Month: May 2021

I watched the very interesting movie District 9 yesterday, which in turn got me to thinking about South African history, which I read up on a bit, which got me thinking about world history generally.  “History” as a discipline began, at least in the West, with war.  Most of what you will study since then will contain many wars, much death, much pain and suffering, major victories and devastating failures.

This morning, I read about the destruction of the city of Merv in Central Asia.  They let the barbarians in the gates, and best guesses are that about a million men, women and children were slaughtered indiscriminately, and their bodies left where they lay.  They took away a few hundred slaves who had skills they needed.  That’s it.

This in turn brought to mind the Ray Bradbury story Zero Hour.

The gist of the story is that Earth has impregnable defenses, and a happy peace.  So aspiring invaders target Earth’s CHILDREN to help them invade another way, which they do.

Is that not in effect what China is doing with us?  Corrupting our children with imbecility and insane ideas, and making it so they are literally INCAPABLE of comprehending violence waged against them or their families, despite the ubiquity of violence in human history (which they are more or less prohibited from studying honestly) and in present day China (organ harvesting, de facto slavery, systematic gang rape of  Tibetans, the destruction of Hong Kong as a free nation, saber rattling with respect to Taiwan, etc.)?  Yes, I think that.

And is Joe Biden not their guy?  They may not be the only ones who put him there, but we have to assume they were one of the main players.  Their guy is in OUR White House.  Madness.

Our soldiers can be the best equipped, bravest, most motivated, and we can and will still lose if we open the gates and put down our arms.  And a great many of the teachers in this country are teaching our children that that is exactly what the United States should do.

I have been assuming, along with most, that the only way to get Joe Biden out of office is to impeach him and convict him of any of the numerous crimes he has patently committed, including voter fraud on a scale never seen before in the United States.

The Constitution, certainly, stipulates that once a President is sworn in, this is the only way to remove him or her.

But the Constitution assumes, does it not, that the person sworn in actually WON THE ELECTION?  The impeachment process is for crimes committed while President, or for gross incompetence and abusiveness.

What if it can be shown, as is now at least in the realm of possibility–the relentless efforts of Democrats to fight the light of truth notwithstanding–that fraud was ubiquitous, egregious, and that even the laws on the books–like chain of custody–were trampled on with impunity?

There are no legal precedents for this.  Yes, the Supreme Court has shown itself to be craven, unprincipled, and most likely corrupt.  There is absolutely no reason now to trust them to do the right thing now, when they were unwilling to do it then.

But at the same time, if the EVIDENCE is obvious and cannot be easily shoved under the rug, it is POSSIBLE.  I won’t hold my breath, but we all need to remember NO ACTUAL INVESTIGATION HAS HAPPENED.  NO COURT HAS YET ALLOWED THE EVIDENCE OF FRAUD TO BE FORMALLY HEARD AND ENTERED INTO THE RECORD.  That is my understanding, at any event.

And keep in mind that what is CLEARLY possible is that Democrats who only appeared to win elections they actually lost because of fraud, VERY CERTAINLY can be removed from office, and either replaced with the demonstrable winners, or subjected to new elections conducted in sane ways with reliable systems in place to prevent a repeat of the shit show we saw last November.

This would apply to Senators–notably from Georgia and Arizona, but certainly elsewhere most likely too–as well as House members, and of course members of all State Assemblies.  It would apply to Governors as well.  Did Kemp win honestly?  Whitmer?  That we may never know, but this is the sort of question we need to start asking.

The creation of beautiful life work using the bright colors of pain and suffering.

Leftism is really all about creating an ersatz, synthetic, manufactured “culture” by making associations INvoluntary, isn’t it?  It is moving backwards in the name of moving forward.

In that Tocqueville bit I quoted in the previous post, they noted that “voluntary associations” were illegal for quite some time in France, as potentially or actually dangerous to the State.

And of course I, and others, have commented often about the political benefits accruing from preventing social gatherings of any size for a sustained period of time.

I just got back from Whole Foods.  I have political objections to their being owned by Amazon, although their founder seems like he was and is a solid guy (I know someone who knew him quite well).  I have objections to the people who shop there.  But basically I hate everyone sometimes, and I really am a Granola sort at heart.  A Barry Goldwater hippie.  There are not many of us.

