Limits of Progression?
May 1, 2022
Describe to me the limits of the progression of humankind.
In some far-off day in the future, will we evolve into a new form? What would that being think and do? Will it exhibit new emotions or …..none?
Since the inception of anatomically modern humans a scant 250,000 years ago, have there been any advances in the psychological characteristics of men and women? Consciousness has pushed us to refine our behavior, to invent our spirituality, to express devotion to brotherhood. But, lying just below that veneer of civilization, are the same primal desires – the lust for blood, sex, and meat.
I think we are much more likely to disappear from the universe than to ever progress beyond the old savagery that rests dormant in all of us
Be or Not?
May 4, 2022 11:04pm
I am working a lot lately mounting security cameras. The garden is mostly planted and the “container” potatoes are doing well. We have been enjoying asparagus which is one of the first crops we pick in the spring.
I often wish not to be. But I don’t have a better option…..OK, I didn’t mean to steal Hamlet’s soliloquy! And I don’t even mean it in the way the Prince did, I just get bored with the repetition of life. All our possibilities are constrained by our reality….by the physical universe; I think that is why transcendentalist philosophy has appealed to so many. All we can do is soldier on.
May 9, Victory Day – Russia’s Future?
May9, 2022 9:57am
Victory Day in Russia! The Eastern Front during WWII undoubtedly saved tens of thousands of allied lives. While many question Suvorov’s analysis of Stalin’s actions just prior to Barbarossa, it does raise interesting possibilities for an alternate interpretation of the objectives of the USSR. In short, Suvorov believes that Stalin hoped that Hitler would sufficiently weaken the Allies and in turn erode his own military capability allowing the Red army to roll over the Wehrmacht and assume control over Europe.
The possibility of a resurrected Russian “neo-Eurasianism” in the thinking of Aleksander Dugin is especially concerning given that he has been called the “intellectual architect of Putin’s imperialism” in Joel Hirst’s article “Putin’s Master Plan.”
The connections to the concept of the “katechon” in Thessolonians, the links to national Bolshevism, the neo-paganism of Evola, and the rise of Russian nationalistic fervor lead to all manner of speculation regarding the people and mythologies driving Putin’s foray into Ukraine!
Does any of this change my stance regarding US involvement in Ukraine? Not yet; we have no business there….yet. Watch and wait.
Stanislaw Lem
May 10, 2022 9:57am
Stanislaw Lem was a Polish writer who focused on Science Fiction and futurology. His works have been translated into more than 50 languages and there are claims that he is the most read science fiction author in the world.
Best known for his 1961 novel “Solaris,” he was a Jewish agnostic/atheist. Here’s a quote regarding his world view:
“I should wish, as do most men, that immutable truths existed, that not all would be eroded by the impact of historical time, that there were some essential propositions, be it only in the field of human values, the basic values, etc. In brief, I long for the absolute. But at the same time, I am firmly convinced that there are no absolutes, that everything is historical, and that you cannot get away from history.” – Stanislaw Lem
Mr. Lem and I are of like mind on this point….here’s my take on time and absolutes: Our Sun will burn out in roughly 5 billion years. If we haven’t already become extinct (asteroid, nuclear war), the sun will expand into a red giant and life on earth will end. Even if we can escape the Earth, assuming the “Big Freeze” theory is right, all stars will eventually go dark and in a “closed universe” all matter will be drawn back to a dense zone of the universe and the cycle will start over again (I believe and also part of Hindu cosmology) after maybe 100 trillion years. Now this time frame is unimaginable to us but the entire natural world is made up of cycles. This particular cycle of death and rebirth of the universe has happened (I believe) a quintillion times. And each time, all evidence that life ever existed is wiped out…..no existing matter successfully crosses that barrier and all our loves and hates, all our discoveries and failures, all our art, our great works of literature, all our Gods, all our memories are lost….only to be reborn in the next iteration of the universe which lasts for another 100 trillion years. There is no way to signal our successive iterations that we were here before them as others were here before us.
So, as I sometimes say (tongue in cheek), don’t worry so much about pollution or climate change….the universe will take care of all that.
Followup on “Solaris”. I cannot recommend it. Translation? I do not think so…..long passages of descriptions of things so otherworldly one cannot visualize them and little in the way of a philosophy of the future.
