All In

When i first set out to write this blog i had no intention of writing about geopolitics, or anything any bigger than my own little world, or to develop any sort of readership at all, let alone to kick up international interest. Who knew? Since the time i started, Adbusters' Occupy movement has overtaken the whole world and i've become a part of it, along with apparently millions of fellow humans dissatisfied with aspects of the concentric and overlapping political systems that govern and control the minutiae of our daily lives. Occupy has struck a chord that resonates well beyond what seems to have been its original intent as well.

Adbusters asserts in its campaign web-page opener that, "we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy," speaking, one assumes of U.S. democracy, even though Adbusters is a Canadian publication founded by Kalle Lasn, an Estonian. Adbusters itself claims to be a, "global network of culture jammers and creatives," and that their Occupy is, "[i]nspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas." One should note that Adbusters is a non-profit organization with aspirations and effect well beyond the confines of the magazine at its core.

Many of my dear intrepid friends struggle mightily with the unavoidable nature of the movement in which we all participate. Occupy Colorado Springs, (OCS), has garnered a fair amount of attention both because of its early acquisition of a city permit to camp on the sidewalk, and for its fragmentary infighting. Strong personalities have clashed fairly spectacularly for what scale we're dealing with here, and precisely the same arguments are on display at Occupy web-pages all over the U.S., as well as abroad. Here, many patriotic, nationally oriented players have concentrated on addressing the U.S. Constitution and the influence of corporate interests in Washington, D.C. politics. Others have been caught up in causes of personal concern as the "focus" of the overall movement has grown more and more diffuse. The bickering and difficulty in reaching consensus has been frustrating but, i suggest, not unhealthy or out of place.

Adbusters, following ques from the Middle East and Spain, deliberately set off a "leaderless" movement, and has fastidiously avoided taking hold of any sort of control of what has developed since, refusing even media interviews for fear of exercising undue influence. Occupy remains a leaderless movement. Various groups and individuals have issued lists of demands; the one linked there,  "is representative of those participating on this [particular 'Occupy Wall Street' Facebook] page." We Occupiers have much common ground, which has served well to bring us all together, and will continue to serve as we gather to discuss and bicker over issues and particulars. There is plenty to differentiate amongst us as well, on individual and other categorical bases, but we have recognized, more or less, an essential humanity that has us willing to stand in freezing temperatures if we live in the northern hemisphere, and subject ourselves to the slow, often painful process of learning to live together.

Some among us, as we have seen right here in Colorado Springs, are very uncomfortable indeed with the amorphous nature of the Movement. We have seen splintering, censorship wars, General Assemblies that devolve into shouting matches, and the development of personal animosities. These phenomena are repeated  on a grander scale throughout the Movement while observers gloat over the imminent dissolution of Occupy unity. Neither we Occupiers nor the Movement's detractors ought to be misled by these birth pains. Our situation as humans, or for that matter any other creature inhabitant of the Earth has been rendered fully untenable by humans competing for dominance. The upheaval we engage from our Colorado Springs street corner, or from squares in Manchester, Belgrade, Cairo, and etc. is the natural response of rats in a corner. Were it not for the fact that we humans indeed possess reasoning capacity beyond a rat's we really would be screwed. Fortune, or divine providence, or evolution, or whatever mechanism or mechanisms turn(s) out to be true has granted us the tools that, utilized with empathy at every turn may--just may--allow us to work our way out of the massive pickle in which we've put ourselves. Nothing about this will be easy, quick, or for most, especially comfortable.

The Movement is leaderless. This is an existential fact. No matter how strenuously individuals attempt to grab hold of reigns, or to turn them over to others, there is no authority behind the Movement other than the profound spiritual authority of its essential Idea. The financial disparities that we have focused on here in the U.S. are real, and the supra-national bodies that control our government with full directive power are the same bodies that separate people from power in every nation on Earth. Each issue that has arisen into the Movement's overall consciousness, from derivative markets, to marijuana law, to camping on public property is part and parcel of the whole thing, which itself amounts to such a gigantic, lumpen juggernaut that we have a hard time gathering our thoughts around the whole thing at once. We must.

