My Brains Have Fallen Out

When I was a youth at a church we attended, there was an older preacher man, now deceased, who was noted for placing his had parentally on the shoulders of young people and saying: "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."

Funny, but religious fundamentalists have a real thing about knowledge. True knowledge for them is faith ... faith in their preferred divine revelation. That is their truth. That is their knowledge. And the something he always advised people to stand for is the Bible, literally understood.

A friend of mine at work has a Baptist deacon brother who warns her all the time about me. I'm too open-minded, he tells her. "You can't talk with someone who is too open-minded."

Seems to me that that type of person is the easiest person to talk to about things.

That picture above is one I used to have in a sidebar, accompanied by a quote I haven't been able to source but which I very much like:

Minds Are Like Parachutes, They Only Function When Open.

I try to be open-minded. I think of myself as a freethinker. That, like just about any other label, is subject to definition. For example, I was a little surprised when studying the history of freethought that for a while there was a strand of openness toward spiritualism within the movement. Hard to fathom that from today's perspective, when the label is often thought to be interchangeable with atheistic or rigid philosophical materialism strands of thought.

My personal open-minded opinion about atheism and rigid materialism (I'm trying to avoid the provocative and perhaps pejorative adjective "fundamentalist" in that regard) is similar to what Einstein is quoted to have said about quantum mechanics: it is certainly imposing, but an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. Of course, I could be mistaken. Inner voices can lead us astray.

But I'm wondering: since I'm so quick and bold to throw around the term "fundamentalist" when describing a rigid religious viewpoint, am I arguing with a double standard? I only rarely refer to strong atheism or materialism as fundamentalist, and that only when I'm suggesting a little more open-mindedness might be appropriate. Am I being consistent?

It's only fair to point out that even one of today's most prominent atheists and materialists, Richard Dawkins, stops short of saying point blank that absolutely God does not exist. Or as he put it: "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable." Of course he is there talking about the popular theistic idea of God. I agree with him one hundred percent here. But I might be a little more hesitant about calling theistic belief a delusion the way he does. A misunderstanding or misinterpretation of evidence maybe ... but a delusion?

Don't get me wrong here. I'm closer to Dawkins in my understanding of reality than I am to Pat Robertson or Billy Graham. But I want to retain my freedom to disagree with authority and develop my own understandings, even if I risk holding misunderstandings.

The problem I have with rigid viewpoints or fundamentalism is the narrow-mindedness. That's the very opposite of freethought. And the extreme of falling for anything is not usually a danger. What's wrong with people disagreeing?

Nancy Grace On Dancing ... Who Could Care Less?

I don't watch a lot of television. Other than watching the news in order to try keep abreast of what's going on in the world, I just don't see that much that is worth my valuable time. The modern trend towards cheaper and cheaper product, quality be damned, has brought us the reality TV genre. Those of us old enough to remember when quality could still be found in abundance on television - fewer networks, less broadcasting time, higher broadcasting standards, better overall quality entertainment - could puke at what we have now. I took out my cable some time back because it just isn't worth my hard-earned money. It takes more than mind-rotting time-filler to entertain me, and for what pay TV costs today, I could better spend my time reading, writing, or just reflecting on life. It's to the point now that even free TV isn't such a bargain. Therefore, my set remains off the majority of the time.

Now comes the "news" (is it newsworthy?) that modern queen of mean Nancy Grace is going to be a contestant on the upcoming season of Dancing With The Stars. Does it matter whether or not she can dance, or dance well enough to win the silly contest? Honestly, if I were to take the time to watch this spectacle it would only be in hopes of seeing karma be a bitch and give Nancy a taste of what highly subjective and irrelevant judgmentalness is all about. But even that wouldn't be "must see TV" for me.

In what sense is Grace a star, a luminary, except maybe as a stellar example of the shallowness of our culture?

Some you people you either love or hate. And some you try to ignore because they really are, when all is said and done, irrelevant.

The Ol' Eyeroll

That's old "Banjo Eyes" Eddie Cantor, largely forgotten now but once a very popular entertainer, noted for his expressive eyes. You really have to see films of him to get the full impact.

But it's popular today to refer to looks of incredulity as eyerolls. That is the subject of this post.

Self-relection suggests to me that I have a tendency to do that too much when people tell me of unusual events in their lives. Let me modify that a bit. I tend to do that when they come to me "out of the blue" with a strange tell. If I am starting the conversation and probing their lives for such tales, I tend to be more serious, as if I'm doing research. Well, in fact I am.

A friend came to me and told me the dirt on her mother's grave sank in several inches and within six months another family member had died. It was a sign, she told me. Eyeroll!

Another friend, of the fundamentalist Christian variety, told me of a person at his church who had fallen and shattered his knee cap. After coming up for prayer in the church, his knee cap was instantaneously restored. Eyeroll!

But when I probe my younger brother's mind and ask for details about the time he was allegedly awakened by a ghost shaking his bed, or the time my mother swears she saw a gnome that upon realization of being seen suddenly ducked into the ground behind some rocks, there is no eyeroll. There are more questions. "Ah, that's interesting."

I love these kinds of stories and collect them, especially stories from people I know personally and have good reason to believe are of basically good character and sound mind. They mean the most to me. They do because they reaffirm a belief I have that the world isn't necessarily an easy place to find understanding.

I write about worldviews a lot on my blog. These are models we have constructed (or simply bought into wholesale with little if any thinking on our own part) and which we use to determine what is true and what is real.
When we encounter something contrary to our comfy little worldview, it is all too easy to eyeroll.

Consider something philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote in his The Analysis Of Mind:

There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

I remember (at least I think I do) my reaction upon reading that for the first time. I thought: "Okay, true enough; but no reason in the least to seriously entertain the notion." (I don't remember if my eyes rolled after I read Russell's statement.) I had at the time (and still do) this strong conviction that the past is real and my perception of reality as I experience it is real (if admittedly not completely understood).

Maybe God (whatever he/she/it is) is a trickster. Maybe God created a universe - or dreamed it into existence (maybe reality isn't real but we all this around us are only figments of another's imagination) - that is reasonable enough to basically understand it, but yet filled with illogical oddities that are designed, I don't know, maybe to keep us from getting bored, overly arrogant, or just to keep us confused and intellectually off-balance.

I don't really believe that is the case. I know it wouldn't go over well with my atheist friends. But I think they lack imagination sometimes. The reason atheism is the imposing force it is is because most people define God out of existence.

Any eyerolls on that?

As I suggested the other day in my At Rainbow's End post, we all are more or less imprisoned by our inner perceptions of what is true (read: our worldview). And for us that prison can be quite real and confining. Breaking free of our mental prisons might not bring us to "the truth," but at least it makes the quest more wondrous and enjoyable.

Having written all the above, I have to confess that I still have the eyeroll on ready for the next time I hear something that doesn't square with my worldview. But after the eyeroll I'm going to say, "let's lay out some possibilities and see what makes the most sense based on what we think we know." A better response than "you're nuts!"

The Case Of The Incredible Self-healing T-shirt

Well, this just happened to me, Sunday being my regular laundry day, and I thought I would blog about this experience as a lesson in one of the many fascinating ways the mind works and how easily we can be misled by it.

First, the necessary set up.

I have five sets of work clothes that I use on my job, consisting of black t-shirts (no writing, symbols, or logos of any kind) and black jeans. My public rationale is because of the oil, dirt, and other stain-makers I encounter in my normal work shift, this allows me to look fairly neat without clothing ruined by hard-to-remove stains. Of course I get my share of Man-in-black (as in country singer Johnny Cash) and men-in-black (as in Ufology) jokes. That's okay. Underneath it all, though my public rationale is the truth, there is a strain Goth running in me.

Because of the recession I rarely work on Saturdays. All five sets of my black "uniform" are duly washed and hung up on hangers on Sunday mornings, readied for the upcoming week. Usually I have to replace my work wardrobe twice a year. Sometimes I have to replace the shirts more often because of the rips and snags caused by the metal parts I deal with daily.

