I was considered odd when I was a little kid. I looked odd, too, since I had a huge lightbulb-shaped head, all full of Poindexter brains, that was always busy busy busy plotting, scheming and inventing.
My parents, intuitively understanding my overreved brains might overheat, made me wear a buzzcut, so my head would be aircooled, much like their '67 VW Bug.
You should have seen what I looked like when that hair grew out. I had Wild Jungle Hair, just like Boy in the old Tarzan films. My mother used to strop it down with a big glob of Dippity-Do and a brush.
Here's an example of my scheming: when I was five a neighbor asked me what I was doing with a car muffler. Making a robot, I told him. And the frog? he wanted to know. Well, obviously, robots need brains. Now, as to how I was going to hook the frog up to the robot I had no idea. But I assumed that I would, somehow, figure it out.
That robot never got anywhere, since the frog – whom I had named Max – went to Frog Heaven after three days. I honestly thought I was giving him the luxury treatment. I didn't realize a frog couldn't live in an empty doughnut box, even if it was full of grass for him to eat, and a bottlecap full of water for him to drink. I felt bad for a few days after I unwittingly committed Involuntary Frogicide.
Then there was the episode of the propane torch and the hot-water heater. The same neighbor wanted to know why a six-year-old boy was using his dad's propane torch on an old hot-water heater my dad had put in the trash. Submarines need hatches, I told him. Oh, he responded.
I had no idea how I was supposed to get my submarine to the lake. I suppose I figured I could talk my father into putting it into the back of his pick-up truck.
None of those plans came close to working. The closest was when I was about eight, when I realized if I hooked up 20 or so C batteries to a belt, I could use them to shock the neighborhood thugs, all of whom were jealous of my brainpower, and therefore chased me around attempting to beat me up.
I believe that plan would have worked, except for the fact that when I asked my dad to buy me 20 batteries, he asked why, and I answered, "Oh, nothing." The look on his face told me the jig was up.
When I was about 12, I wondered if it would be possible to invent what I called Instant Knuckles. It would be an aerosol can, like Raid, with about 2,000 pounds of pressure in it. When the button was pressed, something like Silly String would shoot out, turn into a fist, and BAP BAP BAP whomever I had pointed the nozzle at. If the can could have contained 20 or so shots of Instant Knuckles, I could have walked unmolested anywhere.
My plans continued to fail even into my 20s. My seven-year-old nephew and I once built a model rocket that was taller than he was. I put five engines into it. When we hit the ignition, the rocket didn't move, but the engines exploded through the top. Then the rocket fell over on its side. For all I know, the engines are orbiting the earth, or maybe are on the moon. We never found them.
When I got to be in my 30s, I realized what I wanted to invent most of all were two things: a can of Knucklehead-Be-Gone, to be followed by a shot of Brains-in-a-Can.
The following explains why.
SMART JAPANESE: You know, I don't think it's such a good idea for us to invade China so we can have an empire, and it's probably even worse of an idea to attack the United States, which has twice our population and all kinds of natural resources.
DUMB JAPANESE: You're a coward and a traitor! You support our enemies! All patriots must stand united behind our government and our soldiers! And if you don't like it, leave the country!
KNUCKLEHEAD-BE-GONE: Pssst.
DUMB JAPANESE: Hey, you know, maybe you have a point!
BRAINS-IN-A-CAN: Pssst.
DUMB JAPANESE (NOW SMART): By God, you're right!
Now, let's move to Germany.
SMART GERMAN: You know, maybe this Hitler is an idiot and we shouldn't listen to his warmongering talk. He's going to get all of us into a bunch of trouble.
DUMB GERMAN: You're a coward and a traitor! You support our enemies! All patriots must stand united behind our government and our soldiers! And if you don't like it, leave the country!
KNUCKLEHEAD-BE-GONE: Pssst.
DUMB GERMAN: Hey, you know, maybe you have a point!
BRAINS-IN-A-CAN: Pssst.
DUMB GERMAN (NOW SMART): By God, you're right!
Now let's move to modern-day America.
SMART AMERICAN: You know, I don't think it's such a good idea to invade foreign countries that haven't invaded us. It just makes us into an empire, gets our soldiers killed, wastes billions of dollars, and makes possibly permanent enemies out of those we conquer.
DUMB AMERICAN (AKA NEOCONS AKA RUSH LIMBAUGH AKA SEAN HANNITY AKA DAVID FRUM AKA ALL OF THEM): You're a coward and a traitor! You support our enemies! All patriots must stand united behind our government and our soldiers! And if you don't like it, leave the country!
KNUCKLEHEAD-BE-GONE: Psssst.
DUMB AMERICAN: Hey, you know, maybe you have a point!
