Month: October 2018

It occurs to me falling and flying are connected.  It is gravity which creates the push under a wing, which creates forward motion.

Birds, when they are not flapping, are falling.  Jet airplanes are always simultaneously falling and pushing forward.  It is the combination which propels them.

Flying is not the cessation of the demands of gravity, but rather the skillful use of them.

I think this is clear.  I was thinking about this early this morning in bed.  There is something interesting about this observation I can’t quite put my finger on.

I think societies, in the end, are defined by what their babies and children need to do to get affection and to feel safe, if anything.

If love is easily had, that child will not be driven. That child might be “lazy”.

If love is sparse, that child will grow up keenly aware of duties and obligations, failing to meet which will make them unlovable.

And of course, when dealing with emotionally defective parents, the guilt is there, but not the remedy.

But the point I wanted to make is that much of our anxiety in America, at least–although I think this can be generalized to many nations–is related to our felt need to protect an internal image of ourselves, which makes much of our emotional pain an abstract response to possible criticisms.  Put another way, we beat ourselves up because we feel that if we don’t, we will lose the right to be loved.

This emotional contingency is what drives the modern world.  It is what is propelling this mad rush for more, more, more, while we enjoy what we have less and less, and come to consider the voices arising from unconscious sensations within us as more important than the actual people in our lives.

Put still another way, fear drives our world.

Did you notice how the Left turned allegations of a drunk teenage boy holding a teenage girl down and trying to take her clothes off into “rape”, and turned ambiguous allegations into certainty, such that Kavanaugh became, beyond any possible doubt, beyond any possible dispute, a “rapist”? 

Ford herself did not even call him a rapist, and the other women were not credible.

Kavanaugh probably lied about some things.  He was likely a prep school frat boy who got shit faced drunk at times and chased women.  He probably grabbed a few asses or boobs at the hairiest parties, probably of women who were so drunk they did not remember.  He probably woke up in bed a few times with women he did not remember taking there.

This is the experience of many, if not most college men, especially in that era.  Hell, I woke up one time after passing out with a woman on top of ME. It was a rape of sorts, I suppose, but I figured that was not a bad way to wake up.  That is one important difference between men and women.  I can only guess how she sorted out the preliminaries.

And all the Democrats know this.  They did it themselves. They watched it.  The whole game is ridiculous and utterly and disgustingly hypocritical.  Kavanaugh was combative and a bit disingenuous because that is how they set the rules of the game.

What I think all conservatives need to understand is that an essential element of the Alinskyan game is to get us to play by one set of rules while the Left plays by another.

They want us to value consistency, goodness, fairness, justice, honesty and all the other noble virtues which make America work.

But they themselves could give a flying fuck if they elect a racist serial killing rapist, if he is able to easily win reelection and support the Party.  There are no standards.  There is no morality.

And you can see easily how they win this game, over and over and over.  They are not wrong in pointing out our imperfections, which they are able to do with a reliably partisan media.  But they ARE wrong in using a double standard. 

Who is OBVIOUSLY the worse person: Kavanaugh, who may or may not have done some stupid drunk teenage boy stuff, or Keith Ellison who, RECENTLY and documentably, beat up his woman, and terrified and threatened her?  Who is in the news?

Republicans have been slow to reject our standards.  We continue to believe in nobility, fair play, honor, consistency and the like, but it is hard to know how to win this game while retaining them.  The Democrats likely forced Kavanaugh into some mild lies under oath.

The whole thing is very demonic.  I don’t know the answer, other than that those few among them who retain some residual decency rejecting their game, rejecting their methods, and rejecting their party.  I only see massive and continuing electoral gains by the Republicans as a way of eroding, gradually, this abusive system built up carefully over so many decades, and which was put in place as a national standard by Obama, who by all accounts was and remains one of the most ardent students of Alinsky, and best practitioners of his methods.

Spiritually speaking, you have to learn to be average before you can be exceptional. You can’t skip any steps, no matter how clever you think you are, and especially no matter how clever other people might think you are.

