Category: Lessons Learned
Being Right Everyday Is Boring. Today, I’ll Lie. For Fun.
In our Post-Christendom/Pre-Muslim country, one of the grievances that has come to my ears, and at times come from my mouth, incessantly throughout my life has been that of false prophets’ unceasing role in the Faith. Christian belief seems to contain no stopping power when it comes to men and women seeking the available influence that accompanies predicting the future. This election cycle has proved no different.
Earnest Christians have loved talking about how some prominent-over-there (I’m sure) Africa-continent-based Prophet predicted Trump would win in 2016 even before Trump announced his entry into the contest. These believers do this, of course, with the hope of keeping the Bible alive. (“If prophecy still happens, then it surely happened in the past,” being their real claim.)
And only if you have stopped your ears and avoided all churches for the past two years could you have avoided hearing that some similarly stationed Prophet (that was right about something else recently) had pegged Trump as victorious this go-around.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, writer of the infamous-to-some-in-the-West Essays, wrote of one ancient tribes’ prophets, “…but let him to’t; for if he fail in his divination, and anything happen otherwise than he has foretold, he is cut into a thousand pieces, if he be caught, and condemned for a false prophet: for that reason, if any of them has been mistaken, he is no more heard of.”
Who among us really recoils at that treatment of false prophets?
And yet the punishment, however fitting, does nothing to allay the problem. The problem being: being right everyday is boring.
I’ll sign off today with this lie. For fun.
I feel the same today as I did yesterday.
Resist Every Urge
I love writing at this moment. Love it! Why? Because all you ground-based beings are stuck in uncertainty. My wings release me from such trouble. And while at other times your permanent connection to the earth gives you advantages, at this moment, “advantage pilot”. At this moment writing feels like flying.
So Trump lost. Whoopdie doo. It was all hype anyhow, like I said. The important thing, right now, is to resist every urge to keep the hype going. There was no coup. There was no inordinate amount of voter fraud. There wasn’t. In place of those things there was a presidential election in the United States of America in November of 2020. And lifetime politician Joe Biden won.
Resist every urge, I say. Do not feed the hype. The sky is not falling. There is no silver lining, no matter how many minorities voted their conscience instead of their skin color. Resist every urge. I say again, there is no silver lining anywhere. But it’s not because there is no hope. It’s because there is no dark cloud. That’s the truth. You’re just depressed. Admit it. Then cheer up.
How? Escape. I’m talking exercise your capacity for fantasy. Read romance novels. Watch romance movies. I’m still working through Kushiel’s Dart and every one of the 594 pages so far has improved my mood. Try not to smile challenge: The heroine/temple-prostitute/servant-extraordinaire explains, “While I learned how to kneel uncomplaining for hours at a time and the proper angle of approach for serving sweets after a meal, Ysandre was learning how greed and jealousy corrupt the human soul.” Saucy.
And last night we watched Romancing the Stone. “I’ve never been anybody’s best time,” Douglas replies, crushing it. “This is Joan Wilder, who writes the books I read to you on Saturdays!” the drug-lord clarifies.
Do not feed the hype. Resist every urge.
I Feel Like Biden Won
I’m rushing to push out this short post today because I want to keep up my status as one who has his finger directly on the pulse.
Firstly, I was right. It was all hype.
Secondly, I feel like Biden won.
Thirdly, I can’t find anyone in the mainstream media (or the replacement media even) who has said this yet. And this is weird. I mean, of course we don’t know the final outcome with certainty yet (that’s why I said “feel”). But is there really that much doubt? “O ye of little faith.”
More importantly, however, than sharing with you who I feel won, I wanted to say that, I don’t know about you, but I feel great. Why? Because I was right. It was all hype.
It’s All Hype. I’m Stupid. You’re Stupid
No commentator gets it. None of them do. So I’m compelled to get back to it. Last post, I think, before the election.
The pundits are trying. They even seem to be pulling out all the stops, as it were. (One Trump defender actually discussed Trump’s oft-neglected athletic stamina when advocating for him.) But they’re wrong. None of them really possess the focus and clarity that this moment requires. Lucky for you, I do.
Here’s the truth: It’s all hype. I’m stupid. You’re stupid.