BRAINS-IN-A-CAN: Pssst.
DUMB AMERICAN (NOW SMART): By God, you're right!
Unfortunately, I expect this plan to fail just like all the rest of my plans.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Inner Gilligans and Original Sin
Watching reruns of Gilligan's Island was, for me, the final nail in the coffin of my belief in democracy, and the last bit of evidence I needed to believe in Original Sin. I was in my 20s, in college, and while watching it late one night on cable, I thought, "What an awful way to live."
It occurred to me, like a little lightbulb going on over my head, that at times I almost hated Gilligan, who, like Homer Simpson, was one catastrophic screw-up, and decided that in real life the Skipper, who had a fist the size of a softball, would have hit Gilligan with more than his hat.
I wondered, who could the castaways elect who could possibly be a decent ruler? No one. Why. Because they were all most decidedly imperfect. Since the island was a microcosm of the world, the same rules that applied there applied to everyone else. No one is good enough to rule everyone.
There is an amusing theory, which I first ran across on the Web, that each of the castaways represents one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The Professor is Pride, Mary Ann is Envy, Mr. Howell is Greed, Mrs. Howell is Sloth, Ginger is Lust, and the Skipper is Anger and Gluttony. Since Gilligan doesn't fit any of the sins, some have facetiously suggested he's Satan, since he dresses in red and is the one responsible for keeping the castaways in the Hell that is the island.
I don't believe the creators of the program purposely meant the castaways to represent the sins. I suspect they just intuitively understood what the characters should be like.
Since all of us have at least a bit of the Seven Deadly Sins inherent in us, each of us has an Inner Professor, an Inner Mr. and Mrs. Howell, an Inner Ginger...all of us are flawed, and therefore none of us are fit to rule everyone else. Goodness –- you can make the argument that Gilligan's Island is a Christian program! Who woulda thunk it?
The term often used to describe our Inner Idiots is "archetype," which can be described as a personality pattern than expresses itself in different ways. An expression of the archetype of Satan, for example, is Shakespeare's Richard III (the movie, with Ian McKellen, is a gleefully wicked riot of diabolical fun). An easier way to understand "archetype" is to consider it a "little self" that we have in us.
All of us have, for examples, a Gilligan self, and a -– blech –- Eddie Haskell self. We have Barney Fife selves, and Tooter Turtle selves. All of us are cursed with the Original Sin of Gilliganitis – we're always going to mess it up.
Relating archetypes – our "little selves" – to each other can be great fun. Eddie Haskell was a hypocrite –- he was a suck-up to those who could hurt him, and was a bully to those weaker than he was. He's actually the archetype of many politicians. What archetype could Eddie turn into? The aforementioned Richard III, a consummate politician who postured as a decent man to those whom he wished to impress, and was a monster to those he wished to harm.
People sometimes talk to me about archetypes of the "Earth Mother" and the "Wolf Woman." My eyes glaze over. No one understands what they're talking about, anyway. But everyone understands Gilligan and the Skipper. They're our modern myths, and our modern archetypes.
The snooty may claim Gilligan's Island is not "art," or if it is, it's pop art. That's fine with me. Shakespeare's plays were not originally meant to be read. They were meant to be performed, for the masses. They were the movies of his time, the pop art. Today, he is considered the epitome of l iterature. (I know, Gilligan's Island is never going to be considered as good as Shakespeare; I'm just making the argument that one should never underestimate pop culture. Everyone knows who Eddie Haskell is; hardly anyone knows about Richard III.)
Modern psychology backs up my belief in our "little selves." Object Relations Theory (which you're about as likely to learn in college as you are Austrian Economics) postulates that each of us has an infinity of selves that are activated in our relationships with other people. Except for the arcane advanced jargon, a lot of it is just common sense.
When you raise a child, you become a "father" or "mother" self because of your relationship with the child. Then, later, you develop a "grandmother" or "grandfather" self (a self, that as all parents know, naturally allies itself with the child so that it's an enemy of the parents). And the way you act with a baby or dog is certainly not the way you act with your boss. ("Oooh, him is just sooo cute").
Because we have so many "selves," we are capable of great good, and great evil. But none of us can be all good, or, for that matter, all bad. The early Socialist writers, who thought Man would quickly become god-like through a socialist society, were just as about as deluded as one can be. The leftist understanding of human nature (most especially their own) is, for all practical purposes, non-existent. That is why leftism produced such horrors in the 20th century. It didn't understand the potential Richard III that exists in all of us.
Because of the fact that so many archetypal potential "little selves" exist in us, it's obvious none of us are a tabula rasa, a blank slate. It's because of Gilligan that I years ago dismissed Skinnerian behaviorism, which postulates all of us are little more than blank slates. As I said, don't underestimate the power of pop culture; it led me to dismiss a lot of the nonsense that passes for psychology today.
