram: Emily Dickenson did not even care for monitary success

Friend: sometimes one's own way is one's only hope for success.

Sitaram: nor that portuguese poet, Naruda... whats his name

Friend: fans sometimes think the artist could have done it any way when there was really only one path available

Sitaram: and every artist makes what is agonizing seem effortless, seamless

Friend: yes, the not-caring factor

Friend: like the japanese brush masters who did not make a single erasure

Sitaram: who was that ballet dancer, who did the Faun Fawn

Friend: and who painted their works in a matter of minutes with elaborate meditation and rituals preceding the act.

Sitaram: it is irritating that my memory does not work Nijinsky!

Friend: yes, what about him?

Sitaram: I mean, what an artist, yet, what an off the wall fruitcake I mean, like a Nnietzsche, bordering on genius and madness simultaneously Wallace Stevens is a great poet, but was also vice president of a hartford insurance company Stevens was hardly a Baudelaire, and Baudelaire perhas seems staid, compared to ... oh damn my memory

Friend: I've always been smitten by Manet, the revolutionary, whose paintings were dragged through the mud by critics, who was totally borgeouise in his manner and appearance.

Sitaram: the one who wrote Le Bateau Ivre The Drunken Boat

Friend: oh, yes, and charles Ives was an insurance manager I think executive

Sitaram: google helped me, Rimbaud

Friend: then you have picasso and henry miller who asserted an artist couldn't have a second profession

Sitaram: as crazy as Baudelaire was, I think he was conservative compared with Rimbaud But, I may be wrong

Friend: i've read that J.D. Salinger could be remarkably prudish

Sitaram: Woolf and Fitzgerald were quite unstable,.... but, frost, and many others I could name, were quite stable

Friend: which makes perfect sense when you consider that Holden wanted to erase all the fuk yous

Sitaram: good point, about Holden

Friend: and Hemingway seemed the paragon of stability maybe until

Sitaram: well, except for all the drinking and depression

Friend: in later years, yes one artist whose suicide seemed to nullify his body of work, to me,

Sitaram: I have Heminways "Nick Adams" stories arranged in chronological order

Friend: is Spalding Grey maybe a far more minor artist..
but a beloved one

Sitaram: and the very first story is about a young boy, with is dr. father, who thinks about suicide

Friend: does the chronology make more sense to you when you read them that way?

Sitaram: it is striking to read them in order, and see the ideation of hemingways suicide right at the beginning

Friend: oh ok

Sitaram: well, that is why they published that collection

Friend: dr. father?

Sitaram: doctor

Friend: the boy thinks about it?


Sitaram: Hemingway's dad was a doctor too... I think

Friend: ok the father talks about it

Sitaram: you would have to read the story

Friend: sure I might have it
Friend: today is friday?
Sitaram: and, in a way, Hemingway's preoccupation resembles "The Painted Bird" by Jerzy Kosinsky where the children like on the railroad tracks, while the train rushes inches overhead, and only in that moment of peril do they feel truly alive

Friend: the name of Hemingway's story

Sitaram: I cant remember

Friend: he has one called today is friday

Sitaram: I have it at home

Friend: but I'm sure that's not it

Sitaram: I will look when I get home
Friend: there's a beautiful movie called The Spirit of the Beehive
made in Spain

Sitaram: I did not see that

Friend: with two little girls standing at a railroad track


Friend: and the single shot of it passing is monumental
the train passing

Sitaram: oh, do you know why all those civil war photos look so stiff?
I mean, the people in the photo look stiff, rigid

Friend: yes, the long exposure

Sitaram: well, they had a brace behind , to hold them still

Friend: oh

Sitaram: so, yes, the brace was because of the long exposure

Friend: I see - that's practical

Sitaram: and all those 17th century and earlier where children look like tiny adults

Friend: the stiff remains
certainly make ancient civilizations look ponderous
corpses
ancient tombs
those profiled egyptians
easter island
It's hard to capture an ancient giggle
but
the roccocco age accounted for that
probably