Now I have one t-shirt in particular that I have been watching carefully. It has three holes that are slowly getting bigger with each washing, displaying my white, untanned belly (I have a light complexion even when tanned.) I put this t-shirt in the back of my rotation because Fridays are slow days at work and not many people are there. The truth is, I need to go ahead and replace it because it will soon get to the place of looking totally unprofessional. It's pure economics, and I have a richly deserved reputation for frugality.

Anyway, for those of you still reading along, this morning as I took out my uniforms from the running clothes dryer one set at a time and hung them on hangers, I kept out an eye for the holey t-shirt, in order to place it in back of my rotation.

Funny thing was, the holey t-shirt never appeared.

WAIT A FREAKIN' MINUTE! THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE.

So I went back to my hangers and one-by-one searched my uniforms carefully for the holey shirt. I did this several times with no luck. Hey, it was still early and the sun was not fully up yet, so I turned on the bedroom light and again flipped through the uniforms searching for the holes that were on the left-hand side of my shirt.

Still, not finding the holey shirt, I sat down for a moment to think. "There has to be a logical explanation for this," I thought to myself. After all, I had washed my clothes with city water in my own washing machine, not in the springs at Lourdes. No reason to think anything miraculous was happening.

Okay, I began to think that maybe the holes must have been further to the side than I thought, perhaps wrapping around to the back, and that is how I missed them. So I turned the hangers around and one-by-one flipped through them looking at the backs of the shirts. Nope, no holes.

Then another inspiration struck. I have many black t-shirts, many holey but not thrown out, just downgraded to lounging-around-the-house shirts. Maybe I washed one of those instead and left the particularly holey shirt in the clothes hamper. So I went to the laundry room to check. Nope, only a few rags and towels for another load.

There is no way I can adequately express my consternation over this matter. By this point I was beginning to think that my memory was malfunctioning, that maybe the holey shirt had already been disposed of and replaced and that for some reason I had a mental lapse in ability to recall that event. It certainly made more sense to me than having a self-healing t-shirt. After all, strokes run in my family - no reason to suppose little mini-strokes couldn't be working their magic on my brain.

But that possible explanation didn't satisfy me.

So one last time I took five the hangers down and one-by-one, very slowly and with great deliberation, laid them on my bed, with the overhead light on, and scanned for holes.

Guess what? About the third set in, as I recall, suddenly there the holes were, big and prominent as ever.

However, they were on the right-hand side of the shirt, contrary to the way I had remembered it.

I can't say why I was so sure they were located on the left-hand side, but that certainly was my conviction - a conviction I held so firmly in my mind that it allowed me to zero in on that the wrong side of the t-shirts and miss time and again the holes only slightly out of my visual range.

Ah, the human mind, so capable and yet at the same time so vulnerable. As much as I rely on empiricism, I just can't fully commit to it because the senses are so easily fooled and led astray.

But my skepticism of the miraculous is still firmly in place ... unless perhaps I did remember the placement of the holes correctly in the first place and somehow they were removed to the opposite side...

Nah, couldn't be. Right?

Growing Up In The Shadow Of The Supernatural

We all inherit (or maybe receive through a form of osmosis) a worldview from our parents or from those who did the most to raise us up through those trying childhood years.

The view that was instilled in me was that of a fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christian faith. That served as the mental template of my early life. When I got old enough to enjoy meaningful rebelliousness, I began to reexamine the basic reality I was first taught. My viewpoint slowly began to evolve, and has left me years later with something that certainly works for me (most of the time), but which still has gaps that will probably never be filled.

Please understand that mine and my family's religious experience, our "church life," was not what seems to me from my personal observation of my acquaintances, the casual affair it is with most adherents. The beliefs instilled me from birth were not vague concepts that mostly sat collecting dust somewhere on the shelves in the backs of our minds. These beliefs were constituent elements to our character and personalities.

When I was a child we attended church services four times a week - two Sunday worship services, a Tuesday night "prayer meeting," and a Thursday service directed at the youth. Though out the year there was a Vacation Bible School in the summer and those (dreaded to me as a child) revivals - that in those "good old days" routinely lasted 4, 5, and even 6 or more weeks. At the end of every year we held a Watch Night service where the New Year was literally "prayed in," after hours of testimonies, singing, and sermonettes.

Yes, we were what I now consider to be fanatics. And we were somewhat isolated from the real world, at least emotionally and intellectually speaking, preferring the company of our "brothers and sisters in Christ" to outside "friends" and even blood family.

These Pentecostal church services we attended were replete with strange wonders. People routinely walked the backs of pews (never falling), turned cartwheels in the floor, and danced and whirled "in the Spirit," they spoke in "new tongues," again in the Spirit," - a strange sounding gibberish that seemed even to my child's mind quite unique to the individual (I could close my eyes and tell who it was speaking in tongues from the sounds they uttered) - while others "interpreted" this heavenly language for us, usually prophecies of upcoming events. People testified of the spiritual warfare that went on in their daily lives, miraculous answers to prayer and stories of demons and angels that were relayed and believed in the most literal manner.

From the distance that has grown between my childhood and now, and after years of probing, reading, thinking, and observing, I'm able to see that as strange as my youthful worldview was and might seem to many, psychologically speaking, there was a certain resonance between it and the typical human psyche.

The majority of humans have experiences with something most think of as a transcendent reality. I like to use for shorthand Rudolf Otto's term "the numinous," although I can't fully accept what he and most would consider the supernatural. Adjectives such as supernatural and paranormal don't fit neatly into my current worldview of naturalism, which to my mind gives us a better shot at making sense of it all.

As strange as my religious upbringing might seem to most, for those who have studied comparative religions, or have watched one of the popular documentaries on Vodou which are sometimes shown on television, or maybe have read about the Native American Ghost Dance movement (to give two distant and seemingly unrelated examples), it can be seen that imbedded deep in the mind of humanity is the psychological framework that allows these - for lack of a better term - alternative realities to catch hold.

The rise of the modern scientific worldview has not - to the consternation of many of its more fanatical adherents - ridded humanity of the psychological depths of the numinous experience. That is for the simple reason that so many humans have encounters that don't seem to rest so easily in the reductionistic framework. The orderliness of the universe as revealed in the "laws of nature" has not canceled out the appeal of superstitious and magical thinking. That is because for most people, what they feel and experience is what they tend to accede to and believe in, overall theories be damned.

Religion and especially religious experience seems at its base to be merely the human expression of the ignorance of our inner selves. Religion is steeped in psychological archetypes and is highly personal. Even symbols that are more or less universally recognized can be given those individual twists which make them variations on a theme. That is why, at least I believe it is why, religions turn dangerous and/or harmful when the symbols are interpreted literally, canonized, organized, and then used as means of controlling the masses under the guise of orthodoxy.

I firmly believe that a free mind is a healthy mind, and to that end I've claimed my basic human right to think for myself and view all authority with at least a healthy dose of skepticism. I've allowed myself to unshamefacedly and in all sincerity say "I don't know" when indeed I don't. Finally, I've embraced the provisional nature of my worldview. That was something that didn't come easily to me after my early training.

The Skeptical Mystic

Before heading to the land of Nod last night, I was reading Raymond Smulliyan's interesting little book This Book Needs No Title, in which I found the following tidbit I wanted to pass along:

A Skeptical Mystic

John: Have you ever had any mystical experiences?
Jim: Oh, I have them all the time, but I don't believe a one of 'em!

Mystical experiences? My entire life (so far!) has been one long mystical experience. My personal challenge has been to make sense of it all. So many things don't make sense to me. Others make a difference sense to me now than when I viewed them from within my former worldview.

It seems to my puny mind that in the quest to arrive at that ever-elusive thing we call truth, there exists a continuum. On one end is absolute gullibility, and on the other is closed-minded skepticism. You can place me well in-between those two extremes.

I think of myself as something of a skeptic. I don't believe in things easily - by that I mean without what I believe are good, sound reasons.