How do I defend my assertion? Firstly, by clarifying that I don’t mean ignorant. I mean stupid. Ignorance is bliss. We are not living in bliss. We are living stupidly. We know better and are screwing it up.
Secondly, I defend my assertion by recalling to mind the joke from Ghostbusters that was told when the goddess Gozer appeared and asked one of them, “Are you a god?” Akroyd’s character answered, “No,” and then they all got hurt. At this point, the black ghostbuster rebuked Akroyd, “Ray! When someone asks you if you’re a god, you say YES!”
That joke works because the information seeker, Gozer, at that moment in the parlay, had admitted a weakness: she couldn’t discern deities from mortals. And even the black guy knew that mere mortals would be stupid to give up their unexpected advantage.
Well, I say that this scene has been playing out among us since March. We were gods—even the blacks, for all their whining. Then we found ourselves in new territory—PANDEMIC!! At this point, we made our misstep. We asked Fauci and other mortals if they were a god. Unluckily for us, and (I fervently pray) damningly for them, upon hearing verbal confirmation that we were morons, they all were, unlike us, savvy enough to say, “Yes. Yes I am.”
To be clear, we were Gozer. We were the gods. And, apparently, I’m the only one on the planet who can put this into writing. That fact alone demonstrates how stupid we are.
Finally, I want to go on record as saying the following. This is not the most important election of whatever select time period. It’s not. It’s not even pivotal. The fact that we let people talk like that is further evidence that we’re stupid. This election changes nothing. That’s the truth. And I don’t mean that in some sort of depresso way. I mean it as dryly as possible. As in, “What do you think, Pete?” “To be frank? It’s all hype.”
People who we don’t know—stranger danger 101–have been duping us into believing they are smarter than us, more important than us, more powerful than us, more relevant than us, and that they have more insight into the nature of life on earth than us for nearly all time. Some of us have read the words of men who lived in moments in time that weren’t like this. Seems like it was fun. But the majority of human history has been a record of stupidity—gods giving up their power.
Wednesday will see the rising sun. So will Thursday and Friday and the rest of time. It’s all hype. I’m stupid. You’re stupid.
Next Term, Trump Should Go Full Pre-Science
I’ve been reading entries from Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. The entry on Alexander the Great will make you regret having read any other printed words first. So very interesting.
One aspect that makes it especially intriguing is how Plutarch, with the stated aim of capturing what moved these giants of history, references over and over again how dreams, bird signs, and other non-duplicatable, often mystical, pre-scientific experiences (and their interpretations) drove Alexander.
Whether to fight the battle today or tomorrow, Plutarch tells us, Alexander might decide based on a flock of birds having appeared. If Alexander found himself in a stretch of mourning after he killed someone in a fit of violent passion, he might have allowed his priestly oracles to interpret a dream and the interpretation was then used to stir him back to life.
This is on my mind today because I had a bizarre dream early this morning. Quick backstory: I have a checkride coming up. If the weather held, it would’ve been today. (Weather didn’t hold.) In any case, last night I went to bed around eleven. I awoke at four to use the restroom. I couldn’t fall back asleep.
Next thing I know, I was in some kind of building—like a cabin in a dense forrest or jungle—and my wife, stepson, and baby daughter were also around in the dreamscape. I can’t remember the beginning of the dream, but the drama grew when I saw a vividly green—off-white underbelly—and huge lizard (think something between Komodo dragon and the thing Obi Wan rides in Episode III). Like all dreams the exact sequence and details are hazy, but I know for certain that I was afraid of it and wanted to protect my family from it. It wasn’t on the attack, but I knew that it—by nature—would try to bite anything that got close enough for it to grab hold of.
My wife wasn’t as afraid as I was, and actually was, herself, in the process of removing two smaller lizards that had climbed onto her, as if it was no big thing.
The rest of the dream was basically of the theme that I was very worried and fearful of the big lizard, while nobody else’s demeanor matched my concern. It was uncomfortable, but in the end I awoke.
My interpretation? In my rookie days of contemplating the meaning of my dreams, I would’ve overlooked the first and major point of this dream, being, despite the general theme of fear, I was not eaten or fatally attacked. This leads me to acknowledge that the dream means I have nothing to fear. I will prevail.