Many U.S. citizens, including some prominent in and around OCS, have expressed insistent nationalism. Muslims and Christians around the world have pushed religions agendas. Nationalism is by no means confined to the U.S.A. Our corporate, non-personal enemy and its personal, human operators are Global already, and use these divisions to our detriment! At a Colorado College faculty panel yesterday, much ado was made of income disparities and market finagling by Wall Street financiers. We can isolate our minds all we want, but we can not eliminate the fact that Wall Street, Fleet Street, Singapore, Hong Kong, the House of Saud, whatever, whatever, are already one indivisible entity, operating in opposition to any concern for overall humanity or household priorities for any of us as inhabitants of the planet, including the natural requirements of the controllers. The Idea of competition and profit has acquired an independent life of its own and has prevented even those at the top of the unwieldy pyramid from living  lives connected to the most valuable prizes of all, which we humans have recognized throughout our history and recorded in odes, songs, and literature to be transcendent of politics and possessions. The statistics cited by those college economists, and the many Occupiers that mention them in speeches and lists of demands are quite real, and Americans might note that the positions of Kurdish, Nepali, and Palestinian Occupiers, for example, skew the stats we've been flailing our arms about here even further, and that "First World" exploitation is a very large part of this discussion, indeed.

There can be little doubt that the "Wall Street" entities in control of our various governments have planned for and directed events toward a "New World Order" for decades, if not centuries. Lots of justifiably paranoid conspiracy watchers all over the planet have done their best to alert their fellows to this alarming and unacceptable development for as long as it has been in the mix. The Vatican, a power with negative credibility in its adherence to its own doctrine, has offered itself up as a potential controller of a global banking scheme. Currently entrenched power-brokers will absolutely without question attempt to co-opt and control the current Movement. We humans are not interested in more of the same bullshit, plus the added benefit of still more bullshit! We Occupiers are fully sovereign, each in his or her own right. We are leaderless by design, which is the natural development of the abject failure of our leaders, and in fact of the failure of the very foundation of our interaction amongst ourselves that has developed without much direction for at least the 10,000 year span during which we have written about it. Those who resist this fact will find little more than inversely correlated discomfort in their resistance. One can deny the nature of a rhinoceros till one's dying day, but the beast remains a rhinoceros, and the denier's last day may well come on the day he encounters a rhinoceros.

Sovereign consensus building is not democracy. It's something we humans have never attempted on the scale we Occupiers are attempting now. Broad-scale cooperation as a foundation is against an established competitive approach that we have fallen into by default for a long, long time. Voting one another into submission will not work, simply because we have let the cat out of the bag. We noble individuals are learning a brand-new thing, like it or not, because a rhinoceros has smashed the freakin' house down. I for one will not abandon the liberty of my own sovereignty, no matter who votes what, nor will i abandon the respect i hold for each other Sovereign in the entire mix. I recognize the differences between whatever groups or persons are in the whole wide world. Categorical observations are real, so far as they go; but i won't be bound by them. I won't be forced to fight against the 1% simply because i am a member of the 99%. Rather i will be fighting with every fiber of my being for the 100% of us who will ALL be trampled by the rhinoceros, in pretty danged short order, unless we ALL relinquish our insistence on control, avarice, and irresponsibility of all stripes.

Each of us has a part to play, a purpose to serve. Never abandon what you know. Work hard at open discussion. Don't be embarrassed by frustrating moments or attempt to hide your own humanity. Withdraw for a moment if you need to to prevent overboiling passions. We're all in this together.  Be patient Brothers and Sisters; this is gonna hurt some....

OWS List of Demands: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=157161391040462
Adbusters: http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/occupywallstreet
NPR: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141526467/exploring-occupy-wall-streets-adbuster-origins
Middle Eastern origins: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/apr/09/libya-egypt-syria-yemen-live-updates
Acampadas: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13466977

Q and A to “Dead or Alive”

Q and A to “Dead or Alive”

Steve Bass ; Darrell Dooyema

1 April 2009

           

            Your query: “Missing some info?”