On the other hand, I have a sense of the mystic when I think about the cosmos. My personal opinion is that the best scientists, the real movers and shakers, have been men and women with something of a sense of mysticism about them. (And that should in no way be construed as a swipe at the materialists and reductionists among the science elite, whom I would be unwise to ignore, so I don't.)

Then there are the philosophers. My heroes have always been philosophers. That is the camp in which I feel most comfortable. I believe that some folks too often mistake philosophy of science for science and philosophy of religion for religion. But then who am I to try and draw distinct lines here? It's just a thought I have.

Always in the back of mind is Mark Twain's famous quote: "Truth is stranger than fiction." That quotation usually gets clipped. The entire sentences is:

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

And with that thought I close.

Groper Poll: Meaningful Coincidences

I've mentioned here before that I have an affection for the thinking of Carl Jung and am intrigued by his concept of Synchronicity, or meaningful coincidences. In fact, the study of coincidence has been a lifelong interest of mine.

The cosmos itself seems to many of us to be the grandest coincidence at all. There is an ages long debate whether that coincidence is in need of an explanation or if mere coincidence IS the explanation for the cosmos.

It seems only natural that many of us seek and find meaning in the coincidental nature of life in the universe.

My Groper Poll question for today:

Have you ever experienced a coincidence (or coincidences) that seemed to have deep personal meaning?

If so, I'd love to hear all about it.

At Rainbow's End

(Photo credit: www.publicdomainpictures.net)

There once was in my old hometown a used record shop called At Rainbow's End. It specialized in rare and hard-to-find records from the golden age of rock 'n' roll. That was the gold at the end of that rainbow. It was run by an aging hippie and his wife (who seemed to have aged in the conventional manner and did not look hippie-ish at all). He reminded me forever more of Mad Magazine publisher William Gaines.

Neat shop. But what really has kept alive my memory of all this was something the proprietor said to a friend of mine whom I had accompanied there on a record search. He was looking for a particular song and was convinced it was on a certain album by certain group, and the owner, well acquainted with the number, thought it was on a different album. They jousted back and forth about it for a while.

My friend, however, was adamant (turned out later that he was right). So the owner finally said: "I'm sure in your mind you're right ... and, after all, that's where you live!"

My friend and I looked at each and burst into laughter. In fact, we used that line for years afterward whenever we disagreed with one another but acknowledged the sincere conviction of our opinions.

In yesterday's post I slipped in a thought that is probably controversial. In fact, I half-expected one of you might call me out on it. I wrote: "...there does exist a key to understanding."

Now I will expand on that thought just a little. I will tell you that what I had in mind was the observation the record store owner made, that inside of every skull there is an apparent truth. That "truth" is our own personal understanding of the way things are. And it is the most powerful force we experience. We can be totally wrong in our understanding, but the sheer force of our personal convictions can distort or cancel out incoming information. Yet we remain happily ignorant.

There is no escaping the fact that no matter who we are, we all have a personal and overarching idea of what the cosmic truth is. It guides our manner of living. What we think is true, it is often the case, is more powerful than the cold and sterile mechanics of how the cosmos actually works.

A comfortable and pure agnosticism allows me to navigate my way through life with a minimum of angst and psychological shipwreck. The key of understanding for me was reconciling as much as is humanly possible (and, believe me, it is an ongoing project) the apparent truth with my personal concept of what is true. It's knowing I don't need to have it all figured out. I just need a fairly workable map to guide my journey. The rest is details.

Confessions Of A Former Night Owl

The Sufi Mystic Poet Rumi wrote a verse that has stayed imbedded in my mind since the first time I read it:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

Like anything said by a mystic, it is subject to interpretation. For me personally, though, it has a specific meaning.

As a teenager I gravitated into becoming a night owl. I loved the wee hours of the morning, when most of the world around me was fast asleep. Cable television did not begin to sprawl across my hometown until the late seventies. TV went off the air back then after the late movies played out, usually by 2 a.m. Still I lingered in those late hours dissapating and worrying about the cares of life. Sleeping in until 11 a.m. or later was my habit, yet I never felt rested.

Perhaps you've heard the old saying that as you get older you become your parents. I've found that true in many instances - my sleep habits, for example. Franklin's "early to bed and early to rise" is something that slowly began to take hold of me in my middle-age years, and even when I'm off from work I still keep an early schedule. My normal waking up time is between 3 and 3:30 a.m., and on the weekend between 5 and 6.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you, don't go back to sleep.

It is in these precious early hours, after a good night's sleep and with rested brain, when I am able to think so far-reachingly. The longer the day wears on, the more constipated my mind gets with the countless details of a busy life. But in the stillness of early morn I can think powerfully and deeply.

You must ask for what you really want.

To me that suggests that there does exist a key to understanding, but it is up to us to use it. With all the outside distractions which exist in our modern age, is it surprising so many people have hang-ups and are dependent on drugs to soothe their troubled minds. Might not there be a better way?

People are going back and forth across the doorsill, where the two worlds touch.

I can't say with a certainty what Rumi had in mind when he jotted down those words, but my personal interpretation is that these two worlds are the dream world and what we think of as "the real world." The morning breeze refreshes me to the introspection of the previous night's mindwork, as my dreams reveal to my conscious mind the secrets of my deeper pysche.

Looking back on my former night-owl days, I awoke to meet a day well underway. People were up and rushing about, the noises of the city were in full force, the phone was ringing, I found it necessary to situate myself into an already emerging picture, as if I had walked into a movie well after the beginning, when the groundwork had already been laid.

No time for introspection in all that.

By the time the day had wound down and the pace of life slowed, when the quiet and darkness allowed my mind to embrace its deeper thoughts, my brain was already tired from overuse. The dreams of the night before had mostly faded into the ether.

Everyone is different, I know, but I'm the type of person who thrives on regular down time. A time for meditation and reverie is a must. This time is best for me in the stillness of the early morning, when I am invigorated and receptive to fresh perspectives. I think that is more in keeping with our natural circadian rhythm.

In fact, this blog exists because I don't go back to sleep when I first stir in the early mornings.

Does the breeze at dawn hold any secrets for you?

Looking Deeper: The Appeal Of The Occult

The Seattle Times has a little story about William Kiesel, a lover and now publisher of books dealing with esoteric subjects. He is also an organizer for an annual Esoteric Book Conference to be held there September 10 and 11.

As this story points out, because of the popularity of such books as The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter "the 21st century has been reintroduced to ancient signs, symbols and magical practices."

I think it is fair to say that the occult has always been with us and always will be. And if the above introductions have repopularized that worldview, it comes only after a brief waning of its previous repopularization during the psychedelic sixties and seventies and the hippie counterrevolution.

As I suggested, the occult has always been here, ebbing and flowing, changing with the times.

The word occult carries with it the idea of hiddenness. It, like most religions, is a way to deal with the human encounter of the numinous. Occultism attempts to look beyond the obvious in existence, using symbols to tease out the supposed true underpinnings of reality.

This hasn't been a popular thing with adherents of certain traditional religions. As the Seattle Times story points out:

During the Catholic Church's domination of Europe, publishers took their lives in their hands by printing them. "The Inquisition started cracking down ... They were afraid these (writings) would disprove the existence of God," Keisel says. Some who insisted were burned at the stake.

Right from the get-go of the Jesus movement in the first century of the common era, there were occult versions of the message that attempted to look deeper than the surface facts. We know that movement as Gnostic Christianity.

Even the subject of scientific knowledge is not free of occultism, as is obvious from the debate between the so-called "quantum mystics" and the scientific fundamentalists. (Both camps tend to grate on my sensitivities with their excesses.)

It's a human thing, looking out our windows and viewing the universe as a cosmic play - with humans as the key players! The logical next step is looking behind the scenery and props and actor's masks to what it's really all about.

The everlasting appeal of the occult is humankind's inability to accept that life has no deeper meaning, that it just is.

