An Owl In A Ruined House

From out of the shattered ruins of a life, which may be any given
person’s life, speaks, from time to time, a triumphant voice which
is every person’s life, which is Every-man. The wilely Odysseus
escapes the clutches of Cyclops, Polyphemus, by playing the role of
No-man. Each of us wanders somewhere between No-man and Every-man.

We find the heroic at either extreme of this spectrum of Noman and
Everyman. But in the middle ground of the battlefield, the “No-
man’s Land”, we frequently encounter only what we see as failures
and disappointments and poor decisions. But then, “No-Man’s Lands”
are always dramatized by us as a place for inching along, our faces
in the mud, with a hail of bullets just above our heads. The
triumphant voice within these ruined lives we lead exhorts us to
continue in the face of every adversity and to never give up hope.

In the monastery of my youth, a portion of the Psalms was recited
each night in Church, in a low, solemn voice. The hundred and fifty
Psalms were read through completely each week in this fashion. I
would always pause and take notice of that verse which says, “I have
become like an owl in a ruined house” in Psalm 102:

3 For my days have vanished like smoke, and my bones have been
parched like a stick.

4 I am blighted like grass, and my heart is dried up; for I have
forgotten to eat my bread.

5 By reason of the voice of my groaning, my bones has cleaved to my
flesh.

6 I have become like a pelican of the wilderness;

7 I have become like an owl in a ruined house. I have watched, and
have become as a sparrow dwelling alone on a roof.

8 All the day long my enemies have reproached me; and they that
praised me have sworn against me.

9 For I have eaten ashes as it were bread, and mingled my drink with
weeping;

10 because of Your anger and Your wrath; for You have lifted me up,
and dashed me down.

11 My days have declined like a shadow; and I am withered like grass.

The symbolism of birds is popular. America is symbolized by the
proud, fierce eagle. The Holy Spirit is symbolized by a gentle
dove. It is the early bird which gets the worm. The criminal world
speaks of “stool pigeons.” Hunters used to use decoy pigeons fixed to
posts (stools) to lure their quarry. The term was later adopted to
describe people who helped the police by luring criminals into police
traps. It later came to mean anyone who helped the police by
informing on others.

Odysseus disguises himself as “No-Man” to escape accusation through
anonymity. When Cyclop’s companions hear his groans and asked “Who
is it that has harmed you?” Cyclops answered, “No-man has harmed
me!” Cyclop’s companions, falling into the linguistic trap which
Odysseus had set, assumed that no person at all had harmed Cyclops.
Noman = Outis = “no man” or “no one” in Greek. When the other
Cyclopes say, “Is some man is rustling your flocks” and “If no man is
hurting you” (9.404, 9.409), they use another Greek form of the
negative, m tis, which means “no one” or “no man.” This word sounds
very much like another Greek word–mtis–which means “cunning
intelligence,” and which forms part of Odysseus’s usual epithet
polymtis, or “much cunning intelligence.” Odysseus himself makes the
pun at 9.411-12, which might be more literally translated as: “my
heart within laughed / at how my name and faultless cunning [mtis]
had fooled him.” (9.402) Polyphemus –In Greek, “much telling”
or “much fame”in other words, a braggart.

But once Odysseus’s ship has reached the center of the harbor, with
freedom and safety just barely in his reach, Odysseus cannot resist
the temptation to confess his true identity and his deed of blinding
Polyphemus. The Cyclopes, enraged by the realization of the manner
in which they have been deceived, cast great stones at his ship,
almost sinking it.

The Holy Spirit is a stool pigeon in a way, a bird which decoys us
into confession and capture. Apostle Paul wrote, “All have sinned and
fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Each of us is a ruined house. Each of us pays the penalty of death.

Is it not curious how Christ resembles an Odysseus as a No-Man who
becomes Everyman?

These strange words echo somewhere in the depths of my being, and I
listen and write them down.

I often feel overwhelmed by the ruin of my own life.

Just at this moment, I struggle to remember a name and a poem. It is
gone from my mind. All I can remember is “the old poet of the city”
and “Alexandria.” Lawrence Durrell wrote of him in “The Alexandrian
Quartet.” I search on these shattered fragments of memory, and
there is the name, “Cavafy.” Only search engines and technology make
such recollection possible.

