I'm posting this entry 3 hours early, because I have to make sure and get enough sleep for tomorrow's journey. I just got back from pesh's house, where I helped him put on a new alternator belt. By 'help,' I mean 'slipped the belt off and on a wheel' and 'handed him wrenches.' my hands were already covered with cadmium yellow oils from working on my painting, and to this adornment was added the characterstic black smudges of automobile grease and dirt. I looked at my hand, and thought to myself 'now this is the perfect hand.' my hand, covered in black and yellow, represented to me the archetype of the artisan -- automotive tinkering and oil painting. Engineering and art. Animus and anima. So, without further ado, here is my left hand in its realm-of-ideas state.
I'll be gone, in michigan, until next Tuesday evening. I can be reached by email (barnacle at beevomit dot org).
There are two possible meanings of the word 'god': 1. The sum of all reality, the cosmos, all that is, the one true nature of reality. 2. A sentient, extremely powerful entity who is somehow involved in the lives of humankind, or at least who created the 'universe,' or at the very least who somehow exists apart from everything else. To keep things straight, let's abandon the word 'god' altogether, call #1 'o.t.n.r.' (the one true nature of reality) and #2 'y.l.b' (yahweh-like being). One could pronounce them something like 'oatner' and 'ilb.'
Might there be an ylb? I don't know. I don't think there is, and it's not intuitively obvious to me that here is, but it's certainly possible. This ylb would not be an omniscient, omnipotent being (these are meaningless terms), but simply a very powerful being who's existence we can't comprehend, and who can barely comprehend ours -- we'd be like quarks to it. Perhaps it vaguely 'knows' something about us ('us' being living chunks of mobile protoplasm -- the ylb is uninterested in discerning a pot-bellied pig from a human), and has given us some name. Maybe it even 'created' us. I'm using so many scare quotes because I'm not sure that our tiny linguistic reality can even begin to describe something like this, except in very abstract terms.
To continue the macrocosmic example and demonstrate the difficulty of knowing ylb, allow me to point out that we don't know what quarks 'are.' We only know they exist in some way -- we can't see them, hear them, smell them, etc. Their existence was inferred because it would mathematically explain some properties of measurable matter and energy. The quark-reality is so paradigmatically different from our own that to try and describe it with language is impossible, and even to do so with mathematics is a chore, requiring armies of professors and graduate students.
Perhaps the existence of an ylb needs to be described mathematically, like a quark. Even if we became somehow dimly aware of this being, this entity (or entities, or both -- who knows how ylb's reality works, and if in it the one and the many are different?), this wouldn't mean that we'd found 'god,' in the pan-spiritual, pan-theistic sense -- we won't have found otnr. Ironically, there is far less mystery to otnr (the sum of all reality) than there is to ylb (a macrocosmic thing to whom we're no more than quarks). Discovering ylb would be weird. Discovering otnr is a moot issue; it's already been done.
If we build a macrocosmic model and imagine ourselves peering at both microscopic and macroscopic worlds which share properties, we can infer that the macrocosm is a bi-direction continuum, and that perhaps our 'universe' is the equivalent of a quark in a proton in an atom in a CHON molecule in some creature's toe.
To assume the existence of an ylb is, I think, not entirely unreasonable. What bothers me is the way people describe a powerful entity, unknowable via current technology, as well as the one true nature of reality, with the word 'god.' The ylb, if it exists, is wondering about 'god' too.
Before one talks about 'god,' one has to clarify whether one is referring to all that exists or hebrew science fiction, ca. 2000BCE. Sure, yahweh might have existed. But if it did, then it/them was/is a comparatively very powerful creature from another 'dimension,' planet, galaxy, time, etc. But it isn't 'god,' the way I used to think of and in fact define 'god' ('the sum of all reality' or 'the one true nature of reality'), before I abandoned the term altogether for its lack of descriptive usefulness.
I could call myself a pantheist or I could call myself an atheist.
If there is an ylb, then it has no more control over something as utterly meaningless as 'eternal life' than we humans do. The ylb is part of all reality -- a part of otnr, just like everything else.
I'm certainly not going to worship an ylb (or an otnr, for that matter), nor would a being like that be interested in my worshipping it (physicists don't, I don't think, hopefully in most cases, want quarks to worship them). But I'll keep my eye out, and let you know if I see an ylb flying around somewhere.