Straightjacketed

Don't know if any of you pay much attention to the right side of my blog where the About Me blurb tells you a little something about my intentions here. My blog is a work in progress, in fact a worldview in progress. I'm building and expecting to be building until death do I take my leave from this vale of ... whatever you want to call it.

The illustration above is a poster of magician and escapologist Harry Houdini, one of my childhood heroes, struggling to free himself from a straight-jacket. I had a friend who told me about the man and then I saw the highly fictionalized movie about his life which starred Tony Curtis in the title role. There was a book about his life in the book catalog my elementary school passed around to students that I ordered and devoured. Oh, and let me give the photo credit for the above to www.houdinitribute.com, an excellent source of info about Houdini.

I chose the poster above to illustrate the dilemma we often find ourselves in when examining the world around us. Strange place, it is. Some things make great sense and some things don't. All of us walk along a path illuminated by the lantern of our worldview. Things that don't fit neatly into our worldview we discard, or at least form a mental resistance to. Many of us are open-minded, and try to draw bigger circles in order to allow the possibility of things that we don't normally give much stock to. (You'll notice I'm not one who places much stock in the rule of never ending sentences with prepositions ... as Churchill once said, "That is something up with which I will not put!")

Time was I was one of the fundamentalists. I was straightjacted in a worldview that did not allow for deviations. Now I've lived long enough to realize it isn't an easy thing to amass all the answers. I'm, as I always have been, a bit of a mystic. But that is because I believe in something which has been called rational mysticism. A concept I realize is far from uncontroversial. Moreover, I am one of those who have pejoratively been called (by those I consider to be scientific fundamentalists, again a controversial term) an accommodationist, because I believe there need not be a conflict between science and religion - between science and fundamentalist religion or fundamentalist science and religion, yes. But not science and religion properly defined.

But that's me and the position of my blog.

You see, I have a theory, a sneaking suspicion, that the formulation of our personal worldview has more to do with our personalities and psychological makeups than to strict adherence to any one school of thought. And to that I must plead "guilty" also, although I honestly try to fight it and keep myself "pure."

It is said that Houdini could dislocate his shoulders in order to gain slack when he was being restrained in a straight-jacket, thus making escape possible. He also wisely did not allow his restrainers to intertwine his arms in the device. Finding ways to gain slack in the straight-jackets of our minds seems a bit more difficult.

Little Black Shuck

Okay, it's finally the weekend ... time for a little fun. I'm too tired from a very grueling work week to be serious.

My lady friend has been telling me how her dachshund, not quite a year old, likes to sit for extended periods of time on her butt. And just on her butt, the way she sees her family do. Bella apparently has very good balance (especially for such a long-bodied doggy), and often performs this stunt on the arm of the couch when my gal's sons are eating while watching TV. A clear attempt to charm them out of a bite! When I got online this morning and checked my e-mail I found where she had sent me a cell phone picture of her baby doing her sitting thing.

Let me pause briefly for my newer readers and offer a link to a post I did last year detailing how my gal found her canine companion. A little tongue in cheek (maybe) story of how the harmonious forces of the universe brought a very special pup and a very special lady together. And just so my sweetie doesn't get mad at me for the good-natured poking of fun at Bella's expense, let me hasten to add this link to the post I did once she got her puppy home, settled in, and named. Just want to let you guys know this cuddly little pooch isn't really a hellhound, even if her name was inspired by a character in the Twilight saga.

All that said, when I downloaded this latest picture (after the initial and inevitable "awwww" thought), I looked at Bella and thought to myself, "whoa, a miniature Black Shuck." I think it was the glowing green eyes. Otherwise I would have just thought she had been Svengali-ized. (That "thing" on her left ear, in case you are wondering, is the inside of her turned inside out floppy ear ... too cute!)

In case you are unfamiliar with Black Shuck, he is an old bit of British folklore. Let's get down the trusty old Complete Idiot's Guide To Ghosts And Hauntings, by Tom Ogdon, and let him explain:

There are a variety of canine death omens, especially in Great Britain. The best known is the Black Shuck, also called Old Shuck or Galleytrot (among many other colloquial names). The tradition is especially strong in Norfolk, East Anglia, and Devon. The creature gets its name from scucca or sceocca, which are Anglo-Saxon words meaning "Satan" or "demon." The fact that the death omen is seen in the shape of a dog is attributed to an old Norse myth: Old Shuck is supposedly descended from the black Hound of Odin (or Woden) that accompanied the Vikings when they invaded the British Isles.

Black Shucks are usually, well, black and gigantic, about the size of a colt or calf. Their yellow, red, or green eyes (depending on who's doing the telling) glow or burn in the dark. Sometimes, the Black Shuck is headless; still the eyes burn like fire in the empty darkness where the head should be....If you see a Black Shuck, it means death (most likely yours) within a year.

Now I'm hoping that only holds true for personal encounters with Old Shuck and not for photos, else I have just done my esteemed readers a grave disservice (to say the least, and to use a really lame pun, too).

All joking aside, Bella is the most special dog I know. Just being around her makes me feel happy and very warm and fuzzy inside. She's a very loving and lovable dog.

Groper Poll: Favorite Children's Books

I was fortunate enough to have a stay-at-home mom for the first six years of my life. We couldn't afford that, being impoverished as we were, but my mother cared for elderly parents until they died. One of the benefits of this was that she taught me how to read before I began school. And read I did. I've always been an avid reader.

Today I thought it would be interesting to find out what children's books made the greatest impression on my readers. I love children's books and keep up with what is being released even now. My theory about this is that if a book is written which is simple enough for a child to fully grasp its message, surely us older folks can get it also. People are sometimes surprised when I recommend children's books, or sometimes even relate to them the contents of a children's story. But to me this is just like using parables to illustrate a point. A parable needn't be long and involved in order to make a point, and in fact I think it is better if they aren't.

It would take a series of posts for me to include every book I read as a child that made an impression on me. Again, I was fortunate in that my mom, noticing my love of reading, signed me up for the Weekly Reader Book Club. However, I will give you two children's books that made the greatest impression on me, that I made it a point to obtain and read until they were plumb worn out.

The first of these was Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are. By far my favorite. It spoke to both my own wild imagination, as well as giving a voice to my repressed anger at how unfairly (I thought) I was often treated as a child. The illustrations, simple as they were, held my attention for countless hours. The forests in my own mind tended to be much more complex, however.

The second book I would point to is Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel. What a great story. I think it spoke to my developing emotional side. I interpreted it as a love story between a man and his beloved steam shovel (incidentally, Mike's steam shovel was a female named Mary Anne). He thought his was the bestest of all steam shovels, even after newer, supposedly more efficient, models became available.

Long before I had the fever for members of the opposite sex, I had a succession of cats and dogs, each that I loved best of all the animals I knew. And then as now, I knew many. Before I had pets I had my beloved stuffed animals. I carried them to bed with me every night and still remember lining them up on either side of me as I tucked myself and them snugly into bed (and then proceeded to wallow all over them throughout the night).

But this devotion of mine extended to inanimate objects as well. I remember my first guitars. They weren't females in my mind like Mike's Mary Anne. But the devotion was definitely always there. And I've always had a personal library of books that I loved. Then as now I would often read until falling asleep, cradling my beloved books close to my chest.

I think I understood Mike Mulligan.

So now I ask today's Groper Poll question: What Children's Books had the greatest influence on you when you were young?

And feel free to expand on why these books were special to you.

A Recipe For Ignorance

Sometimes people confuse stupidity and ignorance. Ignorance can be easily cured with a some honest effort. True stupidity is another matter altogether.

It was the writer Elbert Hubbard, his brilliant career tragically cut short in the Lusitania disaster, who offered the following insight:

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

Personally, I've always suspected that those who are loudest and most dogmatic in stating their views are often among the most ignorant (sometimes stupid).

It takes more than mere humility, but also a bit of wisdom, to admit you just don't know everything and you be might wrong about many of the things you think you know.

I've said this before but will do so again: The reason I chose Groping The Elephant for my blog title is because I'm not dead yet (and hopefully nowhere near it) and am still in the processing of learning, or groping at an elephant I can neither see nor feel in its totality.

