CHAPTER FIFTEEN
This chapter of our helpful compendium of insights seeking to illuminate citizens on the thinking of venerable gentlemen was months in the making. It will only take a few minutes now that the writing has begun. The months of preparation have been spent in pursuit of a word. It must be just the right word. There can be no room for ambiguity or misinterpretation if the gravity of this issue is to be made clear.
Until just now, the word needed to describe the insidious characteristic this chapter addresses has escaped the writer. The word will be used to identify a characteristic exhibited by certain groups of people who influence our quality of life, chiefly government agencies, politicians, corporations advertising products, political action committees who seek to shape our thinking and news organizations.
The illusive word is EFFRONTERY.
Before choosing “effrontery” other choices such as brazen boldness, presumptuousness and impudence were considered and rejected. They didn’t quite hit the mark in the struggle to express the angst suffered by the old man when he is treated by these groups of people as if he is wholly unable to think. The way in which we are spoken to by people who presume to shape our thinking is rife with examples of this effrontery, but nowhere is it better demonstrated than in the debate about health care.
New numbers out today...according to CNN's "Anderson Cooper Live" over $200 billion a year in health care is "wasted" on obesity. The reporter just announced this is wasted on such obesity-related medical problems as heart conditions, and another astronomical figure is "wasted" on lung diseases related to smoking. The NEWS reporter says, "If we would just take better care of ourselves, this money could be saved."
This makes perfect sense to people under 60-years old, despite the fact that the “reporter” should be admonished for inserting his naive conclusion into the story. Reporting it as "news", especially when it's done by the network's anchor man, alleges the statement is considered to be a "fact" by the reporter. That's a weighty statement coming from a venerable news gathering unit such as CNN. It causes viewers to actually believe a substantial savings could be realized in health care costs if people would just stop overeating and smoking.
However, Cooper's opinion peddled as a fact makes perfect sense to an UNenlightened mind. Regrettably, the old man is getting no such comfort.
It’s hard to tell if some of the human units spewing the following nonsense are surreptitiously organizing their arguments in a way that intentionally hides and obscures otherwise obvious truth, or if they are really as profoundly stupid as their argument suggests.
Personally, I don’t think anyone this thick should be allowed to walk around free on the planet, so I believe they are intentionally twisting reality in order to profit from what they believe is the stupidity of the American people. That is true effrontery.
When a public figure is heard suggesting obesity should be taxed because it leads to a strain on the health care system, the speaker is guilty of this effrontery. When he says cigarettes should be taxed for the same reason, he is, again, guilty. To be sure, such behavior as over-eating and cigarette smoking results in doctor visits and any visit to the doctor for any reason places stress on the health care system. By the logic these public figures are using, a tax on dangerous behavior of all types should be levied or, perhaps, applied according to severity.
What this argument does not consider is that dangerous behavior not only results in visits to the doctor, but it shortens the life span of those exhibiting the behavior. The argument also presumes that those spared premature death by smoking and obesity will live forever without visiting a doctor or die while healthy. It can happen, but what happens to the argument about smoking and obesity when it does not?
Heckle and Freckle were identical twins, doing business at the same DNA bank. Heckle lived a clean and sober life practicing all potentially dangerous behavior in moderation. He did not smoke. He did not drink, except where his wife made it impossible to resist. He did not drive over the speed limit, avoided extreme sports and never shouted obscenities at other drivers during rush hour. Heckle did his best to live as long as possible.
Heckle’s brother, Freckle, was a reckless thrill-seeker. He smoked a pack a day, got drunk wherever it was possible, did drugs frequently and enjoyed romance without the interference of Polyurethane or latex third parties. Freckle drove up the cost of health insurance with doctor visits about his lung cancer, rotting liver and sexually transmitted diseases until he finally died at the age of sixty from a drug overdose.
Meanwhile, Heckle was healthy through the same sixty years, stressing the system with nothing more severe than an annual checkup. But in the twenty five years after his brother’s premature death, Heckle ran up thousands and thousands of dollars in doctor visits for the brain tumor that would have affected Freckle if he’d lived long enough. The “system” took care of additional thousands of dollars in assisted living care as Heckle became frail and infirm. Taxpayers and health insurance subscribers paid for years of Heckle’s treatments for Alzheimer’s disease as he entered his eighties. It paid for special doctors, clinics, social workers and expensive drugs his brother did not live long enough to need. At the heart of the twin tragedies of Heckle and Freckle is one inescapable reality. Both eventually died as surely as they lived. And the truth about health care is that the longer one lives the greater stress he will put upon any system of health care.
The glaring reality, the undeniable truth cloaked in cleverly constructed arguments that punish people for dangerous life styles is that the quicker the citizen dies the smaller burden to the system he is. If we wish to relieve the burden on the health care system we should not punish smokers and heavy drinkers or discourage snow-boarding and bear wrestling. We should give tax breaks to smokers and drunks.
In the pale light of uncompromised reason it is plain that the more frivolously and dangerously one lives, the more savings will be enjoyed by insurance companies and, therefore, policy holders. And until at least one of us manages to completely escape death and the infirmity that precedes it, this fact trumps all the inglorious effrontery demonstrated by morons and branding wizards arguing otherwise.
An old man who has sorted all this out in the twilight of his thinking life may stare at his television and the twelve year old commentator beaming at him through perfect teeth while spewing arguments about how heavy smokers over-tax the health care system and mutter, “You monolithic idiot. Are you entirely incapable of sober deduction?” He may wonder how the government allows this person to spread such twisted thinking on public airwaves, which it presumes to safeguard from things as innocuous as dirty words. But this is an error made by the old man. He leaps to the generous presumption that the speaker does not understand how absurd his thinking construct is. He believes the speaker is merely stupid.
But what’s to be said about the millions of morons who support such muddy thinking? The answer is that they are composed almost entirely of citizens who have not lived long enough to make their way through the fog of confusion that youth produces. How does the old man, twitching with uncontrollable shakes, slobbering all over his bib and hitching up his diaper address an audience of bewildered sheep and explain they are only stupid because they have not been thinking about the problem long enough to reach the truth that resolves the rebus.
Instead, we climb aboard our wheelchair assisted SUV (made possible by a tax payer supported program for the elderly), drive to the grocery store and park in our special space (paid for by government mandated considerations for the handicapped,) mount our motorized shopping cart (financed through higher prices for the food being sold there) buy our vitamin supplements and other drugs with the assistance of insurance money supplied by young people paying premiums and pay for our food with stamps supplied by confused tax payers who think they have profited by helping us live longer. We need the stamps. Our worldly goods were auctioned off years earlier to pay doctors for health care that would never have been required if we had died of lung cancer at sixty like our infinitely more patriotic twin brother.
Friday, January 13, 2012
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The dictionary definition of the term "hurrah" deals with exultation, excitement and celebration. The words “hubbub”, “commotion” and “fanfare” are mentioned in further definitions. But in the old west the word "hurrah" carried a different meaning. It was used to describe something that can be done to a person by another person or a group of persons. To wit...when you can "buffalo" a person, screw him in the brain, numb his ability to reason or bring him around to an unrealistic course of action by getting him all worked up, you have "hurrahed" him.
Hurrahing people is an effective tactic in modern corporate life. It's performed at sales meetings when we wish to energize the team beyond what their individual enthusiasm will inspire. It's used in sports challenges to inspire athletes to perform past what their own energies make possible. Nowhere in modern American life is hurrahing more often or more effectively employed than by politicians.
The hurrahing of humans is vital to the conduct of governments and companies in a competitive society. And wherever we see an individual who cannot be hurrahed, we work to eliminate him from the herd. This explains why intelligent young bosses do not hire old men. The hurrah factor relegates to inconsequential any sound evidence contrary to the goals of the person doing the hurrahing. When a boss asks for 110-percent of your effort it will not work to explain how percentages work. It is better to launch a victorious fist in the air and shout, "Yes!" Allow yourself to be hurrahed.
A very large part of the reason the U.S. remains at odds with much of the world is that its citizens are so vulnerable to the hurrah. Here's a serviceable example:
It's September 22, 2009. The President of Bolivia in an address to the United Nations made the statement that "Capitalism is a danger to the planet." The comment came during a discussion about the environment. His remarks ran repeatedly on the conservative Fox TV network. Americans hearing this believe it to be Communist propaganda driven by political ambition. They stop listening to the argument after they hear that our economic system is dangerous to the planet and, therefore, human beings in general. “How could that be?” the Fox Network asks. And the hurrah begins.
Unfortunately, the President of Bolivia does not speak English and is unable to explain his remark or express the line of logic that leads him to the conclusion that capitalism is dangerous to the planet. What might he say in defense of that remark if he were able to converse in English, if he were an articulate man and America was willing to listen to his defense of the statement?
Here is a fabricated address to the world by the President of Bolivia (insert your favorite commie), explaining the contention that capitalism is a danger to the planet:
Ladies and gentlemen of the world, the systems of government and economics in use around the globe have all been formed independent of any consideration about the future or survival of mankind. Each concerns itself only with the security and prosperity of those individuals living within its borders. Those people employed by a typical corporation functioning within a capitalist society rely upon the agenda of the corporation for guidance in the conduct of their business activity. From the presidents and vice presidents of a corporation all the way down to the workers on line there is one inviolable edict -- profit to the corporation.
In many industries, for instance the gas and oil industry, pursuit of that profit can result in damage to the environment. The employees of a corporation in that industry understand the dangerous potential of the company's pursuit of profit, but they are all powerless to regulate control over the corporation's activity. Every single employee who loses focus on the pursuit of profit will lose his job and cease to be part of a possible solution that would replace profit with safety of the planet as the corporation’s first responsibility. Instead, those employees rely on the government to create controls that keep the corporation's activity within a tolerance that considers risk to the environment. With that presumption made, the employees are free to push their activity in pursuit of profit to the limits of whatever control the government imposes.
The government, itself, however, is composed of lawmakers who must be elected in order to create the laws which limit the activity of corporations. Each of these office holders relies upon donations to their reelection campaigns and support from major industries and their unions in order to remain a part of the decision making process. This means the people making the laws that control the corporation’s activity must make only laws which please the corporations or they lose their jobs and cease to be part of the equation.
For these reasons the limits designed to protect the environment that are imposed by the office holders on corporate activity allow those corporations to move beyond what is safe for the environment and all the human beings depending upon its purity. After that is done the corporations push those inadequate limits to maximum tolerance in order to produce profit for share holders. Wherever this dynamic is not at play, someone loses a job and ceases to be part of the capitalist decision making process. Therefore, when capitalism is properly functioning, the environment and human beings who depend upon it fall at risk. And now you understand why I say capitalism is dangerous to the planet.
In essence, the makers of law work for the corporations and the corporations are less interested in the environment than they are in profit. In a dictatorship the head of state and maker of law is not at the mercy of profitized corporations and is, therefore, free to consider what damage might be done the environment as a result of the laws he creates. That will not, necessarily, bring about security for the environment, but it is not a certain world wrecker in the manner that capitalism is.
The President of Bolivia is correct. Why are American's unable to see it? Americans only know what their media tells them. The media depends upon advertising dollars to function. The advertising dollars come from the corporations who are less interested in environment than in profit. Violate that system and you will cease to be part of the media. Quid pro quo.
The "American people" consist mostly of people younger than the old man. They can be hurrahed...by the media, by the corporations, by the government and by the elected officials who are being paid by the corporations. And so there is a merry little circle of insanity that administrates the affairs of modern America. The biggest danger to this system is not Bolivian dictators. It is not whistleblowers, corporation busters, newspaper columnists or talk show hosts. It is the people who cannot be hurrahed -- chiefly, the old men who have crossed the "bullshit threshold" and cannot be counted upon to join the rest of the sheep in a mindless parade across the crest of oblivion.
It is this insulation against bullshit the old man enjoys which makes him a poor employee. When a 12-year old sales manager stands in front of his team at sales meeting time and energizes them with slogans, cheers, charts and charm he is relying on the team's vulnerability to bullshit to make his program work. A smart sales manager chooses only personalities for his team that can be hurrahed. Any old man past being hurrahed is a danger to his plan -- a rotten apple in the bullshit barrel. The team must be exorcised of such personalities. In other words, despite laws to the contrary, the sales manager must find language and cause to prevent old men from joining his sales team. The equation works the same in every division and department of the company. If you are an old man who MUST find work, bring pom poms to the interview. Grin with enthusiasm when the company's unrealistic goals are outlined. Mouth positive platitudes and recite the principles of team play at every opportunity. Look as stupid as possible. It will improve your chances of being hired.
By the way, and in the spirit of curmudgeons around the planet, anyone who thinks this examination of the Bolivian President's statement about capitalism being a danger to the environment makes me a communist, should insert his most magnificent member into his least attractive orifice and go fuck himself.
The dictionary definition of the term "hurrah" deals with exultation, excitement and celebration. The words “hubbub”, “commotion” and “fanfare” are mentioned in further definitions. But in the old west the word "hurrah" carried a different meaning. It was used to describe something that can be done to a person by another person or a group of persons. To wit...when you can "buffalo" a person, screw him in the brain, numb his ability to reason or bring him around to an unrealistic course of action by getting him all worked up, you have "hurrahed" him.
Hurrahing people is an effective tactic in modern corporate life. It's performed at sales meetings when we wish to energize the team beyond what their individual enthusiasm will inspire. It's used in sports challenges to inspire athletes to perform past what their own energies make possible. Nowhere in modern American life is hurrahing more often or more effectively employed than by politicians.
The hurrahing of humans is vital to the conduct of governments and companies in a competitive society. And wherever we see an individual who cannot be hurrahed, we work to eliminate him from the herd. This explains why intelligent young bosses do not hire old men. The hurrah factor relegates to inconsequential any sound evidence contrary to the goals of the person doing the hurrahing. When a boss asks for 110-percent of your effort it will not work to explain how percentages work. It is better to launch a victorious fist in the air and shout, "Yes!" Allow yourself to be hurrahed.
A very large part of the reason the U.S. remains at odds with much of the world is that its citizens are so vulnerable to the hurrah. Here's a serviceable example:
It's September 22, 2009. The President of Bolivia in an address to the United Nations made the statement that "Capitalism is a danger to the planet." The comment came during a discussion about the environment. His remarks ran repeatedly on the conservative Fox TV network. Americans hearing this believe it to be Communist propaganda driven by political ambition. They stop listening to the argument after they hear that our economic system is dangerous to the planet and, therefore, human beings in general. “How could that be?” the Fox Network asks. And the hurrah begins.
Unfortunately, the President of Bolivia does not speak English and is unable to explain his remark or express the line of logic that leads him to the conclusion that capitalism is dangerous to the planet. What might he say in defense of that remark if he were able to converse in English, if he were an articulate man and America was willing to listen to his defense of the statement?
Here is a fabricated address to the world by the President of Bolivia (insert your favorite commie), explaining the contention that capitalism is a danger to the planet:
Ladies and gentlemen of the world, the systems of government and economics in use around the globe have all been formed independent of any consideration about the future or survival of mankind. Each concerns itself only with the security and prosperity of those individuals living within its borders. Those people employed by a typical corporation functioning within a capitalist society rely upon the agenda of the corporation for guidance in the conduct of their business activity. From the presidents and vice presidents of a corporation all the way down to the workers on line there is one inviolable edict -- profit to the corporation.
In many industries, for instance the gas and oil industry, pursuit of that profit can result in damage to the environment. The employees of a corporation in that industry understand the dangerous potential of the company's pursuit of profit, but they are all powerless to regulate control over the corporation's activity. Every single employee who loses focus on the pursuit of profit will lose his job and cease to be part of a possible solution that would replace profit with safety of the planet as the corporation’s first responsibility. Instead, those employees rely on the government to create controls that keep the corporation's activity within a tolerance that considers risk to the environment. With that presumption made, the employees are free to push their activity in pursuit of profit to the limits of whatever control the government imposes.
The government, itself, however, is composed of lawmakers who must be elected in order to create the laws which limit the activity of corporations. Each of these office holders relies upon donations to their reelection campaigns and support from major industries and their unions in order to remain a part of the decision making process. This means the people making the laws that control the corporation’s activity must make only laws which please the corporations or they lose their jobs and cease to be part of the equation.
For these reasons the limits designed to protect the environment that are imposed by the office holders on corporate activity allow those corporations to move beyond what is safe for the environment and all the human beings depending upon its purity. After that is done the corporations push those inadequate limits to maximum tolerance in order to produce profit for share holders. Wherever this dynamic is not at play, someone loses a job and ceases to be part of the capitalist decision making process. Therefore, when capitalism is properly functioning, the environment and human beings who depend upon it fall at risk. And now you understand why I say capitalism is dangerous to the planet.
In essence, the makers of law work for the corporations and the corporations are less interested in the environment than they are in profit. In a dictatorship the head of state and maker of law is not at the mercy of profitized corporations and is, therefore, free to consider what damage might be done the environment as a result of the laws he creates. That will not, necessarily, bring about security for the environment, but it is not a certain world wrecker in the manner that capitalism is.
The President of Bolivia is correct. Why are American's unable to see it? Americans only know what their media tells them. The media depends upon advertising dollars to function. The advertising dollars come from the corporations who are less interested in environment than in profit. Violate that system and you will cease to be part of the media. Quid pro quo.
