Today's Tom Sawyer

Today's Tom Sawyer

It's 4am here and this occurred to me strongly enough just now to have me say it just now.

For Vic, Ken and the rest of my Christian friends, as well as Michele, Kathryn, and others who get twitchy when I bring up the Bible.

I had breakfast with my friend Vic a little while ago and we had some of this conversation--I mean this conversation. The one we've been having if you've read any of this stuff around here, or if you've been to see me at my Facebook, or on the sidewalk or whatever. Vic is a Christian, and about as solid a practitioner as I've ever met. He "works" as a prayer director for one of the internationally influential untaxed Christian pseudo-businesses one might easily enough find scattered around town here in Colorado Springs. Years ago I lived in Lindale, Texas and I used to say Lindale was the buckle of the Bible Belt. Now that some of the big organizations down in Lindale have disappeared due to fraud and embezzlement and the like and some of the people I knew down in East Texas have moved to this very town, I sometimes say America's waistline has risen with age and the buckle has found a home in Colorado Springs.

Anyhow, Vic is an affable guy and a good friend and we had a good time over our platesful of arterial lubrication such as we Americans like to do at breakfast. He said he had read some here on these e-pages--I aaalmost cringed because of a certain propensity of mine. Then I remembered one of the axiomatic rules I've taught my kids since they started picking up English: "There's no such thing as a bad word, only bad timing."

It's time for this.

Vic said he found some of the thoughts he'd come across here, "interesting," and mused that I had a bone to pick with "organized religion," which is true, but hasn't really come up at hipgnosis just yet, I don't think. I cringed a bit at having utilized terms like "motherfuckah" while discussing a Bible tidbit known as the Beatitudes from a longer passage known as the Sermon on the Mount. It's one of those axiomatic sets of rules for lots of Christians, and for many who've never set foot in a Christian edifice as well. One finds the passage, (from the book of Matthew, chapter 5, in the Bible, if you're interested), hanging on wooden plaques and the like in people's living rooms and over their toilets and chapel entrances all over the world, and I suppose in every tongue still in print. I felt a familiar twinge of embarrassment at the time, that I get now and then from carry on so strongly about such grand subject matter knowing well that I'm no saint myself. So I brushed my way by that one at the time, and we went on with breakfast, and with other portions of the Conversation. That's why this is for Vic at the top of the page, not 'cause I mean to point him out as a prime exemplar or anything.

I have lots of Christian friends, and I often claim that very appellation amongst them, (though not so often amongst the "Romans"); some of them may now  think of me as shooting my own foot as I continue. I also have friends that are occultist dope fiends. They'll find this bit rather more amusing, I expect, but I'll implicate myself with them too, when I get a round tuit. This is not about organized religion--it's personal, you see, and directed at people I know, among others  including myself where it applies, by which I mean, "where it applies." Not, "where it applies unless it's uncomfortable to apply it there like Mercurochrome or something."

Christians are full of shit as a defining point--the idea of Christian full-of-shitness is all over the New Testament. Many if not most of them have not the merest clue about their own doctrine and those that do spend hours and hours at intricately complex and totally reducible discussions about irreducible complexity and such while ignoring the business of Love so central to their own foundations. (Recall my comments about pseudo-statements now, if you will). One of the so-called Ten Commandments reads, "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain," in that poetic old Frank Bacon English I love so much, (Exodus 20:7, if you give a damn). I'm not gonna dig out a Hebrew lexicon to make this point, and some translations say "misuse" or something instead of "take...in vain". Whatever. You Christians quit tapdancing and think about this.

Just about any Christian will get at least a little uncomfortable if you say, "God damn it." There are injunctions in the doctrine warning them away from curses, as well as oaths, unpiloted tongues, and "coarse language". They don't so often know the difference and figure this sort of thing for "taking the LORD's name in vain." Think about this: When a woman marries a man in most contemporary societies, she takes his name, (though this is no longer so mandatory as it had been given the slow and incremental abandonment of the notion of women as property in vogue these days). If a woman, say, marries some patriarchal Dude and then goes to work for some pimp on the side, she's taken Dude's name in vain. So when Christians do their little equivocation around points in their own bedrock supposedly established by Gawd Himself and endorsed by His Only Begotten where they've not-quite-deliberately, (that's a dance move called an "NQD" in the studios, BTW), failed even to drill for pylons, they join the Golden Calf Party and according to their own lore will be consumed in the fires as they fall through the very fissure in that bedrock I describe here now.

