The best-tended garden is subject to frost. All the labor and all the fertilizer will not extend it one day beyond one night of frost.
Oh, it doesn’t seem fair, of course, but it is the way of the world. All our glorious efforts and designs have an expiration date. We wake up one morning and every one of our flowers from which we had hoped to get some more blooms and every one of our vegetables from which we had hoped to get one more crop have turned to an unrecognizable, and very sad, puddle of mush.
Gardens are metaphors of all human endeavors. What could be more full of promise (except maybe a hedge fund promoter) than a seed catalogue in February? Ideas begin to turn into reality as the spring progresses, and then summer seems to propel winter’s ideas into the stratosphere. But all too soon, so soon, the stillness of the frost.
Gardens teach patience, diligence, and acceptance. We must accept that there are forces beyond our control. We must accept that nature knows better than we. We must accept that nothing is achieved without effort. We must accept that all things end. And we must accept that all the schedules are on a timetable of a higher power.
People who don’t have gardens, if they know these things, know them only as academic abstractions. On the other hand, those who garden, on whatever scale, understand that the garden is where all knowledge is made real, where philosophy and reality meet, and where the hours spent in the garden are hours spent in touch with the eternal.
Solomon’s garden is better than any library, lecture, or learned treatise into the mind of God, into His will. Pope says that “the proper study of mankind is man,” and that is true, but man is an abstraction, and abstractions can only truly be known by indirection. In other words, by metaphors, analogies. All learning is grounded in physical reality. But nothing beats a garden for providing both physical and metaphysical pleasure.
I don’t like, trust, or understand people who don’t appreciate dirt. Unless infirm and incapable of doing garden work, one should never hire others to do the gardening. Theirs will be only a job, they will be only functionaries, and the results will be symbolically imperfect, though perhaps pretty. One can appreciate fully only his own dirt. Employees, alas, can’t appreciate YOUR dirt. Only you can do that.
Frost. And all one’s efforts and hopes lie in ruin. Whatever will propel one to do this all over again? The results will be absolutely the same. Again, we must rely on Pope to provide the pithy rationale: Hope springs eternal in the human breast, Man never is but always to be blessed.
Gardens work on yearly cycles. Every year we get a chance to beat the odds and work against the forces of destruction. Of course, we lose, but ah, February and those catalogues!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
High Fructose Corn Poison
Those huge fat asses waddle to and fro
Or ride on scooters, from row to row
Not speaking here of Michelangelo
We are not a nation that has gotten fat. No, we are a nation that has been made fat!
I want all of you to look at pictures from the seventies. Do you notice how absolutely thin everyone is? And do you think that we were taking better care of ourselves then? Hardly! We probably drank more sodas, smoked more cigarettes, consumed more sugar, and downed more fat than the nanny state would ever allow now. And yet everyone was thin.
How could this be? The fattest person back then would be considered of average weight today. What has happened is appalling, but it isn’t because people fundamentally altered their lifestyles (as the deniers would have you believe). Something else happened to change the nation’s weight.
That thing is something that was introduced into the food chain, and that thing became a part of nearly everything. The eighties saw the beginnings of a fundamental change in the average weight of an American, and then it accelerated in the nineties and into the new century.
So, what is this thing that has been foisted upon the public? It is the creepiest, most insidious change in food of all time—it is the evil witch’s brew known as High Fructose Corn Syrup.
Oh, don’t think this stuff is some kind of benign sweetening agent made somewhere in Iowa by peasants stomping corn kernels. This is something more akin to a chemical whipped up in a KGB lab somewhere in Russia to render the capitalist agents of the West inert and incapable of fighting back.
But the KGB didn’t make this stuff. It is the product of the unholy alliance between big agriculture and government that came about as a result of greed and government meddling in agricultural price manipulation. It is, in short, the result of our decaying republic’s corruption and blindness.
Government, you see, protected sugar producers to the point of making their product artificially expensive. Business responded by looking for ways to replace sugar at a fraction of the price. Big agriculture in the Midwest also wanted to shore up corn prices.
Voila! Corn slurry is chemically transmogrified into a new blend of sucrose and fructose, and it can be made for less than sugar can be grown (at the artificially government mandated prices that Congress ensured). What wasn’t to like about this product?
Through the eighties, this new brew spread like wildfire through the food manufacturing industry, providing cheaper sweetening, longer shelf life of manufactured food products, and happy corn farmers. But the dark side began to appear, gradually, as a growing waist size started happening in America.
The average waist size began creeping up, attributed to the maturing of the baby boomers, but it wasn’t what it seemed to be. This wasn’t a natural expansion. It was being fueled by the new product that had become ubiquitous (and unnoticed by all but a few).
Year after year, the extra pounds were adding up until it was becoming quite noticeable—Americans had become really a lot heavier. And, instead of being rare, truly obese people were just about everywhere. Oh, hands started wringing that Americans were just failing to exercise, eating too much fast food, consuming too much fat. Everywhere villains were spotted, but all the villains were the consumers themselves.
But the truth was that even people following the healthiest of regimens were becoming heavier, with more body fat. When filming the Civil War battle scenes for the movie Cold Mountain, the cast of extras had to be from eastern European countries that didn’t have HFCS in their diets. American soldiers just were way too heavy to look believable as Civil War soldiers!
Kids are fatter, adults are fatter, even thin people are fatter. And it is NOT because we have lost our moral way. We have, and I can’t state this strongly enough, we have been POISONED!
This stuff is worse than any carcinogen in cigarettes—this stuff is truly insidious, for no one knew this would be the side effect of the toxic brew. An entire nation, and increasingly and entire world, made fat without their consent because of bad government policies and greed.
We must not tolerate this poison in our lives. We must write to every company that uses this poison. Hershey’s (can you believe it? Chocolate syrup just full of this crap!!!). Heinz (not ketchup, too!! Sadly, yes). Little Debbie Snack Cakes (the infamy!). Write to them and tell them (and mean it) that you refuse to use any of their products with HFCS in them.
At first, they will think you are just a lunatic who has nothing better to do with his life. But enough of these letters will start a small ripple on their complacent lakes of bottom lines. But soon enough the words “Contains No HFCS” will become the hot selling ticket, and the stuff will disappear from the shelves as quickly as Olestra, that crazy oil substitute that created uncontrollable anal leakage. Remember Wow! potato chips? One serving of those things, and you’d better not sneeze in public!
We’ve been eating this stuff without noticing for over twenty years. The results of stopping aren’t going to be seen for, well, perhaps decades. We just don’t know what kind of long-term damage has been done to our systems by HFCS, so we don’t know how long the reversal will take to show results.
I want to be optimistic, but if you are like the average American, struggling to keep weight off but just can’t, remember to thank the wealthy farmers, politicians, and chemical manufacturers who poisoned us for the two decades of the fin de siecle for keeping those pounds on. We really must start fighting back and insisting that our food contain nothing that wasn’t available in 1970.
Can you believe that food was better for you then than it is now?! Start today consuming nothing, and I mean NOTHING, including ketchup, that has this poison in it. It’s the only way to begin the reversal.
And start writing to companies and talking to people. Remember, there are huge forces out there with a lot of money and power who want this poison to continue. But this is the new fight for our century, just as Upton Sinclair attacked the meat industry at the beginning of the last century.
Or ride on scooters, from row to row
Not speaking here of Michelangelo
We are not a nation that has gotten fat. No, we are a nation that has been made fat!
I want all of you to look at pictures from the seventies. Do you notice how absolutely thin everyone is? And do you think that we were taking better care of ourselves then? Hardly! We probably drank more sodas, smoked more cigarettes, consumed more sugar, and downed more fat than the nanny state would ever allow now. And yet everyone was thin.