The "American people" consist mostly of people younger than the old man. They can be hurrahed...by the media, by the corporations, by the government and by the elected officials who are being paid by the corporations. And so there is a merry little circle of insanity that administrates the affairs of modern America. The biggest danger to this system is not Bolivian dictators. It is not whistleblowers, corporation busters, newspaper columnists or talk show hosts. It is the people who cannot be hurrahed -- chiefly, the old men who have crossed the "bullshit threshold" and cannot be counted upon to join the rest of the sheep in a mindless parade across the crest of oblivion.
It is this insulation against bullshit the old man enjoys which makes him a poor employee. When a 12-year old sales manager stands in front of his team at sales meeting time and energizes them with slogans, cheers, charts and charm he is relying on the team's vulnerability to bullshit to make his program work. A smart sales manager chooses only personalities for his team that can be hurrahed. Any old man past being hurrahed is a danger to his plan -- a rotten apple in the bullshit barrel. The team must be exorcised of such personalities. In other words, despite laws to the contrary, the sales manager must find language and cause to prevent old men from joining his sales team. The equation works the same in every division and department of the company. If you are an old man who MUST find work, bring pom poms to the interview. Grin with enthusiasm when the company's unrealistic goals are outlined. Mouth positive platitudes and recite the principles of team play at every opportunity. Look as stupid as possible. It will improve your chances of being hired.
By the way, and in the spirit of curmudgeons around the planet, anyone who thinks this examination of the Bolivian President's statement about capitalism being a danger to the environment makes me a communist, should insert his most magnificent member into his least attractive orifice and go fuck himself.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Enlightenment Hell. You cannot avoid it once you relocate from the suburbs of stupidity and move to the retirement village where you will be honored and respected as a drooling vegetable by citizens who regard you with all the indifference you have earned.
Now that we have identified capitalism as a danger to the planet, it is important to immediately probe the reason we are recommending it as an economic system, despite its harmful impact on the environment. There are, to be sure, inherent dangers in the system; defoliation of the rain forests, pollution of the rivers and oceans and possible damage to the ozone layer are chief among the harmful effects of a system that encourages its citizens to compete like gladiators in an arena mindless of the carnage that could break out in the stands and turn our adventure into one really bad day at the mall.
Capitalism is not wisely conducted as a free-for-all. Its downside must be acknowledged and carefully monitored and controlled by representatives of the people who acknowledge its danger. This control is also necessary to deal with another inherent weakness of capitalism: over the long haul it is not a stable economic system. From time to time, it breaks down and chaos occurs. Why, with all this bad baggage, would a prudent veteran of six American decades look back over the history of capitalism in America and still recommend it?
In his documentary, “Capitalism; A Love Story” Michael Moore makes the point that capitalism does not work by reminding us that it’s had more than enough time to prove itself in America and we wouldn’t be in the mess we are if it worked. He points out how often taxpayers have had to bail out big business.
Overcome by the fog atop the mountain, as most middle-agers are, Moore finds comfort among millions of Americans who believe the utility of capitalism should be measured by whether or not it produces economic health for the country using it. This is a sad turn of events, because Michael Moore is a brilliant film maker and his documentaries are extremely influential.
Again, the old man is torn between two possibilities. On the one hand he must ask, “Has Moore merely found a spin on reality he can use to make a few bucks?” Is he just using this point of view conjured from muddy thinking to further his career as a film maker? Is he like the thousands of other authors, film makers and politicians who have no interest in truth or enlightenment and are obsessed with profit, no matter the cost to those who consume the pony pucky they spew? Or, is Michael Moore really as thick of wit and one-dimensional in his thinking as this point of view suggests? Should “moron” be his middle name?
Over here on the down side of the mountain, in the clear light of a sunny day and in the absence of the confusion foggy thinking produces…down here where people with a lifetime of thinking over such issues reside, the function of an economic system looks entirely different than such as Michael Moore perceive it.
Economic systems, like militarism, politics, art and science must be measured according to their impact on the population that uses them. For instance, there’s much to be said for the ideology out of which a socialist system grows. It’s well intended and might even be a sturdier system than capitalism if the only yardstick we use to assign it value is functionality. But the net result of socialism is that too little incentive to invent, produce and labor diligently grows from it. Whether it works or not as an economic system is not as important as what kind of result it produces in the long-term fortunes of the nation where it is in place.
The impact of capitalism on Americans is that the gifted microcosm is inspired to amass great wealth by the fertile soil of incentives it produces. The result of that is a never-ending flow of new inventions, new systems and human progress, and the result of those is America; the super nation. From the beginning of our national story such individuals born in other countries have abandoned their native land and made their way to America where the fruits of their labor and creativity can bring them personal profit. That is the measure of capitalism. If it must be buoyed up by government hand-outs, constantly reconstructed so that it may endure or periodically reshaped when its result is too great a concentration of wealth, then these remedies for the inherent weakness of capitalism (greed and abuse) must be put in place.
An old man can’t help thinking Michael Moore has a brain. Late at night when his head hits the pillow and he dwells on his own unique fantasies he may see himself in a room with Michael, slapping the corpulent nitwit around. He may insist on an answer to a most fundamental question. “Michael, how do you explain the success of America or do you outright deny it is the most powerful and influential nation ever to grace the planet?” WHACK! “Let’s have an answer, you vaporous, porcine trough dweller!” WHACK! “Don’t blubber, butt sucker. Do you think natural resources are responsible? Do you lay it off on freedom to worship, free speech, the free press we had before the corporations bought it? What do you think is responsible for the most successful nation in the history of humanity if not this system of capitalism that inspires each individual to contribute his best effort to the common good?” WHACK! “And where, Michael, do you find such incentive to contribute present in a system that conscripts earned wealth and redistributes it to those who have greater need?” WHACK! “You commie sow!”
It is here on the pillow in the moments before surrender to sleep that the old man fights his greatest battles. Bosses have fallen. Politicians have been striped. Wives have been punished and merchants who do not refund without a service contract have been eviscerated.
Only last night, in the moments prior to slumber, I was flying up and down the boulevard in front of the United Nations in a red cape and tights. Muammar Gaddafi was mounting the podium inside the building. I swooped in, melting the security with my x-ray vision and tossing body guards through plate glass windows like they were rag dolls. I lit on the dais and put an open hand over Muammar’s face, pushing him into the third row with a stiff arm as I learned to do when I was scoring touchdowns for the Denver Broncos in a separate daydream. “Fix your robe,” I insisted. “Take off that damn beanie cap, you fashion nightmare. What? Swine flu was invented as a military weapon? You need 58-pages of handwritten notes on 6 different kinds of paper to explain that? Did you prepare for this speech in a coffee shop? WHACK!
These daydreams old men have at the close of day are essential to the well-being of the unit. Mine have brought truth, justice and sexual satisfaction to countless days that might otherwise have passed without significant notation. They help an old man participate in the circus without soiling his pajamas beyond what obligation nature imposes as the night wears on.
Enlightenment Hell. You cannot avoid it once you relocate from the suburbs of stupidity and move to the retirement village where you will be honored and respected as a drooling vegetable by citizens who regard you with all the indifference you have earned.
Now that we have identified capitalism as a danger to the planet, it is important to immediately probe the reason we are recommending it as an economic system, despite its harmful impact on the environment. There are, to be sure, inherent dangers in the system; defoliation of the rain forests, pollution of the rivers and oceans and possible damage to the ozone layer are chief among the harmful effects of a system that encourages its citizens to compete like gladiators in an arena mindless of the carnage that could break out in the stands and turn our adventure into one really bad day at the mall.
Capitalism is not wisely conducted as a free-for-all. Its downside must be acknowledged and carefully monitored and controlled by representatives of the people who acknowledge its danger. This control is also necessary to deal with another inherent weakness of capitalism: over the long haul it is not a stable economic system. From time to time, it breaks down and chaos occurs. Why, with all this bad baggage, would a prudent veteran of six American decades look back over the history of capitalism in America and still recommend it?
In his documentary, “Capitalism; A Love Story” Michael Moore makes the point that capitalism does not work by reminding us that it’s had more than enough time to prove itself in America and we wouldn’t be in the mess we are if it worked. He points out how often taxpayers have had to bail out big business.
Overcome by the fog atop the mountain, as most middle-agers are, Moore finds comfort among millions of Americans who believe the utility of capitalism should be measured by whether or not it produces economic health for the country using it. This is a sad turn of events, because Michael Moore is a brilliant film maker and his documentaries are extremely influential.
Again, the old man is torn between two possibilities. On the one hand he must ask, “Has Moore merely found a spin on reality he can use to make a few bucks?” Is he just using this point of view conjured from muddy thinking to further his career as a film maker? Is he like the thousands of other authors, film makers and politicians who have no interest in truth or enlightenment and are obsessed with profit, no matter the cost to those who consume the pony pucky they spew? Or, is Michael Moore really as thick of wit and one-dimensional in his thinking as this point of view suggests? Should “moron” be his middle name?
Over here on the down side of the mountain, in the clear light of a sunny day and in the absence of the confusion foggy thinking produces…down here where people with a lifetime of thinking over such issues reside, the function of an economic system looks entirely different than such as Michael Moore perceive it.
Economic systems, like militarism, politics, art and science must be measured according to their impact on the population that uses them. For instance, there’s much to be said for the ideology out of which a socialist system grows. It’s well intended and might even be a sturdier system than capitalism if the only yardstick we use to assign it value is functionality. But the net result of socialism is that too little incentive to invent, produce and labor diligently grows from it. Whether it works or not as an economic system is not as important as what kind of result it produces in the long-term fortunes of the nation where it is in place.
The impact of capitalism on Americans is that the gifted microcosm is inspired to amass great wealth by the fertile soil of incentives it produces. The result of that is a never-ending flow of new inventions, new systems and human progress, and the result of those is America; the super nation. From the beginning of our national story such individuals born in other countries have abandoned their native land and made their way to America where the fruits of their labor and creativity can bring them personal profit. That is the measure of capitalism. If it must be buoyed up by government hand-outs, constantly reconstructed so that it may endure or periodically reshaped when its result is too great a concentration of wealth, then these remedies for the inherent weakness of capitalism (greed and abuse) must be put in place.
An old man can’t help thinking Michael Moore has a brain. Late at night when his head hits the pillow and he dwells on his own unique fantasies he may see himself in a room with Michael, slapping the corpulent nitwit around. He may insist on an answer to a most fundamental question. “Michael, how do you explain the success of America or do you outright deny it is the most powerful and influential nation ever to grace the planet?” WHACK! “Let’s have an answer, you vaporous, porcine trough dweller!” WHACK! “Don’t blubber, butt sucker. Do you think natural resources are responsible? Do you lay it off on freedom to worship, free speech, the free press we had before the corporations bought it? What do you think is responsible for the most successful nation in the history of humanity if not this system of capitalism that inspires each individual to contribute his best effort to the common good?” WHACK! “And where, Michael, do you find such incentive to contribute present in a system that conscripts earned wealth and redistributes it to those who have greater need?” WHACK! “You commie sow!”
It is here on the pillow in the moments before surrender to sleep that the old man fights his greatest battles. Bosses have fallen. Politicians have been striped. Wives have been punished and merchants who do not refund without a service contract have been eviscerated.
Only last night, in the moments prior to slumber, I was flying up and down the boulevard in front of the United Nations in a red cape and tights. Muammar Gaddafi was mounting the podium inside the building. I swooped in, melting the security with my x-ray vision and tossing body guards through plate glass windows like they were rag dolls. I lit on the dais and put an open hand over Muammar’s face, pushing him into the third row with a stiff arm as I learned to do when I was scoring touchdowns for the Denver Broncos in a separate daydream. “Fix your robe,” I insisted. “Take off that damn beanie cap, you fashion nightmare. What? Swine flu was invented as a military weapon? You need 58-pages of handwritten notes on 6 different kinds of paper to explain that? Did you prepare for this speech in a coffee shop? WHACK!
These daydreams old men have at the close of day are essential to the well-being of the unit. Mine have brought truth, justice and sexual satisfaction to countless days that might otherwise have passed without significant notation. They help an old man participate in the circus without soiling his pajamas beyond what obligation nature imposes as the night wears on.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I have no friends. Everybody likes me. I'm always upbeat; always have a joke to tell, always lift my voice and smile when greeting people I know. I spend time with folks who don't matter, give to the poor, comfort the afflicted and always slice every circle in those little plastic six-pack holders before throwing them away so that ducks don't strangle on them during massive oil spills. Still, no one ever comes to my house, I pay strangers to help me when I have an emergency and no one feels close enough to borrow money from me. No one really knows me, and even fewer people understand me. I won't even bother having a funeral. It would be embarrassing.
Only in the company of other curmudgeons do I talk about this friendless condition. We all agree friends are a pain in the ass. They snoop into every corner of your life, call you when you're busy napping, ask you to help them move furniture and run for the exit when you start a barroom fight and need back-up. They can explain every betrayal with a story that makes you the bad guy. It's like being married without the sex.
An old woman I know recently decided to build out the space over her garage into an apartment. She had a friend in the building trade so, rather than take bids on the project, she hired her friend. He was the only one she could really trust. I told her it was a bad idea. I said it would take twice as long as he forecast, because he would service customers he didn't know before he would service her. His private justification for this, I told her, would be that strangers would not tolerate missed deadlines, but she would forgive him because, after all, she was his friend. She's now three months into a project that should have taken two weeks. A friend will screw you before he'll screw a total stranger.
The old woman says I'm cynical, pessimistic, without faith in humankind and always expect the worst in people. I told her I wasn't looking for friends, but at least, she was beginning to understand me.
People are a little like stage plays. There are only so many plots. "Pretty Woman" is "My Fair Lady" is "Pygmalion". "Westside Story" is "Romeo and Juliet". Like play plots, there are only so many people types. They keep showing up in different costumes, at different ages with different haircuts, but after you've been paying social security taxes long enough to start collecting checks, you can see each of these people coming a mile away. When I explain this to those who require my guidance, they accuse me of being prejudiced and stereotyping. I'm insulted by this, but at least, they are beginning to understand me.
Stereotyping is a convenient device for anticipating and, thereby, avoiding trouble and confusion. It doesn't always produce profit. Sometimes, stereotyping people leads to incorrect guesses about what they'll do next. The trick is to play the percentages. For instance, when you're walking down a dark street in a poor neighborhood late at night and you see four men walking toward you swinging chains, stereotyping these people is a good idea. React as if they are about to steal your money, beat you viciously and leave you for dead. Sometimes, they are only accountants on their way to assist a friend whose car is stuck in the snow. You lose when you misjudge them by your prejudice. Here are four friends you might have had if not for your bias against chain wielding gangs who roam the streets after dark. However, in the vast majority of cases you will be right, get to keep your money and live. Your function on the planet is to take care of yourself, not to martyr the only life you have on the altar of social justice.
Why are you usually right when you stereotype someone? It’s because stereotypes only come into existence when a preponderance of truth is associated with them. This puts the odds on your side.
Occasionally, you miss a jackpot by exercising prejudice. I'm prejudiced against movies named after food. I will avoid a movie called “Truffles for Sunday Brunch”, “Oatmeal”, “Turnip Sprouts” or “Fried Green Tomatoes.” I expect nonsense and the sort of feel-good, air-headed romantic comedy you take a woman to see when you are attempting to get laid. I avoided the green tomato movie for years, because of my prejudice. Finally, I watched it and realized it was among the better movies I'd ever seen. What did I lose? Nothing. I wouldn't even know about my mistake if I hadn't, eventually, watched the movie...plus it was saved for a moment when there was nothing else to watch but gay films, teen outings, video game movies and films driven by someone getting mysterious calls on a cell phone. What did I gain by exercising my prejudice? I wish I could count the hours of squandered leisure I might have wasted watching movies named after food that really were mindless romantic comedies. On the other hand, I don't get laid much.
The terms stereotyping, prejudice and bigotry carry a lot of baggage, but there's a good reason for that, which I'll explain in a minute. First, imagine a world where we did not make judgments based on experience. It would be populated by people flying kites in the rain, getting struck by lightening and learning nothing from the inconvenience. Governments everywhere would be launching rockets to the moon every month and scratching their heads when the projectiles exploded on the launch pad. There would be no cars. In fact, we'd still be trying to figure out how to make a horse behave. All human progress is the result of lessons learned by mistakes we made. Every useful invention follows a sequence of failures that combined to teach the inventor a lesson. When you are looking for the freeway and you come to an intersection, don't take the dirt road option. Be prejudiced.
The truest nitwit in our midst watches movies named after food, forever hoping for that one in a thousand that will be Fried Green Tomatoes. He makes this sacrifice because he has been programmed to avoid pre-judgment and he would rather waste his time on disappointing films than be labeled a bigot or accused of stereotyping. He will never discover electricity, walk on the moon or know the exhilaration of 1400-pounds of organic power pulsating between his thighs. A horse will not obey a true nitwit.
To understand why bigotry, prejudice and stereotyping have such bad reputations one must consider that most of the nation's wealth is concentrated in the hands of 2-percent of the population. Advice about how to become successful is coming from the other 98-percent. The 2-percent know better than to give advice about how you can take some of their money away from them. Similarly, those disadvantaged by bigotry, prejudice, stereotyping, class judgments, racial bias, religious preference, tendentious partiality and partisan preference represent the vast majority of people on the planet. These are the people attempting to hang negative baggage tags on the process of pre-judgment.