Orlando
May 10, 2022 8:47pm
After a day of working in the garden, repairing the bird netting around the blueberries, and reflecting on the vagaries of life, I retire to the dream chair with an ale and Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando.” I approach this tome with the same trepidation she described for Proust’s “Swann’s Way.” Relaxed and swinging with the same rhythm as the Milky Way, I begin. The moon waning and barely visible at the edge of the barn roof, I read of Orlando’s youth and compare.
It is only May and the light fades early forcing me to the chores I’ve already decided must be completed before dusk. The newly planted trees, white pines, Virginia pines, Shumard Oaks and the three persimmons need water and I’m the only source, so I fill two waterers and carry them to the back field to water the trees. Over my right shoulder a red sun rests on the horizon. I feel the early dew on my sandaled feet but get the trees watered. A blue heron wings lazily overhead. Everything is green and fertile. We still have about six weeks of spring and then, overnight, the light will begin to fade again as we head toward winter. Seasons of life.
Geese in a Small World
May 11, 2022 10:00pm
On March 3, 2022, I wrote about two pairs of Canadian Geese nesting in a pond behind a factory in an industrial area. I wondered what would become of the goslings hatched in such a place. Today, we had to adjust the security cameras we mounted there. The four adults were still present and watched over the 18 children I was able to count! The young were of two distinct sizes indicating that one clutch hatched a couple of weeks before the other one. Anyway, the birds all appeared to be fine; their questionable nesting site probably is safer from predators than a more rural homestead!
In the small world category, I was re-reading an entry dealing with a quote of economist J.M. Keynes and following up with more research. Keynes was bi-sexual but did, late in life, marry Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova. I also discovered that he was not so infatuated with deficit spending as some disciples of von Mises and Hayek would have us believe….more reading required before I agree!
Anyway, I’m reading the forward to Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” and who do you think she thanked for help with the Russian spoken by Sasha? Right! Here are her exact words: “Madame Lopokova (Mrs, J.M. Keynes) has been at hand to correct my Russian.”
I often write that all knowledge is like a big puzzle and the more you know, the more of the puzzle you can visualize.
Narcissus
May 12, 2022 10:11pm
Suicide is in the news these days. A high-profile country singer died April 30 of self-inflicted wounds. We all have our own personal demons who beseech us to end the pain of consciousness but in the end, it is one mythological character who bids us to enter the water mirror of death. Narcissus was in love with himself; we all have his blood coursing our veins. The temptation is always present to think more highly of ourselves. Whether low-born or elite, the sirens continually call us to ruin on the rocky shores of self-love.
But this attraction, for the objective, rational person, should be an omen, a sign that we have somehow gone off the rails. Who can believe that in a meaningless world that our own fate is more momentous than any of the other 100 billion humans who have been born on this planet in its 5-billion-year history? We see ourselves as somehow more important, more central to the fate of the universe than all the other people ever to live on this planet. We are somehow part of the ultimate story of the universe and so our pain, our particular consciousness is more critical to the fate of the universe than that of anyone else and so we must end our life to prove that our pain was more important than the pain of anyone else! We were more important than anyone else!
I have been down this road and at the end is the realization that the universe doesn’t think we are so important, and it doesn’t care one way or the other what we choose to do.
I found that the Narcissism of self-destruction is as meaningless as the continuation of life, and it marks you as one who thought too highly of himself. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t. Man up!
Cult of Chaos
May 19, 2022 10:10pm
This time….this place is beginning to come apart. What passed for common sense for thousands of years is ridiculed as extremism; self-interest is equated with xenophobia, recognizing the obvious is intolerance.
How has this cult of chaos gained control? How did we encourage the indoctrination of generations of people who now turn on the “other”? This perverse philosophy seems now so ingrained in society that only a calamity of monumental proportions will shake people from their propaganda-induced trances; their phones and social media Gods command and they obey – like automatons. They cling to fringe groups that manipulate the suggestion-prone to gain power, inculcate alternate realities, and create guilt.
I don’t see how we escape this without social upheaval. Resources are limited, money grows tighter and soon people will start to care more about who we support and why.
Watchmaker on a Winding Road
May 20, 2022 8:35pm
It is hot and breezy on the 38th parallel. I sit on the barn porch with Virginia Woolf’s ORLANDO and realize her writing is light-years ahead. I realize this on page 268 of my version. in an expanding universe, I can never compete…. can never catch her. This saddens me but life is a series of destructions. Destructions of dreams that we once believed would come true. Dreams of …. (should we say it) glory, of perfect love, of fulfillment, contentment, of meaning, of purpose…. in short, of perfection.