How could this be? The fattest person back then would be considered of average weight today. What has happened is appalling, but it isn’t because people fundamentally altered their lifestyles (as the deniers would have you believe). Something else happened to change the nation’s weight.
That thing is something that was introduced into the food chain, and that thing became a part of nearly everything. The eighties saw the beginnings of a fundamental change in the average weight of an American, and then it accelerated in the nineties and into the new century.
So, what is this thing that has been foisted upon the public? It is the creepiest, most insidious change in food of all time—it is the evil witch’s brew known as High Fructose Corn Syrup.
Oh, don’t think this stuff is some kind of benign sweetening agent made somewhere in Iowa by peasants stomping corn kernels. This is something more akin to a chemical whipped up in a KGB lab somewhere in Russia to render the capitalist agents of the West inert and incapable of fighting back.
But the KGB didn’t make this stuff. It is the product of the unholy alliance between big agriculture and government that came about as a result of greed and government meddling in agricultural price manipulation. It is, in short, the result of our decaying republic’s corruption and blindness.
Government, you see, protected sugar producers to the point of making their product artificially expensive. Business responded by looking for ways to replace sugar at a fraction of the price. Big agriculture in the Midwest also wanted to shore up corn prices.
Voila! Corn slurry is chemically transmogrified into a new blend of sucrose and fructose, and it can be made for less than sugar can be grown (at the artificially government mandated prices that Congress ensured). What wasn’t to like about this product?
Through the eighties, this new brew spread like wildfire through the food manufacturing industry, providing cheaper sweetening, longer shelf life of manufactured food products, and happy corn farmers. But the dark side began to appear, gradually, as a growing waist size started happening in America.
The average waist size began creeping up, attributed to the maturing of the baby boomers, but it wasn’t what it seemed to be. This wasn’t a natural expansion. It was being fueled by the new product that had become ubiquitous (and unnoticed by all but a few).
Year after year, the extra pounds were adding up until it was becoming quite noticeable—Americans had become really a lot heavier. And, instead of being rare, truly obese people were just about everywhere. Oh, hands started wringing that Americans were just failing to exercise, eating too much fast food, consuming too much fat. Everywhere villains were spotted, but all the villains were the consumers themselves.
But the truth was that even people following the healthiest of regimens were becoming heavier, with more body fat. When filming the Civil War battle scenes for the movie Cold Mountain, the cast of extras had to be from eastern European countries that didn’t have HFCS in their diets. American soldiers just were way too heavy to look believable as Civil War soldiers!
Kids are fatter, adults are fatter, even thin people are fatter. And it is NOT because we have lost our moral way. We have, and I can’t state this strongly enough, we have been POISONED!
This stuff is worse than any carcinogen in cigarettes—this stuff is truly insidious, for no one knew this would be the side effect of the toxic brew. An entire nation, and increasingly and entire world, made fat without their consent because of bad government policies and greed.
We must not tolerate this poison in our lives. We must write to every company that uses this poison. Hershey’s (can you believe it? Chocolate syrup just full of this crap!!!). Heinz (not ketchup, too!! Sadly, yes). Little Debbie Snack Cakes (the infamy!). Write to them and tell them (and mean it) that you refuse to use any of their products with HFCS in them.
At first, they will think you are just a lunatic who has nothing better to do with his life. But enough of these letters will start a small ripple on their complacent lakes of bottom lines. But soon enough the words “Contains No HFCS” will become the hot selling ticket, and the stuff will disappear from the shelves as quickly as Olestra, that crazy oil substitute that created uncontrollable anal leakage. Remember Wow! potato chips? One serving of those things, and you’d better not sneeze in public!
We’ve been eating this stuff without noticing for over twenty years. The results of stopping aren’t going to be seen for, well, perhaps decades. We just don’t know what kind of long-term damage has been done to our systems by HFCS, so we don’t know how long the reversal will take to show results.
I want to be optimistic, but if you are like the average American, struggling to keep weight off but just can’t, remember to thank the wealthy farmers, politicians, and chemical manufacturers who poisoned us for the two decades of the fin de siecle for keeping those pounds on. We really must start fighting back and insisting that our food contain nothing that wasn’t available in 1970.
Can you believe that food was better for you then than it is now?! Start today consuming nothing, and I mean NOTHING, including ketchup, that has this poison in it. It’s the only way to begin the reversal.
And start writing to companies and talking to people. Remember, there are huge forces out there with a lot of money and power who want this poison to continue. But this is the new fight for our century, just as Upton Sinclair attacked the meat industry at the beginning of the last century.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Andrew Lloyd Weber's Obamita!
It has become impossible to ignore in these two weeks since January 20, 2009, that America got its own Eva Peron. The only differences are he’s not blond, he’s not as intelligent, and he’s more deluded about his abilities than Evita ever was.
It is only a matter of time before the White House is painted pink and we find this poseur standing on the balcony babbling through microphones about his descamisados. And the money kept rolling in from all directions.
Yes, Madame President reminds me eerily of an androgynous Eva-wannabe. Those repulsive pictures of him in a swimming suit revealed a fleshy not-quite-man emerging Boticelli-like from his seashell. That anyone could say that man is in good shape or is sexy or is manly would feel equally at home in North Korea flattering that ugly little retard known as Dear Leader.
America’s old-fashioned news outlets and their minions have “Gone the Goebbles,” as they say. This, of course, was inevitable when women began taking over the duties that belong to men. Also, college educated people really are the stupidest people on the planet, but none are stupider than journalism majors.
When the education establishment began dictating what constituted real journalistic standards, the end was in sight. It reminds one of the skit by Monty Python where John Cleese teaches sex to a class of boys. He actually has sex, but is so pedantic that the boys don’t pay a whit of attention. This is what education did to journalism.
Education robs people of common sense and natural instincts. Now, of course, tempering certain natural instincts is not such a bad thing, such as training people to be patient, but in the case of journalism the natural instinct to be on the side of truth and right and justice just got thrown under the bus. The angle became all important.
Well, this would have worked all right if the news consumers had been likewise changed, but they weren’t. We remain the same unwashed oafs we’ve always been, so we have drifted away from these people who purvey the news to us. The separation is coming upon us inexorably—and with greater accumulating speed than anyone ever imagined.
Do colleges and universities still take the money of the gullible young who want to “major in journalism”? I’m sure they do, but aren’t these schools duty-bound to tell these feckless girls (fully ninety percent of them are of that inclination) that they will never, repeat NEVER find a job that pays enough to make the rent on a ghetto flat? I’m sure they don’t. These colleges and universities should be hauled into court for swindling.
If these young journalists had any sense they would realize that prostitution in the old sense is more lucrative and less demeaning and requires less borrowed money to get established. News organizations today are not battle-hardened, cynical, hard-drinking men but rather sharp-jawed females from places like Brown and Cornell and Amherst bitter that they weren’t able to get any guys to fall for them.
That is why they are so enamored of the sexless bore we have elected for President, and why they are so willing to overlook the obvious. Watch tweener girls swooning over the latest heartthrob. This is a boy about as sexless and threatening as Michael Jackson (though not as scary facewise).
Reporterettes now find themselves writing stories for others just like themselves, though they haven’t clued in to the fact that the public is about ninety percent different from themselves. Of course we’re going to be repulsed by this drivel! And we’re going to tell them to go peddle their wares elsewhere.
I predict that talk radio is going to explode in the next two years as the cognitive dissidence escalates between the public and the news media. As they more stridently tell us that Evita-Obama is wise and articulate and intelligent and forceful and manly and womanly etc., real men and women are going to forsake them in droves.
It’s happening now. I predict that most of today’s newspapers will be out of business within two years. And then what will Obama Peron do to keep the public in line with the media? The media is going down. And only other media types will be wiping away tears with their crocodile hankies.