Secondly, the fact that my wife was there and almost carelessly removing small lizards—while I was fearing the big one—means that I had something to do with the size of the lizard after me, means that I didn’t handle business when the lizard was small. This, then, I interpret to mean that I am the cause of the fear. I let my anxiety (likely over the pending checkride) grow disproportionately. How to fix that? Daily preparation. Fight small, winnable battles as they come rather than feeding the beast the fruits of procrastination.
Now let me ask you, dear reader, a question. Hasn’t this little blog post made me more likable? Isn’t it more relatable? President Trump is so anti-authority as it stands, I can’t see why this type of thing wouldn’t help him achieve the immortality that he seems to desire. I’m serious. None of us have a real understanding of just exactly what makes him wake up in the morning. And even if we believe it’s “love of America”, that still doesn’t really tell us much. But through dreams and bird signs etc, and how he responds, we’d be sure to see a fuller picture—maybe even one we like.
Get Up! Move Faster!
“I don’t think you’re accurately accounting for the level of vanity involved in the people who translate ancient (or for that matter contemporary) texts.”
That’s what I should have said. Instead, I indulged myself in a fruitless, ground-losing defense of the character of translators. I think my big claim was, “Trust me. These people get it right!” Fizzle.
Why was I talking about translating ancient texts? Because I was talking about the unparalleled world of reading that opens to a human that learns one language—English—as being superior to the notion of achieving some sort of highly inefficient, multi-cultural divinity because of speaking two or more languages.
My partner in the conversation was, naturally, repulsed by this placement of English on a pedestal. Her devotion to sounding welcoming of all peoples and tongues was so blinding that she couldn’t even see that it’s English that gives us the access to all peoples and tongues (or at least those who have had anything to say that’s worth repeating). There’s no Arabic translation of Shakespeare spreading through the Middle East.
Oh well. Now I know. Live and learn.
Rhetorical tip o’ the day: Go with what keeps the conversation interesting and plays into putting the moron on the defense of whoever I’m trying to defend.
“You can’t blame Trump supporters for their zeal. They were beaten into stupors by white supremacists as children. A child can’t recover from that.”
“Well, you know, pro-lifers haven’t really been exposed to other ideas and cultures. Especially the ones claiming female gender. They’re basically enslaved to their holy book, incapable of escape. Pro-life is their hijab.”
“Many of the men supporting gun ownership are actually just compensating for their sterility, which they contracted due to PTSD, either from A. essentially being drafted—due to their poverty—to fight America’s illegal wars, or from B. their having witnessed gruesome animal torture on hunting trips with local hate groups at a young age.”
Yep. Those would nicely tee up even the nimblest leftist rhetorician for slaughter.
Can’t trust translators. Puuh. What an empty statement.
Unlived, Unlit, and Unstoppable
In the future, the historians will earn their daily bread by revealing what is common knowledge to those of us who have endured to this point in America’s second civil war. That is, the historians will take up—singularly—as the topic of their magnum opuses the fact that the war (itself not an immoral or criminal part of life on earth) began with wanton, unchecked criminality.
Once it became clear that the police were not going to behave according to their sworn oaths, Americans in whose veins pumped blood which was hot with rage did not line up according to some contemporary “Blue and Grey” as the Proud Boys and Antifa gangs had hoped.
In the beginning there wasn’t strategy; there weren’t plans. In the place of those things, and others, which always took much time to materialize (and only ever did at the sounding of a long suppressed cry for leadership) the baser instincts of society were unleashed. This meant, naturally, that what we now call the “war” first began as all violent crime begins—passionately. And for any crime to receive this noble description, it can only relate one shameful fact: the violence occurred among family and friends.
People, generally men, who had long felt wronged and unheard by the “man” saw an opportunity to take matters into their own hands. One can almost empathize with these previously caged animals. “Fuck it,” they said. “If there’s no chance of punishment this side of the dirt, I’ll take my chances with whatever comes on the other side.” God Will Judge became the mantra.
Who among us hasn’t heard stories of the bloody red, depressingly black, and intensely personal mayhem that occurred in the year before formal armies were announced and maps redrawn? Tell me I’m wrong. We felt comfortable among strangers—enough even to dull our senses with the poison of the month. But no one would have more than one beer with family for fear of missing the cues proffered that home-cooked meals with just arrived, uninvited distant relatives would end in bloodshed. To live in fear of your own kin? That’s a crime against heaven. And heaven has answered, surely.