Sitaram: their are Egyptian paintings in vivid color, showing dark-skined and light-skinned working side by side
well, Abraham's Sara laughs, when she is told she will have a child
in old age
so, we see some ancient humor

Friend: some
although it almost seems like a scoff
designed to show an obstacle in Faith

Sitaram: Homer has some comic scene, where there is a race, and someone falls with his nose in a pile of dung

Friend: How I long to have great belly laughs through Aeschylus

The Spirit of the Hive

Conversation at bed-time

Finding Frankenstein

The Train


Fernando goes to work

In the Woods at night, seeing the monster

The Black Cat

The Eyes

Mushrooms

The Bees

Piano and Photos

Thomas Mann - Death In Venice

Quite by chance, I stumbled upon a paperback biography of Thomas Mann, on sale for $1. The biographer, Richard Winston, passed away at a tragically young age, before he could finish the biography (which ends with a chapter on the writing of Death In Venice.)

The amazing thing is that Thomas Mann actually went on a vacation to Venice with his family, and actually had many of the experiences which he later wove into the novella. Thomas Mann himself acknowledged this fact. And, ten years after Mann's death, a translator interviewed the actual person whom Mann had seen as the "beautiful young boy." Mann, and all the other tourists actually fled Venice because of an epidemic. The composer, Mahler, a friend of Mann, had just died, and Thomas Mann modeled the character, Gustave Aschenbach, after Mahler.

I forget whether it was in high school or college that I was required to read Death In Venice, but I remember being quite impressed with it. Little did I guess that so much of the story was real-life events which Mann simply re-arranged and embellished.



I in no way mean to denigrate or demean Thomas Mann's artistic ability by stating the historical fact that Thomas Mann himself, in his memoirs, letters and conversations, asseverates that the material for Death in Venice was "handed to him on a platter", as it were, and he merely had to re-arrange it. I simply state this as something of surprise, since all my life I had presumed that the entire story was the product of Mann's imagination. I was even more surprised to learn that, 10 years after Mann's death, an old man in Poland was discovered and interviewed and confirmed to be that beautiful young boy whom Mann used as a model for the story. That fellow even stated that, during their vacation, he remembered an man (Thomas Mann), staring at him from the porch of a bungalow each day.

Mann's one biographer (cited above), quotes Mann at some length regarding the notion of a novelist "gathering material" from real life, as fodder for his fiction. Mann's fictionalization of real people and events even becomes a sore-spot with some of his acquaintances.

I do not feel that totally fictionalized works demonstrate greater artistic ability than works which draw upon actual historical events.

I am reminded of one argument that Hemingway's "Farewell To Arms", is a re-write of his failed affair with a nurse. In real life, she dumped Hemingway. In the novel, Hemingway gets her pregnant and she dies professing her love for him.

I suppose what might be explored, is the controversy between the intentional action of the artist, in crafting symbolism, or innuendo, or psycho dynamics into the work, versus the action of the author's subconscious, to color the narrative with something more profound, and all of that versus the notion that the reader's subconscious projects something into the material.




Kyle replies:

This is very interesting because in the film by visconti, much of Mahler's music is used. visconti's film, death in Venice, is almost just as good as mann's story. yes, death in Venice, is a very strong story. very intense and is not surprising that mann experienced much of the events. also think of how risky it would have been to write such a story in 1911. i did once read a small review of the book that was written in 1911 and of course it was scathing, mostly because of its views, not because of its literary merit. i can't remember if i read it in German or not. Mann remains one of my favorite authors, and the magic mountain and doctor Faustus are some of the best books in the 20th century. also i highly recommend reading the Goethe chapter in Lotte in Weimar. Mann does a brilliant stream of conscious of Goethe's mind for about 30 or 40 pages. it is probably better than the last chapter in joyce's Ulysses.

My Cat Mephibosheth

Mr. Phibbs was found as a kitten, in a basement, with a broken leg.