Schadenfreude will never feel so satisfying as when the NY Times finally prints its last edition. Millions of puppies will no longer be able to pee and poop on Paul Krugman’s and Maureen Dowd’s drivel.
And as they fall, so will the Fraud from Chicago fall as unceremoniously as the statue of Saddam Hussein. Like Evita, he’ll dispatch jack-booted thugs in grisly reprises of the 1930s and 1940s. Count on it. All fascists behave exactly the same way. Eva was one, Juan was one, and Obama is one.
The only difference is that he isn’t going to be able to offer up such a good show. He won’t wear his Adrians and Diors as well. And God help him and us if he ever quits smoking!
Oh, Dear Obamito(a), keep on puffing and preening. The time for such things is much more limited than it used to be.
It is only a matter of time before the White House is painted pink and we find this poseur standing on the balcony babbling through microphones about his descamisados. And the money kept rolling in from all directions.
Yes, Madame President reminds me eerily of an androgynous Eva-wannabe. Those repulsive pictures of him in a swimming suit revealed a fleshy not-quite-man emerging Boticelli-like from his seashell. That anyone could say that man is in good shape or is sexy or is manly would feel equally at home in North Korea flattering that ugly little retard known as Dear Leader.
America’s old-fashioned news outlets and their minions have “Gone the Goebbles,” as they say. This, of course, was inevitable when women began taking over the duties that belong to men. Also, college educated people really are the stupidest people on the planet, but none are stupider than journalism majors.
When the education establishment began dictating what constituted real journalistic standards, the end was in sight. It reminds one of the skit by Monty Python where John Cleese teaches sex to a class of boys. He actually has sex, but is so pedantic that the boys don’t pay a whit of attention. This is what education did to journalism.
Education robs people of common sense and natural instincts. Now, of course, tempering certain natural instincts is not such a bad thing, such as training people to be patient, but in the case of journalism the natural instinct to be on the side of truth and right and justice just got thrown under the bus. The angle became all important.
Well, this would have worked all right if the news consumers had been likewise changed, but they weren’t. We remain the same unwashed oafs we’ve always been, so we have drifted away from these people who purvey the news to us. The separation is coming upon us inexorably—and with greater accumulating speed than anyone ever imagined.
Do colleges and universities still take the money of the gullible young who want to “major in journalism”? I’m sure they do, but aren’t these schools duty-bound to tell these feckless girls (fully ninety percent of them are of that inclination) that they will never, repeat NEVER find a job that pays enough to make the rent on a ghetto flat? I’m sure they don’t. These colleges and universities should be hauled into court for swindling.
If these young journalists had any sense they would realize that prostitution in the old sense is more lucrative and less demeaning and requires less borrowed money to get established. News organizations today are not battle-hardened, cynical, hard-drinking men but rather sharp-jawed females from places like Brown and Cornell and Amherst bitter that they weren’t able to get any guys to fall for them.
That is why they are so enamored of the sexless bore we have elected for President, and why they are so willing to overlook the obvious. Watch tweener girls swooning over the latest heartthrob. This is a boy about as sexless and threatening as Michael Jackson (though not as scary facewise).
Reporterettes now find themselves writing stories for others just like themselves, though they haven’t clued in to the fact that the public is about ninety percent different from themselves. Of course we’re going to be repulsed by this drivel! And we’re going to tell them to go peddle their wares elsewhere.
I predict that talk radio is going to explode in the next two years as the cognitive dissidence escalates between the public and the news media. As they more stridently tell us that Evita-Obama is wise and articulate and intelligent and forceful and manly and womanly etc., real men and women are going to forsake them in droves.
It’s happening now. I predict that most of today’s newspapers will be out of business within two years. And then what will Obama Peron do to keep the public in line with the media? The media is going down. And only other media types will be wiping away tears with their crocodile hankies.
Schadenfreude will never feel so satisfying as when the NY Times finally prints its last edition. Millions of puppies will no longer be able to pee and poop on Paul Krugman’s and Maureen Dowd’s drivel.
And as they fall, so will the Fraud from Chicago fall as unceremoniously as the statue of Saddam Hussein. Like Evita, he’ll dispatch jack-booted thugs in grisly reprises of the 1930s and 1940s. Count on it. All fascists behave exactly the same way. Eva was one, Juan was one, and Obama is one.
The only difference is that he isn’t going to be able to offer up such a good show. He won’t wear his Adrians and Diors as well. And God help him and us if he ever quits smoking!
Oh, Dear Obamito(a), keep on puffing and preening. The time for such things is much more limited than it used to be.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Eden Needs Weedin'
To dismiss the Bible as a fairy tale with no divine inspiration is more wrong-headed than to accept it as literal truth in every detail.
Many people have an aversion to the Bible because of the often-warranted aversion to religion. The Bible and organized religions are not the same thing. The latter evolved from the former for a variety of reasons, not all of those reasons being holy, shall we say. The Bible should be studied and analyzed despite one’s adherence or abhorrence to a particular or to all religions.
Quick, now: Who asks the first question in the Bible, and what is the question?
The question doesn’t appear until the third chapter of Genesis. Declarative sentences plod one after another up until that time, delivering an uninspiring account of God’s creating everything.
It isn’t till the question is asked that the Bible suddenly gets off the history lesson and into a plot.
Give up? OK, the one who asks the question is the serpent, that slithery rascal that called Eden home, along with its new tenants. And the question he asks gets everything finally off static mode. Had he not posed this question, there would be no need to read the Bible any further.
The serpent asks Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” A simple request for clarification of what God had said. What could be more benign?
The Bible doesn’t say the serpent is Satan. It doesn’t even say that the serpent is evil, merely crafty, subtle. I’d say this is a metaphor for a lawyer. Significantly, the serpent never tells Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.
The serpent taps into the human being’s doubt, which is the product of curiosity, but the serpent hasn't put curiosity into the woman. It is already there. And that means that God is the source of disobedience to Himself.
Why did God give man curiosity if it could lead, as it did so quickly, to disobedience? A bit perverse of Him, don’t you think?
Or, and this is what Solomon finds most intriguing, did God not know that when He created man just what all it was he had endowed him with? Let’s explore that idea by looking at the second question in Genesis.
It’s just a few paragraphs later, when God is walking through Eden in the cool of the day (Note: Was God subject to sunburn and discomfort in His own creation? He seems to have been a most short-sighted god if this is the case.), that God calls out to Adam, “Where are you?”
I don’t think it uncharitable to point out that there are now six or so billion people on the planet whom God is supposed to be watching out for. However, when there were only TWO, he couldn’t keep track of them! Again, this does not speak well for His management acumen.
As almost all parents find out quickly: Creation is easy; control is impossible.
I think it would have been a lot easier to appear omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent in those early days than it would now, so it seems a big opportunity was missed by the Almighty. If He had really been supervising the writing of the Bible, He surely would have excluded the fact that He lost control of His creation really from the get-go.
The third question in the Bible follows quickly. Adam responds to God’s question that he was ashamed to meet God because he was naked, to which God angrily asks, “Who told you that you were naked?”
Now, isn’t this a curious response from the Mighty Father? I mean, who does God think COULD have told Adam he was naked? There are two, count them, two people on Planet Earth, but the language genie, as evidenced by the first question, was already out of the bottle and in the repertoire of three (Adam, Eve, serpent) and who knows how many else.
Had God already lost control of who would have language? Had He pulled off another creation somewhere else that He feared had gotten to Adam? Just who does He think slipped Adam the info that nakedness in humans is not to be endured on formal occasions, with the possible exception of entertainment award shows?