And here is the poem of Cavafy that I seek:

The City

You said, “I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city will be found, a better one than this.
Every effort of mine is a condemnation of fate;
and my heart is — like a corpse — buried.
How long will my mind remain in this wasteland.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look
I see black ruins of my life here,
where I spent so many years destroying and wasting.”

You will find no new lands, you will find no other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods;
and you will grow gray in these same houses.
Always you will arrive in this city. Do not hope for any other –
There is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have destroyed your life here
in this little corner, you have ruinded it in the entire world.

======================

I am reminded of the line from the song, “Hotel California:”

“You can check out any time you like. But you can never leave.”

Someone once conjectured that “checking out” refers to suicide.

Erotic Images

An erotic image is simply an illusion, a gestalt of countless
colored pixels upon our senses. The individual pixels have reality
and existence. The woman in the image has no real existence. And yet
we are aroused by the woman and are not conscious of the individual
pixels. We can respond to this non-existent image because it
is an outer reflection of something which is actually within us and
which resonates with that inner woman just as the two arms of a
tuning fork resonate and produce tone.

Should some, but not all of the pixels fade, yet the image of the
woman persists. Cells in our body, and possibly even our brain, are
dying, and yet our individuality and continuity of memory persist.
Lockes and Jeffersons and Lincolns die, yet constitutional democracy
persists. Democracy, a gestalt and illusion of countless pixels of
generations of anonymous humanity which arouses in us noble feelings
of justice and inalienable human rights, persists. Stars explode in
supernova, yet the starry night sky which fills Kant with wonder and
fills Van Gogh’s canvas with intoxicating imagery, persists. And
should this very planet of ours die and grow cold, extinct, is there
not something which yet persists, somewhere, elsewhere in the ever-
collapsing kaleidoscopic telescope of being and reality?

Democracy is our erotic woman, our Statue of Liberty in provocative
pose, a gestalt formed by the myriad pixels of suffering throngs of
humanity which come and go like mist and spray as waves crash upon
the rocky coast. And our libertine lady, provocatively posed, this
non-existent idea of Justice and Truth, is like Dante’s Beatrice,
enticing us up a ladder of Divine Ascent, like Socrates’ school
mistress Diotema and her teaching on the ladder of love in
Plato’s “Symposium”.

The Unpleasant Truth

The unpleasant truth is that ethical societies will never vanquish monstrous strategies except through etymology: coining and then deploying. The neologisms, “geographic neutralization” and “ethnic restructuring.”

The definitions? You tell me. This is a pop quiz. Essays are for extra credit. But, there is a time limit: windows of opportunity. When our window closes their window opens and they will defenestrate in a heart-beat.

Hippocrates said that drastic illnesses call for drastic remedies. What do you call the Dresden fire bombing? What do you call Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What do you call the Sand Creek massacre. So, war is not murder? Wait. Watch. … See what happens. Perhaps I am wrong. Ah, but a just war is not murder. McCain was our hero, blanket bombing Hanoi to make the world a “safe place for democracy.” Hanoi is still communist the last time I looked. Bush and Cheney are war criminals, but there will be no Hague trials.

“The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.” – Henry Kissinger.

Let me ask this question: does a nation pioneer the development of weapons of mass destruction while the thought of using them never enters their minds? Right now, we are launching missile strikes in at SUSPECTED targets in Yemen, but we have not declared war. China sends a shipload of weapons destined for Zimbabwe, for Mugabe to wipe out his opposition, but no coastal port allows them to dock. But what does the world at large do about it? Nothing.

Each and every nuclear sub silently circling the oceans contains MORE destructive fire power than ALL 5 years of WWII BOTH SIDES COMBINED. It is not inconceivable that genetically engineered bio-weapons will be designed specific to peoples with certain ancestry because of something called genetic markers. These are all ideas for a sci-fi screen play. Surely you don’t think I am serious or correct about any of this. Lighten up! No one is ready to do anything about such things until and unless they are ready to do EVERYTHING about it.

The very fact that Tom Tancredo said what he did is just one of many proofs that I am not saying anything which has never been said before:

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

Tancredo traces his interest in politics to the eighth grade, when he played Fidel Castro in a class assignment. He urges America to reject “the siren song of multiculturalism” and depicts Islam as “a civilization bent on destroying ours.” In September 2006, when Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor who said the prophet Mohammed had brought “things only evil and inhuman”,[2] sparking Muslim anger throughout the world, Tancredo urged him not to apologize.