Until we are receiving that monthly stipend from the social security office, we are consumed by the propaganda churned out by the disadvantaged victims of prejudice. This service to stupidity is a large part of the reason we are depending on the social security office to avoid starvation in our sixth decade of life. But when we leave the workplace and are released from the obligation to fall in line, toe the mark, don't make waves and follow the duck in front of us a curious transformation takes place. Now, we have seen all the plots, known all the people types and come to understand bullshit for the true stink our olfactory organ suggests it possesses. It is the victims of prejudice that have given the process a bad name. Whadda you expect?
I have no friends. Everybody likes me. I'm always upbeat; always have a joke to tell, always lift my voice and smile when greeting people I know. I spend time with folks who don't matter, give to the poor, comfort the afflicted and always slice every circle in those little plastic six-pack holders before throwing them away so that ducks don't strangle on them during massive oil spills. Still, no one ever comes to my house, I pay strangers to help me when I have an emergency and no one feels close enough to borrow money from me. No one really knows me, and even fewer people understand me. I won't even bother having a funeral. It would be embarrassing.
Only in the company of other curmudgeons do I talk about this friendless condition. We all agree friends are a pain in the ass. They snoop into every corner of your life, call you when you're busy napping, ask you to help them move furniture and run for the exit when you start a barroom fight and need back-up. They can explain every betrayal with a story that makes you the bad guy. It's like being married without the sex.
An old woman I know recently decided to build out the space over her garage into an apartment. She had a friend in the building trade so, rather than take bids on the project, she hired her friend. He was the only one she could really trust. I told her it was a bad idea. I said it would take twice as long as he forecast, because he would service customers he didn't know before he would service her. His private justification for this, I told her, would be that strangers would not tolerate missed deadlines, but she would forgive him because, after all, she was his friend. She's now three months into a project that should have taken two weeks. A friend will screw you before he'll screw a total stranger.
The old woman says I'm cynical, pessimistic, without faith in humankind and always expect the worst in people. I told her I wasn't looking for friends, but at least, she was beginning to understand me.
People are a little like stage plays. There are only so many plots. "Pretty Woman" is "My Fair Lady" is "Pygmalion". "Westside Story" is "Romeo and Juliet". Like play plots, there are only so many people types. They keep showing up in different costumes, at different ages with different haircuts, but after you've been paying social security taxes long enough to start collecting checks, you can see each of these people coming a mile away. When I explain this to those who require my guidance, they accuse me of being prejudiced and stereotyping. I'm insulted by this, but at least, they are beginning to understand me.
Stereotyping is a convenient device for anticipating and, thereby, avoiding trouble and confusion. It doesn't always produce profit. Sometimes, stereotyping people leads to incorrect guesses about what they'll do next. The trick is to play the percentages. For instance, when you're walking down a dark street in a poor neighborhood late at night and you see four men walking toward you swinging chains, stereotyping these people is a good idea. React as if they are about to steal your money, beat you viciously and leave you for dead. Sometimes, they are only accountants on their way to assist a friend whose car is stuck in the snow. You lose when you misjudge them by your prejudice. Here are four friends you might have had if not for your bias against chain wielding gangs who roam the streets after dark. However, in the vast majority of cases you will be right, get to keep your money and live. Your function on the planet is to take care of yourself, not to martyr the only life you have on the altar of social justice.
Why are you usually right when you stereotype someone? It’s because stereotypes only come into existence when a preponderance of truth is associated with them. This puts the odds on your side.
Occasionally, you miss a jackpot by exercising prejudice. I'm prejudiced against movies named after food. I will avoid a movie called “Truffles for Sunday Brunch”, “Oatmeal”, “Turnip Sprouts” or “Fried Green Tomatoes.” I expect nonsense and the sort of feel-good, air-headed romantic comedy you take a woman to see when you are attempting to get laid. I avoided the green tomato movie for years, because of my prejudice. Finally, I watched it and realized it was among the better movies I'd ever seen. What did I lose? Nothing. I wouldn't even know about my mistake if I hadn't, eventually, watched the movie...plus it was saved for a moment when there was nothing else to watch but gay films, teen outings, video game movies and films driven by someone getting mysterious calls on a cell phone. What did I gain by exercising my prejudice? I wish I could count the hours of squandered leisure I might have wasted watching movies named after food that really were mindless romantic comedies. On the other hand, I don't get laid much.
The terms stereotyping, prejudice and bigotry carry a lot of baggage, but there's a good reason for that, which I'll explain in a minute. First, imagine a world where we did not make judgments based on experience. It would be populated by people flying kites in the rain, getting struck by lightening and learning nothing from the inconvenience. Governments everywhere would be launching rockets to the moon every month and scratching their heads when the projectiles exploded on the launch pad. There would be no cars. In fact, we'd still be trying to figure out how to make a horse behave. All human progress is the result of lessons learned by mistakes we made. Every useful invention follows a sequence of failures that combined to teach the inventor a lesson. When you are looking for the freeway and you come to an intersection, don't take the dirt road option. Be prejudiced.
The truest nitwit in our midst watches movies named after food, forever hoping for that one in a thousand that will be Fried Green Tomatoes. He makes this sacrifice because he has been programmed to avoid pre-judgment and he would rather waste his time on disappointing films than be labeled a bigot or accused of stereotyping. He will never discover electricity, walk on the moon or know the exhilaration of 1400-pounds of organic power pulsating between his thighs. A horse will not obey a true nitwit.
To understand why bigotry, prejudice and stereotyping have such bad reputations one must consider that most of the nation's wealth is concentrated in the hands of 2-percent of the population. Advice about how to become successful is coming from the other 98-percent. The 2-percent know better than to give advice about how you can take some of their money away from them. Similarly, those disadvantaged by bigotry, prejudice, stereotyping, class judgments, racial bias, religious preference, tendentious partiality and partisan preference represent the vast majority of people on the planet. These are the people attempting to hang negative baggage tags on the process of pre-judgment.
Until we are receiving that monthly stipend from the social security office, we are consumed by the propaganda churned out by the disadvantaged victims of prejudice. This service to stupidity is a large part of the reason we are depending on the social security office to avoid starvation in our sixth decade of life. But when we leave the workplace and are released from the obligation to fall in line, toe the mark, don't make waves and follow the duck in front of us a curious transformation takes place. Now, we have seen all the plots, known all the people types and come to understand bullshit for the true stink our olfactory organ suggests it possesses. It is the victims of prejudice that have given the process a bad name. Whadda you expect?
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Facing our maker, old men fall into two categories; those who don’t think it will ever happen and those who are getting ready for it.
As our time left on the planet becomes shorter and shorter men who have been coerced into compliance with Biblical edicts and assorted commandments throughout their lives, slowly begin to take their responsibilities more and more seriously. Inside they have a private little notion that, although God has had his eye on them from the beginning and knows their thoughts better than they do, whatever reservations they have had about his existence have been successfully suppressed and The Almighty has missed them. God missed these thoughts because the young man applied himself diligently to avoiding doubt on the question of God’s existence. The young man occasionally shows up in church to throw God off. He is careful to avoid giving voice to any doubt and studiously refuses to engage in debate on the subject just in case The Lord is listening and something incriminating might fall from the young man’s lips. He is hoping he can get close to the grave having a relatively clean record behind him. Secretly, he keeps near to him the information that God will forgive him for any doubt, so long as he manages to beat the clock and completely embrace God some time before his own expiration date.
Throughout their youth these men fully intend to make an adjustment in their “faith quotient” and surrender entirely to God some time AFTER they are too old to enjoy all the sin they will engage in while young and limber.
As they approach 60, these folks begin reading the Bible when they are in a room all alone, occasionally glancing skyward through one eye without lifting their heads from the reading position in hopes He is watching and will not realize the exercise has two ambitions -- one to suggest to a voyeuristic Lord that maturity has put them in touch with the reality of God and made them regret all their indiscretions, and, two, to gather as much knowledge as possible in case there is an entrance exam at the pearly gates.
Now and then arcing one eyebrow to have a look at the ceiling, they scrupulously outline with yellow highlighter meaningful passages in The Bible and, when they feel his all-seeing eye sizing up this activity, even move their lips as they read. They join charitable organizations and do volunteer work they never had time for when they were young as if there has been an explosion of awareness in their brain that eluded them in youth. They intentionally omit curse words from their spoken expressions. They comb the obits daily, looking for funerals they can attend, hoping the relatives of the deceased will remember their presence and show up at gravesite when their own time comes. The more people at the funeral, the greater recommendation to God that He should make allowances in their low score on the entrance exam.
The more creative among the late bloomers even invent problems that serve as an excuse to seek the council of pastor, priest or assigned emissary of The Lord, hoping The Almighty will observe they have accepted him as the answer to their earthly impasses.
The faithful who expect to walk the streets of gold after they expire are much easier to track and predict than the heathen. The non-believer also passes through a metamorphosis of thinking on the subject of God, but his does not lead him to the blissful embrace of a final surrender. Instead, the older the heathen becomes, the more pissed off he gets over the enormous mind-fuck that has clouded his brain on this subject from the first day it was introduced to him.
This angst might have begun when he protested the requirement of prayer at the beginning of his Cub Scout meetings. Here was the first indication he would be hustled to the side-lines and disallowed from participation in any human game until and unless he joined the flock and, at least, kept his mouth shut about his lack of confidence in the conviction that reality is the result of magic performed by a ghost in the sky.
Despite an intellectual disagreement with the persuasion that God exists, the heathen has been haunted throughout his youth by the enormity of Man’s devotion to the notion. “How could so many people have been so misled over such a distance of time?” he asks himself. “Could I be right and all of them wrong? Not likely. What am I missing?”
One day, the heathen notices the millions of children who swear by the conviction that Santa Clause exists, and, for the first time, it occurs to him that Man’s naiveté does not end with the onset of puberty -- that God may be merely Santa in saintly garb -- yes, it is possible the whole world is wrong and he is right. Later, he comes to believe he is not alone, and that the others who do not believe are invisible, because, like him, they learned at an early age to keep their mouths shut on the subject or suffer shunning. Here is where doubt begins its metamorphosis to anger.
During middle-age a heathen reaches a higher level of understanding at which he comes to regard belief in one sort of God or another as vital to the survival of civilization, whether it is based on fact or not, because religion is the sole repository of shame and guilt. Without these two human foibles organized groups of people would dissolve into anarchy. God may be a fairy tale, but he would not remove it from the human equation because of its utility. This is the belief guiding the heathen who grows to public office or high-profile notoriety and professes a belief in The Lord publicly while privately regarding it as a load of hooey. Like oatmeal and masturbation truth is only good for the individual -- it confounds the ambitions of a society.
Many men never reach the final stage of atheism. They die with a lie on their lips, devoted to a belief that the fairy tale of God is vital to the survival of civilization and they were right to avoid endangering it on the basis of nothing more than unnecessary, unprofitable candor about their personal opinions.
It is the final stage of atheism that only old men know which turns their anger, grown out of angst, to hatred and, in more and more cases, a crusade to educate the Godly on the simple principles of physics. This latter stage only came into existence in the late 40’s. Its defining event was the demolition of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in nuclear clouds.
The old man has always known that belief in God was without peer in its capacity to incite war. But through most of his life the heathen regarded war as nothing more than population pruning and a viable method of solving the argument about whose god is greater -- a small price to pay for maintaining an institution which makes civilization possible. But in this final stage of atheism the old man’s intellect has matured past being intimidated by the preponderance of opinion contrary to his own. He has progressed through a long time during which he kept his mouth shut believing it was gooood for them, and now he enters a time when he dwells on the end of days -- not just his own but the end of days for all Mankind.
Slowly, over the years the heathen begins to understand that sooner or later religious zealots will inherit nuclear capability. Sooner or later, the argument about whose god is greater will bring about the extinction of Mankind, unless he speaks up....unless he joins the growing ranks of other old men who have reached this understanding.
And just when the elderly atheist thinks his hatred for ignorance cannot become more intense, it occurs to him that his journey to the grave is not inevitable at all. The science that helped him reach his position on God has now passed through the completion of the Human Genome Project -- the aging gene is within our grasp. We are right on the edge of a time when nothing but misadventure can kill him. Immortality is just beyond the next breakthrough, and the only thing slowing it down is the widespread belief that Man has an obligation to die in a fiery explosion and be sorted out at the feet of God. The final blow to the old heathen’s sensibilities comes with the understanding that the death God was invented to deal with is only necessary because of the widespread belief in God.
He studies his vacant oatmeal bowl. Like his face the surface is crusted with imperfections that would not exist if he’d risen at the proper moment to wash it clean. If only he could have reached clarity on the need for sanitary, sensible behavior at a moment when his energies were vital and his voice was strong. His death will be needless. He collects a picture of his son from its resting place atop the TV. Sanity will, eventually overtake humanity, he tells himself. In time, primitive devotions to superstitious nonsense invented before hard answers to reality where possible will fall away and there will be no natural death. National borders will fall and humanity will come together as a single force in the Universe. Other worlds will be settled to solve the challenge of finite space. He and the young man in the picture may be among the last to die on the altar of ignorance. Nothing can stop it and only superstition stands in the way.
These generations of old men who die between the explosion on Hiroshima and the arrest of the aging gene perish as martyrs. Ironically, they are not martyr to the cause of sanity, not to the prospect of everlasting life on earth and not to the achievement of the old heathen’s dreams. They are martyrs to their own sealed lips. They die for lack of the courage to speak out. I will die needlessly alongside them, but let it not be said it was in silence or without protest.
Facing our maker, old men fall into two categories; those who don’t think it will ever happen and those who are getting ready for it.
As our time left on the planet becomes shorter and shorter men who have been coerced into compliance with Biblical edicts and assorted commandments throughout their lives, slowly begin to take their responsibilities more and more seriously. Inside they have a private little notion that, although God has had his eye on them from the beginning and knows their thoughts better than they do, whatever reservations they have had about his existence have been successfully suppressed and The Almighty has missed them. God missed these thoughts because the young man applied himself diligently to avoiding doubt on the question of God’s existence. The young man occasionally shows up in church to throw God off. He is careful to avoid giving voice to any doubt and studiously refuses to engage in debate on the subject just in case The Lord is listening and something incriminating might fall from the young man’s lips. He is hoping he can get close to the grave having a relatively clean record behind him. Secretly, he keeps near to him the information that God will forgive him for any doubt, so long as he manages to beat the clock and completely embrace God some time before his own expiration date.
Throughout their youth these men fully intend to make an adjustment in their “faith quotient” and surrender entirely to God some time AFTER they are too old to enjoy all the sin they will engage in while young and limber.
As they approach 60, these folks begin reading the Bible when they are in a room all alone, occasionally glancing skyward through one eye without lifting their heads from the reading position in hopes He is watching and will not realize the exercise has two ambitions -- one to suggest to a voyeuristic Lord that maturity has put them in touch with the reality of God and made them regret all their indiscretions, and, two, to gather as much knowledge as possible in case there is an entrance exam at the pearly gates.
Now and then arcing one eyebrow to have a look at the ceiling, they scrupulously outline with yellow highlighter meaningful passages in The Bible and, when they feel his all-seeing eye sizing up this activity, even move their lips as they read. They join charitable organizations and do volunteer work they never had time for when they were young as if there has been an explosion of awareness in their brain that eluded them in youth. They intentionally omit curse words from their spoken expressions. They comb the obits daily, looking for funerals they can attend, hoping the relatives of the deceased will remember their presence and show up at gravesite when their own time comes. The more people at the funeral, the greater recommendation to God that He should make allowances in their low score on the entrance exam.
The more creative among the late bloomers even invent problems that serve as an excuse to seek the council of pastor, priest or assigned emissary of The Lord, hoping The Almighty will observe they have accepted him as the answer to their earthly impasses.
The faithful who expect to walk the streets of gold after they expire are much easier to track and predict than the heathen. The non-believer also passes through a metamorphosis of thinking on the subject of God, but his does not lead him to the blissful embrace of a final surrender. Instead, the older the heathen becomes, the more pissed off he gets over the enormous mind-fuck that has clouded his brain on this subject from the first day it was introduced to him.
This angst might have begun when he protested the requirement of prayer at the beginning of his Cub Scout meetings. Here was the first indication he would be hustled to the side-lines and disallowed from participation in any human game until and unless he joined the flock and, at least, kept his mouth shut about his lack of confidence in the conviction that reality is the result of magic performed by a ghost in the sky.
Despite an intellectual disagreement with the persuasion that God exists, the heathen has been haunted throughout his youth by the enormity of Man’s devotion to the notion. “How could so many people have been so misled over such a distance of time?” he asks himself. “Could I be right and all of them wrong? Not likely. What am I missing?”
One day, the heathen notices the millions of children who swear by the conviction that Santa Clause exists, and, for the first time, it occurs to him that Man’s naiveté does not end with the onset of puberty -- that God may be merely Santa in saintly garb -- yes, it is possible the whole world is wrong and he is right. Later, he comes to believe he is not alone, and that the others who do not believe are invisible, because, like him, they learned at an early age to keep their mouths shut on the subject or suffer shunning. Here is where doubt begins its metamorphosis to anger.
