...almost. I have been blogging a little bit. This is the most entertaining, on homophobia at the blog Left2Right. I think they do not quite know what hit them. It seems that Leftists are not used to facts, logic and evidence. Instead, they are used to their own pontificating. I've been blogging there a bit in other sections too.
I think that most things reduce down to sexuality, marriage and Romance and views on the same. I have not written here much on this although I think I did in a comments section once. I can't find it now. This post will probably need some refining and defining.
But as to the Left and the Right, the feminine and the masculine, these basic patterns of life can be helpful to understand in philosophy and politics. You may totally disagree with trying to understand by using the stigma word "stereotype" or disagree with my understanding. That is fine and I will discuss it if you like. Try to rip apart what I say, that is good.
As far as America goes I lean towards the Right because it is an increasingly decadent culture. If I lived in a culture ruled by Islamists I would lean towards the Left instead. But I do not live there. So this comes through clearly in the way I put things. I will criticize the Right in some ways too though.
Like prejudices about light these patterns are fairly universal. (Fairly, fair, fair/lighter and fair/just, to bring things to light and sight, you see....these types of associations in symbols and metaphors are why C.S. Lewis referred to language as a store of wisdom and Karl Kraus could make use of it the way he did.)
On the one hand there is the Left. Yes, there is the one hand, literally on the left, and it is generally a bit more artistic. This can be good and can be bad. Some on the Left go pretty far and are like a bohemian artist who blurs the lines instead of drawing any lines at all. Perhaps they want to see things from both sides or all sides. They just can't quite see things from the Right side. In some artist's minds there is not much right, only the little of what is Left. In the words, this is the kind of mind that hides between the lines and must be drawn out into the lines. For even art, like morality, consists of drawing the line. Slightly more often, their words are literally backwards, dyslexic. One will have to draw the lines for them, then they may make a beautiful picture rather than an ugly one. The link between ethics and aesthetics cannot be overlooked, it must be seen through insight to be seen in sight.
Yet the Left probably does have a point in that everything does not have to have such a pointy point. Those points cut and hurt their good lil' feelings, you know. For the discrimination of that and the safety of their blurred lines. If only all would blurr the lines then all would be well, how swell.
The Right replies, "Thou shalt not make any graven image!" Time is of the essence? All is of the essence, so what place then for existence?
(I'll finish this later and put some links in it. Later....in the end, the right is well....right. And that is swell.)
Friday, December 31, 2004
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Sunday, December 26, 2004
Light, the metaphysical and the physical...
Some thoughts about light, it is a universal prejudice that it is Good. It is one of those ancient intuitions or mental structures that makes up a pattern of symbols. It defines the world for what it is. Those who have eyes, let them see. Let them see what? Light.
So a few words about how ancients and others looked at light and saw the light. Even among those who are always perceiving, never conceiving and always deceiving there is a pattern of admissions to self evident truths. For one always needs some light, even to deceive.
First, it is important to keep in mind and to file away in the brain that philosophic naturalism is a failure. Therefore, one cannot keep it in the back of the mind to act as a solvent, even just a little, as to ancient texts written by minds.
That is to say that even if the ancients lacked modern knowledge their brains were not more primitive, less sentient. It is more likely that their mental patterns were the same as those of the modern mind. In certain ways there is nothing new under the sun, the light. Yet there is something new under the Son, the Light.
A summary of the symbolism of light:
(The Mythology of Dark and Fair: Psychiatric Use of Folklore
By Eric Berne
The Journal of American Folklore,
Vol. 72, No. 283. (Jan. - Mar., 1959), pp. 1-13)
"Already white was the color of holiness, and shining beings were worshipped...."
That is typical. Jesus also referred to the people of the light, "The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light." A Parable of Jesus
But apparently angels can be good or evil, so apparently light isn't always associated with being good or good beings.
So a few words about how ancients and others looked at light and saw the light. Even among those who are always perceiving, never conceiving and always deceiving there is a pattern of admissions to self evident truths. For one always needs some light, even to deceive.
First, it is important to keep in mind and to file away in the brain that philosophic naturalism is a failure. Therefore, one cannot keep it in the back of the mind to act as a solvent, even just a little, as to ancient texts written by minds.
It is perfectly safe to attribute [mental structures] to 'natural selection', so long as we realize that there is no substance to this assertion, that it amounts to nothing more than a belief that there is some naturalistic explanation for these phenomena. . . . In the case of such systems as language and wings it is not easy even to imagine a course of selection that might have given rise to them.--Noam Chomsky, notable Leftist
That is to say that even if the ancients lacked modern knowledge their brains were not more primitive, less sentient. It is more likely that their mental patterns were the same as those of the modern mind. In certain ways there is nothing new under the sun, the light. Yet there is something new under the Son, the Light.
A summary of the symbolism of light:
The cultural stream which flows through recorded history from the basins of the Nile and the Euphrates....carries the mythology without any major deviation. In 'the oldest thoughts of men that have anywhere come down to us in written form' Breasted called the Memphite Drama of ca. 3500 B.C., it was said that everything comes from the brilliant sun god. Queen Nitocris of 3066 B.C. was described as “the noblest and most beautiful woman of her time, fair in colour, the first favored blonde on record. Before 2500 B.C., King Pepi after death found the gods standing with white sandals on their feet. Already white was the color of holiness, and shining beings were worshipped by these dark-skinned, dark-haired people.
In Sekhet-Hetep, the Elysian Fields of Osiris, the blessed dead were clad in white robes, while Seker, a melancholy death god, ruled over a kingdom plunged into hopeless darkness. Generally speaking, the literature of ancient Egypt contrasted two sets of ideas. On one hand there was the creative sun, light, beauty, gold; the gods, white garments, happiness, perfume, nectar and ambrosia; and right, good, and truth. On the other was darkness, clouds, filth, evil, wrong, falsehood, noxious odors, and reptiles. This polarity was theologized in their version of the Hamlet story, the battle between Horus and Set.
In Assyria, whose inhabitants regularly spoke of themselves as “the black-headed people,” men powdered their hair with gold dust. Among the Assyrians, Babylonians, Sumerians, and Akkadians were found again the polarities: fire, light, gold, sun, shining, bright, heaven, god, high; healing, light giving, beneficent, and later, white; versus darkness, dreariness, pestilence, hell, and later, black.
(The Mythology of Dark and Fair: Psychiatric Use of Folklore
By Eric Berne
The Journal of American Folklore,
Vol. 72, No. 283. (Jan. - Mar., 1959), pp. 1-13)
"Already white was the color of holiness, and shining beings were worshipped...."
That is typical. Jesus also referred to the people of the light, "The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light." A Parable of Jesus
But apparently angels can be good or evil, so apparently light isn't always associated with being good or good beings.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
The Garden, continued....
The Garden, Part I
The Garden, Part II
The Garden, Part III
The son set to work, it would take a while. He would have to take a special plant seed from the plants when they died and put them in the greenhouse his father was building. The lil' gardening plants were at work in the garden, toiling away. They grew, died and mutiplied. There was the yellowish brown pollution in the garden but things where not so bad. There was still good in it, even as it slowly died. Gardening was much more difficult for the gardening plants without the father's and son's help. He could have just tilled up a whole new gardening spot for the gardening plants and put them in it with some new plants he created. He wished he could help them garden just as they had planned but the pollution in them and the garden had to be dealt with.
The gardening plants life-span grew shorter. He brought a special seed from them in the greenhouse as they died. There they would be born again and they too could watch the garden through the greenhouse window. Sometimes they would ask the son if it was time to move. He would always reply, "No. For I think I can save more plants out of the polluted garden." So he continued his work. The pollution had gotten in the lil' gardening plants eyes and they had begun to struggle against each other, just as all the plants did. They could not see each other as gardening plants so well and some thought they were just plants, like the others. They could not see the son as he worked so well now either.
Sometimes, a lil' gardening plant would look at all the others struggling against each other with their tender tendrils that had become more like tentacles and the strong stalks that had become more thorny. Then in disgust they would go up on a rock. Perhaps the son had given them just a little bit of water and it cleared their eyes of the pollution a little. So there on the rocks they would sit. And so the pollution cleared from their eyes a little more. Their eyes still were not that good but they got a little better than the others. Sometimes these plants began to notice the son's huge footprints in the yard and might say, "Me think that's footprint!" So they would come down off the rock and tell the other lil' gardening plants, "Footprint! Eyes, see!" They could not talk so good, like most plants. But when translated it meant, "Those who have eyes, let them see!" Most of the other lil' plants did not listen and went on with what they were doing. There were many growing right in huge footprints, like blades of grass. When they heard a plant prophet they would say, "Huh? Me no see footprint!" as they stared at the ground and their own roots. Sometimes they would demand to see the footprint without being willing to climb the rock to see it. Then they would get upset about it and would complain about the gardener's son, and why, oh why he would not communicate to them. Then they would get upset about the pollution being there, even as their roots took it up in to them. Some of them would say, "Me no like son!" The son heard them sometimes as he worked and thought, "I know they would like me if they knew me. But I can't save them all." Sometimes he would see an especially polluted plant that came from a line of polluted plants who was ripping up other plants and trying to put its seeds where they did not belong, while taking the best watering spots too. Some of these plants he pulled up and threw over the fence to the neighbor, the neighbor was hungry.
One day it came to the point that all the plants were polluted. Too many of them had come to work against the son as he tried to clean and save them. They did not have the eyes to see at all. Instead they did what was right in their own eyes and what was in their eyes was the yellowish brown pollution. So the son set aside one plant and cleaned his eyes and ears enough to tell him to gather together some twigs and sticks. So the little plant gathered together some twigs and sticks and the son put that little plant and his line on the sticks along with some other plant lines. Then his mom came out to water the garden like she sometimes did. But this time she blasted all the gardening plants who worked against her son away with the hose. The garden was a muddy mess for a bit and the pollution was still in the plants that survived but the son said to his mom, "I can still save more." The father replied, "You're getting so good at gardening that you will always be able to save more! But the next time that happens we are burning the garden and moving to the new house I'm building."
Many generations of gardening plants and plants came from those saved on that day.
Then one day, the mother said to the son, "I think you'd better take a look at the garden." So he went to their backporch. There he saw all the lil' gardening plants trying to make a tower of twigs and things to get on their back porch. He thought, "The neighbor must have told them to try to get in our house." Then his dad said, "If they get in our house they may well overtake us, like some polluted plague. They might even get in my laboratories and greenhouses. They could turn themselves to plants as smart as our neighbor. I've had enough dealings with him and his ways." So he went and made a spray and sprayed the plants to cause the pollution in them to go into the part they needed to communicate with each other. Then he put a fence across the backporch so that the plants would not know it was there anymore. All the gardening plants went to different spots in the garden with others who shared their type of polluted communication, some still tried to build towers like the one that they had been building to get on the gardener's backporch. But there was a fence around them now and they could not see the backporch to the house anymore.
The father said, "I say we just burn the garden now. These polluted plants are tiresome to me. They remind me of our neighbor."
But the son said, "Wait, I can save more." as he shut the new gate and took another batch of seeds into their greenhouse.
The Garden, Part II
The Garden, Part III
The son set to work, it would take a while. He would have to take a special plant seed from the plants when they died and put them in the greenhouse his father was building. The lil' gardening plants were at work in the garden, toiling away. They grew, died and mutiplied. There was the yellowish brown pollution in the garden but things where not so bad. There was still good in it, even as it slowly died. Gardening was much more difficult for the gardening plants without the father's and son's help. He could have just tilled up a whole new gardening spot for the gardening plants and put them in it with some new plants he created. He wished he could help them garden just as they had planned but the pollution in them and the garden had to be dealt with.
The gardening plants life-span grew shorter. He brought a special seed from them in the greenhouse as they died. There they would be born again and they too could watch the garden through the greenhouse window. Sometimes they would ask the son if it was time to move. He would always reply, "No. For I think I can save more plants out of the polluted garden." So he continued his work. The pollution had gotten in the lil' gardening plants eyes and they had begun to struggle against each other, just as all the plants did. They could not see each other as gardening plants so well and some thought they were just plants, like the others. They could not see the son as he worked so well now either.
Sometimes, a lil' gardening plant would look at all the others struggling against each other with their tender tendrils that had become more like tentacles and the strong stalks that had become more thorny. Then in disgust they would go up on a rock. Perhaps the son had given them just a little bit of water and it cleared their eyes of the pollution a little. So there on the rocks they would sit. And so the pollution cleared from their eyes a little more. Their eyes still were not that good but they got a little better than the others. Sometimes these plants began to notice the son's huge footprints in the yard and might say, "Me think that's footprint!" So they would come down off the rock and tell the other lil' gardening plants, "Footprint! Eyes, see!" They could not talk so good, like most plants. But when translated it meant, "Those who have eyes, let them see!" Most of the other lil' plants did not listen and went on with what they were doing. There were many growing right in huge footprints, like blades of grass. When they heard a plant prophet they would say, "Huh? Me no see footprint!" as they stared at the ground and their own roots. Sometimes they would demand to see the footprint without being willing to climb the rock to see it. Then they would get upset about it and would complain about the gardener's son, and why, oh why he would not communicate to them. Then they would get upset about the pollution being there, even as their roots took it up in to them. Some of them would say, "Me no like son!" The son heard them sometimes as he worked and thought, "I know they would like me if they knew me. But I can't save them all." Sometimes he would see an especially polluted plant that came from a line of polluted plants who was ripping up other plants and trying to put its seeds where they did not belong, while taking the best watering spots too. Some of these plants he pulled up and threw over the fence to the neighbor, the neighbor was hungry.
One day it came to the point that all the plants were polluted. Too many of them had come to work against the son as he tried to clean and save them. They did not have the eyes to see at all. Instead they did what was right in their own eyes and what was in their eyes was the yellowish brown pollution. So the son set aside one plant and cleaned his eyes and ears enough to tell him to gather together some twigs and sticks. So the little plant gathered together some twigs and sticks and the son put that little plant and his line on the sticks along with some other plant lines. Then his mom came out to water the garden like she sometimes did. But this time she blasted all the gardening plants who worked against her son away with the hose. The garden was a muddy mess for a bit and the pollution was still in the plants that survived but the son said to his mom, "I can still save more." The father replied, "You're getting so good at gardening that you will always be able to save more! But the next time that happens we are burning the garden and moving to the new house I'm building."
Many generations of gardening plants and plants came from those saved on that day.