Here is what we find in Wikipedia regarding the Mephiposheth of the Old Testament:

Mephibosheth - "exterminator of the shameful one", while textually earlier parts preserve the name Meribaal. This change from "-Baal" to "-Bosheth" is common throughout other Biblical names, the exception being Beliah (Yahweh is Lord/Yahweh is Baal) since this couldn't be allowed to become Boshethiah or Jebosheth (Yahweh is shameful).

(1.) The son of Jonathan, and grandson of Saul (2 Sam. 4:4). He was five years old when his father and grandfather fell in the Battle of Mount Gilboa. The child's nurse hearing of this calamity, fled with the boy from Gibeah, the royal residence, and stumbled in her haste, dropping the child on the ground, permanently paralyzing him from the waist down (2 Sam. 19:26). He was carried to the land of Gilead, where he found a refuge in the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, at Lo-debar, by whom he was brought up.

Some years after this, when King David had subdued all the adversaries of Israel, he began to think of the family of Jonathan, and discovered that Meribbaal was residing in the house of Machir. So he sent royal messengers there, and brought Meribbaal and his infant son (Micah) to Jerusalem, where he resided from that point on (2 Sam. 9).

How Free Are We, Really?

Think about this mystery: If you have a container filled with some gas then, if you examine the behavior of each molecule, each molecule seems totally free, random, irrational, unpredictable.

BUT, if you study the behavior of the entire container of gas, it conforms to very precise laws of temperature, pressure, flow, etc.

Think of the gas molecule as one person, individual, but think of the container of gas as the entire human race.

On a microcosmic level, everything is very free, random and unpredictable.

On a macrocosmic level, everything is constrained by very precise mathematical laws, and quite predictable.

We see the same paradox if we compare the smooth orderly predictable motions of galaxies in Relativity, with the surrealistic vagueness of quantum particles on a microcosmic level which flicker between being and non-being.

Our mind is very linear, addicted to logic, a certain specific kind of logic, Aristotelian, syllogistic, A implied B, B implies C, etc., etc.

We try to reduce everything to that logic and we try to resolve ambiguities, paradoxes. But, there are phenomena which do not fit into that logical scheme, such as the dual nature of light, behaving BOTH as a wave AND as a particle.

Our minds want to resolve what we see as a contradiction, (and contradictions make us uncomfortable.)

The idea is that we BOTH TRULY HAVE FREEDOM AT THE MOMENT of choice AND ALSO the outcome of all choices can be foreknown, without that foreknowledge predetermining them.

Think of it in this fashion:

We are in what we call the future, looking back into what we call the past, history and we see that Brutus chose to assassinate Caesar.

We do not feel that our knowledge in any way forced Brutus to choose one particular course of action.


If a little ant is wandering on a pavement, and I am standing as a giant, to see the overall pattern of that motion, then from a perspective which the ant cannot share, I can see that the ant is traveling, on the hot pavement, in a path which will ultimately bring the ant to the cool green grass. My FOREKNOWLDGE from my vantage point, does not rob the ant of the freedom of each step.

I am like a god to the ant, and the ant is unaware of my presence or nature.

Survival Advantages of Mortality and Discord

Survival Advantages of Mortality and Discord

We are all mortal. We all die within 100 years or less. Have you ever noticed that? Why yes, of course you have.


We can never all agree upon anything of great significance. Have you ever noticed that? Even in democratic nations, there are at least two parties, if not more, in any election. There are Republicans and Democrats, there are Liberals and Conservatives, and perhaps all sorts of shades in between.


I have come to see mortality and discord as distinct survival advantages.

But, how can this be, you ask? How can there be an advantage in the fact that we are all doomed to die? How can there be an advantage to the fact that we can never arrive at unanimous agreement upon important issues?



How wonderful this world of ours would be (you say) if none of us would ever face death, and if all of us could share in one religion, one language, one culture, one nation, one philosophy, one economy and one single set of values and principles. Allow me to explain.



I see the vanished races of north American Indians, who dwelt for millennia in that continent, as having been very hardy because of natural selection, and kept hardy as a race by the rigors of survival. Modern man, by contrast, becomes a progressively weaker and less robust species because of high tech and increasing dependence on things like antibiotics, surgical procedures, insulin, etc., which in the short run greatly benefit individuals, but in the long run weaken the species.



