It's all around you, like smog. This train isn't bound for glory.
Background by Deak Ferrand, who pwnz.
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It seems to me that we don't play games to live, or to "play" - we play games in order not to live. We play games instead of talking to each other. We play games in order not to think about the war - and maybe our game-playing is why the war continues.
Every moment devoted to our hobbies moves us more deeply into a pastime paradise, which removes us from public life and walss un the more thoroughly into a purely private world of masturbatory selves who do not care for, or interact with, the larger world in which others are dying - and they die through our inaction, and their dying facilitates our lives of "comfort" and isolation. Our greatest privilege - our luxurious vice - is to not need to care.
A culture of game-players, pop-culture fanatics, and hobbyists is a spectacle of alienation. As we disengage from the real world, and retreat further into our fantasies, that world - the only world - dies from our neglect of it. Soon enough, we will join it.
Or: On the Care and Feeding of the Recalcitrant Ego
Dear Mr. New Age Dude:
We can talk all day about the evils of the Ego, and the transcending thereof, but at the end of that day, your Ego is like your stomach - still there, and still hungry.
Dude, you are never getting rid of your Ego - you are stuck with it, and it's not going away. You can (and from the looks of you, probably should) take a vacation from it now and again - turn down the volume of Radio Me a little, at least - but like your stomach, it's built in.
What's more: The Ego drives art and literature, and the development of culture generally. As George Carlin said of comedy, the name of the game is "Dig me!" History would be a prolonged yawn without Ego-driven people doing Ego-gratifying, Ego-sustaining, and Ego-defending things. No Ego, no action.
The completely selfless person (sustainable only under laboratory conditions, and rarely for very long) is potentially like a satisfied junkie - passive, unmotivated, and rather dull. At any rate, it's not happening to you any time soon - just look at how much pride you take in being selfless!
Like the stomach, the Ego needs to be fed to avoid becoming an annoyance and a distraction. Consider Breatharians and anorexics - by trying to suppress the stomach, they make it the center of their lives, their activity, and their identity. Ultimately, their spurned and abused god consumes and destroys them. (It's like a character in Carrie Fisher's Postcards from the Edge said about twelve-step program members - "All they do is not take drugs!") A healthier approach to the stomach and Ego is to respect that you have them, as structural features of who and what you are, to learn to manage them, and to remember not to identify with them - and to take them out for a nice dinner now and again.
So care for it and try to keep it off other people's lawns, and maybe toss it a bone now and again, because it likes treats.
While I agree that science should serve its own ends, disinterestedly, I nonetheless feel that sometimes the deeply felt needs of humanity at large should be allowed to raise the priority of certain research programs of immediate urgency.
To wit: What's the deal with propeller beanies? They have a long history as the preferred headgear of such crypto-elite groups as the SMOF. And yet, who really knows what function they serve? Or what effects they have?
While we remain at the stage of hypothesis-formation (or abduction, if you will), two possibilities seem to stand out: that the propeller beanie is an indicator, or that it is a regulator. Allow me to explain.
Though normal motion will, of course, create air currents sufficient to cause propeller rotation, let us assume a stationary subject in a closed room with still air. Heat from the wearer's head should rise, and thus impel roation in the propeller. In this way, the beanie may serve as an indicator of head temperature, and, further, of fluctuating rates of heat dissipation. So, (once our grant is obtained from the National Academy of Sciences) we can attach a laser pointer, or similar device, to the side of the beanie; interruption of the beam by the moving blades may then be recorded by, e.g., a suitably-placed photoelectric cell, thereby giving us a measurement of the rate of rotation, and of its changes. We may control for heat dissipated by the laser by taking a base measure of movement of an unworn beanie. In combination with equipment to continuously measure the subject's temperature, we can work up a fairly robust account of the relationship between angular speed (and acceleration) of the propeller blades and heat dissipation across the upper scalp. At this point we have made the propeller beanie into a useful instrument in the pursuit of truth.