            Discussion: I figure this pertains to the underlined, “leap of faith” of mine (p.1), and this is absolutely so. According to current thinking in the field of “Information Theory,” information is an infinite resource, so of course it is impossible for us to incorporate all possible information into consideration of any topic, let alone one that addresses the infinite at its core. The book, Zeno’sParadox flirts with this notion; I hope you have fun reading it.

            Query: “How does the idea of God, or a necessary being, ‘jump out of the system?’ Is there anything intrinsically illogical or self-contradictory about the idea?”

            Discussion: This is two questions:

            A) The system is that of cause and effect. It is entirely Newtonian/Euclidian in nature, (Deterministic), and it constitutes, I think, the sum of experience for at least the vast majority of humans. Some mystics claim more advanced experience, but they have and acknowledge difficulty expressing it coherently, (Paul the Apostle, for example), and some advanced physicists seem capable of demonstrating some truly bizarre effects mathematically and experimentally, but they, too, generally acknowledge their own limitations in mentally grasping the phenomenon. The system itself, and the experience of humans, allow for no First Cause--what caused the First Cause, or the Necessary Being? This is a “jumping out of the system.” Gödel shows how this works out mathematically, applied generally to any such system and his complete theory, titled, On Formally Undecidable Propositions, is available translated online. I believe I included a link in my cited works, but the theory is largely described in 8 or so full pages of high math. It’s over my head, I’m afraid. The rational/linguistic essence of it is simple enough, though, and acknowledged by writers from Kant to Manly Hall. While the First Cause/Necessary Being solution is elegant and simple, even Billy of Ockham recognized that the simplest solution is only the most statistically likely. “Jumps” in other directions are possible, such as that demonstrated by experiments showing the super-freak phenomenon of “backward causation,” -- effects that precede cause along the “arrow of time,” (this was particularly vexing to Prigogine, a physicist cited in my little discussion), or the notion that all experience is illusory, many supporters of which assert that we create the whole business ourselves. This is also addressed by both assorted mystics, as well as physics. Einstein stated that though he believed the Quantum Field equations contained some deficiency, all our concepts of here/there/past/present/future are strictly illusory. Since his death, many of the postulates of quantum theory he found the most unacceptable due to the radical structure of reality they suggest have, in fact, (whatever that means), been demonstrated experimentally.

            B) No, there is nothing illogical or contradictory to these ideas, unless one suggests a non-sequitur, which they may well represent, I suppose. However, they can be neither demonstrated nor disputed, so far as I can tell, because yes, we are missing information. We will always be missing information-- the system is bound to be incomplete in its compass of All-There-Is.

            Query, (so to speak): “What do you think best accounts for this information?...[C]larify...your point....[C]ompare the opposition’s point...[emphasis in original].”

            Discussion: This was associated with my assertion that the evidence at hand “points in [a Theistic] direction." I suppose that the lack of a conclusive statement on this may constitute a failing on my part, but I don’t believe the question is entirely settled. I do believe quite strongly that I addressed some key opposition points, both from Theists and Atheists. Though evidence suggests strongly that Russell’s questions about the Universe can be answered in the affirmative, the nature of the Principle I sought to define remains ambiguous. I could have made this clearer only by stating it explicitly, as such. The thing is, I rather prefer to allow some ambiguity for the sake of the fact that ambiguity pervades the entire discussion. I realize the problem with this in an academic, and perhaps a philosophical context, but what can I say; I remain comfortable with its presence, and I rather like to foist it on my conversational partners....

            I’m afraid I had no idea that we were meant to personalize this--such a thing is quite unusual, in my experience. What I believe is this:

Ÿ  Reason and Science can get us close.

Ÿ  Mystical experience gets us closer still.

Ÿ  Then we should admit that we’re completely wrong.

Ÿ  A leap of faith is necessary for us all--existentially mandatory and unavoidable.

“God is essentially in all things....The existence of all created things is His existence. Thou dost not see, in this world or the next, anything besides God.”--Ibn alArabi, (Sufi)

BUT

“The Universe is queerer than we imagine. In fact, the Universe is queerer than we can imagine.” --John B. S. Haldane

            P.S. Sorry about the weird centered indentation at the end. Don’t know how that got there.