I sometimes describe myself as a tribe of one, in fact, and have probably done so here at some point.

Be all that as it may, I was the only one not wearing a mask.  They have a sign basically saying that if you have been vaccinated you don’t have to wear a mask, but probably should anyway, especially if you are still scared.  That’s more or less the gist of it.

And I KNOW that a good chunk of the people in there HAVE to have been vaccinated.  At this point, if you want it you can get it, and without stereotyping more than absolutely necessary and absolutely 100% accurately across all times and places with respect to everyone, these people are the scared people.  They have been vaccinated.  Trust me.

So why are they still wearing masks?  And it hit me: there is a psychological secondary gain to masks.  Normally, when we are talking secondary gains we are discussing dysfunctional behavior patterns, but in important respects, is not wearing a medically useless piece of cloth over your face dysfunctional?  Like sleeping in every morning, or sabotaging your diet?

Masks are NOT useless: they are identifiers.  They allow you to say “I care” and allow you to identify people who think like you do.  It is literally a Tribe of the Masks.

And think about this: as a head covering the Yarmulke is absolutely pointless.  It might prevent sunburn on the top of the head of a balding man, but it won’t keep you warm, or keep rain off of you.  What it DOES do is identify Jews of a specific sort.  When they all put one on and go to the synagogue on the 7th day of their week, it reassures them.  They know they are not alone, that many share their faith and customs and habits.

Tocqueville spoke some time ago about the importance of what he termed “voluntary associations”

What I would suggest is that this is a sort of ersatz tribalism,. and as one not anchored in war and history and involuntary association, one that can satisfy our emotional needs, without leading down the path to all the terrible things men in masses (it is usually men) tend to do when their culture is their life.

So this Mask Tribe is not culturally harmful, even if from a scientific perspective it is, was, and will remain ludicrous.

I think that’s what I had to say.  I’m not fully sure.

OK, I think this is what I wanted to add: this Mask Tribe IS dangerous in the sense that they are pushing vaccinations which MAY be dangerous for some of us, and are almost certainly in my view much more dangerous that the disease itself, at least for anyone who is nutritionally sufficient.  They have also attacked many of us pointlessly and angrily.  I’ve been yelled at quite a few times, probably in the 15-20 range.

So none of that is OK.  But as long as they leave me alone–I will note no Jew has ever asked me to wear a Yarmulke–I am fine with all of it.  Their lives, their choices.  My life, my choices.  Simple.

I think I have decided not to kill myself.  I’ve been on this planet over half a century, so that is a bit of a delayed decision, but based on what I read, if one is going to do it, in the present era I am in prime time.  Rock stars die at 27 of being rock stars, and middle aged alcoholic men die despondently and alone in their mid-50’s.

What I realized yesterday is that the first thing I do every morning on waking up is build an emotional bubble around myself, which keeps out all the “bad stuff”.  It has kept out ideas of suicide, of aggression and rage, of despair and terror.

And it takes will maintaining this bubble.  My will tires, which is why even now I periodically get drunk, as I did last night.  I drank a 750 of Ketel One vodka.  It was worth it.  Drinking like that is a bit of a psychedelic experience.  For me, at any rate, it evokes and brings out in full color emotions which were hidden, such as the latent thirst for death.

When I was 17-18 I was an exchange student in Switzerland.  I well remember the segment on Novalis, the German poet/philosopher, who wrote often of the “Sehnsucht nach dem Tod”, which I may as well translate as a thirst for suicide or an easy and early death.

I looked at the world back then, without knowing it, the way a dissociated Insectologist might view a collection of butterflies from many years ago.  To say I was passionless would be wrong, but so too would be saying I was connected and flowing.

Well, somewhere in the past week or so I permeated the bubble.  I popped it, and let all the rottenness in.  And I seem to be dealing acceptably well with it.  This is the only path to relaxation and peace.  You have to learn to trust yourself.  Most of us are fine most of the time.

In my own mind I call this the Sphere Principle.  It seems unlikely I have not mentioned this in the past ten years, but I haven’t recently, I don’t think.

I would assert that our task on Earth, one which is virtually impossible, is to become so pure that if we had the power of manifesting all our thoughts and feelings, nothing but good would result.

The interesting part of this, to me–or at least one interesting part–is that the fear of not measuring up to our own potential causes our actual potential to diminish.  We need, on the one hand, self doubt to push us, but on the other limit ourselves by using this method.