Otnr, on the other hand, just is. That's all it can do, and all it can be. Ironically, 'yahweh' (the modern pronunciational representation of the tetragrammaton) translates into 'i am what I am.' Maybe there was something to that ancient hebrew science fiction after all.
West Virginia and mississippi, two of the poorest states in the union, are 'battling high obesity' according to an article in the atlanta journal-constitution. The muck-raking film 'super size me' gives the statistics of mississippi being the fattest state, with west virgina being third.
One might assume that those with less money are less likely to be obese, simply because you can't buy any food if you don't have any money. However, this not the case (at least in america, and perhaps in other western nations as well).
There are a few widely-given explanations for the positive correlation between poverty and obesity in america:
Clearly, this is a problem. Do we care about it, or do we view obesity as a moral failing? Are fat people fat because they are unwilling to eat better, or because they are unable to eat better? Is the relegation of the obese to the lower ranks of social strata a conspiratorial goal of the ruling elite? Does obesity provide an avoidable red flag in hiring situations, club memberships, etc, as well as a way to kill off undesirables? Essentially, is obesity just another way to maintain an underclass?
When one examines the poor more closely, one discovers additional correlations between poverty and other undesirable things: poverty and alcoholism. Poverty and depression. Poverty and obesity. Poverty and lower IQs. Poverty and increased crime. Poverty and AIDS. The list literally goes on and on.
I think we can safely infer from the correlation of many different things to one thing that that one thing is likely to be the cause of those many different things. And the more things we discover that correlate to poverty, the more certain we become that poverty is causal, and not merely correlated.
The answer to the question: 'what is the nature of the correlation between obesity and poverty?' is 'poverty is a cause of obesity.'
So, the next question we need to ask is: what causes poverty? The million dollar question, as they say. I will presume to speculate.
There's just one cause of poverty: sociocultural need. A civilized society needs some of its members to be underdogs in order to maintain its hierarchical structure and function smoothly in the way to which it's accustomed, and in a capitalist society, underdog status is going to be defined by comparative lack of wealth. Qualities to analyze on a continuum in order to designate the underdogs have classically been race, gender, sexual orientation, mental health, nationality, height, hair color (really!), level of education, intelligence, motivation, and of course body size/weight (illustrating the often-circular process). These can all be grouped under the term 'conformity' -- s/he who does not conform to some societal standard is targeted for assignment of underdog status.
Is there ever a place for conformity? I think so, but more often than not it's used as a tool for social control. I've often wondered about the nature of conformity and the nature of affectation, and if avoiding one necessarily means embracing the other. If one puts an active effort into 'being different than everyone else,' is this a bad thing? It's often looked at that way. If one is 'naturally' different than many others in one's own cultural group, then this is all right. However, the minute one makes a conscious (or even subconscious) effort to be 'different,' the respect given to a so-called natural nonconformist is stripped away. Wanting to be different is universally seen as a bad thing, and I think this has a lot do do with capitalism, which relies heavily on conformity in order for it to function. I won't go into depth on this, largely because I've blogged about it before and at length, but I'll illustrate with a wonderfully simple example: it's easier to sell 1,000 widgets to 1,000 people whom you know all like the same widget.
So, I'm too fat because I'm poor (simple carbs are the cheapest foods: pasta, rice, and potatoes -- animal proteins and fresh vegetables are very expensive). I'm poor because society has placed me in the underdog category (using my mental illness, obesity, and overall lack of conformity as indicators that they may sefely do so). Society has made this placement because it has to as a condition of its capitalism. So, I blame capitalism for my obesity.
Conformity notwithstanding, the primary way a capitalist society assigns underdog status is by making wealth available only to those who are willing/able to fight for it. In a capitalist society, some people are going to get left behind because they don't have the willingness/ability to survive and prosper. Is this a compassionate society?
I clearly don't belong in the united states.