Now, onward into the theoretical depths! The brainpan being generally regarded as the seat of the soul, we may now use our newly-developed and brightly-colored laboratory apparatus for some substantive work on cognition. Let us assemble a graduated series of problem-solving tasks - such as the Towers of Hanoi, graded sudoku problems, etc. - and see if "thinking harder" increases rate of rotation. If this hypothesis pans out, and rotation does increase as our subject's thinker gets over-heated, we will have fully operationalized the notion of intellectual work! At this point, we may further hypothesize that the popularity of these deceptively-simple novelty caps among the world's hidden elites has always secretly been a form of subtle boasting - the faster one's propeller turns, the greater the mental activity one reveals. This affords ample opportunity for flexing one's cognitive muscles, as it were - though one might conceivably "cheat" by the internal manipulation of other phenomena such as emotional agitation.
As for the propeller beanie as a regulator: We cannot neglect the fact that the upward current of heated air off the skull may to some extent be increased one the propeller has been accellerated up to an equilibrium point (and perhaps during the accellerative process itself - an area for further investigation). This raises the possibility that the beanie's propeller may serve as a crude radiator, slightly cooling the brain, and perhaps allowing for greater mental exertions with less wear and tear on the neural infrastructure. In this sense, the propeller beanie may also serve as a primitive noötropic device - which is to say, an intelligence enhancer.
Clearly, there is much difficult - and exciting! - work ahead of us, but, with sufficient funding, I, at least, am willing to undertake it, for great justice, and the ongoing advancement of the geek nation.
Simple Hypotheses Upon Free-Masonry - Part the Second
Having debunked the Shriners to my own satisfaction, I would like to move on to the larger question: What is the nature of Free-Masonry generally?
In venturing into this territory, I enter the august (or fallen) company of conspiracy theorists, esotericists, crackpots, addle-pates, schizophrenics, several popes, and every tin-foil-hatted wingnut this side of Lemuria. What - I hear you asking (I am prone to auditory hallucinations) - What could possibly be left to say about the Free-Masons? [And why do you keep spelling it like that?]
It may appear that every speculative stone has long since been upturned - A. E. Waite even hypothesized once that the great secret of Free-Masonry is: That there is no secret. I can therefore forgive you for doubting my capacity for novelty. (O, ye of little faith!) But, as Jesus once said, dig this:
As with the Shriners, let us first review some salient data points.
The Free-Masons are an international, fraternal, (indeed, exclusively male) society of apparently British origin, with numerous prominent members.
They are a secret society, in the sense that they maintain secrey of some kind, and therefore may be assumed to secretly be keeping a secret or two, in secrecy. Or perhaps they simply hope to protect the privacy of their more prominent members.
Sober sources (which are a bit dull) indicate that primary candidates for "the secret" would be identities of members, content of initiations, and recognition signals.
Masonry has a well-known history of developing ways for one Mason to identify himself to another. Secret handshakes, gestures, postures, seemingly innocent phrases with covert meanings, and so on. One might say that they are among the primary architects of the art of discreetly signalling one's intentions. (I have commented on this before.)
Masonry is documentably centuries old, and allegedly much older. This is far and away more than enough time to take over the world, or end it, were they so inclined. A simple look at any day's headlines shows the utter failure of anyone to actually run the entire world, and incidentally confirms its continued existence. If they've been trying and failing all this time, they suck.
Political conspiracy having been ruled out, they still seem to have a need for secrecy, and especially for secretive means of mutual recognition, but apparently not because they are plotting anything. They could be an intelligence service, I suppose, but that seems far-fetched for an international organization, besides which, if they were a branch of the British intelligence community, the presence of many Masons among the leaders of the American Revolution is rather perplexing.
They seem like nice enough fellows, so various sorts of distateful vices like cannibalism, human or animal sacrifice, and so on, seem straight out.
They insist that candidates affirm the unique Deity, and they are far too tied, historically, to Christianity to be plausible as a front for a cult.
So - with conspiracy, heresy, evil, and espionage ruled out, we seem to be left with victimless crime and ... sin?
Sin! Why call it by the name given to it by its enemies? Let us say, rather, in a fraternal spirit: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name.