Amoral nature, with its natural selection and survival of the fittest, seems to have a very different agenda which favors groups and species over individuals. Our society now seems to place the well-being and interest of the individual above the well-being and interests of the group as a whole. In the short run this emphasis on the individual is quite benevolent. But what is long-term benovelence? Does long-term benevolence sometimes wear the mask of cruelty and indifference?



Nature makes it difficult for the weak and defective to pass their genes on to another generation, but medicine and modern technology makes it easy for even the infertile to pass on their genetic traits to future generations. For me, the problem is so patently obvious. Physis and Nomos, Nature and Law, mortal enemies for eternity!



Of course, we may ocassionally discover some temporary cure for a particular disease, but then all those little pathogens turn around and produce thousands of generations in a short time, and evolve a resistant strain, so then we develop a different antibiotic, and so it goes, on and on, in
a vicious cycle, a Catch-22. Those pathogens desire immortality just as much as we. Their oeuvres are plagues.

As individuals, certainly we benefit from this medicine and technology, but as a species we were obviously better off under the amoral natural scheme of survival of the fittest. Now, as a species, we are gradually becoming weakened and dependent upon that medicine and technology. "Better Living Through Chemistry."



Mind you, I am not saying whether this increased dependence upon medicine and technology and genetic engineering and this progressive weakening of our species is bad or good in the long run. I am merely pointing it out as an observable phenomenon.




In an odd way, mortality is a survival advantage.

In Ham's Histology (a textbook from the 1960's), generation after generation of mice had their haemopoetic marrow tissue destroyed by radiation, and received a transplant of the same strain of tissue received by the previous generation


In theory, that culture of haemopoetic tissue should be immortal, but in practice, it was not, it became weak (exhibited its mortality.)



Here is why I think the property of immortality is a survival disadvantage for the species. That strain of haemopoetic tissue weakened because it was perpetuated asexually, with no chance for change, modification, evolution.


In theory, there is no reason why a strain of cells could not be asexually immortal (in fact, the hela cell cultures are one example), BUT, from an evolutionary point of view, that very immortality is a survival disadvantage, since it does not permit change and adaptation



http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/video/culture.html


Humanity's inability to reach universal consensus in philosophy, theology, politics/government is possibly related to the obvious survival advantage inherent in a genetic tendency towards diversity/uniqueness, so that some might be shoemakers, others soldiers, others scholars, others politicians, each happy in their ecological niche of specialization.



We might have evolved as a species capable of a higher degree agreement with one another, but that would have been a survival disadvantage.


If what I have said is the case, then that aspect of humanity has every bearing in the world on philosophy.



If everyone saw things the same way, then everyone would want to be a philosophy professor (or movie star) or president.... there would be no diversity... no one to live on mountain tops, no one at the polar circle, no one in the Amazon rain forests; that very diversity which was key to species survival now makes unanimous agreement difficult or impossible.



I think of the imaginative faculty of the human mind as a kaleidoscope, constantly churning, changing (almost by chance) , (and how interesting it is that a similar image of "the churning of the oceans" is given in the Vedas as the process by which nectar is produced)


Such a kaleidoscopic churning may produce many mathematical models (model theory), but then by an arduous process, we apply those random productions of imagination to reality, until one day someone stumbles upon a "match" between model and noumena, like Archimedes in the tub, shouts Eureka!, and runs naked through the streets.


For years, people called "imaginary numbers" imaginary precisely because it was felt they had no reality or analog, but now they are indespensable in treating such phenomena as radio waves.

Yet, the products of imagination are a part of reality.

The laws of physics and chemistry do not predict rabbits, but the existence of rabbits in no way defies the laws of physics. If you wanted to learn to play poker, would you study probability and statistics?


Obviously, gambling and gamblers came first, and then the mathematicians like Pascal turned their attention to it.


