Youth

September 1, 2021 10:28am

A song brings back the pain and exquisite beauty of youth….a brief but overwhelming sense of being – of who I once was. He who scanned distant horizons in the morning breeze that sent a chill of excitement and and anticipation. Or perhaps it was just who I thought I was in the delusion of youth and inexperience. But I tell you – never minimize the passions of youth. They know what you have forgotten.

Carlyle….again

September 3, 2021 11:59pm

OK, I had an inter-library loan for “The Man Without Qualities” and had to quit “Sartor Resartus” with only 40 pages left. Being both busy and lazy, I did not finish TMWQ before I had to return it. Bought copy for $6 from Amazon. While waiting for delivery, I decided to go back to Sartor which on page 246 reminded me of why I now place this book at the top of my reading list.

You know that question about what ONE book would you take if you were marooned on a desert isle? So if you discount any of the sacred texts, Sartor Resartus is the obvious choice in my mind. I cannot recommend this book more highly…..Carlyle’s observations are penetrating – revealing the individual threads of the tailor. He delves into the nuances of our existence in a way few other writers manage

And, in addition, he drops gems of factoids that keep me researching references to classical antiquity and more recent mysteries.

He writes of Cadmus bringing the alphabet to Greece.

He points out that Gutenberg had a partner named Fust or Faust…..which begs the question, did the German folk tales originate with the contentious relationship between Fust and Gutenberg? I did find some reference to this possibility. The Gutenberg Bible was completed around 1450 and Marlow’s version of the Dr. Faustus story was published around 1590. So, was the entire story of Dr. Faustus based on the idea that the spread of knowledge might lead to corruption or temptation….much like the story of the Garden of Eden?

When I crossed this frontier, I had to put the book down and consider what life would be like with no consciousness. No past, no future, no moral dilemmas….just the present and existence. I watched a butterfly flitting from flower to flower. Does a butterfly constantly worry that it will get eaten? Does it plan for tomorrow?

I have not read the Marlowe version of Faust but I have read the Goethe version. Carlyle references Goethe often and I have “The Sorrows of Young Werther” and “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprentiseship” on the reading list.

On other fronts, I mowed the back field for the last time this year (I hope) and I’m ready to finish the historic gate by epoxying everything together. I know this is a weakness but tomorrow is the start of the University of Kentucky football season and I’m looking forward to it. I know – I see my own pessimism and think, “how can someone who sees no point to anything care about football.” I can’t answer that question with anything but “GO CATS.”

Consciousness

September 5, 2021 10:10am

In the beginning.

In the beginning, we must ask, “why is there something and not nothing.” If there were something and no consciousness to perceive it, does it really exist? No news here….the same old same old….tree falls in the forrest, etc. But philosophers consider this question on multiple levels. Panpsychism is the theory that the spectrum of consciousness ranges from humans down to the very building blocks of matter. The idea is that even inanimate matter…non-living matter has some level of consciousness that increases as we move into living organisms and then up the evolutionary tree.

My own reading and thinking has led to the question of how we each perceive our lives. I don’t have a clue how life “feels” to anyone else. I don’t really understand much of my own perceptions – except to say that awareness of the scope of the universe, the dawning realization that we are probably not as special as we think, and the true nature of purpose and mortality lead to many a painful session of introspection. And after each?….I still have to take out the garbage, cut my toenails, and change the oil in the car…..all activities designed to insure a bit of humility in the naked ape.

What is the role of consciousness in the long history of the universe? I’ve speculated that the Universe has gone through an infinite cycles of what we call “the big bang” but my understanding of that phenomenon was incorrect. Many of us believe that the big bang started out with a single point of matter in infinite and empty space and all the matter we now see “exploded” out into that space and is now accelerating away from every thing else. It turns out that the early universe was much like the current universe only “hotter” and denser. The expansion discovered by Hubble is the expansion of SPACE itself….not the expansion of matter INTO space that already existed. This is why there is speculation that the “unknown universe” may be bigger than we think….there is no limitation on the speed of the expansion of space. Only the speed of matter is limited to light speed.

