The Traveller

Personal Update

2012-01-28T05:09:00.000-08:00

This entry serves as a personal time-stamp to document current difficulties*, and hopefully it will provide me with a possibility of facing my problems in a constructive way (perhaps another vain hope).

Psalm 128
1) Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways!
2) You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.
3) Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.
4) Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.
5) The Lord bless you from Zion! May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life!
6) May you see your children’s children! Peace be upon Israel!

I was reading from psalm 128 quoted above. It talks about fearing the Lord and the conditional promise (vs 4) of the results of fearing Him. And, especially since I have been thinking about the Covenant Theology aspect of Christian Theology, I really believed this promise. I thought fearing the Lord meant belief and faith in God and His promises and attempting to obey the commandments out of gratitude for the salvation and other good gifts He gives. I actually got excited about serving the Kingdom by establishing institutions and raising believing offspring, but reality has demonstrated to me the vanity of such false hopes of improvement. When it turns out that you are a lousy parent and your child goes down the path of failure and wrongness, it requires some justification or explanation. The only thing that makes sense is that by definition I have not properly “feared the Lord”. Nowhere in the quoted passage does it mention the consequences of sin and how those consequences can snuff out the promise. I still believe in God and respect Him, but for me, those promises in the Bible are getting harder to believe since they don’t seem to be happening in my life. I got lucky these past few years and got a good job in this horrid economy, so I was able to rise above mere survival; I am grateful for this blessing. Now I have some stability in my social status (upper working class), but my family is falling apart. This is all probably my fault on every level, but I knew I couldn’t live a true, honest, and Christian life without spiritual help from God. I have needed help along, but I just didn’t know how to access the help I needed. It breaks my heart to actually see from scripture what should have been my life and compare it too how my life actually turned out.

Now the standard Evangelical way of explaining away promises like the one in the Psalm above is to point out that since the advent of Christ, everything is to be spiritualized and that to believe in an actual physical promise is wrong. I don’t buy it, but when everything falls down such views take on a more “truthiness” type of flavor.

It is a terrible and awful (in the original sense of these words) thing to realize that you are cut off from the future (as far as your own lineage goes) and that judgment day cometh and you have failed.

There were two ways I could have ended the curse of sin in my dysfunctional family. One is to not have children at all and end the genetic mistakes (the easier way and preferred by planned parenthood), the other is to try to raise them in the faith and make every sacrifice for their betterment with (hopefully) the help of God. The second option is the harder and more noble of the two, and with enough hope, it even seems possible (after all haven’t many other families in the church accomplished this?). This second option is also dangerous, because if you fail, you have made things worse and the curse continues and now the dysfunction continues. I should not have hoped. I should have taken the easier first option. May God have mercy on my soul.

*Several days ago, my son, Samuel, was hospitalized for attempted suicide.

W: LP: GRP: DB: The Cost of Discipleship, part 2

2011-11-22T08:38:00.000-08:00

The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

UPDATE: Finished this book going into the Christmas season, so no time at the moment to write more. There is so much profundity in this book that I will be re-reading it in 2012. At that point I will have more to write (possibly).:)

I am about one third the way through this book and I am finding this to be an excellent exegesis of biblical text as it relates to the topic of what it means to be a disciple of Christ. My only objection to anything in this book is the author's incorrect characterization of Reformed theology. I quote below a passage from the exegesis of the beatitudes that otherwise makes a good point (and afterword I will quote another misrepresentation of Reformed theology):

'Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.'
This community of strangers possesses no inherent right of its own to protect its members in the world, nor do they claim such rights, for they are meek, they renounce every right of their own and live for the sake of Jesus Christ. When reproached, they hold their peace; when treated with violence they endure it patiently; when men drive them from their presence, they yield their ground. They will not got to law to defend their rights, or make a scene when they suffer injustice, nor do they insist on their legal right. They are determined to leave their rights to God alone--non cupidi vindictae, as the ancient Church paraphrased it. Their right is in the will of their Lord--that and no more. They show by every word and gesture that they do not belong to this earth. Leave heaven to them, says the world in its pity, that is where they belong.(1) But Jesus says: 'They shall inherit the earth.' To these, the powerless and the disenfranchised, the very earth belongs. Those who now possess it by violence and injustice shall lose it, and those who here have utterly renounced it, who were meek to the point of the cross, shall rule the new earth. We must not interpret this as a reference to God's exercise of juridicial punishment within the world, as Calvin did: what it means is that when the kingdom of heaven descends, the face of the earth will be renewed, and it will belong to the flock of Jesus. God does not forsake the earth: he made it, he sent his Son to it, and on it he built his Church. Thus a beginning has already been made in this present age. A sign has been given. The powerless have here and now received a plot of earth, for they have the Church and its fellowship, its goods, its brothers and sisters, in the midst of persecutions even to the length of the cross. The renewal of the earth begins at Golgotha, where the meek One died, and from thence it will spread. When the kingdom finally comes, the meek shall possess the earth.

And in the following chapter about the visible community you have this piece:

The bushel may be the fear of men, or perhaps deliberate conformity to the world for some ulterior motive, a missionary purpose for example, or a sentimental humanitarianism. But the motive may be more sinister than that; it may be 'Reformation theology' which boldly claims the name of theologia crucis, and pretends to prefer to Pharisaic ostentation a modest invisibility, which in practice means conformity to the world. When that happens, the hall-mark of the Church becomes justitia civilis instead of extraordinary visibility. The very failure of the light to shine becomes the touchstone of our Christianity. But Jesus says: 'Let your light so shine before men.' For when all is said and done, it is the light of the call of Jesus Christ which shines here.

In my reading of Reformed theology, I have yet to encounter any of these problems in the theological constructs. I suppose that even the best writers betray their particular theological biases, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer is no exception.

W: LP: GRP: DB: The Cost of Discipleship

2011-11-21T00:34:00.000-08:00

The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There is so much profundity in this book, I shall have to read it more than once in short order. This book is so excellent that I would like to quote the entire text, but it would be impractical for my 0.78 readers to handle. However, there were so many good points in the introduction to the book that I am quoting it here in it's entirety. (Emphasis mine.)

Introduction

Revival of church life always brings in its train a richer understanding of the Scriptures. Behind all the slogans and catchwords of ecclesiastical controversy, necessary though they are, there arises a more determined quest for him who is the sole object of it all, for Jesus Christ himself. What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? How can he help us to be good Christians in the modern world? In the last resort, what we want to know is not, what would this or that man, or this or that Church, have of us, but what Jesus Christ himself wants of us. When we go to church and listen to the sermon, what we want to hear is the Word—and that not merely for selfish reasons, but for the sake of the many for whom the Church and her message is foreign. We have a strange feeling that if Jesus himself—Jesus alone with his Word—could come into our midst at sermon time, we should find quite a different set of men hearing the Word, and quite a different set rejecting it. That is not to deny that the Word of God is to be heard in the preaching which goes on in our church. The real trouble is that the pure Word of Jesus has been overlaid with so much human ballast—burdensome rules and regulations, false hopes and consolations—that it has become extremely difficult to make a genuine decision for Christ. Of course it is our aim to preach Christ and Christ alone, but, when all is said and done, it is not the fault of our critics that they find our preaching so hard to understand, so overburdened with ideas and expressions which are hopelessly out of touch with the mental climate in which they live. It is just not true that every word of criticism directed against contemporary preaching is a deliberate rejection of Christ and proceeds from the Spirit of Antichrist. So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus. Are we determined to have nothing to do with all these people? They are convinced that it is not the Word of Jesus himself that puts them off, but the superstructure of human, institutional, and doctrinal elements in our preaching. Of course we know all the answers to these objections, and those answers certainly make it easy for us to slide out of our responsibilities. But perhaps it would be just as well to ask ourselves whether we do not in fact often act as obstacles to Jesus and his Word. Is it not possible that we cling too closely to our own favorite presentation of the gospel, and to a type of preaching which was all very well in its own time and place and for the social setup for which it was originally intended? Is there not after all an element of truth in the contention that our preaching is too dogmatic, and hopelessly irrelevant to life? Are we not constantly harping on certain ideas at the expense of others which are just as important? Does not our preaching contain too much of our own opinions and convictions, and too little of Jesus Christ? Jesus invites all those that labor and are heavy laden, and nothing could be so contrary to our best intentions, and so fatal to our proclamation, as to drive men away from him by forcing upon them man-made dogmas. If we did so, we should make the love of Jesus Christ a laughing-stock to Christians and pagans alike. It is no use taking refuge in abstract discussion, or trying to make excuses, so let us get back to the Scriptures, to the Word and call of Jesus Christ himself. Let us try to get away from the poverty and pettiness of our own little convictions and problems, and seek the wealth and splendor which are vouchsafed to us in Jesus Christ.

We propose to tell how Jesus calls us to be his disciples. But is not this to lay another and still heavier burden on men’s shoulders? Is this all we can do when the souls and bodies of men are groaning beneath the weight of so many man-made dogmas? If we recall men to the following of Jesus, shall we not be driving a still sharper goad into their already troubled and wounded consciences? Are we to follow the practice which has been all too common in the history of the Church, and impose on men demands too grievous to bear, demands which have little to do with the centralities of the Christian faith, demands which may be a pious luxury for the few, but which the toiling masses, with their anxiety for their daily bread, their jobs and their families, can only reject as utter blasphemy and a tempting of God? Is it the Church’s concern to erect a spiritual tyranny over men, by dictating to them what must be believed and performed in order to be saved, and by presuming to enforce that belief and behavior with the sanctions of temporal and eternal punishment? Shall the word of the Church bring new tyranny and oppression over the souls of men? It may well be that this is what many people want. But could the Church consent to meet such a demand?

When the Bible speaks of following Jesus, it is proclaiming a discipleship which will liberate mankind from all man-made dogmas, from every burden and oppression, from every anxiety and torture which afflicts the conscience. If they follow Jesus, men escape from the hard yoke of their own laws, and submit to the kindly yoke Jesus Christ. But does this mean that we ignore the seriousness of his commands? Far from it. We can only achieve perfect liberty and enjoy fellowship with Jesus when his command, his call to absolute discipleship, is appreciated in its entirety. Only the man who follows the command of Jesus single-mindedly, and unresistingly lets his yoke rest upon him, finds his burden easy, and under its gentle pressure receives the power to persevere in the right way. The command of Jesus is hard, unutterably hard, for those who try to resist it. But for those who willingly submit, the yoke is easy, and the burden is light. “His commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3). The commandment of Jesus is not a sort of spiritual shock treatment. Jesus asks nothing of us without giving us the strength to perform it. His commandment never seeks to destroy life, but to foster, strengthen and heal it.

But one question still troubles us. What can the call to discipleship mean today for the worker, the business man, the squire and the soldier? Does it not lead to an intolerable dichotomy between our lives as workers in the world and our lives as Christians? If Christianity means following Christ, is it not a religion for a small minority, a spiritual elite? Does it not mean the repudiation of the great mass of society, and a hearty contempt for the weak and the poor? Yet surely such an attitude is the exact opposite of the gracious mercy of Jesus Christ, who came to the publicans and sinners, the weak and the poor, the erring and the hopeless. Are those who belong to Jesus only a few, or are they many? He died on the cross alone, abandoned by his disciples. With him were crucified, not two of his followers, but two murderers. But they all stood beneath the cross, enemies and believers, doubters and cowards, revilers and devoted followers. His prayer, in that hour, and his forgiveness, was meant for them all, and for all their sins. The mercy and love of God are at work even in the midst of his enemies. It is the same Jesus Christ, who of his grace calls us to follow him, and whose grace saves the murderer who mocks him on the cross in his last hour.

And if we answer the call to discipleship, where will it lead us? What decisions and partings will it demand? To answer this question we shall have to go to him, for only he knows the answer. Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows the journey’s end. But we do know that it will be a road of boundless mercy. Discipleship means joy.

In the modern world it seems so difficult to walk with absolute certainty in the narrow way of ecclesiastical decision and yet remain in the broad open spaces of the universal love of Christ, of the patience, mercy and “philanthropy” of God (Titus 3:4) for the weak and the ungodly. Yet somehow or other we must combine the two, or else we shall follow the paths of men. May God grant us joy as we strive earnestly to follow the way of discipleship. May we be enabled to say “No” to sin and “Yes” to the sinner. May we withstand our foes, and yet hold out to them the Word of the gospel which woos and wins the souls of men. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28-30)

W: LP: GRP: NS: Cryptonomicon

2011-11-19T09:09:00.000-08:00

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Here is my Goodreads review of this wonderful novel:

I first read this book early after the turn of the century and loved it, then moved on to the author's Baroque cycle "trilogy". I should have savored it more. So just now (19 Nov. 2011) I finished "re-reading" this novel via the audible version and because of the slower nature of listening to the words instead of power reading by sight I was able to savor the story.

The novel has almost 700 reviews here on Goodreads, so I won't go into any analysis of the novel except to say that it was much like Snow Crash in tone but unique in that the author was able to tell several simultaneous stories flashing between WWII and the late twentieth century involving many characters in settings all around the earth. And I feel that the writer pulled it all together and I didn't mind the anticlimactic ending; it was a relief.

If you are a geek or even a partial geek you will relate to the characters. Some reviewers seem disappointed that this novel wasn't some profound Henry James character study, but that wasn't the intent of the author. The story reverberates in my memory now and has given me an appreciation for avenues of research and learning that I had not previously spent much time considering. Thank-you Mr. Stephenson.

DISCLAIMER:
I don't condone the immoral parts of this story (there are a few here) or that in any other writings that I review in this blog.

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Natural Philosophy: Climate Prediction

2011-11-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

Ice cores have revealed that very large climate swings can occur over just a few years—at least they have in the past. Civilized humankind has not experienced such events. The last one, the Younger Dryas, occurred about twelve thousand years ago. Cooling our climate to glacial temperatures over just a few years would severely disrupt global food production and render cities far from the equator uninhabitable. The ice core record from central Greenland shows that events like the Younger Dryas were the norm for most of the last 100,000 years, while the time corresponding to human recorded history has been quite exceptional.⁸⁰ Extending the record further back in time with the less detailed Antarctic ice cores, it appears that the present warm period is the longest-lived one of the past 420,000 years. There’s clearly something special about our time.

⁸⁰The paleoclimate records of the past half-million years show that the times of greatest climate stability are the relatively short-lived “peak interglacials,” like the one we are presently living in (though ours is already longer-lived). See J. P. Helmke et al., “Sediment-Color Record from the Northeast Atlantic Reveals Patterns of Millennial-Scale Climate Variability During the Past 500,000 Years,” Quarternary Research 57 (2002): 49-57, and J. F. McManus, et al., “A 0.5 Million-Year Record of Millennial-Scale Climate Variability in the North Atlantic,” Science 283 (1999): 971-974. Using otoliths (bony structures in fish for acoustics and balance) as temperature proxies, the following study determined climate conditions about 6,000 years ago: C. F. T. Andrus, “Otolith 180 Record of Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures in Peru,” Science 295 (2002): 1508-1511. They showed that sea temperatures were three to four degrees Centigrade warmer and El Niño events less severe at that time.

These records provide an objective test of computer simulations, which otherwise can be highly subjective. Climatologists can now develop long-term simulations of the global climate by adjusting their models to the present climate and testing them on the paleoclimate data derived from the diverse Earthly archives.⁸¹ With this growing database, they’ll continue to improve their ability to predict future climate changes. Long-term forecasting once seemed a dream, but the ice-filled pipes of ice cores, alongside other records, may one day make that dream a reality.

⁸¹For instance, they consider such factors as carbon dioxide concentration, global ice volume, atmosphere and ocean circulation, solar variations, and the Milankovitch cycles.

We still have much to learn about climate change, of course, but one surprising discovery from this work is that atmospheric carbon dioxide could help prevent glaciation in the future. Research by climatologists A. Berger and M. Loutre of the Institut d’Astronomie et de Geophysique in Belgium suggests that variations in the average amount of sunlight received recently by the Northern Hemisphere are quite exceptional.⁸² They compared the near-term changes (due to the Milankovitch cycles), five thousand years back to sixty thousand years into the future, to those of the past three million years. They found that only five intervals in the past three million years had variations as moderate as our present.⁸³

⁸²In their study “Future Climatic Changes: Are We Entering an Exceptionally Long Interglacial?” Climatic Change 46 (2000): 61-90, they stated, “This insolation variation…is really exceptional and has very few analogues in the past.”

⁸³If the Milankovitch astronomical cycles are the main driving force of the ice ages, this could help explain the highly anomalous climate stability of the Holocene, the past twelve thousand years. But there’s more going on, because Berger and Loutre predict moderate variations up to sixty thousand years into our future. Moreover, the observed range of the Milankovitch variations since the start of the Holocene has been surprisingly small. Their prediction seems well founded, but there seems to be more going on than they realize. Their explanation for the stability of the Holocene is the low amplitude of the Milankovitch cycles from five thousand years ago until sixty thousand years into the future, compared to the past three million years or so. This seems to be an odd coincidence. But how can you use the predicted changes in the future as part of the explanation for the anomalous stability of the Holocene so far?

Loutre and Berger also found that for up to 130,000 years into the future, the onset of a glaciation depends on the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide, with less carbon dioxide leading to more pronounced growth of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere.⁸⁴ So not only has the climate been anomalously warm, with fairly stable temperatures for the last twelve thousand years, but we could enjoy stability for at least a few tens of thousands of years into the future. That puts us at the beginning of a long-lived stable, warm period.

⁸⁴A concentration below 260 parts per million by volume seems necessary for substantial glaciation prior to 50,000 years from now. Right now it’s at 370 parts per million.

You’re probably astonished to learn that a high carbon dioxide level could inoculate the planet, and us, against a near-term glaciation (as long as it’s not too high, of course). The modern Industrial Revolution has maintained, and will continue to maintain, carbon dioxide levels well above the minimum threshold Loutre and Berger predict.⁸⁵

⁸⁵Some have argued recently that the Atlantic Ocean circulation can be disrupted by the rapid injection of fresh water into the North Atlantic from the discharge of large numbers of icebergs as the polar ice breaks up during a rapidly warming period (as some predict for the next century), supposedly returning us to glacial conditions in short order (Alley and Bender, “Greenland Ice Cores,” 181-184). This is a factor Loutre and Berger did not include in their models, but if it occurs, it’s likely we can recover from it quickly with a high carbon dioxide level. In any case, support among climatologists for themohaline circulation as a driver for the ocean currents is losing ground to wind and lunar tides as the main driving forces. See C. Uhlmann et al., “Warming of the Tropical Atlantic Ocean and Slow Down of Thermohaline Circulation During the Last Deglaciation,” Nature 402 (1999): 511-514.

Even within the framework on the thermohaline circulation model, the most recent atmosphere-ocean circulation simulations suggest that the feared shutdown of the ocean circulation from greenhouse warming will not occur. See M. Latif et al., “Tropical Stabilization of the Thermohaline Circulation in a Greenhouse Warming Simulation,” Journal of Climate 13 (2000): 1809-1813; S. Sun and R. Bleck, “Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation and its Response to Increasing CO₂ in a Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean Model,” Geophysical Research Letters 28 (2001): 4223-4226.

We should be glad that the era since the last glacial period has lasted this long. You might not be reading this book had the next major glacial period started, say, one thousand years ago.⁸⁶ The Northern Hemisphere’s climate would have been too severe for Europe to drag itself out of the so-called Dark Ages and to give us enough leisure time to make the web of scientific, philosophical, and artistic advancements that laid the ground-work for the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. And without industrial man pouring his extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, as he began to do some 150 years ago, the tendency toward increased glaciation might have continued unchecked, making it more and more difficult for civilization to progress. Carbon dioxide emissions are the natural consequence of the rise of civilization (in fact, concentration of carbon dioxide tracks closely with world population).

⁸⁶Even during the relatively stable Holocene, the era since the Younger Dryas, temperatures have fluctuated enough to disturb civilizations. Earth is still recovering from a centuries-long cold spell that ended in the early nineteenth century, although the rising carbon dioxide should delay the next cold spell.