Now, of course, you could say that God is being rhetorical, is speaking for effect—after all, He has been known to throw some interesting tantrums. But then the question becomes an apostrophe to some higher force, just as prayer is affirming a belief in spiritual matter.
If God is being rhetorical, then what force is higher than He? This would be indicative that there is a power He is subject to, that He is not the be-all and end-all.
Then God asks the fourth Biblical question, directed to Eve. “What is this you have done?’ Now, that is like a parent walking into the midst of his child’s mess and yelling, “What have you done?” Isn’t it obvious?
Now, I think Eve should have defended herself a little more vigorously, though, this being the beginning of the world and without precedents, perhaps she didn’t know that the best defense is a good offense.
She should have thrown this right back into God’s face and told Him that He was responsible, since He wasn’t doing His godly duty of watching over His creations. Wouldn’t a little vigilance on God’s part at this incipient stage of human development been common sense?
From the very first, we have God taking a laissez-faire approach to creation and then throwing hissy fits when things don’t go as He hopes they will! Did He expect everything to go perfectly from the start? Boy, from someone who’s supposed to be omniscient, an awful lot goes under His radar.
With these four questions, we are able to come to an understanding that God, though powerful, is not all those “omni” words. Clever, mysterious, creative, vindictive, exasperating, and clueless—that’s our God. But not infallible. Not by a long shot.
It seems as if God is competent in His abilities to create, but that He becomes over-confident and overreaches when He creates man.
And just why does He create man? Well, the answer, not expressed in the Bible, is one of vanity, pride. God needs a being of rational intelligence and spiritual ability to be able to appreciate all this creation. God needs to be told how well He’s done.
So he effects the overreach of all creations—He duplicates Himself. Oh, He thinks He will have a creation that is innocent but aware, subservient yet powerful at the same time—but life is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates when He made man. He didn’t know what He was going to get! (No, no, Solomon knows that Forrest Gump didn't make man--this is just awkward grammar.)
His two apostrophizing questions to Adam and Eve are to the force that He is subject to—FATE. Oh, yes, God sells Himself as being beyond all forces, but He isn’t. Fate has always been His Achilles heel, and it trips Him up in what has been called OUR fall. “Our” indeed! It is God’s fall! Sucker punched by Fate.
He has created something LIKE His equals so they can appreciate His Brilliance. The problem is that we are so much like Him that there is only one thing more we need to be identical to Him. And if we get that last thing, there will be nothing separating US from HIM! Oh, the infamy. To be so powerful, and now to have to share equal billing with His own creations! What price vanity!
God must have been tasting a lot of bitter gall about then. He allows Himself to vent with a string of dire curses—among these Lamaze childbirth and non-mechanized farming—but then the Bible gives us the truly unique insight into His psyche. Everything you need to know about God and our creation is in the one and only incomplete sentence in the entire Bible.
Do you know that the only incomplete sentence is uttered by God Himself? Yes, it’s Genesis 3: 22. “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever--”
If we can live forever, we will be truly gods--and the secret is right there in Eden. But God becomes so horrified by this idea that He doesn't even finish His sentence. He knows that if man has eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it won't take long for him to make a beeline to the tree of eternal life (don't you get the idea that God didn't plant this garden Himself?).
Faster than you can lock the door when people wearing suits and dresses are coming up your front walk, God closes Eden. He unceremoniously kicks Adam and Eve out, locks the gates to the place, and puts an unblinking, unchanging sentry to defend it, not to be confused with Joan Rivers.
Think of it, my fellow humans: We came THAT close to being gods ourselves, but He couldn’t take the competition. He took away our godlike status by keeping immortality for Himself. Well, sucks to be us, I guess, but that's why we invented medicine and science--we'll get back into that Garden, if not by the front door, maybe by the virtual one that we can conceive of. I think it's our Fate.
Well, we shouldn’t take God's vindictiveness too hard, I guess. I mean, every man whose son comes close to equaling his old man is duty-bound to sabotage the little whippersnapper. And we have this on the highest authority and from the best of sources that life has always been this way.
Remember the first commandment is to have no other gods before us, but we would all be gods if things had gone a little different back there at the dawn of creation. It would have made waiting in line impossible. Seems Someone wanted to have the number one position all to Himself. (If we were all gods, would there be any atheists?)
I wonder if the all-seeing eye has noticed that there are a helluva lot of people burrowing under the fences around Eden. Also, I wonder who's been doing the weeding in there in our absence. Surely you don't think He has!
Many people have an aversion to the Bible because of the often-warranted aversion to religion. The Bible and organized religions are not the same thing. The latter evolved from the former for a variety of reasons, not all of those reasons being holy, shall we say. The Bible should be studied and analyzed despite one’s adherence or abhorrence to a particular or to all religions.
Quick, now: Who asks the first question in the Bible, and what is the question?
The question doesn’t appear until the third chapter of Genesis. Declarative sentences plod one after another up until that time, delivering an uninspiring account of God’s creating everything.
It isn’t till the question is asked that the Bible suddenly gets off the history lesson and into a plot.
Give up? OK, the one who asks the question is the serpent, that slithery rascal that called Eden home, along with its new tenants. And the question he asks gets everything finally off static mode. Had he not posed this question, there would be no need to read the Bible any further.
The serpent asks Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” A simple request for clarification of what God had said. What could be more benign?
The Bible doesn’t say the serpent is Satan. It doesn’t even say that the serpent is evil, merely crafty, subtle. I’d say this is a metaphor for a lawyer. Significantly, the serpent never tells Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.
The serpent taps into the human being’s doubt, which is the product of curiosity, but the serpent hasn't put curiosity into the woman. It is already there. And that means that God is the source of disobedience to Himself.
Why did God give man curiosity if it could lead, as it did so quickly, to disobedience? A bit perverse of Him, don’t you think?
Or, and this is what Solomon finds most intriguing, did God not know that when He created man just what all it was he had endowed him with? Let’s explore that idea by looking at the second question in Genesis.
It’s just a few paragraphs later, when God is walking through Eden in the cool of the day (Note: Was God subject to sunburn and discomfort in His own creation? He seems to have been a most short-sighted god if this is the case.), that God calls out to Adam, “Where are you?”
I don’t think it uncharitable to point out that there are now six or so billion people on the planet whom God is supposed to be watching out for. However, when there were only TWO, he couldn’t keep track of them! Again, this does not speak well for His management acumen.
As almost all parents find out quickly: Creation is easy; control is impossible.
I think it would have been a lot easier to appear omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent in those early days than it would now, so it seems a big opportunity was missed by the Almighty. If He had really been supervising the writing of the Bible, He surely would have excluded the fact that He lost control of His creation really from the get-go.
The third question in the Bible follows quickly. Adam responds to God’s question that he was ashamed to meet God because he was naked, to which God angrily asks, “Who told you that you were naked?”
Now, isn’t this a curious response from the Mighty Father? I mean, who does God think COULD have told Adam he was naked? There are two, count them, two people on Planet Earth, but the language genie, as evidenced by the first question, was already out of the bottle and in the repertoire of three (Adam, Eve, serpent) and who knows how many else.
Had God already lost control of who would have language? Had He pulled off another creation somewhere else that He feared had gotten to Adam? Just who does He think slipped Adam the info that nakedness in humans is not to be endured on formal occasions, with the possible exception of entertainment award shows?
Now, of course, you could say that God is being rhetorical, is speaking for effect—after all, He has been known to throw some interesting tantrums. But then the question becomes an apostrophe to some higher force, just as prayer is affirming a belief in spiritual matter.
If God is being rhetorical, then what force is higher than He? This would be indicative that there is a power He is subject to, that He is not the be-all and end-all.
Then God asks the fourth Biblical question, directed to Eve. “What is this you have done?’ Now, that is like a parent walking into the midst of his child’s mess and yelling, “What have you done?” Isn’t it obvious?
