Moderates United

It occurs to me that with most “comfort” mattresses, the foam adjusts itself to you.  If you sleep on the floor, like I did last night (I’ll skip the full back story) your body has to adjust itself to the floor.  Thinking about it objectively, which do you think is better for your overall long term health?

Consider this test: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2858804/Can-exercise-test-predict-DEATH-People-struggle-sitting-rising-test-five-times-likely-die.html

Then consider that in the United States you can literally go years without sitting cross legged anywhere.  You sleep on an elevated bed, and you sit in chairs all day, including the chair in your car.

I have a basic cotton mattress on order that I am going to put on the floor, and am giving serious thought to watching TV sitting cross legged on the floor.  I even gave some thought to sawing down the legs on my table, but I do want to have some guests more than once.

Still, I think the way Asians do it is likely healthier.  We read often about overall longevity of nations, but it is worth pondering how we measure longevity of QUALITY life, as in being able to do most things yourself.  Here is one possible metric: median age at which half the aging population needs help getting off the toilet, which would include a support bar. I’m two thirds serious.  Everybody has to (hopefully) do it every day.  Needing help sucks for everyone.

I have no intention of winding up sick and senile in an old folks home, smelling like shit and urine, and eating once again the food of an infant.

It occurs to me that growing in “Goodness”–becoming “gooder”–is a growth in the number of situations where you can be happy.  I have defined Goodness as being capable of living happily on your own, and taking pleasure in the happiness of others.  You are becoming better the happier you can be alone, and the more joy you find in the joy of others, the more places, the more ways.

And I would say relative to the last post, that I think most people walk into adulthood wounded.  They use will power to function, to get married, to have kids and raise them, but when they get to a certain age, they are tired.  They do not know how to contact the joy of living, how to replenish their spirits.  They get in ruts.  They watch TV, drink beer, cheer on the local team, and they grow old poorly, then they die.

We can do much better.  I am going to try and start my “Church” in November.  Should be interesting.  I have the spot selected and am working on a Powerpoint.  This is my answer to aging: a renewed effort to save the world.  You may call me a windmill chaser, but I am an enthusiast, and that is worth something.

I’ve decided to leave curing cancer to my oldest, who I have convinced to pursue it with diligence.  She is indefatigable, and with my ideas, we may have something in a few years.

I will add that in my view we all live forever–whatever that means–so extending lifespans is not an intrinsically important task.  What IS important is a new paradigm as to the nature of life, which in turn will lead to new understandings of what being human truly means, which should be the death knell for the 19th century metaphysics which still infect virtually all the sciences.  That, in turn, will create the opening for building a genuinely good world.  Pipe dream, perhaps, but everything great started as an idea.

You have to do something with your life.  Why not aim high?

The beauty of children, ideally, is they call forth from us all of our creative and beneficial energies.  They give us opportunity to express completely unselfish love, a love which differs from that of man and wife in that in giving you also hope to receive.  With children, all you receive is their happiness and well-being (again, ideally: many parents rely on their children to meet their own selfish needs).

And children grow.  That is what they do.  We become connected with this process, cheering them on at this and that, commending for this or that.  Change is continual, whether we seek it or accept it or not.

We have all heard of the Empty Nest Syndrome, which is a bit different, but not that different, for single parents.  What next?  What to do with a life which had been dedicated to something which grew and left?

This is the thing: you should never get caught flat-footed.  All of us can see this coming, and need to have projects in the hopper, and new work to do.

The joy of parenting is in giving, loving, and growing.  You do not need children for any of these, though.

I personally am committed to growing as continually as I can manage as a person for the remainder of my life.  My last project will simply be interrupted by death.

I feel sad.  I am moving from where I have lived the past ten years, and looking through all the old stuff is bringing back a lot of memories.  Since God is a practical joker–and likes to teach through apparent bad luck–I have simultaneously gotten a bed bug infestation, and am having to weigh what to bring and what not.

I am leaving virtually all that connects me to the childhood of my children–their blankets, stuffed animals, their artwork, and even their bed.

And pondering all this, it occurs to me that the essence of letting go is opening to new possibilities.  If you remain attached to the past, this is tantamount to saying that your best years are behind you.  It is a regression, a choice of decline.

Where I was concerned, my children had very happy childhoods, fulfilling, nurturing childhoods, and they know and appreciate this.  They are both wise beyond their years.

For my part I look at, say, an piece of artwork that I had thought lost, and feel happy finding it.  Then I recollect that all that is gone.  They are gone. That child that painted that is gone, never to be again, although I may one day get glimpses of it again in a grandchild.  Who I was then, thankfully, is also gone.  I have evolved.  I have worked very hard, and seen good results.

So in the spirit of Tibetan butter art–which they create, then melt–I am going to burn my favorite drawings, in the name and in the spirit of embracing all the good things, and all the learning, which is yet to be.

I am finding that you can choose courage.  You can choose to face an unknown future calmly, and even with acceptance and grace.  You can choose to be fully human.