Who enjoys theatre, costuming, and a mythology consisting near-exclusively of male characters? The Free-Masons. Who has an impeccable sense of style? The Free-Masons. Who virtually invented hanky codes? The Free-Masons. Who knows how to let you know that they know without letting your wife know in the process? Well, you know. And finally - who spends all their free time hanging out in the exclusive company of other men? The devotees of brotherly love, that's who.
Not that there's anything wrong with that! We understand, guys - it was a different time... There was the Church to contend with, for one thing. And there you were, a beseiged minority, with an especial need for each other's company, but mortal danger lurking at every step taken to determine who was your comrade, and who was just effete. There you were, benign, but stigmatized - in constant fear of jail, loss of your jobs, disinheritance, shunning, and harassment of all kinds. What else were you supposed to do? And you can hardly break silence now, in that you would betray the trust of all those, past and present, who have joined in hopes of being protected by that very silence. This is not a demand that you out yourselves. Rather, consider this a friendly letter from the outside world, saying: Well played!
It is true that certain holographically-arranged texts contain within them all possible interpretations, and so, in this sense, this theory, and all others past and yet to come, have already been aired, but have perhaps not yet been read. There is nothing new under the sun, so I can't really claim too much originality here... but I will wager that you heard it here first.
(Well, there is Illuminatus! to consider. Oh drat.)
[Because it is quaint and antique, ("antient", if you will) and because I can.]
Simple Hypotheses Upon Free-Masonry - Part the First
Consider, if you will, the Shriners. They have a reputation as amiable, charitable, middle-aged businessmen who nonetheless retain a certain impish frat-boy streak that comes out during their conventions. They are, collectively, subsumed under the archetype of Someone's Dad - maybe not yours or mine, but someone's.
I wish to offer an alternative picture of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Here are some generally uncontroversial points:
They have a curious fascination with Middle-Eastern culture and aesthetics.
As members of a secret society, they presumably have at least one secret.
They are known to enjoy a tipple now and again - which is to say, they like to party.
They are often seen in parades, driving miniature cars, wearing fezzes and sashes, waving to passersby and grinning widely and amiably.
In general, they display a remarkable degree of easy-going good cheer. They are happy-go-lucky men of goodwill.
Hashish has been widely available to Westerners, principally via Middle-Eastern trade routes, since the Nineteenth Century.
The Shrine was founded in 1870. Around the same time, a similar group was founded, named the Mystic Order of Veiled Prophets of the Enchanted Realm. I am not making this up.
For fuck's sake, they wear fezzes in public while driving toy cars.
I submit that the Shriners are venerable heshers - vipers of the first fucking water. They are manifestly and royally baked.
Check out this dude, then just try and tell me that I'm wrong. Oh, and by the way, he's the "Imperial Potentate". Other Shrine titles are at least as florid as that. He is also a member of the Royal Order of Jesters. Apparently "Dad" isn't so square after all!
Epistle to the World-Haters, or, To Hell with Heaven!
DISCLAIMER: If your religion is nothing like what I heap abuse on below, then obviously I am not talking about it... right?
Sometimes I have been asked to explain my aversion to Christianity, and to religion generally. The short answer: Because it hates the real, and loves the ideal. To which I reply: To Hell with Heaven! Stay tuned for details.
Nietzsche found both the Socratic and Christian traditions to be dominated by the despisers of this world - regarding life, and this world, it is agreed - it is no good! He and I agree in one thing, at least: We have no quarrel with the world as it is. For another view, you simply must consult Westboro Baptist Church's recent hit single, "God Hates the World". Unfair as it may be for me to use this extreme (and widely condemned by the sincerely religious) example, I feel that it represents the logical terminus of the worst impulse - and an authentic one, I fear - of the dominant faiths of our time. They set God, and the "Godly" person, at war against the World and the Flesh. (It's called "Sin", kids.) They are other-wordly, and perhaps Platonic. This world does not live up to their human (all too human!) ideals - which are mostly puerile. And so they hate it. Which turns out to be rather a problem if this world is the only actual one!
I have no patience for it any more. God's answer to Job makes more sense to me now than it did when I was in high school and first read it - I thought then that it was morally vacuous, and God was playing the part of a simple bully. But now...