Dead or Alive

Plenty long for the format here,  though abbreviated by a deadline at the time. Not nearly a complete discussion. I owe you all this, though, as well as the continuation. Wait for it.... 

For Darrell Dooyema

21 February 2009

 Bertrand Russell suggested these questions as among those imminent in philosophy, and reserved them particularly to philosophy, claiming that if they were ever answered conclusively they would be claimed by empirical science and cease to be approachable by philosophy: “Has the universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet on which life must ultimately become impossible” (par. 5)? Many of Russell’s readers will immediately notice the proximity of these to similar questions about the existence of God. Surprise! Great thinkers have grappled with these fundamentals since before humans gained the ability to convey their arguments to us across time and still we bicker over them, rarely if ever to the satisfaction of anyone unwilling to make a leap from a logical dead end to what they view as a conclusion based on mere convenience, or one might say, a leap of faith.

            The primary argument for or against the existence of God is known as the “Cosmological” argument and shows up in variations such as Kant’s “First Cause”, Leibnitz’ “Argument From Contingency,” described by Coplestone in his debate with Russell, and goes something like this:

1. The universe began to exist.

2. Everything which begins to exist has a cause

3. Therefore the universe had a cause.

All of these say the same thing, in essence, that since we are unable to account for the infinite, or for the existence of any objects lacking a cause then we are forced to acknowledge some self-existent being, or thing, that serves as a “causeless” cause . Copleson puts it rather poetically while citing Leibnitz during his scuffle with Russell, maintaining that, “in order to explain existence, we must come to a being which contains within itself the reason for its own existence, that is to say, which cannot not exist.” (par.16).

            This line of thought is fine so far as it goes, but all too often we seem tempted to apply our prejudices to the nature of the undetermined Cause we come to at its conclusion. Plenty of theologians, including Copleston use this argument as proof of God, but the reasoning does not warrant this conclusion, even if it presents an intriguing bit of direction. It may be that “God” cannot be defined by reason. In fact the business of a First Cause seems an attempt to create distance between the thinker and a closed system that is reason itself, and an insoluble problem. This, in turn, brings to mind Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, and discussion given by Hofstadter where he suggests we humans possess a capacity to mentally “jump out of the system” when we find ourselves faced with an obviously self-defeating question that nonetheless we intuit as brushing up against truth. But as a matter of logic, this is cheating, really, and even if we allow it and admit a first Cause, or a Causal Principle, we haven’t by any means begun to describe it, and to label it “God” is not at all warranted.

            So if we find ourselves unable to prove God in this manner, what about some sort of undefined organizational principle, and if we allow for such a principle, can we go so far as to label it “Conscious,” as he asks? Well now, this is another matter and we are left to address the question of an organizing principle in the universe, at least a slightly simpler conundrum.

First, allow that by this we mean an undefined cause that girds an underlying impetus toward organization in whatever exists. This prevents us from being derailed by questions about what is real, questions of dualism versus monism, the existence of any sort of god or gods, “multiverses”. The question is only whether or not something tending toward complexity and organization rather than chaos and dissolution is apparent in the structure and processes of the universe, the definition of which we have allowed to remain rather loose. Note that to posit the existence and functioning of such a principle, whether this involves a conscious intervention or is merely an artifact of the way things are, would necessarily bring argument from physicists attached to the Second Law of Thermodynamics all the way to the level of sixth grade science classes.

            Handily enough, we can turn to Science to point us toward an answer to the matter, and over the past thirty years or so some startling developments have occurred, causing at least some in the scientific community to begin to sidle up to these foundational questions that have been eschewed by their peers since the Enlightenment gave birth to Modernism. Since 1824, when the Second Law was formulated (Erlichson, par. 6), scientists have avoided the rather glaring problem that living biological organisms ignore the Law with impunity. Both live specimens and the fossil record demonstrate the very impetus toward greater complexity one would expect if directed by our postulated organizing principle. In fact, organizations of cells, organisms, and even societies, rather than dispersing, persistently form ever more complicated structures and arrangements.