Culturally speaking, this played out across the country differently. The blacks, hispanics, Chinese, mooslums, and others—by virtue of living so communally as it was—were on edge all the time (which was not too different from their prior felt experience). The whites? Well, we lived out another chapter of the story. The interstates were filled with murderous travelers. To keep up with the new reality, we put a new entry into the Merriam-Webster app entry of “road rage”. And when people stopped for what would have become road rage crimes in the recent past, this time they didn’t fight or shoot each other. Rather, they shared the stories which, like their vehicles, carried them forward by the latent power of unexploded remains of ancient demons. But most of the time no one stopped. Tailgating still caused anger, but no one stopped driving. They allowed the reflection of the bumper close behind to crystallize their vision of the future close ahead.
Here’s the point. Here’s the part that no historian will ever think to write about or investigate because a negative just can’t be proven—so they say. But I don’t need logic to tell you what I saw. The dead, the victims of these crimes of passion? They never saw it coming.
This Time I Resolve Why There Are No More Great Ideas (And This Also Explains Why Good Ideas Didn’t Ever Really Come Out Of Anywhere But The West)
I’ve had my “Great Books of the Western World” set for over two years now. Not including the Synopticons, books 2 & 3, I am on book 5, I think. Aeschylus. I think. Anyhow, the thing that has been unresolved until now is how no one else cares about these amazing books and ideas.
Finally, today, it hit me. To put it avant-garde, the reason no one cares about the “great books/ideas” is because there are too many Indians to kill this time around. Put inversely, the reason no one cares about the “great books/ideas” is because there is no vast, unexplored, unconquered, and ungoverned terra firma to be again treated like New Eden. After all, it’s “you’ve been kicked out of the Garden”, not, “You’ve been kicked out of wherever you settled after being kicked out of the Garden.”
We don’t seem to be able to think more than one step ahead.
Put another way, great ideas and great books—so says the zeitgeist—have become meaningless. We ask, “What’s the point? Where could we put them into practice and try to build up a utopia for a third time?”
“Is anyone really going to redraw European boundaries? Will untamed regions of Africa and South America and Siberia and Northern Canada really find themselves useful to man?”
“Where is the Neo New World? Or the Ultimate Final Frontier?”
“Speaking of, will it be ‘New USA’ once we’re living somewhere off earth? Or just ‘USA’?”
My step-son just finished reading about Columbus, from an author who adored Columbus—rightly so—and on no follow-on ACT/SAT-prep style reading comprehension test is Columbus:Spain::Musk:USA, no matter how many dictionaries or books I let him use.
Changing generations, my good, in fact, great friend is working on his History PhD, and in so doing writes on mountaineering and exploration. I used to think he was writing the history of mountaineering and exploration. Now I see that he is writing that mountaineering and exploration are actions and ideas which can only be found in history—like the word “homespun”. The crazy part of this aspect of my realization is that many people and cultures never climbed mountains for pleasure or explored uncharted vistas in the first place. It seems that nature is not equitable when dishing out bravery. We might say that bravery is actually unnatural. Better to hide, run, and go hungry.
In the end, despite the depressing nature of the above, I am terribly excited to have resolved this.
Stay tuned for a post about how I resolve the follow-up quandary, which is deciding how to let fellow earthlings know that they are not very nice neighbors without killing the men, raping the women, and enslaving the children. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.
Let’s Be Honest
Can we be honest with each other, you and me? Let’s be honest. This whole “Say Her Name” challenge chant that accompanies the now nightly tide of stupidity is an indefensible, ignorant, and superstitious holdover from Old Testament days and Old Testament locations.