In July, when Tancredo proposed that America respond to any future terrorist attack by bombing Mecca and other holy sites, John Podhoretz, writing on the National Review’s website, said: “Tom Tancredo is an idiot.”

But as we well know, idiots are sometimes elected to high office.

http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2009/11/hearts-and-minds-from-bible-to.html

VIETNAM WAR QUOTE: “We must be ready to fight in Vietnam, but the ultimate victory will depend upon the hearts and the minds of the people who actually live out there.” Lyndon Baines Johnson Hearts and Minds” speech, May 4, 1965

VIETNAM WAR COUNTERQUOTE:
“If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” U.S. Green Berets slogan during the Vietnam War

When the threat decade after decade is ideological, your enemy becomes the minds of a generation in which the meme dwells and breeds its offspring. How does one defend against a generation or an idea? You don’t. Your choice is to be vanquished or vanquisher.

Certain kinds of enemies may only effectively be incarcerated in ancient history. Notice we have not had a troublesome pharaoh for some time. Today, Switzerland is only legislating against minarets. Tomorrow, who knows? The basements?

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

And the Swiss are so flexible and lenient! Their knives are a bit of everything and their cheese has holes!

I suppose I am making fun of euphemisms like “sleep management” and others to be found here

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/166848.html

or

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

(excerpt: A similar progression occurred with the following terms for persons with physical handicaps:

lame → crippled → handicapped → disabled → physically challenged → differently abled
)

I am saying something without saying anything (to confuse certain people) – see “Persecution and the Art of Writing” by Leo Strauss (pay special attention to “Apples of gold in silver fittings) – Nota bene: If I were to post that I one day anticipate a “World War III” that does NOT mean that I am telling the world to have a third world war, but simply that like the prophet Daniel, there is certain handwriting on the wall (in Daniel’s case, Mene mene tekel upharsin) and (if you ask me what I think it means) then I interpret it in a certain way (in Daniel’s case it was

“you have been weighed and found wanting.)

Now, if I had a weekly television series, say “Boston Legal”, then I could weave all these observations into the plot, the way they do. Actually, I did do that a while back and called it “Waging P.E.A.C.E.)

I wonder what Truman or Eisenhower would have said if you had predicted to them that within a few decades, America would be fighting undeclared wars, torturing prisoners, holding captives indefinitely without due process, I wonder what they would have said, if anything, AFTER they finished telling you that you were out of your mind.

But each of you can be your own prophet and interpret the handwriting on the wall any way you see fit, or, you may close your eyes and say “there is no wall, there is no writing.” This is the beauty of the Reformation!

Yes, I agree, we only think in the terms to which we have been conditioned. Muslims think in terms of haram (forbidden) and halal (permitted.)

There are groups or types who sexualize everything. Scientists think in terms of experiment. Mathematicians think axiomatically. Artists think aesthetically. An entrepreneur or an accountant thinks in terms of profit, loss and net worth. Atheists think in terms of discrediting notions of God and religion. The devout seek not only proofs of God but also arguments that their own creed is the only truth. When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are pockets.

When you stop and think about it, the Bible starts and ends with ethnocide. The first extermination is described in the account of Noah’s ark. The Bible ends with an extermination in the Book of Revelation. There is also the suggestion that various peoples, such as the Malachites be exterminated, together with all their beasts. Somewhere in the Psalms there is one verse that says something “blessed is he who dashes their infants’ heads against a rock.”

I have been thinking today about how often the entire world, or large parts of it, have become polarized. I suspect the first large scale polarization was our homo sapient ancestors against the Neanderthal. They co-existed for a period of 50,000 years. The last signs of Neanderthal are to be found at the Rock of Gibralter. I would not be surprised if our ancestors killed the Neanderthal on sight.

The Internet is chocked full of the sort of things I hint at, stated far more explicitly than my understated style.

http://hammerofevil.blogspot.com/2007/01/25-how-do-you-choose-enemies-to-attack.html

Those of us who lived through the cold war era of the 1950s well remember how we demonized the Communists who in turn demonized us as Capitalists. Before that, the world was polarized into the Nazis and axis powers vs the Allies.

With each decade and each century the terminology changes but the polarization remains the same. We need not state what the polarity is today, for we know that all too well.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis; aufgehoben (uniting opposites, and then starting the process all over again in endless cycles.) I should post the link to my Senior paper on Hegel.