These posts represent my best thinking at the moment. I reserve the right to change my mind later. I hope all of you do, too.

Michelle Bachmann: Queen Of Silly

When Newsweek magazine recently featured Michelle Bachmann on their cover in what was deemed a controversial photograph, I was tempted to say a few things. In the end, I didn't weigh in.

For the record, I think Bachmann is a real hottie. A very pretty lady I never get tired of looking at on the boob tube. However, I get very tired of listening to her spew idiocy. The Newsweek cover with her spacey gaze might have been unfair, but then again, it might be suggestive of a side she often shows. Too often for me take her seriously as a presidential candidate.

I'm just going to point to two recent examples of her silliness. Don't get me wrong, I disagree and find goofy at least 80 percent of what she says. But the two examples I'm highlighting in today's post are, I think, unforgivable examples of a politician trying use dead celebrities to score popularity points and making a fool of herself in the process. And these flubs are unforgivable in this age when most of the folks with money (and many who can't afford it) has access to the internet through their cell phones. I mean, good grief, how hard is it to do a little fact checking to avoid looking a dunce when you open your mouth?

First, when kicking off her campaign in Waterloo, Iowa she made reference to The Duke, actor John Wayne, whom she said hailed from Waterloo. Even going so far as to say

Well, what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa, that's the kind of spirit that I have, too.

The oops here is that it was the notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy who was from Waterloo. And it can certainly be hoped that it isn't Gacy's spirit that she wishes she had.

Then there was yesterday's incident that I saw on NBC's evening news. (If you missed it, Huffpo has the video here.) I couldn't help laughing when she, pretending to be a big Elvis Presley fan, kept wishing him a happy birthday on the anniversary of his death. Now no true Elvis fan would do that. Which suggests to me she is just your typical politician stretching to associate with any potential voting bloc. Unfortunately, she's making a fool of herself doing it.

She later tried to clarify and correct herself by saying "As far as we're concerned, he's still alive in our hearts." The "we" being the Elvis fans, whose attention she probably just lost. Okay, he still lives there. But what has that to do with this very unfortunate mix up? It would be similar to wishing JFK a happy birthday on November 22, wouldn't it?

I suppose a Christian like Bachmann wouldn't think wishing a dead person a happy birthday is that strange. After all, they usually think of the departed as leaning over Heaven's bannister watching the goings on "down here." And Elvis could not possibly have gone to Hell, right?

As far as his Christianity, that seems to be overblown somewhat. His religious view, according to the accounts of those who knew him best, was a strange amalgam of very vague Christianity with a heavy dose of New Age wackadoo. That being the case, I submit it is just as reasonable to suggest that he was reincarnated in Amy Winehouse and is now between incarnations and unable to receive birthday wishes.

[Side note: Yes, I'm an Elvis fan. But I'm a fan of his singing. From a personal perspective, I find him every bit as silly as the would-be president who is rubbing her face in his legacy, hoping some of his popularity will cling to her. And yes, I think what happened to Winehouse was sad, but exactly the same type of squandering of life and talent that Elvis is now noted for.]

Candidate Bachmann bears watching (for comedy relief, anyway). I look forward to her campaign.

When Spontaneous Human Combustion Was Taken Seriously

I stood in my favorite used book store thumbing through a copy of Larry Arnold's exhaustive study of SHC, Ablaze!, priced fairly enough at a four-and-a-half bucks, trying to decide whether or not I wanted to take it home. It's a subject that had always intrigued me. Already I had (and still do) stacks of used books I've bought with the best of intentions, to read whenever I got the time. And this seemed a popular treatment of the subject rather than a critical effort. I passed and purchased other items.

Curiously enough many of the best known cases of SHC involved tobacco smokers. Mary Reeser, who died under strange, fiery circumstances in 1951, is one of the best documented cases of this type. Lots of information about her is available. Here is an old newspaper story about her death. And here is her Findagrave page. Interesting, I think.

The most popular critical theory for explaining these odd cases of people who were nearly completely cremated in environments that suffered minimal heat damage is what has been called the Wick Effect. Under certain situations a person's clothing can, when sufficiently heated, absorb melting body fat and form something similar to a candle wick that can burn at quite high temperatures for long enough so as to cremate the majority of the body.

That sounds reasonable enough to me. Better than, say, the idea that maybe space aliens studying our species and environment periodically aim at their subjects an advanced ray gun capable of doing the deed. Or the idea that maybe God or more likely Satan had something to do with it. I hate those types of suggestions worst of all.

However, I did run across this old item from the October 27, 1829 issue of the Boston Medical And Surgical Journal, under the heading Human Combustion, which gives the best scientific thought of that day:

In a Memoir presented to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, M. Julia de Fontanclle has furnished an account of fifteen cases of spontaneous human combustion, the occurrence of which seems to be supported by respectable testimony. He considers this combustion to depend on a very advanced and putrid degeneration of the system, which suddenly produces very combustible substances, at the expense of the muscular fibre, &c. This degeneration is considered as presenting a perfect analogy with vegetable putrid fermentation and putrefaction. The putrefaction of vegetables is known to occasion the development of so much heat as sometimes to cause their inflammation.

That human combustion does not depend on the combination with atmospheric oxygen, appears probable for three reasons :—1. There is not sufficient heat evolved. 2. There is not the production of a charcoal requiring a high heat for its incineration. 3. There are no ammoniacal products. The effects, therefore, appear to depend on a new arrangement of the elements existing in the body itself.

Although my bedside table is overflowing with books marked according to the progress I've made, I still kind of regret not getting Ablaze! when I had it in my hands.

I Think, Therefore I Evolve

We are pattern seeking and pattern following animals. That is why "the road less traveled" is less traveled. There is that thing called the conventional wisdom. It is a "Stay on the trail" sign that keeps the majority in line, and makes even the trailblazers at least pause to think.

I remember as a child growing up those countercultural sixties, my mother making the statement that she fully expected that one day soon it would be acceptable for people to walk the streets stark naked. (I suppose that seemed to her the logical end of the new liberality of that age, displayed in the burning of bras, donning skimpier swimwear, and trends toward ever shorter dress lengths.) She raved on about the day when decent women like her would have to turn their heads when a naked man walked down the street, flaccid penis swinging in the breeze.

That day hasn't come yet, and if it did it would only be a return to the beginning. Nudity isn't acceptable to the mainstream because we humans have too much to hide. Our minds got bigger and more complex and we were able to elevate deceit to a fine art.

Free love and casual sex was brought out into the open in those swinging sixties, which again was just a return to the way things were in the beginning.

The majority still want to talk about "traditional values," but their actions more often expose their hypocrisy.

Most folks just don't want to deal with the way things really are. They need some majestic (but totally false) narrative to anchor their lives to.

We are (they say), after all, not animals but humans: God's crowning achievement!

Yesterday I mentioned pioneer thinkers of the psyche Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. I like them both, but find more common ground with Jung. I think they both were right (and a little wrong). And we can't forget that others have followed in their footsteps and broadened their observations.

The thing about delving into our subconscious minds is that it brings us face to face with the many false narratives that have been imposed on us. We can submit to these, create our own individual narratives, or suffer mentally from our confusion.

Whenever I speak to people who claim to have it all together all the time and are mentally conflict free, I right away think they are full of shit or just not very introspective. Life is just more complicated than that. And it isn't static, but evolving. Every now and then I feel a compelling urge to dart down one of the less traveled paths, or to create my own!

My Brain On Sleep

For as long as I can remember I have had vivid dreams during my sleep. A goodly number of my childhood nightmares and dreams have been etched into my memory, and I'm certain have an influence on my waking mind. Vivid imagination, vivid dreams, I suppose.

As an admirer of both Freud and Jung I've always felt my dreams were meaningful. This isn't to deny that I'm dealing with a slippery, hard to grasp, subject here. The fact is that for all our advances in knowledge, the study of dreams still has lots of gaps. But for me, I see a window in my dreams into my psyche. I don't try to interpret the dreams of others, because all minds are different in many ways, despite being so similar in others.