            Now, this brings us to a secondary question. “Life” is defined as, “The property or quality manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, response to stimulation, and reproduction, by which living organisms are distinguished from dead organisms or from inanimate matter...” (Morris 754). Without delving too deeply into the history and technical aspects of the matter, the problem is that there are all sorts of non-biological systems and objects, such as crystals for example, that display all these properties. Manifold systems throughout nature do, in fact, and are referred to as “self-organizing,” often achieving a level of order that seems quite magical to the average observer (Prigogine and Stengers 72). Furthermore,  some objects we would certainly think of as “live,” such as dormant seeds, display none of these properties for many years, yet can produce viable plants or other forms we think of as obviously live. In fact, cosmologists, chemists, physicists and others have described innumerable systems suiting this definition just fine, most of which we would not commonly view as “alive.” That is to say the same sorts of processes occur in things that are living and things, including our cosmological universe, which we generally imagine to be non-living.

            The mechanics involved in these associated systems can be extraordinarily complex, concentric, and overlapping, or very simple. The core features remain identical, though, with their feedback loops and  processed data and remain the same in all coherent systems from galaxies and molecules, to bacterium and human beings, and even systems which contain information only and no matter at all, such as computer programs and imaginary stories. When the coherency of the information falls apart, or dissipates, one might say as a nod to Carnot’s Second Law, we cease to recognize the structure as systemic. It takes very little information to establish a recognizable system. For example, if we say 2+2=4, we immediately recognize something coherent. If we say 2-17=12 the coherency disappears. If we substitute minor balancing variables to feed back to one another, making a slightly more complex system, such as x=x2+c, we can create a beautiful structure such as in this case is found in “fractal” artwork (Kelley 3). This is akin to phenomena of all sorts, from weather patterns, to crystal formation, a bacterium foraging for nutrients, or children learning to add, as well as any noumena we might imagine. It is fully pervasive.

            Because of this difficulty in finding a distinction between life and non-life Feinberg and Shapiro suggest that we should abandon our attempts to define life based on what parts make up an “organism,” and readjust our definition to one based on the amount of order and information contained in the arrangement of those parts, with attention to the likelihood of the arrangement occurring by chance (131). Discussing the self-organizing nature of the universe, Prigogine, who won a Nobel for his work on this field of inquiry, and not a Theist, by the way, stated that, “We no longer conceive of nature as a passive object. I can't stress enough that it is an active object in our lives,” that is, matter is not inert. It is alive and active (Tucker, par. 20).

We are forced to acknowledge that due to a lack of space, and perhaps equally because of our own limited capacity to grasp some of the technical aspects of the discussion, a deference to authority has necessarily taken place here. But this is not entirely a trap. Prigogene was a highly distinguished chemist and physicist. Collaborators Feinberg and Shapiro have distinguished themselves in the fields of physics and biology respectively. Between them are several thousand pages describing rigorous thought and experimental evidence. We could, if so motivated, study physics and chemistry or other fields and pursue the evidence ourselves. Further, these three are merely representative of a fairly large minority school of thought in scientific circles, among whom a rather common feature is having reached their jarring conclusions pertinent to Russell’s queries with great reluctance—hostile witnesses, one might say. For the most part, these scientists did not approach the material from a religious or philosophical angle, but discovered this difficulty in defining life as an outcome of studying nature as its own end. So if we trust that there is generally no bias from these learned figures toward the mystical-sounding determinations they render, there is no particular reason to assume that we would have better luck at separating objects or phenomena into the categories at hand.

            So given that we have found systems throughout nature that follow the principles of organization, in that the likelihood of having fallen together by chance approaches nil, and we find additionally that we cannot distinguish these organized phenomena from anything else we define as living by any substantive means, then we have discovered at minimum a pair of simple philosophical identities. The universe must be not only imbued with an organizational principle, but it must also--an incredible postulate--be alive. But what of our musings about God?