Human activity has always affected our planet locally, but our striving since the early Holocene has brought us to the point where we can hope to understand the global climate system just as we’re beginning to have a significant impact on it.⁸⁷ If we’re smart, the measurability of our environment can lead to improved habitability in the near term by allowing us to attune our behavior with the natural processes of global change.⁸⁸

⁸⁷We must interpret this data properly if we are to avoid costly and even deadly mistakes, especially since the actual effects of our activities may sometimes be counterintuitive. For instance, this evidence suggests that hindering worldwide economic growth for a slight reduction in the global temperature is unlikely to make Earth more habitable for life in general. In fact, it would probably have the opposite effect, by making it much less hospitable for civilization. We agree with Peter Huber [Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists, A Conservative Manifesto (New York: Basic Books, 1999)] that a healthy economy leads to a healthy environment. In addition, there is a huge (and rapidly growing) volume of published material demonstrating the many benefits to the biosphere and to civilization of elevated carbon dioxide levels. Most of the benefits would come from the effects of aerial fertilization on plants and trees. For a review of this topic, see C. D. Idso, “Earth’s Rising Atmospheric CO₂ Concentration: Impacts on the Biosphere,” Energy & Environment 12 (2001): 287-310. The increased plant growth resulting from higher carbon dioxide levels will greatly aid in food production in the coming century as population grows. The overall climate would also be more hospitable. For example, the growing season in cold latitudes would be lengthened; the warming is expected to occur mostly in the winter and nights; evaporation and precipitation would increase, probably resulting in more rainfall throughout the world and more snowfall in artic regions.

The moderate increase in global temperatures, too, should benefit civilization. This is not just unfounded speculation. The effects of the climate fluctuations of the past millennium support the notion that warm periods are preferable for civilization. The Medieval Warm Period, also called the Little Climate Optimum, peaked near A.D. 1200, reaching perhaps half a degree centigrade higher temperatures than the present. Afterwards, the Little Ice Age saw its coldest temperatures in the seventeenth century. There is much historical anecdotal evidence that the Little Ice Age was much harsher on European peoples than the Medieval Warm Period. For a historical treatment, see H. Lamb, Climate, Change, and the Modern World, 2^nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1995). There is also increasing evidence that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were global phenomena. If the many predicted catastrophes resulting from warmer temperatures (such as the shutdown of the Atlantic circulation of the sudden release of methane from the ocean floor) did not already occur during the Medieval Warm Period (or during the even warmer “Holocene maximum,” about five thousand years ago), then they are not likely to occur in the coming centuries either.

⁸⁸The notion that we are conducting a vast and dangerous experiment on the climate is often repeated in apocalyptic environmentalist literature. The quote “Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment” was an early expression of this view. It originated in R. Revelle, W. Broeker, H. Craig, C. D. Keeling, and J. Smagorinsky, “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,” Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, President’s Science Advisory Committee (Washington, D.C.: The White House, 1965), 126. People who hold to this view never imagined that the activities of industrialized society could benefit the world’s ecosystems.

from “Privileged Planet” by Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez & Dr. Jay Richards.

Social Philosophy & W: LP: GRP: IC: The Coming Insurrection

2011-10-22T20:41:00.001-07:00

The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a comprehensive critique of French society permeated as it is by the State. Every aspect of the culture is taken to task from formal institutions down to the family, and the current generation is filled with alienation, isolation, and desolation. Even the enfranchised are alienated. With this destruction of the soul comes the conviction that the only solution is the rise of collectivism via nihilistic destruction of society and the state.

As I thought about the valid criticisms made here, I could see very clearly that much of dysfunction was caused by the intrusion of the State into every aspect of life. So, while I can understand the reaction against commercialism and materialist culture, the state, and society, especially when you've been disenfranchised your whole life, it must be remembered that every time a collectivist revolution succeeds, it re-establishes the state in a more evil form.

For a revolutionary answer to the critique of French civilization (and by extension, Western civilization), it must bring individualistic personal liberty regulated by ethics. True individualism unhampered by the enslaving state results in freedom, and freedom is the answer to the mindless materialism of consumerism.

Perhaps unknown to the invisible committee (or the new universal collective), is that the abrogation of the individual and the rise of the collective is only another type of materialism. It asserts that the space-time construct of the current mass of human life is all that there is, and thus, happiness can only occur in the making of a utopia.

The only solution proposed by this book is only perpetual revolution.

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W: LP: GRP: YZ: We

2011-10-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With almost 13,000 reviews for this book, there doesn't seem much point in rehashing what the book is about, but I did want to point out a few things. The author enters the psyche of the main character in a way that reminds me of Dostoevsky's treatment of the underground man and the criminal in "Crime & Punishment" with bits of the Inquisitor thrown in. In this story this approach works, and it becomes an analysis of a society built around a collectivist "scientific" rationalism. The main character is infected with the growth of a soul or individual self-awareness, and as the story progresses he struggles against his programmed desire to be unconscious in the collective and the new feelings of self.

All this, I find interesting, and it makes a wry comment on all utopianist experiments. In a way it is a bridge between the ideas in Dostoevsky and Rand and Orwell and Huxley. Very well done in sparse modernist prose. I wish I could read Russian to see how it worked in it's original language.

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W: LP: GRP: RH: Farnham's Freehold

2011-10-18T04:46:00.000-07:00

Farnham's Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein

I have read many of Heinlein's earlier novels (marketed to the YA demographic) in my youth, and then later I absorbed a few of his more well known works (like Stranger...etc.), but this novel is new to me.

When I come to a novel that I haven't yet read, I find it helpful to NOT check reviews or plot spoilers before plunging in. Sometimes, I end up seeing some reviews, but for this novel, a few of the reviews that I took a peak at seemed to be describing two different stories. Now that I am mostly through this novel I think I can understand why. As I began this novel, I thought, "Oh, good! I haven't read a post-apocalyptic story in awhile, and this seems interesting." Then at about on third of the way into the novel, the story suddenly morphed into a story about a one-way time travel 2100 years into the future of our present day with a complete mirror image of the social conditions of America in the early 1960s.

This sudden change of the story somewhat irritated me, and I was going to give this low marks. Then it occurred to me that if I took the actual story less seriously, and looked at the morphing story as a metaphor of the idea of liberty as it intersects with the reality that each individual must endure, it became much more interesting. Examples from the story where Hugh Farnham (the main character) is working for an overlord in this new society and earlier where he and family and friends were struggling to survive, serves to illustrate the struggle between ideals and reality as it is thrust upon you. I don't know if this was intentional, but it does open perspectives on what it means to be free, whether you are without society and fighting to survive nature or you are within society and comfort but are essentially a slave. How do you seek freedom and liberty when you are deeply enmeshed within the system of an un-free society? Can you escape? How do you make peace with slavery when you know the truth of liberty?

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W: LP: LG: Fyodor Dostoevsky

2011-10-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

Despite the demise of the Literary Group that I used to belong to, I am continuing to read from and study about one of my favorite authors, Fyodor Dostoevsky. So I came across another mini-biography in the Christian Encounters series about this great writer. The first book I read in this series was the excellent survey of J.R.R. Tolkien by Mark Horne. Like the biography of Tolkien, this account of Dostoevsky is fairly general and light, but accurate, easy to read and good for introducing new readers to the lives of these great men. Here following is my quick review from Goodreads:

Fyodor Dostoevsky by Peter Leithart

The author uses the conceit of the fictional biography to tell the story of FD's life. The story is fairly light and an easy read, but still deals with the important events in Dostoevsky's life as it relates to the development of his writing.

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W: LP: GRP: NS: Cobweb

2011-10-05T04:23:00.000-07:00

The Cobweb by Neal Stephenson

This is the second book by this combination of writers (Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George), and it is still in the category of mainstream thriller involving political intrigue. The story takes place during the run-up to the first Gulf War. The premise of the story is that part of Saddam's biological warfare production was being done at various universities in the US with Iraqi exchange students using funding from the US gov't. Much of the action takes place in the Midwest, and the characters are better drawn than the first novel by this combination of writers. Well done.

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Social Philosophy: Statism as Baal worship

2011-10-04T19:51:00.000-07:00

The following is a re-post of an article from http://www.flaglesscoop.com/; I'm posting it here so that if it gets taken down I can still find it:

Has the American State Become Your Religion?

“You shall have no other gods before me.” (Ex. 20:3)

Before falsely using YHWH’s name, before the sabbath, before honor of father and mother, before murder, adultery, theft, or false witness or coveting, before all of these is this single command: “You shall have no other gods before me.” It is unqualified. Commentators have noted how the commands that follow this one command and every book that follows Exodus relate to it. Jesus summed up the two tables and their Deuteronomical and Levitical reiterations well. He said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and…you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” (Matt. 22:37-38). Throughout the Old and New Testaments the command is clear. When a king of Israel set up idols to Baal? He got sick and died or got killed in battle. When the Israelites themselves served Baal? The whole nation experienced strife and suffering. Israel was eventually conquered and destroyed for their idolatry. When Ananias and Sapphira worshiped their stuff rather than their creator? They died. Moses made it clear. The prophets made it clear. The Psalmists made it clear. Job made it clear. Jesus made it clear. Paul made it clear. There is no God but YHWH. You cannot serve YHWH and serve another god.

Whenever the followers of YHWH have ceased following Him, be it the church or Israel (if you choose to make that distinction,) and followed gods and systems who disdained human life, indulged in human sacrifice, and called for general immorality, the followers of YHWH have proven themselves not followers at all but, rather, idolaters who fall into many immoral pursuits. The writer of Hebrews said it well, “For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief,” (Heb. 3:16-19). This is one of those rare texts that connects disobedience closely with unbelief. Those people who called themselves follower of YHWH? They were no followers at all, they were unbelievers and they proved it with their actions of unfaithfulness to YHWH.

Imagine a god who calls for you to sacrifice your children! Imagine a god who calls for you to slaughter humans on his altar! Imagine a god who calls you to steal from your neighbor! Imagine a god who demands that you devote yourself to it and no other. “Baal!” you say. “Moloch!” you say. Why, yes, those gods did demand human sacrifice, theft, and pure devotion. They are gods of aggression. They are gods whose image we surely do not bear. They are not YHWH. They are not the true God. If you worship them you worship nothing and show yourself to be an unbeliever.

However, I am not talking about Baal or Moloch per se. I speak of the modern Baal.

Hear me out.

When you pay your taxes, the state takes that money and uses it to kill women and children both here and abroad in the protection of their own interests. When you put on a uniform and wield a weapon on behalf of the state to kill, you kill the son of another father and mother and a creature created in the image of God. When you vote, you perpetuate a system of democracy that is rooted in injustice (imagine using a majority of 51% to screw 49% out of their inherent right to something!) When you take millions of dollars from the state you swear your devotion to it for life. When you campaign for Rick Perry, or Ron Paul, or Michelle Bachmann, or Mitt Romney, or Barack Obama, or any human, you say, “This, I worship!” “The state?” you say? “HOW DARE YOU!?”

I am tracking a deeply disturbing trend: many Christians maddeningly refuse to hear “Christarchists” out when they decry the state’s protection of itself in war. Many Christians virtually stop their ears and gnash their teeth before they will hear us out when we decry the use of your taxes for abortion and the killing of the Muslim (while they somehow still “oppose” abortion and murder.) Many Christians refuse to hear us out when we decry the perpetuation of a system rooted in the injustice of the many oppressing the few. Many Christians refuse to hear us out when we question the validity of an institution that calls them to murder, steal, and inflict poverty wherever they go.

It is as if we were decrying the worship of YHWH! It is almost as if we used the very name of YHWH in vain! I, personally, have been sworn at, accused of being “inconsistent” with my worldview, and told that I am a disgrace to to the concept of freedom.

Why? Because I have chosen to live consistently with the Sermon on the Mount? Because I have attempted to live as consistently as possible with the system of non-aggression that the Bible predominantly espouses? Because I have expressed disdain for a Church that largely refuses to do its work and feed the poor? Because I have called for Voluntary consent to all taxes and systems of government (imagine a world in which we may voluntarily decide where we want our money and efforts to go! Is that not freedom?!) Because I have asked you to actually do what you say you’re doing and read Thomas Jefferson’s hatred of centralized government and banking? Because I have dared to point out that we in Evangelicalism and many Reformed circles are treating the Constitution as if it were God breathed?

Christians, the American state is the modern Baal! The voting booth is the modern “high place!” Politicians are the modern Asherim, the Constitution a modern Golden Calf, partisan politics the modern Marduk. As Moloch asked the Israelites to sacrifice their children on his altars, the state demands that we fund its murder of children. As Asher demanded immorality on her altars, the state demands at the point of a gun that we fund every immorality which we supposedly oppose. As Nebuchadnezzar built a giant image of himself and demanded Daniel worship it, the state presents politicians of all colors who build an image of themselves through various media and demand that we worship them with our vote and consent (and, subsequently, our money, time, and lives.)

I am seriously uncomfortable in my church now. Why? Every time I look at my pastor (who preaches amazing, Biblical, Christ-centered sermons) I see the American flag directly behind him. That’s right, the symbol of the modern Baal, proudly displayed for all to see and hear that we condone the murder of children, that we love war, that we adore theft! That flag speaks so loudly I cannot hear my pastor anymore. We may as well have a Pentagram on the wall! Let us display the Asherim! Let us build a high place! Let us mold a golden calf and dance around it! Let us bow down and worship Tiamat! If we’re going to go this far we may as well “go the whole hog!”

Christians, the American state is dangerously close to being our religion if it is not already. It is becoming hard to distinguish between the two for me. Do we serve Baal, or do we serve YHWH? Choose, and choose quickly, because this state is about to demand your total and complete worship.

If we bow down, we prove our unbelief. YHWH and YHWH alone is God. If we dance around this golden calf, we prove that we do not ultimately believe that Christ is the one and all-sufficient King.

Do we serve YHWH, or do we serve Herman Cain? Do we serve YHWH or do we serve the Republican party? Do we serve YHWH, or do we serve the American state? Has the American state become our religion?

We worship in vain before blocks of wood and dead pillars of stone wrought by the hands of men if we continue to serve America, the modern Baal.

There is no King but Christ! Let us serve the King!

Ryan Day Thompson, Contributor
The Flagless Cooperative

Natural Philosophy: Neuroscience and memory

2011-10-03T13:39:00.001-07:00

In The Palaces Of Memory: How we Build the Worlds Inside Our Heads by George B. Johnson

This an excellent explanation of the development of neuroscience as it relates to memory in the human brain. The author does a good job of explaining the various concepts and mechanisms for the layman; you don't have to have a degree in Biology or Chemistry to understand the subject related here. A good introduction to the vast field of Cognitive Science in general. Recommended.

Further comments:

I have studied the area of applied physics concerning Electromagnetism as it relates to the design, installation, and maintenance of electrical systems and devices. In my studies (both formal and self-educated), I have surveyed electronics, computers, information theory, and cybernetics, among other things of related interest. The deeper I delve into the details of these subjects, the more I see the similarities between the underlying principles of man-made machines and biological machines. In my reading of the above referenced book, I noticed some striking parallels between the inner workings of solid state devices (SCRs, transistors, microprocessors, etc.) and the action of neurons in the process of an organism forming memories. I would have to quote too much about solid state physics to spell it all out, so I will just quote a small passage of the book and leave it to my audience to notice interesting correlations. From page 82:

Apparently, there was something special about NMDA receptors that was integral to memory--or at least to LTP. Researchers soon discovered that the receptor was unlike any other. Receptors generally work by opening ion channels in the cellular membrane. Until very recently, all ion channels were believed to be either chemically gated or electrically gated. Either the arrival of a neurotransmitter at the receptor or a change in membrane voltage caused them to open and close.

The NMDA receptor had the distinction of being both electrically gated and chemically gated--it required both kinds of stimulation before it would open its ion channel. Normally, a magnesium ion blocked the channel. No matter how much neurotransmitter crossed the synapse and stuck to a neuron's NMDA receptors, they would be incapable of responding. But if the neuron was already in a state of electrical arousal--stimulated by a previous signal that had activated the cell's normal glutamate receptors--then the magnesium stoppers would pop out. Now the NMDA receptors were free to react to a second rush of glutamate by opening their channels. The receptor was, in other words, a two-step device. One pulse cocked the trigger, the second pulse fire the gun. And while normal receptors worked by allowing sodium ions into the cell--the positive charges that led to the firing of an action potential--the NMDA receptor also let in calcium.

The importance of the last sentence of the second paragraph has to do with Dr. Gary Lynch's work on the mechanism of calpain in changing the cytoskeleton in the synapse. Fascinating stuff.

Neal Stephenson on Innovation

2011-10-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

The article in the following link so succinctly points out some of the issues surrounding innovation in my culture that I have to recommend it to my audience of 0.78 persons. Here is the link: Innovation Starvation

Here is another link (I archived it on my own tertiary blog): Innovation Starvation

Personal Update: Social Media & misc.

2011-09-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

I have been practicing various forms of writing and enjoying the concept of a blog. It's like publishing a magazine with virtually no cost except the time devoted to it. It has allowed me to force myself to communicate by writing. It provides the sort of practice that authors used to get when they would starve while sending stories to magazines. By blogging, you can work your job and practice your writing. Perhaps the disadvantage is that sometimes when an author starts selling stories or articles, he/she sometimes has the privilege of getting expert help from an editor, whereas in a blog, unless you have a large interactive audience, you are just alone and you have to police your own grammar and style.

I am in the latter category, so I have tried to look at my entries carefully and do a little polishing. I started this blog not knowing what to make it into, but only that I needed to express myself. I intended to just communicate about what interests me and report the joy I discover as I have been educating myself about various subjects. I tried to do this with portions of fiction and straight articles, but as I have progressed in this endeavor, I've noticed that the Ephemera articles and some of the personal updates would be better placed by being posted in the social media. I am somewhat a late bloomer when it comes to being web-savy, so I only got involved in social media (esp. fb) recently. With the exception of some pedantic and self important people, it looks like a good way to interact and inter-react. And it fits the seasonable nature of many of the posts. So I am going to move future Ephemera Articles and much of the personal updates to facebook, or maybe google+ if most of my contacts move there.

Except for the turn towards fascism in the United States, this is a great time to be alive because of the many avenues of expression and information exchange. If the internet can remain open, it will be looked at in historical hindsight like the invention of the press in Europe is looked at by the West.

Novo Visum.
Neue Ansicht.

W: LP: GRP: SW: China: How a revolution can go bad.

2011-09-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time by Simon Winchester

Interesting view of China from the mid-1990s via a trip up the Yangtze River. I would love to visit China, and among the many things to see, I should very much like to visit the Three Gorges Dam now that it is finished. Currently personal economics and the US government might militate against this for some time, so I will have to content myself with travelogue books like this one. I have now passed the part of the journey where the author visits the People's Theatre near Guling. Here he stops to relate an important event in the early revolutionary history of modern China. The time was 1959 at a major meeting of party leaders...

The author eloquently describes the events of 1959 and subsequent years:

1959 was the second year of the Great Leap Forward. So it was a time when some kind of evaluation could be made of Chairman Mao's bold plan to increase, drastically, China's agricultural and industrial production. His plan had been radical, and in many senses, bizarre: it had called for the establishment of giant agricultural communes, for the transfer of millions of city dwellers to work on grandiose irrigation projects, for the building of tens of thousands of "backyard furnaces" that would turn steelmaking into a nationwide cottage industry and swell production. People were told to hand in their pots and pans for melting; communal feeding halls were set up as household kitchens vanished. Society underwent a profound change, with unanticipated and often haphazard consequences, and all in the vain hope of elevating the world's most populous nation into the international premier league.

The Great Leap Forward was an unmitigated disaster--perhaps the most searing indictment of a command economy since Stalin had forced collectivization on the Ukraine in the thirties. Anyone with any insight who gathered in Lushan that summer, for the eighth plenum of the Communist Party Central Committee, knew that it was a disaster--or at the very least that it was going badly wrong. But hardly anyone had the courage or the folly to say so--no one, that is, except for a tiny group of moderates led by the ill-educated but shrewd bulldog of a defense minister, a man who has since been pilloried and victimized into legend, Peng Dehuai. Peng alone felt able to say that what was going on was madness; and in a letter sent from his cool bungalow at one side of Guling to Mao's compound on the other, he told him so.