Now, I think Eve should have defended herself a little more vigorously, though, this being the beginning of the world and without precedents, perhaps she didn’t know that the best defense is a good offense.
She should have thrown this right back into God’s face and told Him that He was responsible, since He wasn’t doing His godly duty of watching over His creations. Wouldn’t a little vigilance on God’s part at this incipient stage of human development been common sense?
From the very first, we have God taking a laissez-faire approach to creation and then throwing hissy fits when things don’t go as He hopes they will! Did He expect everything to go perfectly from the start? Boy, from someone who’s supposed to be omniscient, an awful lot goes under His radar.
With these four questions, we are able to come to an understanding that God, though powerful, is not all those “omni” words. Clever, mysterious, creative, vindictive, exasperating, and clueless—that’s our God. But not infallible. Not by a long shot.
It seems as if God is competent in His abilities to create, but that He becomes over-confident and overreaches when He creates man.
And just why does He create man? Well, the answer, not expressed in the Bible, is one of vanity, pride. God needs a being of rational intelligence and spiritual ability to be able to appreciate all this creation. God needs to be told how well He’s done.
So he effects the overreach of all creations—He duplicates Himself. Oh, He thinks He will have a creation that is innocent but aware, subservient yet powerful at the same time—but life is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates when He made man. He didn’t know what He was going to get! (No, no, Solomon knows that Forrest Gump didn't make man--this is just awkward grammar.)
His two apostrophizing questions to Adam and Eve are to the force that He is subject to—FATE. Oh, yes, God sells Himself as being beyond all forces, but He isn’t. Fate has always been His Achilles heel, and it trips Him up in what has been called OUR fall. “Our” indeed! It is God’s fall! Sucker punched by Fate.
He has created something LIKE His equals so they can appreciate His Brilliance. The problem is that we are so much like Him that there is only one thing more we need to be identical to Him. And if we get that last thing, there will be nothing separating US from HIM! Oh, the infamy. To be so powerful, and now to have to share equal billing with His own creations! What price vanity!
God must have been tasting a lot of bitter gall about then. He allows Himself to vent with a string of dire curses—among these Lamaze childbirth and non-mechanized farming—but then the Bible gives us the truly unique insight into His psyche. Everything you need to know about God and our creation is in the one and only incomplete sentence in the entire Bible.
Do you know that the only incomplete sentence is uttered by God Himself? Yes, it’s Genesis 3: 22. “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever--”
If we can live forever, we will be truly gods--and the secret is right there in Eden. But God becomes so horrified by this idea that He doesn't even finish His sentence. He knows that if man has eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it won't take long for him to make a beeline to the tree of eternal life (don't you get the idea that God didn't plant this garden Himself?).
Faster than you can lock the door when people wearing suits and dresses are coming up your front walk, God closes Eden. He unceremoniously kicks Adam and Eve out, locks the gates to the place, and puts an unblinking, unchanging sentry to defend it, not to be confused with Joan Rivers.
Think of it, my fellow humans: We came THAT close to being gods ourselves, but He couldn’t take the competition. He took away our godlike status by keeping immortality for Himself. Well, sucks to be us, I guess, but that's why we invented medicine and science--we'll get back into that Garden, if not by the front door, maybe by the virtual one that we can conceive of. I think it's our Fate.
Well, we shouldn’t take God's vindictiveness too hard, I guess. I mean, every man whose son comes close to equaling his old man is duty-bound to sabotage the little whippersnapper. And we have this on the highest authority and from the best of sources that life has always been this way.
Remember the first commandment is to have no other gods before us, but we would all be gods if things had gone a little different back there at the dawn of creation. It would have made waiting in line impossible. Seems Someone wanted to have the number one position all to Himself. (If we were all gods, would there be any atheists?)
I wonder if the all-seeing eye has noticed that there are a helluva lot of people burrowing under the fences around Eden. Also, I wonder who's been doing the weeding in there in our absence. Surely you don't think He has!
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Kill the Beast! Starve the Beast!
Sayonara, Washington…Mon Amour
Mistresses age. Alas! Though once-vibrant, they come to the inevitable time when they can’t stand the glare of day and must be craftily enhanced with exotic contents of paint pots rare. Charm becomes artifice, studied and calculated, where once it was natural and spontaneous and possibly real. There is a sad reminder in the flirtatious formulas of the faded doyennes—we are reminded that if vibrant vixens can decline, what indeed cannot!
And thus it is that goddesses of yesterday must stand aside for the new and fresh. A good mistress must know when to retire before retirement is forced upon her. It’s best to have it said “She had a good run” rather than “There’s a fine line between mistress and slut and, I’m afraid, she’s lost her balance.”
As Dryden says, “All human things are subject to decay,” and mistresses—and governments—must obey. And like a clinging woman, a concept can hang on too long—and the concept of the necessity of a government to have an actual capital city has had its run, at least for THIS republic.
You see, Washington, like the above-mentioned mistress, is a holdover from a time when a capital city was the only way to conduct governmental business in a representative democracy. But Washington, far from being essential to the lusty republic’s needs, is now a tarted-up whore of a place that is beyond embarrassing and outworn—she is absolutely destructive to the noble ends of her founders.
It is time for Washington to be retired.
In the 18th Century, the concept of representative democracy could ONLY occur if there were a capital city. No capital, no capitol, no meeting place. So our country grew up with the concept that a capital was essential. And so it was. Note the past tense, though.
But something called the 20th Century happened, and it created new ways of doing business, perfected now to the point that people don’t have to be anywhere near one another to have face-to-face meetings.
You know, it is hard to get your pocket picked by someone who isn’t near you. Well, the same could be said for the pack of thieves and reprobates who are our political class. If they can’t physically get together, the mischief they can work is just about completely undone. (I say “just about” because we must never underestimate the resourcefulness of politicians with law degrees.)
Note that I say that they “can’t” physically get together, and that is just what I propose—namely, that they are, once elected, forbidden from leaving their District until their term is up. When a man or woman wins election to serve a District, he/she is electronically braceleted and monitored 100% of the time. How’s that for a novel idea! We put them under our lock and key!
The person may receive visitors, but every visitor and that person’s conversation and interaction will be recorded and open for public inspection. Visitors to his/her home, likewise, will be monitored. In short, NO PRIVACY WHATSOEVER! For the full term of their “service.”
Now, politicians are fond of referring to themselves as “public servants.” Well, dammit, I say let’s start treating them as our servants, not as our betters. Sure, we can give them one or two weeks off a year, but we don’t allow them to leave the estate, in this case the District.
No more getting wined and dined and bribed and junketed and entertained and showered with perks, perks, perks. No more high-falutin’ balls and dinners in that rarefied moneyed honey pot called Washington. These people are going to be staying HOME! They better like the restaurants in their home District, because those are the only ones they can eat in for the duration of their term.
Voting will be done from their office via electronic means, and their vote will be made in full view of their constituents who care to make the drive downtown and watch and possibly confront the office holder.
We’re not a representative democracy if our politician is unavailable IN PERSON twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. What good is a “representative” who can only be reached by phone or e-mail (which can easily be ignored) or can only be seen in press releases?
If they have their voters sitting just feet away from them while they are debating, voting, holding hearings, and all the other official things they do, they’re not going to be able to get away with the shenanigans that they get away with now. Some of these people would get punched if their constituents could get to them. Well, with this system, they COULD get to them and they COULD, literally, punch the transgressing pol. Do I hear an “AMEN”?!
And wouldn’t that do our country good! (As well as our hearts!) True accountability! True representative democracy! Federal politicians would be forbidden, under penalty of five years of hard time in a federal lockup, to make any physical or clandestine contact with any other politician except the President.