All of this, as noted above, smacks of Theism. One may notice similarities to the “Watchmaker” argument of the Intelligent Design camp. It is tempting to suggest that this organized, organizing, living thing we have made the universe out to be represents the flesh of God. But, alas, we haven’t even begun to wonder whether this life principle as we might call it possesses any sort of individuality or consciousness, let alone to approach the question of just what we mean by “God,” or where the heck God or the universe derives from. We have found no “Necessary Being” or “First Cause,” and certainly no reason to label any such object “Allah,“ or “Jesus,“ “Ahuramazda,” “Sophia,“ or for that matter, something like “Joe Smith.” Nothing whatsoever in this argument supports any Theistic conclusion at all, even if it may point in that direction somewhat. To make that stretch from here will require an altogether new argument. Or we could “jump out of the system.”

Works Cited

Copleston, Father F. C, and Russell, Bertrand. A Debate on the Argument from Contingency. Ed. Chrucky, Andrew. Blackboard, 21 February 2009

Erlichson, Herman. Sadi Carnot, ‘Founder of the Second Law of Thermodynamics’. European Journal of Physics 20 (1999): 183-192. 21 February 2009

Feinberg, Gerald, and Shapiro, Robert. Life Beyond Earth. New York, New York: William Morrow, 1980.

Hofstadter, Douglas. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. 1979. New York, New York: Random House, 1980.

Kelley, Alice. Fractal Cosmos: The Art of Alice Kelley 2009 Calendar. Amber Lotus Publishing, 2009.

Morris, William, ed. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. New York, New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1973.

Prigogine, Ilya, and Stengers, Isabelle. The End of Certainty:Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Physics.New York, New York: Free Press, 1999.

Russell, Bertrand. The Value of Philosophy.  Problems of Philosophy, 1912. Ed. Andrew Chrucky. Oxford University Press: 1959. Blackboard, 21 February 2009

Tucker, Robert B.Ilya Prigogine: Wizard of Time, part 2 Omni Magazine, May 1983. 21 February 2009

Willie and Waylon and Some Other Dude: A story about weed, marriage, and Texas tall tales, Part 2

 Willie and Waylon and Some Other Dude: A story about weed,  marriage, and Texas tall tales, Part 2

For you, Willie. God bless the Hell out of ya!

Alright, so this is all the same thought and I'm just thinkering around with it some for y'all. And it's all bullshit.

I bet some of y'all forgot this was in the offing. I didn't, and it really is all one thought. It's about more than lost weekends or divorce fodder, too. It's about God and country, life, liberty, and the pursuit of revolution in the fast lane. Let's hope no one gets hurt, because it's not me in the fast lane. And you thought I was going to tell you something torrid, din'cha!? Wait--maybe I am!

A lot of the guys that started this country--the U.S.A., where I live--were church folk. They tried real hard, ya have to grant, but they were church folk after all, so they had blinders on just like lots of church folk always have, and still do today. Get to lookin' too closely at the periphery of things and it's scary, don't we all know....

They came over here in the first place on the run from some other church folk, that wanted to kill the Hell out of them. So, naturally they immediately set about establishing a domicile, ( in someone else's back yard, mind you), where they could kill the shit out of everyone else, instead. After a while that arrangement started to smell a little funny--on account of the bullshit, see--and a few got together to to try and straighten things out. Besides, the Grand Game wasn't working out quite right and the game pieces kept getting scattered.

The Occupiers read St. Thomas's Declaration at Acacia Park the other day, ( I call him St. Thomas just to mess with him--he was just as scrambled as the rest of us, if ya didn't know). It was a beautiful thing. It was beautiful when Kyle read it with his shredded voice. It was beautiful when Jefferson wrote it, and beautiful when they read it in the Boston Common. It's all the more applicable today if you crunch a few names and change a few numbers, and Jefferson would certainly be needing to restrain Patrick Henry from swinging blows by now if those guys lived now, and had let it all slide as far.