Given the cruel imperium that was beginning to grip Mao's rule, the result was predictable. The Chairman began by admitting to some mistakes--though in is own defense said that Lenin and Marx had made errors too, but were brilliant and invincible nonetheless--and tried to give the impression of flexibility. It was merely a feint: for the rest of the Lushan meeting Mao tore into Peng and those few men who dared support him--with the result that when all trooped down from the hills at the end of that July, Peng was out of a job, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) was firmly under the hand of Mao, and Peng himself was dispatched into a six-year political exile in a slum on the outskirts of Beijing, sweeping his own floors and carrying out his own night soil, reduced from a hero to a scapegoat in the blink of an eye.

If it was possible to make a connection in Lushan between the growing of tea and the eventual collapse of Imperial China, so it turns out also to be possible, and also in Lushan, to construct a filigree of connections between the angry exchanges in the People's Theatre in 1959 and the terrors that were unleashed in Beijing by Mao and his supporters seven years later that came to be known as the Cultural Revolution. The connections might seem tenuous, only half visible: but unlike the saga of tea and opium and war and treaties, where the links are mostly commercial, political, western and obvious, those that link Peng's sacking and the start of the madness of 1966 are very Chinese, relying as they do to deliver their force on hints, allusions, literature and legend. It is a complicated story, but it is one that has Lushan as its backdrop, and manages to be of huge importance in the history of the country.

Peng Dehuai had found himself in trouble simply because he had told the truth. Doubtless he saw himself as a martyr, though he left no written record saying so. But the deputy mayor of Beijing, a noted and brilliant Chinese historian, party propagandist and occasional essayist named Wu Han, essentially said as much in an article in the "People's Daily" shortly after the Lushan meeting, alluding in well turned historical phrasings to all that had happened. Wu did not mention Peng by name. Instead, he used his stature as a historian to reprise a famous and often told story from the Ming dynasty: that of the summary sacking and imprisonment, in February 1566, of a devout, honest and well-loved court official named Hai Rui.

Hai, who worked for the Board of Revenue, had sent a minute to the Emperor, accusing him of extravagance, banditry and corruption--all of which was evidently true. The Emperor was duly outraged, sacked and fettered Hai--and then suddenly died himself. Hai was released, and then went and did more or less the same thing twice more in his checkered life--he was impeached and dismissed by the governor of Suzhou, whom he had similarly accused, and then he was censured for calling for the introduction of the death penalty for corruption. Hai was too righteous for his own good, perhaps--a prophet without honor in his own time.

Wu Han had been studying Hai Rui, and had already published one article about Hai's decision to stand up for right against the Ming Emperor. This had appeared in the "People's Daily" on the eve of the Lushan meeting, and it is more than possible that Peng read it. He may even have been inspired by it. But the more important article came after Peng had been sacked. It was a lengthy essay about the sacking of Hai in which he was called 'a man of courage for all times,' someone who refused to be intimidated. The Emperor, on the other hand, was 'self-opinionated and unreceptive to criticism,' a man 'craving vainly for immortality.' To any Chinese skilled in reading between the lines of ideographs, the allusion was quite clear: yet another good man had been sacked for standing up for right, and a tyrant was in power, behaving as a classical demagogue.

Two years later Wu developed the theme of this now celebrated article into a full-length play, "The Dismissal of Hai Rui from Office". It was staged in a Communist Party theater in Beijing, and it was also published in book form. The idea, lèse-majesté that it obviously was, was being broadcast far and wide. But--was it real criticism, thinly veiled? Was it a red herring? Why was Wu himself not arrested and humiliated for daring to speak out? Scholars still wrestle with such matters: theses tumble from the presses, their authors poring over the bones of the Lushan encounter and all that stemmed from it.

They do so because the echoes of Lushan and the allusive saga of Hai Rui reverberated down the years, most strongly in 1965. It was then that Mao moved to secure absolute control over the PLA, and in that same year Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, had her colleague Yao Wenyuan attack Wu Han's by now infamous play. Yao, Mao's wife and Mao himself were at long last saying: thus far and no further. Those who dared to compare Mao's energetic running of China with the behavior of a vain and corrupt Ming emperor were, in essence, the new enemy. China must be purged of them, and of all who dared to think like them. Those foolish people who agreed with Wu Han were people who would have agreed with Peng Dehuai; those who condemned Peng and stood alongside Mao would be safe. For the remainder--who knew?

This, then, was the very beginning of what would swiftly become the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a ten-year nightmare that changed the face of the country, horribly and terrifyingly, forever. Tender and elegant though the essays of the seven-year interregnum may have been, they hid the realities of a mighty power struggle that had been going on ever since the Lushan meeting, and which penetrated to the very core of the new China. As usual, what took place in the Middle Kingdom was hidden, at least at first, by the obsequies and curlicues of history and literature. What began with a brief display of plays and poems ended with the deaths of millions in thousands of prisons, and in limitless acres of mud and dirt.

It saw the end of Peng Dehuai's life. He was arrested by Red Guards at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, fell ill in prison, was denied any treatment for his ailments. He died in pain eight years later, but four years would pass before his family was told. His victimization, which began at Lushan, continued with all the special bitterness that a revolution can employ only when it chooses that to further its ideals it must consume its own children.*

(bold emphasis mine)

This passage serves as a warning and a metaphor for all would-be revolutionaries.

*Wu Han was arrested and brutalized, and died within three years. Yao Wenyuan, who wrote the attack on Wu Han's play, went on to become one of the infamous Gang of Four, a steersman of the Cultural Revolution. Once Mao had died he, Mao's widow and their two colleagues were arrested and put on trial: Yao was sentenced to eighteen years in prison.

W: LP: GRP: NS: Interface

2011-09-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

Interface by Neal Stephenson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Entertaining book that captures the socio-political zeitgeist of the USA for the last ten years.

For me, this book falls into the "mainstream fiction" category; a category of books that I don't often read. And with this expectation I embarked upon this novel and have been enjoying the mind candy aspect. But throughout this book I often found myself chuckling at the so very true social commentary. Great entertainment and great gallows humor as we all get to experience the decline of American civilization.

UPDATE: Just finished this book; it was a lot better than I thought it would be. I liked the ending and the many eery parallels to current reality. Written in 1994, it seem so appropriate for today's political struggle between the few who believe in liberty and the status quo that believes in control and tyranny. Recommended.

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W: LP: GRP: SW: Korea

2011-08-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles by Simon Winchester

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked this book, but my only regret is that it was written in the late 1980's. I would like to read something that covers the last twenty years since this book was published. For now, I'll have to content myself with Wikipedia articles and archived news reports.

The book did make me want to visit Korea. I worked for a Korean company here stateside for a short time, and I wish I had read the book before working there as it would have given me a bit more insight in how to deal with the boss. As an American, I am ashamed by the idiot infantrymen stationed in Korea that for better or worse represent the USA to the Korean people. But I have always gotten along with the Koreans that I have known here in the states, and I am sure that if I visited Korea I would love the people. The book is definitely worth your time as long as you make allowances for the author's biases.

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W: LP: GRP: JK: On the Road and other novels

2011-08-17T21:46:00.001-07:00

Jack Kerouac: Road Novels 1957-1960 by Jack Kerouac

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

08/17/2011 Update:

I liked "Lonesome Traveler" as much as "On the Road", and in fact the last section of Lonesome Traveler, "The Vanishing American Hobo", portrays the tightening noose of anti-liberty in America starting at the fringes. Today the noose is so tight that we are starting to choke. You couldn't have Walt Whitman today (he'd be arrested) unless he was on a government grant and had papers to prove it. Anyway the collection is worth reading for completeness.

jri.

08/12/2011 Post:

I'm finally getting back to this collection. I find that, except for "On the Road", I have to be in the right mood to read Kerouac. Just finished "The Subterraneans". I think Kerouac's 'stream-of-consciousness' writing is more accessible than James Joyce's, but of course each writer is unique. These two writers, together with Thomas Pynchon, constitute my periodic immersion in what I categorize as post-modern writing. I'll probably add Joseph Heller's "Catch 22" to the mix eventually for the full trip. All-in-all, however, I like the poetic-ness of Kerouac better. This type of literature is not good to hold up as an example of how to write, but it is entertaining and often times the subjects addressed in the fictions are worth contemplating.

Novo Visum,

Neue Ansicht.

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W: LP: RAH: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

2011-08-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is laden with great ideas, and may be considered subversive by those opposed to liberty. Just finished it for the second time and loved it. I should be getting a paper copy (listened to audible version this time around) next week, at which time I shall start quoting portions here to stimulate discussion of the ideas contained within. Beyond the great ideas in the book, I also marveled at the perfect pacing of the events in the story and enjoyed all the various characters. The basic science within the story is what makes it "hard" science fiction, but enjoyable in the tradition of the golden age of this genre.

I'll have updates posted here when I have time.

For now,

Novo Visum,
Neue Ansicht.

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W: LP: GRP: HN: Out of Solitude

2011-08-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

Out of Solitude; Three Meditations on the Christian Life, by Henri J.M. Nouwen
This was light but profound, and it's as if the author had read Bonhoeffer's "Life Together" because there were some places where the words were eerily parallel. This will be re-read again as there is so much to mine that I might as well post the entire contents. The author uses the biblical dialectic like Bonhoeffer does in the above referenced work. Here is an example from the Introduction:

"I want to reflect on this lonely place in our lives. Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our lives are in danger. Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our actions quickly become empty gestures. The careful balance between silence and words, withdrawal and involvement, distance and closeness, solitude and community forms the basis of the Christian life and should therefore be the subject of our most personal attention. Let us therefore look somewhat closer, first at our life in action, and then at our life in solitude."

W: LP: GRP: DB: Life Together

2011-07-27T18:26:00.001-07:00

Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(July 27, 2011AD)
This short book has only an introduction and five chapters, but oh how profound are the thoughts contained therein. I have only just finished through the first chapter (Community) and found numerous passages to quote. Many of the reviews on this book quote copiously from the text, but I will still add to the din. I will be reading this again periodically as I try to internalize these ideas.

This passage reminds me to pray for my brothers around the world, it is also a comfort to me in my place as second class member of my church:

"So between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians. It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God's Word and sacrament. Not all Christians receive this blessing. The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered lonely, the proclaimers of the Gospel in heathen lands stand alone. They know that visible fellowship is a blessing. They remember, as the Psalmist did, how they went "with the multitude...to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday" (Ps.42:4). But they remain alone in far countries, a scattered seed according to God's will."

I will add more quotes to this review as I have time; for now:

Novo Visum
Neue Ansicht.

Here are two more quotes on Community:
(07/28/2011 update):

"But God has put this Word into the mouth of men in order that it may be communicated to other men. When one person is struck by the Word, he speaks it to others. God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man. Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure.
And that also clarifies the goal of all Christian community: they meet one another as bringers of the message of salvation. As such, God permits them to meet together and gives them community. Their fellowship is founded solely upon Jesus Christ and this 'alien righteousness.' All we can say, therefore, is: the community of Christians springs solely from the Biblical and Reformation message of the justification of man through grace alone; this alone is the basis of the longing of Christians for one another."

(07/29/2011 update):
"When the way of intellectual or spiritual selection is taken the human element always insinuates itself and robs the fellowship of its spiritual power and effectiveness for the Church, drives it into sectarianism. The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door. We must, therefore, be very careful at this point."

On scripture (a discipline of each day):
(07/30/2011 update):

"We must learn to know the Scriptures again, as the Reformers and our fathers knew them. We must not grudge the time and the work that it takes. We must know the Scriptures first and foremost for the sake of our salvation. But besides this, there are ample reasons that make this requirement exceedingly urgent. How, for example, shall we ever attain certainty and confidence in our personal and church activity if we do not stand on solid Biblical ground? It is not our heart that determines our course, but God's Word. But who in this day has any proper understanding of the need for scripture proof? How often we hear innumerable arguments 'from life' and 'from experience' put forward as the basis for most crucial decisions, but the argument of Scripture is missing. And this authority would perhaps point in exactly the opposite direction. It is not surprising, of course, that the person who attempts to cast discredit upon their wisdom should be the one who himself does not seriously read, know, and study the Scriptures. But one who will not learn to handle the Bible for himself is not an evangelical Christian."

Well anyway, you get the idea; there is much to mine in this small book.

W: LP: GRP: PA:: Time is the bridge that always burns behind us.

2011-07-09T09:28:00.000-07:00

The Burning Bridge by Poul Anderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This short story (really, in between a short story and a novella in length) is a tightly paced account of the journey of a fleet of colony ships traveling from Earth to another star system with a habitable planet roughly twenty light-years distant. This has all the elements of the type of science fiction that I loved most in my youth. In this story, the heroic captain and admiral of a fleet of Libertarian Separatist colonists is a believing New England Christian but is haunted by the profound psychological strain of alienation from his own home on Earth by time and the vast distances of space. In a very short time the author gets inside the head of this main character as events of the story unfold. As the story progresses, you get scientific explanation of how the spacecrafts traverse the vast distance of the journey traveling at half the speed of light. Most of the crew and passengers are in cryo-sleep except for a fractional "awake" crew to monitor everything. After some time into the voyage from Earth, at the limit of signal attenuation, they receive a message from Earth that the Educational Mandate (requiring all citizens to be indoctrinated in government schools) is rescinded for the "Constitutionalists" and other laws may be relaxed and that the colonists may return to Earth. There is little time to debate the issue and the captain must decide the course of action, and his choice requires him to do something wrong which now alienates him further as he may be required to no longer be involved in space travel (all of his life that he has left is his existence as an astronaut). The end was poignant, but requires experience of the entire story to get the intensity. Here is a quote from the end of the story:

"You aren't alone, Joshua, she wanted to call. Every one of us is beside you. Time is the bridge that always burns behind us."

Anderson, Poul William (2010). The Burning Bridge (Illustrated Version) (p. 42). Unknown. Kindle Edition.

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W: LP: GRP: CSL: The Pilgrim's Regress

2011-06-17T08:33:00.000-07:00

The Pilgrim's Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity Reason and Romanticism by C.S. Lewis

I thought that I had read this book by C.S. Lewis, but now that I am into it most of the way, I find I have not read it before. I plan to re-read this book a few years after I will finish it soon. The allegorical character of the story is clear, but I think that Lewis is telling the story of his own journey toward Faith in Christ. I have not read much of Lewis' scholarly writings (on literature and philosophy, except the writings that relate to Christian apologetics), so I know that I am missing some allusions and satire of various philosophical positions. When I have come to a better understanding of ALL of Lewis' writings, I shall revisit this story, and I know that I will enjoy it even more.

No time for deep analysis now, but the next time...maybe there is a paper or two to be written on some of the ideas and concepts.:}

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W: LP: GRP: Franz Mohr with Edith Schaeffer

2011-06-08T04:25:00.000-07:00

My Life with the Great Pianists, by Franz Mohr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The content of this book deserves at least 4.5 stars, but the poor organization and slightly above average writing made this a chore to get through (at least until part 3). I think this book would have been better if it was arranged as a regular biography of Franz Mohr (that is in chronological order), and then polished a little more. For these reasons it gets a three star rating.

Personal Update: I'm baaack.

2011-06-07T20:53:00.001-07:00

As someone might tell from my recent upsurge in Facebook traffic, I am back online via my homemade workstation. 3Ware owns LSI (the manufacturer of my controller card), but they were very good about replacing my dead controller card. I was able to plug the card in (this time installing an extra slot fan for additional cooling) and the machine booted right up and is running great. Immediately I performed a data backup and bookmarked the 32 tabs on my browser and then exported the book marks to an html file. Everything seems to be running well. Now to get back to reading books instead of the information ocean...

Sumner viz the opening of American Imperialism

2011-05-24T22:40:00.000-07:00

against American Imperialism

Personal Update: Computer woes & yard activities

2011-05-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

So the LSI PCI Express Ultra320 SCSI Single-Channel Host Bus Adapter which controls my boot drive in my home workstation suddenly died. Fortunately my controller is only 4 months away from being out of warranty. But so far it looks as if they will replace my card.

Since the RMA process even with the best companies can take a few weeks, my online presence, already reduced for increased reading load, will diminish as I am compelled to use other computers for access to the 'net.

Like I asked on the facebook, is this a sign from God that I should not spend as much time on the computer or is this just normal chaos from a fallen universe? I don't know why it is that I expect things to go well on any given day, because it so seldom happens that there is no trouble in a day. Even Jesus said, "sufficient unto the day is the evil therein." (Matt 6:34b)

Anyway, as I spend time working on outdoor stuff on the house, and waiting for parts for my computer, I will be forced to shed my addictive obsession with the information ocean. It's a good thing, right?

Peace Out.

History of Zionism minus the propaganda

2011-05-05T19:41:00.000-07:00

Blood Brothers, exp. ed. by Elias Chacour

From pages 122 to 135:

What was the true story of Palestine? I was aware as never before that people in the West held a view that went something like this. The Jewish people, have suffered tremendous persecution, needed a haven--a national homeland. Their Zionist leaders had chosen the "uninhabited" land of Palestine. Supposedly, the surrounding Arab nations were naturally antagonistic and jealous that the Jewish settlers had turned a wasteland into a paradise. They had risen unprovoked against the Jews, forcing them to fight a valiant War of Independence in 1948.

But I had grown up in Palestine in those years and that was not the full story, nor was it especially correct. I had witnessed a terribly ironic twist of history in which the persecuted became the persecutor. As one of its victims, I had seen the cruel face of Zionism.

Now I determined to find out how a peaceful movement that had begun with a seemingly good purpose--to end the persecution of the Jewish people--had become such a destructive, oppressive force.

Along with that determination, I was driven by a respect for history that Father had planted in me. Did the seeds of our future hope lie buried in our past, as he had so often said?

Aside from my seminary studies I began to spend hours in the libraries of Paris, hunting down books and news reports on the true history of the Zionists and the Palestine disaster. Whole books and reports unifying these accounts would not be published until years later. Yet my study pieced together a startling, documented story.

In 1897, I learned, a conference had convened in Basle, Switzerland, to "lay the foundation stone of the house which was to shelter the Jewish nation." The director of the gathering was a prominent writer named Theodor Herzl. He had fathered in Europe a new political movement called Zionism--an inspiring movement that hoped to rescue the downtrodden, impoverished and humiliated Jews in the big city ghettoes [sic]. By the end of the conference the delegates had agreed on two points--a flag and an anthem, the symbols of their unity and purpose. Beyond the pomp and emotional fervor the delegates were split on the location of this homeland that was being pushed by the leadership: Palestine.

Immediately, many disputed Herzl's statement that Palestine was a "land without a people, waiting for a people without a land." Though Herzl had been willing contemplate settlement in Argentina or Uganda as alternatives, his sights were clearly set on the Middle East. It was to this proposal that many delegates primarily and strenuously objected. By what right could Zionists expect to create a state in Palestine? It was a land with established borders and, more importantly, it had long been inhabited by people of an ancient, respectable culture. A homeland in Palestine, they declared with the overtones of a heinous prophecy, would have to be forgotten--or else established by force.

Devout Jews within and without the movement--particularly the Orthodox--fervently argued that Zionism was a blasphemy, because the elite, non-religious Jews felt that Zionism was the only Messiah Israel would ever have. Such talk incensed the religious, as did hints of militarism that already colored the fringes of the movement. Others, less religious and more pragmatic, believed that Zionism would feed anti-Semitism [sic] since it underscored the long-criticized "exclusiveness" of the Jewish people. They saw clearly that no land could be simply, peacefully "resettled" without violence.

Therefore, to appease the religious consciences the Zionist leaders adopted the principles of non-violence embodied in the Jewish Havlaga. This helped to rally support of the masses, the multiple millions who desperately hoped for an escape from the growing pogroms against them in Europe. Yet the leaders continued to formulate designs on Palestine. Though Herzl would not live much beyond the turn of the century, others would push his plans forward.

