Opium of the People
January 1, 2022
“Religion used to be the opium of the people. But now we are witnessing a transformation: a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, that we are not going to be judged.” – Czeslaw Milosz, The Discreet Charm of Nihilism
Milosz lived under both National Socialism and Communism, then defected to the west; he has a unique perspective. Here is more about Czeslaw Milosz .
What does come after death? No one can prove anything, so it comes down to what we have been taught and what we choose to believe. Choose wisely….there are many versions of the “truth” out there and each believer knows which is the real truth.
Happy New Year!
Big Silver Tray
January 2, 2021 12:01am
Once, I watched a bug trying to get out of a big silver tray. He walked along the edge looking for an exit. He never stopped and never turned back. I wondered how long this bug would cover the same ground if left to his own devices.
He knew nothing but the tray. He was not aware that the tray was on a concrete floor in a barn in Kentucky on a planet in the galaxy called the Milky Way. He did not know geometry, or the date of the Battle of Hastings. He was not fluent in French or any other language. He had no bank account or social security number. He was not a fan of Elvis and had not listened to a single Gregorian Chant.
He was just obeying his programming …. which told him to walk the edge of the tray until he got out or died.
We are like the bug walking worn paths, ignorant of all we do not know. Limited by our genetics-our programming – and oblivious to any transcendent ideas about our existence or the unimaginable possibilities that may exist beyond our perception, we just keep walking.
I am tired of this tray.
Guess and Fear
January 2, 2022 1:01pm
What led me to Burns’ “To a Mouse”, I cannot recall. This stream flits from rock to boulder to crag and out the cataract into space. But his final words put me in mind of the prognosticators who predict the coming year. Will it be the second coming….will we see the conversion of the Jews? Coy marvels of mist, they miss more than strike….but we hope for a true Nostradamus to reveal a future that is impenetrable to both us and the wee mousie.
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
– from Robert Burns – TO A MOUSE
Water and Hermeneutic Phenomenology
January 15, 2022 1053pm
Here’s my advice: Drink lots of water.
If you fail to do this, you may end up going through cystolitholapaxy….which you don’t want to do. Don’t ask how I know this.
OK, I admit it, I don’t drink much water. This was my second time. I ask the Dr. for the “child-sized” instrument but he doesn’t find this amusing. I secretly think it’s a pretty good line but then figure I’m not the first to say this. He’s heard it all.
I ask him, “what happens if I just ignore this?” (I mean there are very insignificant (sometimes no) symptoms and NO discomfort).
“We have to cut you if they get too big,” he says.
OK, pretty blunt, I think to myself but his point is well-taken. I go in, he takes them out. I’m home two hours later. Be thankful we have this level of care, our ancestors lived with these maladies and suffered greatly from the eventual consequences – and now….we zap the stones with a laser and pull out the smaller pieces.
Two days later, I was in a certain large city to work on a newly purchased house. We demolished a wall, fixed electrical issues, hung doors, installed lights and fans, and did a little dry wall work and some painting.
I go only to home improvement stores where everyone is wearing a mask. At home, I never wear one. We can’t go to restaurants or anywhere else because of the mandates in place. At home (30 miles from a smaller city), we go out to eat and do pretty much anything we want with no masks. The vet and the Dr. Offices are the only exception and I don’t really get the vet but hey, when in Rome…..
_____________________________________________________________________
Tonight, I ran across hermeneutic phenomenology and realize again how much there is to know. While investigating the history and branches of this field of study, I come across a journal dealing with mathematical logic and I can’t even decipher the titles of the articles (speakin’ o yer basic hermeneutics!) and I’m discouraged by my lack of knowledge….there’s a lot to know. And then I think of the billions of people around the world, the differences in IQ and their abilities to understand ….anything – and I wonder what we could teach them that would lead to a better world? Can this be done? Can we infuse the people with awareness or enlightenment that would improve the lives of all?
I mean, they don’t need to understand mathematical logic or even know their multiplication tables to be better people so what do we teach them? I think I know but Nietzsche might not approve.
You have to tell each one what that person needs to hear….even if you doubt it yourself.
Heavy Snow
January 16, 2022 6:14pm
A heavy snow fell at dusk. I mean it was a wet snow, the heavy flakes falling fast to the ground unlike the light ballerinas that swirled in the cold of this morning.