Edit: those pictures still make me happy in the present, so I decided to keep them.  They are the open musings of happy children, and that is an energy worth recollecting for all of us.

Can you remember an election where the front runner of either party was doing anything but looking for all the publicity they could get?  Bernie Sanders certainly is.

I think this fact alone, this willingness of Hillary to trust the media to carry water for her, should speak volumes about the state of our political affairs.  She still had a commanding lead, last I read, although it was slipping.  Going months and months during a campaign season doing something close to nothing will do that.

I think this is a good motto for me.

We live in a world where many words have been converted into NewSpeak, such as “homophobia”, “Islamophobia”, “Racism/ist”, and in my view most notable “hate”.

We know the left does not oppose hate per se, because it is uniquely gifted in practicing it, and preaching it, and inflicting it.  It is FOUNDED on it.  Without hate, they have nothing.

I woke up this morning feeling I have never actually hated anyone, myself.  I have always said hate is a lot of work, and it is not repaid, at least for emotionally well people.  If I disagree for one moment–or even express insufficient enthusiasm–for the propaganda de jour–soon to be de jure, if the actual haters get their way–then I am called a hater.  They take the notion of hate, then add the appropriate propagandistic appellation.

Do you think the failure of blacks to thrive is in some measure their own fault?  Then you are a hater and a racist.

Does it make you uncomfortable seeing two flamboyantly gay men adopting a little boy?  Then you are a hater and a homophobe.

Do you take Muslim radicals at their word when they say they want to destroy America?  Then you are a hater and an Islamophobe.

We all know the drill.

The actual point I wanted to make, before I got preachy, is that I think hate is a combination of fear and disgust.  We have six primary colors of emotions, and hate is a mixture of those two.  I don’t know that Ekman has said so–although he may well have–but it would seem to me that hatred and happiness are physiologically incompatible and likely opposites.

You cannot be a genuinely happy Communist, at least a practicing Communist.

I got deep into some childhood stuff last night, really to the heart of my shaking, which has always lacked pictures, and I can tell you that my previous post was a much less unpleasant process than going to my diary and writing.

At root, evil is an avoidance.  It is avoiding dealing with horrible traumas through the mechanism of enacting them.  But it is circular: the trauma makes its presence known, a sadistic act is committed, temporary peace is bought, then it all starts again.  It can never heal, and the farther down this path one goes, the harder it becomes to stop, because the pain is accumulating.

Talking about evil is in some respects for me an avoidance, but it is also I think a necessary process for me to go through, to wrap my brain around what happened to me and why.

Through an intrinsic ability for deep concentration, I was able to hide myself well enough to survive the floods.  Now, it is time to being planting seeds, and watching living things grow.

As should be obvious, I am somewhat sympathetic to New Agey sorts of things.  I believe in chakras and energy meridians, feel there is something to astrology, although I can’t explain it, and of course believe in the survival of death and psychic phenomena of all sorts.

But I cannot accept this simplistic understanding that the world is a kind and wonderful place, or that some sort of miraculous improvement in the human condition will come about by any means other than clear thinking based on very unemotional, clear eyed fact gathering and following effective action.  We cannot just sit on our duffs and expect good things to happen.

I read today that Obama is trying to undermine US sovereignty: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/02/obama-administration-and-un-announce-global-police-force-to-fight-extremism-in-u-s/

This is no longer paranoia: there was a press conference. I will note that we ALREADY have the Department of Homeland Security, which to my knowledge, and despite an enormous budget, has not stopped ONE terrorist attack, while simultaneously failing miserably to do its job protecting our borders.

I read the Chinese are killing people and selling their body parts: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3257383/Thousands-religious-prisoners-China-livers-kidneys-corneas-ripped-ALIVE-sell-transplant-tourists-claims-new-film.html

Many of the bodies used in these “human corpses as art” seem to be Falun Gong.  I was talking with a woman on a plane, and at the exhibit she went to they even had fetuses in all stages up to the new born,which she found quite disturbing.  She said all of them looked Asian, and it is my assumption that the Chinese, in tandem with truly horrible human beings, are “harvesting” them as needed and selling them for profit.

And while I am being dark, can I ask: do we even know who the buyers are of baby parts that Planned Parenthood is selling, or what their purposes are?

I will recall this story to your mind: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/18/11755862-thai-police-arrest-man-after-babies-bodies-found-roasted-wrapped-in-gold-leaf

I read this shooter in Oregon wanted to be welcomed into Hell: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/oregon-college-shooting/oregon-shooting-umpqua-gunman-chris-harper-mercer-what-we-know-n437351

It is no doubt comforting to be able to ignore evil in the world–and that is the word, used to describe something very very old–but serious, responsible, genuinely spiritual people do not get to do this.  We have to learn both to know about the horrors in the world, and to care about them, but to not let them get to us.  We need to both know and to forget.  We need emotional skill and considerable fortitude.  There is no other way to do it right.

http://www.infowars.com/fbi-far-more-murders-committed-with-knives-than-assault-rifles/