During middle-age a heathen reaches a higher level of understanding at which he comes to regard belief in one sort of God or another as vital to the survival of civilization, whether it is based on fact or not, because religion is the sole repository of shame and guilt. Without these two human foibles organized groups of people would dissolve into anarchy. God may be a fairy tale, but he would not remove it from the human equation because of its utility. This is the belief guiding the heathen who grows to public office or high-profile notoriety and professes a belief in The Lord publicly while privately regarding it as a load of hooey. Like oatmeal and masturbation truth is only good for the individual -- it confounds the ambitions of a society.
Many men never reach the final stage of atheism. They die with a lie on their lips, devoted to a belief that the fairy tale of God is vital to the survival of civilization and they were right to avoid endangering it on the basis of nothing more than unnecessary, unprofitable candor about their personal opinions.
It is the final stage of atheism that only old men know which turns their anger, grown out of angst, to hatred and, in more and more cases, a crusade to educate the Godly on the simple principles of physics. This latter stage only came into existence in the late 40’s. Its defining event was the demolition of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in nuclear clouds.
The old man has always known that belief in God was without peer in its capacity to incite war. But through most of his life the heathen regarded war as nothing more than population pruning and a viable method of solving the argument about whose god is greater -- a small price to pay for maintaining an institution which makes civilization possible. But in this final stage of atheism the old man’s intellect has matured past being intimidated by the preponderance of opinion contrary to his own. He has progressed through a long time during which he kept his mouth shut believing it was gooood for them, and now he enters a time when he dwells on the end of days -- not just his own but the end of days for all Mankind.
Slowly, over the years the heathen begins to understand that sooner or later religious zealots will inherit nuclear capability. Sooner or later, the argument about whose god is greater will bring about the extinction of Mankind, unless he speaks up....unless he joins the growing ranks of other old men who have reached this understanding.
And just when the elderly atheist thinks his hatred for ignorance cannot become more intense, it occurs to him that his journey to the grave is not inevitable at all. The science that helped him reach his position on God has now passed through the completion of the Human Genome Project -- the aging gene is within our grasp. We are right on the edge of a time when nothing but misadventure can kill him. Immortality is just beyond the next breakthrough, and the only thing slowing it down is the widespread belief that Man has an obligation to die in a fiery explosion and be sorted out at the feet of God. The final blow to the old heathen’s sensibilities comes with the understanding that the death God was invented to deal with is only necessary because of the widespread belief in God.
He studies his vacant oatmeal bowl. Like his face the surface is crusted with imperfections that would not exist if he’d risen at the proper moment to wash it clean. If only he could have reached clarity on the need for sanitary, sensible behavior at a moment when his energies were vital and his voice was strong. His death will be needless. He collects a picture of his son from its resting place atop the TV. Sanity will, eventually overtake humanity, he tells himself. In time, primitive devotions to superstitious nonsense invented before hard answers to reality where possible will fall away and there will be no natural death. National borders will fall and humanity will come together as a single force in the Universe. Other worlds will be settled to solve the challenge of finite space. He and the young man in the picture may be among the last to die on the altar of ignorance. Nothing can stop it and only superstition stands in the way.
These generations of old men who die between the explosion on Hiroshima and the arrest of the aging gene perish as martyrs. Ironically, they are not martyr to the cause of sanity, not to the prospect of everlasting life on earth and not to the achievement of the old heathen’s dreams. They are martyrs to their own sealed lips. They die for lack of the courage to speak out. I will die needlessly alongside them, but let it not be said it was in silence or without protest.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - final chapter
CHAPTER TWENTY
One of the great, enduring truths about old men is that there are no such things. There are only little boys who occasionally look in the mirror and can't believe what has happened to them. The child looks and wonders, "What will I become?" Later he asks "Who am I?" And finally, just when he's reached the age of asking, "What happened to me?" he sees he is not alone in the mirror -- never has been. There's a shadow standing behind him, and the shadow is fear.
Thoreau's observation that, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" was a remarkable insight. I might tell you there is a nose between the lips and the eyes on most faces. That's another thing I never heard anyone say before, and I suppose the truth of both statements is so plain it's hardly worth pointing out.
Every man knows the shadowy fear Thoreau called desperation, but the ghost goes by different names at different times in a man's life. In the early days it may look more like lust. There is a seed in the belly that grows larger with each day that passes, until it is larger than the man, himself -- larger at least than his ability to resist it. Well inside the young man is a particular understanding that never makes its proposition plain to him. It is the screaming universal voice of a thousand grandfathers whose efforts to survive through the generations of their spawn will come to conclusion unless he fathers a child. This is the truth of it, but to the young man living on the surface of his self it has a smaller feeling, and when he looks in the mirror he simply says to his reflection, "I gotta get laid."
Later in a man's life desperation goes by the name “responsibility.” His family believes they are safe with him and it's his job to encourage that illusion. It is his way of sparing them the insecurity he privately shoulders alone. But the shadow is ever whispering the world is a lethal place, and he is ill-equipped to protect himself, let alone his family. Together, they cling to a dream it will all turn out okay, but alone in confrontation with his solitary self, what the world calls responsibility is a muffled roar of desperation. It's a desperate hope that nothing will expose his utter helplessness to protect those who are dear to him from the overwhelming weight of a merciless world.
As the age of curmudgeonry sets, in the old man reaches a fork in the road. One of the chief components of his faith in the future falls away and “hope” ceases to fuel optimism. It is no longer prudent to speculate about winning the lottery. No knock upon his door will find opportunity waiting on the other side. He will not be discovered by a Hollywood producer. He will not stumble upon some great invention that will forever etch his name in the encyclopedia. There will be no best-seller, and any rich relation who might pass away and leave him flush is already dead. If life were a game of 5-card stud, he would already have made his draw, and the truth of the hand would now be plain.
Those old men who spent their lives amassing wealth now realize it is a game that cannot be won. A goal achieved produces only a higher goal. For wealthy men there are no goals. There are only steps and redeveloped goals, and death will take him somewhere along the staircase, which is exactly where he began the game.
Wealth, itself, is a relative value. It can only exist in a world where there are far more people with far less. That relegates the vast majority of old men to financial failure, and now that the cards are all visible and faith in a windfall future is exhausted, the old man must confront the shadow behind him by its rightful name -- desperation. It is here we find the greatest utility in the notion of God. In fact, without this devotion, almost nothing can save him from despair.
In the face of such futility it's proper to ask why any curmudgeon such as I would squander his remaining time writing down all these observations, which are plain upon their face. Where is the point? The predictable despair is the point. This penetrating, consuming pain, Thoreau's desperation, the ghost of fear in the mirror are the point. In a larger context the well-educated curmudgeon can assist less fortunate seniors in the digestion of this discomfort if only he will re-energize the benevolence that left him around the time his erection did.
I will need to be precise with language here, and the needy senior must pay close attention as the key to escaping the pain is delicate in its configuration, not at all well known in literature and nearly non-existent in dialog between the human units. It is only visible to the old man, himself, and most of us are past concern about the welfare of other victims, so the reader is not likely to learn it elsewhere.
Life is a bit like a trip to grandma's house, during which your car breaks down on the highway. You lift the hood and observe the plume of grey smoke rising from the engine. Life, this milieu that is punctuated by desperation and ends in despair, begins with the lifting of the hood and the observation of the smoke plume. As LIFE unfolds we are concerned with a central proposition -- what caused the smoke to rise from the engine? We are certain it is connected to the mystery of the automobile's failure and the solution to the problem can only come with the answer to the question about the smoke.
And so we spend LIFE considering this plume of smoke. Along the way, we analyze each of the separate functions of the automobile engine, using our human intellect and emotion to attach value to them in an attempt to deduce the reason for the smoke. The smoking episode may occur repeatedly in the story of an automobile and there may be many occasions on which it blows away and a repair is made. Eventually, however, the smoke will not vanish and it becomes clear the engine is on fire. The car is a total loss and there is no solution. Life for those curmudgeons who began it by lifting the hood comes to a conclusion with a trip to the junkyard.
The well-kept secret only an old man knows is that LIFE was such a distraction we forgot about the trip to grandma's in the instant we lifted the hood of the car.
To negotiate the inherent despair involved in life, we must go further back in time. We must go deep beneath the skin. We must consider the point of the automobile.
LIFE seems to be all there is because we are analyzing it through its own prism. Do not expect answers about the trip to grandma's to come in a conversation with the car. The car's concern is with the fire beneath its bonnet, not the larger journey. To get to grandmas after the expiration of the automobile one must take one's brain down to the size of a quark, a component particle of a proton or neutron, existing in the eye of an atom.
An organism experiencing LIFE is merely an assembly of countless atoms behaving in a particular way. LIFE, therefore, is merely a snapshot moment taken along the journey an organism's component parts are traveling. Somewhere along the trip the hood is lifted and an episode we call "consciousness" occurs. This is the smoke. In that snapshot each of us assembled atomic units engages other assembled units, and this is no accident or event without meaning, because it is the result of a universal commandment issued to each component of our being.
The greater journey which embraces LIFE began in a time when each component part of the universe, including every atom of your body and every grain of sand on every beach on every planet in every solar system, was locked together in a harmony so perfect there was no space between the particles. Think of it as a small ball of stuff. And then something happened that brought about an interruption in the harmony, causing the ball to fragment and the fragments to fly off into the ether.
The greater journey is about the effort on the part of each particle to reunite. The first clue to the truth of this equation is in the arcing trajectory of the particles as they flew away from the event. Without some compelling predisposition to reunite, the trajectory of the particles would never have arced and none would ever have touched another again. But there was a need possessed by each particle of existence -- a need to come together...to restore the state of perfect harmony, which once sustained the ball of stuff in its original configuration.
Through all the journeys of all the particles across the billions of earth years since the event each particle has exhibited a solitary behavior -- they need to reunite. This predisposition brought about the gases, then the suns, then the planets and, finally, the organisms. In each of its phases, the assembled particles of existence have come closer to reaching their goal. Human consciousness is no accident or unrelated phenomenon. It is a state in which the reassembling particles of existence have begun to study their own journey. This is the meaning of the metamorphosis. It is the purpose out of which we have been fashioned.
Understanding the conclusion of this event is, for the moment, beyond the capacity of us human units who are, throughout our time as living creatures, preoccupied with the smoke pouring forth from the engine we call LIFE. But it is possible to find meaning within the snapshot that will sustain us until the fire beneath the bonnet burns out. Most of us are too intellectually lazy to address the greater event. They will expire praying to the god du jour for a heaven that will never come.
It is the rest of the old men who will suffer. These curmudgeons who have put away their faith in Santa Clause, who have recognized the bold truths civilization has tried to hide from them and found only the specter of desperation standing behind them in the mirror may require this handbook to serve as a personal answer to the problem of spiritual salvation.
You are a link in a chain, old man. You are a truth greater than yourself. You have been preceded by a million grandfathers and, in your infancy, by a smoke in the ether. Your job is to father a child, so that the chain of which you are a part is not broken. Human consciousness, this thing we call LIFE is merely a vehicle designed to consider ways in which the particles of existence can be brought back together in perfect harmony. It is the sub-atomic need to reestablish this harmony which caused the planets to form and organisms to evaluate possibilities. This is the need that provokes copulation, creates cooperative civilizations of men and sends us on journeys across unknown waters to conquer uncharted lands. It is at the heart of all human exploration and the reason we cannot resist the challenge to populate the stars. Every individual human unit is a complex collaboration of smaller particles engaged in a solitary goal. The one commandment common to all creatures and all pieces of existence can be spoken in two words. They are: COME TOGETHER.
No matter what failures you may believe yourself guilty of, redemption is at hand. If you are father to a child, you have done the only thing required to justify your life. The rest of your efforts, the successes along with the defeats, will evaporate like the smoke from an engine fire. If you produced no successor to your earthly presence, it is never too late to help a child along. In this way your time on the planet can be spent with consequence. Anything else is a whisper in the wind.
One of the great, enduring truths about old men is that there are no such things. There are only little boys who occasionally look in the mirror and can't believe what has happened to them. The child looks and wonders, "What will I become?" Later he asks "Who am I?" And finally, just when he's reached the age of asking, "What happened to me?" he sees he is not alone in the mirror -- never has been. There's a shadow standing behind him, and the shadow is fear.
Thoreau's observation that, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" was a remarkable insight. I might tell you there is a nose between the lips and the eyes on most faces. That's another thing I never heard anyone say before, and I suppose the truth of both statements is so plain it's hardly worth pointing out.
Every man knows the shadowy fear Thoreau called desperation, but the ghost goes by different names at different times in a man's life. In the early days it may look more like lust. There is a seed in the belly that grows larger with each day that passes, until it is larger than the man, himself -- larger at least than his ability to resist it. Well inside the young man is a particular understanding that never makes its proposition plain to him. It is the screaming universal voice of a thousand grandfathers whose efforts to survive through the generations of their spawn will come to conclusion unless he fathers a child. This is the truth of it, but to the young man living on the surface of his self it has a smaller feeling, and when he looks in the mirror he simply says to his reflection, "I gotta get laid."
Later in a man's life desperation goes by the name “responsibility.” His family believes they are safe with him and it's his job to encourage that illusion. It is his way of sparing them the insecurity he privately shoulders alone. But the shadow is ever whispering the world is a lethal place, and he is ill-equipped to protect himself, let alone his family. Together, they cling to a dream it will all turn out okay, but alone in confrontation with his solitary self, what the world calls responsibility is a muffled roar of desperation. It's a desperate hope that nothing will expose his utter helplessness to protect those who are dear to him from the overwhelming weight of a merciless world.
As the age of curmudgeonry sets, in the old man reaches a fork in the road. One of the chief components of his faith in the future falls away and “hope” ceases to fuel optimism. It is no longer prudent to speculate about winning the lottery. No knock upon his door will find opportunity waiting on the other side. He will not be discovered by a Hollywood producer. He will not stumble upon some great invention that will forever etch his name in the encyclopedia. There will be no best-seller, and any rich relation who might pass away and leave him flush is already dead. If life were a game of 5-card stud, he would already have made his draw, and the truth of the hand would now be plain.
Those old men who spent their lives amassing wealth now realize it is a game that cannot be won. A goal achieved produces only a higher goal. For wealthy men there are no goals. There are only steps and redeveloped goals, and death will take him somewhere along the staircase, which is exactly where he began the game.
Wealth, itself, is a relative value. It can only exist in a world where there are far more people with far less. That relegates the vast majority of old men to financial failure, and now that the cards are all visible and faith in a windfall future is exhausted, the old man must confront the shadow behind him by its rightful name -- desperation. It is here we find the greatest utility in the notion of God. In fact, without this devotion, almost nothing can save him from despair.
In the face of such futility it's proper to ask why any curmudgeon such as I would squander his remaining time writing down all these observations, which are plain upon their face. Where is the point? The predictable despair is the point. This penetrating, consuming pain, Thoreau's desperation, the ghost of fear in the mirror are the point. In a larger context the well-educated curmudgeon can assist less fortunate seniors in the digestion of this discomfort if only he will re-energize the benevolence that left him around the time his erection did.
I will need to be precise with language here, and the needy senior must pay close attention as the key to escaping the pain is delicate in its configuration, not at all well known in literature and nearly non-existent in dialog between the human units. It is only visible to the old man, himself, and most of us are past concern about the welfare of other victims, so the reader is not likely to learn it elsewhere.
Life is a bit like a trip to grandma's house, during which your car breaks down on the highway. You lift the hood and observe the plume of grey smoke rising from the engine. Life, this milieu that is punctuated by desperation and ends in despair, begins with the lifting of the hood and the observation of the smoke plume. As LIFE unfolds we are concerned with a central proposition -- what caused the smoke to rise from the engine? We are certain it is connected to the mystery of the automobile's failure and the solution to the problem can only come with the answer to the question about the smoke.
And so we spend LIFE considering this plume of smoke. Along the way, we analyze each of the separate functions of the automobile engine, using our human intellect and emotion to attach value to them in an attempt to deduce the reason for the smoke. The smoking episode may occur repeatedly in the story of an automobile and there may be many occasions on which it blows away and a repair is made. Eventually, however, the smoke will not vanish and it becomes clear the engine is on fire. The car is a total loss and there is no solution. Life for those curmudgeons who began it by lifting the hood comes to a conclusion with a trip to the junkyard.
The well-kept secret only an old man knows is that LIFE was such a distraction we forgot about the trip to grandma's in the instant we lifted the hood of the car.
To negotiate the inherent despair involved in life, we must go further back in time. We must go deep beneath the skin. We must consider the point of the automobile.
LIFE seems to be all there is because we are analyzing it through its own prism. Do not expect answers about the trip to grandma's to come in a conversation with the car. The car's concern is with the fire beneath its bonnet, not the larger journey. To get to grandmas after the expiration of the automobile one must take one's brain down to the size of a quark, a component particle of a proton or neutron, existing in the eye of an atom.
An organism experiencing LIFE is merely an assembly of countless atoms behaving in a particular way. LIFE, therefore, is merely a snapshot moment taken along the journey an organism's component parts are traveling. Somewhere along the trip the hood is lifted and an episode we call "consciousness" occurs. This is the smoke. In that snapshot each of us assembled atomic units engages other assembled units, and this is no accident or event without meaning, because it is the result of a universal commandment issued to each component of our being.
