Personality Disorders of the Soul

July 2, 2023 10:09am

Canadian wildfires have given us hazy conditions for weeks. Rain, humidity, and heat have settled over us as well – July in the Ohio Valley. We have gotten lots of squash out of the garden. Also picked lots of raspberries and blueberries. I dumped a literal ton of 3-year-old cement that was useless for the stone cottage. That project has pretty much halted with the mortar issue, the European vacation, and the subsequent rains. No way I can make much progress before winter at this rate.

I stumbled upon “personality disorders” after reading about a celebrity who was entering rehab to deal with addiction, PTSD, and “personality disorders.” My research leads me to conclude that to be human is to have personality disorders – it is another term for the irrationality that afflicts us all! Read through the “symptoms” and tell me if you know anyone who shows no signs of “personality disorder!” We all have these symptoms to one degree or another. It is this characteristic of humans that will be our undoing. A completely rational and logical AI being will not understand our weaknesses or our emotional responses and humans will be slowly marginalized to increase the orderliness of civilization. We will become extinct, and the AI historians of the future will write of our savagery and illogic before conceding that we DID at least create them.

In the meantime, we’re left with our own efforts to find some meaning in life. I frequently become aware of my surroundings as one experiencing all of time and existence as an objective observer. I watch myself moving through time and space and realize the fleeting nature of this perception and I understand that it is this troubling realization that leads humans to invent all our fantasies – our escape hatches from reality. And yes, some of those “personality disorders” – they’re the symptoms of what really ails us, you know what it is – right?

This particular perception of existence is my own intensely personal burden – with its own tendrils reaching into every damp crack and crevice of my mental constructs of life, being, relationships, and theology. I have often wondered how many normal people see things this way. But then, how often do you get into conversations that delve into such foundational topics as these? I did recently learn that a family member was shocked to finally realize that not everyone shared his natural positivity. So – proof that we are all individuals with very different ideas of self and life.

Birds

July 5, 2023 12:21am

We were returning from Lexington via backroads when we saw a bald eagle in a tall, dead tree. It was appropriate for the 4th of July. Later, about dark, I walked the perimeter watching the neighbor’s fireworks. The explosions of light and sound echoed all around in tribute to an event that was only the memorialization of a conflict that had already taken lives. Since then, millions of others have sacrificed all to maintain the ideal of freedom – now become something else – an empire, with all its myriad interests, power plays, and schemes while the dead lie in their graves wondering if the sacrifice was wasted.

As I walked on around the pasture field (no grazers but I tend it like pasture), I heard a distinct rustle like leaves in the wind. I looked to the trees and then noticed the line of Canadian geese – about 20 of them- waddling through the grass. I paused to let them pass as they walked single file from one lake toward another. Many were young birds but old enough to fly. I could only guess that the combination of the darkness and the fireworks kept them on the ground.

The Big Empty

July 8, 2023 6:31pm

Despair is the last redoubt of all who have lost hope. But there is another bastion for those who must go beyond despair. You fall into despair when you claim to have given up but in some hidden recess of heart or mind, you still believe there may be a chance that all the dreams, all the hopes, all the fantasies may still be possible. You tell yourself there is still time and still a will to grasp the unreachable. Then, reality presses hard upon you and a clear assessment of your life brings you face to face with the truth. At this point, you have two options- denial or acceptance.

If you accept, you will move beyond despair because there is no reason for an emotional response in a physical universe devoid of the constructs of the human mind. Once you reach this point, you will not feel – anything. There is no reason for hopelessness or happiness. All of life becomes a mechanical process and you are only a cog in the machine. Perform your job, wear out, become replaced. That’s all there is in the big empty.

Time of Monsters

July 20, 2023 12:18am

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” – Antonio Gramsci -1929.

I’ve written of Gramsci before. There are many who would say that Gramsci was one of the monsters!

On NOVA tonight, I learned that the Earth is unique among other solar systems, occupying a space that is conducive to life.

Life – facile finder and builder over a billion years only to extinguish at the end – then reborn in the universe.

Homo Naledi

July 21, 2023 11:44pm

Homo Naledi was discovered in 2013 in South Africa. I don’t remember hearing about this remarkable discovery at the time – I only found out about it now after watching a documentary.

I have written about the appearance of anatomically modern humans maybe 100,000 years ago and the evidence of consciousness maybe 40,000 years ago (art, burial practices). Now that timeline is shattered and we have proof that earlier, now extinct branches of the human family tree showed signs of consciousness 150,000-200,000 years earlier than previously thought.

So, I sit here in 2023 imagining how Homo Naledi looked, smelled, and sounded and how these diminutive creatures felt about the deaths of family that led them to carefully bury the bodies in a cave where scavengers could never disturb them.

Where did we come from is one of our most compelling questions. It would seem we just got lucky – we came from chance. And we made our own realities by our own choices.

Big Themes in Human Thinking

July 25, 2023 11:50pm

What impact does our thinking – our mindset (which is determined by our culture – have on our perception of our societal ills and how does it affect our problem-solving capability? When you consider what “philosophies” have had the greatest influence on our civilization, what comes to mind? Capitalism is the default setting of existence. Survival of the fittest drove the entire ecosystem until consciousness gained a foothold. Once we experienced empathy and morals, religion became the next “philosophy” and was dominant until Marxism replaced God. Socialism and Marxism have been taught in our schools for generations and now we have a populace that knows nothing else. So, all our solutions to problems are automatically framed within the current default worldview in which we see every victim, every injustice, every difference as something to fix or celebrate. Of course, progress demands that fairness should prevail but is there something sinister about the fact that we don’t seem to be able to take individual action to make the world better? Marxism demands that we hand over power to a government that will perfect society. In so doing, we also relinquish our own sovereignty, we give up our humanity!!

Auguries of Ruin

July 28, 2023 9:58am

The Zeitgeist falters in the wake of each revelation. Our house now divided beyond repair; it seems we just wait for the continued crumbling of empire until all that remains is a field of ruin.

Civilization turns upon itself at intervals determined by excess. Now, the Gods have decreed that we have exceeded those bounds again – the time for correction is nigh. Casualties litter the fields of ruin, and the destruction is complete.