In Palestine, my own people were under too tight a thumb to take much notice of a conference in Basle, even if they had known of it. In the early 1900s, ours was also a downtrodden people, struggling and praying for freedom from our own oppressors. For hundreds of years we had suffered under the iron heel of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. When World War I engulfed the Middle East, the empire had begun to totter.

After the war, as the empire crumbled, the Palestinian people felt the first winds of freedom. The League of Nations bore their hopes aloft further by proposing a plan that would help "subject peoples." Larger, powerful nations would assist weaker nations in establishing their own independent governments. This was known as the Mandate system.

The British, who desired a foothold of power in the Middle East, saw in the Mandate system a great opportunity. Secretly, they made a proposal to Palestinian leaders: The British would help oust the Turks; in return, they would set up a temporary Mandate government in Palestine with the promise that they would slowly withdraw, leaving an established, independent country governed by the Palestinians themselves. In desperation, the Palestinian leaders agreed to this strategy. Freedom was in sight--or so they supposed--and little notice was given to the tiny Jewish agricultural communities that were sprouting in a seemingly scattered fashion across the landscape.

What I learned next in my readings truly saddened me. Once the British rule was established, the story became convoluted with political intrigues and double-dealings.

Immediately, the British met in secret with the French and Russians to divide the Middle East into "spheres of influence" with Palestine to be governed, not by the people of Palestine as promised, but by an international administration. The secret agreement was uncovered several years later, in 1917, when the Bolsheviks overthrew the czarist regime and could not resist making public such "imperialist" duplicity. Palestinian leaders were dismayed at this news and at once sent delegates to the British to protest. They chose the diplomatic route while an elite group, whose sights were set on Palestine, had already begun influencing British bureaucrats.

The year 1917 will forever be scarred with the brand of infamy for the Palestinian people. The Zionists had aligned themselves with Great Britain's Christian Restorationists, a group that believed they might bring to pass--by manipulating world events and reestablishing the nation of Israel--the Second Coming of Christ. The Zionists ignored this view, but the benefits of such a plan for them were obvious. They saw in Britain's new hold on Palestine their secret inroad to the Middle East, and so began a strange marriage between Zionist and Restorationist. It was in 1917 that the British Lord Arthur Balfour made his famous declaration--not in public at first, but privately in a letter to the powerful Lord Rothschild.

Lord Balfour wrote that the Cabinet "viewed with favor the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. And in the same letter; with the stroke of a pen, he reclassified the people of Palestine--ninety-two percent of the population--as "non-Jewish communities." Not only did this renege on the promise of independence, but it effectively handed over Palestine to the Zionists. The prime mover behind the British decision was the Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann.

If Lord Balfour was acting out of his own religious conviction or a love for the Jewish people, as some historians declared, I was unconvinced. In 1906, he had played a major part in passing the Aliens Act, which expressly sought to exclude Jews from Great Britain.
Nor was Lord Balfour oblivious of the political treachery in which he was enwebbed. In 1919, in a memorandum to the British Cabinet, he declared:

In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. So far as Palestine is concerned, (we) have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which at least in the letter (we) have not always intended to violate.

To me, it seemed that the Zionists had entered into an unholy marriage, an alliance motivated by power and convenience, consummated in treachery.

At once, Palestinian leaders were dismayed. For the next sixteen years they continually presented their fears to the British through diplomatic channels, appealing continually to royal commissions while unrest grew throughout Palestine. And the Zionists, funded by international money collected by the Jewish Agency, rapidly settled kibbutzim in a clearer and clearer pattern throughout Palestine, slowly forming the skeletal outlines of the land they meant to declare as their homeland.

Through the 1920s, European immigration to Palestine rose dramatically and the Zionist leaders became less and less guarded about their plan. Weizmann told an American secretary of state that he hoped "Palestine would ultimately become as Jewish as England is English." And thereafter, another Zionist leader told British officials, "There can only be one National Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish predominance as soon as the numbers of that race are sufficiently increased."

Increasingly, many Zionists themselves were ill at ease with those who insisted on Jewish "predominance" in Palestine. Yitzhak Epstein, an agriculturalist, had warned an international congress of the Zionist Party that they had wrongly consulted every political power that held sway over Palestine without consulting the Palestinians themselves. He feared the fact that Palestinian peasants had already lost so much land as a result of Zionist purchases from absentee landlords, and that this loss was sure to breed resentment. He argued ...

W: LP: GRP: CP: Boneshaker

2011-05-04T04:52:00.000-07:00

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

I just started this novel, so more comments may follow beyond these next few words. Imagine the 19th century, compressed, twisted, and an unusual fantastic element added, and you have the Steampunk universe of this story. I like how the style of the beginning of the story is very like many nineteenth century stories I have read. More later...

Happy Easter to Everyone: He Is Risen...& simplified gospel video

2011-04-24T06:41:00.000-07:00

This though contemporary, is to the point:GOSPEL.

W: LP: GRP: OH: Stories

2011-04-16T14:45:00.000-07:00

Holiday Classics By O. Henry by O. Henry

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a lovely collection of three most famous (of the many famous) short stories of William Sydney Porter. The three stories in order are "The Cop and the Anthem","The Gift of the Magi","The Last Leaf".

Sublime apotheosis of short story making indeed!

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General Reading: "Blood Brothers" by ELias Chacour

2011-04-11T17:25:00.001-07:00

Blood Brothers, exp. ed. by Elias Chacour

I just started this book, but I liked this scene from early in the first chapter (from middle earth):

"I darted through the narrow streets--hardly streets at all, but foot-worn, dirt corridors that threaded the homes of the village together beneath the shade of cedar and silver-green olive trees--dodging a goat and some chickens in my path. Biram seemed like one huge house to me. Our family, the Chacours, had led their flocks to these, the highest hills of Galilee, many hundreds of years ago. My grand-parents had always lived here, nearly next door to us. And there were so many aunts, uncles, cousins and distant relatives clustered here, it was as if each stone dwelling was merely another room where another bit of my family lived. All the homes fit snugly together right up to our own, the last house at the far edge of the village. Biram had grown here, quietly rearing its children, reaping its harvests, dozing beneath the Mediterranean stars for so many generations that all households were as one family."

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Link

2011-04-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

Rosanne E. Lortz

W: Steampunk Links: via Gail Carriger

2011-04-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd try my hand at a few steampunk stories when I have time, so links like the following {GC} are helpful for such endeavors.

W: LP: GRP: NTW: Surprised by Hope updated/final

2011-04-04T03:25:00.000-07:00

Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was quite interesting and Wright's position is solidly orthodox concerning Christ's resurrection and and the renewal of the Cosmos that is the final hope.

In the course of this exposition, I came across the following passage that ties in with my recent exploration of post-modernism and it's modernist roots, check it out:

[Quote:]

The real problem with the myth of progress is, as I just hinted, that it cannot deal with evil. And when I say "deal with," I don't just mean intellectually, though that is true as well; I mean in practice. It can't develop a strategy that actually addresses the severe problems of evil in the world. This is why all the evolutionary optimism of the last two hundred years remains helpless before world war, drug crime, Auschwitz, apartheid, child pornography, and the other interesting sidelines that evolution has thrown up for our entertainment in the twentieth century. We can't explain them, given the myth of progress, and neither can we eradicate them. Marx's own agenda, not to explain the world but to change it, remains unfulfilled. Of course, the twentieth century provided a quite full answer to the myth of progress, as many people (such as Karl Barth) saw during the First World War, but it's remarkable how many others have continued to believe and propagate it nonetheless. Teilhard himself was a stretcher bearer during the Great War, and the experience was influential not in leading him away from evolution but in his attempt to factor human suffering into his equation. Part of the problem in our contemporary debates about asylum seekers or about the Middle East is that our politicians still want to present us with the dream of progress, the steady forward advance of the golden dream of freedom; and when the tide of human misery washes up on our beaches or when people in cultures very different from our own seem not to want the kind of freedom we had in mind, it is not just socially but ideologically untidy and inconvenient. It reminds the politicians that there is a gap in their thinking. The world is in fact still a sad and wicked place, not a happy upward progress toward the light.

The myth, then, cannot deal with evil, for three reasons. First, it can't stop it: if evolution gave us Hiroshima and the Gulag, it can't be all good. There is no observable reason in science, philosophy, art, or anywhere else to suppose that if we simply plow ahead with the enlightenment dream these glitches will be ironed out and we'll get to utopia eventually. What's more, today's cutting-edge science is quite clear that whatever may or may not be true about specifically biological evolution, the cosmos as a whole is simply not evolving toward a golden future. The world that began with the Big Bang is heading either for the Big Cool-Down, as energy gradually runs out and the universe expands into the cold dark beyond, or for the Big Crunch, as gravity reasserts itself and everything slows down, stops, and then rushes back together again. It is quite possible that before either of these worrying possibilities takes place, a giant meteorite such as likely wiped out the dinosaurs could strike the Earth with similar devastating effects. None of these scenarios makes any sense within the myth of progress.

Second, even if "progress" brought us to utopia after all, that wouldn't address the moral problem of all the evil that's happened to date in the world. Suppose the golden age arrived tomorrow morning; what would that say to those who are being tortured to death today? How would that be a satisfactory solution to the huge and indescribable evils of the last century, let alone all of world history? If, akin to Teilhard de Chardin, we were to make God part of the process of it all, what sort of a god would it be who builds his kingdom on the bones and ashes of those who have suffered along the way? The picture reminds me of the story of the old Oxford don who, whenever the paper on his desk got quite out of control, would simply spread a copy of the Times over the lot and start again. After his death they found several layers, like an archaeologist's tell, of matters that had never been dealt with. And after the construction of the evolutionist's kingdom of God, God would be left with precisely the same problem. It was because of this that the ancient Jews began to speak of the resurrection.

The myth of progress fails because it doesn't in fact work; because it would never solve evil retrospectively; and because it under-estimates the nature and power of evil itself and thus fails to see the vital importance of the cross, God's no to evil, which then opens the door to his yes to creation. Only in the Christian story itself--certainly not in the secular stories of modernity--do we find any sense that the problems of the world are solved not by a straightforward upward movement into the light but by the creator God going down into the dark to rescue humankind and the world from its plight.

[Unquote.]

W: LP: GRP: BS: Zeitgeist

2011-04-02T05:23:00.000-07:00

Zeitgeist by Bruce Sterling

I just had to share this almost 'noir' flavored description of Istanbul, Turkey (and this whole novel would make a great intro piece for Effinger's Marid Audran trilogy) :

[Quote:]

Worn out from repeated jet flights, Starlitz stared murkily out his curtained window.

So it was back to Istanbul, finally. He'd never meant to spend so much time here. The place had a fatal attraction for him. It had been so much stronger than he was, so far beyond his ability to help. The city was neck deep, chin deep, nose deep, in the darkest sumps of history. Istanbul was the unspoken capital of many submerged empires: it had called itself Byzantium, Vizant, Novi Roma, Anthusa, Tsargrad, Constantinople....

Stuck in dense Turkish traffic, their driver clicked on his radio and began to curse a soccer game. The variant districts of Galata, Pera, Beshiktas, and Ortakoy inched beyond the bumpers. It was the Moslem London, the Islamic New York, crammed neighborhoods of millions with as much regional variety as Bloomsbury or The Bronx.

Istanbul. Crumbling ivy-grown Byzantine aqueducts with Turkish NO PARKING signs. Smog-breathing streetside vendors with ring-shaped breadrolls on sticks. Rubber-tired yellow bulldozers parked under the carved stone eaves of mosques.

Tourist-trap nightclubs featuring potbellied Ukrainian dancers. Vast sunshine-yellow billboards imploring bored Turkish housewives to learn English. Cash-card bank machines in prefab kiosks, built to mimic minarets. Pudding shops. Chestnut trees. Spotted wild dogs of premedieval lineage on their timeless garbage patrol.

Istanbul had more vitality than Sofia, or Belgrade, or Baghdad. Despite its best efforts, the twentieth century had not been able to beat the place down. Istanbul had lost its capitalship, but Istanbul had always walked on its own sore feet. It had not been crushed, conquered, and carpet bombed, it had never been forced to exist at the sufferance of others.

[Unquote.]

.

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W: LP: GRP: IA: I, Robot

2011-03-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I will come back to this collection of stories with more in-depth analysis as I have time. The stories contain prose that is sparse, and the characters are somewhat stereotypical, but the real appeal to me are the great ideas and the tightly reasoned development of society with the ubiquitous use of robotics in lieu of personal computers. For now I shall just quote the conclusion of the last story in this collection:

[Quote:]
“That I don’t see at all.”

"Then listen. Every action by any executive which does not follow the exact directions of the Machine he is working with becomes part of the data for the next problem. The Machine therefore knows that the executive has a certain tendency to disobey. He can incorporate that tendency into that data,--even quantitatively, that is, judging exactly how much and in what direction disobedience would occur. Its next answers would be just sufficiently biased so that after the executive concerned disobeyed, he would have automatically corrected those answers to optimal directions. The Machine knows, Stephen!”

“You can’t be sure of all this. You are guessing.”

“It is a guess based on a lifetime’s experience with robots. You had better rely on such a guess, Stephen.”

“But then what is left? The Machines themselves are correct and the premises they work on are correct. That we have agreed upon. Now you say that it cannot be disobeyed. Then what is wrong?”

“You have answered yourself. Nothing is wrong! Think about the Machines for a while, Stephen. They are robots, and they follow the First Law. But the Machines work not for any single human being, but for all humanity, so that the First Law becomes: ‘No Machine may harm humanity; or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.’

“Very well, then, Stephen, what harms humanity? Economic dislocations most of all, from whatever cause. Wouldn’t you say so?”

“I would.”

“And what is most likely in the future to cause economic dislocations? Answer that, Stephen.”

“I should say,” replied Byerley, unwillingly, “the destruction of the Machines.”

“And so should I say, and so should the Machines say*. Their first care, therefore, is to preserve themselves, for us. And so they are quietly taking care of the only elements left that threaten them. It is not the ‘Society for Humanity’ which is shaking the boat so that the Machines may be destroyed. You have been looking at the reverse of the picture. Say rather that the Machine is shaking the boat--very slightly--just enough to shake loose those few which cling to the side for purposes the Machines consider harmful to humanity."

"So Vrasayana loses his factory and gets another job where he can do no harm-he is not badly hurt, he is not rendered incapable of earning a living, for the Machine cannot harm a human being more than minimally, and that only to save a greater number. Consolidated Cinnabar loses control at Almaden. Villafranca is no longer a civil engineer in charge of an important project. And the directors of World Steel are losing their grip on the industry-or will."

But you don’t really know all this,” insisted Byerley, distractedly. “How can we possibly take a chance on your being right?

“You must. Do you remember the Machine’s own statement when you presented the problem to him? It was: ‘The matter admits of no explanation.’ The Machine did not say there was no explanation, or that it could determine no explanation. It simply was not going to admit any explanation. In other words, it would be harmful to humanity to have the explanation known, and that’s why we can only guess-and keep on guessing.”

“But how can the explanation do us harm? Assume that you are right, Susan.”

“Why, Stephen, if I am right, it means that the Machine is conducting our future for us not only simply in direct answer to our direct questions, but in general answer to the world situation and to human psychology as a whole. And to know that may make us unhappy and may hurt our pride. The Machine cannot, must not, make us unhappy.

“Stephen, how do we know what the ultimate good of humanity will entail? We haven’t at our disposal the infinite factors that the Machine has at its! Perhaps, to give you a not unfamiliar example, our entire technical civilization has created more unhappiness and misery than it has removed. Perhaps an agrarian or pastoral civilization, with less culture and less people would be better. If so, the Machines must move in that direction, preferably without telling us, since in our ignorant prejudices we only know that what we are used to, is good--and we would then fight change. Or perhaps a complete urbanization, or a completely caste-ridden society, or complete anarchy is the answer. We don’t know. Only the Machines know and they are going there and taking us with them.

“But you are telling me, Susan, that the ‘Society for Humanity’ is right' and that Mankind has lost its own say in its future.

"It never had any really. It was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand--at the whims of climate and the fortunes of war. Now the Machines understand them; and no one can stop them since the Machines will deal with them as they are dealing with the Society,--having, as they do the greatest of weapons at their disposal, the absolute control of our economy.”

“How horrible!

Perhaps how wonderful! Think that for all time all conflicts are finally evitable. Only the Machines from now on are inevitable!”

And the fire behind the quartz went out and only a curl of smoke was left to indicate its place.

“And that is all,” said Dr. Calvin, rising. “I saw it from the beginning, when the poor robots couldn’t speak, to the end, when they stand between mankind and destruction. I will see no more. My life is over. You will see what comes next.”

I never saw Susan Calvin again. She died last month at the age of eighty-two.
[Unquote, bold mine.]

*So say we all; so say we all.

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W: LP: GRP: PKD: VALIS and Later Novels final

2011-03-28T10:58:00.000-07:00

VALIS and Later Novels by Philip K. Dick

Just finished the fourth novel in this collection, "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer," and I found this story similar to VALIS in some ways but the focus was more on the loss that entails when those around you that you love start 'offing' themselves. The whole thing was poignant with sadness, yet we still had the profound explorations of philosophy and religion and human nature that is the hallmark of these late novels. It has been somewhat difficult to slog through these novels in this collection, but now that I have made the effort, I have that satisfied feeling of making it back from across the universe.

W: LP: GRP: MS: Frankenstein 03

2011-03-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

{Update}
I just finished this novel, what a magnificent achievement for the first novel of a nineteen year old writer!!!
I want to quote a sublime soliloquy from the monster of Frankenstein, but before looking at that elevated passage, I'd like to relate the following intelligent feminist thought:

{Safie related that her mother was a Christian Arab, seized and made a slave by the Turks; recommended by her beauty, she had won the heart of the father of Safie, who married her. The young girl spoke in high and enthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born in freedom, spurned the bondage to which she was now reduced. She instructed her daughter in the tenets of her religion, and taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect, and an independence of spirit, forbidden to the female followers of Mahomet. This lady died; but her lessons were indelibly impressed on the mind of Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again returning to Asia and being immured within the walls of a harem, allowed only to occupy herself with infantile amusements, ill suited to the temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble emulation for virtue. The prospect of marrying a Christian, and remaining in a country where women were allowed to take a rank in society, was enchanting to her.}

--You see here proto-feminist thought but with the recognition that the status of women is indeed elevated in a Christian culture. Thus wherefore is this artificial divide between the humanizing of women brought about by the Christian faith and the modern alien propaganda against the faith? This doesn't have to be.

But now on to our soliloquy:

{"Oh, it is not thus--not thus," interrupted the being; "yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow-feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow and that happiness and affection are turned to bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure: when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

[Is not this description above not the picture of all human hearts? If everyone is honest deep down in their soul, without pretense or excuse, to remember our omissions and our commissions, this poetic passage above aptly describes us.]

[There is more to this soliloquy, but I'm out of time for this post. See pages 240 to 242 in the hardbound edition referenced in the picture of the cover.]

W: LP: GRP: PKD: VALIS and Later Novels

2011-03-20T23:20:00.000-07:00

Divine Invasion

VALIS and Later Novels by Philip K. Dick

In the novel "Divine Invasion" (#3 of 4 in this collection), we have the retelling of the historical moment of Christ's incarnation in science fiction terms with the limited understanding that an unbeliever would have in these matters.

It is an alternate future in which the Earth is ruled by a global government made of a coalition of two major factions. One faction is the Catholic-Islamic Church sharing power with the Scientific Legate, the other faction. The S.L. is a trans-statist power controlling at least half of the Earth, an alliance led by the Communists.

This Earth under totalitarian control is slowly colonizing the nearby star systems. A female colonist is impregnated by an alien being, but the offspring is fully human. She is assisted by an unwilling fellow colonist to return to Earth with her unborn child. The powers of Earth notice her arrival through the stellar frontier immigration checkpoint and immediately want the child dead.

Here is a passage that displays the moral corruption of these powers among other things (Linda Fox is some media star whose entertainment package is used to keep the colonists happy in their lonely outposts):

[Quote:]

"If Linda Fox will not decide for the S.L.," Galina said,"why don't you draw her aside and tell her that one day on her way to a concert engagement her private rocket--that gaudy plush thing she flies herself--will go up in a flash of flaming fire?"