If I were asking the opening question of for a seminar on the Iliad, perhaps I would ask “What would Achilles’ attitude be towards ethnocide?”

In fact, I wonder what the earliest historical example is of a writer describing ethnocide in modern terms, and conceding that it may be morally repugnant.

What China did to Tibet is considered a form of ethnocide, not because they slew all Tibetans, but because China systematically, with malice of forethought, destroyed the fabric of Tibetan culture and tradition.

Conservative Islamic societies, who wage a “soft war” against Western Internet influence view the demonic West as attempting ethnocide in the sense that our secular, material culture threatens to destroy the Islamic moral fabric of their youth.

You might say that Islam sees the West as guilty of Socrates’ crime, corrupting the youth, and they are wondering how large a chalice of hemlock to prepare.

If (lets be imaginative), say, Stalin has a Tardis time travel machine (OK, he STEALS it from Dr. Who), and Stalin travels back in time with weapons of mass destruction, and gives Achilles the button, what does Achilles do?

If Achilles pushes that button then, bing, bang, boom, Troy is gone! Is the poetry gone? Is the plot gone? Or does the poetry and drama morph into something that culture has yet to imagine?

Achilles starts asking Stalin some questions. Stalin explains the usual dictator stuff, you know “one death is a tragedy, ten million deaths is a statistic.”

There is one little sentence in American history that no one really seems to think deeply about:

“Live free or die.”

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

The question is, when does the “or die” kick in and how does it play out?

The way I see it, Achilles knew how and when to die, but America has forgotten how to kill in the way that Achilles killed and, with all due respect, America may have forgotten the how and why of when to die.

Now, purely by coincidence, I just finished watching a Netflix DVD, “The Taking of Pelham 123″

with John Travolta. We could have an interesting discussion if we carefully analyze that movie from the perspective of Achilles, Stalin and Dr. Who.

But then, we would have to talk about who is the MOST free. When are we the most free? And what makes us so free?

Human Rights

I am given to understand that the first occurrence in English literature of the expression “human rights” appears in Thoreau’s essay “On Civil Disobedience.” I was shocked to realize the expression appears only in recent history, and not from the mighty organizations and traditions of religions and lawmakers, but from a rather eccentric and reclusive bachelor (whom I greatly admire!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjCB6W1TKcc

Howard Zinn on Civil Disobedience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oRoQTwac9M

What Is Globalization? – Noam Chomsky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdYwAXZh0ME

The Most Dangerous Moment In History

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc0eUtBAWyA

Authorship and Social Responsibility

While I was in Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, I came to know an old Russian professor, retired, a layperson, who lived at the seminary school which trained future priests.

The professor was a worldly man and an intellectual, but very devout and pious, his thinking very much influenced by Russian Orthodox beliefs. One day, during Lent, the period before Easter, he was looking at an iconographic painting of the final Day of Judgment, depicting the wicked souls being cast into the torment of hell and the righteous souls being admitted to a heavenly paradise. He remarked that the day of Judgment must certainly be most severe for authors, because although the ordinary person must answer only for personal actions and sins and transgressions, an author must take responsibility for the conduct of thousands or millions of people who are influenced by the authors writings, either for good or for evil.

Each of us is author of our own actions (or inaction) and our lives and careers are our books, whether famous, or infamous for the very few, or simply anonymous for the vast majority. Each of us must answer for our actions in some fashion or other. We pay a price for foolishness or sloth, and we are rewarded and compensated for wisdom and industry. But an author or artist is a different sort of beast from the ordinary individual or average citizen.

We must ask ourselves two questions. First, what do we mean by social responsibility? Secondly, what is the nature and motivation of an author or artist?

In every society, government, culture, and ideology, there is a stress and emphasis upon the responsibilities of an individual to society as a whole. From the time we are small children, we are painfully aware that certain things, in fact, many things are expected of us, and that there are consequences and a price to be paid should we fall short of those expectations. The notion of an individuals social responsibility has existed in one form or another since very ancient times, in the earliest of governments and polities, and even in the small tribes of hunters and food gatherers at the dawn of history. It is only in the past several centuries that there has arisen a notion that societies have responsibilities to individual members. We call this new found notion of society’s responsibility Human Rights or Civil Rights.