The President would be the only politician allowed to reside in Washington or move about during his term. Senators (yes, ideally the Senate should be written out of the Constitution and every senator sent to do real work—they’d soon find that this House of Lords mentality doesn’t play well in the capitalistic workplace; however, for now, we’re stuck with them for the time being) would likewise have to stay within the borders of their states but remain out of physical contact with any other politician.
Politicians may contact one another by phone, e-mail, or carrier pigeon, but not face to face. But everything they do has to leave a trail that can be scrutinized, so we know who is trying to pull what scam on whom.
Yes, lobbyists can visit with their trench coats full of enticements, but their presence will be recorded and open to public viewing. No meetings behind closed doors. And, whereas lobbyists used to be able to score a gaggle of favors by just sashaying from one office to the next, now they are going to have to make unglamorous trips to seedy offices scattered all over this great land.
And what would happen to that city on the Potomac now that the politicians can’t go there? Washington would become a purely ceremonial city, used only when we need a backdrop for a ceremony, like the inauguration of the President or a State funeral. But otherwise, the Capitol can be open to tourists to gawk at where the corruption used to take place. We need monuments; we need ceremony. We just don’t need politicians getting together in their Coven of Cupidity and Rapacity.
And who would want to be a representative or senator then, you ask.
Do you see that if this plan is followed, you are going to get people in government who REALLY care about the people, because they’re going to be tooth-to-jowl with their constituents, unable to hide. And if you think the quality of politician would go down, then I have to ask where the hell you have been for the last fifty years. They CAN’T get worse!
I realize, of course, the property values in Washington, D.C. are going to fall precipitously, but nothing of any value will have been lost. Our government will function with total, and I mean TOTAL transparency, and the era of the career politician (meaning the one who REALLY knows how to take bribes and stiff the public) will be a thing of the past.
Thank you, technology, for giving us the means to finally free ourselves of the tyranny of our government. This will be the bloodless REVOLUTION that we are all so desperately craving. Cincinnatus, you can now return to your farm AND still be a public servant.
From now on, politicians had better like their home Districts and their constituents because that is all they’re going to have to keep them company for however many years they serve.
And here I address all you politicians: Just keep in mind that we really MEAN it! You’re going to serve us daily and really earn your keep! And you’re not going to get rich screwing us!
That will be the reward for our worthy mistresses.
Mistresses age. Alas! Though once-vibrant, they come to the inevitable time when they can’t stand the glare of day and must be craftily enhanced with exotic contents of paint pots rare. Charm becomes artifice, studied and calculated, where once it was natural and spontaneous and possibly real. There is a sad reminder in the flirtatious formulas of the faded doyennes—we are reminded that if vibrant vixens can decline, what indeed cannot!
And thus it is that goddesses of yesterday must stand aside for the new and fresh. A good mistress must know when to retire before retirement is forced upon her. It’s best to have it said “She had a good run” rather than “There’s a fine line between mistress and slut and, I’m afraid, she’s lost her balance.”
As Dryden says, “All human things are subject to decay,” and mistresses—and governments—must obey. And like a clinging woman, a concept can hang on too long—and the concept of the necessity of a government to have an actual capital city has had its run, at least for THIS republic.
You see, Washington, like the above-mentioned mistress, is a holdover from a time when a capital city was the only way to conduct governmental business in a representative democracy. But Washington, far from being essential to the lusty republic’s needs, is now a tarted-up whore of a place that is beyond embarrassing and outworn—she is absolutely destructive to the noble ends of her founders.
It is time for Washington to be retired.
In the 18th Century, the concept of representative democracy could ONLY occur if there were a capital city. No capital, no capitol, no meeting place. So our country grew up with the concept that a capital was essential. And so it was. Note the past tense, though.
But something called the 20th Century happened, and it created new ways of doing business, perfected now to the point that people don’t have to be anywhere near one another to have face-to-face meetings.
You know, it is hard to get your pocket picked by someone who isn’t near you. Well, the same could be said for the pack of thieves and reprobates who are our political class. If they can’t physically get together, the mischief they can work is just about completely undone. (I say “just about” because we must never underestimate the resourcefulness of politicians with law degrees.)
Note that I say that they “can’t” physically get together, and that is just what I propose—namely, that they are, once elected, forbidden from leaving their District until their term is up. When a man or woman wins election to serve a District, he/she is electronically braceleted and monitored 100% of the time. How’s that for a novel idea! We put them under our lock and key!
The person may receive visitors, but every visitor and that person’s conversation and interaction will be recorded and open for public inspection. Visitors to his/her home, likewise, will be monitored. In short, NO PRIVACY WHATSOEVER! For the full term of their “service.”
Now, politicians are fond of referring to themselves as “public servants.” Well, dammit, I say let’s start treating them as our servants, not as our betters. Sure, we can give them one or two weeks off a year, but we don’t allow them to leave the estate, in this case the District.
No more getting wined and dined and bribed and junketed and entertained and showered with perks, perks, perks. No more high-falutin’ balls and dinners in that rarefied moneyed honey pot called Washington. These people are going to be staying HOME! They better like the restaurants in their home District, because those are the only ones they can eat in for the duration of their term.
Voting will be done from their office via electronic means, and their vote will be made in full view of their constituents who care to make the drive downtown and watch and possibly confront the office holder.
We’re not a representative democracy if our politician is unavailable IN PERSON twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. What good is a “representative” who can only be reached by phone or e-mail (which can easily be ignored) or can only be seen in press releases?
If they have their voters sitting just feet away from them while they are debating, voting, holding hearings, and all the other official things they do, they’re not going to be able to get away with the shenanigans that they get away with now. Some of these people would get punched if their constituents could get to them. Well, with this system, they COULD get to them and they COULD, literally, punch the transgressing pol. Do I hear an “AMEN”?!
And wouldn’t that do our country good! (As well as our hearts!) True accountability! True representative democracy! Federal politicians would be forbidden, under penalty of five years of hard time in a federal lockup, to make any physical or clandestine contact with any other politician except the President.
The President would be the only politician allowed to reside in Washington or move about during his term. Senators (yes, ideally the Senate should be written out of the Constitution and every senator sent to do real work—they’d soon find that this House of Lords mentality doesn’t play well in the capitalistic workplace; however, for now, we’re stuck with them for the time being) would likewise have to stay within the borders of their states but remain out of physical contact with any other politician.
Politicians may contact one another by phone, e-mail, or carrier pigeon, but not face to face. But everything they do has to leave a trail that can be scrutinized, so we know who is trying to pull what scam on whom.
Yes, lobbyists can visit with their trench coats full of enticements, but their presence will be recorded and open to public viewing. No meetings behind closed doors. And, whereas lobbyists used to be able to score a gaggle of favors by just sashaying from one office to the next, now they are going to have to make unglamorous trips to seedy offices scattered all over this great land.
And what would happen to that city on the Potomac now that the politicians can’t go there? Washington would become a purely ceremonial city, used only when we need a backdrop for a ceremony, like the inauguration of the President or a State funeral. But otherwise, the Capitol can be open to tourists to gawk at where the corruption used to take place. We need monuments; we need ceremony. We just don’t need politicians getting together in their Coven of Cupidity and Rapacity.
And who would want to be a representative or senator then, you ask.
Do you see that if this plan is followed, you are going to get people in government who REALLY care about the people, because they’re going to be tooth-to-jowl with their constituents, unable to hide. And if you think the quality of politician would go down, then I have to ask where the hell you have been for the last fifty years. They CAN’T get worse!
I realize, of course, the property values in Washington, D.C. are going to fall precipitously, but nothing of any value will have been lost. Our government will function with total, and I mean TOTAL transparency, and the era of the career politician (meaning the one who REALLY knows how to take bribes and stiff the public) will be a thing of the past.