The greater journey which embraces LIFE began in a time when each component part of the universe, including every atom of your body and every grain of sand on every beach on every planet in every solar system, was locked together in a harmony so perfect there was no space between the particles. Think of it as a small ball of stuff. And then something happened that brought about an interruption in the harmony, causing the ball to fragment and the fragments to fly off into the ether.
The greater journey is about the effort on the part of each particle to reunite. The first clue to the truth of this equation is in the arcing trajectory of the particles as they flew away from the event. Without some compelling predisposition to reunite, the trajectory of the particles would never have arced and none would ever have touched another again. But there was a need possessed by each particle of existence -- a need to come together...to restore the state of perfect harmony, which once sustained the ball of stuff in its original configuration.
Through all the journeys of all the particles across the billions of earth years since the event each particle has exhibited a solitary behavior -- they need to reunite. This predisposition brought about the gases, then the suns, then the planets and, finally, the organisms. In each of its phases, the assembled particles of existence have come closer to reaching their goal. Human consciousness is no accident or unrelated phenomenon. It is a state in which the reassembling particles of existence have begun to study their own journey. This is the meaning of the metamorphosis. It is the purpose out of which we have been fashioned.
Understanding the conclusion of this event is, for the moment, beyond the capacity of us human units who are, throughout our time as living creatures, preoccupied with the smoke pouring forth from the engine we call LIFE. But it is possible to find meaning within the snapshot that will sustain us until the fire beneath the bonnet burns out. Most of us are too intellectually lazy to address the greater event. They will expire praying to the god du jour for a heaven that will never come.
It is the rest of the old men who will suffer. These curmudgeons who have put away their faith in Santa Clause, who have recognized the bold truths civilization has tried to hide from them and found only the specter of desperation standing behind them in the mirror may require this handbook to serve as a personal answer to the problem of spiritual salvation.
You are a link in a chain, old man. You are a truth greater than yourself. You have been preceded by a million grandfathers and, in your infancy, by a smoke in the ether. Your job is to father a child, so that the chain of which you are a part is not broken. Human consciousness, this thing we call LIFE is merely a vehicle designed to consider ways in which the particles of existence can be brought back together in perfect harmony. It is the sub-atomic need to reestablish this harmony which caused the planets to form and organisms to evaluate possibilities. This is the need that provokes copulation, creates cooperative civilizations of men and sends us on journeys across unknown waters to conquer uncharted lands. It is at the heart of all human exploration and the reason we cannot resist the challenge to populate the stars. Every individual human unit is a complex collaboration of smaller particles engaged in a solitary goal. The one commandment common to all creatures and all pieces of existence can be spoken in two words. They are: COME TOGETHER.
No matter what failures you may believe yourself guilty of, redemption is at hand. If you are father to a child, you have done the only thing required to justify your life. The rest of your efforts, the successes along with the defeats, will evaporate like the smoke from an engine fire. If you produced no successor to your earthly presence, it is never too late to help a child along. In this way your time on the planet can be spent with consequence. Anything else is a whisper in the wind.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
LETTING GOD OFF THE HOOK
I’m not superstitious and don’t believe in ghosts, holy or otherwise. But defenders of faith need some help, especially in Denver where poor Tim Tebow is getting his ass kicked by the liberal media about praying on the football field.
The problem with asking a Christian to explain how God created Heaven and Earth is that the Christian has been programmed to lay it off on faith…which is a non-answer to anyone who understands faith is only required in the absence of evidence. Reasonable people have to wonder how a sensible human being can have faith in anything that has failed to produce the slightest sliver of evidence over thousands of years of questions and answers on the subject.
There is another answer the Christian can’t get to, because he’s been conditioned to respond with the faith dogma. But you have to put your brain in “open” mode to embrace it. Here it comes…wait for it…
…this system we humans use to transform water, rocks, sand and trees into skyscrapers and rocket ships to the moon is some kind-a wonderful. We’ve even got it down to cloning, genetic manipulation and birthin’ babies in petri dishes. And even as I write, we’re unlocking the mysteries of the Universe’s beginning in a far off black hole. Nothing but time stands between us and a comprehensive understanding of exactly how it all came to be.
But you don’t have to wait. I can tell you now that, sooner or later, it will occur to Christians that we have mislabeled this marvelous system of invention/creation/discovery that is responsible for the transformation of planetary flotsam and jetsam into useful tools. We’re calling it “technology.” However, if you were jerked out of the 4th Century and exposed to it, you would have another name for it. You’d call it “magic”.
The inscrutable fact is that what separates God’s achievements from human achievements is one simple element. In order to qualify as God, magic must be used. Yet, today’s “magic” is tomorrow’s “technology.”
For instance, if Jesus came back and explained the technology that allowed him to persuade everyone watching that he rose from the grave, there would be no further reason to believe he might have been the son of God. So long as it was “magic”, then it must have been God’s doing.
Are you ahead of me yet? This thing we call technology is the same stuff God used to create what there is. We’ve just been calling it “magic” because we didn’t understand it and for lack of explanations, we leaped to the notion that a magic wand was used.
Looked at through this filter, God and Science become symbiotic. They are the same process. When we unlock another secret, we move just a little closer to full understanding of how God or (insert favorite ghost) accomplished what he did.
If you’re a Christian and the hair on the back of your neck is bristling right now, you should ask yourself why. Is God not allowed to use technology? Is it possible that the preachers got it wrong and there is no magic wand? Is it possible that our under-educated ancestors had no better way to explain what they could not understand than to lay it off on “magic”? Is it possible that you are the victim of an ages-long massive mind-fuck designed to eradicate your individuality and shape you and the rest of the human race into a cohesive unit so that the enterprise of civilization could be successfully conducted?
I know what you’re thinking and I should have expected a thoughtful reaction. You’re thinking…maybe technology is the simple answer to all that God gets credit for, but hell…it won’t win football games.
The problem with asking a Christian to explain how God created Heaven and Earth is that the Christian has been programmed to lay it off on faith…which is a non-answer to anyone who understands faith is only required in the absence of evidence. Reasonable people have to wonder how a sensible human being can have faith in anything that has failed to produce the slightest sliver of evidence over thousands of years of questions and answers on the subject.
There is another answer the Christian can’t get to, because he’s been conditioned to respond with the faith dogma. But you have to put your brain in “open” mode to embrace it. Here it comes…wait for it…
…this system we humans use to transform water, rocks, sand and trees into skyscrapers and rocket ships to the moon is some kind-a wonderful. We’ve even got it down to cloning, genetic manipulation and birthin’ babies in petri dishes. And even as I write, we’re unlocking the mysteries of the Universe’s beginning in a far off black hole. Nothing but time stands between us and a comprehensive understanding of exactly how it all came to be.
But you don’t have to wait. I can tell you now that, sooner or later, it will occur to Christians that we have mislabeled this marvelous system of invention/creation/discovery that is responsible for the transformation of planetary flotsam and jetsam into useful tools. We’re calling it “technology.” However, if you were jerked out of the 4th Century and exposed to it, you would have another name for it. You’d call it “magic”.
The inscrutable fact is that what separates God’s achievements from human achievements is one simple element. In order to qualify as God, magic must be used. Yet, today’s “magic” is tomorrow’s “technology.”
For instance, if Jesus came back and explained the technology that allowed him to persuade everyone watching that he rose from the grave, there would be no further reason to believe he might have been the son of God. So long as it was “magic”, then it must have been God’s doing.
Are you ahead of me yet? This thing we call technology is the same stuff God used to create what there is. We’ve just been calling it “magic” because we didn’t understand it and for lack of explanations, we leaped to the notion that a magic wand was used.
Looked at through this filter, God and Science become symbiotic. They are the same process. When we unlock another secret, we move just a little closer to full understanding of how God or (insert favorite ghost) accomplished what he did.
If you’re a Christian and the hair on the back of your neck is bristling right now, you should ask yourself why. Is God not allowed to use technology? Is it possible that the preachers got it wrong and there is no magic wand? Is it possible that our under-educated ancestors had no better way to explain what they could not understand than to lay it off on “magic”? Is it possible that you are the victim of an ages-long massive mind-fuck designed to eradicate your individuality and shape you and the rest of the human race into a cohesive unit so that the enterprise of civilization could be successfully conducted?
I know what you’re thinking and I should have expected a thoughtful reaction. You’re thinking…maybe technology is the simple answer to all that God gets credit for, but hell…it won’t win football games.
A WOMAN'S WORLD?
So you say this world would be a better place if women had been in charge.
Of course, I've heard that point of view countless times in recent years. Whenever I hear it the entire history of humanity's stewardship of the Earth rolls across my mind. The question you asked seems to suggest the males have done a poor job. It asks me to consider how much better things might be if he had put his brain on hold and allowed civilization to develop at a speed controlled by females.
I wonder, in the beginning, what chance Man would have had against creatures much faster like the horse, the cheetah and even the dog, much bigger like the bear and the elephant and the buffalo, much stronger like the ape and the ox, more insidious like the sub atomic life forms such as viruses. But we survived. We survived and we dominated every other life form on the planet. We harnesssed the rivers and streams to create power and irrigate land for crops. We drew energy from the very air around us to power machines we invented to do more work than any animal could dream of. We probed a world the living eye cannot even see to conquer disease after disease and, more recently, have even unlocked the secrets of manufacturing ourselves to our own design. We turned the sand and rocks and water into high rise buildings, bridges and factories. We learned to soar through the air faster than any bird and even sail to the moon and back.
None of it was done using the brute force you suggest we employed to subjugate human women. All of it was done through the power of our enormous intellect -- the intellect that instinctively uses a built-in gyroscope to find directions rather than the landmarks females use, the intellect that connects visual images with imagination the way the pornography you cannot comprehend does, the intellect that makes perfect sense of the chaos of war, using the same set of principles, strategies and tactics used to wage corporate battles in the 21st Century. The lions, tigers and bears, despite their superior strength, could not prevail in the battle against our intellect. Why do you suppose the human female, using what you consider to be HER superior intellect, has been chattle to the human male for all this time? If intellect is as powerful as history suggests and females are more intellectually qualifed to run the planet than human males, why have they not done so?
The fact...the UGLY TRUTH is that during all these thousands of years humanity has slowly crawled from the slime at the bottom of the ocean to the planet Mars the contribution of female human beings, beyond birthing other human beings, has been so tiny and inconsequential it almost cannot be measured. Do you really believe the social dogma shoved down your throat suggesting they have made no contribution because they have not been permitted to do so? Do you believe the lions and the tigers and bears ALLOWED Mankind to dominate them or do you think human males brutalized them into submission the way you appear to believe we did the human females?
It is a miracle that Man has survived despite his frailties. It has been a greater miracle still that he has become preeminent on the planet and an even greater miracle that he stands poised on the precipice of unlocking the last few remaining secrets of existence. But YOU could have done a better job.
I want to end this rant with the words of Theodore Roosevelt uttered in the year 1910. Read the speech and see if you can comprehend its application here.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
There is no way to know what the human experience might have been like if the female had been in charge. But considering the success of the species during the male's leadership, I think it would have been difficult to surpass. When I hear this question you asked me escape the lips of another human being, I am nearly struck dumb by the ignominious stupidity that must inspire the question. I am hard-pressed to voice an answer without revealing my disgust over the lack of gratitude and the unwillingness of the female to acknowledge the achievements of the man in the arena. And always, of late, I return to the words on the billboard: A WORLD AT PRAYER IS A WORLD AT PEACE. Again I am reminded that at least half of us would prefer to believe a beautiful lie, no matter how demonstrably false it is, than to face an ugly truth.
Of course, I've heard that point of view countless times in recent years. Whenever I hear it the entire history of humanity's stewardship of the Earth rolls across my mind. The question you asked seems to suggest the males have done a poor job. It asks me to consider how much better things might be if he had put his brain on hold and allowed civilization to develop at a speed controlled by females.
I wonder, in the beginning, what chance Man would have had against creatures much faster like the horse, the cheetah and even the dog, much bigger like the bear and the elephant and the buffalo, much stronger like the ape and the ox, more insidious like the sub atomic life forms such as viruses. But we survived. We survived and we dominated every other life form on the planet. We harnesssed the rivers and streams to create power and irrigate land for crops. We drew energy from the very air around us to power machines we invented to do more work than any animal could dream of. We probed a world the living eye cannot even see to conquer disease after disease and, more recently, have even unlocked the secrets of manufacturing ourselves to our own design. We turned the sand and rocks and water into high rise buildings, bridges and factories. We learned to soar through the air faster than any bird and even sail to the moon and back.
None of it was done using the brute force you suggest we employed to subjugate human women. All of it was done through the power of our enormous intellect -- the intellect that instinctively uses a built-in gyroscope to find directions rather than the landmarks females use, the intellect that connects visual images with imagination the way the pornography you cannot comprehend does, the intellect that makes perfect sense of the chaos of war, using the same set of principles, strategies and tactics used to wage corporate battles in the 21st Century. The lions, tigers and bears, despite their superior strength, could not prevail in the battle against our intellect. Why do you suppose the human female, using what you consider to be HER superior intellect, has been chattle to the human male for all this time? If intellect is as powerful as history suggests and females are more intellectually qualifed to run the planet than human males, why have they not done so?
The fact...the UGLY TRUTH is that during all these thousands of years humanity has slowly crawled from the slime at the bottom of the ocean to the planet Mars the contribution of female human beings, beyond birthing other human beings, has been so tiny and inconsequential it almost cannot be measured. Do you really believe the social dogma shoved down your throat suggesting they have made no contribution because they have not been permitted to do so? Do you believe the lions and the tigers and bears ALLOWED Mankind to dominate them or do you think human males brutalized them into submission the way you appear to believe we did the human females?
It is a miracle that Man has survived despite his frailties. It has been a greater miracle still that he has become preeminent on the planet and an even greater miracle that he stands poised on the precipice of unlocking the last few remaining secrets of existence. But YOU could have done a better job.
I want to end this rant with the words of Theodore Roosevelt uttered in the year 1910. Read the speech and see if you can comprehend its application here.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
There is no way to know what the human experience might have been like if the female had been in charge. But considering the success of the species during the male's leadership, I think it would have been difficult to surpass. When I hear this question you asked me escape the lips of another human being, I am nearly struck dumb by the ignominious stupidity that must inspire the question. I am hard-pressed to voice an answer without revealing my disgust over the lack of gratitude and the unwillingness of the female to acknowledge the achievements of the man in the arena. And always, of late, I return to the words on the billboard: A WORLD AT PRAYER IS A WORLD AT PEACE. Again I am reminded that at least half of us would prefer to believe a beautiful lie, no matter how demonstrably false it is, than to face an ugly truth.
COMMEN MEN
When I have heard about the nobility of the common man, and it is a thing I have heard often across the years, I have always had a bit of a pause at the suggestion, for I find nothing noble about the common man. I believe his nobility is a rumor started and nurtured by those who require a mass of common men around them, for without such men there are no UNcommon men. A king in a realm alone is both king and subject. Only when a subject apart from himself is admitted to the room can the man who would be king claim his throne. So it profits the king to elevate the common man, to recommend to all at a cross roads that it is a noble state of being and that it is a condition to be celebrated by all who are willing to embrace the distinction.
But for myself...there is no excuse to exist if there is nothing to be produced by my life but repetition of deeds done by countless other men, thoughts held by legions before me, contributions of no consequence, words that changed nothing and persuasions that brought no profit to anyone but myself. If there is nothing I can uncover, nothing I can turn back, nothing I can alter nor any single thing is changed by my time spent here, then there is no point I can find in having dallied even for so long as I have.
To be an uncommon man...this is the ambition you speak so lightly, but which has consumed me throughout my life. I simply MUST make some difference or there will never have been justification for the breath I've drawn. I view it as an obligation born to every man who enters the realm of human beings. Of a million who surrender all the days of their lives in that quest, perhaps a thousand alter some meaningful small thing. Of that thousand perhaps a hundred succeed in justifying their existence by some act or some thought they will to humanity which helps to guide the direction of the vast and countless sea of mediocre men. And of these there may be one among that million who is called Beethoven or Ford or Franklin or Einstein.
The full measure of a man's life cannot be accurately taken until his death, and frequently it happens that not even then the value of his contribution is acknowledged. Often, a lifetime or two may pass before the world catches up to the vision of an extraordinary man and the kiss of immortality graces his name.
Because that is so, a man cannot allow himself to be demoralized by the lack of progress along the road to an uncommon existence. Many such men die believing their visions were futile, that they changed nothing. The lasting result never comes to fullness except in the course of time. So it is not the celebrity a man enjoys during his days on earth that justify the space he has taken up on the planet -- it is simply that he tried, that his life was exhausted in the pursuit of dreams he alone conjured from his own unique humanity.
Praise be to sheep everywhere who graze on the hillside mindless of things to come, who sit on the banks of rivers across the world fishing for pleasure, who have been taught by UNcommon men there is a certain nobility in counting for nothing. Without them there would be no point in the service uncommon men provide. But I know my place in that equation. It may be to fail in an endless quest to do otherwise, and that will be fine, for it is not achievement that drives my life, but the purpose I find within the effort to reach it. And that, as you eloquently quantify it, is, simply, to be an uncommon man.