Anyway, if the universe is expanding now, is it likely that this is the first and only time that expansion has occurred? This seems like a form of egotistical, human-centric, hubristic bias. Nature is many interlocking cycles which we see around us daily. It is logical to assume that other, larger cycles are at work in the universe, concealed by their scope and long time-frames.

But we are humans and we must have explanations, right? So there are many creation stories from many cultures and religions and the vast majority attribute creation to a single God. There are many estimates of the number of Gods that have been worshipped in human history but let’s just go with 2500 (which is a number proposed in the book “Encyclopedia of Gods”.) So these deities are an easy way to avoid all sorts of messy investigations involving mathematics and physics and many of us rely on them to make sense of the world around us. I do not denigrate faith or belief….I even interpret Nietzsche’s “God is Dead” statement with more sympathy than most believers. I think he simply understood the path we started down when we achieved the consciousness required to become aware of (invent?) God AND the fork in the road that was science. I never felt that he reveled in the “Death of God”….instead he seemed to realize what we were losing and what he lost – his mind. It’s not an easy thing to give up tidy beliefs that provide explanations that we crave. And remember this, regardless of which fork in the road you chose, tomorrow upon waking, you will put into practice whatever code of ethics or morals you adopted long ago and which are based on a belief system that you worked out in a consciousness lodged on a bit of matter speeding through a strange and expanding universe.

Vibrating Water of Reality

September 10, 2021 9:33pm

All to which I’ve devoted my life will disappear. The vibrating water of autumn reflects the inverse reality of this world and calms to mirror finish in the end. What is real? I can no longer tell. The flower of summer dries to death that promises the seeds of spring. The stones of the future rise to some new facade and will crumble before time’s grains. What reality stretches to the orange /purple horizon of dusk and precedes the recognition of mortality?

Importance

September 12, 2021 8:48am

Ask anyone what is important and you will get the expected answers: family, God, kindness, knowledge, wisdom, love, understanding, country, friendship, justice, equality, liberty.

Keep pressing and you might get some others a little further from the heart: nature career, money, pets, success, growth, etc.

How many of us think about these answers in much depth? Do we really even know what these words mean if you get beyond the facade of popular definition? Some are clearly self-explanatory: all recognize devotion to family but some concepts are more abstract and thoughtful examination of true meanings leads to many a rabbit hole from which you may not emerge with your delusions intact.

Sacrifice

September 17, 2021 5:46pm

The equinox is only days away….it is still hot and I was raking grass when it occurred to me that perhaps Christ understood the importance of purpose. What if he saw that we need a purpose so badly that we invented God to give our existence some supernatural purpose? But – knowing the whole thing was false, he understood that with no external purpose – no God to save us – the only escape was sacrifice. Perhaps he grasped that last straw of personal sacrifice and taught billions that the only way to a meaningful existence was through personal sacrifice. If nothing you do makes any sense or any difference anyway, then sacrificing yourself for your fellow traveler is no loss and may be the only way to achieve purpose. Christus Rex!

I read “The Last Temptation of Christ” by Nikos Kazantzakis many, many years ago. The book was missing 20 or 30 pages about 3/4 of the way through….I still don’t know what they had to say.

Bikes and Trucks

September 19, 2021 6:39pm

Watching the eruption of Cumbre Vieja on La Palma….this is the one that could result in a coastal landslide projected to cause tsunamis hundreds of feet high on the US east coast. God Forfend! Millions would suffer loss of life, property, and livelihood.

Driving home this afternoon, I was passed by a big dude on a big motorcycle. American flag headband, leather jacket with club insignia, flying stars and stripes off the tail of the bike. His whole identity as a human wrapped up in this biker persona. He sees himself this way and deliberately projects this image to others.