Who are you to judge the entire Universe? Let us not forget that everything any of us has ever encountered - or loved - was found right here, in this body, with its co-located mind, in the womb of this world. Who are you to say that the life we are actually and verifiably living now is worth nothing but to prepare for another, "better" life, and that it is better to suffer here, and to supress our individual wills, and normal desires - or even our whims - if this prepares us to receive some ill-defined reward in some fantastical future state? Oh, but the voice is not yours, it is the voice of God! Well, as Ozzy Osbourne has observed, "I talked to God this morning, and He don't like you!" - and who's going to prove to me that the voice in your hero's head is real, but the voice in his is a delusion? "But consider the risk you take, in that the afterlife is infinitely long!" I am perfectly willing to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit right now, if it will free me from any appearance of having sold out to that bribe! And should I die and find I was "wrong", I will gladly take a righteous shit on the doorstep of Heaven on my way down to Hell.
In accepting the world as it is, am I resigned to evil? Not at all! The world I love is the world as it was made. Human institutions are ours to criticize, even to hate, and certainly to change or destroy. And when matter is out of place (for example, food being distant from the hungry), it is well within our role here to move it. I remain in favor of activity that improves the state of the world. But finding fault with the arrangement of the world and its affairs is very far different from finding fault with its nature.
Perhaps it may appear that my position rests crucially on atheism. In fact, it is totally independent of the question of God. Let us suppose, then, that there is a God, of the usual sort. If this God - perfect, wise, benevolent - made the world, then how could the world be wrong? Or the body? Or the human soul? Creation is a theophany (appearance of God) according to any sane theology. The reality of God would not diminish the force of Nietzsche's critique of the psychology of Christianity, for that matter. If anything, his this-worldy healthy-mindedness and unconditional affirmation of the Lord's works is more compatible with there being a real God than the bizarre self-loathing and repulsive paranoia and negativity of Saint Paul. (Am I enlisting Nietzsche as a Theodicy? Why not?)
There are, of course, many other evils associated with religion - claims of exclusivity, immature understanding of morality, alienation of individual spirituality onto hierophants, links to political oppression, etc., ad nauseum. Nonetheless, and perhaps surprisingly, I retain a high regard for Jesus, and for many individual participants in religions - as Hillel the Elder, Albert Schweitzer, al-Hallaj, Ghandhi, M. L. King, Jr., Johnny Appleseed, et al., whose greatness can not be separated from their piety. Jesus said that a tree may be judged by its fruit, and theirs was ripe in season - but most of today's harvest is utterly spoilt.
In keeping with the spirit of paradox, I conclude by offering, in support of the religious side of my position, a quote from Nietzsche, and in support of the atheistic side of my position, a quote from God. (As an aside - I currently enjoy thinking of N. as the South Park of his day. "Well, I'm hip and all - I see what he's trying to do, and I appreciate the cutting-edge, transgressive humor as much as anyone, but, really, this time he's gone too far!" N. is a philosopher for the young. [Older people tend to be more conformist because they have endured many more years of operant conditioning driving and shaping their behavior!] It's like deliberately farting in church - not so much because farting in church is funny, and not so much because it's something you're not supposed to do, but rather because the fact that it is What You Should Not Do is itself hilarious.)
About life, the wisest men of all ages have come to the same conclusion: it is no good. Always and everywhere one has heard the same sound from their mouths — a sound full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness of life, full of resistance to life. Even Socrates said, as he died: "To live — that means to be sick a long time: I owe Asclepius the Savior a rooster." Even Socrates was tired of life. What does that prove? What does it demonstrate? At one time, one would have said (and it has been said loud enough by our pessimists): "At least something must be true here! The consensus of the sages must show us the truth." Shall we still talk like that today? May we? "At least something must be sick here," we retort. These wisest men of all ages — they should first be scrutinized closely. Were they all perhaps shaky on their legs? tottery? decadent? late? Could it be that wisdom appears on earth as a raven, attracted by a little whiff of carrion?
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? Declare if thou knowest it all. Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born? or because the number of thy days is great? Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south? Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? He that reproveth God, let him answer it. Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. Wilt thou also disannul my judgment? Wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous? Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him? Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.
In which bragging is determined to be incompatible with pausing.