The universe is infinite, and so is time, or so we can reasonably suppose.  They are both vastly larger than our limited capacities can ever experience in millions of lifetimes.  And so I propose that we do best when we accept, to some degree, our limitations and imperfections, and of course those of others.

If I am very, very demanding of me, then it follows that I can view you with contempt for doing less.  You, in turn, are confused, dazed, shocked, and barely getting by, if you are honest.  That is nearly all of us.  The people who are sure, and walking with fixity and confidence of purpose are those on short term tasks, and who depend on such things for their sanity.  The large world is much too large for them.  No laying in meadows watching butterflies for them.  The Milky Way is an answer to a Jeopardy question.

This may be true.  It may not be true.  I can accept both answers.  What I will suggest though is that there are limits to our organic capacity for love.  We can truly love perhaps a dozen people in a lifetime, no more. The rest is duty and habit.  There is no loving “humankind”.  People who claim to be able to do so love the idea of themselves loving humankind.  That is my feeling at the moment at any event.  Anything larger must come from God, and there you are loving only one Thing, which is the unity of the Divine, and seeing it in every face.  Namaste.

I was reading about Brian Jones the other day.  Did you know he founded the Rolling Stones and gave them their name?  And that he was kicked out of the band before he died in his infamous swimming pool?  He died at 27 in 1969.  That means he was born during World War 2.  This just hit me the other day.  So too were Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (both 1943).  Paul McCartney was born in 1942, and John Lennon in 1940.

All of them were born into worlds of trial and difficulty.  The British Invasion, in some respects, was born while Britain itself was trying to stem off an actual invasion.

I am tempted to say more, but if I am going to strike a proper pose, I should probably stop writing.

That, there: that is me having a second cup of excellent coffee (one of the dozen or so things I love in this world), and looking forward to the day, for once.

I was contemplating the image of ideas as art.  Creating cognitive art, beautiful pictures, to be hung in a private gallery within the confines of their skulls, is the primary task of people I call Thought Aesthetes.

This is normally, of course, accomplished by the reasonable expectation of social reward, and congratulations of precisely the sort a Picasso received, or a Van Gogh should have received.

If you add to this the invariant creation in the process of an unquestionable virtue which attends all visitors to the gallery, and you have a virtually impregnable fortress.

Of course, impregnating these fortresses with new and better ideas is precisely the task of all people living today who possess, in my preferred formulation, common decency and common sense.

And it occurs to me the image of the images can evolve.  Rather than a picture on the wall, what about an open ended play?  This is vastly more true to life.  Or perhaps little engines, which build good ideas everywhere they go–which is my own aim–or tear them down, which is the aim, ultimately, of those I term Cultural Sadeists.

Perhaps our ideas are attached to a sort of clothesline system, in which we pull a rope, and pull them into the world on the top, then pull them back on the bottom, to see what happened.  We then change them, until eventually we get back what we expected and wanted, regularly.  This is Science.

It is hard for me to overemphasize the STUCKNESS–emotionally, socially, morally and intellectually–which underlies those pushing these ridiculous Left Wing ideas, which have all been decisively refuted over and over by at least 3-4 generations of educated men and women, who spoke in many voices, but always to such a similarly devastating effect that, as I continue to insist, the survival of this lunacy is obviously a matter of social psychopathology, and not of the tenability and viability of ANY of it.

And, again, behind the stupid intellectuals are corrupt people who want what their kind has always wanted.  The first step to true Liberalism is understanding these people can use any language to get what they want, and that the task of the truly honest is perennial vigilance, and a ready willingness to call bullshit on anything that does not make sense.

I am more than a bit guilty of Tsundoku, which is buying books I don’t read.  There are worse habits, and honestly I have some of those too, but I invented another word that is related, Churchilling.

I created it for my oldest.  I buy both of my kids books often.  Both are and have long been voracious readers.

“Churchilling” is the process of book abuse of the Tsundoku kind.  It comes from a passage in Churchill’s excellent little book/essay “Painting as a Pastime”, which I would encourage you to read.  It is about, among other things, the importance of hobbies.  Few know that Churchill was a good enough painter that Picasso claimed he could have made a living at it.

