Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
I Find it Kind of Funny
“Mad World”
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very mad world mad world
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
And I feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me
And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very mad world … mad world
Enlarging your world
Mad world
- Tears for Fears [Covered by Gary Jules]
Thoughts on Coexistence
This is my obsession as of late: what am I to do with believers?
Empiricists have long been subject to ridicule and doubt by the devout, scorned for their intellectual snobbery and their sneering “reason.” When the science and the scripture conflict, God tends to win… for a while.
Trace the progression of religion, however, and you cannot help but get a sense that with each passing year literalistic dogma and creed pass further into obscurity. Certainty has become relative, a condition I see directly provoked by postmodernism. Of course this is not true for all religious belief; the fundamentalist remnants continue to wreak havoc on human society, rending its fabric into absolutes.
With such a range of theistic belief and, simultaneously, a common thread of certainty running throughout each of them, how does a passionate secularist respond?
A World of Imagination
What a world we live in,
what manifest destiny we have wrought.
This world stands on the brink,
the knife’s edge poised for oblivion.
The scales balanced carefully,
our future’s fate at stake…
_
What we face are a set of principles, mutually exclusive, that guide our decisions; all of them.
On one hand, we have the sturdy band of rationalists who have throughout history been committed to inquiry, to reason, and to fact.
Yet on the other hand there is a different sort of rationale, one wholly committed to the heart (as opposed to the head). We see its definition every day. Individuals with utter conviction spewing complete nonsense; and one could hardly dispute that it is pure rubbish! These people, whole-heartedly insistent, refuse to acknowledge exceptionally reasonable science, psychology, sociology and the like, on the grounds of belief.
A More Sinister Realpolitik
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has been grabbing headlines over the past few months for being a bit of a loud-mouth and spilling the beans on the GOP’s master stroke to “defeat” Obama (meaning that Republican interests do not align with health care and labor reform, among other things, so the public interest must be aggressively impeded). His flippant remarks earned him a deserved tongue-lashing from the president and others who are trying to fix the problems that politicians like DeMint helped to create and perpetuate.
If that were not already enough, did you know that Sen. DeMint is also a member of a covert Christian political organization that has influenced global politics since the 1930s? Recently outed congressional adulterer John Ensign (R-NV) and Argentine-mistress-entertainer/taxpayer-defrauder South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (the stoic King David himself) are also members of this theocratic nightmare. Sounds crazy, I know; Jeffrey Sharlet, co-author of Killing the Buddha and contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine and Rolling Stone, has been following this secretive political organization since 2002, and his work “undercover” within The Family — as the group is called — was published in book form last year, titled The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.
Sharlet has made a number of appearances on MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s show; go to the Daily Kos to watch his interview from last week: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/29/185647/053/.
Book description of The Family contained after the jump.
Time and Again
Time and again, I am astounded at the disctinct pleasures of humanism. Coming into work today, I had no way of knowing that the random old man sitting behind me for the past week was a lapsed Lutheran minister, not to mention an outspoken and committed humanist and freethinker.
Ray grew up in Nebraska in the thirties and fourties. During Korea he was drafted, and served a brief stint in Alaska but (details are hazy here) never went overseas. In his words, it was just another “chance to goof off; they gave me a jeep and everything!”
Though Ray chose to forgo traditional secondary education, he eventually took the GED test and passed. Despite this, when he sought receipt of an official high school diploma, his request was denied. Choosing not to attend high school at all, he said, precluded the granting of a diploma — though partial high school attendance and later GED testing was, oddly enough, acceptable. A friend suggested to Ray that he apply at a small bible school, and he did; he sent in a copy of his GED and the school (the name of which I cannot recall) accepted him, on the condition that he send them $200.
Revisionist Creationism
The first thing I ever learned was how to create myself.
Though, of course, other factors were involved, I wish to take full credit for this feat, and this is why: while my copulating biological contributors provided the seed necessary for life, it was I, in rudimentary cellular form, who learned how to live.
It took no exposure to the trials and temptations of this world, nor any semblance of morality, ethics, or even thought, to convince me to do so; the fact is that I really had no say in the matter, and my own insignificant life could easily enough have been extinguished without an afterthought before its very beginnings had been allowed.
Before my first sunrise, or rainbow, or kiss, I taught myself how to exist.
Hiroshima, 1945
Hiroshima, 1945
_
My name is Dr. Manhattan, and I am here to explain myself.
I am the imagination’s manifestation of its own highest ideal;
Not unlike gods, we roam the earth as peasants,
Unworthy of adornement at any rate,
Though something greater forever shadows our consciences.
How would you respond to my own mind,
With its intricacies and methodology?
Could you possibly harness its power?
The Power of Fraternite
The Power of Fraternite
by Ryan Georgioff
_
In the time it will take me to write this piece, it is likely that hundreds, if not thousands of women will be sexually assaulted.
_
As an afterthought to my previous piece, “Viva” (which, if you have not read it yet, you should peruse before proceeding any further), I stumbled upon another insightful point regarding the human search for power and its derivatives.
Within the footnotes of “Viva” I noted both the definition and implications of the word “ally.” To save us both time, the essential logic I presented was that if our allies were friends, we would call them friends; considering that human language represents a kind of verbal contract between its users, we necessarily must all agree that “ally” does not equal “friend,” just as “tree” does not equate with “bush,” though some of their fundamental components are related.
Similarly I came to consider the word “fraternity,” and if it would not be too much trouble I encourage you to find its definition now. Its origins are masculine, and this is seen within the modern Greek system at colleges and universities, though the female counterpart of a fraternal twin might feel a bit excluded by these linguistic parameters. Regardless, my interest in this word stems from that same interest in alliance (and concomitantly: gang, band, party, and nation).
Viva la (Human) Revolucion
Read the following, if you dare. It is my letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, which was produced during a feverish writing session yesterday evening. It is long, but I would appreciate your reflection upon it — both its content and its form.
Linked HERE.
As described to a friend, this essay is one-half poetry, one-half philosophy, and one-half social critique. Thus it is 1 1/2 of everything.
Genesis
Life has changed significantly over the past year. I have lived in a lot of different places, made and lost friends, and somewhere along the way I discovered myself. To inaugurate the end of one thing and the beginning of something new, I have disemboweled my blog and emptied it of the refuse it once contained. All of my previous entries have been archived in a new blog: HERE. I keep those entries only for historical and nostalgic purposes; for the reader, they provide a helpful introduction to my perspectives and manner of thinking, but little else.
The beauty of life is that it can change so rapidly. This blog is dedicated to documenting those changes, and that beauty.