I was working on a computer at work, when a young employee of ours walked up to me and struck up a conversation, during which he began to brag of his 733+ haXing 51<1775. He could devise a virus to fry you any way you wanted to be fried, he explained - though in plainer language. I was suspicious, because of his youth (I am not terribly impressed with the 1337-itude of the current crop, most of whom don't even understand the arguably practical purposes for which "1337" was devised.), and because of his job description (in a word: "peon"). His demeanor didn't help much, and his explanation included "an' shit", or the equivalent. But no snob I, and willing to give the benefit of the doubt, I remained open and accepting, and with apparent sincerity asked him a simple question: "What do you code in?"
"Uh, what do you mean?"
"What programming languages do you use?"
There was a significant pause, which told me all I needed to know, but as a final seal upon the verdict, he replied:
"Microsoft."
The moral is clear: Do not seek to invoice for goods you are not prepared to ship.
The Great American Novel - is generally a road novel.
(Huckleberry Finn, Moby-Dick, The Grapes of Wrath, On the Road, Naked Lunch, The History of Luminous Motion...)
We are away from home - we can long for it, but we can't go there. Twain tries to return Huckleberry Finn to his hometown, but we are not Ulysses, and eveyone hates that ending, and marvels at Twain's moment of cowardice - which he partially redeems by promising that Huck will "light out for the territories".
We are away from home, and we can't go back. We are not entirely familiar with our surroundings. We are in a foreign land, all our lives, and we must improvise, or try to get by on charm and by being openly naive. We are in motion. We have to find the new home to replace the lost homeland. The urge for home is never satisfied by a new home, though - it could only be assuaged, if that were even possible for us, by the original home.
I think people don't yet grasp the immensity of what is going on right now. They think they do, but they are thinking small, because they are small. Everything that has happened up until now was a prologue. Right now, we are living through the beginningof history, not the end.
Let me make it more vivid: Our proto-human ancestors developed fire, tools, weapons, and clothing. As a result, we have language, leisure, and wealth, and are mostly hairless. Later, we developed agriculture, and as a result we have religion and government. We developed the wheel, and as a result we have begun to develop spaceflight. We developed writing, which led to the development of individualism and democracy.
And then, for a while, nothing much happened.
Within the past two centuries, we have developed what may appear to be separate technologies, but which amount to a single shift: power generation, telephony, recording and broadcast media, and electronics generally, all of these converging on a global (and increasingly wireless) network of millions of computers.
If banging two rocks togther to strike a spark into some dried grasses made us lose our fur; if poking a seed into the soil led to the total upheavel of our social life; if a rounded rock or two mounted on a pole led to rocketships - what, then, will an instantaneous global communications network and universally accessible repository of all knowledge do?
Our descendents will forget our wars and the ideologies that fueled them long before they forget our technology.
Our forebears did not know what they were doing for (or to) us; similarly, we have no way of knowing what we are doing to (or for) our descendents. But precedent indicates that it will be - unprecedented.
Sometimes, it seems you wish to appeal to the values of ordinary decent hard-working people.
I wish you would make up your mind. You may speak of ordinary people or you may speak of decent people. But these are two different groups.
Ordinary people supported the fascists and Nazis. Ordinary people lynched blacks, beat up freedom riders, jailed civil rights leaders, terrorized the queer kids in high school, and voted for villains like Wallace and Bush. Ordinary people hate science and love superstition. Ordinary people love war; they are rabid nationalists. Ordinary people stifle and beat their children. Ordinary people can't drive for shit. Ordinary people enforce conformity through force and employment - the threat of joblessness is financial blackmail that keeps people acting as "normally" as they are able, and starves those who can't or won't fake it straight to death. Ordinary people overconsume and waste and render unclean. Ordinary people are destroying the environment, and may cause the end of life on Earth (or at least vertebrate life). Ordinary people, in short, are the main reason the world is unlivable, and Utopia unattainable.
Let's look at the KKK - some think of them as being like Stormtroopers, or perhaps reactionary guerrilla soldiers, or terrorists, or some-such. But no - look into them, and you will see that they are ordinary, hard-working people who love their families and their country.
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