I was having lucid dreams (I'm neither very good nor consistent with it) before I had read about that concept in popular dream studies. I have had a number of - for lack of a better term - prophetic dreams, dreams that foreshadowed things that had yet to come to pass. And I've had more than my share of night terrors and nightmares, usually of a demonic variety.

Usually asleep by 8 p.m. and awake by 3 a.m. (except on the weekends when I shift those hours forward very slightly), and having a typical workday of 10 or 11 hours in length, I'm perpetually tired. Any spare moment of repose usually leads to a brief power nap and quite often dreams and hypnagogic hallucinations. These are golden moments for me. My best periods of creativity come when the filter of my conscious mind is turned off.

That is what I believe to be the magic of dreams: the rules of logic and limitations of space and time don't uniformly apply. If you truly want to "think outside the box," study your dreams, catch your critical mind off-guard.

I don't find my dream world more real than my real world, just more revealing.

I Want To Live A Long, Long Time

I really enjoyed all the comments received in my last Groper Poll. The emphasis seemed to be on the quality of our existence. As long as we are living fully, learning new things, being allowed to grow, being alive is a good thing. As Ahab well put it: "Immortality in the afterlife would be bearable, I think, if there were opportunities to grow, learn, and evolve toward higher states."

As for that specter of boredom, Exrelayman added that he didn't see why, if the common conception of God were true, "it would not be within God's power to make it be continuously and everlastingly wonderful." No one seemed to suggest that, as D'Ma put it, "shouting "Holy, Holy, Holy" all day and night," as the Christian religion suggests, would be desirable. God, I suppose, could keep it interesting. One thing I began wondering about the time I was in my mid-teens is why, if God's plan is for an eternal worship service in celestial city, he didn't just skip this present "vale of soulmaking" and get on with his plan.

My main hobby is reading. I love to study and branch out in my knowledge of this crazy but wondrous universe of ours. I've often made the statement that one lifetime just isn't enough to read all the books I have on my list. Don mentioned a "bucket list," and I suspect most of us have one of those. I'm a simple man and don't demand much to be happy. However, there are some things I'd like to do and places I'd like to visit in person (rather than virtually via the internet) before I die. It seems many of those items will go unfulfilled - right along with my reading list - because I am going to run out of time and health.

I think it was Bob Hope who observed that no one wants to turn 80 years of age ... except the person who is 79! Again, as D'Ma pointed out: it isn't getting old that is the problem, "but what it does to you." Indeed. And what it does to us all eventually is place limits on our vitality. There is probably, as the biblical book of Ecclesiastics points out, "a time to be born and a time to die." Hopefully death will find me at a point in my life in which I am ready to lie down and sleep for a good long time. I enjoy what Edgar Allen Poe called sleep, "those little slices of death." (Poe said he loathed them!) I suspect that is what death really is for us: a long, dreamless sleep. I'm open to conviction if that isn't the case.

DoOrDonNot hit upon one of the themes of immortality that I have suggested is the true basis for the notion: "We are motivated innately to preserve our life so it's only natural to want it to continue on beyond the grave." Most humans seem to accept one version or another of escape from death, I believe, for this very reason. But in the end Diane's response is to the point: "What happens after -- cross that bridge when/if I come to it." That's about all we can do. Wait and hope.

Paul added that death isn't the challenge for him. "Living life as fully as possible is the challenge." Ah, I remember going with a friend of mine once to visit her parent's grave, located in a tiny country cemetery. As I was walking along noticing the stones (a pastime I enjoy), I came upon the grave marker for a young man who died, as I recall, at fifteen years of age. His epitaph was: "Dying wasn't hard. Living is what was hard." That moved me and stayed with me. But I think squandering the life we do have is probably hard, too, even if the perspective on that isn't clear until we are in decline, perhaps bedridden or wheelchair bound, and think back on all those glorious yesterdays when we acted as if tomorrow would never come.

As I said, I'm open to convincing that we will somehow survive death and enjoy (or endure) personal immortality. As of yet I haven't found reason to believe that is possible, or, if by some lack of knowledge concerning the details of how such a thing could be possible, even desirable.

That leaves me only with this life - the only one I know for sure that is mine. I wish I could stand pat physically right where I am (no longer in my prime, to be sure, but still fairly able mentally and physically) and enjoy a long succession of todays. Impossible, I know, but still a pleasant thought. I want to live a long time, if I can remain viable. As for living forever, I just can't fathom it. Death seems to be a part of living. The price of admission to this show.

Praise The Lord And Pass The Taser

It was the Apostle Paul who counseled Christians about settling disputes among themselves:

Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church? I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren, but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers? (I Corinthians 6:1-6, New American Standard Bible.)

So in St. Elmo, Alabama's New Welcome Baptist Church we see how one Minister of Music, upon his firing, settled a pay dispute with his Pastor. Rather than disgracing his church by taking his pastor to court, he simply tased him.

Minister of Music Simone Moore explains himself rather remorsefully in this rambling statement to the media:

We don't fight like that. I have two masters, a bachelor, etc. I don't need to run down to church and tase a pastor. I did not have a taser to the world, but a small stun gun 'cause I've been carjacked before. I didn't take it for that. It wasn't a reason to have that in God's house, two rights don't make a wrong. I should not have had it, but I didn't trust the situation. I saw Riley going in there with a T-shirt and tennis shoes, and that's the pastor. He had a T-shirt and shoes he did not preach in.

Does that make sense to any of you?

As if that isn't enough, Moore's mother, Agolia Moore, was also stabbed after the tasing incident. One of the church's deacons, Havery Hunt, used a pocket knife to inflict nineteen stitches worth of wounds on Moore's mom

Perhaps this is why there has been an increasingly vociferous cry to permit guns to be carried in churches. That Old Time Religion is getting dangerous.

Coverage of this ridiculous story can be found here and here.

Groper Poll: Is Personal Immortality A Desirable Thing?

Death is a bit of downer. On that we should be able to agree. It hurts to lose those we love. It saddens us to think of our own demise (unless we are in great pain or such a state of infirmity as to be able to view death as a release).

For my part, I enjoy life and enjoy being alive - at least right now, in my present state of mind and health.

As much is that is so, doesn't a conclusion bring true meaning to everything? A great concert, a fantastic book, a delicious meal, an enjoyable movie, a peaceful walk in the park are all surely the better for having an appropriate point of termination.

Can the same not be thought about our lives?

Despite the utopian visions of the afterlife offered by many of the traditional religions, is it possible to imagine continuous existence without the specter of boredom.

Most of the people I have asked seem untroubled by that prospect. How deeply they have really pondered the matter is something I can't gauge.

My Groper Poll question for today is:

Is personal immortality really something to be desired?

I'll go first and say I think eternal life would be burdensome after a while. At the same time I confess that I greatly dread the thought of nonexistence.

Feel Good God

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

So observed Nobel Prize winning writer George Bernard Shaw,

I thought of that quote as I pondered this article about a recent study by a Harvard-affiliated hospital. From that story I quote the following:

This study found that those who trusted in God to look out for them had lower levels of worry and less intolerance of uncertainty in their lives than those who had a "mistrust" of God to help them out.

It is my contention that religious attitudes are mostly a matter of emotion. That is why reason alone has done little and will do little to make belief in a personal God, the benevolent old man in the sky, obsolete.

That is why those of us who came to unbelief from a deeply felt religious background often look back fondly and/or from time to time feel a certain "something missing" in our lives.

A personal God is often the Father we never had or no longer have, the best friend who is ALWAYS there and ALWAYS understands us. He is our guide and companion through life's trials:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want (Psalms 23:1).

The world is a scary place. The idea that nothing is going to come our way that we will not - with God walking beside us - be able to handle is comforting ... if you can convince yourself and remain convinced that this God is consistent with the egregious evil that surrounds us.