Thank you, technology, for giving us the means to finally free ourselves of the tyranny of our government. This will be the bloodless REVOLUTION that we are all so desperately craving. Cincinnatus, you can now return to your farm AND still be a public servant.
From now on, politicians had better like their home Districts and their constituents because that is all they’re going to have to keep them company for however many years they serve.
And here I address all you politicians: Just keep in mind that we really MEAN it! You’re going to serve us daily and really earn your keep! And you’re not going to get rich screwing us!
That will be the reward for our worthy mistresses.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Sun'll Come Up To Maya
The Maya culture presents us with problems, much as a white-knuckled fist hurtling toward our nose by a perfect stranger presents us problems. We can close our eyes and just avoid the whole thing, but that is going to help us for all of a split second. And it will do us absolutely no good in trying to understand the situation.
Or we can actually strap on our big boy boots and make a stab at trying to understand this most mysterious aspect of our past.
I say let’s go for the latter.
First question: Where’d they come from? Well, of course, from Mesoamerica, but I mean the entire culture seems to have sprung into full-blown maturity without preliminaries.
Evolution that crosses species is just downright nuts, but evolution within species, and within man’s cultures, is absolutely correct. The technology of today didn’t just come into being over night but evolved, and those steps can be traced backward in time. Occasionally, cultural evolution gets a goose in the behind by the appearance of a genius (think Newton) or an accident (think discovery of penicillin), but in general, we march forward at a pretty steady, predictable pace.
But the culture of the Maya does NOT seem to have evolutionary roots. BAM! Here it is, full blown and amazing, and don’t ask any questions about how it got here. Now, I suppose that the evolutionary steps might have been present, might have involved a logical progression of steps toward an incredibly sophisticated science, architecture, and art, steps which have been lost in jungle humidity and rapacity, but to date nothing, not a single thing, has turned up that shows this evolution.
Did they, illogically, rip down all their previous attempts once a new piece of knowledge became clear, thus obliterating their evolution? I mean, one doesn’t just go from primitive jungle dweller pulling leaves over his head to protect himself from the rain to sophisticated architect and mason raising pyramids of incredible complexity. And surely one of those experiments would have been left standing. There HAS to be some intermediary step—but in the Mayan world, there isn’t.
Second question: Why is their representational art so similar to that of ancient Egypt’s? Granted that both societies raised monumental pyramids without any seeming communication or collaboration. And I can accept that two cultures that had absolutely no connection could just possibly end up building incredibly similar structures.
But that these two cultures would also produce representational art in exactly the same way beggars the imagination. Both the Maya and the ancient Egyptians presented the human figure exclusively in profile with non-realistic shoulder presentations—i.e., an alignment of head and body that is impossible in reality.
Yet, in both their three-dimensional art, there is a very realistic presentation. Both societies were able to create fantastic works of architecture and art and science, yet neither was able to utilize even rudimentary realistic perspective in one-dimensional presentation?
Were both societies blind to reality in the just the same way and did they create exactly the same kind of artistic mistake, or did they both share a similar artistic sensibility? If the former, I merely scoff. If the latter, then we have more than just pyramids in common.
Question three: How could a civilization as mathematically and astronomically advanced as the Mayas not have utilized the wheel?
If they made their own astronomical calculations, were they not aware that everything was running in a circular or elliptical pattern? And surely someone would have finally had a “Eureka!” moment when it became obvious that it would be easier and more efficient to use a round object to help move stones—and themselves. But apparently this moment never came.
There is nothing in their representational art or in the detritus of their remains to suggest that wheels were ever used.
Now, you may say that they didn’t have horses, so why would they have had chariots? True enough about the horses. But still—doesn’t the three-year old in his play, no matter what culture, find that moving things on round objects beats moving them by dragging?
I mean, a dislodged stone doesn’t slide down the mountainside—it rolls!
But this connection didn’t occur to a society so advanced that they could make incisions into the human skull and have the person survive.
Question four: Just what the hell happened to these people? The current explanation requires us to buy into eco-nonsense. The Mayas simply exhausted the natural resources; drought overtook tropical Central America, blah, blah, blah.
Sociologists would have us believe that their blood lust for human sacrifice made them vulnerable to resentment by outside forces or from within. Possible, of course, but without a scintilla of evidence.
And do people who have lived with and possibly created such monumental cities just drift away, en masse. If Detroit still exists, then so should the Mayan cities.
And are the poor people who claim to be remnants of the Mayan civilization (living now in squalor in Central America) really the descendants of what has to be a pinnacle of man’s brilliance. Wow, then there really IS a falling off that is beyond imagining! Could people really fall so far so fast and yet be so near?
I don’t have definitive answers for any of these questions (nor does anyone else, by the by, so my theories are as good as theirs). But I do know that the evolution of the Mayan culture is all backwards, just as is that of ancient Egypt. They both seem to have sprung into being, fully loaded, then languished, then precipitously declined and disappeared, all of which is contrary to natural evolution within cultures of our acquaintance.
Only an outside force (and I do not mean necessarily an alien force--though I certainly don't exclude an alien force) could have established such a culture. And that there are two cultures so similarly inclined but so geographically separated supports the theory that the knowledge that was imposed on these people was shared in common, though the homo sapiens were not.
From wreckage, there was a jump-starting of civilization by beings that had extraordinary knowledge. Man was new but the knowledge was old. Whoever or whatever implanted knowledge into the Egyptian and the Mayan culture was not of them, but was rather part of some other time, possibly place.
This force was trying to jump-start what it had known, what it knew, and was putting its knowledge and ideas into minds not evolutionarily ready to accept this knowledge.
Great structures were created, art was invented, mathematics and astronomy were thrown into minds barely evolved enough to grunt.
And it all probably worked for a bit. But it was all doomed to disintegrate, because it didn’t have natural evolution as its foundation.
And so we are left with monuments and knowledge that are, really ARE, impossible for the primitives to have created. Like monkeys conscripted to build a spaceship, early man was forced to waltz before he was able to crawl.
Then the brilliance of the Creators could only be sustained by mindless rituals and brute force—and our Creators were forced to watch the knowledge of the ages they'd so carefully saved from obliteration being devoured and destroyed by primitive beings knocking around in the temples of gods, not of reason but of incomprehension.
New knowledge would arise, but it would have to evolve naturally, through the painful trial and error that has marked mankind’s history since about 3000 BC.
Yes, we are reinventing that which our Creators already knew, but without that reinvention, it wouldn’t last, because it wouldn’t be ours.
The greatness of the time of the Creators ended, and they wanted it to go on, seamlessly, but rather than create a new human race that would take up where they left off, what they did was erect barriers to our understanding the past.
They left us mysteries, puzzlements, insoluble conundrums—and we have been trying to sort out those things, when we should have been getting on with things. They didn’t trust us to be able to discover things on our own.
Like parents who refuse to believe that their children will actually ever amount to anything, they gave us EVERYTHING—only to discover that all we really needed was a cardboard box and our imagination and a little time to grow into our brains.
Imagine ourselves, citizens ensconced in the computer age, where our every desire can be summoned effortlessly from the ends of the earth, being faced with the extinction of all our modern wonders. If a few of us survived, wouldn't we try to impart our wisdom and accomplishments to whatever intelligent race might be struggling to establish itself on this planet's bleak remains? And so we impart to them, DO for them, what they cannot imagine or do for themselves. How long will what we’ve set up last?
Well, give a library of the world’s greatest intellects to a bunch of six-year-olds, and see how much of it is left in twenty years.
The reason “Lord of the Flies” is such a disturbing book is that it shows us just how quickly and utterly all of our civilization can be, and will be, wiped out. The book has such a deus ex machina ending because it is obvious where this story is heading—into our unthinkable beginnings.
