A long time ago, in a forgotten history, Man walked naked among the trees and the grass. Those men didn't think of themselves as primitive like today’s Men think of themselves as Modern; they didn’t have cinema or the printing press to tell him how to think.
I like to imagine that those forgotten men abided by a nobler law then we live by. The same law that the trees and the mountains and the wild animals abide by. They adapted to adversity by recognizing an immutable divinity.
The four seasons occur because of the Earth’s revolution around the sun. What about the revolution of our sun around the galactic center and our galaxy round the rim of the universe? Oh the colors of the slow cosmic seasons!
One could say that spring evolves into to summer. It does--and summer evolves into fall and fall into winter. But it would be wrong to say that summer is modern and winter primitive. Maybe too it is foolish to talk about the progress of Man. Maybe He too blooms and withers like the plants around him only to rise from the ashes another season.
This is all a long way of saying that I am amazed by the pliability of our law. Something illegal today can be legal tomorrow, one just has to convince everyone that it should be. In this way law is like fashion. It changes with popular attitude. It is free flowing, like the moods of a mad people. Yesterday gay marriage was illegal meaning, however subtly, that a majority of the people believed it wrong. A vote in Washington State yesterday could have reversed that ban on gay marriage. I’m not here to be a lawyer or a moralist. It just strikes me as odd how something considered a taboo--a high sin a generation ago could be celebrated the next. Is it progress? Is it fashion? Do we live by a natural law? A divine law? Are we evolving towards a singularity or simply growing cyclically?
A consensus among a majority has nothing to do with truth.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Monday, July 24, 2006
Ultimate Island
My brother and I were watching TV when a commercial for a new BBC America island reality Television show came on. Images of beautiful people engaging in dramatic social interactions were flashing on the sceen at a furious clip when Andy exclaimed, "Dude, get this: I have an idea for a TV show. It would be called Ultimate Island. We'd invite all the people in the world that are interested in being on one of these island shows and once they were all gathered there on the Island we'd loose the nukes on 'em."
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Cosmic Religious Feeling
We were sitting out of doors on the balcony at our local brewery enjoying dinner. My girlfriend and her friend excused themselves to use the restroom, leaving me alone with her friend’s boy friend, a stranger. He had said he was a high school biology teacher. That’s interesting, I thought. I couldn’t resist, “So being a biology teacher, tell me, do you have any doubts about evolution?”
He looked at me for a moment, studying my expression and began, “It is a theory and there are questions still to be answered but no, I think the theory is a solid one. Why do you?”
Oh man, here it came.
“Yes, I guess I do. I have a hard time swallowing the idea.”
He threw his huge bearded head back and started laughing from his gut. “I’m sorry. Really, I’m not laughing at you. I just didn’t think people like you existed anymore. What gives you trouble?”
“I’m not going to pretend to be an expert. It’s just that it seems so far fetched, I mean first there’s nothing and then the nothing turns into something and after enough time passes there are single-cell organisms and then after more time passes there are mult-cellular organisms and now here we are eating dinner in a beer garden discussing it. It seems a little far fetched to me.”
He nodded and began about proteins. I nodded but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was sitting in a small desk in a high school class room. He knew his text book very well. And as he told me about this stuff called DNA, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. I gazed off at the pink and violet clouds and the band of orange on the horizon as the sun sank behind the bay. I wanted to fly away to a different world. A magical world.
Someone asked me what happiness is. It’s hard to define. But so is that feeling I get when I watch the sunset in summer at the park while kids play catch with their fathers and young lovers walk together with their arms wrapped around each other. Maybe that is happiness.
Ask anyone what makes them happy and they’ll probably describe something like a park or a pet or something big and colorful like love. I’ve never heard anyone say that science makes them happy because science is a different kind of thing than a sunset or the buzz of restaurant. It’s a tool to describe the world not the world itself. Science and technology are wonderful things but they aren't happiness itself only a vehicle. It isn’t the internet that will bring joy to a poor child in Africa but the poetry he reads on it.
People do not need to be “educated” which to often these days means indoctrinated. They only need to be watered and nurtured and their curiosity encouraged. I think we are creatures created to experience happiness like flowers are creatures created to bloom.
He looked at me for a moment, studying my expression and began, “It is a theory and there are questions still to be answered but no, I think the theory is a solid one. Why do you?”
Oh man, here it came.
“Yes, I guess I do. I have a hard time swallowing the idea.”
He threw his huge bearded head back and started laughing from his gut. “I’m sorry. Really, I’m not laughing at you. I just didn’t think people like you existed anymore. What gives you trouble?”
“I’m not going to pretend to be an expert. It’s just that it seems so far fetched, I mean first there’s nothing and then the nothing turns into something and after enough time passes there are single-cell organisms and then after more time passes there are mult-cellular organisms and now here we are eating dinner in a beer garden discussing it. It seems a little far fetched to me.”
He nodded and began about proteins. I nodded but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was sitting in a small desk in a high school class room. He knew his text book very well. And as he told me about this stuff called DNA, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. I gazed off at the pink and violet clouds and the band of orange on the horizon as the sun sank behind the bay. I wanted to fly away to a different world. A magical world.
Someone asked me what happiness is. It’s hard to define. But so is that feeling I get when I watch the sunset in summer at the park while kids play catch with their fathers and young lovers walk together with their arms wrapped around each other. Maybe that is happiness.
Ask anyone what makes them happy and they’ll probably describe something like a park or a pet or something big and colorful like love. I’ve never heard anyone say that science makes them happy because science is a different kind of thing than a sunset or the buzz of restaurant. It’s a tool to describe the world not the world itself. Science and technology are wonderful things but they aren't happiness itself only a vehicle. It isn’t the internet that will bring joy to a poor child in Africa but the poetry he reads on it.
People do not need to be “educated” which to often these days means indoctrinated. They only need to be watered and nurtured and their curiosity encouraged. I think we are creatures created to experience happiness like flowers are creatures created to bloom.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
The Progressive Element
In an effort to generate more posts I will try and post a video with commentary on Mondays. Enjoy.
The internet and a modern digital society empowers the little man. Robots and Indians are taking our jobs, yes, but this frees people to focus on their own inner creativity. No longer will men slave all day at the plant or the office. We will be able to sleep in, working sometimes as little as nine minutes a week filling out online surveys and selling recycled goods on eBay. Man as an individual is brimming with passions and creativity that for ages have been repressed--squelched by the need to survive. Man no longer works to survive--he lives to express. With a digital video camera and access to the internet a sole individual becomes as powerful as a broadcasting corporation. Let the Revolution begin!
The internet and a modern digital society empowers the little man. Robots and Indians are taking our jobs, yes, but this frees people to focus on their own inner creativity. No longer will men slave all day at the plant or the office. We will be able to sleep in, working sometimes as little as nine minutes a week filling out online surveys and selling recycled goods on eBay. Man as an individual is brimming with passions and creativity that for ages have been repressed--squelched by the need to survive. Man no longer works to survive--he lives to express. With a digital video camera and access to the internet a sole individual becomes as powerful as a broadcasting corporation. Let the Revolution begin!
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Send Her to Boot Camp
I wrote a very philosophical post that touched on mortality, truth, the problem of knowledge. I erased it because I may want to run for political office someday. The short of that now erased post is this: this girl challenges my entire idea about human beings and in all honesty, I don't think I could love a person like her. What a horrible thing to say!
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