Gloomily, Bulkowsky said, "Because the cardinal got to her first. He has already passed the word to her that if she doesn't accept sweet Jesus into her life bichlorides will find her whether she wants to accept them or not."

The tactic of poisoning Linda Fox with small doses of mercury was an artful one. Long before she died (if she did die) she would be mad as a hatter--literally, since it had been mercury poisoning, mercury used to process felt hats, that had driven the English hatters of the nineteenth century into famous organic psychosis.

I wish I had thought of that, Bulkowsky said to himself. Intelligence reports stated that the chanteuse had become hysterical when informed by a C.I.C. agent of what the cardinal intended if she did not decide for Jesus--hysteria and then temporary hypothermia, followed by a refusal to sing "Rock of Ages" in her next concert, as had been scheduled.

On the other hand, he reflected, cadmium would be better than mercury because it would be more difficult to detect. The S.L. secret police had used trace amounts of cadmium on unpersons for some time, and to good effect.

"Then money won't influence her," Galina said.

"I wouldn't dismiss it. It's her ambition to own Greater Los Angeles."

Galina said, "But if she's destroyed, the colonists will grumble. They're dependent on her."

"Linda Fox is not a person. She is a class of persons, a type. She is a sound that electronic equipment, very sophisticated electronic equipment, makes. There are more of her. There will always be. She can be stamped out like tires."

"Well, then don't offer here very much money." Galina laughed.

"I feel sorry for her," Bulkowsky said. How must it feel, he asked himself, not to exist? That's a contradiction. To feel is to exist. Then, he thought, probably she does not feel. Because it is a fact that she does not exist, not really. We ought to know. We were the first to imagine her.

Or rather--Big Noodle had first imagined Fox. The A.I. system had invented her, told her what to sing and how to sing it; Big Noodle set up her arrangements...even down to the mixing. And the package was a complete success.

Big Noodle had correctly analyzed the emotional needs of the colonists and had come up with a formula to meet those needs. The A.I. system maintained an ongoing survey, deriving feedback; when the needs changed, Linda Fox changed. It constituted a closed loop. If, suddenly, all the colonists disappeared, Linda Fox would wink out of existence. Big Noodle would have canceled her, like paper run through a paper shredder.

[Unquote.]

[Here is another passage from a conversation during the long journey to earth:]

"The Torah is the Law?" Herb said.

"It is more that the Law. The word 'Law' is inadequate. Even though the New Testament of the Christians always uses the word 'Law' for Torah. Torah is the Creator's instrument. With it he created the universe and for it he created the universe. It is the highest idea and the living soul of the world. Without it the world could not exist and would have no right to exist. I am quoting the great Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik who lived from the latter part of the nineteenth century into the mid-twentieth century. You should read him sometime."

"Can you tell me anything else about the Torah?"

"Resh Lakish said, 'If one's intent is pure, the Torah for him becomes a life-giving medicine, purifying him to life. But if one's intent is not pure, it becomes a death-giving drug, purifying him to death.'"

The two men remained silent for a time.

"I will tell you something more," Elias said. "A man came to the great Rabbi Hillel--he lived in the first century, C.E.--and said, 'I will become a proselyte on the condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I stand on one foot?' Hillel said, 'Whatever is hateful to you, do not do it to your neighbor. That is the entire Torah. The rest is commentary; go and learn it.'" He smiled at Herb Asher.

"Is the injunction actually in the Torah?" Herb Asher said. "The first five books of the Bible?"

"Yes. Leviticus nineteen, eighteen. God says, 'You shall love your neighbor as a man like yourself.' You did not know that, did you? Almost two thousand years before Jesus."

"Then the Golden Rule derives from Judaism," Herb said.

"Yes, it does, and early Judaism. The Rule was presented to man by God Himself."

"I have a lot to learn," Herb said.

"Read," Elias said. "'Cape, lege,' the two words Augustine heard. Latin for 'Take, read.' You do that, Herb. Take the book and read it. It is there for you. It is alive."

As their journey continued, Elias disclosed to him further intriguing aspects of the Torah, qualities regarding the Torah that few men knew.

[Unquote.]

W: LP: GRP: MS: Frankenstein 02

2011-03-18T08:41:00.000-07:00

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I am further along in this novel and I have reached the part where Dr. Frankenstein meets his creature (he had rejected it shortly after it's creation and it had fled); so now we have an Inception-like feature--within Dr. Frankenstein's story (within the letters) is the creature's story. This is a somewhat interesting account of a fully cognizant being learning how to communicate and about the cruelty of humanity. This story isn't anything like any of the movies made of it, but it is still fascinating. Mary Shelly brings out relational and psychological aspects of the characters that I think is sometimes missing from modern literature. So far this novel is better than I thought it would be because it is so different.

W: LP: GRP: MS: Frankenstein 01

2011-03-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

As I have been using Goodreads to track my current reading and catalog some past reading, I have noticed that there are some 'classics' of speculative fiction that I have missed. I have seen many movie versions of Frankenstein, but I had never actually read the original novel. I have just begun this story and so far it looks like it is, among many other things, a critique of modernism.

Since I am somewhat used to archaic ways of novel writing, in the sense that to 20th and 21st century ears, novels written in the early 19th century and before seem archaic, I have no problem 'getting into' the spirit of the story. The book starts out as an epistolary novel but within the letters, the narrative story of Dr. Frankenstein emerges. I'm sure more unusual features of the novel will be revealed as I progress further along. (More to come, but in the interim here following are a few interesting quotes:)

[Quote (this exemplifies the hunger of the discoverer or explorer):]

What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.

[Unquote.]

[Quote (against the hyper specialization of our modern era in the sciences):]

"Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made: it is on that account that I have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time I have not neglected the other branches of science. A man would make a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone. If your wish is to become really a man of science, and not merely a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics."

[Unquote.]

W: LP: GRP: PKD: VALIS and Later Novels

2011-03-15T00:03:00.000-07:00

VALIS and Later Novels by Philip K. Dick

After finishing "VALIS", I accidentally skipped ahead to "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer", but I'm only three chapters into the novel, so I'll stop and go back and read "The Divine Invasion" first. But first a few comments on this novel. The novel is written by a man (Philip K. Dick) in the first person from a woman's POV making it somewhat unusual. And right away the reader is thrust into the post-psychedelic era in California, where the lost traded in their drugs for spiritualism. I came across a short passage that exposes one aspect of this New Age movement:

[Quote:]

A terribly thin kid who resembled our friend Joe the Junkie stopped me, saying, "Ticket?"

"You mean this thing?" From my purse I got out the printed card that Barefoot had mailed me upon receipt of my hundred dollars. In California you buy enlightenment the way you buy peas at the supermarket, by size and weight. I'd like four pounds of enlightenment, I said to myself. No, better make that ten pounds. I'm really running short.

"Go to the rear of the boat," the skinny youth said.

[Unquote.]

{UPDATE}

I just started "The Divine Invasion", and on the first page (p.401) I came across a couple of lines that I liked (emphasis mine):

The two of them took the local rail to the school. A fussy little man met them, a Mr. Plaudet; he was enthusiastic and wanted to shake hands with Manny. It was evident to Elias Tate that this was the government. First they shake hands with you, he thought, and then they murder you.

W: LP: GRP: BS: Distraction

2011-03-13T17:14:00.000-07:00

Distraction by Bruce Sterling

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Published in 1998, the story takes place in the years 2044 to 2045, but it is a thinly veiled commentary on what is going on currently (as of this writing--c.2011AD). Mr. Sterling is a skilled writer, so the story gets a higher rating because he has accomplished the first goal of publishing a book--it needs to entertain. I was entertained and found some of the ideas in the story quite interesting; it's worth your time to read this novel. I liked a number of passages in this book, so I'll quote them here:

[Quote:]

It had never occurred to the lords of the consumer society that consumerism as a political philosophy might one day manifest the grave systemic instabilities that Communism had. But as those instabilities multiplied, the country had cracked. Civil society shriveled in the pitiless reign of cash. As the last public spaces were privatized*, it became harder and harder for American culture to breath. Not only were people broke, but they were driven to madness by commercials, and pitilessly surveilled by privacy-invading hucksters. An ever more aggressive consumer-outreach apparatus caused large numbers of people to simply abandon their official identities.

It was no longer any fun to be an American citizen. Bankruptcies multiplied beyond all reason, becoming a kind of commercial apostasy. Tax dodging became a spectator sport. The American people simply ceased to behave. They gathered publicly to burn their licenses, chop up their charge cards, and hit the road. The proles considered themselves the only free Americans.

[Unquote.]

[Quote:]

She looked at him with sudden pity. "Poor Oscar. You've got it all backward. That's not why I feel guilty. I'm guilty because I know it's going to work. Talking with those Moderators for so long...I really understand it now. Science truly is going to change. It'll still be 'Science.' It'll have the same intellectual structure, but its political structure will be completely different. Instead of being poorly paid government workers, we'll be avant-garde dissident intellectuals for the dispossessed. And that will work for us. Because we can get a better deal from them now than we can from the government. The proles are not so new; they're just like big, hairy, bad-smelling college students. We can deal with people like that. We do it all the time."

He brightened. "Are you sure?"

"It'll be like a new academia, with some krewe feudal elements. It'll be a lot like the Dark Ages, when universities were little legal territories all their own, and scholars carried maces and wore little square hats, and whenever the university was crossed, they sent huge packs of students into the streets to tear everything up, until they got their way. Except it's not the Dark Ages right now. It's the Loud Ages, it's the Age of Noise. We've destroyed our society with how much we know, and how quickly and how randomly we can move it around. We live in the Age of Noise, and this is how we learn to be the scientists of the Age of Noise. We don't get to be government functionaries who can have all the money we want just because we give the government a lot of military-industrial knowledge. That's all over now. From now on we're going to be like other creative intellectuals. We're going to be like artists or violin-makers, with our little krewes of fans who pay attention and support us."

"Wonderful, Greta. It sounds great!"

"We'll do cute, attractive, sexy science, with small amounts of equipment. That's what science has to be in America now. We can't do it the European way, where there's all kinds of moral fretting and worrying about what technology will do to people; there's no fun in that, it's just not American. We'll be like Orville Wright in the bicycle shed from now on. It won't be easier for us. It'll be harder for us. But we'll have our freedom. Our American freedom. It's a vote of confidence in the human imagination."

[Unquote:]

*I don't think Bruce foresaw America's sudden lurch toward statism or the 2008 beginning of our economic collapse.

View all my reviews

W: LP: GRP: AR: We The Living 04

2011-03-09T09:53:00.000-08:00

We the Living: 60th Anniversary Edition by Ayn Rand

from page 376 (and I ask this question of the corporatist oligarchy masquerading as a Republic here in the USA):

"But you've tried to tell us what we should want. You came as a solemn army to bring new life to men*. You tore that life you knew nothing about, out of their guts--and you told them what it had to be. You took their every hour, every minute, every nerve, every thought in the farthest corners of their souls--and you told them what it had to be. You came and you forbade life to the living. You've driven us all into an iron cellar and you've closed all doors, and you've locked us airtight, airtight till the blood vessels of our spirits burst! Then you stare and wonder what it's doing to us.

Well, then, look! All of you who have eyes left--look!"

[Unquote.]

*In our case it was an army of salesmen followed by a galactic sized force of bureaucrats, do-gooders, utopianist experimenters, and many other cozy country club betrayers and revilers of God.

W: LP: GRP: AR: We The Living 03

2011-03-08T09:34:00.000-08:00

We the Living: 60th Anniversary Edition by Ayn Rand

Here is another scene from this novel that captures the betrayal of the revolution by that lowest of human types, "the climber" or "the opportunist", the Grima Wormtongue:

[Quote:]

"Comrade!" Morozov panted. "Let me go!"

"Sit still!" Timoshenko roared. "Pour yourself a glass and drink. Do you hear me? Drink, you bastard! Drink and listen!"

Morozov obeyed; his glass tinkled, shaking, against the bottle.

"You see," said Timoshenko, as if each word were tearing his throat on its way out, "I don't mind that we're beaten. I don't mind that we've taken the greatest of crimes on our shoulders and then let it all slip through our fingers. I wouldn't mind it if we had been beaten by a tall warrior in a steel helmet, a human dragon spitting fire. But we're beaten by a louse. A big, fat, slow, blond louse. Ever seen lice? The blond ones are the fattest...It was our own fault. Once, men were ruled with a god's thunder. Then they were ruled with a sword. Now they're ruled with a Primus.* Once, they were held by reverence. Then they were held by fear. Now they're held by their stomachs. Men have worn chains on their necks, and on their wrists, and on their ankles. Now they're enchained by their rectums. Only you don't hold heroes by their rectums. It was our own fault."

"Comrade, for God's sake, comrade, why tell it all to me?"

"We started building a temple. Do we end with a chapel? No! And we don't even end with an outhouse. We end with a musty kitchen with a second-hand stove! We set fire under a kettle and we brewed and stirred and mixed blood and fire and steel. What are we fishing now out of the brew? A new humanity? Men of granite? Or at least a good and horrible monster? No! Little puny things that wiggle. Little things that can bend both ways, little double-jointed spirits. Little things that don't even bow humbly to be whipped. No! They take the lash obediently and whip themselves! Ever sat at a social-activity club meeting? Should. Do you good. Learn a lot about the human spirit."

"Comrade!" Morozov breathed. "What do you want? Is it money you want? I'll pay. I'll..."

Timoshenko laughed so loudly that heads turned and Morozov cringed, trying not to be noticed. "You louse!" Timoshenko roared laughing. "You fool, near-sighted, demented louse! Who do you think you're talking to? Comrade Victor Dunaev? Comrade Pavel Syerov?
Comrade..."

"Comrade!" Morozov roared, so that heads turned to him, but he did not care any longer. "You...you...you have no right to say that! I have nothing whatever to do with Comrade Syerov! I..."

"Say," Timoshenko remarked slowly, "I only said you should have. You and he and Victor Dunaev. And about one million others--with Party cards and stamps affixed. The winners and the conquerors. Those who crawl. That, pal, is the great slogan of the men of the future: those who crawl. Listen, do you know how many millions of eyes are watching us across land and oceans? They're not very close and they can't see very well. They see a big shadow rising. They think it's a huge beast. They're too far to see that it's soft and brownish and fuzzy. You know, fuzzy, a glistening sort of fuzz. They don't know that it's made of cockroaches. Little, glossy, brown cockroaches, packed tight, one on the other, into a huge wall. Little cockroaches that keep silent and wiggle their whiskers. But the world is too far to see the whiskers. That's what's wrong with the world, Comrade Morozov: they don't see the whiskers!"

"Comrade! Comrade, what are you talking about?"

"They see a black cloud and they hear thunder. They've been told that behind the cloud, blood is running freely, and men fight, and men kill, and men die. Well, what of it? They, those who watch, are not afraid of blood. There's an honor in blood. But do they know that it's not blood we're bathed in, it's puss. Listen, I'll give you advice. If you want to keep this land in your tentacles, tell the world that you're chopping heads off for breakfast and shooting men by the regiment. Let the world think that you're a huge monster to be feared and respected and fought honorably. But don't let them know that yours is not an army of heroes, nor even of fiends, but of shriveled bookkeepers with a rupture who've learned to be arrogant. Don't let them know that you're not to be shot, but to be disinfected. Don't let them know that you're not to be fought with cannons, but with carbolic acid!"

[Unquote, emphasis mine.]

*The Primus was the name of the small cooking/lamps using kerosene and ubiquitous in the common usage by the citizens of Petrograd and represents the meager consumer/comfort device allowed to the proletariat.

W: LP: GRP: PL: Solomon Among the Postmoderns: 03

2011-03-04T21:42:00.000-08:00

Here are some closing quotes from PJL's book:

[Quote:]

"Vapor" pictures the world as impossible to control. But vapor is also a veil, a screen. Think of how hard it is to drive through a thick fog. Everything disappears. You know there's still a world and a road out there, but the vapor keeps them hidden away. To say that all is vapor is to say that it's hiding something, and Solomon is suggesting that the vapor of the world screens us from God himself, who for the time being, "under the sun," modestly remains behind the veil of the vaporous world.

We don't yet see God putting everything right. We don't see the sovereign hand of poetic justice. Innocents die, sages are ignored, moral pygmies rule the airwaves and the movie screens and many nations. That's what it's like to live in a world of vapor. And that's just what we should expect once we wake from our modern Promethean nap and realize we are creatures, mad from dust, living in a world made from nothing at all. On what were we drunk when we began to imagine we could figure it all out?

[Unquote.]

W: LP: GRP: PL: Solomon Among the Postmoderns: 02

2011-03-01T05:07:00.000-08:00

Here is some more Peter Leithart from his book, “Solomon Among the Postmoderns”; these thoughts are useful to me in constructing the specifics of the aesthetic I will try to apply to a Steampunk story (consider that an alternate history in which the rate of modernization and technological advancement in mechanics, including mechanical computers has advanced to give analogous steam-tech solutions to society’s technology needs would all the more create the social pressure toward a post-modern effect):

[Quote:]

Postmodern skepticism also arises from the intensification of scientific progress: as science becomes more and more specialized, it becomes less and less obvious that it is all one project. The very successes of modern science produce a postmodern ghettoization, an inversion of modernity that produces postmodern tribalism—the tribe of physicists at war with the tribe of biologists, and each tribe plagued by its own subtribes—astrophysicists versus particle physicists, biochemists versus microbiologists.

Alongside these inversions, postmodernism unmasks truths that modern science has tried to hide. The truth, for instance, that scientific experiments require very special conditions and constraints and therefore don’t offer the direct and transparent access to nature that they pretend to. Science has acted as if scientific methods quietly seduce Dame Nature to unveil herself to expert gaze, naked and unashamed; postmodernists often see science as something more like gang rape. To take another instance, postmodernists unmask the truth that scientific theories are never as uncontested as the textbooks make them appear. There are always anomalous facts that stubbornly refuse to fit the elegant lines of the dominant paradigm, and there are always cranks who gleefully point out where the undergarments are showing through the straining seams of theory.

[Unquote, p.80-81]

[Quotes from p.100-101]

Under the sun, during this time, we are surrounded by diffusion, differance, death, and decay. Under the sun, the self is elusive, and we all die. Solomon says there is no profit “under the sun,” that is, there is no apparent accumulation, no guarantee of surplus or progress. Under the sun, our projects slip from our fingers like mist. Under the sun, we cannot get a panoramic view of the times and seasons, cannot tell a master story that organizes and places every event of history. In this time under the sun, all is vapor—our lives, our books, our words, our projects. All is so much futile shepherding wind.

~

How can Solomon, after emphasizing the vaporous character of reality, speak with the confidence he does? The key to understanding Solomon is to recognize that he deliberately limits his observations to what is true “under the sun” or “under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1: cf. 1:3, 9, 14; 2:11, 17-18; etc.)

~

Unlike most postmoderns, however, Solomon does not believe that the world “under the sun” is the only world there is. One of the things Solomon says he knows is that God will bring all wickedness to judgment (3:16-17). He knows this, but he doesn’t know it by observation of the world. Observation of the world would lead him to the somber conclusion that the wicked will triumph. If Solomon knows that God will judge the world, that every wrong will be put right, it is because he trusts that God will not let evil triumph forever. Like Abraham, Solomon knows that the God who is the Judge of all the earth will do right.

In knowing that God will judge, Solomon also knows that Derrida is wrong: waiting for the messianic is not fruitless waiting. There is a final word, a word that closes out the time under the sun and begins the time after the time under the sun, a word that sets the final horizon for all words, all thoughts, all selves. And this omega-word is, Christians confess, also the alpha-word, Word who was from the beginning, the living Word who is with God and who is God, the living Word. The words of the wise who fear him are not vaporous breath but “well-driven nails.” For Solomon and for Christian faith, there is a time after the time under the sun, and scripture teaches that there is treasure, a surplus beyond imagining, waiting for us there (Matt. 6:20; 1 Pet. 1:3-5). In the time after the time under the sun, there is a judgment, a final word. In the time after the time after the sun, death and decay are swallowed up in incorruptible life.