This is the same sort of thing going on when a guy zips up his fly after reading about turning the other cheek and steps out to shoot his quota of Afghans for the day. Or votes a "hawk" into office at his 8-year-old's school assembly room. Or works up a smokin' hot head of steam about the crackhead that broke into his garage to feed a real live demon that lives in any crackhead's pocket and gets real hungry and cranky, (snicker), when its belly is empty. And practicing the sort of bullshit Christianity that allows for this sort of Gene Kelly move is like sailing down the mighty Mississip' on a flat Tom Sawyer raft made of the concrete that you ought to have been using to build your foundation instead. You're already at the bottom of the river and the Water of Life is flowing right by your drowned bones.

I'll be danged...the Sun is coming up over a fine Colorado Sunday morning and I've just come to wrapping up a genuine sermon, complete with brimstone. Who'da thunk it?

Pay attention Christian: The World doesn't hate you because you bring Jesus up all the time. It hates you because you sully a beautiful thing. It hates you because you're an abject hypocrite, the worst variety of an asshole! And they can smell it, even if they can't articulate the thought. And none of this is wrong; the fact that it's coarse is a separate matter. I may have blown my disguise for some...it's OK, I'm still pretty clear with my own notion of where I stand, and this is for you at least as much as it's for my own amusement. To paraphrase Gandhi, "I'd be a Christian if it weren't for the God-damn Christians." That nor any of the above has nothing at all to do with whether I'm actually a Christian or not, nor does it have to do with "religion", organized or otherwise. It's about that personal relationship you guys keep talking about. It's dysfunctional, Yo, and it's up to you to straighten yours out while I worry about my own.

Freight Hopper Squirrel/Chicken Soup

Freight Hopper Squirrel/Chicken Soup

 

 

From David Bass & Rebecca Porter

Squirrel chicken soup--I'm going to try attaching it, let's see how that goes--this is what David described to me. It's how he used to cook the squirrels he shot when we lived in the beautiful mountains of western NC in our run down shack.

Squirrel-chicken soup

Bones and skin from one de-boned chicken (use the meat for something else)

3 squirrels, skin removed

3 carrots

3 stalks of celery

1 onion

3 cloves of garlic (or more, to taste)

1 green pepper

Enough water to cover the chicken scraps and squirrels

Black pepper to taste

Italian seasoning to taste

Optional—egg noodles or brown rice

Put the chicken scraps and squirrels in a large soup pot and cover with water.  Cook until squirrel meat is falling off the bones.  Remove from heat.  Take out chicken bones & squirrels; remove usable meat; set aside.  Strain the liquid in the soup pot, remove the bones & stuff you don’t want to eat, and put the liquid back in the pot.

Chop all the veggies.  Put them in the soup pot with the squirrel-chicken stock.  Cook them on medium low heat until they are all cooked.  Add the meat back in to the pot.  Season with black pepper & Italian seasoning.  Add noodles or rice if you like those things in soup.   Also good with buttered toast.

Thanks ever so kindly, y'all.

Have a little plug:

http://www.thefreighthoppers.com/

Genocide

Genocide

When I was a young hoodlum, I plagiarized a bit of prose poetry with something like this at its core in order to make myself look cool. As an officially legal adult I've lost interest in how things look and have taken up a pursuit of how things Are. This is my take on the piece that my younger self recognized as valuable. That unknown poet, whose name is long lost to the mists of my long lost mind may well recognize a few of  his or her words here. No harm intended, kind sir or ms. All the cells that may have stolen your work wholesale are long dead. I hope you like what my momentarily current self has done with the memory....