Then one day, the mother said to the son, "I think you'd better take a look at the garden." So he went to their backporch. There he saw all the lil' gardening plants trying to make a tower of twigs and things to get on their back porch. He thought, "The neighbor must have told them to try to get in our house." Then his dad said, "If they get in our house they may well overtake us, like some polluted plague. They might even get in my laboratories and greenhouses. They could turn themselves to plants as smart as our neighbor. I've had enough dealings with him and his ways." So he went and made a spray and sprayed the plants to cause the pollution in them to go into the part they needed to communicate with each other. Then he put a fence across the backporch so that the plants would not know it was there anymore. All the gardening plants went to different spots in the garden with others who shared their type of polluted communication, some still tried to build towers like the one that they had been building to get on the gardener's backporch. But there was a fence around them now and they could not see the backporch to the house anymore.
The father said, "I say we just burn the garden now. These polluted plants are tiresome to me. They remind me of our neighbor."
But the son said, "Wait, I can save more." as he shut the new gate and took another batch of seeds into their greenhouse.
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Obscenity....
I do not make a big deal about it. In some contexts, it may even be apposite.
But I do make a big deal out of people who believe that words are just subjective, matter in motion. I think that they have a spirit, a meaning. You put your own breath of life into them or your mind behind your written symbols. That is your spirit. Ultimately, if your spirit is not in agreement with the Spirit then you are wrong.
In contrast, relativism is premised on the notion that what we say is immoral, is therefore immoral and so what we say is obscene, is therefore obscene. What you say does not have a spirit to it. It is just your will. Your own assertion into matter in motion, perhaps you are just matter in motion too.. This premise is incorrect. There are objective facts involved in the issue and it is not all merely subjective. This is the very reason that obscenities are what they are based on excrement and copulation. They deal only in uncivilized things in all languages. In contrast, all civilized cultures surround that which most closely links humans with animals with ceremony, ritual, etc. They tend to try to protect the human spirit this way, this distinction between human and animal. The things that threaten that distinction are things like having sex and going to the bathroom, which come to be represented in crass sentiment by obscenities. They threaten to break that distinction because they are things that animals do. Yet, something like composing, reading and writing are not surrounded by ceremony, ritual or privacy.
Men tend not to use these obscenities around women and children out of the ancient notions of civilization. Instead, it is their duty as a man, a human, to protect women and children from the harsh realities of Nature and human animality. Yet in places like the military, construction and so on men will use obscenities because they are among men who all know the more brutish realities that they are seeking to protect women and children from.
I had a conversation with a man recently and he said that women using obscenities disgusts him. These are most likely some of the reasons why. This is one of those things one could write a dissertation about. Invariably, the breaking of the distinction between human and animal is found at the end of civilization, as in Rwanda.
But to America,
American civilization is on the decline, it seems this is the way of the world. For this reason you will see more obscenity, less of the distinction and discriminations that civilization rests on, including the distinction of human and animal, and less respect for women and children. Indeed, discrimination comes to be a negative buzzword as an indiscriminate people continue on their way into decadence and decline. The New Man is the type of man who becomes more and more common as a civilization declines.
A few points,
There are still situations in which one can be arrested for using "fighting words" inappropriately because the animality that is part of the ethos of obscenity is something that can be dangerous. People also don't use profanity in many situations because assumptions are made about how civilized the person that uses it is. Which is only logical.
In a civilized culture the distinction of human and animal is held in place by ceremonies and ritual surrounding sex, etc. So when people go to a movie with bathroom humor and sex humor they instinctively know by common sense the juxtaposition and tension between categories that the humor is based on. These things are universal. There is a universal pattern of prejudices, pre-judgments or Sense that is common to man. Sometimes on this issue people will say, "Oh, just have some common sense!" They are appealing to it.
In the end, it seems to me that one can abstain from obscenity and coarse jesting, for refined jesting is much better anyway.
But I do make a big deal out of people who believe that words are just subjective, matter in motion. I think that they have a spirit, a meaning. You put your own breath of life into them or your mind behind your written symbols. That is your spirit. Ultimately, if your spirit is not in agreement with the Spirit then you are wrong.
In contrast, relativism is premised on the notion that what we say is immoral, is therefore immoral and so what we say is obscene, is therefore obscene. What you say does not have a spirit to it. It is just your will. Your own assertion into matter in motion, perhaps you are just matter in motion too.. This premise is incorrect. There are objective facts involved in the issue and it is not all merely subjective. This is the very reason that obscenities are what they are based on excrement and copulation. They deal only in uncivilized things in all languages. In contrast, all civilized cultures surround that which most closely links humans with animals with ceremony, ritual, etc. They tend to try to protect the human spirit this way, this distinction between human and animal. The things that threaten that distinction are things like having sex and going to the bathroom, which come to be represented in crass sentiment by obscenities. They threaten to break that distinction because they are things that animals do. Yet, something like composing, reading and writing are not surrounded by ceremony, ritual or privacy.
Men tend not to use these obscenities around women and children out of the ancient notions of civilization. Instead, it is their duty as a man, a human, to protect women and children from the harsh realities of Nature and human animality. Yet in places like the military, construction and so on men will use obscenities because they are among men who all know the more brutish realities that they are seeking to protect women and children from.
I had a conversation with a man recently and he said that women using obscenities disgusts him. These are most likely some of the reasons why. This is one of those things one could write a dissertation about. Invariably, the breaking of the distinction between human and animal is found at the end of civilization, as in Rwanda.
But to America,
American civilization is on the decline, it seems this is the way of the world. For this reason you will see more obscenity, less of the distinction and discriminations that civilization rests on, including the distinction of human and animal, and less respect for women and children. Indeed, discrimination comes to be a negative buzzword as an indiscriminate people continue on their way into decadence and decline. The New Man is the type of man who becomes more and more common as a civilization declines.
A few points,
There are still situations in which one can be arrested for using "fighting words" inappropriately because the animality that is part of the ethos of obscenity is something that can be dangerous. People also don't use profanity in many situations because assumptions are made about how civilized the person that uses it is. Which is only logical.
In a civilized culture the distinction of human and animal is held in place by ceremonies and ritual surrounding sex, etc. So when people go to a movie with bathroom humor and sex humor they instinctively know by common sense the juxtaposition and tension between categories that the humor is based on. These things are universal. There is a universal pattern of prejudices, pre-judgments or Sense that is common to man. Sometimes on this issue people will say, "Oh, just have some common sense!" They are appealing to it.
In the end, it seems to me that one can abstain from obscenity and coarse jesting, for refined jesting is much better anyway.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Hmmm......
I deleted a post about censorship. There is an irony in that. This blog is about Good and Evil. But, I can't have one on an occultic Evil right below my niece's picture.
Besides, it's Christmas.
I may comment on it some other time as public issues come about. It is one of those issues that has this way of coming up.
Later...
Besides, it's Christmas.
I may comment on it some other time as public issues come about. It is one of those issues that has this way of coming up.
Later...
Free Speech!
One day, a case came before a group of American judges in California. A man had run down the street naked and then said he could because of his free speech rights. Someone sued him because they did not want their kids to see him naked.
So the American judges were discussing it and one said, "I wonder, free speech means freedom of all types of expression, right?" Another replied, "Yes, I think we should have it mean more than just free speech."
So one said, "So what part of his body was he talking with, do you suppose?"
"Well, if he ran down the street in a speedo then we would not have a case before us. So I think that since we say he was talking by not wearing one, he must have been talking with his private parts."
One replied, "Yeeeah, I think so too. So I wonder, what were his privates saying as he ran down the street?"
One looked at a video of it and said, "It looks like they're saying, 'I'm cold!'"
"Yeeeah, I think so too." another replied.
Another said, "Well, I am glad we decided this case about free speech today, just look at the free speech of us! Yep, it's a good thing we are here to protect free speech from Americans. Otherwise Americans would be discriminating against pornographers and nudists."
"....argh, what is that smell?"
"Oopsy, I think I just emitted another penumbra."
"Man, you need to stop emitting those!"
(It's too bad, you can't really satirize Californian judges. They already are a satire. They do not protect free speech in various ways, by the way. They protect decadence and the like as "speech" but not political speech as speech. Words have come to be quite malleable in their hands.)
So the American judges were discussing it and one said, "I wonder, free speech means freedom of all types of expression, right?" Another replied, "Yes, I think we should have it mean more than just free speech."
So one said, "So what part of his body was he talking with, do you suppose?"
"Well, if he ran down the street in a speedo then we would not have a case before us. So I think that since we say he was talking by not wearing one, he must have been talking with his private parts."
One replied, "Yeeeah, I think so too. So I wonder, what were his privates saying as he ran down the street?"
One looked at a video of it and said, "It looks like they're saying, 'I'm cold!'"
"Yeeeah, I think so too." another replied.
Another said, "Well, I am glad we decided this case about free speech today, just look at the free speech of us! Yep, it's a good thing we are here to protect free speech from Americans. Otherwise Americans would be discriminating against pornographers and nudists."
"....argh, what is that smell?"
"Oopsy, I think I just emitted another penumbra."
"Man, you need to stop emitting those!"
(It's too bad, you can't really satirize Californian judges. They already are a satire. They do not protect free speech in various ways, by the way. They protect decadence and the like as "speech" but not political speech as speech. Words have come to be quite malleable in their hands.)
Monday, December 20, 2004
A Wonder of the World, Wondering
"74. Thought
How is our thought different from the information processing of a computer? The computer is not conscious or aware of itself doing its processing as we are when we think. Rule-governed activities, such as chess, can be formalized and simulated in a computer program. But remember that it’s we humans who do the programming and create and input the appropriate symbols. The computer has no clue about the meaning of the symbols it processes. All that it does is generate electrical pulses. It doesn’t know what it’s doing. There is, in fact, no “it” to know because it’s simply an as semblage of mechanical systems. There is no knowing going on within it; there’s simply a continuous flow of electrical pulses through its circuitry, assuming, of course, that it’s connected to a power source and appropri ately programmed by a user. Real thinking, on the other hand, involves our knowing what we’re thinking about, being aware that we’re thinking, recognizing that we’re arguing or reaching a conclusion and the like."
(The Wonder of the World: A Journey from
Modern Science to the Mind of God
by Roy Abraham Varghese :414)
There's a thought.
This is more important to remember than one might think. It's especially important when a person dies or is dying. I suspect that people have this creeping doubt that as the person's body dies, then they must no longer exist somehow. This is probably because people become so health and body centered. But I look on it like this, the body is a home that you get used to living in. You get used to thinking through your brain. If you do not think that much and then come across a difficult problem, you get a headache. That is why the term headache means the same thing as having a difficult problem.
Generally, you make your Self at home in your brain and body. American ascetics are few and far between these days, that is certain.
But when an amputee loses a hand they still feel like it is there. They are used to it being there. Also, when someone has a brain lesion, they were used to having their brain the other way. They cannot think through their brain as well as they used to anymore. Perhaps they never will be able to again if they are dying. However, some of them do recover. Perhaps they are moving their own neurons around. You can do drugs and so on to mess around with your brain. But it is not so different than anything that you get a good feeling from, like eating a good meal. There are some people who are burning their brains up, in a sense. The bad thing is that once you know how to get something and you recover out it, you know that by going back you will get that first time feeling again. Jesus mentions this, in a way. So it will be very difficult for any type of addiction. After it is broken, it is still there. And deep in your spirit, you know it. For that first time was a really good feeling. It's not like it was not. It was only the downers, the burning up of the brain that eventually brought you down. So, just this once to get that first time feeling again, and you'll fix it again later.....
It's hard, that's for sure. At any rate, scientists and doctors have a vested interest in saying that you are just your brain, "So here's a drug."
However, a few things to think about on how that is not so.
"Neuroscience, for instance, is nowhere near achieving its ambitions, and that despite its strident rhetoric. Hardcore neuroscientists refer dis paragingly to the ordinary psychology of beliefs, desires and emotions as “folk psychology The implication is that just as “folk medicine” had to give way to “real medicine,” so “folk psychology” will have to give way to a revamped psychology that is grounded in neuroscience. In place of talking cures that address our beliefs, desires and emotions, tomorrow’s healers of the soul will manipulate brain states directly and ignore such outdated categories as beliefs, desires and emotions.
At least so the story goes. Actual neuroscience research has yet to keep pace with its vaulting ambition. That should hardly surprise us. The neu rophysiology of our brains is incredibly plastic and has proven notoriously difficult to correlate with intentional states. For instance, Louis Pasteur, despite suffering a cerebral accident, continued to enjoy a flourishing scientific career. When his brain was examined after he died, it was discovered that half the brain had completely atrophied. How does one explain a flourishing intellectual life despite a severely damaged brain if mind and brain coincide?
Or consider a still more striking example. The December 12, 1980, issue of Science contained an article by Roger Lewin titled “Is Your Brain Really Necessary?” In the article Lewin reported a case study by John Lorber, a British neurologist and professor at Sheffield University:
[This has been disputed here. The irony is, they say it is "striking" too, just like Dembski does. But then they get a little mixed up by dissecting it, becoming lost in the details. I still think it is "striking." Apparently, everyone can agree on that.]
Against such anomalies, for cognitive neuroscientists to claim that brain determines mind hardly inspires confidence. Yet as Thomas Kuhn has taught us, a science that is progressing fast and furiously is not about to be derailed by a few anomalies. Neuroscience is a case in point. For all the obstacles it faces in trying to reduce intelligent agency to natural causes, neuroscience persists in the Promethean determination to show that mind does ultimately reduce to neurophysiology. Absent a prior commitment to naturalism, this determination wifi seem misguided. On the other hand, given a prior commitment to naturalism, this determination is readily understandable."
(Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology
By William Dembski :215-216)
There is the example of the Frenchman and others. I wonder how a neuroscientist would say it is possible for the brain to set itself, against itself? But for the mind to set itself against the body makes sense to me. All the stories of people "holding on" just so they can see a loved one and then dying also make sense to me. But they would not make sense if the mind did not have some control of the body. I am not saying that people can make up their mind to levitate and then do it. There is also the recent case of an Eastern mystic trying to meditate himself to death, he failed. I suppose his mind was not as strong as he thought. Not to mention the fact that that was a dumb lack of thought to try to think.
How is our thought different from the information processing of a computer? The computer is not conscious or aware of itself doing its processing as we are when we think. Rule-governed activities, such as chess, can be formalized and simulated in a computer program. But remember that it’s we humans who do the programming and create and input the appropriate symbols. The computer has no clue about the meaning of the symbols it processes. All that it does is generate electrical pulses. It doesn’t know what it’s doing. There is, in fact, no “it” to know because it’s simply an as semblage of mechanical systems. There is no knowing going on within it; there’s simply a continuous flow of electrical pulses through its circuitry, assuming, of course, that it’s connected to a power source and appropri ately programmed by a user. Real thinking, on the other hand, involves our knowing what we’re thinking about, being aware that we’re thinking, recognizing that we’re arguing or reaching a conclusion and the like."