But for myself...there is no excuse to exist if there is nothing to be produced by my life but repetition of deeds done by countless other men, thoughts held by legions before me, contributions of no consequence, words that changed nothing and persuasions that brought no profit to anyone but myself. If there is nothing I can uncover, nothing I can turn back, nothing I can alter nor any single thing is changed by my time spent here, then there is no point I can find in having dallied even for so long as I have.
To be an uncommon man...this is the ambition you speak so lightly, but which has consumed me throughout my life. I simply MUST make some difference or there will never have been justification for the breath I've drawn. I view it as an obligation born to every man who enters the realm of human beings. Of a million who surrender all the days of their lives in that quest, perhaps a thousand alter some meaningful small thing. Of that thousand perhaps a hundred succeed in justifying their existence by some act or some thought they will to humanity which helps to guide the direction of the vast and countless sea of mediocre men. And of these there may be one among that million who is called Beethoven or Ford or Franklin or Einstein.
The full measure of a man's life cannot be accurately taken until his death, and frequently it happens that not even then the value of his contribution is acknowledged. Often, a lifetime or two may pass before the world catches up to the vision of an extraordinary man and the kiss of immortality graces his name.
Because that is so, a man cannot allow himself to be demoralized by the lack of progress along the road to an uncommon existence. Many such men die believing their visions were futile, that they changed nothing. The lasting result never comes to fullness except in the course of time. So it is not the celebrity a man enjoys during his days on earth that justify the space he has taken up on the planet -- it is simply that he tried, that his life was exhausted in the pursuit of dreams he alone conjured from his own unique humanity.
Praise be to sheep everywhere who graze on the hillside mindless of things to come, who sit on the banks of rivers across the world fishing for pleasure, who have been taught by UNcommon men there is a certain nobility in counting for nothing. Without them there would be no point in the service uncommon men provide. But I know my place in that equation. It may be to fail in an endless quest to do otherwise, and that will be fine, for it is not achievement that drives my life, but the purpose I find within the effort to reach it. And that, as you eloquently quantify it, is, simply, to be an uncommon man.
I BELIEVE
I'm a man given to fits of outrage and indignation. I was not well-educated, but have read just enough Plato, Socrates and Nitche to believe all the great insight there is to be found has already been located and reduced to language. That makes it accessible to all human beings, so I read as much as I could and, frankly, I am apalled at what I have read.
In a song long ago, Frankie Lane sang, "I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows." It's a sweet thought, but we'd all be wading through flowers wherever we went if it were true. Frankie sang, "I believe that someone in that great somewhere hears every word." I like that too, but in all the wishing and hoping of a hundred centuries nowhere, ever has anyone produced so much as a shred of evidence to suggest anyone's listening. Sweet thoughts create magnificent images, but it was not the search for beauty that led us from the caves on earth to the craters of the moon -- it was the search for truth.
I believe. I do. I believe in logic and reality. I believe in the ugly truth and despise the glorious fantasy. I believe in justice even when it serves my enemy. And I believe in the America that never was, but should have been. I believe the function of all law is the abbreviation of freedom. I believe the greatest enemy of global peace is patriotism. I believe the engine which drives us toward apocolyptic extinction is powered by the notion that Man has a responsibility to die by fire and be sorted out at the feet of God. I believe. I do.
I once believed the essence of greatness was within each man. Now, it's plain only a tiny microcosm of men have known the call to challenges of consequence. The rest are like cows on a hill, grazing through life with no ambition above comfort and amusement; suffocating in a sea of bullshit.
Mankind is not great, but now and then there comes a great man. Great men die misunderstood by the rabble around them, villified by those they failed to vanquish and celebrated by those they conquered. In the end, the essence of greatness rests not with what discoveries men make, but with how well they are able to communicate their discoveries to the mob which defines them. Greatness is an architectural achievement. It is the building of bridges between ignorance and understanding. Such bridges are not fashioned by blades of steel, but by words and phrases, and even when that is done they must be open to the public. They must find a venue where they can be considered. They must be reduced to ink on a page, carved in stone or borne on the air for all to hear.
I believe a life without purpose is an empty vessel. I believe each man must create his own purpose. And I believe the purpose of great men is to illuminate those who may walk upon the bridges they build.
In a song long ago, Frankie Lane sang, "I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows." It's a sweet thought, but we'd all be wading through flowers wherever we went if it were true. Frankie sang, "I believe that someone in that great somewhere hears every word." I like that too, but in all the wishing and hoping of a hundred centuries nowhere, ever has anyone produced so much as a shred of evidence to suggest anyone's listening. Sweet thoughts create magnificent images, but it was not the search for beauty that led us from the caves on earth to the craters of the moon -- it was the search for truth.
I believe. I do. I believe in logic and reality. I believe in the ugly truth and despise the glorious fantasy. I believe in justice even when it serves my enemy. And I believe in the America that never was, but should have been. I believe the function of all law is the abbreviation of freedom. I believe the greatest enemy of global peace is patriotism. I believe the engine which drives us toward apocolyptic extinction is powered by the notion that Man has a responsibility to die by fire and be sorted out at the feet of God. I believe. I do.
I once believed the essence of greatness was within each man. Now, it's plain only a tiny microcosm of men have known the call to challenges of consequence. The rest are like cows on a hill, grazing through life with no ambition above comfort and amusement; suffocating in a sea of bullshit.
Mankind is not great, but now and then there comes a great man. Great men die misunderstood by the rabble around them, villified by those they failed to vanquish and celebrated by those they conquered. In the end, the essence of greatness rests not with what discoveries men make, but with how well they are able to communicate their discoveries to the mob which defines them. Greatness is an architectural achievement. It is the building of bridges between ignorance and understanding. Such bridges are not fashioned by blades of steel, but by words and phrases, and even when that is done they must be open to the public. They must find a venue where they can be considered. They must be reduced to ink on a page, carved in stone or borne on the air for all to hear.
I believe a life without purpose is an empty vessel. I believe each man must create his own purpose. And I believe the purpose of great men is to illuminate those who may walk upon the bridges they build.
WHERE THE HEART IS
There is a hellish brand of torture waiting for me on the job each day. Pressure, expectations, backstabbing, bloodletting, hypocrisy, injustice and inequity await me at every corner of the day. But I am strong. I am confident. Because when the world turns sour and my best efforts result in failure...when it looks as if I am too weak to compete, too unprepared to succeed and too dumb to know the difference, I know where to find someone who still believes in me.
She shows me every day in the thousand ways she cares for me. I am the focus of her life and living up to her expectations is what drives me through the storm of discontent the world washes me with each time I leave the house.
Home. It is where I mean something no matter how miserably inconsequential I may be in any other environment. Home is where I'm not afraid to be the child I must conceal everywhere else I go. My mother knew. She filled me up each day with the belief that I was worthy -- that I was special, and no task required of her to lead me to that notion was beneath her.
Men do not outgrow their need for another human being who believes in them simply because they must now shave their face each morning. They only grow wise enough to discern the difference between "lip service" and service of the heart.
When a man looks into the eyes of a REAL WIFE it is as if he has looked into a mirror reflecting the best that he can be. And when his clumsy hands smudge her toes with nail polish they will both laugh, because he's no better equipped to paint her nails than she is to draw his bath. When he strains his imagination to find the special gift no other husband will give his wife on a random Valentines Day and what he chooses makes no sense at all, she smiles, because shopping is no more his strength than doing laundry is hers. He may be counted out on the curb where he fell, because he was not able to protect her when he wanted to most, but she was no better suited to the task of making his morning breakfast than he was to protecting her honor. And in the end, he may fall in battle because he was no more in control of his destiny than she was in control of that errant lock of hair that clouded her forehead the day he kissed her goodbye. But it will have been a life worth living and a life worth giving for all he gave to her and for all she gave back. There is no sweeter love, no greater cause for the celebration of life, nor the goodness that can come of it.
Home...where the heart resides...because she is there.
She shows me every day in the thousand ways she cares for me. I am the focus of her life and living up to her expectations is what drives me through the storm of discontent the world washes me with each time I leave the house.
Home. It is where I mean something no matter how miserably inconsequential I may be in any other environment. Home is where I'm not afraid to be the child I must conceal everywhere else I go. My mother knew. She filled me up each day with the belief that I was worthy -- that I was special, and no task required of her to lead me to that notion was beneath her.
Men do not outgrow their need for another human being who believes in them simply because they must now shave their face each morning. They only grow wise enough to discern the difference between "lip service" and service of the heart.
When a man looks into the eyes of a REAL WIFE it is as if he has looked into a mirror reflecting the best that he can be. And when his clumsy hands smudge her toes with nail polish they will both laugh, because he's no better equipped to paint her nails than she is to draw his bath. When he strains his imagination to find the special gift no other husband will give his wife on a random Valentines Day and what he chooses makes no sense at all, she smiles, because shopping is no more his strength than doing laundry is hers. He may be counted out on the curb where he fell, because he was not able to protect her when he wanted to most, but she was no better suited to the task of making his morning breakfast than he was to protecting her honor. And in the end, he may fall in battle because he was no more in control of his destiny than she was in control of that errant lock of hair that clouded her forehead the day he kissed her goodbye. But it will have been a life worth living and a life worth giving for all he gave to her and for all she gave back. There is no sweeter love, no greater cause for the celebration of life, nor the goodness that can come of it.
Home...where the heart resides...because she is there.
UNDERSTANDING MALE SELF CONFIDENCE
Mar 16, 2007...4:03PM...I read a blog entry entitled, "WHAT IS IT WITH MEN AND THEIR DICKS" It was posted by a befuddled young hen who found no profit in the examination of a suitor's most prominent appendage.
As with all postings to my blog, this is designed to assist thimble-witted subscribers who are confused by the sea of mystery surrounding all pristine truth. In particular, this missive addresses the question many poultry have asked concerning the propensity of men to send pictures of their cocks, drooping with disinterest or in a formidable, combative posture.
This issue is important to address because the hen so quickly dismisses the sender, believing him to be without redeeming personality value when, in fact, the picture of his cock may teach her far more about his mental demeanor than the deepest examination of his eyes.
As a person who has taught confidence training to hundreds of others across many years I read every book available on the subject before deciding they were mostly full of shit and developing my own program. I gave it a lot of thought. I know how to fix a damaged self-confidence through a trick of thinking I developed. But I always wondered why some people grow up without self-confidence and some seem to arrive with iron-clad personalities at a tender age.
Then one day I was standing over a toilet, addressing a domestic obligation, and found myself thinking about what a handsome and commanding weapon I was holding. That's when a novel thought hit me for the first time.
I never heard of any research done on the subject, and there are no polls to prove anything yea or nay about the question....but what if a man's confidence quotient turned out to be nothing more than his own impression of his own dick? And the mega-million dollar industry that spins around confidence training is merely the equivalent of shallow writers masturbating on keyboards.
Maybe it's just a coincidence that I am a demonstrably self-assured individual in possession of remarkable ordinance. No one will ever know. But if I had a tiny pecker, I think I would be reluctant every time I was about to share it with a woman. I think the lack of satisfactory size must have SOME influence on a man's general self-opinion. But what influence? And how pervasive is it? And how, if at all, does it transcend the bedroom and manifest itself in other engagements?
So what I'm saying is...if you knew a little more about men than you do, you might be able to discern a whole lot more about their personality by looking at their dick than their face. I mean, we'll never know, but what if it turned out that 99% of the arrogant, pumped-up, self-inflated male personalities on the planet have great cocks and 99% of the timid, pussy-whipped, milquetoast, fuck-me-in-the-ass-with-your-dildo males you run into have minor toolage?
Of course, there will be anomalies. And, of course, there will be men who over-compensate for the lack of a satisfactory digit. These will serve to complicate the issue and obscure the general truth about the matter. Therefore, anecdotes that represent contradiction will muddy the waters of fact. Worse, a young hen can never know whether her personal experience has been representative of the truth or the result of an engagement with an anomaly, because there is no research to support any broad scientific interrogation of the matter. And even the most active tart cannot have had enough sexual activity to support or disparage the theory. So we are all left to draw conclusions based upon our ability to think, rather than experience we have had.
Still, postings about your personal dalliances and the conclusions to which they have led you may illuminate the issue. Are all the self-help manuals regarding male self-confidence just so much spit in the wind? And is the real truth about male self-assurance seated in a man's personal impression of his own magnificent member? And if it is...will a picture of his cock not tell you far more about his personality than a portrait of his face?
And, by the way...before leaving the subject it's only fair to explain the attitude of the hen who views the "cock pic" with such disdain. For the benefit of the swain who feels rebuffed by her disparaging attitude...she views your cock pic as an unspoken statement. She imagines you are saying, "Look what I've got that you don't have." And that is the deepest cut you can inflict on poultry who suffer robust penis envy.
As with all postings to my blog, this is designed to assist thimble-witted subscribers who are confused by the sea of mystery surrounding all pristine truth. In particular, this missive addresses the question many poultry have asked concerning the propensity of men to send pictures of their cocks, drooping with disinterest or in a formidable, combative posture.
This issue is important to address because the hen so quickly dismisses the sender, believing him to be without redeeming personality value when, in fact, the picture of his cock may teach her far more about his mental demeanor than the deepest examination of his eyes.
As a person who has taught confidence training to hundreds of others across many years I read every book available on the subject before deciding they were mostly full of shit and developing my own program. I gave it a lot of thought. I know how to fix a damaged self-confidence through a trick of thinking I developed. But I always wondered why some people grow up without self-confidence and some seem to arrive with iron-clad personalities at a tender age.
Then one day I was standing over a toilet, addressing a domestic obligation, and found myself thinking about what a handsome and commanding weapon I was holding. That's when a novel thought hit me for the first time.
I never heard of any research done on the subject, and there are no polls to prove anything yea or nay about the question....but what if a man's confidence quotient turned out to be nothing more than his own impression of his own dick? And the mega-million dollar industry that spins around confidence training is merely the equivalent of shallow writers masturbating on keyboards.
Maybe it's just a coincidence that I am a demonstrably self-assured individual in possession of remarkable ordinance. No one will ever know. But if I had a tiny pecker, I think I would be reluctant every time I was about to share it with a woman. I think the lack of satisfactory size must have SOME influence on a man's general self-opinion. But what influence? And how pervasive is it? And how, if at all, does it transcend the bedroom and manifest itself in other engagements?
So what I'm saying is...if you knew a little more about men than you do, you might be able to discern a whole lot more about their personality by looking at their dick than their face. I mean, we'll never know, but what if it turned out that 99% of the arrogant, pumped-up, self-inflated male personalities on the planet have great cocks and 99% of the timid, pussy-whipped, milquetoast, fuck-me-in-the-ass-with-your-dildo males you run into have minor toolage?
Of course, there will be anomalies. And, of course, there will be men who over-compensate for the lack of a satisfactory digit. These will serve to complicate the issue and obscure the general truth about the matter. Therefore, anecdotes that represent contradiction will muddy the waters of fact. Worse, a young hen can never know whether her personal experience has been representative of the truth or the result of an engagement with an anomaly, because there is no research to support any broad scientific interrogation of the matter. And even the most active tart cannot have had enough sexual activity to support or disparage the theory. So we are all left to draw conclusions based upon our ability to think, rather than experience we have had.
Still, postings about your personal dalliances and the conclusions to which they have led you may illuminate the issue. Are all the self-help manuals regarding male self-confidence just so much spit in the wind? And is the real truth about male self-assurance seated in a man's personal impression of his own magnificent member? And if it is...will a picture of his cock not tell you far more about his personality than a portrait of his face?
And, by the way...before leaving the subject it's only fair to explain the attitude of the hen who views the "cock pic" with such disdain. For the benefit of the swain who feels rebuffed by her disparaging attitude...she views your cock pic as an unspoken statement. She imagines you are saying, "Look what I've got that you don't have." And that is the deepest cut you can inflict on poultry who suffer robust penis envy.
THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT LAW
Most of the people smart enough to figure out half of what I know are smart enough to keep their mouth shut about what they figured out. They're smart enough to know they'll be be considered dangerous if they spill their guts. Who will consider them dangerous? The ones who haven't figured it out, and they outnumber us a hundred to one...at least. They're in charge. Let me correct that. They are the vast majority. The weight of numbers gives them the power. But the people actually in charge are the ones who've figured out half of what I know and are keeping their mouth shut about what they know.
The game is about sheep and shepherds. If you want to play you have to choose sides. Those too stupid to figure out the truth are the sheep. The ones who have figured out half of the truth are the shepherds. The shepherds believe ignorance among the sheep is bliss and keeping the sheep happy is the point of organized living, so it's the responsibility of the shepherds to play dumb so the sheep never guess the truth.
But let's not be sheepish about the truth. Let me just spit out the half of it the shepherds know. After all, there's nothing secret about the truth, so there's no need to hide it. In a way, it's like gravity was before Isaac Newton gave it a name. We all knew it was there. No one could deny it. We just couldn't find the words for it before Sir Newton described it.
Here's a truth right in front of your face; LAW can be defined by how much freedom it confiscates. The function of all law is to restrict the activity of individual human beings. It is the nemesis of any free people. It is the oppressive master of those it is intended to serve. Those living under law are slaves to the institution from which the law draws its power. The more law in a society the less free the people in that society are by the very definition of law, itself.