Believe all survivors is tautological. Paraphrased, it is “believe all people who are telling the truth.”

Self evidently, this is a laudable sentiment, but it neglects the obvious fact that not all people, male or female, always speak the truth.

X is human.

Humans sometimes lie.

Ergo it is possible X is lying.

This is all pretty simple. This is why we evolved formal methods of inquiry, why we grant the accused the right to confront their accusers, and why we demand evidence if we are to be persuaded of a claim which calls for punishment.

“Always believe survivors” is sentimental nonsense. Yes, of course we can and should do a better job of creating the emotional space for women to speak of things which terrify them. But this does not require abdicating the duty to protect the innocent.

Why did Ford delete her social media history?

Why won’t she release her polygraph or her therapists notes? She wants to enter them into evidence, which is her choice, but wants to enter them into evidence based on her DESCRIPTION of them. That is not evidence.

Why did she, apparently, lie both about her experience with polygraphs, and when why she built her second door?

Does she REALLY use that little girl voice all the time. Many women doubt it.

Why can’t she find one corroborating witness, when Kavanaugh has 70 women vouching for his character?

And I was watching her testimony, a small fraction, when she was talking about the door. The man with the beard next to her was smiling–really, suppressing a smile, ineffrctivrly–and there was a period his eyes went up and he seemed to be reciting the story they had rehearsed with her.

This whole thing was traumatizing for a lot of people, and I really hope it wakes a lot of people up to the clear and present danger Democrats represent to the rule of law, to civility, and to ALL aspects of American progress.

Everything Trump has accomplished has een done despite the opposition of Democrats, who would be HAPPY to see a major downturn or war, if it meant they could get.back in control.

I think there are a lot of hysterical Democrats, but few enthusiastic ones.  How can you be enthusiastic about a party which defines itself as what it is not, and which has no coherent plan to work to better the lives of any people actually born here?

Imagine you heard this.  What would you do differently?  Is there a big gap between who you would like to be and who you are? 

I was in the shower this morning and this thought popped in my head.  And my answer was I would not do anything differently.  If I was making coffee, I would continue making coffee.  As I was in the shower, I finished my shower.

You are dying every moment.  Who you are is who you have been, and who you will be is who you are now.  What do you focus on?  What is valuable to you?

To me, it is odd to be my age and have so little to show materially.  But I have followed a path somewhat monomaniacally all my life.  I remember sitting in Mr.  Johnson’s Sophomore Biology class and encountering the idea of Evolution through Natural Selection for the first time.  It struck me instantly that such a doctrine did not require a God for its operation. I still remember that shock.  I got a little dizzy.

Ever since then, I have been obsessed with building and understanding meaning systems at a thought level, with investigating how the world actually seems to work, with building something up to replace what was lost.  That has been my life.  It will be my life in five minutes.  And five minutes after that. 

One day I will end, but I can’t imagine anything more important, and I can’t imagine living my life any other way.  I wish I had been more successful, but it has not been for lack of trying. I simply have a finite pain tolerance, even if it is quite substantial.  I can’t do what I can’t do, and I have a pretty idea where that line is because I have tested it many times.

I think all college students should be required to take a debating class, where they are also required to engage in a debate where they defend the merits of whatever the opposite of their own position is.

I did this in high school, in something called Lincoln-Douglas debate.  It dealt mainly with moral issues, like abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia and the like.  You would do three debates, and had to do both sides.  You would alternate between defending a proposition, and attacking it.  If your task was to support, say “Resolved: that abortion is inherently immoral and should be made illegal again”, you were on the Affirmative side.  If you opposed it, you were Negative (or so I recall).  A speaks 5 minutes, say, then is cross examined by N.  N then speaks 8 minutes, then is cross examined by A.  A then gets the final 3 minutes.  Something like that.  If you did A the first round, you did N the second, and A the third.  Since A got the last word, most people preferred it.