(The Wonder of the World: A Journey from
Modern Science to the Mind of God
by Roy Abraham Varghese :414)
There's a thought.
This is more important to remember than one might think. It's especially important when a person dies or is dying. I suspect that people have this creeping doubt that as the person's body dies, then they must no longer exist somehow. This is probably because people become so health and body centered. But I look on it like this, the body is a home that you get used to living in. You get used to thinking through your brain. If you do not think that much and then come across a difficult problem, you get a headache. That is why the term headache means the same thing as having a difficult problem.
Generally, you make your Self at home in your brain and body. American ascetics are few and far between these days, that is certain.
But when an amputee loses a hand they still feel like it is there. They are used to it being there. Also, when someone has a brain lesion, they were used to having their brain the other way. They cannot think through their brain as well as they used to anymore. Perhaps they never will be able to again if they are dying. However, some of them do recover. Perhaps they are moving their own neurons around. You can do drugs and so on to mess around with your brain. But it is not so different than anything that you get a good feeling from, like eating a good meal. There are some people who are burning their brains up, in a sense. The bad thing is that once you know how to get something and you recover out it, you know that by going back you will get that first time feeling again. Jesus mentions this, in a way. So it will be very difficult for any type of addiction. After it is broken, it is still there. And deep in your spirit, you know it. For that first time was a really good feeling. It's not like it was not. It was only the downers, the burning up of the brain that eventually brought you down. So, just this once to get that first time feeling again, and you'll fix it again later.....
It's hard, that's for sure. At any rate, scientists and doctors have a vested interest in saying that you are just your brain, "So here's a drug."
However, a few things to think about on how that is not so.
"Neuroscience, for instance, is nowhere near achieving its ambitions, and that despite its strident rhetoric. Hardcore neuroscientists refer dis paragingly to the ordinary psychology of beliefs, desires and emotions as “folk psychology The implication is that just as “folk medicine” had to give way to “real medicine,” so “folk psychology” will have to give way to a revamped psychology that is grounded in neuroscience. In place of talking cures that address our beliefs, desires and emotions, tomorrow’s healers of the soul will manipulate brain states directly and ignore such outdated categories as beliefs, desires and emotions.
At least so the story goes. Actual neuroscience research has yet to keep pace with its vaulting ambition. That should hardly surprise us. The neu rophysiology of our brains is incredibly plastic and has proven notoriously difficult to correlate with intentional states. For instance, Louis Pasteur, despite suffering a cerebral accident, continued to enjoy a flourishing scientific career. When his brain was examined after he died, it was discovered that half the brain had completely atrophied. How does one explain a flourishing intellectual life despite a severely damaged brain if mind and brain coincide?
Or consider a still more striking example. The December 12, 1980, issue of Science contained an article by Roger Lewin titled “Is Your Brain Really Necessary?” In the article Lewin reported a case study by John Lorber, a British neurologist and professor at Sheffield University:
There’s a young student at this university,” says Lorber, “who has an IQ of 126,
has gained a first-class honors degree in mathematics, and is socially
completely normal. And yet the boy has virtually no brain.” The student’s
physician at the university noticed that the youth had a slightly larger than
normal head, and so referred him to Lorber, simply out of interest. “When we did a brain scan on him,” Lorber recalls, “we saw that instead of the normal
4.5-centimeter thickness of brain tissue between the ventricles and the cortical surface, there was just a thin layer of mantle measuring a millimeter or so. His cranium is filled mainly with cerebrospinal fluid.
[This has been disputed here. The irony is, they say it is "striking" too, just like Dembski does. But then they get a little mixed up by dissecting it, becoming lost in the details. I still think it is "striking." Apparently, everyone can agree on that.]
Against such anomalies, for cognitive neuroscientists to claim that brain determines mind hardly inspires confidence. Yet as Thomas Kuhn has taught us, a science that is progressing fast and furiously is not about to be derailed by a few anomalies. Neuroscience is a case in point. For all the obstacles it faces in trying to reduce intelligent agency to natural causes, neuroscience persists in the Promethean determination to show that mind does ultimately reduce to neurophysiology. Absent a prior commitment to naturalism, this determination wifi seem misguided. On the other hand, given a prior commitment to naturalism, this determination is readily understandable."
(Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology
By William Dembski :215-216)
There is the example of the Frenchman and others. I wonder how a neuroscientist would say it is possible for the brain to set itself, against itself? But for the mind to set itself against the body makes sense to me. All the stories of people "holding on" just so they can see a loved one and then dying also make sense to me. But they would not make sense if the mind did not have some control of the body. I am not saying that people can make up their mind to levitate and then do it. There is also the recent case of an Eastern mystic trying to meditate himself to death, he failed. I suppose his mind was not as strong as he thought. Not to mention the fact that that was a dumb lack of thought to try to think.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
The Garden......
The Garden, Part I
The Garden, Part II
The Garden, Part III
So the lil' gardening plants gardened the forbidden tree. The one with the strong stalks said, "Me like tree!" and the one with the tender lil' tendrils and beautiful flowers replied, "Me like, me like too!"
As they gardened they took in some of the tree into their plant recycling system. The one with strong stalks looked over and saw some brown going up the stalks of the one with slender stalks. Then he looked down at his own leaves and they seemed wilted, just a little. The one with tender tendrils looked at him and said, "Me no like!" as one of her tendrils drooped down. They looked at each other again. Then he replied, "Me hide now." So they both went to a corner of the garden and hid behind a plant. They did not like the brown pollution inside them and it was not so fun to garden the tree anymore.
The next day the father came down from his back porch and looked at the polluted tree and saw that it had been gardened. Then he saw a little trail of yellowish brown where the lil' gardening plants had walked, their roots leaving a pollution all through the fine black humus of his garden. Already there were other plants that it had gotten into. Some of them drooped and wilted with brown trailing up their stems, others of them seemed to grow thorns, while some tendrils pushed at each other and leaves grew larger as they struggled against each to take the light first. He saw the spirit of his uncreative neighbor in it all.
He and his neighbor used to be partners and had even created a garden together. Then they had a falling out and the neighbor moved out to be on his own. It was because of their different ways of creating that they began to differ. His neighbor wanted to eat too much and create too little.
The father looked and saw the little trail of brown leading to two lil' gardening plants, quivering and hiding. He heard one whisper, "Me scared!" The father thought about all the effort and time he had put into this garden. Then he thought about how much of his energy he had put into the gardening plants. He grew sad at what a polluted waste it was now. Then he grew angry. So he walked back inside his house to get some matches and gas to burn the garden. But his son saw him and asked, "What is the gas for?" His father replied, "Come with me and you'll see." So they both went to the backporch and his son took in the whole scene. The son said, "I think I can fix this." His father replied, "How are you going to get the pollution out? I will not have it." The son replied, "I think I can regenerate the plants, turn it around and actually make use of it. Just think of the satisfaction of turning the neighbor's pollution that eats away on its head so that it creates. Besides, this is my first garden and I like my little plants. I think we should save them."
Looking at his son his father said, "Alright, this might be harder than you think. First, I have to build a green house. Also, I am going to build a whole new house and move away from our neighbor. Enough is enough, he will probably starve to death. For your sake, I will not burn this polluted garden. You save what plants you can and plant a seed from them in the greenhouse. Then when we move you can take the plants that you save with us. Again son, I will not take that pollution but will leave it here. In fact, I will have to burn the garden when we are ready to move, to be rid of it as much as possible. So save what you can, I have a lot of other work to do now. Also, only the plants that actually trust our instructions can go. I'm not going to have this happen again. They'll have to trust you. You can make them trust you if you want but you cannot save those who do not trust you."
The father sighed as he went to put the gas and matches away. Then he thought, "It's going to be harder than he thinks to save those polluted little plants. Already, they did not trust us."
The son went down to the plants that were hiding. He said, "Come out, I know you are there. Why are you hiding." The plant replied, "Me scared!" "Of course you are. Look what you have done to yourselves and now the ground is polluted too. Look at these other plants with thorns in them, struggling against each other. Now gardening is going to be hard for you." The plant with the slender stalks waved one of her tender tendrils in the direction of the fence from which she heard a whisper and said, "Me no like."
The son said, "But you did like, you liked it enough not to trust me. Well, now your plant systems are all messed up, little one. But I can turn what he did on its head. Do not worry too much, we will garden like we once did. You have really messed things up. But one day I'll take one of your seeds inside again and fashion a plant for myself to fix some things through. I'll have to be the one to do all the work, since you failed my father and I. He is really upset, you know."
Then he ripped up some other plants and gave them some of the leaves to cover their recycling systems. The gardening plants quivered at this because they had never seen a plant ripped up before. They saw that the son seemed sad as he handed the ripped up plant to them. For the lil' plants were ashamed of their recycling parts now because of the pollution in them. So they covered themselves.
The son walked back to the porch and took inside a plant that was sitting there. It was a special plant that he and his father had made to change the recycling system of the gardening plants. But now it would have to be put in the greenhouse. The son thought, "I can probably make a hybrid seed with this plant and a whole new seed to make use of that pollution. It's not going to do any good to have them garden this plant now, the pollution would be eating them up inside even as I garden them." He looked out the window and saw the little gardening plants struggling to garden the other plants. The one with the tender tendrils had her tendrils droop, just a bit, as she helped the one with the strong stalks struggle to garden.
He sighed, then set to work too.
The Garden, Part II
The Garden, Part III
So the lil' gardening plants gardened the forbidden tree. The one with the strong stalks said, "Me like tree!" and the one with the tender lil' tendrils and beautiful flowers replied, "Me like, me like too!"
As they gardened they took in some of the tree into their plant recycling system. The one with strong stalks looked over and saw some brown going up the stalks of the one with slender stalks. Then he looked down at his own leaves and they seemed wilted, just a little. The one with tender tendrils looked at him and said, "Me no like!" as one of her tendrils drooped down. They looked at each other again. Then he replied, "Me hide now." So they both went to a corner of the garden and hid behind a plant. They did not like the brown pollution inside them and it was not so fun to garden the tree anymore.
The next day the father came down from his back porch and looked at the polluted tree and saw that it had been gardened. Then he saw a little trail of yellowish brown where the lil' gardening plants had walked, their roots leaving a pollution all through the fine black humus of his garden. Already there were other plants that it had gotten into. Some of them drooped and wilted with brown trailing up their stems, others of them seemed to grow thorns, while some tendrils pushed at each other and leaves grew larger as they struggled against each to take the light first. He saw the spirit of his uncreative neighbor in it all.
He and his neighbor used to be partners and had even created a garden together. Then they had a falling out and the neighbor moved out to be on his own. It was because of their different ways of creating that they began to differ. His neighbor wanted to eat too much and create too little.
The father looked and saw the little trail of brown leading to two lil' gardening plants, quivering and hiding. He heard one whisper, "Me scared!" The father thought about all the effort and time he had put into this garden. Then he thought about how much of his energy he had put into the gardening plants. He grew sad at what a polluted waste it was now. Then he grew angry. So he walked back inside his house to get some matches and gas to burn the garden. But his son saw him and asked, "What is the gas for?" His father replied, "Come with me and you'll see." So they both went to the backporch and his son took in the whole scene. The son said, "I think I can fix this." His father replied, "How are you going to get the pollution out? I will not have it." The son replied, "I think I can regenerate the plants, turn it around and actually make use of it. Just think of the satisfaction of turning the neighbor's pollution that eats away on its head so that it creates. Besides, this is my first garden and I like my little plants. I think we should save them."
Looking at his son his father said, "Alright, this might be harder than you think. First, I have to build a green house. Also, I am going to build a whole new house and move away from our neighbor. Enough is enough, he will probably starve to death. For your sake, I will not burn this polluted garden. You save what plants you can and plant a seed from them in the greenhouse. Then when we move you can take the plants that you save with us. Again son, I will not take that pollution but will leave it here. In fact, I will have to burn the garden when we are ready to move, to be rid of it as much as possible. So save what you can, I have a lot of other work to do now. Also, only the plants that actually trust our instructions can go. I'm not going to have this happen again. They'll have to trust you. You can make them trust you if you want but you cannot save those who do not trust you."
The father sighed as he went to put the gas and matches away. Then he thought, "It's going to be harder than he thinks to save those polluted little plants. Already, they did not trust us."
The son went down to the plants that were hiding. He said, "Come out, I know you are there. Why are you hiding." The plant replied, "Me scared!" "Of course you are. Look what you have done to yourselves and now the ground is polluted too. Look at these other plants with thorns in them, struggling against each other. Now gardening is going to be hard for you." The plant with the slender stalks waved one of her tender tendrils in the direction of the fence from which she heard a whisper and said, "Me no like."
The son said, "But you did like, you liked it enough not to trust me. Well, now your plant systems are all messed up, little one. But I can turn what he did on its head. Do not worry too much, we will garden like we once did. You have really messed things up. But one day I'll take one of your seeds inside again and fashion a plant for myself to fix some things through. I'll have to be the one to do all the work, since you failed my father and I. He is really upset, you know."
Then he ripped up some other plants and gave them some of the leaves to cover their recycling systems. The gardening plants quivered at this because they had never seen a plant ripped up before. They saw that the son seemed sad as he handed the ripped up plant to them. For the lil' plants were ashamed of their recycling parts now because of the pollution in them. So they covered themselves.
The son walked back to the porch and took inside a plant that was sitting there. It was a special plant that he and his father had made to change the recycling system of the gardening plants. But now it would have to be put in the greenhouse. The son thought, "I can probably make a hybrid seed with this plant and a whole new seed to make use of that pollution. It's not going to do any good to have them garden this plant now, the pollution would be eating them up inside even as I garden them." He looked out the window and saw the little gardening plants struggling to garden the other plants. The one with the tender tendrils had her tendrils droop, just a bit, as she helped the one with the strong stalks struggle to garden.
He sighed, then set to work too.
Friday, December 17, 2004
The rest of an index for old stories and parables
The Debt
Mothers who lack Wisdom
Two men, praying
The Twinkie People
Little Timmy
The stem cells that would steady the tide.
A Parable of Genesis, a Beginning
The Author (I like this one.)
The Right and the Left
A Sage of an Age
The Nice Guy
Some Real Cluckers
If Adam Had Wisdom
If Eve had walked with the living Logos
The Sensitive War
Scientists, a Satire
The Programmer
The Race, this one is just a little racy.
The Eggs of Easter, seek and you shall find.
The Big Secret
Some swine, they whine!
Some artistic shepherds....
Solomon's Sword
A story of Ape-man, my favorite hero!
Another Big Secret
Nursery Duty!