[Unquote:]

W: LP: GRP: AR: We The Living 02

2011-02-28T17:21:00.000-08:00

[Quote]

"Why, Kira," asked Irina, "aren't you interested in the subject of this discussion?"

"I am," Kira answered calmly, "but I think the discussion is superfluous. I am going to the Technological Institute."

"Kira!"

There were seven startled voices and they all uttered one name. Then Galina Petrovna said: "Well, with a daughter like this even her own mother isn't let in on her secrets!"

"When did you decide that?" Lydia gasped.

"About eight years ago," said Kira.

"But Kira! What will you do?" Maria Petrovna gasped.

"I'll be an engineer."

"Frankly," said Victor, annoyed, "I do not believe that engineering is a profession for women."

"Kira," Alexander Dimitrievitch said timidly, "you've never liked the Communists and here you select such a favorite profession of theirs--a woman engineer!"

"Are you going to build for the Red State?" asked Victor.

"I'm going to build because I want to build."

"But Kira!" Lydia stared at her, bewildered. "That will mean dirt, and iron, and rust, and blow-torches, and filthy, sweaty men and no feminine company to help you."

"That's why I like it."

"It is not at all a cultured profession for a woman," said Galina Petrovna.

"It's the only profession," said Kira, "for which I don't have to learn lies. Steel is steel. Most of the other sciences are someone's guess, and someone's wish, and many people's lies."

[Unquote, emphasis mine.]

W: LP: GRP: AR: We The Living 01

2011-02-27T12:42:00.000-08:00

We the Living: 60th Anniversary Edition by Ayn Rand

Excellent so far (just started it again); I'll be posting some quotes right here.

[Quote:]
"I'll tell you, Galina," Maria Petrovna hurried and coughed, choked, and went on, "I'll tell you the best thing to do: Alexander must take a job."

Galina Petrovna sat up straight, as if she had been slapped in the face. "A Soviet job?"

"Well...all jobs are Soviet jobs."

"Not as long as I live," Alexander Dimitrievitch stated with unexpected strength.

Vassili Ivanovitch dropped his spoon and it clattered into his plate; silently, solemnly, he stretched his big fist across the table and shook Alexander Dimittrievitch's hand and threw a dark glance at Maria Petrovna. She cringed, swallowed a spoonful of millet, coughed.

"I'm not saying anything about you, Vasili," she protested timidly. "I know you don't approve and...well, never will...But I was thinking they get bread cards, and lard, and sugar, the Soviet employees do--sometimes."

"When I have to take Soviet employment," said Vasili Ivanovitch, "you'll be a widow, Marussia."

"I'm not saying anything, Vasili, only..."

[Unquote.]

We here in America are extremely pragmatic, (and maybe used to being slaves) so we don't even think twice--gotta keep the income coming in--we work for the few corporations or government agencies that have the last few good paying jobs or we earn wages not worth the paper its printed on in the private sector.

Is it a sin to work for the system until you have enough capital to have more choices?

W: LP: GRP: PL: Solomon Among the Postmoderns: 01

2011-02-26T23:04:00.001-08:00

Solomon among the Postmoderns by Peter J. Leithart

Vapor

The neat boundaries of knowledge, and the easy certainties of modern language, seem to be diffusing to nothing. All is liquid, vapor, mist. It wouldn't have surprised Solomon. He would have seen our sense of disorientation and our frustrated lack of control not as the "end of reality" but as our awakening to reality as it is and always has been.

--{Leithart, Peter J. Solomon Among the Postmoderns. Michigan: Brazos Press (Baker), 2008. Print. p.66}

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W: LP: GRP: PKD: VALIS

2011-02-25T21:43:00.000-08:00

VALIS and Later Novels by Philip K. Dick

I'm about two thirds through the novel, "VALIS", (second of four* in this collection) and I find elements of the polyphonic voice reminiscent of Dostoevsky, but with an almost schizophrenic exploration of madness, philosophy, and religion in a proto-New Age mien. This is not so much a novel as a out-spilling of the mental overload that was Philip K. Dick the author.

*I would have made it a five novel collection and added "Radio Free Albemuth".

W: LP: GRP: PKD resumed

2011-02-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

In August of 2009, I blogged about the third volume in Library of America's edition of the major novels of Philip K. Dick. I had to leave off for awhile, but now that I have a copy of the audible edition of VALIS, I have started in again on this second of the four novels in this volume. As I got into the beginning of this story, I came across this quote which exemplifies the origins of the drug war:

[Quote:]
As a matter of fact, Fat had lost his own wife, the year before, to mental illness. It was like a plague. No one could discern how much was due to drugs. This time in America--1960 to 1970--and this place, the Bay Area of Northern California, was totally f*<#ed. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that's the truth. Fancy terms and ornate theories cannot cover this fact up. The authorities became as psychotic as those they hunted. They wanted to put all persons who were not clones of the establishment away. The authorities were filled with hate. Fat had seen police glower at him with the ferocity of dogs. The day they moved Angela Davis, the black Marxist, out of the Marin County jail, the authorities dismantled the whole civic center. This was to baffle radicals who might intend trouble. The elevators got unwired; doors got relabled with spurious information; the district attorney hid. Fat saw all this. He had gone to the civic center that day to return a library book. At the electronic hoop at the civic center entrance, two cops had ripped open the book and papers that Fat carried. He was perplexed. The whole day perplexed him. In the cafeteria, an armed cop watched everyone eat. Fat returned home by cab, afraid of his own car and wondering if he was nuts. He was, but so was everyone else.
[Unquote, obscuration mine.]

Fiction & Social Philosophy: "Anthem" by Ayn Rand: more quotes

2011-02-19T08:26:00.000-08:00

Reminding me of Rush's song cycle from their album "2112", when Equality 7-2521 presents his rediscovery of electricity and electric light to the Council of Scholars, he gets this reaction after cold silence:

[Quote:]
But they looked upon us, and suddenly we were afraid. For their eyes were still, and small, and evil.

"Our brothers!" we cried. "Have you nothing to say to us?"

Then Collective 0-0009 moved forward. They moved to the table and the others followed.

"Yes," spoke Collective 0-0009, "we have much to say to you."

The sound of their voice brought silence to the hall and to the beat of our heart.

"Yes," said Collective 0-0009, "we have much to say to a wretch who have broken all the laws and who boast of their infamy! How dared you think that your mind held greater wisdom than the minds of your brothers? And if the Councils had decreed that you should be a Street Sweeper, how dared you think that you could be of greater use to men than in sweeping the streets?"

"How dared you, gutter cleaner," spoke Fraternity 9-3452, "to hold yourself as one alone and with the thoughts of the one and not of the many?"

"You shall be burned at the stake," said Democracy 4-6998.

"No, they shall be lashed," said Unanimity 7-3304, "till there is nothing left under the lashes."

"No," said Collective 0-0009, "we cannot decide upon this, our brothers. No such crime has ever been committed, and it is not for us to judge. Nor for any small Council. We shall deliver this creature to the World Council itself and let their will be done."

We looked upon them and we pleaded:

"Our brothers! You are right. Let the will of the Council be done upon our body. We do not care. But the light? What will you do with the light?"

Collective 0-0009 looked upon us, and they smiled.

"So you think that you have found a new power," said Collective 0-0009. "Do all your brothers think that?"

"No, we answered.

"What is not thought by all men cannot be true," said Collective 0-0009.

"You have worked on this alone?" asked International 1-5537.

"Yes," we answered.

"What is not done collectively cannot be good," said International 1-5537.

"Many men in the Homes of the Scholars have had strange new ideas in the past,"
said Solidarity 8-1164, "but when the majority of their brother Scholars voted against them, they abandoned their ideas, as all men must."

"This box is useless," said Alliance 6-7349.

"Should it be what they claim of it," said Harmony 9-2642, "then it would bring ruin to the Department of Candles. The Candle is a great boon to mankind, as approved by all men. Therefore it cannot be destroyed by the whim of one."

"This would wreck the Plans of the World Council," said Unanimity 2-9913, "and without the Plans of the World Council the sun cannot rise. It took fifty years to secure the approval of all the Councils for the Candle, and to decide upon the number needed, and to re-fit the Plans so as to make candles instead of torches. This touched upon thousands and thousands of men working in scores of States. We cannot alter the Plans again so soon."

"And if this should lighten the toil of men," said Similarity 5-0306, "then it is a great evil, for men have no cause to exist save in toiling for other men."

Then Collective 0-0009 rose and pointed at our box.

"This thing," they said, "must be destroyed."

And all the others cried as one:

"It must be destroyed!"

[Unquote, emphasis mine.]

W: LP: GRP: StPk: Story from Steampunk II

2011-02-18T04:48:00.000-08:00

I've been reading two volumes of short stories from the Steampunk genre, entitled Steampunk and Steampunk II, ed. by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer. Though the stories are of varying quality, I found that I enjoyed them all, because each has something unique that I liked. I'm about half-way through the second volume now, and I came across a story entitled "As Recorded on Brass Cylinders: Adagio for Two Dancers" which had a small paragraph worth quoting related to my social philosophy. Here it is:

The Company's damned motto echoed in the silence that spiraled out between them as the voices of the past faded. Commune bonum. The Common Good. They used such words in their speeches, on their posters, in the printed material distributed in schools in conjunction with words like 'valor' and 'honor' and 'for the glory of the Empire!'...words war-tattered about the edges and stained with tears. Vomit. Blood.
Such words lured children onto the battlefield and wrapped their battered, broken bodies in a winding-sheet for transport home to weeping families. Such words were thin consolation, rough with all the things left unsaid. Such words were diamonds dangled before starry-eyed girls, to whom honor and glory were jewels beyond compare, brighter than circlets of gold slipped upon a willing finger.

Fiction & Social Philosophy: "Anthem" by Ayn Rand

2011-02-17T09:41:00.000-08:00

Let me start with what I wrote over at Goodreads:
Anthem by Ayn Rand

I first read this book in the seventh grade and found the concepts to be a good mind trip. I am re-reading it again via listening to an audible version of this story.

I recommend ignoring most of the Monkey Collective members' reviews. To be fair, it is not the most literary in style; read it for the concepts. Just as collectivism can be a false god, so can an obsession with individualism become a false god. Again look at the concepts, especially now that the USA is continuing down the path of overweening Statism. This story is essentially an "argumentum ad absurdum" (sp?), if we extrapolate current trends we might devolve to the society depicted in this story. Oligarchic corporate fascism is not much different from Statist Collectivism in its effects, so this story is still relevant because the individual is demeaned for the sake of some oligarch or committee.
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There are some great passages in this book which I will append to this post, so stay tuned. But I will leave my 0.085 readers to consider the following from the beginning section of this novella:

Quote:

We were born with a curse. It has always driven us to thoughts which are forbidden. It has given us wishes which men may not wish. We know that we are evil, but there is no will in us and no power to resist it. This is our wonder and our secret fear, that we know and do not resist.

We strive to be like all our brother men, for all men must be alike. Over the portals of the Palace of the World Council, there are words cut in the marble, which we repeat to ourselves whenever we are tempted:

"We are one in all and all in one.
There are no men but only the great WE,
One, indivisible and forever."

We repeat this to ourselves, but it helps us not.

Unquote.

Here is another small passage:

We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those years in the House of the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked upon us.

And here is another:

The Teachers had said to us all:
"Dare not choose in your minds the work you would like to do when you leave the Home of the Students. You shall do that which the Council of Vocations shall prescribe for you. For the Council of Vocations knows in its great wisdom where you are needed by your brother men, better than you can know it in your unworthy little minds. And if you are not needed by your brother men, there is no reason for you to burden the earth with your bodies."

Personal Update: After Bread Winning, etc.

2011-02-13T05:53:00.000-08:00

Once again I have received grace in the form of having made it through the week to arrive here on the Lord's Day. After selling our time (pieces of our day or week) to receive wages or compensation that we might support the work of the gospel, our families, and ourselves, and we all must do this unless one is a "trust-baby", we come to the use of our free time.

As of the beginning of this year, 2011 A.D., I have been busy with some Bible Study Fellowship, our covenant group, and other social commitments. And after all this I had the opportunity to get working on my reading projects and commitment for this new year; to this end, I have been grateful for Goodreads (TM) as a useful tool. You can monitor my activities here.

Towards the end of 2010 I finished editing and adding miscellaneous additions to the Traveller RPG blog (q.v.). I have found this activity useful to objectify and visualize exactly how a character might interact based on background motivations etc. for use in fiction writing. The whole mental process for me is still mostly experimental and I am just starting to attempt some stories and I hope in the development of each story to start incorporating some of the things I have been learning from literature and from various other mental techniques.

W: LP: GRP: SciFi: Perry Rhodan

2011-02-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

So, I had always heard about this science fiction series, first from my dad, and then while I was stationed in Germany. The series? Perry Rhodan: (I don't know what to make of the series yet as I have not yet read it, but when I finally choose to brush up on my German, I may try to get some German copies of some of the stories. Topic for another day as to which story arc in this long running series is the most critically acclaimed.)

Wikipedia had this to say: "Having sold over one billion copies (in pulp booklet format) worldwide, it is the most successful science fiction book series ever written."

I would love to sell a billion copies of my stories.

Personal/Materialism: The Ural Motorcycle

2011-02-07T19:05:00.001-08:00

This little gem of mobility just caught my eye and is now on my "midlife crisis wish list":

W: LP: GRP: CSL: Till We Have Faces

2011-01-28T18:06:00.000-08:00

I had read the novel, "Till We Have Faces", many decades ago, but I think it got lost in the 10's of thousands of pages of other fantasy reading imbibed at the time. I am now re-reading the story via audio format, and despite the plainness of the prose, there is a poignancy in how that prose is used that is just amazing. Here following is a quote from the story:

But in the reality (not in the dreams), with the horror came the inconsolable grief. For the world had broken to pieces and Psyche and I were not in the same piece. Seas, mountains, madness, death itself, could not have removed her from me to such a hopeless distance as this. Gods, and again gods, always gods...they had stolen her. They would leave us nothing. A thought pierced up through the crust of my mind like a crocus coming up in the early year. Was she not worthy of the gods? Ought they not to have her? But instantly great, choking, blinding waves of sorrow swept it away and, "Oh!" I cried. "It's not right. It's not right. Oh, Psyche, come back! Where are you? Come back, come back."

She had me in her arms at once. "Maia--sister," she said. "I'm here. Maia, don't. I can't bear it. I'll--"

"Yes...oh, my own child--I do feel you--I hold you. But oh--it's only like holding you in a dream. You are leagues away. And I..."

She led me a few paces further and made me sit down on a mossy bank and sat beside me. With words and touch she comforted me all she could. And as, in the center of a storm or even of a battle, I have known sudden stillness for a moment, so now for a little I let her comfort me. Not that I took any heed of what she was saying. It was her voice, and her love in her voice, that counted. Her voice was very deep for a woman's. Sometimes even now the way she used to say this or that word comes back to me as warm and real as if she were beside me in the room--the softness of it, the richness as of corn grown from a deep soil.

What was she saying?..."And perhaps, Maia, you too will learn how to see."

Twitterama Technos: Open Mesh

2011-01-27T09:39:00.000-08:00

"Join Open Mesh and help Egypt build one."

W: LP: GRP: NS: The Diamond Age: a few final words

2011-01-22T00:05:00.000-08:00

I finished this novel yesterday; I had forgotten how good the story was. Beyond the extreme coolness of Neal's vision of the possibilities of nano-tech and all the other nifty ideas, can be found a sensitivity to how all this might have it's effect in the social realm. The characters were well fleshed out, and there were moments of poignancy that only a good writer can pull off. The story also has an epic aspect to it that makes this an excellent entertainment value.

When the buzz about nano-tech was all the fashion in the late 1990's, this was the first story I had read which explored these concepts. I have read many other stories since then exploring these concepts, but now I see that this story became in my mind the standard to which I unconsciously compared all the other stories.

I definitely recommend this novel to anyone who can read.
(All the usual caveats apply when reading anything modern of course.)

Technos: Airships: US Air Force deployment

2011-01-21T00:30:00.000-08:00

Another twitter-like post viz airships. Thanks to my brother for this link.

And here is the comment I made:

I have to say, having been in air defense artillery in the US Army, that hitting a stationary airborne target is trivial--all you need is a missile with enough thrust to make it to the correct altitude. I don't see the airship lasting very long on station.

--unless the existing air defense coverage is going to be beefed up.

W: LP: GRP: NS: The Diamond Age: another passage

2011-01-20T00:31:00.000-08:00

In the story, we have the following:

He turned and left the room; none of the girls noticed, which was just as well, as they might have seen a quiver in his lip and a tear in his eye. As he made his way through the corridors toward the upper deck where his airship awaited him, he reviewed for the thousandth time the Great Learning, the kernel of the Master's thought:

The ancients who wished to demonstrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things....From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.

Ephemera: On the Peace Corps

2011-01-19T19:09:00.000-08:00

My son, Sam, shared this link to a youtube video with me, so I thought I'd post it here for tertiary edification.

W: LP: GRP: NS: The Diamond Age

2011-01-18T14:54:00.000-08:00

I'm re-reading another Neal Stephenson book via audio. You can find way too much information about this story by looking at the innumerable "write-ups" about the story, so I am just mentioning this story, because Neal has predicted another technology. The novel was published in 1995 and the first advent of peer to peer file sharing was Napster in 1999. In the novel the world's communication system has been rebuilt using peer to peer file sharing. We can say that Neal anticipated this idea at least four years before it's actual advent.

This is one of the things I like about science fiction--the forward thinking and the imagination.

And if I come across someone who hates science fiction, I have to ask myself if the person is even intelligent. Perhaps such a person doesn't like to think for themselves. What is wrong with speculating about the future or thinking about things from a different perspective?

Daguerrotype: W: LP: GRP: NS: Snow Crash

2011-01-14T21:57:00.001-08:00

Here is nClaire's rendition of Hiro Protagonist (or his Avatar):

Ephemera: Next phase in anti-liberty narrative

2011-01-12T18:37:00.001-08:00

I was wondering how long it would take before the Gun Control nuts would jump on the AZ shooting. Sure enough, today's TNT had an AP article questioning Arizona's gun laws.

W: LP: GRP: NS: Snow Crash

2011-01-11T08:53:00.000-08:00

I've decided to "re-read" (via audio version) the novel by Neal Stephenson entitled "Snow Crash." Reading a book by listening is an interestingly different way to experience literature. I find that I pay more attention to the texture of the words.

In this story (I'll not go into a very deep analysis of the book, the internet has a huge amount of people who've done this already.), we have what is categorized as a cyberpunk type story. The language of this story is indeed textured to achieve the feeling of cyberpunk. But the story goes beyond a simple trippy tale and explores the possibility of an information virus that can affect the human mind as well as computers. We get ancient Sumerian mythology and many interesting technology predictions.

One example of technological prediction is Google Earth. In the virtual office where Hiro Protagonist has received some free killer software, one of the programs is called Earth. And it's a mapping software of the Earth with hyperlinks, streetview; just about everything that Google Earth does is very much like the description given in the story. The novel was published in 1991, fully 14 years before the Google Earth beta.

I like the various descriptions the author uses that also make a sly comment on present society. Check this out:

Once she gets over the shock of it and settles into a routine, she starts looking around her, watching the other fish-cutting dames, and realizes that this is just like life must be for about 99 percent of the people in the world. You're in this place. There's other people all around you, but they don't understand you and you don't understand them, but people do a lot of pointless babbling anyway. In order to stay alive, you have to spend all day every day doing stupid meaningless work. And the only way out of it is to quit, cut loose, take a flyer, and go off into the wicked world, where you will be swallowed up and never heard from again.

W: LP: GRP: picture of authors

2011-01-10T00:03:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of three of the authors whose works I devoured when in elementary through early high school.

From left to right Robert Heinlein, L. Sprague deCamp, & Isaac Asimov at a shipyard (helping out in WWII). These are just the writers I started with in my fiction reading. Many others count as favorites also. Check out my GoodReads(TM).

Ephemera: Twitter-style viz AZ rampage

2011-01-09T12:03:00.000-08:00

It's good that I am on a voluntary MSM blackout, because now we get to experience an avalanche of propaganda used to attack our Right to keep and bear arms.