I sit under a reading lamp looking out at this winter scene reflecting on the stories I’ve just finished….tales of young soldiers and wandering artisans and failed love; tales of the mysteries of life, mysteries we can’t quite grasp. And I know that my little part in the mystery is insignificant but I feel the weight of all of the stories and it is heavy and I’m falling like wet snow in a glass globe. This storm will subside and I’ll be blanketed in the Earth where I can lie down and put off this burden and say, Thank God it’s Over.
No Way Outta Here
January 19, 2022 7:31pm
England lifted all Covid restriction today. Austria, on the other hand is proceeding with its plan to make vaccinations mandatory by February. If they can force you to take an injection you don’t want, what can’t they do? This is line of sand territory and is completely totalitarian. If the Austrians submit to this, they are finished.
Our DNA is a parasitic entity driving us to insure its survival. We must reproduce, we must dominate our environment to guarantee the continuation of these small strands of nucleotides…but why?
I just read that happiness is 50% genetic, 40% what happened in the past, and 10% present circumstances. We certainly can and should take responsibility for our behavior and we should always strive for improvement in all areas of our lives but there’s no denying that we are operating within limits imposed by our DNA. The lion kills the cubs of his rival, we display jealousy. Our behaviors befitting a rational, consciousness that originated in the same primal survival instinct driven by that parasitic DNA.
Perhaps our very fear of death is rooted in the prime directive of our nucleotides and so the poor humans who secretly thought they would live forever were de-railed when covid came along to remind them of their mortality.
“Dust thou art, to dust returneth” is a harsh admonition for a generation of pampered and entitled children.
There ain’t no way outta here said the thief.
Vintner’s Lament
January 23, 2022 7:31pm
If you’re thinking about stomping grapes or at least dipping a toe in the wine vat (making wine at home), I have some advice for you. Get in your car and drive straight to Trader Joe’s or wherever they sell your favorite vintage and buy two bottles. Now take them home. Store one, open the other, and pour a quarter of it on your kitchen floor – assuming this is where you planned to orchestrate your fermented masterpiece. Then seal the bottle.
Now go find you some pond water, put a few drops of vinegar in it and let this mixture sit in an iron skillet for one week. Run a $10 bill though a paper shredder and add the shredded bill to the skillet, stir well. Let it set for another week. Next pour this liquid through cheesecloth into the partially empty bottle. Allow a liberal amount to flow over the side of the bottle and onto the kitchen floor (which you cleaned up after the first “spillage” – right?)
Pour a little more on the floor to make room for the cork….oh, you don’t have a corker? OK, put some aluminum foil over the top (with the requisite rubber band) and set this fine beverage on the shelf where you can see it and yearn for a taste every day for the next year which turns into four weeks because you are impatient and can wait no longer.
Go ahead….open it. Unlike Orson Wells, you had every intention of serving this wine before its time!
Sniff it. Oh, the bouquet is so fine! You may have just whipped up the next rival to a 2008 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac. You pour this magical elixir into your glass and give it a swirl or two. You note the lack of clarity and attribute it to the “organic” water and those lees washed up on the side of your Waterford crystal??? Why it’s just a little pond scum that slipped through your rigorously clean processes…..or is that perhaps Hamilton’s eye staring through that glass????
Finally, the moment of truth – you sip the concoction and use every taste bud at your disposal as well as the retronasal olfaction technique you learned on Youtube. Ugh! It’s horrible – you spew the vile vomitus onto the clean kitchen floor and wonder why you ever thought to make a bad wine that cost you ten dollars and six weeks when you could have just opened that other, $3 bottle of wine and avoided all the cost and headaches.
This was a fabricated story but represents the thoughts of a certain vintner of my acquaintance on days like today when I, I mean he, bottled 31 bottles of wine….half of which was made from actual fruit grown on our blackberry vines! And he still has 2 more gallons to bottle!
The amount of equipment, the time to ferment, rack several times, clean and sanitize the bottles, set up the bottling apparatus after sanitizing that too and then the time to fill the bottles with my homemade Rube Goldberg pressure system (which actually works pretty well – thank you) it all does make one think – is this wine really good enough to justify all the time, effort and expense? I mean that Trader Joe $3 wine is probably good enough for a rustic such as myself….I mean, my friend.
But then, after the work is complete and you have 50 or 60 bottles on the rack with your own label on them, there IS a sense of accomplishment.
There’s also a certain sense if you take the easy way out…..it’s a sense of superiority as you savor your store-bought wine while gleefully thinking of all the work you avoided while some other schmuck is still cleaning wine stains off the floors and walls while anticipating a very mediocre wine for all his troubles. Cheers! Salute! Skol! Drink up!