We believed that we would perfect (verb) life. It would be all that we could imagine. We would live out every fantasy of a generation fed a constant diet of advertising, propaganda, of soft (or hard) pornography, of spiritual awakening (for those inclined), of the acquisition of every possible material possession (for those so inclined). And, in truth, many of us crossed what barriers remained to partake, at least a little, of all of these fruits of our society.
Now, I sit on this barn porch watching the maples, elms, and cherry trees swaying in the strong breeze. They are almost conscious today and whisper ancient truths that I do not understand…. but whose meaning I may yet grasp as I watch our civilization begin the birth pangs of whatever comes next. With gasoline at six dollars a gallon and food increasing apace, it feels like Weimar all over again.
I see the destruction of my own life and my feeble attempts to reconstruct the intricate clockworks that I assembled over a lifetime. The watch I built exploded in a few weeks, and I alternately tried to piece it together…. then decided to discard the entire thing as unworkable fiction…. only to grasp the glass and tools to proceed with the repair again. Where this will end, I do not know, the small pieces are scattered and unrecognizable and I have no plans. There has never been a plan. And so, we work in the dark with no instructions to build something we do not understand. Watchmaker on a winding road.
Culture of Depravity
May24. 2022 11:30am
Imagine a meeting of the minds – like the Steve Allen show from the late 70’s but with the actual historical figures. What would some of the greatest minds to walk the earth think about our husbandry of civilization/society? I fear that Plato, Jefferson, Thoreau, Carlisle, Maxwell, and Einstein would look at the present and believe that the future had gone mad. The almost daily manipulations of bureaucrats, politicians, and journalists is accelerating the inevitable overload of the human psyche described in “Future Shock.” It looks bleak and the only question may be: “how bad will be our dystopia?”
I found “Meeting of the Minds” on Youtube and after watching only a few minutes of a discussion between Jefferson, Bertrand Russell, Empress Theodora, and St. Augustine, I remembered Linh Dinh explaining American culture to his Vietnamese friends in terms of Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda”, Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have my Money” and best of all (apologies to those with any civility….) Riskay’s “Smell Yo’ Dick.” Unfortunately, to discuss the disappearance of culture, one must inform the reader of the current state of things.
I personally had no idea that such “entertainment” even existed. There appears to be no hope for the future when large portions of the population emulate this behavior. American culture is becoming a race to the bottom. There is no civility, no appreciation for anything other than the basest elements of depravity. These “entertainers” live in a cesspool and attract our stupid fellow citizens to join them.
For a glimpse of an alternate vision of culture, click the link above and watch the discussion between Lord Russell and St. Augustine. The video quality leaves a lot to be desired, but the repartee is second to none. Augustine’s admonition of Russell offers an explanation of the cultural decomposition we now witness….not all can achieve the perspective of a Russell or Jefferson but all can grasp the idea of good, and honor, and integrity if only we teach them.
Why don’t we do that?
Woolf Quote:
May 26, 2022 1:18pm
“Behold them all. Though Heaven has mercifully decreed that the secrets of all hearts are hidden so that we are lured on forever to suspect something, perhaps, that does not exist…..” Virginia Woolf in ORLANDO.
George Rogers Clark and retro-causality
May 31, 2022 9:20am
Friday last, I arrived in Vincennes, Indiana, in the rain, for a re-enactment commemorating George Roers Clark’s conquest of Fort Sackville. Heading north on Indiana 41, the mist and low clouds recreated a sense of the winter march of Clark and 170 men whose determination helped ensure that the Old Northwest Territory was American rather than Canadian at the end of the Revolutionary War. If not for Clark, everything north of the Ohio River might have ended up as Canadian land.
Clark was hailed a new Hannibal for inspiring his men on the 18-day trek through the frozen and flooded prairie that surrounded Vincennes. This is still considered one the most daring campaigns in American Military history and it led to the doubling of the land area of the 13 colonies.
About 150 re-enactors camped on the National Park grounds and re-created Rev War battles twice each day on Saturday and Sunday. The camaraderie and conversations in camp were wonderful and I learned of the concept of retro-causality from my friend Rosa and her husband Mike. New perceptions have encouraged an advance beyond early “indoctrination.” We need never settle for the understanding we start with….there is always more to learn, new horizons to visit and new prospects to view.