To win, you need to clearly define your terms.  “Abortion” for example, could as one rhetorical method be confined to any killing of fetuses that are older than, say 6 months.  You could call it infanticide, and note the general historical cultural rejection of infanticide.  You would need to define immoral (Golden Rule, Categorical Imperative, Christian teaching: the choice is yours.  I tended to use Kant and Rousseau), and define illegal–such as HOW illegal (felony, misdemeanor), illegal for who (doctor, pregnant woman, helpers), and under what jurisdiction (Federal, State, City, County).

And you need criteria by which to judge the claims.  Obviously, getting the judges to accept your criteria then showing how your case best fits those criteria is the way to win.  Obviously, you will have two opposed ways of looking at it.  You may have one person making a narrow claim, and the other claiming everything else, or two people fighting it out for the middle.  Many things are possible, and many approaches are possible.

But you need something like, say: “Murder is inherently immoral”.  You then perform a logical operation, such as: Abortion constitutes a murder.  Therefore abortion is immoral.

The negative, say, on this one, will be to define murder as the killing of a human person who is breathing and viable.

But overall, and over time, you learn to think in terms of principles, and you learn to value the use of clear language.  You learn to see the merits of both sides in complex questions like these.

And obviously politically, it would be useful to do survey courses such as “modern political theories” where students learn in detail what conservatives think and why, and what leftists of all varieties think and why.  They could read, say, “Conscience of a Conservative”, and Edmund Burke, and John Stuart Mill.  They could read Hayek and perhaps even Ayn Rand.  Then they could read whatever else the teacher sees fit.

And at the end of the semester they could have a debate tournament, with the top five finishers guaranteed an A in the class, where they debate a political question from both a conservative and a leftist point of view.  If there are any conservatives, they get to see things from a leftist perspective, and vastly more importantly, the many leftists at least learn to use the words, principles, and ideas of conservatives in a way which is not cartoonish and highly prejudicial.

Oh, when I drink I see so much.  I see visions everywhere.

Tonight, I am looking at the process of connection.  So often we look straight ahead.  We see out of our eyes, and look for people who can meet us there.  If they do, we connect.  If they can’t, we wonder what is wrong with them, with people, or perhaps even with us.

Imagine a line.  I line up, and look forwards.  Imagine someone else lining up five feet to my left, and also looking forward.  We don’t align.  We don’t connect.  We are close, but distant.  Our relationship is a failure.

Agility is being able to move five feet to the left, and to the right, to doing the work other people cannot even conceive is possible.  To doing work other people cannot even see, to being invisible while moving, and misunderstood when arrive.

To being there when they arrive, and seeing them, and being recognized.  Oh, it is all so OBVIOUS, no?

We all of us flail around in the wind like helpless newborn birds.  We fail to see what is possible for us, and we fail to pursue it.  Then we blame life or circumstance or something else.

Somehow, somewhere, God has given us the clues for this Escape Room adventure. He/She/It/Them has created a path forward, which leads to fulfillment, peace, joy, and a sense of connection.

You, yes you: you were born with something special to express, and a life to do it.  On one level you cannot fail, but on another, you will feel so much more joyous if you do fulfill the mission.  Have at it.  Carry on.

I have no idea if all this makes sense, but this is a good approximation of what floats around my brain all day, when I am not focused on doing the work of close reasoning.

As I share from time to time, I am a sea creature.  I am a product of wave, wind, time and tide.  I am this one minute, then that another.  I travel from here to there, then return.  I go in circles.  Everywhere my world is moving.  The universe is moving.

Tonight I was listening to Mondo Cozmo–who I saw live not too long ago, and thoroughly enjoyed–Then I drank beer–can I go out there on that long and fragile limb and speculate “I like beer” may play a role in our culture for a time?–and forgot what the fuck I was going to post about. It was emotionally deep, and heart felt.  And there it remains, unrediscovered.

I thought that link to Mondo Cozmo, who would presumably hate my politics, was still worth sharing.  Their bassist/keyboardist, who is female, which I find fantastic, looks from a distance like she is 15.

The only other mixed band I can think of is Talking Heads, which has or had a female bass player.  I always thought that was cool.  It’s nearly always all dudes, unless it is all women, like the Go-Go’s.