The universe will continue after our sun supernovas in 8 billion years, and humankind are extinct, and this 8 billion year from now doomsday is something which we could be addressing to preserve culture and knowledge, but no one is concerned because that doomsday seems so
remote.


There is no causal connection, I suspect, between the laws of reality, and the activities and products of human imagination, and yet imagination (and the imaginary) is our source for this kalaidescope of models which we heave at reality in a hit or miss fashion.


In a certain sense, imagination is the threshhold of Being.

Earthly Paradise is Within our Grasp

Earthly Paradise is Within our Grasp

Category: Religion and Philosophy

http://literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org/ftopic53.php

Suppose you were transported to a different land, and you met some doctors or counsellors in that land, and they wanted to advise you, help you.... but it happens to be close to lunch time, and suddenly the doctors and counsellors open their lunch pails, and pull out their lunch,... which to your HORROR AND AMAZEMENT, are fried and roasted human infants.....


They notice that you are shocked, and they offer you a multitude of reasons why you really shouldnt be shocked at all, that those infants felt no pain,.... that it was really more or less God's providence which had provided them or slated them for our consumption and enjoyment... that they could not be considered human since they had not reached the age of reason. Who knows what various and sundry reasons they might give you in this strange land to justify their
ghoulish eating habits.

No matter what justfications they give you, you are still horrified. It appears to you monstrous, unfeeling. From your perspective, it is THEY who are blind to the fact that their personal gratification as robbed a soul/consciousness of the right to exist, and experiences, to suffer and enjoy.

My little, hypothetical example is perhaps greatly exaggerated. But my point is that in a land , or a village, where people will not light a fire after dark, because the flame would attract an insect to its death, and that insect possess a soul which is essentially no different from a human soul, and the karmic consequences of having lite that fire, and cause that souled being to die, would negatively impact the soul of the person who lights the fire... were you such a people as the Jains, then how greatly would you value the spiritual, or psychological advice of those baby-munching physicians in that strange land. How seriously would you take them, if they told you that perhaps you were mentally ill, or that your way of life was somehow "wrong" or "inferior?"

And if you think that their notion of the insect having a soul is strange... well open your Biblical Old Testament and read about he Prophet Baalam, who had a talking donkey. The donkey was able to recognize the presence of the fearsome angel with a sword, standing to block the path of Balaam's journey. Balaam himself was blind to the angel's threat. When God grants the donkey the ability to speak, the donkey complains, "Why do you treat me so poorly, when I have
been your donkey for so many years and served you so faithfully." The angel chimes in, speaking in favor of the donkey and censures Balaam saying, "You should not treat your donkey so poorly." The bottom line of the story is simply that the donkey was ALWAYS a good donkey, and did its duty, yet BALAAM DID NOT HAVE sufficient FAITH in the faithfulness of the donkey to question or suspect that there might be a perfectly good reason why they donkey was refusing to
budge in this one instance.

Similary, BALAAM DID NOT HAVE sufficient FAITH in the faithfulness of God. Balaam did not see that there was a good reason why God did not want him to go on his journey. If we want to be REALLY clever and subtle in our observations concerning this Old Testament story of
Balaam, we will notice that Balaam says, "IF I HAD A SWORD, I would kill (the donkey)". This reveals to us that Balaam DID NOT take a sword on his journey (even though journeys were quite dangerous), out of respect for human life, lest he be tempted to take a human
life... and yet BALAAM has no respect for the donkey's life, admitting that HE WOULD kill the donkey if only he had a sword...

Of course, I am not for one minute suggesting that everyone in India, or any other country, is extremely religious, or obeservant, or vegetarian.

The religion of the great american hotdog/hamburger/capitalist culture has been quite successful in preaching its culture.

I suppose what I am saying is that in many such countries, people might welcome a pill or injection to control their diabetes, but they might not necessarily accept counselling or values of some social worker whose culture seems so brutal and barbaric.