This personal God has a plan for every life. He directs our paths, uses incidents along the way to teach us faith and trust, to strengthen us, to teach us about life and each other, to make himself happy and bring glory to himself. Nothing is for naught. And that is the true believers' answer to the problem of evil: "All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28)."

Even the most faithful have their moments of doubt, their dark nights of the soul. Life is sometimes too true to be dismissed by a mouthful of cliches alone. That is when the community of fellow believers is most helpful. That is why there are full time ministers of propaganda to stand as a bulwark against doubt. That is why books on theodicy and apologetics pour from the presses like water over the proverbial damn.

What could be easier than persuading a person that what they feel deep down in their guts is actually the truth?

And Shaw's alcohol-intoxicated man is not different from this study's God-intoxicated man. Therapy is therapy, I suppose.

And The Band Played On

News coverage of our country's richly deserved stripping of our triple A credit rating is nonstop.

Yes, I think we deserved being taken down that notch because of our national leaders being unable to govern our finances. The dangerous game of chicken they played with raising the debt ceiling was inexcusable.

And our leaders are unrepentant and as much in combat mode as before.

Republicans think we tax and spend too much. Democrats think we tax too little and too often spend inappropriately. And that disgusting Tea Party, out in their La La Land, think we shouldn't tax at all (well, not really, but almost).

Everyone it seems thinks taxes are too high and would like to keep more of what they earn. The rich, who rule over us, and their enablers, think they should be allowed to keep even more of what they don't earn. They are, in effect, getting ever richer merely by being rich.

Those of us lucky enough to still be working at all find ourselves in the unenviable position of performing the jobs formerly performed by three to four fellow workers as one job.

And this isn't because of an effort to increase efficiency by eliminating waste. It's not thrift. It is an orchestrated effort to keep CEO salaries and business profits at unrealistic levels, while everyone else helplessly watch their lives go down the drain.

A great nation must invest. It must invest in itself. Yet our country's infrastructure is declining, even as more cuts in spending is being trumpeted as necessary.

When budget cuts and reforms are mentioned, inevitably the first thing to be mentioned are so-called entitlements. Monies used to keep the elderly, disabled, and those being caught up in the business world's frenzy of cut, cut, cut (I'm speaking here of the unemployed). Where is all this investment we keep hearing lower corporate taxing supposedly makes possible?

What irony: we can afford long, pointless wars against nations who pose no immediate threat to us, yet we can't afford to invest in our own crumbling nation!

Meanwhile the corporate controlled media spends endless hours on analysis and commentary to explain to us why the above is the only reasonable course of action.

Most people must hate history. This idea has been tried before, always with grave results, much human suffering and national disgrace.

Now I'm not talking about anything radical here. Just balance. Let's take a little more from those who used the system to make themselves wealthy. Let's ask that they contribute, to invest, a little more in order that others have the same chance.

Of course the corporate owned politicians and their parrots have a term for that balance. They call it class warfare.

Sad to say, but it seems only the cataclysmic collapse our nation is well on its way to can change the direction.

According to popular legend the band on deck of the Titanic played Nearer My God To Thee as she slowly sank into the ocean.

Nightmare In Rome (Georgia, That Is)

Cue the Twilight Zone theme music.

I saw on yesterday evening's news that in nearby Rome, Georgia there was an astounding coincidence.

Tony Vasser was visiting dreamland on Saturday night when he began to have a bad dream of some sort (there is a real lack of details so far on this story). So bad, in fact, it roused him from his slumber.

Vasser then got up and went next door to talk to his neighbor and noticed only moments later that his mobile home had caught fire. The damage was minimal, however, it is being reported that the bad dream may have saved Vasser's life. Indeed. Smoke inhalation is perhaps the gravest danger in a home fire.

Sure wish there had been more details. I'll watch for any further reporting. I have to wonder what Vasser was dreaming about. Is he a believer in a personal God who directs our lives? Does he believe in psychic phenomena? Does he attribute this to anything other than coincidence?

I love these types of stories!

A Sermon On Werewolves

If nothing else, I want my blog to be informative and at least mildly entertaining (at least sometimes). This being Sunday, the Lord's Day of Orthodox Christianity, and with the preceding goals in mind, I offer for your consideration this fifteenth-century sermon by one of that era's master pulpiteers, Johann Geiler von Kaiserberg, which was lovingly preserved for us by Sabine Baring-Gould, folklorist and hymn-writer (author of the well-known Onward! Christian Soldiers) in his The Book Of Were-Wolves.

And now the Very Reverend Geiler:

What shall we say about were-wolves? for there are were-wolves which run about the villages devouring men and children. As men say about them, they run about full gallop, injuring men, and are called ber-wolff, or wer-wolff. Do you ask me if I know aught about them? I answer, Yes. They are apparently wolves which eat men and children, and that happens on seven accounts:

The first happens through hunger; when the wolves find nothing to eat in the woods, they must come to people and eat men when hunger drives them to it. You see well, when it is very cold, that the stags come in search of food up to the villages, and the birds actually into the dining-room in search of victuals.

Under the second head, wolves eat children through their innate savageness, because they are savage, and that is (propter locum coitum ferum). Their savageness arises first from their condition. Wolves which live in cold places are smaller on that account, and more savage than other wolves. Secondly, their savageness depends on the season; they are more savage about Candlemas than at any other time of the year, and men must be more on their guard against them then than at other times. It is a proverb, 'He who seeks a wolf at Candlemas, a peasant on Shrove Tuesday, and a parson in Lent, is a man of pluck.' . . . Thirdly, their savageness depends on their having young. When the wolves have young, they are more savage than when they have not. You see it so in all beasts. A wild duck, when it has young poults, you see what an uproar it makes. A cat fights for its young kittens; the wolves do ditto.

Under the third head, the wolves do injury on account of their age. When a wolf is old, it is weak and feeble in its legs, so it can't run fast enough to catch stags, and therefore it rends a man, whom it can catch easier than a wild animal. It also tears children and men easier than wild animals, because of its teeth, for its teeth break off when it is very old; you see it well in old women: how the last teeth wobble, and they have scarcely a tooth left in their heads, and they open their mouths for men to feed them with mash and stewed substances.

Under the fourth head, the injury the were-wolves do arises from experience. It is said that human flesh is far sweeter than other flesh; so when a wolf has once tasted human flesh, he desires to taste it again. So he acts like old topers, who, when they know the best wine, will not be put off with inferior quality.

Under the fifth head, the injury arises from ignorance. A dog when it is mad is also inconsiderate, and it bites any man; it does not recognize its own lord: and what is a wolf but a wild dog which is mad and inconsiderate, so that it regards no man.

Under the sixth head, the injury comes of the Devil, who transforms himself, and takes on him the form of a wolf So writes Vincentius in his Speculum Historiale.

Of course, Satan did it! I always wondered why the paranormal often walked hand-in-hand with religion in the fundamentalist Christian circles I was familiar with. It was because of demonology. Demonic possession was used to explain a host of monstrosities. And the same Satan that the Bibles tells us can transform himself to an angel of light, can also shapeshift into any creature. In that line of thinking, for example, witchcraft is a branch of demonology. Insanity and psychotic behavior are forms of demon possession. The legendary monsters have at their root the influence of the Devil. That world can be a very scary place, let me tell you.

Waterlogged

As I was sitting here at the computer looking over the news at 6 a.m., my ears caught the familiar sound of a lawn mower in action. What? It's still dark out. Nevertheless, as cool as it will be for the day. The expected high is again the mid to upper nineties.

My neighbor is out getting her mowing done. Nice idea, except that its the weekend and some of the folks might still be trying to slip in a few extra Zzzzzzzzzzs.

No bother to me. I'm accustomed to rising between 3 and 3:30 a.m. because of my job. Even on the weekends I tend to keep very early hours. Sleeping in for me is making it to 5 or 6 a.m.

I suppose the heat does strange things to folks.