I think I'm a socialist, folks. I have some libertarian tendencies as well, but I don't want to call myself a libertarian-socialist because that's too closely associated with anarchism, and I think government is an inevitability of human nature -- a necessary evil. Basically, I need to invent a new term for what I am. A libertarian-socialist-minarchist, maybe? The problem is, how does one enforce socialism with a small government? Does socialism need to be 'enforced'? Does capitalism need to be 'enforced'? Should we follow our perceptions of human nature? Will a group of people always politically evolve along the lines of human nature, whatever that might be? That would make an interesting computer model: put 200 people on a desert island and see what develops. _the lord of the flies_ was a very political book.
This is why it's impossible for me to answer when someone asks me where I stand politically: it's just too complicated, and there are too many unanswered questions. I'm often not sure that I care enough about society to care how it's ruled. I'm not even sure I fundamentally understand the existence of anything other than myself, which is probably a bad statement to make on a presidential campaign, so to speak. In essence, I'm either beyond politics, or politics are beyond me. I'm just in a different place, most of the time. But I can theorize without personal motives on what would be the best state for the most people, lending my own subjectivity to 'best,' of course.
Is a compromise between every person possible? Is it possible to 'average' the natures of every person in a geographical area, and assign a state to that area that best conforms to that average? Might there be racial differences in state-preference? Haha. I guess the question is: what would be the best state for me? And, would that state be the best state for everyone else too, using some kind of libertarian notion of 'what is good for the individual is good for the society?' what if socialism is what's good for me, because I can't keep up with the few people who gobble up all of the resources? And then, by libertarian logic, is socialism implied to be what's best for society? I think I've sufficiently illustrated the impossibility of pinning down political thought. But for the time being, I'm a socialist-libertarian-minarchist, until that's conclusively proven not to work.
Oh yeah, and I'm too fat.
Reading books is overrated. Prose is essentially no more than poetry -- all of these superfluous words surrounding and trying to encapsulate a few concise points. These points, or central ideas, can easily be made into summaries, or to use a broader umbrella term, fall under later analysis by the culture at large.
After this cultural analysis has taken place on a wide enough scale, one can pick up bits of the idea in question from the internet, magazines, conversations, television, professors, other books, etc, which get molded along with one's own interpretations to form one's own idea of the idea, so to speak.
After this cultural osmosis, one actually ends up with a better understanding of the idea, which has evolved over time with many different sources of input, than one would by simply reading the 'original' idea in a book cover-to-cover, tangled with poetic language and ornamentation.
A point can be communicated to one's self so much more easily in one's own mind and by one's own mind than with someone else's language. Language is inherently a cumbersome tool for expressing ideas. The important thing isn't the prose itself, but the idea in the prose, which may not even correspond to the author's 'original' idea, since language is such an inherently imprecise tool. However, once culture has gotten a hold of an idea, that idea is built upon and made more cogent, until that idea is preserved in the cultural memory in a way not unlike oral tradition.
Ultimately, an author's idea will become the reader's idea as the reader formulates his own understanding of it. This is the generative creative process of understanding ideas -- when you truly understand something, that idea is then your own.
This is why an 'original idea' is an impossibility -- because everything creative has some source material. A lifetime of experience goes into every creative effort, and these experiences can be thought of as quanta of input, a way of building something new from blocks; in this sense, creativity is algorithmic. Sometimes one idea, or one piece of output, is clearly more creative, more orignal, than another one. For instance, someone who reads one article and then paraphrases has made something less creative than someone who has read three articles on different topics and related ideas in each article to a 'new' idea. The recombinance of elements is a necessary part of the creative process. So, the question 'where do you get your ideas?' may be very difficult, even impossible, to answer, but it is always a valid question.
This is something I put together today. It took me much longer than it should have, because I'm so inexperienced with flash.
Click here to download the flash movie in a new window (it's about 150K).
Apologies go to stanley kuberick because the dialog, of course, is 'borrowed' from his movie, 'full metal jacket.' I didn't think this project was involved enough to make it onto my main site (not to mention that the soundtrack isn't original, which makes me uncomfortable in assigning it seriousness), but it's certainly enough for my blog. That's the nice thing about a blog -- one can post any little thing, regardless of how much of a toss-away it might be.
As far as high-minded conceptual BS goes, this short details and symbolizes the roles of and relationship between coercive authority and the ones who carry out the orders, together as instruments for state-sponsored terrorism and violence. Clearly, culpability lies both with the order-giver and the order-follower.