Every school child in America is required to read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, (a.k.a. Samuel Clemens). Twain’s novel is required reading because it is a brilliant, entertaining and, now, historic portrayal of a time of slavery and oppression in America. We now know that smoking and the use of tobacco is very damaging to the health. In Samuel Clemens day there was no notion that tobacco might be harmful. Yet, every other page of Huckleberry Finn is praising the virtues and pleasures of smoking tobacco. Many young people have been tempted to experiment with tobacco simply because it was so romanticized by Mark Twain’s novels. We may see this negative influence of Huckleberry Finn as an example of social irresponsibility, of corrupting the youth. We certainly cannot lay the blame for this corrupting influence at the feet of Mark Twain. We must, if anything, blame generations of educators who have chosen to place the book among the required readings of the curriculum of very young and impressionable students without giving thought to the damaging social consequences.

If we extend our notion of authorship and social responsibility to artists, then possibly, we may see the painting Guernica, by Pablo Picasso, as a positive exercise of social responsibility, dramatizing for society the evils of violence and war. Yet, if we study the life and works of Pablo Picasso, it becomes quite obvious that concern for social responsibility was not in the forefront of Picasso’s mind as a goal or concern or inspiration.

In the 1960s, Francoise Gilot, one of Picasso’s several ex-wives wrote Life with Picasso, and painted a picture of a very selfish, egocentric and unpredictable personality. That woman divorced Picasso and married the famous humanitarian Jonas Salk, who pioneered the development of the first polio vaccine. We may certainly see someone like Jonas Salk as a scientist committed to social responsibility in his attempt to alleviate the suffering of many. Though, perhaps it is far more accurate to observe that each author, whether of books or paintings or theories in physics and math, is driven more by a quest for the power of recognition than by some altruistic notion of social responsibility. Authors and creators are most driven by an eudaimonic inspiration or compulsion which drives them mercilessly and relentlessly towards the act of creation, and often, in that process, alienates the author from society as an eccentric rebel outcast.

What of the authorship of someone such as Albert Einstein, the author of the theory of Relativity which made possible the terrible destructive force of the atomic bomb? The ancient Greeks spoke in their myths of Pandora’s Box. The name Pandora means every gift or all gifts. When Pandora’s Box was opened, many terrifying things escaped which could never be put back again. In the myth, the last thing to escape was Hope. Many physicists felt dread and guilt over the monster of destruction which they had created and unleashed.

Those who are religious and believe the Bible to be the divinely revealed word of God feel that each and every sentence is totally good and instructive. Yet, at the end of the New Testament, in the Second Epistle of Peter, Chapter 3, verse 16 we find this curious warning:

[In the Bible] are some things difficult to understand , which they that are unlearned and unstable twist and distort, unto their own destruction.

So here, we see the Bible itself warning us that there are verses within it which are harmful to certain people. In the Old Testament of the Bible, in the Book of Jeremiah, the prophet speaks scathingly of the lying pens of the scribes. And yet it is those very scribes who copy and perpetuate the religious scriptures. Indeed, Karl Marx saw religious scriptures as an opiate of the people and therefore as something negative from the point of view of social responsibility. Conversely, the religious communities of the world see communist regimes in a negative light, believing them to oppress and censor freedom of religious expression and worship.

If one looks at popular authors and artists like Picasso, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Proust, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Thomas Dylan, and many others, one sees that they are rebels, renegades, misfits, alcoholics, recluses. We see that the worlds of imagination which they create in their writings and art are forms of escape from reality and everyday responsibilities of a good citizen.

Now, if we search for socially responsible authors, then one might choose Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Toms Cabin. When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he exclaimed, And here is the little lady who started the Civil War. Certainly, Lincoln was exaggerating to some extent in his good-natured humor, but it is certainly also true that the nation as a whole became more self-conscious about the evils of slavery after reading Uncle Toms Cabin with the cruelty of Simon LeGree, whose name became the byword of wickedness.

Another prime example of social responsibility in American literature is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which exposed the evils of company towns who exploited immigrant workers in the meat-packing industry. President Theodore Roosevelt was
sickened by the brutality and injustice which Sinclair’s novel dramatized so vividly. Roosevelt immediately called upon Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration and, for the first time, setting up federal inspection standards for meat. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, were both signed into law on June 30th, 1906, as a direct result of Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle. President Roosevelt commended Sinclair for exposing the corruption and injustice, but scolded him for being such a socialist. Certainly, Sinclair seems to be one author deeply motivated by notions of social responsibility.