When I woke up this morning I pulled back the cover and in so doing scattered skin cells like chaff from wheat onto the floor.
I drank a bunch of hot-ass coffee and scalded my tongue--maybe the caffeine killed a few hundred thousand brain cells. Who knows?
I rode my bike to a demonstration, undoubtedly reaping a harvest of sorrow amongst the muscle cells in my anguished protesting protester's legs.
When I arrived and put the rest of my body to protesting I  met a friend and we hugged causing the deaths of multitudes of fleshly villagers in each of our respective bodies.
As the day progresses into evening I'll meet others maybe loved ones maybe new acquaintances and we will joyfully kill one another's cells ending their brief unnoticed lives ignominiously.
If it should fall out that we fuck--Genocide!
How is it that these most tender of acts expressing our humanity are so violent in their collatery? Does it matter? Are those cells not reborn in a new generation a new regeneration? Hark! I am born again yes born again.
I am born and born and born requiring the Universe to bear me. It's the points on a line--I am born again at each indivisible moment. Infinite. There are no two points between which there are not infinite dimensionless points. I've been born again more times than there are numbers for as I wrote this.
You've committed murder in your own head while you read it. Surely this bit has killed some of your brains off too.
The beauty of it all is Infinite. Eternal. Undying.

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)

Revolution at 2112 RPM

Revolution at 2112 RPM

For Tom, the guys at Occupy Colorado Springs, and everyone else:

So, if I sit here and carry on about how we can get out of this grief under which so many of us find ourselves buried by living cooperatively, and no one plays along, it's like division by zero, an operation that produces no definable solution and the thought of which is so troublesome it caused philosopher George Berkeley to suspect all mathematicians could be devil-worshipers on the side. Seriously. A new friend I met at Acacia Park yesterday asked where the little hullabaloo about banks and bailouts and revolution and such that was happening in Colorado Springs led, and was asking the general milieu of rabble-rousers where their overall revolution could be expected to go. (Hi, Tom). Some of the guys there, as one might expect, were so fed up with the obviously unsupportable state of current affairs that they were almost gleefully anticipating violence and war--civil war--right here in the U.S.A.. (Hi, Pat). I certainly can't blame anyone for thinking that way, given that I hoped fervently for exactly the same outcome from around the 3rd grade til only recently, really.

I've already mentioned my opinion of the futility of standard issue revolutions. We've tried that. It doesn't work. We've tried Monarchies, ordinary dictatorships, "working-class dictatorships", Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Ism after Ism--none of what we've tried to do has worked, neither for the oppressed nor the oppressors. We've been dividing by zero all the while. You should look that operation in the eye some, so you know what I'm saying. It's the same as proving a negative, or trying to work out the math of the Singularity, and if you find it difficult, one glance at a graph will turn the lights on a little for you. When I was a schoolboy, I always thought it was supremely bogus to respond to any questions about division by zero, (or other imponderables, for that matter), by asserting the answers to be "undefined" just because a conventional answer might be unsatisfactory. I was a weird kid, OK? Look at the links or find something more techie, (a little help, Kathryn?), and then extrapolate the idea to the business of social revolutions and you'll find my point, or at least one "quantum" facet of it. You could have a look at a representation of the Ouroborus and get the same notion to materialize in your head, maybe.

The shit we've been doing has not worked, is not working, and will not work. The answers we're after will not derive from the operation we've been attempting to apply, no matter what.

We compete. That's just what we do. We compete against one another, against Nature, and maybe against God, though it's not by any means compulsory for you to think of it in any sort of Divine sense, or wrestle with religious aversions for the thing to work out the same, here. That's just me. The competition we've been so avid to pursue all these generations hasn't worked any better for the atheists or the religious. If we pursue yet another bloody revolution, we'll wind up bathing in another absurdly predictable vat of blood, and maybe you super-rich can stretch your inane Grand Game out for a few more years in your bunkers after some of us useless eaters are dispatched and used as semi-organic fertilizer. The snake will still have a mouthful of tail caught up in its throat, if it lives through this one.

Tom was serious about finding a solution when he came by our little protestation yesterday. Pat was just as serious about the blood, I'm afraid. I've had enough of blood, so here's what I'm doing. See what you think. (Here comes the part that might curdle Mom's blood a bit, but maybe not...maybe not.)  I have completely abandoned ordinary reality. It's never worked so well for me anyhow, and I was already kinda screwed when I came to this notion, so you are welcome to hold on to your own personal misery and think of me as just another hopeless crackpot, if you want--another useless eater. After all, I'm seriously just an 9th grade dropout and unemployed house painter with bad joints and a broken back, a tragic character out of a Steinbeck novel if you will. Except I don't feel tragic at all; I'm the happiest guy I know. No shit. [Guess what? Still true in 2014. Loring is pretty happy.]