Yet, while Americans stack law upon law, congressional session after congressional session, and while law becomes so cumbersome and thick in number and complexity it cannot even be enforced, Americans continue to think of themselves as a free people and even boast their freedom before a world of nations with only a fraction of the laws which restrict American's. The shepherds who know half the truth understand this. They must chuckle in private as they watch the sheep wave their flag into battles intended to bring freedom to people who suffocate beneath far less law than the liberating Americans who've sanctimoniously come to save them.
The shepherds understand. The sheep have been confused by the notion that freedom is measured by how many people are elected to create law. But the truth is that freedom is measured by how much law restricts the movement and activity of citizens -- a clear reality the mindless sheep are encouraged to ignore by confusing propaganda designed to keep them powerless.
The game is about sheep and shepherds. If you want to play you have to choose sides. Those too stupid to figure out the truth are the sheep. The ones who have figured out half of the truth are the shepherds. The shepherds believe ignorance among the sheep is bliss and keeping the sheep happy is the point of organized living, so it's the responsibility of the shepherds to play dumb so the sheep never guess the truth.
But let's not be sheepish about the truth. Let me just spit out the half of it the shepherds know. After all, there's nothing secret about the truth, so there's no need to hide it. In a way, it's like gravity was before Isaac Newton gave it a name. We all knew it was there. No one could deny it. We just couldn't find the words for it before Sir Newton described it.
Here's a truth right in front of your face; LAW can be defined by how much freedom it confiscates. The function of all law is to restrict the activity of individual human beings. It is the nemesis of any free people. It is the oppressive master of those it is intended to serve. Those living under law are slaves to the institution from which the law draws its power. The more law in a society the less free the people in that society are by the very definition of law, itself.
Yet, while Americans stack law upon law, congressional session after congressional session, and while law becomes so cumbersome and thick in number and complexity it cannot even be enforced, Americans continue to think of themselves as a free people and even boast their freedom before a world of nations with only a fraction of the laws which restrict American's. The shepherds who know half the truth understand this. They must chuckle in private as they watch the sheep wave their flag into battles intended to bring freedom to people who suffocate beneath far less law than the liberating Americans who've sanctimoniously come to save them.
The shepherds understand. The sheep have been confused by the notion that freedom is measured by how many people are elected to create law. But the truth is that freedom is measured by how much law restricts the movement and activity of citizens -- a clear reality the mindless sheep are encouraged to ignore by confusing propaganda designed to keep them powerless.
THE HEATHEN POINT OF VIEW
Am I an Atheist? Call me whatever you like, though I intensely disdain labels applied to me of any sort. I don't fit into any boxes designed to separate people from one another for handy reference. I'll say this about that: Many people are raised Episcopalian or Methodist or Catholic or Buddhist or Republican or civic-minded or, essentially, encouraged to believe whatever their ancestors lived by. In that context my parents didn't actually "raise" me to believe anything. They allowed me to grow up. They exposed me to a world of possibilities and, basically, said, "What do you make of all that?"
In all I have seen, heard and thought during my life the only reason I have ever uncovered to think there is some presence in the Universe which intentionally created Man and is monitoring or mindful of his activity is the stories dreamed up by human beings going back thousands of years -- human beings who knew only a fraction of what I know about the dynamics of matter and the Universe at large. I never believe ANYTHING on the basis of what other people think. I have to examine the possibilities from scratch and make a determination about what I believe is most likely to be true. In so doing, I find no cause to think there might be a god such as superstitious people use to explain reality.
I have written thousands of words on this subject and am not at all bashful about full frontal confrontation over the matter such as I once had in a hallway with Jerry Falwell when I lived in Colorado Springs where Focus on the Family is headquartered.
Further to the subject...About 75% of the women near my age who live within dating distance of me have something in their profile about "loving the Lord" or "a good Christian man," which prevents them from knowing me. They will be happier people for never having made my acquaintance. I do not wish to bring misery into anyone's life and the primary reason belief in God is so embraceable is that it facilitates happiness. The TRUTH is ugly, scary, intimidating and oppressive. That is why the beautiful lie persists.
Someone asked me just last week how I thought so many millions of people could believe something that is a lie. I told them about the weathered billboard on the outskirts of Cordele, Georgia, sponsored by a consortium of religeous organizatons, which reads: A WORLD AT PRAYER IS A WORLD AT PEACE. It has been sitting there without controversy for decades. The TRUTH is that the world has been praying since the dawn of civilization. The TRUTH is that the world has been at war for the entire length of time it has been praying, and the vast preponderance of wars have been inspired and nurtured by the issue of whose god is greater, including the one we are fighting with Muslims right now. The TRUTH is that A WORLD AT PRAYER IS A WORLD AT WAR! But you will never see the TRUTH on a billboard, because, like the women who are looking for a "good Christian man"...nobody wants to hear the truth -- their opinions are shaped by what is required to bring them peace and how they's raised.
For good or bad -- I am a seeker of TRUTH. I do not care where it leads me. I do not care what brands and labels are used to minimize me by people whose opinions are based on primitive rituals, dancing around campfires and chanting slogans. This species has an important challenge before it -- survival! It cannot be accomplished in the same fashion that it was begun. TRUTH must guide it now as TRUTH has dragged it out of the dark ages and the Crusades despite the best efforts of the faithful to cling to notions of ghosts and godly folk.
TRUTH is under no obligation to correspond with what is required for you to "survive". In other words, just because you can only make it through difficulty by believing a particular thing, does not make that particular thing TRUE. The NEED to believe is not a good enough reason for me to believe ANYTHING. I am fascinated by the ugly truth that makes the beautiful lie necessary. I am determined to deal with reality while the world around me has its head buried in the sand and is petrified to look up for fear it will not be able to face the terror of THE TRUTH.
The TRUTH need not be so dark. It can be used to make the future a beautiful thing. If the religeous zealots will desist from interference long enough for science to complete its work on stem cell and DNA research, people will no longer be required to die natural deaths or age. There will be no need for an imaginary hereafter. I do not know where the preachers and the pastors and the parsons and the preists will find jobs when that happens, but the first order of organisms will finally have been achieved -- SURVIVAL and that trumps whatever they are holding in their hand.
Humanity is on a forced march of sorts. Superstition sustained us in our infancy as a species, but now that we have achieved civilization and populated the planet, it's time to get off it or die with it, and in this next chapter of humanity we will require a different fulcrum upon which to balance our beliefs -- we must look for, conscript to our purpose and employ TRUTH about reality...AND WE WILL. Bilbical prophecy about the rapture and Armageddon are only in the cards for us if we insist upon acting out the predictions of Biblical prophecy in order to validate what we wish to believe. But we are NOT required to do so.
In all I have seen, heard and thought during my life the only reason I have ever uncovered to think there is some presence in the Universe which intentionally created Man and is monitoring or mindful of his activity is the stories dreamed up by human beings going back thousands of years -- human beings who knew only a fraction of what I know about the dynamics of matter and the Universe at large. I never believe ANYTHING on the basis of what other people think. I have to examine the possibilities from scratch and make a determination about what I believe is most likely to be true. In so doing, I find no cause to think there might be a god such as superstitious people use to explain reality.
I have written thousands of words on this subject and am not at all bashful about full frontal confrontation over the matter such as I once had in a hallway with Jerry Falwell when I lived in Colorado Springs where Focus on the Family is headquartered.
Further to the subject...About 75% of the women near my age who live within dating distance of me have something in their profile about "loving the Lord" or "a good Christian man," which prevents them from knowing me. They will be happier people for never having made my acquaintance. I do not wish to bring misery into anyone's life and the primary reason belief in God is so embraceable is that it facilitates happiness. The TRUTH is ugly, scary, intimidating and oppressive. That is why the beautiful lie persists.
Someone asked me just last week how I thought so many millions of people could believe something that is a lie. I told them about the weathered billboard on the outskirts of Cordele, Georgia, sponsored by a consortium of religeous organizatons, which reads: A WORLD AT PRAYER IS A WORLD AT PEACE. It has been sitting there without controversy for decades. The TRUTH is that the world has been praying since the dawn of civilization. The TRUTH is that the world has been at war for the entire length of time it has been praying, and the vast preponderance of wars have been inspired and nurtured by the issue of whose god is greater, including the one we are fighting with Muslims right now. The TRUTH is that A WORLD AT PRAYER IS A WORLD AT WAR! But you will never see the TRUTH on a billboard, because, like the women who are looking for a "good Christian man"...nobody wants to hear the truth -- their opinions are shaped by what is required to bring them peace and how they's raised.
For good or bad -- I am a seeker of TRUTH. I do not care where it leads me. I do not care what brands and labels are used to minimize me by people whose opinions are based on primitive rituals, dancing around campfires and chanting slogans. This species has an important challenge before it -- survival! It cannot be accomplished in the same fashion that it was begun. TRUTH must guide it now as TRUTH has dragged it out of the dark ages and the Crusades despite the best efforts of the faithful to cling to notions of ghosts and godly folk.
TRUTH is under no obligation to correspond with what is required for you to "survive". In other words, just because you can only make it through difficulty by believing a particular thing, does not make that particular thing TRUE. The NEED to believe is not a good enough reason for me to believe ANYTHING. I am fascinated by the ugly truth that makes the beautiful lie necessary. I am determined to deal with reality while the world around me has its head buried in the sand and is petrified to look up for fear it will not be able to face the terror of THE TRUTH.
The TRUTH need not be so dark. It can be used to make the future a beautiful thing. If the religeous zealots will desist from interference long enough for science to complete its work on stem cell and DNA research, people will no longer be required to die natural deaths or age. There will be no need for an imaginary hereafter. I do not know where the preachers and the pastors and the parsons and the preists will find jobs when that happens, but the first order of organisms will finally have been achieved -- SURVIVAL and that trumps whatever they are holding in their hand.
Humanity is on a forced march of sorts. Superstition sustained us in our infancy as a species, but now that we have achieved civilization and populated the planet, it's time to get off it or die with it, and in this next chapter of humanity we will require a different fulcrum upon which to balance our beliefs -- we must look for, conscript to our purpose and employ TRUTH about reality...AND WE WILL. Bilbical prophecy about the rapture and Armageddon are only in the cards for us if we insist upon acting out the predictions of Biblical prophecy in order to validate what we wish to believe. But we are NOT required to do so.
HIPPIES AND THE DEBT CEILING
In the days around the horrible event at Kent State in 1970, when Ohio National Guardsmen killed five students during a protest, I rounded the corner inside a building on my own college campus in California and noticed a National Guard machine gun nest at the end of the corridor. I realized in that moment my country was on the verge of violent revolution.
Since that terrible day, my generation of Americans has grown fatter, spoiled by prosperity and apathetic about the activity of its government. Meanwhile those who have assumed the reins of power in government have moved into the void, bringing with them the liberal agenda we students of the seventies fought for. In a way you could say we won the day.
Over time, the educational standards of the nation were dumbed down to the extent that basket weaving and the lot of the snail garter became compulsory concerns and readin', writin' and 'rithmatic became the illiterate drivel you see in text messages and e-mail. And with the declining devotion to excellence in America came a breathtaking fall from grace in virtually every category of global leadership by which great nations are measured.
In simpler terms, we hippies and wanna-be hippies have managed to change the status of the nearly sacred "Made in America" label into what the label "Made in China" stood for in our youth -- cheap, second-rate plastic crap.
And now, as our country teeters on the brink of economic collapse threatening to bring the rest of the world along for the ride, those liberal values continue to guide the American agenda. Congress has broken down into a playground game waged by egotistical, irresponsible, self-serving children. The welfare of the dirt beneath our feet has become more important than the survival of our own species. The patently Communist ethic of equality has replaced freedom as the nation's signature value. The concept of winning has been replaced by a trophy-for-all mentality that spits in the face of excellence. And in a spine-chilling smite to all we hold dear as a nation earned wealth is being systematically conscripted from each according to their ability to pay and distributed to each according to their need -- a behavior exactly extracted from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.
And while it is going on, suggesting the truth in public dialog has become a career-ending assertion by any public figure brave enough to suggest it; an indiscretion that must be immediately followed by an apology or paid for by removal from the public forum.
But...there is hope and so it's worth saying that the conservative values which insist upon limited government, freedom to compete without government intrusion and restraint in our spending policies -- those values that elevated America The Beautiful from wilderness to wonderland are alive and fulminating in the nostrils of patriots who will not let this nation die.
Make no mistake about it...the violence in Egypt at this moment can happen here. If and when the dollar is replaced as the monetary standard of the world and we lose our unique ability to simply print more money; which is to say … when our bills come due…on that horrible, unthinkable, unexplored hell of a day only a handful of hours will turn the peaceful protests of tea partiers into a nightmare of national shame that will make Kent State look like a game of dodge ball.
Congress -- it's not as complicated as your partisan-driven, myopic point of view suggests. Dismantle the entitlements monster, pay down the national debt, balance the budget and put incentives in place that will restore to glory the once-proud label, "Made in America," a standard the world was, once, willing to pay a premium for. And, Congress...do it now!
It doesn't matter much if raising the debt ceiling will allow us to escape for a while longer. What matters is that it will, eventually, bring us down. And anything that permits congress to continue along this dangerous path merely delays the inevitable.
Since that terrible day, my generation of Americans has grown fatter, spoiled by prosperity and apathetic about the activity of its government. Meanwhile those who have assumed the reins of power in government have moved into the void, bringing with them the liberal agenda we students of the seventies fought for. In a way you could say we won the day.
Over time, the educational standards of the nation were dumbed down to the extent that basket weaving and the lot of the snail garter became compulsory concerns and readin', writin' and 'rithmatic became the illiterate drivel you see in text messages and e-mail. And with the declining devotion to excellence in America came a breathtaking fall from grace in virtually every category of global leadership by which great nations are measured.
In simpler terms, we hippies and wanna-be hippies have managed to change the status of the nearly sacred "Made in America" label into what the label "Made in China" stood for in our youth -- cheap, second-rate plastic crap.
And now, as our country teeters on the brink of economic collapse threatening to bring the rest of the world along for the ride, those liberal values continue to guide the American agenda. Congress has broken down into a playground game waged by egotistical, irresponsible, self-serving children. The welfare of the dirt beneath our feet has become more important than the survival of our own species. The patently Communist ethic of equality has replaced freedom as the nation's signature value. The concept of winning has been replaced by a trophy-for-all mentality that spits in the face of excellence. And in a spine-chilling smite to all we hold dear as a nation earned wealth is being systematically conscripted from each according to their ability to pay and distributed to each according to their need -- a behavior exactly extracted from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.
And while it is going on, suggesting the truth in public dialog has become a career-ending assertion by any public figure brave enough to suggest it; an indiscretion that must be immediately followed by an apology or paid for by removal from the public forum.
But...there is hope and so it's worth saying that the conservative values which insist upon limited government, freedom to compete without government intrusion and restraint in our spending policies -- those values that elevated America The Beautiful from wilderness to wonderland are alive and fulminating in the nostrils of patriots who will not let this nation die.
Make no mistake about it...the violence in Egypt at this moment can happen here. If and when the dollar is replaced as the monetary standard of the world and we lose our unique ability to simply print more money; which is to say … when our bills come due…on that horrible, unthinkable, unexplored hell of a day only a handful of hours will turn the peaceful protests of tea partiers into a nightmare of national shame that will make Kent State look like a game of dodge ball.
Congress -- it's not as complicated as your partisan-driven, myopic point of view suggests. Dismantle the entitlements monster, pay down the national debt, balance the budget and put incentives in place that will restore to glory the once-proud label, "Made in America," a standard the world was, once, willing to pay a premium for. And, Congress...do it now!
It doesn't matter much if raising the debt ceiling will allow us to escape for a while longer. What matters is that it will, eventually, bring us down. And anything that permits congress to continue along this dangerous path merely delays the inevitable.
A MORNING IN RETIREMENT
"Please, God ! Don't let the butter take me down!" My eyes snap open and my hand comes down in a sharp swat on the night stand. I'm aiming at the alarm clock, but it isn't there. Instead, the ill-tempered bulldog is there, trying to catch up on the sleep he missed during the fourteen hours he was napping yesterday. He snaps at the intruder reflexively, leaving a sharp gash in my hand.
I scream, "Fuck!"
If I'm still dreaming, the bulldog will regard this as a command and the hand will be just the beginning of the pain. If I'm awake, the crimson river decorating the newly acquired designer sheets is real and the mattress beneath is ruined.
"Goddamn it, Barker! You're on the wrong side of the bed," I mutter, dragging myself by the ass toward the edge of the matress. Now the blood streaks the sheet in an interesting angle, and I pause for just a moment, blinking rapidly to bring the vision into focus. Hmmm, I think, staring at the blood streak as I might if I were trying to make sense of a Rorshack smear.
The sweet stink of burned popcorn still infects my nose hairs, and I can't wait to find out where it's coming from, but this fascinating blood streak may be the answer to a rhebus I've been trying to solve for days, so I pinch my nose to be sure I won't drown in the sea of popcorn butter I was dreaming I'd fallen into and squint at the blood streak. It looks a bit like a diagram.
Pipes! It's a series of pipes.
It's the solution to the coffee challenge I've been working on for the last week. All I have to do is run pipes from the main coffee pot in the kitchen to the office, the deck, the Florida room and the patio. That's how I can keep my cup full of fresh, hot coffee no matter where I decide to drink it!