The Beings who just kept being. (Hmmm, never did finish that one. I forgot. I guess I'll have to do that sometime. Some of them could probably use some refining and defining, so criticize if you want.)
Mothers who lack Wisdom
Two men, praying
The Twinkie People
Little Timmy
The stem cells that would steady the tide.
A Parable of Genesis, a Beginning
The Author (I like this one.)
The Right and the Left
A Sage of an Age
The Nice Guy
Some Real Cluckers
If Adam Had Wisdom
If Eve had walked with the living Logos
The Sensitive War
Scientists, a Satire
The Programmer
The Race, this one is just a little racy.
The Eggs of Easter, seek and you shall find.
The Big Secret
Some swine, they whine!
Some artistic shepherds....
Solomon's Sword
A story of Ape-man, my favorite hero!
Another Big Secret
Nursery Duty!
The Beings who just kept being. (Hmmm, never did finish that one. I forgot. I guess I'll have to do that sometime. Some of them could probably use some refining and defining, so criticize if you want.)
An Index of Parables and Stories...
I'm making this post as an index so that I can have the links all in one place. It's starting to get hard to find things.
Judging Judgment
The Beasts
A parable of an atheist
The Metaphysician
The Artist and the Scientist
Two men, philosophizing...
A Story of Aliens
The Adams, (Adam: a creature of humus, human or earthling)
Of Mice and Men....and pseudo-mice too! ...and why not some prissy pussies too?
A fairy tale, with no fairies
A fairly fair fairy tale, still with no fairies
Humans and their humus...
The Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich...
A parable about some farmers....
Running the Race....
The Butcher the Baker and some Candlestick makers too!
Science Fiction
The Extracosmosials
Sheesh, I did not realize how many parables and stories are mixed in.
I'll index the rest later.
Judging Judgment
The Beasts
A parable of an atheist
The Metaphysician
The Artist and the Scientist
Two men, philosophizing...
A Story of Aliens
The Adams, (Adam: a creature of humus, human or earthling)
Of Mice and Men....and pseudo-mice too! ...and why not some prissy pussies too?
A fairy tale, with no fairies
A fairly fair fairy tale, still with no fairies
Humans and their humus...
The Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich...
A parable about some farmers....
Running the Race....
The Butcher the Baker and some Candlestick makers too!
Science Fiction
The Extracosmosials
Sheesh, I did not realize how many parables and stories are mixed in.
I'll index the rest later.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
The Garden.....
Part One
Part Two,
....so one day the lil' plant looked up at the son as he came down from the backporch and said, "Me lonely!"
So the son took the lil' plant inside to where they had created it to make another. The plant was put to sleep and did not remember a thing about the inside of the house and the creation of another gardening plant. He came to back outside in the garden. Then he saw another lil' plant with some tender lil' tendrils, slender stems and some beautiful flowers. He said, "Me like!" Then the two gardening plants started gardening the garden and the corner of the family's backyard started getting green with plants of all sorts. The father, son and mother looked down from their backporch and talked about how good their garden was coming along. It was looking like it would be very fruitful and the gardening plants would work well, once there were many more of them. The son said, "I guess they'll figure out how to make more on their own pretty soon." The father replied, "Probably, that first one seems a bit slow, though."
Then the family went in for the evening.
This evening a wind blew from the neighbor's yard and brought some pollen into the family's garden. The neighbor was not that creative. He once was friends with the creative family but did not get along with them anymore. He still remembered some of the things he learned and he wanted his own backyard to be green too. His gardening was not working out so well. He could not remember the things the creative family had taught him. His garden was not that fruitful and so he was becoming hungry. He put effort into, yet could not get enough energy back out of it to live well on and do more gardening too. He just could not create and he was not strong enough. But he hated the family now and would not accept any help from them.
This evening he had seen the family create their gardening plants and he thought to himself that here was the solution to his gardening problems. If he could just get some of those plants that the family had made then he could still garden and they would be creative for him. Through them, he could create. He could just tell them what to do and since the creative family had made them the lil' gardening plants would be able to do the gardening that he could not remember how to do. He felt hungry and then thought, "I just have to get them to my own backyard, somehow." So he took some of his only remaining type of plant and shook it over the fence, this was how the pollen came to fall down into the family's backyard. A hybrid tree came to grow from his pollen mixing in with plants of the garden. The father saw this tree and told the lil' gardening plants not to try to garden it. He saw that there was something wrong with it and did not want it to be fruitful or to pollute the garden.
The gardening plants were recyclers, like all plants are. They might have been special and creative gardening plants but they were, after all, still plants. So if the pollution got into them, then it would spread into the garden through their recycling processes. So he told them that their life as plants would get messed up from the pollution in the tree.
But one evening the neighbor whispered through the fence, "It would not mess up your recycling. But it is true that you would be changed. I created that tree, you see. So I know that if you garden it then you will be like me and the family you know. Look at yourselves, just stupid little plants, you can hardly talk or create as we can. Ha! Can't you see that my neighbors are just using you for their gardening?" So there was a lot of truth in what the neighbor said, he had just put things in his own light to get what he wanted.
The beautiful plant with the tender lil' tendrils replied, "Me tired of being plant!" The original plant agreed, "Me too!"
So they gardened the forbidden tree.
(I guess there will have to be a Part III. Sheesh....)
Part Two,
....so one day the lil' plant looked up at the son as he came down from the backporch and said, "Me lonely!"
So the son took the lil' plant inside to where they had created it to make another. The plant was put to sleep and did not remember a thing about the inside of the house and the creation of another gardening plant. He came to back outside in the garden. Then he saw another lil' plant with some tender lil' tendrils, slender stems and some beautiful flowers. He said, "Me like!" Then the two gardening plants started gardening the garden and the corner of the family's backyard started getting green with plants of all sorts. The father, son and mother looked down from their backporch and talked about how good their garden was coming along. It was looking like it would be very fruitful and the gardening plants would work well, once there were many more of them. The son said, "I guess they'll figure out how to make more on their own pretty soon." The father replied, "Probably, that first one seems a bit slow, though."
Then the family went in for the evening.
This evening a wind blew from the neighbor's yard and brought some pollen into the family's garden. The neighbor was not that creative. He once was friends with the creative family but did not get along with them anymore. He still remembered some of the things he learned and he wanted his own backyard to be green too. His gardening was not working out so well. He could not remember the things the creative family had taught him. His garden was not that fruitful and so he was becoming hungry. He put effort into, yet could not get enough energy back out of it to live well on and do more gardening too. He just could not create and he was not strong enough. But he hated the family now and would not accept any help from them.
This evening he had seen the family create their gardening plants and he thought to himself that here was the solution to his gardening problems. If he could just get some of those plants that the family had made then he could still garden and they would be creative for him. Through them, he could create. He could just tell them what to do and since the creative family had made them the lil' gardening plants would be able to do the gardening that he could not remember how to do. He felt hungry and then thought, "I just have to get them to my own backyard, somehow." So he took some of his only remaining type of plant and shook it over the fence, this was how the pollen came to fall down into the family's backyard. A hybrid tree came to grow from his pollen mixing in with plants of the garden. The father saw this tree and told the lil' gardening plants not to try to garden it. He saw that there was something wrong with it and did not want it to be fruitful or to pollute the garden.
The gardening plants were recyclers, like all plants are. They might have been special and creative gardening plants but they were, after all, still plants. So if the pollution got into them, then it would spread into the garden through their recycling processes. So he told them that their life as plants would get messed up from the pollution in the tree.
But one evening the neighbor whispered through the fence, "It would not mess up your recycling. But it is true that you would be changed. I created that tree, you see. So I know that if you garden it then you will be like me and the family you know. Look at yourselves, just stupid little plants, you can hardly talk or create as we can. Ha! Can't you see that my neighbors are just using you for their gardening?" So there was a lot of truth in what the neighbor said, he had just put things in his own light to get what he wanted.
The beautiful plant with the tender lil' tendrils replied, "Me tired of being plant!" The original plant agreed, "Me too!"
So they gardened the forbidden tree.
(I guess there will have to be a Part III. Sheesh....)
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
The Manufacturers of Madness, how they work.
The proposal that rape is a disease so upset feminists— fearing that the diagnosis would provide an instant insanity defense for men who sexually assault women—that they threatened to sue. So Spitzer backed down: “We probably will withdraw the diagnosis of rapism . . . ,“ he told The New York Times. It would be laboring the obvious to dwell on the fact that Spitzer and his colleagues are acting like legislators introducing new bills in Congress and supporting or withdrawing them, depending on how the political winds blow. This is not the way real doctors act: Medical research on AIDS has provoked violent responses of outrage from African authorities who feel their countries are stigmatized by the high incidence of the disease among their people; but these protests have not prompted western AIDS re searchers to withdraw their findings.
Moreover, according to the report in Time magazine, when the feminists threatened to sue over the invention/discovery of “masochism”— mainly afflicting women who stay in abusive marriages—the psychiatrists changed its name to “self-defeating personality disorder.” This surprised the feminists, who did not expect the meeting to descend “into the usual picturesque result of successful lobbying: a bit of old- fashioned horse-trading.”
Psychiatrists have, indeed, come a long way from the autocratic-Teutonic days of Kraepelin and Bleuler, when solitary, male, psychiatric investigators staked their reputations on claiming to have discovered new diseases. Now we have psychiatric democracy or mobocracy—that is, psychopathology by a consensus of charlatans, with women meticulously included among the mischief-makers, with a stake in expanding the business. One of the invited psychologists—naively expecting something scientific to happen—complained: “The low level of intellectual effort was shocking. Diagnoses were developed by majority vote on the level we would use to choose a restaurant. You feel like Italian, I feel like Chinese, so let’s go to a cafeteria. Then it’s typed into a computer. However, it does not seem to matter how openly political—how obviously nonmedical and unscientific—are the ways and means by which psychiatrists create categories of mental illness: the medical and scientific community, as well as the lay public, continue to view psychiatry as a bona fide medical specialty and mental illness as bona fide illness.
Carol Nadelson, the president of the APA (for 1985—1986), smugly asserts:Thanks to the use of DSM-III, the diagnosis of mental disorders is now generally as reliable as the diagnosis of physical ills. . . . Psychiatry has emerged as a mature medical specialty whose methods of diagnosis and treatment are guided by a rational scientific approach. Psychiatry has proved itself in the laboratory.Is that so?
(Insanity, the Idea and Its Consequences
By Thomas Szasz :80-81)
Note that it is the American judiciary that is coming to be reliant on "mental illness." They are corrupt and increasingly rely on a corrupt foundation. There are those who would make all your discriminations for you one day, if they could. So it is best to pay attention as to how they would.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
To those who say, "Huh?"
"My request that my writings be read twice has aroused great indignation. Unjustly so. After all, I do not ask that they be read once."
--Karl Kraus, Half-Truths and One and a Half Truths
It is easy now, with a dictionary.
More or less,
"There are writers who can express in as little as twenty pages what I occasionally need as many as two for." Ib.
More meaning more, the less meaningless,
"It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean." Ib.
"In case of doubt, decide in favor of what is correct." Ib.
Seek and find the Word to find a mind,
"Let language be the divining rod that finds sources of thought." Ib.
--Karl Kraus, Half-Truths and One and a Half Truths
It is easy now, with a dictionary.
More or less,
"There are writers who can express in as little as twenty pages what I occasionally need as many as two for." Ib.
More meaning more, the less meaningless,
"It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean." Ib.
"In case of doubt, decide in favor of what is correct." Ib.
Seek and find the Word to find a mind,
"Let language be the divining rod that finds sources of thought." Ib.
Monday, December 13, 2004
Sadean Philosophy
The Marquis de Sade lived in rather decadent times in the decline of civilization. At the end of civilization, there is almost invariably revolution. There has to be, because man cannot live as a brute. Sade lived at the time of the French Revolution. He has been referred to as the anti-Montesquieu, while in contrast, the Founding Fathers agreed with or took much of their philosophy from Montesquieu. Their philosophy was based on transcendence and Natural Law, Sadean philosophy is based on immanence and the supposed laws of Nature, survival of the fittest. The French Revolution was the advent of socialism and later the Nazis would repeat a brutish Sadean philosophy as socialists.
Evil is essence, it is transcendent. Yet those who live as slaves to Evil typically deny the spiritual, the philosophic, the metaphysical, in favor of the physical, the personal.
Example,
"[Sade] immediately relativizes, personalizes, narcissizes the idea of justice. He makes it into a human structure riddled with egotistical and contradictory impulses, into a sublimation of our passions:
'...let us have the courage to tell men that justice is a myth, and that each individual never actually heeds any but his own version of it; let us say so fearlessly. Declaring it to them, and giving them thus to appreciate all the dangers of human existence, our warning enables them to ready a defense and in their turn to forge themselves the weapon of injustice, since only by becoming as unjust, as vicious as everybody else can they hope to elude the traps set by others. 'Sade, in fact, restores tribal law, a world of retaliation.....
.....the rituals of cruelty staged by Sade do not lead to the accomplishment of any end, nor are they redeemed by any form of transcendence; their function is one of loss, of waste for its own sake. They continually repeat the desire to escape the social order, to liberate the actors from all social taboos. Sadean atrocities—torture, cannibalism, murder—are performed in an absolute vacuum of significance. No mystical transcendence is there to shore it up."
(Original Vengeance: Politics, Anthropology,
and the French Enlightenment
By Pierre Saint-Amand
Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 26,
No.3. (Spring, 1993), pp. 399-417)
"Sade is the anti-Montesquieu of the Enlightenment. Indeed, he mentions Montesquieu in Juliette only to denigrate him as a second- rate philosopher. Sade exposes, and opposes, the idealistic dimension of Montesquieu’s political science. Montesquieu’si deal of justice is unacceptable in Sadean politics. It must be replaced by an implacable judicial relativism, by private passions and interests — precisely what Montesquieu was at pains to repress in order to demonstrate the possibility of peaceful cohabitation."
(Ib.)
This ".....implacable judicial relativism....." guided by private passions is very popular in the American Republic.
Sade, on private passions,
"The Marquis de Sade reverses the Rousseauean use of nature: Sade uses the category “nature” to affirm bisexual aristocratic libertinage. In Philosophy in the Bedroom (first published in 1795), Sade rejects the contention.....that nature endorses heterosexual vaginal copulation because of its procreative function. Sade asserts that sodomy is within the boundaries of nature and adds,'Those who wish to denigrate the taste or proscribe its practice declare it is harmful to population; how dull-witted they are, these imbeciles who think of nothing but the multiplication of their kind, and who detect nothing but the crime in anything that conduces to a different end. Is it really so firmly established that Nature has so great a need for this overcrowding as they would like to have us believe?