What image do you project?

When I stopped to get gas near home, a truck roared to life at the apartment complex behind the station. The driver gunned the engine several times generating that deep gutteral sound indicative of some specialized muffler like a glass-pack – at least that’s what we called them back in the day. He goosed that truck several times as he coasted to the stop sign at the corner, then floored it to enter traffic and again to fish-tail it on the rain-wet pavement.

Attention is what we all want, right? So we ride big motorcycles and drive loud trucks to stand out in the crowd. Or maybe we are more righteous or more educated, or more rich or more pretty or more athletic and by these methods we reaffirm our importance and cater to the ego that demands pre-eminence. Are you important enough now?

Alpha Omega

September 21, 2021 9:44pm Columbia, SC

Many dilettantes delve into end times. Even the non-believer wants to immanentize the eschaton, to predict the day civilization plummets from the precipice. Audiences lap up the terrifying tales – longing for an end to the current ancien regime and the new age to come.

Doomsday and post-apocalyptic books and movies proliferate – perhaps pandering to a civilizational desire for a reset, a time of reversal of alpha and omega.

Fertile Musings

September 27, 2021 7:33pm

He was drawn to people disturbed by life – not those who inhabit it comfortably.

Forest primeval, silent tiaga, overgrown, decaying, ancient root, penetrating Earth’s heart. Robber baron of resources and well-spring of ages past. Quiet strata of eons of leaves and organic matter brooding over millennia of lonely quiet decomposition from which new growth springs….harbinger of change and new skies. The fire and following winter bring a new denizen – the angry ape, glassy, self-conscious, scheming. The forest relenting, for a time, then reclaiming all that was lost and more….until the final denouement. This, the story of man

Life! What a pain in the ass! We drive to South Carolina for a football game but have days to spare with no plan…sound familiar? Ha! From Columbia, we drive to Charleston and Patriot’s Point. We tour the USS Yorktown (Aircraft Carrier), the USS Laffey (Destroyer), and the USS Clamagore (Submarine) and gain new respect for the sailors who manned those ships in WWII.

Then on to Myrtle Beach and an average meal with watered-down beer (in a freakin’ plastic cup) and a walk on the beach to collect seashells that will decorate our flower gardens. At night, we watch the humans launched into the sky on a “bungie” ride that is powered by motors or hydraulics. We conclude it is more fun to watch those who scream on the ride. The next morning we drive up the coast (our vacations involve too much driving…..all agree this is the case, the kids still moan about the upper peninsula trip) and stop at Hampton Plantation, visited by George Washington in 1791 as he toured the King’s Road (now US 17). We return to Charleston and decide we don’t want to see anything downtown and the hotels are expensive so we go back to Columbia. Do you get the sense that these people drive too much? The next day we walk the city, take a tour of the state capital building (well worth the price – free! seriously, it is beautiful and we agree to tour Frankfort, KY to compare), we walk a little of the “River Walk” used by a lot of runners and bikers, and meander through the old water works. Saturday morning, we visit the downtown Farmer’s Market and then get lost trying to find Harbison State Forest which is a bust because you have to pay to get in!

We get back to the hotel and get on the alumni bus which takes an hour to go six miles but then, miracle of miracles, UK beats SC even after four fumbles. Back at the hotel, (which is the weekend home to both UK Alumni and the SC footbaIl team!) I’m on the elevator when a SC player gets on with his girlfriend. They are both swimming in the deep end of the gene pool and requesting no life guard. He is blond, 6-3, muscular, perfect, young. She is blond, 6-0, beautiful, perfect. I make some comment about us being lucky to win and they are polite but clearly disappointed. I wonder what their lives will be like together. He working for some financial institution, making big bucks…..she bearing children who will be warriors, scientists, stateswomen. And then they are gone and I’m on the elevator alone, old, wrinkled, scrawny….ah, who cares anyway, we won!!!!