You know, the West is so comical. We so cherish personal freedom, democracy, and liberty. We were so horrified when China instituted its "one baby" policy. And yet I often see mention made of the undeniable fact that, if China HAD NOT instituted such a policy, they would NOW be in much deeper environmental and overpopulation trouble. And it was only because they had the power of an absolute dictatorship that China could succeed in enforcing what seems like
such an inhumane law.

Ecologists and environmentalists estimate that the planet earth could comfortably support a population of ONE billion for an indefinite number of centuries.

The earth did not reach a population of one billion until around 1860, and yet by 1930, it had DOUBLED to TWO billion. And now it has skyrocketed to SIX billion. Those ads for ADM (supermarket to the world) project 20 billion by the year 2030.

Did it every occur to anyone that PARADISE, earthly paradise, IS ALREADY within the grasp of mankind?? Whatever do I mean by this strange statement?

Very simply this: If all 6 billion humans united and worked in harmony, this very moment,..... and through self-control, abstinance... whatever means (birth control, self-gratification...whatever) ... if their goal was to reduce the world population to ONE BILLION over the next 200 years... SIMPLY by limiting reproduction, THEN in a short 200 years, the
earth's population would be at a reasonable stable level from an environmental point of view.

Now what do I mean by "earthly paradise is in our grasp". I MEAN THAT, AFTER THE EARTH HAD RETURNED TO THE ONE BILLION population level, over the next 200 years, then technology, science, medicine, and a united world democracy, would make EVERYONE independently wealthy, and disease free.

It is very obvious to us , even now, that computers and robots and modern technology makes possible a level of production (food and other materials) which does not require such a work force as in previous centuries... and CERTAINLY DOES NOT require the slave labor
which was employed so many times in history.

Humanity has it totally within their power, to choose, to elect, to transform human life into a paradise of wealth for all, free of disease.

But our own selfishness and greed, and our racial and ethnic prejudices and nationalistic pride, will perhaps never allow us to co-operate with one another, and to practice the personal asceticism and self denial, to achieve such an end.

But even if humanity COULD manage to unite and discipline to create such a UTOPIAN WORLD, then what would those people do with all their free time, their leisure, their perfect health and incredible life spans extended by genetic engineering and artificial organ
transplants?

Would they write poetry and create works of art or recite prayers and debate theology?

Or would they have too much sex, drink and smoke too much, and become bored and depressed?

Authorship and Social Responsibility

Authorship and Social Responsibility

http://literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org/ftopic856.php

A friend of mine, from the United States, once told me an interesting account of his time spent in a monastery. There he came to know an old Russian professor, retired, a layperson, who lived at the seminary school which trained future priests. The professor was a worldly man and an intellectual, but very devout and pious, his thinking very much influenced by Russian Orthodox beliefs. One day, during Lent, the period before Easter, he was looking at an iconographic painting of the final Day of Judgment, depicting the wicked souls being cast into the torment of hell and the righteous souls being admitted to a heavenly paradise. He remarked that the day of
Judgment must certainly be most severe for authors, because although the ordinary person must answer only for personal actions and sins and transgressions, an author must take responsibility for the conduct of thousands or millions of people who are influenced by the authors writings, either for good or for evil.


Each of us is author of our own actions (or inaction) and our lives and careers are our books, whether famous, or infamous for the very few, or simply anonymous for the vast majority. Each of us must answer for our actions in some fashion or other. We pay a price for foolishness or sloth, and we are rewarded and compensated for wisdom and industry. But an author or artist is a different sort of beast from the ordinary
individual or average citizen.


We must ask ourselves two questions. First, what do we mean by social responsibility? Secondly, what is the nature and motivation of an author or artist?


In every society, government, culture, and ideology, there is a stress and emphasis upon the responsibilities of an individual to society as a whole. From the time we are small children, we are painfully aware that certain things, in fact, many things are
expected of us, and that there are consequences and a price to be paid should we fall short of those expectations. The notion of an individuals social responsibility has existed in one form or another since very ancient times, in the earliest of governments and polities, and even in the small tribes of hunters and food gatherers at the dawn of history. It is only in the past several centuries that there has arisen a notion that societies have responsibilities to individual members. We call this new found notion of societys responsibility Human Rights or Civil Rights.