What does it mean to have abandoned ordinary reality? There are lots of angles to that so I apologize up front for the doglegs I'll be working as I attempt to answer the question. First, I've given up looking for a "job", or the hope of ownership of anything at all, including money. That doesn't mean I've decided to laze around on someone's sofa til I die of entropic dissipation; I've been incredibly busy since this paradigm shift, with no horizon in sight, really. There are millions of people in the shape I was in over last summer, wells running dry and bankruptcy looming while the whole time work to do abounds. I've just given up the game those $game pieces$ track, like a chess player laying down his king. Those guys won. It's OK--it's only a game, after all. I was never so good at it--never really gave a damn.

Now I find myself in a brand-new and rather sketchily mapped territory where I'm the president of my own head and nothing else, a monarch of abrogation and apostasy. So when Tom asked about a plan, I had to think about it some before I could even say as much as I am right here, right now. The two biggest differences I can define between this new approach and the other are cooperation and good ol' hippie-dippie, Jesus freak style love and self-abandonment. And not just on my end, see. I don't own anything, won't own anything at least so long as I go down this path, and can't pay for anything or support myself, or anyone else. Well then. WTF?

I've always given. Always. I loved Robin Hood as a kid, and I used to do things like stashing random campfire-scented homeless dudes in the back of my room at night, in hope that Mom wouldn't discover them and put them out in the snow or, even worse, send them packing to jail. (Neither Mom nor Dad ever discovered any of them. Hi, Mom. Hey, Dad ;)). I give away food for...well that's a fine question. When asked why I spend so much of my time on things like the Colorado College Community Kitchen, the best I've been able to come up with in response is that it's just in me to do. I think it's been some sort of psychic trade-off for the ethical compromises and outright violations to which I've succumbed in my lackluster prosecution of the game of property collection, which I've always vaguely known to be a sort of theft, just like the Marxists--well, Anarchists--say. Follow me, though--the Marxists haven't show me anything not-dysfunctional, either. (Sorry, Michele, Jon).

This new thing is about giving and receiving, and about a different way of seeing the whole picture, like when one of those optical illusions with the hidden horse and rider amongst the trees suddenly becomes apparent. Nothing changes; it's just revealed--revelatory. I live at someone else's house. I bring around food for everyone to eat that I never owned. I smoke tobacco that a gracious host brought to me, and hope my phone and broadband will still be operational next week. You're welcome to pay it for me while I try to figure out how to do this with no game pieces at all. Message me; I won't be paying for it. I'm living on a prayer, as the song goes, living on Love. You can too, I swear. Quit your shitty job at Wal-Mart's haircutting kiosk and cut your neighbor's hair for free. Don't worry about game pieces. Come down to CC on Sunday and help us give away someone else's food. Have some! Bring some pizzas from your shop to the protesters. Retire your jersey if you're a big winner and forget about the conspicuous displays of wealth. We get it. You won! Yay for you! Now put a few families up in your east wing. Love them. Be tender. Let their hapless lost patriarchs  know it's unnecessary to numb the pain with whiskey, or whatever. It's OK--we won't call you a wuss, or anything.

Right now there's Revolution in the wind. I like to read kind of a lot. It seems the handiest way to find out about shit, and I've read about a lot of Revolutions. It can make my head spin. If we pursue Revolution we'll be running in circles. We'll be eating our tails. The Earth herself is done with our bullshit, and there's really not any more tail left to eat. Let's get off the turntable. We'll be dizzy for a while, but I think we can walk in a straight line if we get our bearings. Get hold of me. I've got these words for you all, for free. This is not a trade. I can paint your house, too, or build you a deck or something. If you want to give me something, or give something to my family, or give something to someone I don't know and will never meet, then maybe you get it. I won't take it as payment. I'm not in that game.

I hope this works. I've had enough tail. How 'bout you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_by_zero