The wisdom of Gilligan's Island teaches us a realistic, balanced view of human nature. Actually, you could consider watching it a sort of a voyage of self- discovery. Some may identify with Mr. Howell, who took a trunkful of money on a three-hour tour. If you identify with him, you may want to ask yourself just how greedy and stingy you are.
Unfortunately, I identify with Gilligan. I have since I was a kid. This means I have to watch myself. For years I've noticed that if I get around too many people, and spend too much time with them, catastrophes happen.
When I was a kid, parents would not only not let me in their houses, they wouldn't let me in their yards. I once walked by an above-ground plastic pool in a neighbor's backyard, and put my hands on the side of the pool so I could look in the water. The entire side gave way, pouring the entire pool into their yard. I stood there, paralyzed in awe, as they ran out, yelling, "What did you do?" "Nothing," I told them. They didn't believe me. Another time, I was with a kid who burned up an entire wheatfield, and after that, with one who burned down the barns behind my house.
I even accidentally shot a friend in the leg with a BB gun. I chalk all of this up to Gilligan's Aura, which still haunts me to this day.
Since all of us are burdened with some degree of the Castaways' Selves, democracy is one of the worst forms of government that exists. In a democracy, politicians will appeal to our envy, our greed and our sloth in order to get elected. This means democratically-elected politicians are the worst people to put in office; they have to be manipulative, lying Eddie Haskell hypocrites to get elected. This is one of the reasons why democracies always fall.
And people say that TV is a wasteland. Ha!
It occurred to me, like a little lightbulb going on over my head, that at times I almost hated Gilligan, who, like Homer Simpson, was one catastrophic screw-up, and decided that in real life the Skipper, who had a fist the size of a softball, would have hit Gilligan with more than his hat.
I wondered, who could the castaways elect who could possibly be a decent ruler? No one. Why. Because they were all most decidedly imperfect. Since the island was a microcosm of the world, the same rules that applied there applied to everyone else. No one is good enough to rule everyone.
There is an amusing theory, which I first ran across on the Web, that each of the castaways represents one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The Professor is Pride, Mary Ann is Envy, Mr. Howell is Greed, Mrs. Howell is Sloth, Ginger is Lust, and the Skipper is Anger and Gluttony. Since Gilligan doesn't fit any of the sins, some have facetiously suggested he's Satan, since he dresses in red and is the one responsible for keeping the castaways in the Hell that is the island.
I don't believe the creators of the program purposely meant the castaways to represent the sins. I suspect they just intuitively understood what the characters should be like.
Since all of us have at least a bit of the Seven Deadly Sins inherent in us, each of us has an Inner Professor, an Inner Mr. and Mrs. Howell, an Inner Ginger...all of us are flawed, and therefore none of us are fit to rule everyone else. Goodness –- you can make the argument that Gilligan's Island is a Christian program! Who woulda thunk it?
The term often used to describe our Inner Idiots is "archetype," which can be described as a personality pattern than expresses itself in different ways. An expression of the archetype of Satan, for example, is Shakespeare's Richard III (the movie, with Ian McKellen, is a gleefully wicked riot of diabolical fun). An easier way to understand "archetype" is to consider it a "little self" that we have in us.
All of us have, for examples, a Gilligan self, and a -– blech –- Eddie Haskell self. We have Barney Fife selves, and Tooter Turtle selves. All of us are cursed with the Original Sin of Gilliganitis – we're always going to mess it up.
Relating archetypes – our "little selves" – to each other can be great fun. Eddie Haskell was a hypocrite –- he was a suck-up to those who could hurt him, and was a bully to those weaker than he was. He's actually the archetype of many politicians. What archetype could Eddie turn into? The aforementioned Richard III, a consummate politician who postured as a decent man to those whom he wished to impress, and was a monster to those he wished to harm.
People sometimes talk to me about archetypes of the "Earth Mother" and the "Wolf Woman." My eyes glaze over. No one understands what they're talking about, anyway. But everyone understands Gilligan and the Skipper. They're our modern myths, and our modern archetypes.
The snooty may claim Gilligan's Island is not "art," or if it is, it's pop art. That's fine with me. Shakespeare's plays were not originally meant to be read. They were meant to be performed, for the masses. They were the movies of his time, the pop art. Today, he is considered the epitome of l iterature. (I know, Gilligan's Island is never going to be considered as good as Shakespeare; I'm just making the argument that one should never underestimate pop culture. Everyone knows who Eddie Haskell is; hardly anyone knows about Richard III.)