Every school child in America is required to read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, (a.k.a. Samuel Clemens). Twains novel is required reading because it is a brilliant and entertaining and, now, historic portrayal of a time of slavery and oppression in America. We now know that smoking and the use of tobacco is very damaging to the health. In Samuel Clemens day there was no notion that tobacco might be harmful. Yet, every other page of Huckleberry Finn is praising the virtues and pleasures of smoking tobacco. Many young people have been tempted to experiment with tobacco simply because it was so romanticized by Mark Twains novels. We may see this negative influence of Huckleberry Finn as an example of social irresponsibility, of
corrupting the youth. We certainly cannot lay the blame for this corrupting influence at the feet of Mark Twain. We must, if anything, blame generations of educators who have chosen to place the book among the required readings of the curriculum of very young and impressionable students without giving thought to the damaging social consequences.


If we extend our notion of authorship and social responsibility to artists, then possibly, we may see the painting Guernica, by Pablo Picasso, as a positive exercise of social responsibility, dramatizing for society the evils of violence and war. Yet, if
we study the life and works of Pablo Picasso, it becomes quite obvious that concern for social responsibility was not in the forefront of Picassos mind as a goal or concern or inspiration.

In the 1960s, Francoise Gilot, one of Picassos several ex-wives wrote Life with Picasso, and painted a picture of a very selfish, egocentric and unpredictable personality. That woman divorced Picasso and married the famous humanitarian Jonas Salk, who pioneered the development of the first polio vaccine. We may certainly see someone like Jonas Salk as a scientist committed to social responsibility in his attempt to alleviate the suffering of many. Though, perhaps it is far more accurate to observe that each author, whether of books or paintings or theories in physics and math, is driven more by a quest for the power of recognition than by some altruistic notion of social responsibility. Authors and creators are most driven by a eudaimonic inspiration or compulsion which drives them mercilessly and relentlessly towards the act of creation, and often, in that process, alienates the author from society as an eccentric rebel outcast.


What of the authorship of someone such as Albert Einstein, the author of the theory of Relativity which made possible the terrible destructive force of the atomic bomb? The ancient Greeks spoke in their myths of Pandoras Box. The name Pandora means every gift or all gifts. When Pandoras Box was opened, many terrifying things escaped which could never be put back again. In the myth, the last thing to escape was Hope.
Many physicists felt dread and guilt over the monster of destruction which they had created and unleashed.

Those who are religious and believe the Bible to be the divinely revealed word of God feel that each and every sentence is totally good and instructive. Yet, at the end of the New Testament, in the Second Epistle of Peter, Chapter 3, verse 16 we find this curious warning:


[In the Bible] are some things difficult to understand , which they that are unlearned and unstable twist and distort, unto their own destruction. So here, we see the Bible itself warning us that there are verses within it which are harmful to certain people. In the Old Testament of the Bible, in the Book of Jeremiah, the prophet speaks scathingly of the lying pens of the scribes. And yet it is those very scribes who copy and perpetuate the religious scriptures. Indeed, Karl Marx saw religious scriptures as an opiate of the people and therefore as something negative from the point of view of social responsibility. Conversely, the religious communities of the world see communist regimes in a negative light, believing them to oppress and censor freedom of religious expression and worship.



If one looks at popular authors and artists like Picasso, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Proust, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Thomas Dylan, and many others, one sees that they are rebels, renegades, misfits, alcoholics, recluses. We see that the worlds
of imagination which they create in their writings and art are forms of escape from reality and everyday responsibilities of a good citizen.


Now, if we search for socially responsible authors, then one might choose Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Toms Cabin. When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he exclaimed, And here is the little lady who started the Civil War.
Certainly, Lincoln was exaggerating to some extent in his good natured humor, but it is certainly also true that the nation as a whole became more self-conscious about the evils of slavery after reading Uncle Toms Cabin with the cruelty of Simon LeGree, whose name became the byword of wickedness.