We even see, in the 20th century, authors like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, examining the state and society as some abortion gone bad, creating a nightmare world for its inhabitants. The passion of the authors creative obsession is closely analogous to the reckless abandon of sexual passion. In Orwell’s novel, 1984, it is a love scene of wild abandon in a secluded woods which symbolizes the rebelliousness and isolation of the individuals will to power. It is the State of Big Brother which crushes the sexual feelings of the protagonist during his imprisonment.

We easily come to see society and the state, not in their day to day reality, but in the fictional picture which is painted for us by novelists and philosophers and historians. We romanticize our notion of the state until we become like America, carrying its holy grail of democracy and freedom to the four corners of the globe through diplomacy or force, to the willing and unwilling alike. As social activists, driven by our ideologies we become Christs running about everywhere seeking out the largest cross, and then gathering about us a reluctant crowd of Herods.

In Genesis it is said of Abraham that he believed the promise of the divine vision, and that his very belief was counted to him as a form of righteousness or correct action, which also goes by the name of social responsibility. But by the time we come to the end of the Book of Job, God is saying to Job, Tell your friends that I am angry with them because they BELIEVED about me incorrectly. We see how ideology and theory and belief gradually supplant the individual and his daily actions and conduct in life. Finally, by the time we arrive at Jesus and his Apostles and Paul, we are told that we are utterly worthless and hopeless no matter what we do, but that there is a way to be forgiven, if only we will embrace a certain belief. Communism and Capitalism are both jealous gods preaching their ideology to the world and offering forgiveness and shelter in return. A certain physicist once pointed out that, in a gaseous collection of molecules, each individual molecule enjoys the utmost random chaotic freedom of chance. No one may say what a given individual molecule will do at any given moment. And yet, the mass of molecules as a whole is under strict obedience to various laws of temperature and pressure and gravity. The fiery rebel freedom of any single renegade molecule represents the force of hundreds or thousands of molecules robbed of their vigor and spontaneity and exiled to an icy state of passivity and inaction.

Plato explored many notions of social responsibility his dialogues, most notably The Republic. Plato proposes to examine the State as a kind of microscope to view the soul written in large letters. Plato envisioned philosopher kings in a society which saw the noble character of its citizens as its product and enterprise. Remember that Socrates was put to death for allegedly corrupting the youth through his teachings, whether oral or written we know not.

That great German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, said that we must always act in such a way that we treat individuals as ends in themselves rather than as means to some end.

Psychiatrist John Powell wrote: “To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, not love things and use people.”

http://www.meaningoflife.i12.com/psychology.htm

Gradually, over the millennia, our notion of social responsibility has evolved and shifted from the prehistoric hunters and warriors duty to his tribe, and has done a hundred and eighty degree about face. Now the great emphasis is upon society’s duty to the individual in the form of human rights or civil rights.

In light of the above considerations, I must personally conclude that the notion of social responsibility of the author is something alien and unknown to the author, imposed posthumously by a reading public. Responsibility, if it lies anywhere at all, lies in the appetites and demands of the consumer public, who clamor for an endless stream of murders, rapes, cataclysms, wars, monsters and even alien invasions from outer space. Our true responsibility is to our own inner space first. If we personally set that inner space of the heart in order, then the orderliness of society will perhaps follow more naturally. The real truth is that both religion and politics are the opiates of the soul, lulling it into complacency, apathy and indifference.

Trusting Strangers on the Internet

I simply approve every request. You can always delete them later. And you might be missing out on something very interesting that someone will one day post. I mean, just look at their info, and posts, and see if they seem genuine, and if they share some interests in common with you. If one feels that no one can be trusted, then the Internet is not the place to be.

Besides, in my situation, everyone who is an alumnus of St. John’s Annapolis or Santa Fe Great Books program automatically shares something in common with me. How will you ever meet new and interesting people if you never trust anyone? Is it not the case that all of your friends were, at one point, a stranger that you got to know? I am a stranger to 6 billion people on the planet, but that does not make me strange. And a large percentage of violent crimes are perpetrated by relatives or acquaintances.

I have been on the Internet non-stop since 1998, and I always talked to everyone who approached me. An online friend from University of Oulu, Finland came with his 11 yr. old son and stayed at my apartment for a few days to save on hotel costs. I went to Tampa, FL once and had dinner with 3 yahoo chat acquaintances. An AOL friend from Great Britain spent the day with me while visiting NY. And I am guessing that about 50,000 people over the past 10 years have read my blogs on philosophy, religion, poetry, etc. I have never regretted giving everyone a chance.