. . . It is false that Nature intends this sperinatic liquid to be employed only and entirely for reproduction.' Sade flatly rejects the absolute, qualitative, procreative standard increasingly used in the eighteenth century to define the “natural.” "
(Erotic "Remedy" Prints and the Fall of the
Aristocracy in Eighteenth-Century France
By Mary L. Bellhouse
Political Theory, Vol. 25, No. 5. (Oct., 1997), pp. 680-715)
"....Nature has so great a need for this overcrowding....."
That is also typical, for Evil. There is this creeping idolatry of Mother Nature, a desire to raise the Asherah poles again, you see.
Evil is essence, it is transcendent. Yet those who live as slaves to Evil typically deny the spiritual, the philosophic, the metaphysical, in favor of the physical, the personal.
Example,
"[Sade] immediately relativizes, personalizes, narcissizes the idea of justice. He makes it into a human structure riddled with egotistical and contradictory impulses, into a sublimation of our passions:
'...let us have the courage to tell men that justice is a myth, and that each individual never actually heeds any but his own version of it; let us say so fearlessly. Declaring it to them, and giving them thus to appreciate all the dangers of human existence, our warning enables them to ready a defense and in their turn to forge themselves the weapon of injustice, since only by becoming as unjust, as vicious as everybody else can they hope to elude the traps set by others. 'Sade, in fact, restores tribal law, a world of retaliation.....
.....the rituals of cruelty staged by Sade do not lead to the accomplishment of any end, nor are they redeemed by any form of transcendence; their function is one of loss, of waste for its own sake. They continually repeat the desire to escape the social order, to liberate the actors from all social taboos. Sadean atrocities—torture, cannibalism, murder—are performed in an absolute vacuum of significance. No mystical transcendence is there to shore it up."
(Original Vengeance: Politics, Anthropology,
and the French Enlightenment
By Pierre Saint-Amand
Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 26,
No.3. (Spring, 1993), pp. 399-417)
"Sade is the anti-Montesquieu of the Enlightenment. Indeed, he mentions Montesquieu in Juliette only to denigrate him as a second- rate philosopher. Sade exposes, and opposes, the idealistic dimension of Montesquieu’s political science. Montesquieu’si deal of justice is unacceptable in Sadean politics. It must be replaced by an implacable judicial relativism, by private passions and interests — precisely what Montesquieu was at pains to repress in order to demonstrate the possibility of peaceful cohabitation."
(Ib.)
This ".....implacable judicial relativism....." guided by private passions is very popular in the American Republic.
Sade, on private passions,
"The Marquis de Sade reverses the Rousseauean use of nature: Sade uses the category “nature” to affirm bisexual aristocratic libertinage. In Philosophy in the Bedroom (first published in 1795), Sade rejects the contention.....that nature endorses heterosexual vaginal copulation because of its procreative function. Sade asserts that sodomy is within the boundaries of nature and adds,'Those who wish to denigrate the taste or proscribe its practice declare it is harmful to population; how dull-witted they are, these imbeciles who think of nothing but the multiplication of their kind, and who detect nothing but the crime in anything that conduces to a different end. Is it really so firmly established that Nature has so great a need for this overcrowding as they would like to have us believe?
. . . It is false that Nature intends this sperinatic liquid to be employed only and entirely for reproduction.' Sade flatly rejects the absolute, qualitative, procreative standard increasingly used in the eighteenth century to define the “natural.” "
(Erotic "Remedy" Prints and the Fall of the
Aristocracy in Eighteenth-Century France
By Mary L. Bellhouse
Political Theory, Vol. 25, No. 5. (Oct., 1997), pp. 680-715)
"....Nature has so great a need for this overcrowding....."
That is also typical, for Evil. There is this creeping idolatry of Mother Nature, a desire to raise the Asherah poles again, you see.
Different storytellers makes for a different story....
"On March 24,2003, the fourth day of the war in Iraq, [Dan] Rather opened his newscast with this upbeat description of the American-led military campaign: “Barreling toward Baghdad. Fast-moving U.S. ground forces fight their way to within miles of the capital. Up above, air raids try to cut up and cut off Iraqi divisions. Iraq insists Saddam is alive, well, and in control.”
But over at ABC, Peter Jennings seemed to be reporting on an entirely different war:
“On World News Tonight, the U.S. attacks all over Iraq, the drive on Baghdad is cautious. There is opposition and there is weather. The Iraqi leader is alive and on television. Who knows how well he is. The U.S. believes he is still in control. Two more Americans are captured, their helicopter shot down. So many others are coming back frill of bullet holes. And the pictures of the POWs. So public now, such pain for the families.”
As it turned out, of course, Rather’s reporting was not simply more optimistic than Jennings’s; it was far more accurate. "
(Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming
Meltdown of the Liberal Media
By Brent Bozell :69)
It's something to think about if you still watch the Old Media.
Dan Rather distorted his coverage of things all the time, depending on the issue and what he thought about it. Sometimes it is worth deconstructing a story and looking at the storyteller. I am not saying that deconstructionists always have a point, typically they do not. But if a person's basic philosophy is that all is matter in motion then deconstruction applies. Like Karl Kraus said of psychoanalysis, it applies to psychanalysts. It also applies to anyone whose basic philosophy is that all is matter in motion. How do you understand matter in motion, the way it moves as per cause and effect? You use the solvent of science on it, deconstruction and perhaps even psychoanalysis. The mind that refutes its being as spirit, seems to refute itself into a conditioned brain that can be analyzed, the symbols it writes deconstructed.
This is what happens to the New Man. C.S. Lewis predicted his abolition by his self-refutation, now his conditioning is like clockwork.
To attempt to see something from all sides, all the time, is the same as not to see at all.
"To reduce [Natural Law] to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything then everything is tranparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see."
(C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man)
But over at ABC, Peter Jennings seemed to be reporting on an entirely different war:
“On World News Tonight, the U.S. attacks all over Iraq, the drive on Baghdad is cautious. There is opposition and there is weather. The Iraqi leader is alive and on television. Who knows how well he is. The U.S. believes he is still in control. Two more Americans are captured, their helicopter shot down. So many others are coming back frill of bullet holes. And the pictures of the POWs. So public now, such pain for the families.”
As it turned out, of course, Rather’s reporting was not simply more optimistic than Jennings’s; it was far more accurate. "
(Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming
Meltdown of the Liberal Media
By Brent Bozell :69)
It's something to think about if you still watch the Old Media.
Dan Rather distorted his coverage of things all the time, depending on the issue and what he thought about it. Sometimes it is worth deconstructing a story and looking at the storyteller. I am not saying that deconstructionists always have a point, typically they do not. But if a person's basic philosophy is that all is matter in motion then deconstruction applies. Like Karl Kraus said of psychoanalysis, it applies to psychanalysts. It also applies to anyone whose basic philosophy is that all is matter in motion. How do you understand matter in motion, the way it moves as per cause and effect? You use the solvent of science on it, deconstruction and perhaps even psychoanalysis. The mind that refutes its being as spirit, seems to refute itself into a conditioned brain that can be analyzed, the symbols it writes deconstructed.
This is what happens to the New Man. C.S. Lewis predicted his abolition by his self-refutation, now his conditioning is like clockwork.
To attempt to see something from all sides, all the time, is the same as not to see at all.
"To reduce [Natural Law] to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything then everything is tranparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see."
(C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man)
Saturday, December 11, 2004
The Garden...
Once upon a time there was a gardener who could create his own plants. So that is what he did in his house. Then he planted the plants in a big garden he had made in his backyard. His backyard was a vast wilderness that was still wooded. He had started gardening in one little corner of it. He made all sorts of new lil' plants and planted them there. His wife watered them and so on. Then one day his wife, his son and he were sitting on the back porch looking at the little corner and his son said, "Why don't we make some little plants that can garden, like we do. Then we could make the garden team with life faster. Plus, we could even have them talk and make more plants that could garden, like we do." His father replied, "That is an excellent idea. It will take a lot of work to create a plant like that though. We would have to put a lot of our own energy and spirit into it." His son said, "Yes, but it would be worth it. I would love some lil' plants like that." So they toiled away, to make some plants that could garden as they did. They got one done, after putting a lot of energy into it.
So they had this lil' plant that was walking around the corner of the garden, gardening. The family of gardeners watched the lil' plant from the porch, gardening away. The son went down and talked to his lil' plant sometimes and the plant talked back to him saying, "Me like this. Me call this other plant, this name." The son thought, "That really is cool. I like this lil' plant. He's really little and can't talk so good. But he is part vegetable, after all." The son went with the lil' plant that wandered around saying, "Me call this, that!" and sometimes he would help the lil' plant along or help him with some gardening. He knew that the lil' gardening plant needed another lil' gardening plant for the Romantic plan of he and his dad gardening the wilderness with a bunch of lil' gardening plants. He was waiting for the plant to realize it. Well, it took the lil' plant a while because he was not so quick compared to those who created him. He could not quite speak their language either.
But one day he looked up at the son as he came down from the backporch, where his parents were looking down enjoying their garden too, and said to him, "Me lonely!"
(Continued)
So they had this lil' plant that was walking around the corner of the garden, gardening. The family of gardeners watched the lil' plant from the porch, gardening away. The son went down and talked to his lil' plant sometimes and the plant talked back to him saying, "Me like this. Me call this other plant, this name." The son thought, "That really is cool. I like this lil' plant. He's really little and can't talk so good. But he is part vegetable, after all." The son went with the lil' plant that wandered around saying, "Me call this, that!" and sometimes he would help the lil' plant along or help him with some gardening. He knew that the lil' gardening plant needed another lil' gardening plant for the Romantic plan of he and his dad gardening the wilderness with a bunch of lil' gardening plants. He was waiting for the plant to realize it. Well, it took the lil' plant a while because he was not so quick compared to those who created him. He could not quite speak their language either.
But one day he looked up at the son as he came down from the backporch, where his parents were looking down enjoying their garden too, and said to him, "Me lonely!"
(Continued)
Friday, December 10, 2004
Blog keeping....
I have some blog notes saved in my email things, ideas. I'll probably have some time to write tomorrow. I have not had that much time lately. It often takes me at least a half an hour for a story or parable. Right now I have a book I want to read, sorry about that.
Here are my blog notes:
------
The Beauty Queen and perfection....
News Journal editorials..
Christmas quotes or parable...
Story of scientist who naturalizes ancient text, all the anything but God hypotheses....
God vs. a demi-god.....blackholes, moving planets around and sweeping stars from the sky.
A creative man with a son who gardens....
-------
I'll probably write at least some of these. My favorite story so far has been The Author. I hope to write something better one day, none of these ideas are better. I'm curious about what your favorite parable is, if you have one and care to comment. One reader's seems to be, Judging Judgment and another's was The Race. Thanks for the encouragement, readers.
My email is watt2020@bellatlantic.net
Later, I hope to get some writing in tomorrow.
Here are my blog notes:
------
The Beauty Queen and perfection....
News Journal editorials..
Christmas quotes or parable...
Story of scientist who naturalizes ancient text, all the anything but God hypotheses....
God vs. a demi-god.....blackholes, moving planets around and sweeping stars from the sky.
A creative man with a son who gardens....
-------
I'll probably write at least some of these. My favorite story so far has been The Author. I hope to write something better one day, none of these ideas are better. I'm curious about what your favorite parable is, if you have one and care to comment. One reader's seems to be, Judging Judgment and another's was The Race. Thanks for the encouragement, readers.
My email is watt2020@bellatlantic.net
Later, I hope to get some writing in tomorrow.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Ghosts....
"Hitler stopped and looked me in the eyes, ‘Christianity is, for the moment, one of the points in the programme I have laid down. But we must look ahead. Rosenberg is a forerunner, a prophet. His theories are the expression of the German soul.'"
(Otto Strasser
Hitler and I
Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Company 1940 :96)
I need to assemble a pattern of evidence about demoniacs, just to get this pattern down. They tend to have these "visions" and things, like Hitler did. Then they are virulently anti-Christianity and/or anti-Judaism, sometimes secretly. They must put on a good public face for political reasons.
Another vision:
"Ed Murrow's ghost is here," Rather told the Hollywood Reporter. "I've seen him and talked to him on the third floor of this building many times late at night. And I can tell you that he's watching over us."
Cite: all over the internet, Google it.
This guy thinks he is talking to a ghost. All these stories upon stories, myths, etc., are they all a bunch of liars? I can deconstruct a story fairly well. Some stories fall apart easily, others not so much. In the end, I can see no reason why people lie about these things, all the time. I would not quite accept their version of "ghosts" though. There are some ghosts that are not holy ghosts at all. They seem to be unholy ghosts.
Good ol' demented Dan, his spirit looks out with such a vain glory and arrogance. But just whose vain glory is in the eyes of those who do what is right in their own eyes? The bonfire of the vanities can burn very hot, perhaps even now the flame of righteousness can singe the spirit of vain glory.
(Otto Strasser
Hitler and I
Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Company 1940 :96)
I need to assemble a pattern of evidence about demoniacs, just to get this pattern down. They tend to have these "visions" and things, like Hitler did. Then they are virulently anti-Christianity and/or anti-Judaism, sometimes secretly. They must put on a good public face for political reasons.
Another vision:
"Ed Murrow's ghost is here," Rather told the Hollywood Reporter. "I've seen him and talked to him on the third floor of this building many times late at night. And I can tell you that he's watching over us."
Cite: all over the internet, Google it.
This guy thinks he is talking to a ghost. All these stories upon stories, myths, etc., are they all a bunch of liars? I can deconstruct a story fairly well. Some stories fall apart easily, others not so much. In the end, I can see no reason why people lie about these things, all the time. I would not quite accept their version of "ghosts" though. There are some ghosts that are not holy ghosts at all. They seem to be unholy ghosts.
Good ol' demented Dan, his spirit looks out with such a vain glory and arrogance. But just whose vain glory is in the eyes of those who do what is right in their own eyes? The bonfire of the vanities can burn very hot, perhaps even now the flame of righteousness can singe the spirit of vain glory.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
The New Man....
His view of Michael Moore's 9/11.
It goes a little like this, "Bad pictures....they makin' me cry. For the nicety of me!"
-------
"Sure, there really are lots of uneaven and conflicting views, but he does a good job of pointing out the fact that there is a large population of people in Iraq who do not want us there and never did."
(I shall translate.)
Michael Moore does a good job. He is pointing out facts. There a lot of people in Iraq who do not want us there.
"They are fighting as patriots who don't want to see their babies blown to shreds in their cribs at night."
They are patriots.