I get it. The “whites” who are marching alongside the “blacks” are trying to be empathetic and sympathetic (and many other multi-syllabic words which these self-same “blacks” still aren’t certain as to whether they mean friend or foe). And in their skin-deep efforts, the “whites” are willing to go with the flow. In the meantime, the “whites”, who also like to wrap the utterance of “RBG” in a knowing look (Do you honestly believe you knew her? I know that you haven’t read one, not one, of her opinions. Stop the nonsense.)—as I was saying—the “whites” have tragically left their thinking caps at home when they pack their camelbacks for the day trip downtown. But if they knew what the “blacks” chanting “Say Her Name!” really meant to accomplish—some kind of wishful, but literal, deification of the dead #BreeWay—I have to believe that these “whites” would pack it up and head home.
Despite the “blacks’” most passionate and honest desire to take us back to the days when crossing the Jordan meant something, since the Resurrection, the utterance of only one name actually requires decision, actually might have consequence, and that name, as you know, is Jesus. And even here most people, Christians included, don’t really believe the good Lord is going to hold their silence against them at the Pearly Gates.
Anecdotally, I’m told that in Ethiopia if a person exclaims, “Jesus!” after dropping a dish, stubbing their toe, or hearing a loud noise, then a non-believer will often playfully retort, “Are you Pente?” They, of course, mean “of the pentecostal denomination” which is renowned for placing great value on all things uttered. I mention that here because that should get you close to understanding what the “blacks” you’re marching alongside, and posting yard signs in support of, really mean.
On the whole, in this superficially diverse movement, the “blacks” are foolish for thinking this is finally “their” moment—foolish especially for believing the “whites” who literally have nothing better to do with their time really care. And the “whites” are foolish for dropping the great legacy of skepticism and regressing to the point of ancestor worship. To be clear: Civilized man doesn’t do ancestor worship anymore. There is power in the name of Jesus (or there might be), but that’s it. No amount of chanting any other audible elixir will ever change that. So let’s be honest. You know this. Or you used to. Please remember it.
Review of Bob Woodward and Friends’ Forgettable Effort
I don’t remember who taught me to do this, maybe it’s just the way my mind works. But if I hear that, for example, some otherwise successful and prepared leader lost a battle because he underestimated his enemy, I try to live under the mindset of the other extreme. In this case, I live always overestimate my enemy. (Enemy is a bit harsh here, but it’s quick.)
What’s on my mind, today, is that the pundits won’t stop. It’s been four years of Trump and they won’t stop. They somehow believe that today is the day I’ll rise up with them in indignation that Trump lied. (“Up-played.” It’s brilliant.) But until recently I couldn’t answer the question, “Why do the pundits press on? What drives them?”
It cannot be love of country. They cannot be driven by their love of the USA because that’s what drives me. That’s what drives Trump. If I felt they loved America, then I wouldn’t care what they said, anymore than I care what Trump says. But I do care about what they say, rather I do struggle to understand how and why they continue to point out the obvious as if it isn’t obvious. And so something else must be driving them.
At first, I wanted to treat the pundits like children. Like children, I thought, the pundits just didn’t like the man. But then I remembered that underestimating my opponent can lead to disaster, so I have given up that line of thinking.
What, then, would the wisest, most educated and well-read humans who ever walked the earth (here’s the intentional overestimate) be so ate up with that they’d persevere day in and day out against Trump? That became my question.
The answer: Vanity.
If I was wise, well-read (let’s not forget camera ready and funny), and lived in the United States of America right now, I’d hate that no one noticed me. I’d be super pissed that all my brainpower was not translating to real power. Sure, I may live in opulent comfort, but I would know that if I had been alive only a few generations ago, then I would have found that my abilities would have placed real power within my grasp. I’m talking Trump-like power. I would know that I could have very likely been KING OF THE WORLD!! (Flat or not.)
But, as it stands, we all live today. Right now. And no one, not-a-me, and not-a-you, (and not the pundits—from either side) are going to live on in history. President Donald J. Trump will, though. He, in all his buffoonery and apparent lies and orange hair and every other flaw the wise and well-read (perhaps even physically fit) pundits point out unrelentingly, will live on.
Do I care that Trump lives on and I do not? Nope. But if I was as wise and well-read as my (overestimated) opponents must be, then I have to think I’d resent that despite all my education and training and ambitions, that I, daily, was proving to be impotent and forgettable.
This perspective, achieved by overestimating my opponent, allows little ol’ me to admit that this would be a hard truth to face. I could even admit that this hard truth might just drive me into an incessant, blind rage.
Captain’s Log 