I hold one gushing hand with the other, hoping to avoid pictures of pipes on the carpet, and rise with another mumbled "Fuck".
Barker's head rises from the pillow and studies me over his shoulder for a second. Then his chops shiver as if to say, "Shut up and bleed," and he goes back to sleep.
"Fuck" is one of the human words he understands best. It's the money word. Loosely translated it means do your stuff, you big-balled, over-pedigreed stud muffin. It's time to earn a breeding fee. Any other time he would already be humping, but sleep is his higher calling and the only other mode he knows with authority.
I'll have to wire the pipes to heat them before the coffee starts flowing or it'll be cold by the time it gets to the cup, I think, making my way toward the kitchen sink to treat the gushing hand. I'll need a system of buttons at the coffee pot to control which receptacle get's the coffee. And a method of insuring there's a fresh cup waiting for it at the other end of the line.
I let the cool water from the kitchen tap bathe my right hand and stare at the smoke-stained face of the microwave above the range. I can see the popcorn bag inside. It's mostly black. Vaguely, I recall thinking popcorn would keep me awake last night. I guess it didn't and I guess I set the microwave a little too high. Maybe, a lot too high.
All I have to do is keep a supply of fresh cups at each location. When I finish a cup, I can take it to the kitchen as I leave that spot, replacing it with a fresh cup. That way, there will always be a cup waiting under the dispenser pipe at each location.
"Rolph!" Barker, red-eyed and already slobbering, stands in the doorway recommending breakfast. It must be noon. Time for Phase Three of his three phase day, consisting of sleep, fuck and other stuff.
"In a minute," I tell him.
"Rolph!"
I understand that means NOW.
"In a freaking minute." I hate the word freaking. It sounds so preppy, but fucking is a dangerous word around Barkington unless you're really in the mood for romance.
"Rolph!"
That, too, means NOW.
"Look what you did to my hand, goddamnit."
"Rolph!" meaning, fuck the hand --where's the breakfast?
The cool water eases the pain, but not enough. The hand is throbbing. Now I realize the whole thing was my own fault for crawling into bed on the wrong side. The thought causes me to look up from the hand and stare at myself in the mirror mounted above the kitchen sink where I usually shave. It's a vacant stare, fueled by the realization that since Barker was on the wrong side of the bed, he must have slobbered all over a pillow. That would mean I slept on his personal slobber pillow and only the stiff bouquet of the popcorn butter prevented me from understanding that the instant I woke up.
My gaze drifts from my own eyes to my slobber-crusted jaw. I smear it with an elbow.
It was a brilliant stroke to mount the mirror in the window above the kitchen sink. There are bathrooms in my house -- six of them. But shaving at the kitchen sink spares me cleaning the bathroom sinks, which I have not used since I decided to perform all my morning ablutions at the kitchen sink and moved my toothbrush tools there. The window above the kitchen sink offers a splendid view of the gardens, and that's sacrificed by the presence of the mirror I mounted in the center of the window, but it's a worthwhile trade-off. Visitors ask ignorant questions about it like, "What's the mirror for?" It seems condescending to say, "For looking at the self," but how else can I put it.
The voice mail beep on my cell phone signals me. With my dry hand I pick it up and click in a number. "Hello, David. Doctor Proctor's office calling," a female says. It's Marianne at the vet clinic. "Just a reminder you and Barkington have a consultation scheduled with the doctor at four today. See you then."
"Rolph!" I'm not going back to that fucking place.
"You ready for breakfast?" I say.
"Rolph!" Do I have to send you an e-mail?
"A'right," I tell him, opening the door under the sink with a bare foot. As I stoop down and reach into the compartment for the dog chow I pause for a moment, my right hand still enjoying the soothing water above, and consider the back of the cabinet. The pipes from the coffee pot could come right under here and splay in appropriate directions. Easy peasy.
Using only my left hand, I open the dog chow and dump a portion into Barker's bowl strategically placed next to the kitchen cabinet six-inches above the floor on a small pedestal to mitigate the angle of stooping for the pourer and the angle of neck bendage for the consumer. It was a brilliant stroke.
I wrap the injured hand in a series of paper towels, liberate the burned popcorn bag from the microwave, trash it and then collect the cell phone. I'll have my coffee in the Florida room, I think, knowing damn well I'll be back and forth from there to the kitchen to re-nuke the coffee at least three times before I get to the bottom of the cup -- an annoying condition soon to be remedied by my new invention as soon as I make a couple calls.
Minutes later, I'm on the way to the Florida room, Barker limping along behind, drooling bubbles on the carpet. The limp is what precipitated the doctor appointment. It's a mystery to me as I see no injury. A visit to the doctor would nicely break up what would, otherwise, be a very busy day
I scream, "Fuck!"
If I'm still dreaming, the bulldog will regard this as a command and the hand will be just the beginning of the pain. If I'm awake, the crimson river decorating the newly acquired designer sheets is real and the mattress beneath is ruined.
"Goddamn it, Barker! You're on the wrong side of the bed," I mutter, dragging myself by the ass toward the edge of the matress. Now the blood streaks the sheet in an interesting angle, and I pause for just a moment, blinking rapidly to bring the vision into focus. Hmmm, I think, staring at the blood streak as I might if I were trying to make sense of a Rorshack smear.
The sweet stink of burned popcorn still infects my nose hairs, and I can't wait to find out where it's coming from, but this fascinating blood streak may be the answer to a rhebus I've been trying to solve for days, so I pinch my nose to be sure I won't drown in the sea of popcorn butter I was dreaming I'd fallen into and squint at the blood streak. It looks a bit like a diagram.
Pipes! It's a series of pipes.
It's the solution to the coffee challenge I've been working on for the last week. All I have to do is run pipes from the main coffee pot in the kitchen to the office, the deck, the Florida room and the patio. That's how I can keep my cup full of fresh, hot coffee no matter where I decide to drink it!
I hold one gushing hand with the other, hoping to avoid pictures of pipes on the carpet, and rise with another mumbled "Fuck".
Barker's head rises from the pillow and studies me over his shoulder for a second. Then his chops shiver as if to say, "Shut up and bleed," and he goes back to sleep.
"Fuck" is one of the human words he understands best. It's the money word. Loosely translated it means do your stuff, you big-balled, over-pedigreed stud muffin. It's time to earn a breeding fee. Any other time he would already be humping, but sleep is his higher calling and the only other mode he knows with authority.
I'll have to wire the pipes to heat them before the coffee starts flowing or it'll be cold by the time it gets to the cup, I think, making my way toward the kitchen sink to treat the gushing hand. I'll need a system of buttons at the coffee pot to control which receptacle get's the coffee. And a method of insuring there's a fresh cup waiting for it at the other end of the line.
I let the cool water from the kitchen tap bathe my right hand and stare at the smoke-stained face of the microwave above the range. I can see the popcorn bag inside. It's mostly black. Vaguely, I recall thinking popcorn would keep me awake last night. I guess it didn't and I guess I set the microwave a little too high. Maybe, a lot too high.
All I have to do is keep a supply of fresh cups at each location. When I finish a cup, I can take it to the kitchen as I leave that spot, replacing it with a fresh cup. That way, there will always be a cup waiting under the dispenser pipe at each location.
"Rolph!" Barker, red-eyed and already slobbering, stands in the doorway recommending breakfast. It must be noon. Time for Phase Three of his three phase day, consisting of sleep, fuck and other stuff.
"In a minute," I tell him.
"Rolph!"
I understand that means NOW.
"In a freaking minute." I hate the word freaking. It sounds so preppy, but fucking is a dangerous word around Barkington unless you're really in the mood for romance.
"Rolph!"
That, too, means NOW.
"Look what you did to my hand, goddamnit."
"Rolph!" meaning, fuck the hand --where's the breakfast?
The cool water eases the pain, but not enough. The hand is throbbing. Now I realize the whole thing was my own fault for crawling into bed on the wrong side. The thought causes me to look up from the hand and stare at myself in the mirror mounted above the kitchen sink where I usually shave. It's a vacant stare, fueled by the realization that since Barker was on the wrong side of the bed, he must have slobbered all over a pillow. That would mean I slept on his personal slobber pillow and only the stiff bouquet of the popcorn butter prevented me from understanding that the instant I woke up.
My gaze drifts from my own eyes to my slobber-crusted jaw. I smear it with an elbow.
It was a brilliant stroke to mount the mirror in the window above the kitchen sink. There are bathrooms in my house -- six of them. But shaving at the kitchen sink spares me cleaning the bathroom sinks, which I have not used since I decided to perform all my morning ablutions at the kitchen sink and moved my toothbrush tools there. The window above the kitchen sink offers a splendid view of the gardens, and that's sacrificed by the presence of the mirror I mounted in the center of the window, but it's a worthwhile trade-off. Visitors ask ignorant questions about it like, "What's the mirror for?" It seems condescending to say, "For looking at the self," but how else can I put it.
The voice mail beep on my cell phone signals me. With my dry hand I pick it up and click in a number. "Hello, David. Doctor Proctor's office calling," a female says. It's Marianne at the vet clinic. "Just a reminder you and Barkington have a consultation scheduled with the doctor at four today. See you then."
"Rolph!" I'm not going back to that fucking place.
"You ready for breakfast?" I say.
"Rolph!" Do I have to send you an e-mail?
"A'right," I tell him, opening the door under the sink with a bare foot. As I stoop down and reach into the compartment for the dog chow I pause for a moment, my right hand still enjoying the soothing water above, and consider the back of the cabinet. The pipes from the coffee pot could come right under here and splay in appropriate directions. Easy peasy.
Using only my left hand, I open the dog chow and dump a portion into Barker's bowl strategically placed next to the kitchen cabinet six-inches above the floor on a small pedestal to mitigate the angle of stooping for the pourer and the angle of neck bendage for the consumer. It was a brilliant stroke.
I wrap the injured hand in a series of paper towels, liberate the burned popcorn bag from the microwave, trash it and then collect the cell phone. I'll have my coffee in the Florida room, I think, knowing damn well I'll be back and forth from there to the kitchen to re-nuke the coffee at least three times before I get to the bottom of the cup -- an annoying condition soon to be remedied by my new invention as soon as I make a couple calls.
Minutes later, I'm on the way to the Florida room, Barker limping along behind, drooling bubbles on the carpet. The limp is what precipitated the doctor appointment. It's a mystery to me as I see no injury. A visit to the doctor would nicely break up what would, otherwise, be a very busy day
The American male; Architect of the Earth’s Greatest Empire
No matter what you think of him the American male is due some credit for his contribution to human history. It’s never a good idea to write a historical account until the event has closed, and some would argue America is not over yet. By that measure, Greece is not over yet, nor is Rome nor Egypt nor China, but while those nations survive as geography and still bear their once-hallowed names, all are but shadows of their former selves. At the current rate of decay, the American Empire will qualify as a closed account by the time this report has concluded. So…let’s get on with it, before we’ve entirely forgotten how it all came to be. The interlopers who brought down this great land are changing history so rapidly the truth will soon be past recovery, swept beneath the carpet of “social reform” as that is the lot of all heroes – to be vilified and maligned by those who replace them.
By some yardsticks, there’s not much to recommend the American male. He came over here parading his British devotion to form and brandishing superior fire power, determined to eradicate the native indigenous to the geography. He was quickly joined by the Irish male, who brought his dispensation for high spirits, high octane alcohol and bare-knuckle brawling. Add to that the quick tempered Italians who insisted Rome’s domination of the world should be transferred to the Vatican, and the formula for false bravado, pretentious superlatives and egotistical presumption was ripe. He enslaved the Africans and imported the Chinese to do the dirty work while he set about enraging the world with his interloping politics and a war machine that left little room for argument about who got to hold the pen in the authorship of the history that followed. He treated his women like cattle. He raped the landscape of its natural bounty and imposed his will on all he conquered.
By many measures the American male is a reprehensible creature.
But there is one measure by which the American male stands head and shoulders above all the men in all the lands throughout the history of the planet earth. He has built the greatest civilization ever to grace the globe. The people living within the borders of his nation are the most influential and powerful group of people ever born.
Unfortunately, this titanic icon from the pages of human history has left the building. He has been evicted by his wife. In his place is a man who hesitates to impose his will on those he conquers, avoids raping the landscape, does not treat women like cattle, abhors slavery of any kind and writes history according to what sells theater tickets. He is obsessed with what is appropriate and blind to what is truth. He is infatuated with equality and indifferent to freedom. He is a cartoon character drawn by his wife and mother, living an agenda created by the same two people.
Perhaps, the new version of the American male will be a better steward of this hallowed geography we call America. But, so far, it sure as hell doesn’t look that way. So far, he is ceding preeminence in the world at a rate that would stun his predecessor, who spent 200-years creating it.
By some yardsticks, there’s not much to recommend the American male. He came over here parading his British devotion to form and brandishing superior fire power, determined to eradicate the native indigenous to the geography. He was quickly joined by the Irish male, who brought his dispensation for high spirits, high octane alcohol and bare-knuckle brawling. Add to that the quick tempered Italians who insisted Rome’s domination of the world should be transferred to the Vatican, and the formula for false bravado, pretentious superlatives and egotistical presumption was ripe. He enslaved the Africans and imported the Chinese to do the dirty work while he set about enraging the world with his interloping politics and a war machine that left little room for argument about who got to hold the pen in the authorship of the history that followed. He treated his women like cattle. He raped the landscape of its natural bounty and imposed his will on all he conquered.
By many measures the American male is a reprehensible creature.
But there is one measure by which the American male stands head and shoulders above all the men in all the lands throughout the history of the planet earth. He has built the greatest civilization ever to grace the globe. The people living within the borders of his nation are the most influential and powerful group of people ever born.
Unfortunately, this titanic icon from the pages of human history has left the building. He has been evicted by his wife. In his place is a man who hesitates to impose his will on those he conquers, avoids raping the landscape, does not treat women like cattle, abhors slavery of any kind and writes history according to what sells theater tickets. He is obsessed with what is appropriate and blind to what is truth. He is infatuated with equality and indifferent to freedom. He is a cartoon character drawn by his wife and mother, living an agenda created by the same two people.
Perhaps, the new version of the American male will be a better steward of this hallowed geography we call America. But, so far, it sure as hell doesn’t look that way. So far, he is ceding preeminence in the world at a rate that would stun his predecessor, who spent 200-years creating it.
MIGHTY MOUSE FOR PRESIDENT
At any moment of any day
You can expect him and you can say
Look out cats, you're gonna pay
Cause Mighty Mouse is on his way
Any time a rat gets naughty
he can act a little haughty
and when security gets shoddy
A cat can come and eat his body
That's when we will hear that cry
And swooping down from a clear blue sky
wolloping cats with a sock in the eye
Comes the mouse...what a guy
Saving chicks from railroad tracks
slapping cats with smiting smacks
saving the day with mighty wacks
what a wallop this rat packs
Where he really needs to be
Is on the ticket of the GOP
Fighting Reid and Pelosy
Saving you and saving me
The rat should rule, don’t be wary
He could route the likes of Barry,
bust up Nancy and Dirty Harry
Even the indies he could carry
cheese for every resident
even though we’re overspent
ain’t what Jefferson really meant
Mighty Mouse for President
You can expect him and you can say
Look out cats, you're gonna pay
Cause Mighty Mouse is on his way
Any time a rat gets naughty
he can act a little haughty
and when security gets shoddy
A cat can come and eat his body
That's when we will hear that cry
And swooping down from a clear blue sky
wolloping cats with a sock in the eye
Comes the mouse...what a guy
Saving chicks from railroad tracks
slapping cats with smiting smacks
saving the day with mighty wacks
what a wallop this rat packs
Where he really needs to be
Is on the ticket of the GOP
Fighting Reid and Pelosy
Saving you and saving me
The rat should rule, don’t be wary
He could route the likes of Barry,
bust up Nancy and Dirty Harry
Even the indies he could carry
cheese for every resident
even though we’re overspent
ain’t what Jefferson really meant
Mighty Mouse for President
MARCH ON THE STARS
I twist myself in every direction,
swinging my arms with a single intention
finding some space would be my perfection
but there's no room...front or rear...and the world is closing in I fear
Can we just agree we're knee-deep in debris and we got to find a way outta here
swinging my arms with a single intention
finding some space would be my perfection
but there's no room...front or rear...and the world is closing in I fear
Can we just agree we're knee-deep in debris and we got to find a way outta here
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
SPRING IN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY
The Valley? Yes, it is sprung! The landscape is alive with vibrant colors and the bouquet of nature’s finest perfumes. I nearly weep with joy at each breath of it. By and large it is an affirmation for me, in that I often think of how intrinsically twined our capacity for happiness is with the features of reality that made us as we are. If we are not surely sprung from the earth then how can we feel as we do in the spring of the year? The annual rebirth of the flowers and trees is, after a fashion, a kind of proof to me that any sane discussion of “creation” must begin before the particles of existence exploded in a big bang, before the everlasting moment when they were all in such perfect harmony that they might fit on the head of a pin as there was nothing to separate them, and that all that has occurred since that time is merely a cascading panorama of seamless circumstance with each event absolutely dependent upon its predecessor. Like the dogwood and the magnolia, we live and we die, we rot and are reborn in a perpetual parade of incarnations, slave to the munificence of the cosmos.
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