But that is where things must actually begin—and man with his reason will pull himself out of the blood swamp into the light. And if we try to speed it along, we will face the same frustration and anger of our Creators, who created not a fast track toward the top but rather a constant inexplicable diversion that pulls back to the past.
We would have been much further along by now if our Creators hadn’t tried to get us to move forward faster. Sad, so sad.
Or we can actually strap on our big boy boots and make a stab at trying to understand this most mysterious aspect of our past.
I say let’s go for the latter.
First question: Where’d they come from? Well, of course, from Mesoamerica, but I mean the entire culture seems to have sprung into full-blown maturity without preliminaries.
Evolution that crosses species is just downright nuts, but evolution within species, and within man’s cultures, is absolutely correct. The technology of today didn’t just come into being over night but evolved, and those steps can be traced backward in time. Occasionally, cultural evolution gets a goose in the behind by the appearance of a genius (think Newton) or an accident (think discovery of penicillin), but in general, we march forward at a pretty steady, predictable pace.
But the culture of the Maya does NOT seem to have evolutionary roots. BAM! Here it is, full blown and amazing, and don’t ask any questions about how it got here. Now, I suppose that the evolutionary steps might have been present, might have involved a logical progression of steps toward an incredibly sophisticated science, architecture, and art, steps which have been lost in jungle humidity and rapacity, but to date nothing, not a single thing, has turned up that shows this evolution.
Did they, illogically, rip down all their previous attempts once a new piece of knowledge became clear, thus obliterating their evolution? I mean, one doesn’t just go from primitive jungle dweller pulling leaves over his head to protect himself from the rain to sophisticated architect and mason raising pyramids of incredible complexity. And surely one of those experiments would have been left standing. There HAS to be some intermediary step—but in the Mayan world, there isn’t.
Second question: Why is their representational art so similar to that of ancient Egypt’s? Granted that both societies raised monumental pyramids without any seeming communication or collaboration. And I can accept that two cultures that had absolutely no connection could just possibly end up building incredibly similar structures.
But that these two cultures would also produce representational art in exactly the same way beggars the imagination. Both the Maya and the ancient Egyptians presented the human figure exclusively in profile with non-realistic shoulder presentations—i.e., an alignment of head and body that is impossible in reality.
Yet, in both their three-dimensional art, there is a very realistic presentation. Both societies were able to create fantastic works of architecture and art and science, yet neither was able to utilize even rudimentary realistic perspective in one-dimensional presentation?
Were both societies blind to reality in the just the same way and did they create exactly the same kind of artistic mistake, or did they both share a similar artistic sensibility? If the former, I merely scoff. If the latter, then we have more than just pyramids in common.
Question three: How could a civilization as mathematically and astronomically advanced as the Mayas not have utilized the wheel?
If they made their own astronomical calculations, were they not aware that everything was running in a circular or elliptical pattern? And surely someone would have finally had a “Eureka!” moment when it became obvious that it would be easier and more efficient to use a round object to help move stones—and themselves. But apparently this moment never came.
There is nothing in their representational art or in the detritus of their remains to suggest that wheels were ever used.
Now, you may say that they didn’t have horses, so why would they have had chariots? True enough about the horses. But still—doesn’t the three-year old in his play, no matter what culture, find that moving things on round objects beats moving them by dragging?
I mean, a dislodged stone doesn’t slide down the mountainside—it rolls!
But this connection didn’t occur to a society so advanced that they could make incisions into the human skull and have the person survive.
Question four: Just what the hell happened to these people? The current explanation requires us to buy into eco-nonsense. The Mayas simply exhausted the natural resources; drought overtook tropical Central America, blah, blah, blah.
Sociologists would have us believe that their blood lust for human sacrifice made them vulnerable to resentment by outside forces or from within. Possible, of course, but without a scintilla of evidence.
And do people who have lived with and possibly created such monumental cities just drift away, en masse. If Detroit still exists, then so should the Mayan cities.
And are the poor people who claim to be remnants of the Mayan civilization (living now in squalor in Central America) really the descendants of what has to be a pinnacle of man’s brilliance. Wow, then there really IS a falling off that is beyond imagining! Could people really fall so far so fast and yet be so near?
I don’t have definitive answers for any of these questions (nor does anyone else, by the by, so my theories are as good as theirs). But I do know that the evolution of the Mayan culture is all backwards, just as is that of ancient Egypt. They both seem to have sprung into being, fully loaded, then languished, then precipitously declined and disappeared, all of which is contrary to natural evolution within cultures of our acquaintance.
Only an outside force (and I do not mean necessarily an alien force--though I certainly don't exclude an alien force) could have established such a culture. And that there are two cultures so similarly inclined but so geographically separated supports the theory that the knowledge that was imposed on these people was shared in common, though the homo sapiens were not.
From wreckage, there was a jump-starting of civilization by beings that had extraordinary knowledge. Man was new but the knowledge was old. Whoever or whatever implanted knowledge into the Egyptian and the Mayan culture was not of them, but was rather part of some other time, possibly place.
This force was trying to jump-start what it had known, what it knew, and was putting its knowledge and ideas into minds not evolutionarily ready to accept this knowledge.
Great structures were created, art was invented, mathematics and astronomy were thrown into minds barely evolved enough to grunt.
And it all probably worked for a bit. But it was all doomed to disintegrate, because it didn’t have natural evolution as its foundation.
And so we are left with monuments and knowledge that are, really ARE, impossible for the primitives to have created. Like monkeys conscripted to build a spaceship, early man was forced to waltz before he was able to crawl.
Then the brilliance of the Creators could only be sustained by mindless rituals and brute force—and our Creators were forced to watch the knowledge of the ages they'd so carefully saved from obliteration being devoured and destroyed by primitive beings knocking around in the temples of gods, not of reason but of incomprehension.
New knowledge would arise, but it would have to evolve naturally, through the painful trial and error that has marked mankind’s history since about 3000 BC.
Yes, we are reinventing that which our Creators already knew, but without that reinvention, it wouldn’t last, because it wouldn’t be ours.
The greatness of the time of the Creators ended, and they wanted it to go on, seamlessly, but rather than create a new human race that would take up where they left off, what they did was erect barriers to our understanding the past.
They left us mysteries, puzzlements, insoluble conundrums—and we have been trying to sort out those things, when we should have been getting on with things. They didn’t trust us to be able to discover things on our own.
Like parents who refuse to believe that their children will actually ever amount to anything, they gave us EVERYTHING—only to discover that all we really needed was a cardboard box and our imagination and a little time to grow into our brains.
Imagine ourselves, citizens ensconced in the computer age, where our every desire can be summoned effortlessly from the ends of the earth, being faced with the extinction of all our modern wonders. If a few of us survived, wouldn't we try to impart our wisdom and accomplishments to whatever intelligent race might be struggling to establish itself on this planet's bleak remains? And so we impart to them, DO for them, what they cannot imagine or do for themselves. How long will what we’ve set up last?
Well, give a library of the world’s greatest intellects to a bunch of six-year-olds, and see how much of it is left in twenty years.
The reason “Lord of the Flies” is such a disturbing book is that it shows us just how quickly and utterly all of our civilization can be, and will be, wiped out. The book has such a deus ex machina ending because it is obvious where this story is heading—into our unthinkable beginnings.
But that is where things must actually begin—and man with his reason will pull himself out of the blood swamp into the light. And if we try to speed it along, we will face the same frustration and anger of our Creators, who created not a fast track toward the top but rather a constant inexplicable diversion that pulls back to the past.
We would have been much further along by now if our Creators hadn’t tried to get us to move forward faster. Sad, so sad.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)