Psychodynamic Theory
January 24, 2022 10:04pm
Why am I attracted to things that lure me to the edge of consciousness? To a state of unease so profound that I question all of life, all of existence?
Freud believed that much of our mental activity is below the conscious level and that we are unaware of the influence of these thoughts even though they have terrible impact on our lives.
It seems that I’m drawn to music, dramas, ideas that bring me to the edge of the subconscious that we normally cannot or will not confront. This terrain is a desolate place of no hope that I have learned to control and use to achieve a state of awareness and insight that otherwise is buried beneath the daily requirements of life and the consciousness necessary to fulfill them. I….perhaps use this access as one would a drug to visit an alternate reality of terrible beauty that reminds me of the brevity and meaninglessness of our lives, of existence, of the physical universe.
I have never been one to take unnecessary physical risks but maybe this feeling is similar to the relief of a mountain climber who summits and descends to safer elevations.
How much more is there than what we think we know?
Categorical Imperative
By Any Other Name???
January 26, 2022 9:58am
The furnace has been making an odd noise for a while so, yesterday, I called my HVAC guy who is supposed to be here soon. This morning, we awakened to find that the fan motor was switching off and on but the fan wouldn’t actually run. It was still warm in the house but the outside temperature before sunup was 8 degrees! Now up to 10….the coldest morning of the winter so far! Doesn’t it always happen this way?
We turned the thermostat off for 30 minutes and then back on. The fan ran as it should and it’s still going (fingers crossed) but the motor is clearly struggling as it starts (capacitor maybe?) We’ll see what the man says! Anyway, I think we can keep the pipes from freezing with the basement fireplace and space heaters should we end up in a worst-case scenario. This is the reason I elected to go with unvented natural gas logs in the basement fireplace!!
On other fronts….I have a couple of books by Sarte sitting around but have not read any…..so I pick up “Search for a Method” and am immediately off searching (fan just grinding into action but very slowly!) for more on Kant and the “categorical imperative”, and I run across an excerpt which is said to be at the core of this principle:
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”. – Immanuel Kant
I do not wish to question the work of Kant…..I mean, as Montaigne said, what do I know? But……but where have we heard this axiom of categorical imperative before? Could it be the Sermon on the Mount? Could it also be known as the Golden Rule? Why, yes, I believe it is.
As Solomon said, there’s nothing new under the sun. We just have new ways to talk about old stuff…..now where is that HVAC guy?????
Note to the Kant scholars: calm yourself, I’m just a guy trying to learn something and yes, I do have an inkling that your boy did more than repeat the Golden Rule….not much of one but an inkling.
You are Getting Sleeeeeeppppyyyyy,
Very Sleeeeeepppy
January 27, 2022 6:42pm
Up much of the night nursing the furnace through another single digit night. I dreamed a lot during those 1-hour naps.
Today, I knew the end was near and called all over town trying to find a replacement blower motor. The only one I located on the phone was $467 for this 1HP motor. I decided to run by Grainger since their 800 number was swamped. I’ve never shopped there because I had this idea they were expensive but they had my motor in stock for $209!!! Had to drive across town to a distribution center but it only took around 40 minutes. I pulled the old motor, put in the new one and had heat again. Parts and labor in my area is $750 and up for this work so I saved $500 by doing it myself.
One Thing to Hold on to
January 31, 2022 12:23am
There is a John Prine song in which he implores, “just give me one thing that I can hold on to.” This is the wish of many.
I thought I was a temple, that my belief would carry me through, that there was a purpose, that destiny would bring me to a resting place and a home where I would dwell.
But this didn’t last. All my expectations failed. I realized the temple was corrupt and served a delusional theology led by a false priest. This charlatan lived a lie but never even knew of his own charade…..the illusion of “self” and of personhood.
We are phantoms living in a phantasmagoria of our own device.
And so, in sequence, my delusions began to topple as I saw the truth, first the self and all the branches of that tree….and they are many. Then the roots – faith, belief, God, and the physical universe which we think is ultimate reality but which is only a delicate construct, a tenebrous web, a whirlwind that spins up only to exhaust itself, then spin up again to blow the elements to consciousness once more. Dying, it leaves no record of our dreams and not one thing to hold on to.
Here’s the conundrum…..you can’t live like that – with nothing to hold on to. It leads to destruction. So you realize that all the “truths” you discarded have their place and that you must live by the old code you adopted as a child. In your heart you have chambers where you store all this hard-won wisdom….is it wisdom or just more illusion? And you visit these stores of revelation but you must not try to hold them in your mind simultaneously for that too leads to darkness.