Ephemera: Excerpt from analysis viz the murderous leftist in AZ

2011-01-08T09:10:00.000-08:00

The following is a rebroadcast, but the analysis is valid:

"The first, most heinous act, occurred when six people were slaughtered (including a federal judge and a nine-year old little girl born on 9/11/01) and multiple others that were gunned down in Tuscon, AZ.

The second atrocity occurred within minutes after the violence in Tucson, when the nation’s hardcore Leftists and mainstream media tried—and failed—to convince America that Emma Goldman killed President William McKinley. By the logic of the Left, Emma Goldman, whose vitriolic rhetoric against the government, her opposition to Christianity, and general anarchist preachings was, from hundreds of miles away, somehow responsible for the death of President McKinley as surely as if her hand was on the gun and her finger pulled the trigger.

Flashback - 1901:
While extending in friendly greeting his hand of fellowship, in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition, William McKinley, President of the United States, was shot down at the hands of either an Anarchist or a lunatic, a few minutes after 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon.

The assassin, in a confession made to the District Attorney, court officials and the police at midnight, said that his name was Leon Czolgosz, that he was 28 years old, a blacksmith, and that he had come to Buffalo from from his home in Cleveland three days ago with the express intention of assassinating the President. He said he had been a student of Emma Goldberg, the Anarchist, had approved her doctrines and did not believe in this form of government. He described with accuracy and with seeming pride the preparations he had made to kill the President, how he had practiced in folding the handkerchief about his hand so as to conceal the revolver, and described how he had shot the President.

Despite the fact that Leon Czolgosz—and not Emma Goldman—assassinated President McKinley, by the Left’s logic on Saturday, it was as Emma Goldman, through her anarchist preaching that killed President McKinley. According to the Left’s logic, martial law should have been declared and Emma Goldman (and all anarchists) should have been rounded up*.

In other words, claims were made on Saturday, within minutes and before the facts had even been established, that the evil that occurred in Tuscon was directly associated with “right-wing rhetoric.” Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the whole Tea Party movement were all responsible for the actions of the gunman in Arizona.

As Erick Erickson pointed out, ”the tea party movement won in November. Winners don’t go on shooting sprees.” The Left’s attack on Saturday, however, was not an impromptu misguided attempt to assign blame, it was nothing more and nothing less than an Alinsky-style lynching of the Right. The ends justify the means—even if those means are based on a lie. The fact that the ‘guilt by association’ argument (a well-used propaganda technique) may have even been planned or coordinated, as the facts became more clear, the Left’s rush to judgment was not only evil, it was also flat-out wrong. Facts do not matter to the Left if it fits their narrative.

On Saturday, within minutes of the reports that Congresswoman Giffords had been shot in the head at point blank range, because she is a Democrat who was on Sarah Palin’s 2010 “Target List” for the mid-term elections, much of the Left on social media began accusing Sarah Palin and Tea Party activists of being responsible for the shooting. The Pima County Sheriff jumped into the blame game. Markos Moulitsas, founder of the far-left Daily Kos, who had (himself) listed Congresswoman Giffords on his own “Target List” for the Democratic primaries was tweeting for hours on the topic.

The use of Sarah Palin’s target list is made even more hypocritical in view of the DLC’s use of targets on their own “target list” [via Verum Serum]:

The Left-wing hate rhetoric even extended to Jane Fonda, who had this to say on her blog:

But today, my heart and mind is full of the horriffic news of the shooting in Arizona of Rep Gabrielle Giffords and others by, I am sure, right wing fanatics who have been repeatedly harassing and threatening Giffords, egged on by Sarah Palin and Glen Beck and Tea Party members.

We must stop this madness, this violent rhetoric which media exploits!!

Before information was even in on the actual shooter, Left-wing haters were shouting from the rooftops (from their keyboards, actually) that racist “Teabaggers” were responsible for the shooting. These are just a few of the Tweets:

The Left’s sheer hypocrisy at claiming the Right engages in vitriolic rhetoric is even more diabolical when all they have to do is look in the mirror (or listen to Barack Obama). However, one can only imagine how deeply disappointed they became when they learned that their accusations were wrong. You see, in their demented rush to heap blame on the Right, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, the hard-core Left and their sycophantic followers in the media forgot to do something really important…check the facts.

As in other cases, the facts don’t really matter to the vile and vitriolic Left because the ends justify the means. They were so certain that the shooter was going to turn out to be a Tea Party activist, some right-wing nut job, that their giddiness at being able to paint the brush could not contain itself long enough for the facts. [And, yes, the Leftists appeared giddy at the shooting and their ability to blame the Right at something so heinous.]

Through the day on Saturday, as more information became known about the shooter, Jared Loughner, it turned out the killer appears to be, as are most assassins throughout history, just a plain whack-job loser. If anything, it could be made (with vitriolic rhetoric) that the killer is more aligned with the Left as his listing of Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Hitler’s Mein Kampf among his favorite books, as well as his flag-burning video are not something that any rational Lefty could associate with the beliefs of Palin, Beck, Limbaugh or most Tea Party activists.

Claiming that a Left-wing whack job is the one who killed a little girl and five others would be stooping to the gutter-level lows of the Left though. Instead, it appears that Jared Loughner has more in common with Leon Czolgosz, the whack-job loser who shot President McKinley in 1901.

* In 1901, Emma Goldman, was in fact arrested by police in Chicago who detained her believing she might be part of a conspiracy to kill the President. She was later released though as it became clear that she could not be blamed for the actions of a madman.

Just as anarchist Emma Goldman could not be held responsible for the actions of a madman, for the Left to try to destroy the Tea Party movement at all costs, including assigning Jared Loughman’s actions to Sarah Palin, Beck or anyone else’s rhetoric is insidiously evil.

Lastly, for all the hyperbole that will be heaped on by the Left over the coming days and weeks ahead about toning down the rhetoric, they need to clean out their own mouths first."

_________________

“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

Ephemera: Soviet of Washington's very own anti-christ viz education

2011-01-06T09:24:00.000-08:00

“I think we ought to talk about what’s good for the student from the day they’re born to the day they get the degree they want to get.”
This centralization of education in the state of Washington is ideal for our mega-statists to make sure none of that pesky Christian world-view gets through. The hook is perfect for our particular psycho-social moment what with the appeal to Pragmatism. It'll be more efficient and remove inequities, right?

All this busy kingdom building on Epiphany. But I confess that Jesus is building His Kingdom, not-withstanding my failures as bit, one each, in the fabric of God's Church.

Historia: Protostatism

2011-01-03T15:40:00.000-08:00

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
(Genesis 6:1-4 ESV)

Jim's Commentary:

Humanity expands into the earth; the normative default for the various communities being small villages engaged in free enterprise economics.

As the covenant people (children of Seth, or "Sons of God") intermarry with unbelievers ("children of men"), there arise warlords or proto-statists called Nephilim who are not afraid to use coercion (murder) to achieve their ends. Which ends usually include some sort of economic exploitation or control of others distorting or destroying the free enterprise market.

With the moral fabric of these small villages destroyed by the betrayal of the Sethites, and with the rapid growth of the cancer of statism, in short order, nearly everyone had forgotten God except Noah.

Twitter style post: Neue Jahr

2011-01-02T17:34:00.001-08:00

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
(Philippians 3:12-16 ESV)

Ephemera: How the Federal regulatory meme beats worthless congress

2010-12-31T10:17:00.000-08:00

Less we forget, going into the new year, how completely depraved our leaders are, we need to remember the enemy and not be taken in by the bull$#!^. (I don't have OCR software on my Win7 machine, so the following is a photo of an article everyone should read.)

Ephemera & Social Philosophy: On higher education

2010-12-13T13:26:00.001-08:00

The linked article in this post lays out all the important concepts and realities regarding higher education. The artificial credential inflation has been so effectively programmed into our consciousness that I have had to stop and reprogram myself on many occasions. For example many people I meet are not at my intellectual level and yet they are educated beyond my level and so in society's eyes they are better. And many of my friends that I have intellectual parity with, vary from those with little or no formal education to those who have doctorates, master's, and equivalent degrees, and my education consists of years of trade school and the reading of books; when we ignore this education meme we understand each other quite well. I meet many highly intelligent productive people who are, in the eyes of our culture, uneducated. But, with my exposure to heavy bureaucracy at the Port of Seattle, I meet the other end of the spectrum, and one can only say, "Many people are educated way beyond their intelligence."

This would all be fine and worth filing under signs of the decline, but this same attitude has invaded the church, especially in Presbyterian circles, and thus should be criticized. To many of my own brothers and sisters in the church, I am nothing because I am uneducated. But at least with the true believers in the faith who are my friends and associates, I don't have to deal with this attitude. The church needs to self correct on this (among many other more important issues) so that we are not blinded by our sublimation within the greater culture.

Ephemera: Another example of the consequences of a society that rejects God

2010-12-07T11:42:00.000-08:00

Without going into a massive philosophical treatise on all the ramifications of how the many failures of the American Church helped or modified the various tyrannies of our civilization's cultural mores, I want to state that is was the renewed Israel of God, the Universal Church, which lifted women from mere property (sometimes of less value than farm animals) to equal and humane value in the sight of society and before the throne of God.

Now as many in our society have either rejected God outright or whose involvement in the civil religion or some other toxic meme has caused them to de facto reject God, we see the value of women declining as witnessed by this report.

I fear for my sisters (in the Adamic sense in my case), for my mothers (I give honor to my own mother as well as my mother-in-law), and for my daughters (again in the Adamic sense for me), since they inevitably become the victims when a civilization collapses. In the Christian Church every one of us men has the relations of mothers, sisters, & daughters, so we must protect them when or if the circumstances of life allow. If we cannot physically (and even when we can physically) protect them, we must stand in the breach spiritually through prayer, loving acts of service, and a life of understanding.

Social Philosophy: Interesting take on Feminism by UKL

2010-12-06T08:35:00.000-08:00

UKL's latest blog entry makes a few interesting points. I like the statement from her entry:

"Can women operate as women in a male institution without becoming imitation men?"

Because everything I've seen when given power, women are just as exploitative as men if given the opportunity.

Ephemera: Noticing the flying time etc.

2010-12-05T20:49:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe it, but it is already the second Sunday in the Advent season. Our pastor has departed from standard expositional sermons for the morning service to give us a series on the incarnation.

The link is to last week's sermon, but I recommend that when the other sermons are posted, that everyone should take a look.

Merry Christmas season, everyone!

Ephemera: Comment into the Aether regarding TSA et al.

2010-11-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

The solution to the TSA et al intrusion into our privacy and other rights, is for everyone who can fly, to not do so. Once the airlines start losing significant business, their lobbyists will get the sorry bastards (I mean Congress) to maybe reign in the agency. This would require that Americans be willing to put up with some short-term inconvenience for the sake of liberty. Yes all you beautiful people--stop flying!

But, (sigh), we all know how short-sighted our fellow citizens are and how little they regard their liberty.

I continue to say over and over again: "The AMERICAN people are UNWORTHY of their liberty--proven by these unprotested incursions of our rights and by the results of the last two elections."

Ephemera: A link to an interesting look at the WikiLeaks

2010-11-29T12:31:00.000-08:00

I just had to throw this link on the blog:

Psy Ops ?

Ephemera: Journal of the Decline: miscellany, x-ray poisoning etc.

2010-11-28T22:09:00.000-08:00

I had to put a link here for my own personal reference. I like how the writer dealt with the dangers of TSA's new body-scan devices. I have no desire to go through one after reading this article.

Ephemera: the evolution of the war machine in the late 19th century

2010-11-27T23:11:00.000-08:00

Another view of the American West.

Ephemera: SteamCon II

2010-11-21T08:36:00.000-08:00

By necessity, this entry is lame.

Just after I registered for entry for the day, Saturday, I changed the batteries in my camera, and -- the bloody camera wouldn't work! Thus the lameness.

Someone more prepared to document one's adventures would have a working (and better) camera with a competent smart-phone camera for back-up. I was not such a one as to be in this category, and I carry a dumb-phone (don't laugh, it can go five days on one charge). This phone contains a insufficient 2MP camera which is non-focusable unless you drop your resolution to VGA standards.

No pictures this year.

Lord willing, I hope to attend again next year with better preparation. I went on about the camera situation just now because the costumes worn by many of the participants were absolutely fabulous. I was amazed -- the clothing/gadgets varied from proper Victorian attire to skanky punk-style designs to western styles all added together with the Vernian Sci-Fi flavor that is Steampunk.

I enjoyed myself and I got to hear an interview with James P. Blaylock and get his autograph on my copy of "The Digging Leviathan". I attended a few panels and never did make it over to the RPG section. I got off of work Saturday morning from my graveyard shift job, met Sam coming down from Seattle at the Airport and then we were at this convention. I had less energy and I had to pick up Janie at 2330h and head home so I didn't attend the music concert (it looked fun--perhaps next year). All-in-all in was an entertaining Saturday.

Ephemera: Personal Update

2010-10-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

Attenuated,

Cosmic signal - traveller

Lost not forgotten.

After having a personal abhorrence of the dangerous and fool-hardy course that my civilization had begun to take in the early twenty-first century Anno Domini... I just couldn't take it anymore.

It takes a strong psyche to deal with the punishing turns of life, much less to see no hope in this earthly life, what with the coming judgment and all.

I had to turn away...

I had to let it happen, I had to change
Couldn't stay all my life down at heel
Looking out of the window, staying out of the sun

Not really, but I think you could also almost call it an information allergy or data-psychosis.

So after my departure from the wave, I have just been coasting along deep in the black, trying to fix my spaceship...:)

So, I would just use my 57.4 minutes of personal time to either watch TV (Netflix-catching up on Farscape and various other shows) or work on back-ground material for my stories. And then of course once the academic year began...I call it the Over-commitment Season Disease or OSD (pronounced OZ). So we are in Oz right now.

But my procrastination must come to end because Reformation Day points out that it is time to use my hobby time to track with NANOWRIMO.

My apologies to my audience of 1.78 sentient beings for my absence.

Novo Visum; Neue Ansicht.

Ephemera/Historia: America's Ruling Class

2010-08-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

This article (which I call "America's Ruling Class") just about says it all. Indeed, "our ruling class recruits and renews itself not through meritocracy but rather by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in."

Ephemera: Personal Update

2010-08-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

Windows 7 environment 97% complete.

It was six weeks or so since my last post when I decided that it was time to make a change in my computing environment. Together with keeping house while Janie was away and working full time on graveyard shift, I began to back up data, prepare hardware, get MS licenses thanks to Sam's college and NewEgg, with another deka-day of time, a small amount of hour's weariness staring at a screen, I took the plunge.

It is not an easy thing to take the amorphous mass of data, obscure programs, archives, old & new documents in a vast confused system (known only to me), and submit it all to the new Microflaccid way. Linux is good, but sometimes one just wants to go to work and/or game and have it work, without, however, shelling out hundreds of ounces of silver for that irregular sphere with the bite chunk missing. In my case, I think Sauron I mean MS got it right this time with their OS...

To rebuild my system I must take sixteen major steps each with significant multiple sub-steps. But since time presses as a downpressor man upon our precious life-energy eaten by the collective, I leave that to another post. Hopefully soon.

^<_>^

Novo Visum, Neue Ansicht.

Personal Update: Time Count Zero.zero & Baal Victim Celebration Day*

2010-05-29T08:34:00.000-07:00

God has been pleased to grant strength to keep my nose to the grind-stone.

All time is going into home projects and various other neglected needs.

I may get back to writing soon.

Life energy leaking away in to the abyss of the cost of existence.....

Personal Update: Time Count > zero

2010-05-23T03:56:00.000-07:00

I've recently been yanked about with responsibilities to detriment of my reading and thinking life. I am glad to have work in these bad-for-the-worker times, but let me tell you:

Daily average time usage:

{Time at work+commute=10.5hrs.} + {Preparation for work, misc. maint. et al.=1.5hrs} + {Sleep=7hrs} + {Social, familial activities, home projects=2hrs.} + {Worship=1hr.} + {Reading, writing, learning, blogging, information consumption, entertainment=2hr.} = 24 hours per day.

There can be much overlap in the above categories, and I am sure that the Worship/Bible portion should probably increase, and "ministry" work should be added.

This means that just "reading" has all the above to compete with it. So, yesterday's competition got the best of me just when I was about to dash off something entertaining and relate how I don't have time to even write my own blog, when I began and was instantly pulled away by my wife, I could only transmit incoherence. However, it is really more than necessary to be sure to spend time with her since she must travel to and stay in Anchorage with her mother for most of the summer to help with the medical issues of her mother's husband.
(He has third stage congestive heart failure--I'm not sure how long God has ordained him continue upon Earth--do offer prayers, as far as we all know, he is not saved--and we would like to affirm that "God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth".--do pray.)
In a few hours the daylight portion of the Lord's day will begin, and I have a brief moment that I have snatched from the "sleep" portion of my busy dying day.

I have not done many entries on my reading projects since the "read" time is severely abbreviated. This slows progress to a crawl.
(Despite my ability in my youth to really "put away" the novels, I was never a fast reader--I like to read 'in depth' and I enter a contemplative state where I most often can mentally construct the universe of the idea I am thinking about, this tends to slow the work portion of the reading process. But even if I'm slow I mostly get a higher retention rate on what I've just read.)
I decided to add an N.T. Wright book into my "currently reading" stack, and since what I've read so far of Wright's prose is quite readable, I figured that in my time-limited reading time that I would breeze through one or two of his books and move on. Progress was not to be, since I find that there were a good many things to write about from the many well-said things in his books that need commenting upon. I may try to write up a paper or long blog entry on the Wright book that I am reading currently. Anyway, stay tuned...

Personal Update: Time Count Zero

2010-05-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

May God have mercy on the pettiness of my life, but I've got to relate my lesser self.

...fail...

ping.

W: ORP: NTW: "Simply Christian"

2010-05-16T14:08:00.000-07:00

In a discussion of good books to read about Christian living with my friend Bob, the following book caught our eye: "After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters" by N. T. Wright. But as I was reading the introduction I noticed that it was a third book in a series that NTW has been writing as introduction to and summary of the Christian Faith. Being a concrete sequentialist in learning style especially to deal with abstract-random or philosophical thought, I naturally wanted to read the book series in the order they had been written. My friend Bob is likely more than half done with "After You Believe...", but I will eventually catch up to have discussions about the book.

This book introduces the Christian Faith from a philosophical approach using a few examples that point to the eternal longings of most of humanity. It makes me wonder if he had read Don Richardson's "Eternity in Their Hearts" as part of his preparation for this approach. I won't go into a massive analysis of the text because of lack of time and one can piece together the gist of what the book is about from all the reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. The problem of my usual approach of quoting passages from works that I consider here, is that with NT Wright, like CS Lewis, there is so much one would like to put down that one may as well quote the entirety of the work and be done with it. NTW does write better for the average reader in America than CSL, but he still says some important things and has familiarity with philosophy and culture that I find refreshing.

Here is a small lesser passage that shows how easy and relaxed NTW's prose can be:

The real problem with Epicureanism in the ancient world, and Deism in ours, is that it has to plug its ears to all those echoing voices we were talking about earlier in this book. Actually, that's not so difficult in today's busy and noisy world. It's quite easy, in fact, when you're sitting in front of the television or hooked up to a portable stereo, one hand glued to the cell phone for text messaging, the other clutching a mug of specialist coffee...it's quite easy to be a modern Epicurean. But turn the machines off, read a different kind of book, wander out under the night sky, and see what happens. You start wondering about Option Three.

W: LP: GRP: FD: PFOS: Razor's Edge

2010-05-13T17:43:00.000-07:00

After I finished reading "Poor Folk" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (transl. by David McDuff; ISBN 9780140445053) I listened to an Audible Books purchase of the story in a different translation. As I listened to this story so soon after reading the text, I was struck over and over again by how completely at the mercy of the "fickle hand of fate" (what I would call, Providence and Anti-Providence in the face of faith) to which the 'poor' are subject.