What would Jesus have done? The Samaritan women at the well, the adulteress, about to be stoned, Zaccheus the tax collector, the Ethiopian eunuch in his chariot reading Isaiah, Apostles Andrew and Nathaniel…. they were ALL TOTAL STRANGERS! America amazes me, because we pay such lip service to Christianity and demand that our presidential candidates take Jesus as their personal savior, but what do we choose to do in daily life? Don’t get me wrong. I am Hindu and Buddhist in my personal beliefs. Gandhi rejected Christianity as his personal religion but the beatitudes of the sermon on the mount were his favorite. Kurt Vonnegut wryly observed that Americans clamor to erect monuments to Moses’ ten commandments, but no one thinks to have a plaque for the Jesus’s Beatitudes.

The Torah and Talmud say to welcome the stranger so don’t any of you weasel out of this by saying you are Jewish.

Dennis the Menace asked someone “are you a stranger”. The old man replied “No, I’ve lived her all my life.” Dennis said “Good, ’cause my Mom says not to talk to strangers.”

It’s like the Lotto ad says, “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

One of my tutor’s at St. John’s, Mr. Main I think, said in seminar “you can’t have too much money or too much whiskey.” I guess I would add to that sentiment that you can’t have too many friends (though you can have too many enemies). Lincoln said “If I make my enemy into my friend, then have I not destroyed my enemy?”

My practice for years is to pick up a book at random, a book I might not otherwise read, open it and read a page at random, and try to understand something from that page.

People on Facebook and Myspace are like books. I randomly look at what some of the 1000 people on my list are saying, and I am glimpsing into the soul and life and heart of that person. They mention something entirely new to me. I look at something in a way that I have never seen before. I Google and read some. I reflect, react and post. Others randomly read my thoughts.

These activities are very enriching. Even a fool has something to teach a wise man.

Where would philosophy be today if Socrates had said to The Eleatic Stranger, “Oh, sorry, I can’t talk to you ’cause you’re a stranger.”

Somewhere in the Talmud it is observed that “when a great king stamps out coins with his image on them, each coin is the same, but when G-d creates people in His image, each and every one is different.” Now, YOU are a stranger to all the people who might possibly add YOU. Do you feel they should FEAR you?

No, of course not. And you know that you are totally unique. There has NEVER been another person just like YOU, and there never shall be. And you have much to offer others.

Aristotle said, “A friend is another I.” Well, consider the reflexivity of this I-Thou relationship. As we esteem others, so, in a labyrinthine fashion, we come to esteem ourselves.

There is a saying in India, “When a saint meets a sinner, all he sees is saintliness, but when a sinner meets a saint, all he sees is sin.”

Also, “when a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are pockets.”

Erotic Images

An erotic image is simply an illusion, a gestalt of countless
colored pixels upon our senses. The individual pixels have reality and existence. The woman in the image has no real existence. And yet we are aroused by the woman and are not conscious of the individual pixels. We can respond to this non-existent image because it is an outer reflection of something which is actually within us and which resonates with that inner woman just as the two arms of a tuning fork resonate and produce tone.

Should some, but not all of the pixels fade, yet the image of the woman persists. Cells in our body, and possibly even our brain, are dying, and yet our individuality and continuity of memory persist. Lockes and Jeffersons and Lincolns die, yet constitutional democracy persists. Democracy, a gestalt and illusion of countless pixels of
generations of anonymous humanity which arouses in us noble feelings of justice and inalienable human rights, persists. Stars explode in supernova, yet the starry night sky which fills Kant with wonder and fills Van Gogh’s canvas with intoxicating imagery, persists. And
should this very planet of ours die and grow cold, extinct, is there not something which yet persists, somewhere, elsewhere in the ever-collapsing kaleidoscopic telescope of being and reality?

Democracy is our erotic woman, our Statue of Liberty in provocative pose, a gestalt formed by the myriad pixels of suffering throngs of humanity which come and go like mist and spray as waves crash upon the rocky coast. And our libertine lady, provocatively posed, this non-existent idea of Justice and Truth, is like Dante’s Beatrice, enticing us up a ladder of Divine Ascent, like Socrates’ school mistress Diotema and her teaching on the ladder of love in Plato’s “Symposium”.