American soldiers are blowing up their babies. Wouldn't you also become a patriot and try to blow up American soldiers, just like they do? If you are an Iraqi reading this, have you joined the movement of patriots and tried to blow up American soldiers today? Best to join up now, lest you be blown up tomorrow.
"He also does a good job of showing the human cost of war... "
To reiterate, Michael Moore does a good job, not a bad job, a good job.
"Men sobbing as they pick up mutilated parts of their wives who got killed in their sleep, women screaming in agony with their legs blown off as they went to the market, children in shock as they watch the burned bodies of their siblings being piled into a truck."
American soldiers are killing women and children, then piling the bodies high right in front of the siblings.
"These are people who have commited no crime and who did not ask to be a part of the war, but the war greeted them in the streets and in their houses."
It's the innocent villagers vs. the Big Meanie Americans.
(If you want to see this pattern, just watch Stolen Honor. It's the same thing that propagandists did then.)
"Surgical precision technology... oops, that was a marketplace. Highly trained soldiers who only take out "insurgent targets..." One soldier said this, "When you go into battle, you shoot anything that moves. You are listening to your favorite CD to get all pumped and ready for action, then you gou out with guns blazing. Sometimes you waste a few kids and women, but you would do the same thing if you were here."
American soldiers are running rampant. They kill women and children because well.....it is like their favorite thing to do.
(Propagandists work through associative conditioning, infralogical conditioning, etc., using basic psychological patterns to "Say it with pictures." images, etc.)
"So yes, you should be ware of fancy editing tricks and disjointed opinions flung in your face with a specific agenda, but you should see it to get another perspective. If you still think that this war is only being waged on terrorists, you are sadly mistaken."
American soldiers are waging war on women and children. You should see it because Michael Moore does a good job, such a good job in offering another perspective.
It goes a little like this, "Bad pictures....they makin' me cry. For the nicety of me!"
-------
"Sure, there really are lots of uneaven and conflicting views, but he does a good job of pointing out the fact that there is a large population of people in Iraq who do not want us there and never did."
(I shall translate.)
Michael Moore does a good job. He is pointing out facts. There a lot of people in Iraq who do not want us there.
"They are fighting as patriots who don't want to see their babies blown to shreds in their cribs at night."
They are patriots.
American soldiers are blowing up their babies. Wouldn't you also become a patriot and try to blow up American soldiers, just like they do? If you are an Iraqi reading this, have you joined the movement of patriots and tried to blow up American soldiers today? Best to join up now, lest you be blown up tomorrow.
"He also does a good job of showing the human cost of war... "
To reiterate, Michael Moore does a good job, not a bad job, a good job.
"Men sobbing as they pick up mutilated parts of their wives who got killed in their sleep, women screaming in agony with their legs blown off as they went to the market, children in shock as they watch the burned bodies of their siblings being piled into a truck."
American soldiers are killing women and children, then piling the bodies high right in front of the siblings.
"These are people who have commited no crime and who did not ask to be a part of the war, but the war greeted them in the streets and in their houses."
It's the innocent villagers vs. the Big Meanie Americans.
(If you want to see this pattern, just watch Stolen Honor. It's the same thing that propagandists did then.)
"Surgical precision technology... oops, that was a marketplace. Highly trained soldiers who only take out "insurgent targets..." One soldier said this, "When you go into battle, you shoot anything that moves. You are listening to your favorite CD to get all pumped and ready for action, then you gou out with guns blazing. Sometimes you waste a few kids and women, but you would do the same thing if you were here."
American soldiers are running rampant. They kill women and children because well.....it is like their favorite thing to do.
(Propagandists work through associative conditioning, infralogical conditioning, etc., using basic psychological patterns to "Say it with pictures." images, etc.)
"So yes, you should be ware of fancy editing tricks and disjointed opinions flung in your face with a specific agenda, but you should see it to get another perspective. If you still think that this war is only being waged on terrorists, you are sadly mistaken."
American soldiers are waging war on women and children. You should see it because Michael Moore does a good job, such a good job in offering another perspective.
Light, a delight, it is sheer brilliance to see the light.
It is a wonder that makes it possible to wonder more. Wonderful, is it not? Let there be light, for sight.
"Light is arguably the most fascinating form of energy. At every instant of our lives we’re surrounded by photons, some dating back to the ori gin of the universe, speeding by at 186,183 miles per second, which is the speed limit of the universe. In one year a photon travels some six trillion miles. These are the photons that chemically react with our retinal cells constantly to give us sight and with chlorophyll to generate the energy required by plants and us. Light is also today’s most potent medium of information transmission: information is transmitted via photons rather than electrons."
(The Wonder of the World: A Journey from
Modern Science to the Mind of God
by Roy Abraham Varghese :404)
Starlight, star bright, shed the light of the night.
"...Comte was wrong. Stars are not merely hot, opaque balls of gas. William Huggins, the first stellar spectroscopist, saw stars as encoded books whose language we had to learn to translate. More literally, a star is a space probe that continuously broadcasts light in all directions, conveying information about itself and its local environment over vast distances—enough information, in fact, to keep thousands of astronomers quite busy. Stars are relatively simple, however. Most are nearly spherical, allowing astronomers to describe their structure with a few simple equations."
(The Privileged Planet: How Our Place
in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery
By Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards :120)
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world."
(An ancient Psalmist, some would say just another ignorant goat herder, less evolved, you know. Yet their witness, their information is in all different languages at the same time. Therefore, all can see the light.)
Those who have eyes, let them crack the cosmic code.
"Within this unraveled starlight exists a strange cryptography. Some of the rays may be blotted out, others may be enhanced in brilliancy. Their differences, countless in variety, form a code of signals, in which is conveyed to us, when once we have made out the cipher in which it is written, information of the chemical nature of the celestial gases. . . . It was the discovery of this code of signals, and of its interpretation, which made possible the rise of the new astronomy." —William Huggins (Ib. :119)
Those who have eyes, let them see.
"65. Seeing—3
At one time it was thought that the eye evolved separately in different life-forms. Today, as Stephen Jay Gould has said, there is no longer any separate story of evolutionary origins for the eye because an underlying master-control gene, common to all phyla, positioned the fundamental structure of the eye on one and the same genetic pathway. Fully functional eyes appear right at the beginning of the Cambrian explosion. The Pax-6 gene governs the development of this delicate and intricately organized organ in the most varied species. A single genetic blueprint was pre-pro- grammed into the very stuff of being."
(The Wonder of the World: A Journey from
Modern Science to the Mind of God
by Roy Abraham Varghese :414)
Who would have thought that the bright city lights of men that hide and blur out the lights of the night would impact their philosophy? Yet the New Man has indeed lost his sense of the Creator by less, for less. Human beings are such a strange sort of being.
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so."
Genesis
"Light is arguably the most fascinating form of energy. At every instant of our lives we’re surrounded by photons, some dating back to the ori gin of the universe, speeding by at 186,183 miles per second, which is the speed limit of the universe. In one year a photon travels some six trillion miles. These are the photons that chemically react with our retinal cells constantly to give us sight and with chlorophyll to generate the energy required by plants and us. Light is also today’s most potent medium of information transmission: information is transmitted via photons rather than electrons."
(The Wonder of the World: A Journey from
Modern Science to the Mind of God
by Roy Abraham Varghese :404)
Starlight, star bright, shed the light of the night.
"...Comte was wrong. Stars are not merely hot, opaque balls of gas. William Huggins, the first stellar spectroscopist, saw stars as encoded books whose language we had to learn to translate. More literally, a star is a space probe that continuously broadcasts light in all directions, conveying information about itself and its local environment over vast distances—enough information, in fact, to keep thousands of astronomers quite busy. Stars are relatively simple, however. Most are nearly spherical, allowing astronomers to describe their structure with a few simple equations."
(The Privileged Planet: How Our Place
in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery
By Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards :120)
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world."
(An ancient Psalmist, some would say just another ignorant goat herder, less evolved, you know. Yet their witness, their information is in all different languages at the same time. Therefore, all can see the light.)
Those who have eyes, let them crack the cosmic code.
"Within this unraveled starlight exists a strange cryptography. Some of the rays may be blotted out, others may be enhanced in brilliancy. Their differences, countless in variety, form a code of signals, in which is conveyed to us, when once we have made out the cipher in which it is written, information of the chemical nature of the celestial gases. . . . It was the discovery of this code of signals, and of its interpretation, which made possible the rise of the new astronomy." —William Huggins (Ib. :119)
Those who have eyes, let them see.
"65. Seeing—3
At one time it was thought that the eye evolved separately in different life-forms. Today, as Stephen Jay Gould has said, there is no longer any separate story of evolutionary origins for the eye because an underlying master-control gene, common to all phyla, positioned the fundamental structure of the eye on one and the same genetic pathway. Fully functional eyes appear right at the beginning of the Cambrian explosion. The Pax-6 gene governs the development of this delicate and intricately organized organ in the most varied species. A single genetic blueprint was pre-pro- grammed into the very stuff of being."
(The Wonder of the World: A Journey from
Modern Science to the Mind of God
by Roy Abraham Varghese :414)
Who would have thought that the bright city lights of men that hide and blur out the lights of the night would impact their philosophy? Yet the New Man has indeed lost his sense of the Creator by less, for less. Human beings are such a strange sort of being.
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so."
Genesis
Monday, December 06, 2004
A fairly fair fairy tale, still with no fairies.
(Read part one here.)
So the knight errant, who was not too errant, kept going on his patrol. He road along on his high horse on that mighty fine and dandy day. For without the mighty tricky dandy men about, the day was fine and dandy indeed.
He came to the other side of the castle of the Prince. On this side was the land of the Beast and his servants, the ape-men. The ape-men just had clubs and their own brute strength. They worshipped trees and animals, so they did not progress very far. Also, they did not write things down but only grunted at each other. They ran in packs and relied on that for their strength. Fortunately, there were no packs of ape-men out on this mighty fine day. They were probably out worshipping trees as they sometimes did. So the knight rode back to the castle.
Inside the gates there were some young squires sparring. So the knight went and joined them. As he sparred with them he noticed that they were using a few techniques of the dandy men of the Queen of the South. He shrugged it off as coincidence. But then, there it was again, and then again. They were fighting like dandy men.
He looked up to see one of the knights of a higher order called a knight templar walking out of the palace and coming to observe. He went over to him and said, "Does it seem to you like they're fighting like dandy men? It does to me." The knight templar replied, "Yes, we know that they have been sneaking out to the terrority of the Queen of the South. We cannot have the lukewarm within these gates, they might become her servants and betray us. So we know that something msut be done. The Prince's orders in dealing with these squires is to wound them, so they must stay in the gates. He is a forgiving master, but if they keep doing the same thing then they will be thrown out to go serve the Queen until she is defeated."
So the knight went back to sparring with the squires. He started swinging and sparring harder. One little squire said, "Hey, that's not nice!" with a quaver in his voice. Then, he tried to fight harder but failed. They were groupie squires and they piped up with a sqeaky voices, "That's really just not nice!" Then those that were left all tried to fight at once.
But each one was wounded because they were not very strong, even all together. So these groupie squires stayed in the gates for a bit. Eventually some would leave, yet some that were wounded would also stay and become stronger knights of the Prince than the one who trained them on that day.
So the knight errant, who was not too errant, kept going on his patrol. He road along on his high horse on that mighty fine and dandy day. For without the mighty tricky dandy men about, the day was fine and dandy indeed.
He came to the other side of the castle of the Prince. On this side was the land of the Beast and his servants, the ape-men. The ape-men just had clubs and their own brute strength. They worshipped trees and animals, so they did not progress very far. Also, they did not write things down but only grunted at each other. They ran in packs and relied on that for their strength. Fortunately, there were no packs of ape-men out on this mighty fine day. They were probably out worshipping trees as they sometimes did. So the knight rode back to the castle.
Inside the gates there were some young squires sparring. So the knight went and joined them. As he sparred with them he noticed that they were using a few techniques of the dandy men of the Queen of the South. He shrugged it off as coincidence. But then, there it was again, and then again. They were fighting like dandy men.
He looked up to see one of the knights of a higher order called a knight templar walking out of the palace and coming to observe. He went over to him and said, "Does it seem to you like they're fighting like dandy men? It does to me." The knight templar replied, "Yes, we know that they have been sneaking out to the terrority of the Queen of the South. We cannot have the lukewarm within these gates, they might become her servants and betray us. So we know that something msut be done. The Prince's orders in dealing with these squires is to wound them, so they must stay in the gates. He is a forgiving master, but if they keep doing the same thing then they will be thrown out to go serve the Queen until she is defeated."
So the knight went back to sparring with the squires. He started swinging and sparring harder. One little squire said, "Hey, that's not nice!" with a quaver in his voice. Then, he tried to fight harder but failed. They were groupie squires and they piped up with a sqeaky voices, "That's really just not nice!" Then those that were left all tried to fight at once.
But each one was wounded because they were not very strong, even all together. So these groupie squires stayed in the gates for a bit. Eventually some would leave, yet some that were wounded would also stay and become stronger knights of the Prince than the one who trained them on that day.
The fish, that really was just a fish.
"A particularly interesting case which illustrates both the problem
of convergence and the danger of judging overall biology on
skeletal grounds is that of the rhipidistian fishes. For nearly
a century these ancient lobe finned fishes, as they are often
known, have been generally considered to be ideal amphibian
ancestors and have been classed as intermediate between
fish and the terrestrial vertebrates. This judgment was based
on a number of skeletal features including the pattern of their
skull bones, the structure of their teeth and vertebral columns and e
ven the pattern of bones in their fins, in all of which they closely
resembled the earliest known amphibians. It was assumed that their
soft biology would be also transitional between that of typical fish
and amphibia. But in 1938 fishermen in the Indian Ocean, off Cape
Province in South Africa, hauled to the surface a living relative of
the ancient Rhipidistia - the coelacanth. It was an astonishing discovery,
as the coelacanth had been thought to be extinct for a hundred million
years. Because the coelacanth is a close relative of the Rhipidistia,
here at last was the opportunity to examine first hand the biology
of one of the classic evolutionary links. Its discovery provoked
considerable excitement. Peter Forey comments:
'We had to wait nearly one hundred years before discovery of the
Recent coelacanth. During that time many fossil coelacanths were
described and, on the basis of osteological features, their systematic
position as near relatives of the extinct rhipidistians and as tetrapod
cousins had become part of "evolutionary fact", perpetuated today
in textbooks. Great things were therefore expected from the study
of the soft anatomy and physiology of Latimeria. With due allowance
for the fact that Latimeria is a truly marine fish, it was expected
that some insight might be gained into the soft anatomy and physiology
of that most cherished group, the rhipidistians. Here, at last, was
a chance to glimpse the workings of a tetrapod ancestor. These
expectations were founded on two premises. First, that rhipidistians
are the nearest relatives of tetrapods and secondly, that
Latimeria is a rhipidistian derivative.'