Wednesday it was 101 degrees. I work in a metal fabricating plant, in the paint department where the washers and ovens necessary for cleaning and drying the metal and then curing the applied paint powder into a glossy finish means there can be no air conditioning. The steam from the washers always kicks the usual southern humidity up a few notches. I keep a bottle of cool water near me at all times, and go through five or more in a typical summer workday.

Now I know just about everyone has experienced the phenomenon of having a tune or song stuck on an endless playback loop inside your head. My tune for Wednesday was Cool Water, by the Sons of the Pioneers. It played all day, even after I got home and took my customary cool shower. It has resurfaced intermittently since.

Keep a-movin Dan, dont'cha listen to him, Dan
He's devil, not a man
He spreads the burning sand with water
Dan, can you see that big, green tree?
Where the water's runnin' free
And it's waitin' there for me and you?

Cool, clear, water
Cool, clear water

I think I have an idea of how you can die of thirst long before you would die from starvation.

Several times this past week I had in mind several errands I wanted to get done after I finished work. There was a lot of rescheduling because about all I could think of at the end of my workday was getting home to my airconditioner, peeling off the clothes that were sweat-plastered to my body, and jumping into the shower. Then off to my easy chair to relax and sip a cold drink (or two, or three).

I place bread crumbs around my deck for the birds to eat (plus they like the left over dry cat food I give my cat friends) and make sure they have water. I watch from my front window as they flit about with their mouths open, suffering from the heat. Unreal.

It's funny, but poor folks that we were, we didn't have air-conditioning when I was growing up. Our house was filled with window fans and portable oscillating fans. We spent evenings on the front porch sipping iced tea. But I don't remember dreading the Dog Days of summer as I do now. I distinctly remember stepping out of our old claw-foot bathtub and working up a sweat toweling off. I just don't recall getting beat down by the heat the way I do now.

I suppose it's one of the challenges of aging. (Lots of those, I've noticed.)

"Boy! It's hot as Hell today." I hear it all the time from the folks around me. Down south in this here Bible Belt that is meant literally. We know what Jesus said about Hell and the wailing and gnashing of teeth therein. We know the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). The rich man died and then opened his eyes in Hell and begged Lazarus to dip his finger in water and place it on his scorched tongue. But nope! That's against the rules.

So here I sit, listening to my neighbor mow her yard in the early morning darkness as I sip on a bottle of cool water, anticipating yet another hot one. Seek the shade and keep well-hydrated, my friends, as we wait for autumn.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

I've mentioned here before that occasionally I have auditory hallucinations that sometimes produce distinct voices that seem audible. Sometimes I think I hear my name being called. I'm most susceptible when I am drifting off to sleep or coming out of a sleep. Sometimes I hear sounds, rather than voices. This fascinates me more than annoys me. And it doesn't influence my behavior. I don't have conversations with or take seriously the voices I occasionally hear.

Some people hear voices in their head. That's a fact. I've known three such people extremely well, and being the type of person I am I questioned them intensely trying to understand the matter. Two of those people attempted suicide at the prompting of their voices. Medicine seems to help most folks with this problem. Unfortunately, most people either have trouble keeping themselves in their medication, or have trouble being consistent in the taking of it. And then there are those who haven't sought help.

I bring this up after reading about Levi Aron, who is the accused killer of an eight-year-old boy, Leiby Kletzy, and who in his confession reportedly told police that voices in his head suggested he kill himself for his actions. His legal counsel is considering an insanity appeal.

I don't know how widespread this phenomena is (I suspect very), but I noticed one of the reader comments for this story said:

Strange that the "voices" never tell people to do something good - maybe they should not listen to the "voices"

In fact, some people probably do hear voices telling them to do good things. I suspect that at least some of the people who claim to talk to God are hearing voices in their head. Alongside outright lying, I offer that as an explanation for the so-called prophets of God.

Just a thought I have.

Schizophrenia is both God and the Devil. The picture above I chose for this post is a painting of Joan of Arc by Eugene Thirion. Some have claimed that Joan's godly inspiration really might have been schizophrenia.

Who Wants To Be A Centenarian?

Scanning the AOL news this morning I followed a link to a story about longevity, Genes, Not Healthy Living, Get Most To Age 100. It gives voice to a conclusion I had already reached.

I always get a kick out of the stories about centenarians on the news from time to time in which the person gives as the secret of their longevity some contrarian advice such as eating lots of bacon every morning and washing it down with copious amounts of beer, or chewing tobacco and enjoying a good cigar everyday.

Just last week I saw a story on the evening news about a doctor who was still practicing at 100 years of age. He was stooped and somewhat unsteady, but appeared to be of very sound mind. He enjoyed playing classical music on his violin as a hobby. I was tickled when he stated that exercise is greatly overrated, as are vitamins. And he thought sex might be a key to a healthy, long life. Or at least a good one. (Lest you get the wrong idea, he had been married to the same woman for seventy years.)

My kind of doctor!

Now I'm the kind of person who believes in moderation in most things. I watch my diet, but not obsessively. I get some exercise, but no obsessively. I try to get enough sleep, but not obsessively. I like sex ... okay, not obsessively.

Studying my family tree, I have a fairly good idea of what my life span is likely to be (I'm thinking between seventy and eighty years, give or take a half decade or two - IF something quirky doesn't happen). I know that odds are - again ignoring the quirky - I will have strokes or heart attacks, either capable of taking me out, but, should I survive those dangers, various cancers have taken out a substantial number of my relatives. In this I think I'm from fairly typical stock.

I have no illusions about living to 100. In fact, I have no desire to live that long unless I could do it in something resembling my present state of health and mind. And that's not going to happen! For that matter, I would as soon bow out with a heart attack while still in reasonably good shape, the way my older brother did, than live on for years in state of poor health the way my father did after a series of strokes. For what it's worth, both of them smoked rather heavily - a habit I don't have. I'm right now the age my brother was when he died. But he was a half-brother (which we never made much of) and we had different fathers. His lived 63 years, mine 72. I have great confidence of beating my brother's lifespan. Not only because of different lineage, but because he ignored clear warning signs of an impending heart attack - something I can't see me doing.

Anyway, if you've read my blog for very long you are aware that I'm a philosophical determinist. I firmly believe the cards have been dealt to me at birth (genes) and there is nothing I can do to re-deal that hand. I'm not going to go into the deeply now because it is hard to talk about it without going astray from the topic. It isn't so much what you think about fate, but how you think about it - at least that is the way I understand the matter.

Good Stoic that I am, I'm impressed with Epictetus' summation of the matter:

Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a part as it may please the master to assign you, for a long time or for a little as he may choose. And if he will you to take the part of a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen, then may you act that part with grace! For to act well the part that is allotted to us, that indeed is ours to do, but to choose it is another's.

And no, I don't take that literally as a theist might. I don't believe that a personal God predestined everyone and every event. But my philosophy is one that embraces a metaphorical theology, if you will. As a child of the Cosmos, I was placed here without prior consultation and can do no more than play the hand dealt me.

The business of living is living. That I aim to do to the best of my ability. I can't live longer than the fates have determined I can. I can't live more intelligently than the brain power nature has allotted to me allows. But I can and am determined to play the hand I was dealt as gracefully as I know how.

I believe it is delusional to think we can cheat the fates. And free will? It is the ignorance factor that gives us that particular illusion. Environment plays off our genes, but cannot reshuffle the cards and deal us new hands.

(How's that for stirring the pot?)

Groper Poll: Should Congress Have Term Limits?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the only person to have been elected presdient of the United States for four consecutive terms. (He did not live long enough to finish the fourth.) No one will ever accomplish that feat again (short of changing the Constitution), because shortly after FDR's death the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed by Congress and ratified four year after that in 1951, limiting future presidents to serving two terms.

This is a controversial measure and from time to time the idea is floated of repealing the Twenty-second Amendment.

For some reason the sentiment doesn't seem to be strong enough, or maybe organized enough, to set some limits on our Congresspeople.

I'm thinking such a move might help curb some of the problems we are seeing in our political process, such as I discussed yesterday.

My Groper Poll question today: Should there be term limits for Congress?

What say my intelligent readers?