When you are poor, and you are lucky enough to have a job, you still have anxiety, because any stable situation can be overthrown in a moment! In the following passage we have an example of the whole mental trip of being in dire straits.
At this point in the sequence of events recounted in the correspondence between the two protagonists, the writer of this letter is still at least ten days away from when his salary is to be paid, and has taken an advance on his pay, owes money, is overdue on his rent and clothing repairs.....

September 9

Varvara Alekseyevna, Little Mother!

I am beside myself as I write this to you. I am thoroughly agitated by a terrible thing which has happened. My head is whirling round. I feel as though everything were spinning around me. Oh, my darling, what a thing I have to tell you now! This we did not foresee. No, I do not believe that I did not foresee it; I foresaw it all. My heart sensed it in advance! I even dreamed of something similar the other night.

This is what happened! I shall tell you without regard for style, just as the Good Lord puts the words into my head. I went to the department today. I arrived, sat down, and started to write. I should also tell you, little mother, that I had been writing the day before as well. Well, it was like this: Timofey Ivanovich came to me yesterday with an order for a document which was required in a hurry. 'Please copy it cleanly, swiftly and carefully, Makar Alekseyevich,' he said. 'It's to be signed today.' I should observe, little angel, that I was not quite myself yesterday, and had no interest in anything; such were the sadness and depression that had overtaken me. My heart was cold and my soul was dark; my memory held nothing but you, my poor little treasure. Well, so I got down to the task of copying; I did the work cleanly and well, except that--I don't know how to explain it to you, whether it was the work of the Unclean One, whether it had been preordained by some secret Fate, or whether it simply had to happen that way--I left out a whole line; Lord knows what sense it must have made, it simply didn't make any. There was a delay over the delivery of the document, and it wasn't handed to His Excellency for signature until today. I reported for work this morning at the usual time and stationed myself beside beside Yemelyan Ivanovich. I should observe to you, my dear, that I have recently begun to feel twice as ashamed and apologetic as I used to. I've recently begun to find it impossible to look at anyone. If anyone's chair so much as gives a creak, I feel more dead than alive. That was how it was today: I sat huddled up, not making a sound, like a hedgehog, with the result that Yefim Akimovich (there never was such a bully) said so that everyone could hear: 'What are you sitting there looking so scared for, Makar Alekseyevich?' And he made such a face that absolutely everyone near us split their sides with laughter, at my expense, of course. They laughed, and they laughed! I stuck my fingers in my ears and shut my eyes, just sat there, not moving. That's what I usually do; that way they usually desist sooner. Suddenly I heard noise, the sound of running footsteps, fuss and bustle; I listened--surely my ears must be deceiving me? My name was being called, someone was asking for me, for Devushkin. My heart began to quiver within me, and I still don't really know why I was so scared; all I know is that I was more scared than I have ever been in my life before. I became rooted to my chair--as though nothing were wrong, as though I were not even there. But again the voice started up, coming nearer and nearer. At last it was right next to my ear: 'Devushkin! Devushkin! Where's Devushkin?' I raised my eyes: before me stood Yevstafy Ivanovich; he said: 'Makar Alekseyevich, you've to go to His Excellency, at the double! You've made a mistake in a document!' That was all he said, but it was enough, little mother, don't you think! I went numb, froze, lost all feeling; and began to walk, more dead than alive. I was escorted through one room, through a second, then a third, into a study--I stood before His Excellency! It's impossible for me to give you a positive account of the thoughts that passed through my mind at that moment. I saw His Excellency standing there, and they were all standing around him. I don't think I bowed; I forgot. Struck dumb, I merely stood there, my lips trembling and my legs shaking. And I had reason to be struck dumb, little mother. For one thing, I was ashamed of myself; I took a glance in a mirror to the right of me, and what I saw in it nearly sent me out of my mind. And for another, I have always tried to do my job as though I myself were not actually there. So that it was hardly likely that His Excellency could know of my existence. Perhaps he might have heard in passing, as it were, that there was a member of the staff named Devushkin in the department, but he would never have had any close dealings with him.

Angrily, he began:'What's the meaning of this, sir? Where was your concentration? An important document, urgently required, and you go and spoil it. What's the meaning of it, eh?' At that point His Excellency turned to Yevstafy Ivanovich. I could only hear certain isolated words and phrases: 'Negligence! Indiscretion! You will get us into trouble!' For some reason I suddenly had an urge to open my mouth. I wanted to beg forgiveness, but could not, I wanted to flee, but dared not attempt to, and then...then, little mother, something happened that even now makes the pen want to fall from my hand. One of my metal buttons--the devil take it--a button which had been hanging from my uniform by a thread--suddenly fell off (I must have brushed against it by accident), bounced on the floor with a ping, and rolled straight, just like that, the accursed object, to His Excellency's feet--and this while everyone was completely silent, too! There went any hope I might have had of excusing myself, of making an apology, of accounting for my misdeed--all the things I had been preparing to say to His Excellency! What happened next was dreadful. His Excellency at once fastened his attention on my appearance and on what I was wearing. I recalled what I had seen in the mirror: I rushed to retrieve the button! I lost my head! I stooped down and tried to get hold of the button, but it spun and rolled, in short, I couldn't catch hold of it, and gave a fine display of dexterity in the process. Then I suddenly felt the last of my strength desert me, and knew that all, all was lost! My entire reputation was ruined, I was finished as a human being! And then, for not reason at all, I started to hear the voices of Teresa and Faldoni, and my ears began to ring. At last I managed to retrieve the button, got to my feet, straightened myself up, and had I not been such a fool I would have stood to attention and kept still. But oh, no: I began pressing the button against the torn off threads, as though that would make it stay on again; and, what's more, I smiled, and smiled again. At first His Excellency turned away, but then he glanced at me again--I could hear him saying to Yevstafy Ivanovich: 'What on earth?...Look at the state he's in!...How does he...What does he...' Oh, my darling, the sound of those words! I heard Yevstafy Ivanovich say: 'He has a good record, has never put a foot wrong--exemplary conduct, draws a reasonable salary, in accordance with his grade...' 'Well, do something to ease his position,' said His Excellency. 'Give him something in advance.' 'But he's already been paid,' Yevstafy Ivanovich replied. 'He's been paid in advance for ages now. He must be having some difficulties or other--but he's always shown good conduct, and he's got a good record, a spotless record.' I burned, my little angel, I burned with the fires of hell! I died inwardly! 'Well,' His Excellency said in a loud voice, 'it must be copied out again, and quickly; Devushkin, come here and copy it out again, without mistakes this time; and listen...' At that point His Excellency turned to the other people present and issued various instructions; then they all went their separate ways. No sooner had they dispersed than His Excellency hurriedly took out his pocketbook and produced a hundred ruble* note from it. 'Here,' he said. 'It's the least I can do, look on it as you please...'--and he shoved it into my hand. My angel, I gave a start of shock, my whole being was shaken; I don't know what came over me--I tried to kiss his hand. But he blushed all over, my little dove, and--I depart from the truth by not one hair's breath, my darling--he took my unworthy hand and shook it, shook it properly as though it were the hand of someone who was his equal, someone equal in rank to himself, a general. 'Off you go,' he said, it's the least I can do...Don't make any more mistakes, but on this occasion we'll manage to get by.'

Now, little mother, this is what I have decided: I ask you and Fedora--and if I had any children, I would ask them, too--to say your prayers henceforth in the following manner: to pray, not for your fathers, but for His Excellency, and to do so each day and every day until the end of your lives! I also want to say this, little mother--and I say it solemnly, listen carefully, little mother: I swear that no matter how afflicted by mental agony I was in the cruel days of our misfortunes when I looked at you, at the miseries you had to suffer, and at myself, at my degradation and my incompetence, in spite of all that I swear that the hundred rubles are less dear to me than the fact that His Excellency himself deigned to shake my unworthy hand, wretch and drunkard that I am! By doing that he restored me to himself. By that action he has resurrected my spirit, has made my life sweeter for ever, and I am firmly convinced that, no matter how grievously I may have sinned in the eyes of the All-Highest, my prayer for the happiness and prosperity of His Excellency will reach His throne...

Little mother! I am now in a dreadful state of mental disarray and agitation! My heart is thumping as if it wanted to leap out of my breast. At the same time, I seem to have lost all my energy. I am sending you forty-five paper rubles; I am giving the landlady twenty, and leave thirty-five for myself: I'll spend twenty on setting my clothes to rights, and keep fifteen for daily expenses. The only thing is that all these events which took place this morning have shaken my being to its foundations. I am going to go to bed. But I feel peaceful, very peaceful. Only there is a crack in my soul, and I can hear it trembling, quivering, stirring deep inside me. I shall come and see you: but for the moment I am simply intoxicated by all these sensations...God sees it all, my little mother, my priceless little dove!

Your worthy friend,
Makar Devushkin

____________

Anyway, that does it for "Poor Folk"; I am almost done reading the second story in the collection, entitled "The Landlady". This next story is an intense character study in almost Gothic style; the descriptions and dream-like texture of the story had me expecting the whole thing to turn into a vampire story--it hasn't as of the 95% point in the story. So I'm liking the mood created by this story, and I may make use some of the elements of this story for one of my science fiction stories.

*100 rubles was slightly more than three month's wages.

Novo Visum,
Neue Ansicht.

Ephemera: Non-Liturgical Special Holiday: Mother's Day & Personal

2010-05-09T07:27:00.000-07:00

A quick twitter-like message about Mother's Day (But at the beginning of the day before an adequate time to meditate on the greatness of {as Dostoevsky in Poor Folk had the protagonist refer to the love of his life...}_as I say my Little Mother.)

This is an American Haiku (7,11,7 syllable scheme; bring nature or creation into the word picture; add some element as appropriate): Here is a grouped series.

Oh Little Mother of mine,
Like a red, red, rose, or a sweet kind brandy-wine,
A pillar of all the good.

How lush our sacred garden,
In green, green walls, Doors of Paradise opened,
Precepts drop from your sweet mouth.

Colorful, floating, burst free,
Life casts off the bonds of earth, past the round sea,
Souls riding the words of life.

Mercy's image in my wife,
Sweetly singing around, quickly ending strife,
Music-shaped, this gnarled pine.

I rise with you my love,
Through golden, blue skies, soaring, fluttering dove.
Aloft, incense vanishes.

W: LP: Literature: CSL vs JRRT, misc.

2010-05-05T16:24:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to one of Mark Horne's commentators for the following link:

Conflict and convergence on fundamental matters in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien by John C. Wood.

There is so much in the article to digest that I recommend everyone to read it and think about it. These men were both geniuses in their individual ways. Some of the points in the article re-enforce my long held contention that JRRT was a better fiction writer in general than CSL, but CSL was a better essayist. Scholastically, CSL might have been more prolific but I contend that they were both excellent in their respective fields.

These men were both Christians, and I find my ecumenical outlook more alike to CSL than to JRRT, with reservations on certain theological issues. There are such great insights from both these great men. This is one of the reasons that though I may not be a great scholar of literature, I dearly love to read the great writers of history, because the extraordinary creativity and insight can inform my life and faith. Even a writer like Dostoevsky who was so profoundly different from these two great writers informs my faith and provokes my thoughts to a higher plane. Even as I read the article referenced above, I have been closing in on the end of FD's story, "Poor Folk" and I can see that FD is more of a modernist than the two medievalists CSL & JRRT. I couldn't help but think that as JRRT described the great conflict in Middle Earth against the forces of darkness, FD was describing the life of humans in thrall in Mordor and showing that even in misery, the little glimmers of God shine through in the human image bearers of Christ.

Social Philosophy: National ID again

2010-05-04T00:23:00.000-07:00

These guys just won't give up.

W: LP: GRP: FD: PFOS (Poor Folk & other stories)

2010-05-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

There are plenty of write-ups on this story, so I won't go into heavy analysis. I find this story interesting because Fyodor Dostoevsky creates a romance using the technique of correspondence between two people to create the story in the mind of the reader. This story is what I would almost call an anti-romance or to use the Greek classification, a tragedy. The two main characters, an older writer and a young seamstress, are both profoundly poor, and they live across a courtyard from one another in what we would call a tenement. The courtyard is not that large but it still serves as a metaphor for the gulf between the two that prevents them from coming together to form a couple and a family. The barriers are insurmountable, but the affection can't die.

I don't know if FD intended to purposely make a social commentary, but because of the realism of the story about the sordid conditions of those on the bottom of society, this short novella serves to slap the complacent in the face about "how the other half lives" or in the real nature of the case, how the other 90% lives. Perhaps almost depressing, nevertheless, the story shows the real humanity of the characters and how they grasp at so little for hope and comfort. If one can take it, the story is a "must-read".

Social Philosophy: Today is Int'l Labour Day: Some thoughts...

2010-05-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

I was meditating on the relationship between labor and capital, I think the division is artificial.

Capital is resources plus labor. The resources require labor to make them available; for example, if one wants metal, one must exert labor and energy to mine the ore, refine and mold it into usable form, then there is the need to transport the finished product to the end user. In every case labor must be used, and labor is tied closely to energy.

If cheap energy is available and labor plentiful and allowed to keep its remuneration...you could make anything.

Or as an alternative, and even if you don't like Abraham Lincoln, I do like the sentiment behind the following quote:

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much higher consideration. Working men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are more numerous. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as much as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.

Anyway something to think about

W: LP: GRP: CSL: Letters to Malcolm, comments

2010-04-29T09:47:00.000-07:00

This book, "Letters to Malcolm", by C.S. Lewis is short but ever so dense with meaning. As I continued reading after the first post on this book, I began to make notes in order to quote passages from each of the 'letters' or chapters, and I found nuggets of profundity in every chapter. In the end I would have ended up quoting the entire book, and each chapter seemed to get better than the last. So I will probably just copy out the entire book into one of my non-public blogs. This book is so good that I would just recommend that everyone read it. Now that I have my own copy, I think I may just read it every year.

Having said all the above about such a wealth of things to quote, and out of so many good things to quote, one stands out as approaching the sublime; this from the eighth letter:

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don't agree at all. They are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ. For the beginning of the Passion--the first move, so to speak--is in Gethsemane. In Gethsemane a very strange and significant thing seems to have happened.

It is clear from many of His sayings that Our Lord had long foreseen His death. He knew what conduct such as His, in a world such as we have made of this, must inevitably lead to. But it is clear that this his knowledge must somehow have been withdrawn from Him before He prayed in Gethsemane. He could not, with whatever reservation about the Father's will, have prayed that the cup might pass and simultaneously known that it would not. That is both a logical and a psychological impossibility. You see what this involves? Lest any trial incident to humanity should be lacking, the torments of hope--of suspense, anxiety--were at the last moment loosed upon Him--the supposed possibility that, after all, He might, He just conceivably might, be spared the supreme horror. There was precedent. Isaac had been spared: he too at the last moment, he also against all apparent probability. It was not quite impossible...and doubtless He had seen other men crucified...a sight very unlike most of our religious pictures and images.

But for this last (and erroneous) hope against hope, and the consequent tumult of the soul, the sweat of blood, perhaps He would not have been very Man. To live in a fully predictable world is not to be a man.

At the end, I know, we are told that an angel appeared "comforting"* Him. But neither comforting in sixteenth-century English nor ἐνισχύων in Greek means "consoling." "Strengthening" is more the word. May not the strengthening have consisted in the renewed certainty--cold comfort this--that the thing must be endured and therefore could be?

We all try to accept with some sort of submission our afflictions when they actually arrive. But the prayer in Gethsemane shows that the preceding anxiety is equally God's will and equally part of out human destiny. The perfect Man experienced it. And the servant is not greater than the master. We are Christians, not Stoics.

Does not every movement in the Passion write large some common element in the sufferings of our race? First, the prayer of anguish; not granted. Then He turns to His friends. They are asleep--as ours, or we, are so often, or busy, or away, or preoccupied. Then He faces the Church; the very Church that He brought into existence. It condemns Him. This also is characteristic. In every Church, in every institution, there is something which sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence. But there seems to be another chance. There is the State; in this case, the Roman state. Its pretensions are far lower than those of the Jewish church, but for that very reason it may be free from local fanaticisms. It claims to be just on a rough, worldly level. Yes, but only so far as is consistent with political expediency and raison d'état. One becomes a counter in a complicated game. But even now all is not lost. There is still an appeal to the People--the poor and simple whom He had blessed, whom He had healed and fed and taught, to whom He Himself belongs. But they have become over-night (it is nothing unusual) a murderous rabble shouting for His blood. There is, then, nothing left but God. And to God, God's last words are "Why has thou forsaken me?"

You see how characteristic, how representative, it all is. The human situation writ large. These are among the things to be a man. Every rope breaks when you seize it. Every door is slammed shut as you reach it. To be like the fox at the end of the run; the earths all staked.

As for the last dereliction of all, how can we either understand or endure it? Is it that God Himself cannot be Man unless God seems to vanish at His greatest need? And if so, why? I sometimes wonder if we have even begun to understand what is involved in the very concept of creation. If God will create, He will make something to be, and yet to be not Himself. To be created is, in some sense, to be ejected or separated. Can it be that the more perfect the creature is, the further this separation must at some point be pushed? It is saints, not common people, who experience the "dark night." It is men and angels, not beasts, who rebel. Inanimate matter sleeps in the bosom of the Father. The "hiddenness" of God perhaps presses most painfully on those who are in another way nearest to Him, and therefore God Himself, made man, will of all men be by God most forsaken?

*CSL makes this textual comment probably because he may have been reading from the Latin and/or Greek. In the Latin the word is "confortans" which is analogous to our word "comfort". All the modern English translations have "strengthen" or "strength". Another point is that I don't know what Greek text he was using or if the publisher made a boo-boo, but in the book I am quoting from it is spelled thus: ἐννισχύων.

W: LP: GRP: CSL: Letters to Malcolm, chiefly on prayer

2010-04-27T00:02:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd take a break from my readings from the post-modern genre of literature, to get some good insightful, logical, wholesome thoughts in my head. Anytime I read C.S. Lewis, I am uplifted in spirit and mind; I may not agree with him theologically, but he wrote well and I can always find something of value. I had been wanting to read "Letters to Malcolm" for some time and now have finally gotten to it. I have not been disappointed; a few pages into the book, we have these interesting comments in regard to liturgy:

There is no subject in the world (always excepting sport) on which I have less to say than liturgiology. And the almost nothing which I have to say may as well be disposed of in this letter.

I think our business as laymen is to take what we are given and make the best of it. And I think we should find this a great deal easier if what we were given was always and everywhere the same.

To judge from their practice, very few Anglican clergymen take this view. It looks as if they believed people can be lured to go to church by incessant brightenings, lightenings, lengthenings, abridgements, simplifications, and complications of the service. And it is probably true that a new, keen vicar will usually be able to form within his parish a minority who are in favour of his innovations. The majority, I believe, never are. Those who remain--many give up churchgoing altogether--merely endure.

Is this simply because the majority are hide-bound? I think not. They have a good reason for their conservatism. Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value. And they don't go to church to be entertained. They go to use the service, or, if you prefer, to enact it. Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best--if you like, it "works" best--when, through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don't notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping. The important question about the Grail was "for what does it serve?" "'Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the god."

A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question "What on earth is he up to now?" will intrude. It lays one's devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, "I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks."

Thus my whole liturgiological position really boils down to an entreaty for permanence and uniformity. I can make do with almost any kind of service whatever, if only it will stay put. But if each form is snatched away just when I am beginning to feel at home in it, then I can never make any progress in the art of worship. You give me no chance to acquire the trained habit--habito dell'arte.

It may well be that some variations which seem to me merely matters of taste really involve grave doctrinal differences. But surely not all? For if grave doctrinal differences are really as numerous as variations in practice, then we shall have to conclude that no such thing as the Church of England exists. And anyway, the Liturgical Fidget is not a purely Anglican phenomenon; I have heard Roman Catholics complain of it too.

And I like these lines from the second letter:

One meets people who are perturbed because someone in the next pew does, or does not, cross himself. They oughtn't even to have seen, let alone censured. "Who art thou that judgest Another's servant?"

..."sound doctrine." Left to oneself, one could easily slide away from "the faith once given" into a phantom called "my religion."