Jefferson wrote the Declaration, , but he had nothing to do with the Bill o' Rights. He was out of town when they threw that stuff together, which they did 'cause they knew he hated the idea. In fact, he may have ditched town because he knew they were gonna just have to write it and he just couldn't stand it. He figured it best to leave well enough alone, for fear of a thing developing like we've heard: "Everything not forbidden is mandatory." Now would be the moment to mention that this is an axiom in--wait for it... Quantum Physics, stolen from literature fair and square by a fellow named Gell-Mann and named the "Totalitarian Principle". That's right--physicists see the poetry and the downright ridiculous humor in all this, too, sometimes.

The Bill o' Rights contains stuff designed to keep government unobtrusive. No one could figure out a way to make it go away completely back in the day, but those guys had eaten enough shit to realize they didn't want a buncha power to inhere in the Halls of Power. Even the church guys had had enough--my mom's family came over to escape religious persecution real early on, (my aunt Leslie paid someone a boatload of money to tell her we came over with a boatload. Surely it's not bullshit). So that's what they were thinking about when they put together the addenda to the Constitution. How could Jefferson and the rest have guessed that it didn't matter about the enumeration? We were bound to fuck it up, anyhow.

Willie, still onea my heroes, used to let his freak flag fly without regard for whom it may have snapped when the wind caught it. No doubt being out in the weather like that has worn his flag out some, so I hope I can spiff it up some for him--add some color, if you will. The weed-rag interview that set me off about all this was sad as a dirge, to me, simply 'cause I still idolize Mr. Nelson. I still hope he gets to be POTUS. If he does I wanna do some bongs in the Oval Office! But when I read his carryings on about medical marijuana, and how we ought to tax and regulate it and all that Republican, party-line shyte, I wanted to spend the rest of the week wearing a black arm-band, even though I know lots of the "patients" at the weed stores here in Colorado just want to get stoned.

The decision to alter one's consciousness, which each and every human being makes every single day as soon as the notion to open his eyes in the morning passes across the surface of his frontal lobes, is absolutely private, to be rendered with the final consultation of no one but the individual in question, and his or her God, (or absence of god, if such a thing were really possible). I promised I wouldn't use that clunky English, but it's important to be sure no one feels left out of this. Maybe I should say "his and her" now, to be sure I don't miss any hermaphrodites, drag queens, or Chas Bono. The fact that this is a strictly spiritual decision relieves the government, and everyfuckin'body else of responsibility for my decisions, or anyone else's decisions other than their very own. It also renders it illegal for them to regulate or tax. "Sin" tax, right? Ooooh-- I can smell the smoke coming form y'alls ears from here, though I know not all those brain cells are heating up for the same reasons.

I promised to squeeze marriage into this, right? Still think I can't do it? Watch this....

We have spent an awful lot of effort in this country worrying about whether or not queers ought to be allowed--allowed--to marry each other. Who is it gonna do the allowing? We the people? Aren't we talking about the government? Isn't marriage at its very most basic essence a spiritual agreement between some people and whatever god or non-god they deign to invoke? So what the fuck is a secular government doing in the marriage business at all??? If your church doesn't like queers, don't have any. If your church doesn't like straights, get the pastor to put on lots of makeup and a Dolly Parton wig--that ought to scare them off well enough. But if those perverts in Washington start foisting their own crap on us then--oh, wait--they have, and the shit is totally screwed now!

St. Thomas said the government should do no more than to prevent folks from harming one another. (He got that idea from J.S. Mill, who likely got it by Divine Inspiration, if you ask me). So, a bit of tastefully rendered social contract law wouldn't hurt, but licensing marriage is utterly unconstitutional, and maybe straight from the Devil, or the Balrog, or something. Just like prohibition laws of any stripe. You just can't write one in stripes that are recognizably red, white, and blue. Maybe Willie's flag is too faded for it to remind him of that, but I know the damn thing is still flying. I have to believe it. 'Cause Willie's a hero, an icon of the War from back before he was born.

And when we get together next summer we're gonna laaaugh--'cause he gets it, ya know....

I lied about it bein' part two, though. It's all been the same story--all of it. I lied about the bullshit, too--it's all fuckin' True!!!

http://www.willienelson.com/   https://www.facebook.com/WillieNelson   http://ireadculture.com/ (Full Nelson, p. 28, September 2011)