Another prime example of social responsibility in American literature is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which exposed the evils of company towns who exploited immigrant workers in the meat-packing industry. President Theodore Roosevelt was
sickened by the brutality and injustice which Sinclairs novel dramatized so vividly. Roosevelt immediately called upon Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration and, for the first time, setting up federal inspection standards for meat. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, were both signed into law on June 30th, 1906, as a direct result of Upton Sinclairs book The Jungle. President Roosevelt commended Sinclair for exposing the corruption and injustice, but scolded him for being such a socialist. Certainly, Sinclair seems to be one author deeply motivated by notions of social responsibility.


We even see, in the 20th century, authors like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, examining the state and society as some abortion gone bad, creating a nightmare world for its inhabitants. The passion of the authors creative obsession is closely analogous to the reckless abandon of sexual passion. In Orwells novel, 1984, it is a love scene of wild abandon in a secluded woods which symbolizes the rebelliousness and isolation of the individuals will to power. It is the State of Big Brother which crushes the sexual feelings of the protagonist during his imprisonment.


We easily come to see society and the state, not in their day to day reality, but in the fictional picture which is painted for us by novelists and philosophers and historians. We romanticize our notion of the state until we become like America, carrying
its holy grail of democracy and freedom to the four corners of the globe through diplomacy or force, to the willing and unwilling alike. As social activists, driven by our ideologies we become Christs running about everywhere seeking out the
largest cross, and then gathering about us a reluctant crowd of Herods.


In Genesis it is said of Abraham that he believed the promise of the divine vision, and that his very belief was counted to him as a form of righteousness or correct action, which also goes by the name of social responsibility. But by the time we come to the end of the Book of Job, God is saying to Job, Tell your friends that I am angry with them because they BELIEVED about me incorrectly. We see how ideology and theory and belief gradually supplant the individual and his daily actions and conduct in life. Finally, by the time we arrive at Jesus and his Apostles and Paul, we are told that we are utterly worthless and hopeless no matter what we do, but that there is a way to
be forgiven, if only we will embrace a certain belief. Communism and Capitalism are both jealous gods preaching their ideology to the world and offering forgiveness and shelter in return. A certain physicist once pointed out that, in a gaseous collection of molecules, each individual molecule enjoys the utmost random chaotic freedom of chance. No one may say what a given individual molecule will do at any given
moment. And yet, the mass of molecules as a whole is under strict obedience to various laws of temperature and pressure and gravity. The fiery rebel freedom of any single renegade molecule represents the force of hundreds or thousands of
molecules robbed of their vigor and spontaneity and exiled to an icy state of passivity and inaction.


Plato explored many notions of social responsibility his dialogues, most notably The Republic. Plato proposes to examine the State as a kind of microscope to view the soul
written in large letters. Plato envisioned philosopher kings in a society which saw the noble character of its citizens as its product and enterprise. Remember that Socrates was put to death for allegedly corrupting the youth through his teachings,
whether oral or written we know not.

That great German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, said that we must always act in such a way that we treat individuals as ends in themselves rather than as means to some end.



Psychiatrist John Powell wrote: "To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, not love things and use people."


http://www.meaningoflife.i12.com/psychology.htm

Gradually, over the millennia, our notion of social responsibility has evolved and shifted from the prehistoric hunters and warriors duty to his tribe, and has done a hundred and eighty degree about face. Now the great emphasis is upon societys
duty to the individual in the form of human rights or civil rights.


In light of the above considerations, I must personally conclude that the notion of social responsibility of the author is something alien and unknown to the author, imposed posthumously by a reading public. Responsibility, if it lies anywhere at all, lies in the appetites and demands of the consumer public, who clamor for an endless stream of murders, rapes, cataclysms, wars, monsters and even alien invasions from outer space. Our true responsibility is to our own inner space first. If we personally make that inner space of the heart in order, then the orderliness of society will
perhaps follow more naturally. Perhaps the real truth is that both religion and politics are the opiates of the soul, lulling it into complacency, apathy and indifference.