But examination of the living coelacanth proved very disappointing.
Much of its soft anatomy, particularly that of the heart, intestine
and brain, was not what was expected of a tetrapod ancestor.
[....]
If the case of the coelacanth illustrates anything, it shows
how difficult it is to draw conclusions about the overall biology
of organisms from their skeletal remains alone. Because the
soft biology of extinct groups can never be known with any
certainty then obviously the status of even the most convincing
intermediates is bound to be insecure. The coelacanth represents
yet another instance where a newly discovered species, which
might have provided the elusive evidence of intermediacy so
long sought by evolutionary biology, ultimately proved to
be only another peripheral twig on the pre sumed tree of life."
(Evolution: A Theory In Crisis
By Michael Denton :179, 180)
of convergence and the danger of judging overall biology on
skeletal grounds is that of the rhipidistian fishes. For nearly
a century these ancient lobe finned fishes, as they are often
known, have been generally considered to be ideal amphibian
ancestors and have been classed as intermediate between
fish and the terrestrial vertebrates. This judgment was based
on a number of skeletal features including the pattern of their
skull bones, the structure of their teeth and vertebral columns and e
ven the pattern of bones in their fins, in all of which they closely
resembled the earliest known amphibians. It was assumed that their
soft biology would be also transitional between that of typical fish
and amphibia. But in 1938 fishermen in the Indian Ocean, off Cape
Province in South Africa, hauled to the surface a living relative of
the ancient Rhipidistia - the coelacanth. It was an astonishing discovery,
as the coelacanth had been thought to be extinct for a hundred million
years. Because the coelacanth is a close relative of the Rhipidistia,
here at last was the opportunity to examine first hand the biology
of one of the classic evolutionary links. Its discovery provoked
considerable excitement. Peter Forey comments:
'We had to wait nearly one hundred years before discovery of the
Recent coelacanth. During that time many fossil coelacanths were
described and, on the basis of osteological features, their systematic
position as near relatives of the extinct rhipidistians and as tetrapod
cousins had become part of "evolutionary fact", perpetuated today
in textbooks. Great things were therefore expected from the study
of the soft anatomy and physiology of Latimeria. With due allowance
for the fact that Latimeria is a truly marine fish, it was expected
that some insight might be gained into the soft anatomy and physiology
of that most cherished group, the rhipidistians. Here, at last, was
a chance to glimpse the workings of a tetrapod ancestor. These
expectations were founded on two premises. First, that rhipidistians
are the nearest relatives of tetrapods and secondly, that
Latimeria is a rhipidistian derivative.'
But examination of the living coelacanth proved very disappointing.
Much of its soft anatomy, particularly that of the heart, intestine
and brain, was not what was expected of a tetrapod ancestor.
[....]
If the case of the coelacanth illustrates anything, it shows
how difficult it is to draw conclusions about the overall biology
of organisms from their skeletal remains alone. Because the
soft biology of extinct groups can never be known with any
certainty then obviously the status of even the most convincing
intermediates is bound to be insecure. The coelacanth represents
yet another instance where a newly discovered species, which
might have provided the elusive evidence of intermediacy so
long sought by evolutionary biology, ultimately proved to
be only another peripheral twig on the pre sumed tree of life."
(Evolution: A Theory In Crisis
By Michael Denton :179, 180)
Sunday, December 05, 2004
A fairy tale, with no fairies.
Once upon a time there were some knights who lived in a fortress with their ruler, the Prince. There was a King of all kings and so the Prince was the Prince of princes. The Lady of the castle was the Lady of ladies too, her ways seemed mysterious sometimes. The interesting thing about these rulers is that they were not human but were some other type of alien Beings fight against other beings. They were not fighting over the place, the kingdoms that were there. Instead, they came from their Universe to fight for the souls of men and women that the King of kings had made because what he had made was good.
The powerful kingdom was at war with two other weaker kingdoms, ruled by weaker beings. On the one side of the kingdom of the Prince was a place ruled by an alien being, the Beast. All of the Beast's men were like Ape-men, brutish. They were powerful fighters in some ways, yet their weakness was their stupidity. On the other side of the kingdom was a place ruled by the Queen of the South. All of her men were smarmy dandies, quite effeminate. They could be tricky fighters in some ways, yet their weakness was always in their effete lack of strength. These two kingdoms had somewhat of an alliance because the King of kings was too powerful and they knew it. They could not be divided against such a powerful foe as the Prince.
One fine day a knight errant rode his trusty steed out of the castle of the kingdom of the Prince to do battle. For the Ape-men would try to eat or dehumanize any who fell into their grasp and the dandies were corrupt. He used to be a squire and this was his first journey. His mother was like the Lady of ladies and his father like the Prince, so he had become strong.
The first people he came across were some effete men of the Queen of the South. They were real dandies. As such men typically did, they tried to act friendly. They were pretty good at acting. So he got off his high horse and talked to them some. Yet, since they were at war and there was no way around this fact, as soon as he turned his back they tried to stab him in the back. This is generally what they did. Fortunately, he had some armor on and he jumped back on his high horse. Then he swung his sword and chopped one of their arms off. At this, all the dandies cried, "How could you!" While they got out their lil' hankies and started crying about it. So he turned to ride away again. Yet, as he did one of the archers tried to shoot him in the back. Fortunately, the dandy men were not so strong and the arrow did not fly very strong, straight and true. It seemed like these men just could not get things straight. So he turned his high horse back and all the dandies cried, "Your high horse, is so high. Why don't you get off your high horse?" The knight errant thought, "I might be a knight errant but I'm not that errant. Sheesh!" as he road back. The smarmy men all started waving their white hankies to surrender and some fell on the ground to play like they were already dead or wounded. But the knight errant ran them through with his sword this time. One of the dandy men fought, he seemed stronger and he parried and fought the knight. So the knight said, "You seem like a good fighter. Do you want to join our fight instead of having to fight for these strange men who fight by trying to surrender all the time?" The strong dandy man replied, "I see, so you do not surrender all the time and try to stab people in the back. I have heard of your Prince. I would meet your Prince." So the knight handed him a note which said, "This guy looks like a dandy man but he isn't. I know, it's surprising." which he put his seal on. He told him, "Show this at the gate."
This first battle seemed easy but the knight knew that if he ever met the true spirit of the Queen of the South and not just her servants that he would be easily seduced by her ways. Thankfully the Prince was not and could deal with her. In fact, through some of his servants he did deal with her and proved to her that the Lady of ladies had a vast wisdom that she lacked. Yet, she did not listen and corrupted the Prince's servants in various ways because she was a whore with some perverted wisdom that hid the lack of true wisdom in her babelings. She could corrupt his servants if they were willing but could never corrupt the Prince, although this was not for lack of trying.
(Some other time I'll finish this. Maybe with some Ape-men...and some intrigue and corruption among a group of groupie squires at the castle too. But later...)
The powerful kingdom was at war with two other weaker kingdoms, ruled by weaker beings. On the one side of the kingdom of the Prince was a place ruled by an alien being, the Beast. All of the Beast's men were like Ape-men, brutish. They were powerful fighters in some ways, yet their weakness was their stupidity. On the other side of the kingdom was a place ruled by the Queen of the South. All of her men were smarmy dandies, quite effeminate. They could be tricky fighters in some ways, yet their weakness was always in their effete lack of strength. These two kingdoms had somewhat of an alliance because the King of kings was too powerful and they knew it. They could not be divided against such a powerful foe as the Prince.
One fine day a knight errant rode his trusty steed out of the castle of the kingdom of the Prince to do battle. For the Ape-men would try to eat or dehumanize any who fell into their grasp and the dandies were corrupt. He used to be a squire and this was his first journey. His mother was like the Lady of ladies and his father like the Prince, so he had become strong.
The first people he came across were some effete men of the Queen of the South. They were real dandies. As such men typically did, they tried to act friendly. They were pretty good at acting. So he got off his high horse and talked to them some. Yet, since they were at war and there was no way around this fact, as soon as he turned his back they tried to stab him in the back. This is generally what they did. Fortunately, he had some armor on and he jumped back on his high horse. Then he swung his sword and chopped one of their arms off. At this, all the dandies cried, "How could you!" While they got out their lil' hankies and started crying about it. So he turned to ride away again. Yet, as he did one of the archers tried to shoot him in the back. Fortunately, the dandy men were not so strong and the arrow did not fly very strong, straight and true. It seemed like these men just could not get things straight. So he turned his high horse back and all the dandies cried, "Your high horse, is so high. Why don't you get off your high horse?" The knight errant thought, "I might be a knight errant but I'm not that errant. Sheesh!" as he road back. The smarmy men all started waving their white hankies to surrender and some fell on the ground to play like they were already dead or wounded. But the knight errant ran them through with his sword this time. One of the dandy men fought, he seemed stronger and he parried and fought the knight. So the knight said, "You seem like a good fighter. Do you want to join our fight instead of having to fight for these strange men who fight by trying to surrender all the time?" The strong dandy man replied, "I see, so you do not surrender all the time and try to stab people in the back. I have heard of your Prince. I would meet your Prince." So the knight handed him a note which said, "This guy looks like a dandy man but he isn't. I know, it's surprising." which he put his seal on. He told him, "Show this at the gate."
This first battle seemed easy but the knight knew that if he ever met the true spirit of the Queen of the South and not just her servants that he would be easily seduced by her ways. Thankfully the Prince was not and could deal with her. In fact, through some of his servants he did deal with her and proved to her that the Lady of ladies had a vast wisdom that she lacked. Yet, she did not listen and corrupted the Prince's servants in various ways because she was a whore with some perverted wisdom that hid the lack of true wisdom in her babelings. She could corrupt his servants if they were willing but could never corrupt the Prince, although this was not for lack of trying.
(Some other time I'll finish this. Maybe with some Ape-men...and some intrigue and corruption among a group of groupie squires at the castle too. But later...)
Saturday, December 04, 2004
Still reading....
Interesting paragraph, given the issue of textbooks:
"Interestingly, the same year that the Johnson/Raven book was published, researcher Michael Richardson, in a letter to the editor of Science that appeared in the August 28, 1998 issue of that journal, lamented: “Sadly, it is the discredited 1874 drawings that are used in so many British and American biology textbooks” (281:1289). Yes, sadly, it is. Stephen J. Gould lamented: “We should not therefore be surprised that Haeckel’s drawings entered nineteenth-century textbooks. But we do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of those drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks” (2000, 109[2]:44, emp. added). One would assume that a well-known publication like National Geographic would possess the ability to internally review and check such basic tenets, in an effort to present only the truth to its readers. Yet, that same long-discredited material—which even prominent evolutionists admit makes them “ashamed”—is exactly what David Quammen attempted to portray in the November 2004 issue of National Geographic as a “proof” of evolution. The question is: Why is the use of such material—which is known to be fraudulent—allowed to continue?"
National Geographic Shoots
Itself in the Foot—Again!
What is interesting is that these are probably some of the same textbooks that moral degenerates have such a problem with putting a label of "theory" on. Yet scientists, are they not the ones who will put a label on everything, making more money through government regulations and lawyers? For the safety of that! And the unity of everyone being treated like mental retards, too.
But apparently, they will not label their own textbooks. I call believers in evolutionism moral degenerates because they merge the categories of human and animal, male and female, etc. Their so-called science is more about an ancient subpagan rebellion against Natural Law and civilization and so almost all written codes of ethics. Natural Law condemns treating humans like animals, merging their being together and so on. Evolutionists do not tend to focus on history text and so they apparently overlook the stories of times when they put humans in zoos, etc., as part of the "missing link." (E.g., Ota Benga and others.)
Evolutionism tends to acts as a solvent to sexual ethics and taboos. Zoophiilia, homophilia, pedophilia, necrophilia, etc., are condemned by Natural Law. But if a culture can merge the categories of human and animal then Natural Law can be done away with in favor of ancient subpagan tendencies that are morally degenerate. You may not believe how bad religious hedonism can cause the mergings and perversions of natural categories to get, but just check your spam filters sometime. It is the process of the decline of civilization into animalization. Yet often, animals are not even as perverse as humans.
It seems that the only word left for it is Evil.
"Interestingly, the same year that the Johnson/Raven book was published, researcher Michael Richardson, in a letter to the editor of Science that appeared in the August 28, 1998 issue of that journal, lamented: “Sadly, it is the discredited 1874 drawings that are used in so many British and American biology textbooks” (281:1289). Yes, sadly, it is. Stephen J. Gould lamented: “We should not therefore be surprised that Haeckel’s drawings entered nineteenth-century textbooks. But we do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of those drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks” (2000, 109[2]:44, emp. added). One would assume that a well-known publication like National Geographic would possess the ability to internally review and check such basic tenets, in an effort to present only the truth to its readers. Yet, that same long-discredited material—which even prominent evolutionists admit makes them “ashamed”—is exactly what David Quammen attempted to portray in the November 2004 issue of National Geographic as a “proof” of evolution. The question is: Why is the use of such material—which is known to be fraudulent—allowed to continue?"
National Geographic Shoots
Itself in the Foot—Again!
What is interesting is that these are probably some of the same textbooks that moral degenerates have such a problem with putting a label of "theory" on. Yet scientists, are they not the ones who will put a label on everything, making more money through government regulations and lawyers? For the safety of that! And the unity of everyone being treated like mental retards, too.
But apparently, they will not label their own textbooks. I call believers in evolutionism moral degenerates because they merge the categories of human and animal, male and female, etc. Their so-called science is more about an ancient subpagan rebellion against Natural Law and civilization and so almost all written codes of ethics. Natural Law condemns treating humans like animals, merging their being together and so on. Evolutionists do not tend to focus on history text and so they apparently overlook the stories of times when they put humans in zoos, etc., as part of the "missing link." (E.g., Ota Benga and others.)
Evolutionism tends to acts as a solvent to sexual ethics and taboos. Zoophiilia, homophilia, pedophilia, necrophilia, etc., are condemned by Natural Law. But if a culture can merge the categories of human and animal then Natural Law can be done away with in favor of ancient subpagan tendencies that are morally degenerate. You may not believe how bad religious hedonism can cause the mergings and perversions of natural categories to get, but just check your spam filters sometime. It is the process of the decline of civilization into animalization. Yet often, animals are not even as perverse as humans.
It seems that the only word left for it is Evil.
I do not have a National Geographic...
I would not read it for much other than its worth for satire, on the whole.
The National Geographic's scholarship:
cf. National Geographic Shoots Itself in the Foot—Again!