But at one point he talked about pulling a book off the shelf in his library that he knew he would never read, and stroking the cover fondly, looking at the title page, perhaps thumbing through it, and putting it back, after apologizing to it, saying “I’m afraid I won’t get to you in this lifetime, poor thing.”

We created a rule to do our best not to Churchill our books.  I am failing right now.  I just bought two cookbooks.  I don’t know why, but reading cookbooks calms me down.  For some stranger reason, I seem to like best Central Asian cookbooks.  I mean mainly the Muslim nations, plus Georgia and Armenia and Azerbaijan, but I saw a Xinjiang one today that I was sorely tempted by as well.  Knowing me, I will buy it at some point.

But I have Jacques Ellul’s “Technological Society” on my shelf. I will probably never read it.  I had Korzybski’s “Science and Sanity” on my shelf for a long time, before giving up the faith.

I have no particular reason for posting this.  I am feeling a bit guilty I guess.  These books don’t deserve this.

I will comment, though, too, that we all of us have to say no every day to an essential infinity of potential information.  More books are published every day, even now, than any of us could read in a dedicated lifetime.  Movies and shows by the countless thousands are everywhere.

I remember well my first trip to New York.  I found it very confusing.  Everyone was going somewhere.  There was no way to keep track of it all.  No sane person would try, of course, but it is still worth pointing out that most New Yorkers miss nearly everything that happens in their city nearly every moment of every day.

We make choices by habit.  We develop patterns, interests, habits.  So and so watches such and such a kind of show, or likes this kind of books, and that other person likes this different thing.

But it is worth pointing out,  I suppose. again, that we are forced to say no EVERY DAY to an essential infinity of information.  We have to learn to not think about it, and if some people (like me) spend too much time on the internet, it could sure as hell be worse.  In my own case, moreover, I am at least as likely to be CREATING content as consuming it.  This means I am paying attention most to my own experience, own thoughts, and own life, which is now that I think about it reasonably healthy.

In a mental world where are all referents are ideas, no idea can be proclaimed either true or false against the will of any inhabitant.  All possibilities remain, and will always remain, perennially and continually viable.

Only facts disrupt ideas, and one need only develop the idea that facts do not matter–for example, that they are “manufactured” by an idea, like that of “white males”–do remain free to imagine the world in any way one desires.

One remains free to hallucinate, in other words.

I saw this reality of course many years ago, but have never, I don’t think, put it quite this way.  But it is the idea behind Perceptional Breathing, as I put it, in which perceptual attention regularly alternates between ideas–in-breath–and particular and facts and pure experience in the out breath.  You need abstractions and you need observations.  You need both.

And a war was just fought, was it not?  First, against Donald Trump, and then–in a related conflict the propagandists found it impossible to separate from the war on Donald Trump–in the battle for control of the COVID-19 narrative.

Around here, what I feel is the smoke settling, but I can see where there were recent flames, minds on fire, and trouble in the water.

There is a Day After sort of quality going on, that something major just happened, and is not quite gone, but no longer fully present.

And I am wondering–when I see things like the renewed discussion about the origin of a virus which came from bats, and which cannot have come from a wet market where that type of bat was not sold–if the narcotic of war, and daily terror, is starting to wear off among some elements of those who have been pushing the propaganda so hard.

I have no doubt that even those WITH doubts felt that they HAD to do it; had to induce panic; had to make sure only a single narrative got played; had to use every tool of censorship, the abuse of the law, and personal attack to ensure that everyone was on the same page or marginalized as much as possible.

Those people are looking now over a scarred battlefield.  They are beginning to see, I feel, most likely for the first time, just how damaging their manias have been, how many lives they have wrecked, how much living they made impossible, how many minds have been permanently twisted in fear and paranoia.  They are realizing, perhaps for the first time, that KIDS, even small kids, are wearing masks to–it’s unclear–either protect them from a disease they can’t get, or protect others from a disease they can’t transmit.  They KNEW this, of course, but they didn’t contemplate it, feel it, “grok” it.

If there is enough sanity remaining on their part, there will be a lot of soul searching, and wondering if, in the end, they really DID do the right thing.  Obviously, I feel and think and have often argued that NO, they did not do the right thing.

Apologies are in order, the world over, in my view.  Don’t hold your breath for them, but we can hope for a relaxation of the cultish behavior, and perhaps one day, an amount of regret proportionate to the crimes committed.