This reasoning is based on known frauds. Typically, if you are going to smash some stupid and silly ideas you will pick the weakest one and have at it. But to be honest, given this article, it is difficult to choose. This is one I knew off hand as a "merging" fraud that has been put in textbooks although it has been known for over one hundred years or so to be a fraud. There are others still in textbooks too. Yet there is this big deal made of putting the word "theory" on these textbooks with a sticker. You can read that site if you are interested in just how many times the N.G. shoots itself in the foot in that instance. It is fairly lengthy.
But about this instance:
(Icons of Evolution
by Johnathan Wells
(Regnery, 2000) :92)
That site mentions the same things:
National Geographic Shoots Itself in the Foot—Again! (scroll way down)
Well, I suppose that the MTVeee generation is too stupid to know or care anyway. But they are still being conditioned and indoctrinated in various ways. At the end of the Geographic article it ends with a picture of a Russian convict with a big tattoo on his chest. It says something about how he picked up the tattoo and some disease in a Russian prison. It goes on to say that his best hope for a cure is medical science, science! The tattoo on him was of a huge cross, a religious icon. That seems to be the symbolism of what subpagans are after. Do you not know that religion is associated with disease and criminality? Hey, maybe it is a disease and people should be quarantined for the sake of medical science?
Do not fail to consider that subpagan proto-Nazis may think exactly that, secretly. Ironically, the exact opposite pattern is true, sociologists have proven that there are negative correlations between Christianity, crime and disease. (Images of diseased convicts with huge religous icons tattooed on them not withstanding.)
The National Geographic's scholarship:
Embryology too involved patterns that couldn’t be explained by coincidence. Why does the embryo of a mammal pass through stages resembling stages of the embryo of a reptile? Why is one of the larval forms of a barnacle, before metamorphosis, so similar to the larval form of a shrimp? Why do the larvae of moths, flies, and beetles resemble one another more than any of them resemble their respective adults? Because, Darwin wrote, “the embryo is the animal in its less modified state” and that state “reveals the structure of its progenitor”....
cf. National Geographic Shoots Itself in the Foot—Again!
This reasoning is based on known frauds. Typically, if you are going to smash some stupid and silly ideas you will pick the weakest one and have at it. But to be honest, given this article, it is difficult to choose. This is one I knew off hand as a "merging" fraud that has been put in textbooks although it has been known for over one hundred years or so to be a fraud. There are others still in textbooks too. Yet there is this big deal made of putting the word "theory" on these textbooks with a sticker. You can read that site if you are interested in just how many times the N.G. shoots itself in the foot in that instance. It is fairly lengthy.
But about this instance:
When Haeckel’s embryos are viewed side-by-side with actual embryos, there can be no doubt that his drawings were deliber ately distorted to fit his theory. (Figure 5-2) Writing in the March 2000, issue of Natural History, Stephen Jay Gould noted that Haeckel “exaggerated the similarities by idealizations and omissions,” and concluded that his drawings are characterized by “inaccuracies and outright falsification.” Richardson, interviewed by Science after he and his colleagues published their now-famous comparisons between Haeckel’s drawings and actual embryos, put it bluntly: “It looks like it’s turning out to be one of the most famous fakes in biology.”
So Haeckel’s drawings are fakes, and they misrepresent the embryos they purport to show. But they are fakes in another sense, too. Darwin based his inference of common ancestry on the belief that the earliest stages of embryo development are the most similar. Haeckel’s drawings, however, omit the earliest stages entirely, and start at a point midway through development. The earlier stages are much different.
(Icons of Evolution
by Johnathan Wells
(Regnery, 2000) :92)
That site mentions the same things:
We have known for almost 150 years that the “Biogenetic Law” is not correct, and that human embryos do not possess gill slits (see Assmuth and Hull, 1915; Grigg, 1996, 1998; Pennisi, 1997; Richardson, 1997a, 1997b; Youngson, 1998). Even though it was common knowledge by the end of the 1920s that Haeckel’s concepts, to use Stephen Jay Gould’s words, had “utterly collapsed” (1977a, p. 216), Haeckel’s drawings and ideas still continue to turn up in modern biology texts and instructional tools as a “proof” of evolution.
National Geographic Shoots Itself in the Foot—Again! (scroll way down)
Well, I suppose that the MTVeee generation is too stupid to know or care anyway. But they are still being conditioned and indoctrinated in various ways. At the end of the Geographic article it ends with a picture of a Russian convict with a big tattoo on his chest. It says something about how he picked up the tattoo and some disease in a Russian prison. It goes on to say that his best hope for a cure is medical science, science! The tattoo on him was of a huge cross, a religious icon. That seems to be the symbolism of what subpagans are after. Do you not know that religion is associated with disease and criminality? Hey, maybe it is a disease and people should be quarantined for the sake of medical science?
Do not fail to consider that subpagan proto-Nazis may think exactly that, secretly. Ironically, the exact opposite pattern is true, sociologists have proven that there are negative correlations between Christianity, crime and disease. (Images of diseased convicts with huge religous icons tattooed on them not withstanding.)
Friday, December 03, 2004
Hmmm....
“This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.”
cf. Carl's Blog
This is a comment apparently intended for textbooks, perhaps some of those that have various known frauds in them. The evolutionists keep them there because they are moral degenerates. That's all. It has nothing to do with the truth.
How about my comment on evolutionism instead, "Evolutionism is a fairytale for grown ups."
The grand mythological narratives of naturalism that typically make up evolutionism are not a theory. They are hypotheses. It is telling how ignorant and stupid journalists are, though. That's about par for them. In fact, I have conversed with a lot of people and some are at least intelligent about trying to support Evil but all the journalists have been mental retards par excellence. Maybe it was just a happenstance. I'll have to finish reading the rest later.
Your commentary seems reasonable, which seems typical for you.
Later dude...
cf. Carl's Blog
This is a comment apparently intended for textbooks, perhaps some of those that have various known frauds in them. The evolutionists keep them there because they are moral degenerates. That's all. It has nothing to do with the truth.
How about my comment on evolutionism instead, "Evolutionism is a fairytale for grown ups."
The grand mythological narratives of naturalism that typically make up evolutionism are not a theory. They are hypotheses. It is telling how ignorant and stupid journalists are, though. That's about par for them. In fact, I have conversed with a lot of people and some are at least intelligent about trying to support Evil but all the journalists have been mental retards par excellence. Maybe it was just a happenstance. I'll have to finish reading the rest later.
Your commentary seems reasonable, which seems typical for you.
Later dude...
Cryptozoology...
It's pretty interesting. I tend to take ancient texts and the like seriously. I.e., I do not just say that all is a "superstition" of less evolved primitive people. It's simple, mind is not matter. The implications of this echo out and out. For as one mental retard (i.e. evolutionist) said with a fearful lil' quaver in his voice, "We cannot allow a divine foot in the door!" Of course not, because he knows the foot would start kicking his butt.
I am still somewhat of a skeptic sometimes. I can also deconstruct a conspiracy theorist fairly well. But sometimes they have a point.
This guy has some interesting pictures. When I cite gay activists, socialists or conspiracy theorists that does not mean I agree with everything they say.
I am still somewhat of a skeptic sometimes. I can also deconstruct a conspiracy theorist fairly well. But sometimes they have a point.
This guy has some interesting pictures. When I cite gay activists, socialists or conspiracy theorists that does not mean I agree with everything they say.
Judging judgment...
Once upon a time two people were having a discussion and one made a judgment the other did not like.
So her friend said, "Who are you to judge?"
The first replied, "Who are you to judge that I am judging?"
"I....uh, what?"
"I figure that when I make a judgment I am the same type of person you are when you judge me for making judgments. If so, I suppose that is who I am to judge, just like you when you judge." the one who judged said.
"Huh? No, by asking who are you to judge I mean that you're not supposed to judge because it is judgmental."
"Who are you to judge what is judgmental?"
"You just need to stop that, right now!"
"Who are you to judge me?"
"I asked first. So you have to answer my question first."
"It seems like just another questionable question. But who am I to judge? I am a sentient being, sentient beings think, which can become existential belief, which can become knowledge and then deeper knowledge when something is truly known. Knowledge is sound judgment and what people make further judgments based on. That is who I am to judge. I am not the "I AM that I AM." of scriptures because I did not claim to be sitting in ultimate judgment, just little judgments.
So....who are you to judge my judgments?"
"Look, I never meant for you to actually answer that question."
"I guess that questionable question is just your passive agressive way of saying that you do not know the answer to something but do not want anyone else to know either. So you just drag everyone down to unthinking, unknowing moral degeneracy with mentally retarded questions."
"What?! Why, I.....you are judgmental!"
Her friend just laughed.
So her friend said, "Who are you to judge?"
The first replied, "Who are you to judge that I am judging?"
"I....uh, what?"
"I figure that when I make a judgment I am the same type of person you are when you judge me for making judgments. If so, I suppose that is who I am to judge, just like you when you judge." the one who judged said.
"Huh? No, by asking who are you to judge I mean that you're not supposed to judge because it is judgmental."
"Who are you to judge what is judgmental?"
"You just need to stop that, right now!"
"Who are you to judge me?"
"I asked first. So you have to answer my question first."
"It seems like just another questionable question. But who am I to judge? I am a sentient being, sentient beings think, which can become existential belief, which can become knowledge and then deeper knowledge when something is truly known. Knowledge is sound judgment and what people make further judgments based on. That is who I am to judge. I am not the "I AM that I AM." of scriptures because I did not claim to be sitting in ultimate judgment, just little judgments.
So....who are you to judge my judgments?"
"Look, I never meant for you to actually answer that question."
"I guess that questionable question is just your passive agressive way of saying that you do not know the answer to something but do not want anyone else to know either. So you just drag everyone down to unthinking, unknowing moral degeneracy with mentally retarded questions."
"What?! Why, I.....you are judgmental!"
Her friend just laughed.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Conscience....why did ancient pagans sacrifice their children?
Atonement...it is just that some attempts at atonement for rebellion against Natural Law are themselves morally degenerate. The Bible speaks of the Conscience being seared away altogether eventually, but it is like a process. At the end of Conscience you have what one philosopher called a "flat souled" type of person, insensitive, dead in the head. This is the end of civilization too, when there are enough who are dead in the head.
The Conscience, the Word on the individual level,
"...there was the woman of chapter two, who had her first abortion out of anger because her husband had been unfaithful to her, and her second because “I wanted to be able to hate myself more for what I did to the first baby.” In much the same waythat some people use one credit card to pay off another, she was trying to abate her present remorse by increasing her burden of future remorse.
We may be sure that spoiled remorse is just as great a motive for killing the sick and the old. For years, perhaps, I have neglected my aging father. Now, when he is weak and dependent, the burden of my conscience has become intolerable. I cannot bear the reproach of his watery eyes; I would rather endure the blows of his fists than the sight of his withered, lumpy hands. To avoid him I visit him less and less. One day he requires hospitalization and cannot feed himself. He is not dying, he is not unconscious, he is not even in great discomfort; nevertheless I tell his caretakers to withdraw his food and water. It is easier to face them than to face him, for he is the sole surviving witness to the slights of his ungrateful son. Besides, I tell myself, I no longer deserve a father. When his body is buried, perhaps my guilt will be buried as well."
(The Revenge of Conscience: Politics
and the Fall of Man
By J. Budziszewski)
People are still thinking in terms of justice, Good and Evil, all the time. They just convince their Selves that what they are doing is Good. I have done so too. Yet everyone has different limits and we are not all equals in the extent and ways we do so.
The Conscience, the Word on the individual level,
"...there was the woman of chapter two, who had her first abortion out of anger because her husband had been unfaithful to her, and her second because “I wanted to be able to hate myself more for what I did to the first baby.” In much the same waythat some people use one credit card to pay off another, she was trying to abate her present remorse by increasing her burden of future remorse.
We may be sure that spoiled remorse is just as great a motive for killing the sick and the old. For years, perhaps, I have neglected my aging father. Now, when he is weak and dependent, the burden of my conscience has become intolerable. I cannot bear the reproach of his watery eyes; I would rather endure the blows of his fists than the sight of his withered, lumpy hands. To avoid him I visit him less and less. One day he requires hospitalization and cannot feed himself. He is not dying, he is not unconscious, he is not even in great discomfort; nevertheless I tell his caretakers to withdraw his food and water. It is easier to face them than to face him, for he is the sole surviving witness to the slights of his ungrateful son. Besides, I tell myself, I no longer deserve a father. When his body is buried, perhaps my guilt will be buried as well."
(The Revenge of Conscience: Politics
and the Fall of Man
By J. Budziszewski)
People are still thinking in terms of justice, Good and Evil, all the time. They just convince their Selves that what they are doing is Good. I have done so too. Yet everyone has different limits and we are not all equals in the extent and ways we do so.
Cracking the Cosmic Code....
"The mystery that now confronts us is this: How did human beings acquire their extraordinary ability to crack the cosmic code, to solve nature’s cryptic crossword, to do science so effectively? I have mentioned that science emerged from a predominately Christian culture. According to the Christian tradition God is a rational being who made the universe as a free act of special creation, and has ordered it in a way that reflects his/her own rationality. Human beings are said to be 'made in God’s image,' and might therefore be considered (on one interpretation of 'image') to share, albeit in grossly diminished form, some aspect of God’s own rationality. If one subscribes to this point of view it is then no surprise that we can do science, because in so doing we are exercising a formof rationality that finds a common basis in the Architect of the very natural world that we are exploring.
Early scientists such as Newton believed this. They thought that in doing science they were uncovering part of God’s rational plan for the cosmos. The laws of nature were regarded as 'thoughts in the mind of God,' so that by using our God-given rationality in the form of the scientific method, we are able to glimpse the mind of God. Thus they inherited a view of the world—one which actually stretches back at least to Plato—that places mind at the basis of physical reality. Given the (unexplained) existence of rational mind, the existence of a rationally ordered universe containing rational conscious beings is then no surprise."
(Paul Davies, "The Intelligibility of Nature," Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature, ed. Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and C.J. Isham
(Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1996) :155)
Early scientists such as Newton believed this. They thought that in doing science they were uncovering part of God’s rational plan for the cosmos. The laws of nature were regarded as 'thoughts in the mind of God,' so that by using our God-given rationality in the form of the scientific method, we are able to glimpse the mind of God. Thus they inherited a view of the world—one which actually stretches back at least to Plato—that places mind at the basis of physical reality. Given the (unexplained) existence of rational mind, the existence of a rationally ordered universe containing rational conscious beings is then no surprise."
(Paul Davies, "The Intelligibility of Nature," Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature, ed. Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and C.J. Isham
(Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1996) :155)
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