Modern psychology backs up my belief in our "little selves." Object Relations Theory (which you're about as likely to learn in college as you are Austrian Economics) postulates that each of us has an infinity of selves that are activated in our relationships with other people. Except for the arcane advanced jargon, a lot of it is just common sense.
When you raise a child, you become a "father" or "mother" self because of your relationship with the child. Then, later, you develop a "grandmother" or "grandfather" self (a self, that as all parents know, naturally allies itself with the child so that it's an enemy of the parents). And the way you act with a baby or dog is certainly not the way you act with your boss. ("Oooh, him is just sooo cute").
Because we have so many "selves," we are capable of great good, and great evil. But none of us can be all good, or, for that matter, all bad. The early Socialist writers, who thought Man would quickly become god-like through a socialist society, were just as about as deluded as one can be. The leftist understanding of human nature (most especially their own) is, for all practical purposes, non-existent. That is why leftism produced such horrors in the 20th century. It didn't understand the potential Richard III that exists in all of us.
Because of the fact that so many archetypal potential "little selves" exist in us, it's obvious none of us are a tabula rasa, a blank slate. It's because of Gilligan that I years ago dismissed Skinnerian behaviorism, which postulates all of us are little more than blank slates. As I said, don't underestimate the power of pop culture; it led me to dismiss a lot of the nonsense that passes for psychology today.
The wisdom of Gilligan's Island teaches us a realistic, balanced view of human nature. Actually, you could consider watching it a sort of a voyage of self- discovery. Some may identify with Mr. Howell, who took a trunkful of money on a three-hour tour. If you identify with him, you may want to ask yourself just how greedy and stingy you are.
Unfortunately, I identify with Gilligan. I have since I was a kid. This means I have to watch myself. For years I've noticed that if I get around too many people, and spend too much time with them, catastrophes happen.
When I was a kid, parents would not only not let me in their houses, they wouldn't let me in their yards. I once walked by an above-ground plastic pool in a neighbor's backyard, and put my hands on the side of the pool so I could look in the water. The entire side gave way, pouring the entire pool into their yard. I stood there, paralyzed in awe, as they ran out, yelling, "What did you do?" "Nothing," I told them. They didn't believe me. Another time, I was with a kid who burned up an entire wheatfield, and after that, with one who burned down the barns behind my house.
I even accidentally shot a friend in the leg with a BB gun. I chalk all of this up to Gilligan's Aura, which still haunts me to this day.
Since all of us are burdened with some degree of the Castaways' Selves, democracy is one of the worst forms of government that exists. In a democracy, politicians will appeal to our envy, our greed and our sloth in order to get elected. This means democratically-elected politicians are the worst people to put in office; they have to be manipulative, lying Eddie Haskell hypocrites to get elected. This is one of the reasons why democracies always fall.
And people say that TV is a wasteland. Ha!
Ow! Crick! Ow!
hurt my back badly a year ago. Well, technically it wasn't my back. It was my right hip, except it was in back of me. You get what I mean. Maybe I caused the problem by sitting on my wallet--the one that (in my imagination) is stuffed with cash. I had to blame it on something.
I was fine a) walking b) sitting c) lying down. However, going from one position to the other was the problem. Yeow. I had to figure out a sequence to get out of bed: first, throw the dog on the floor (a pug who always has a permanently reproachful look on his face like I'm a dog beater), then pivot like one of those arrows pinned to a board in a kid's game, so I could put my knees on the floor, then put my hands on the bed and ow! ow! ow! lever myself to my feet.
Once on my feet (sort of, since I was still bent over like Quasimodo), I had to put my left hand on my hip and rotate myself upright. I was reminded of that song, "Do the Hokey Pokey":
You put your right foot in,
You put your right foot out;
You put your right foot in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,
And you turn yourself around.
Okay, laugh. You just wait until it happens to you. I hope you end up like a friend of mine, who was too cheap to buy a cane when he hurt his back and instead hobbled around using a golf club to support himself.
Things got much, much worse, unfortunately. After I got out of my car downtown, I noticed my right shoelace was untied. Surreptitiously I attempted to tie it while hiding behind a pillar. Didn't work. I couldn't bend over.
Now here's where you're really going to laugh. A woman saw me and asked, "Do you want me to tie your shoelace for you?"
I instantly shrank from six feet tall to about two and a half. The same size as a five-year-old, I think. My pride and dignity evaporated and wafted away on the breeze.
"Well," I replied, "my back's out, and I can't bend over to tie my shoelace. So if you could, I'd appreciate it if, yes, you'd tie it for me." I couldn't look her in the eye. I probably would have seen my mother's face superimposed over hers.
So, she got down on her knees and tied my shoelace for me, on a sidewalk in the middle of downtown. People walking by smiled. I put my hand over my eyes. I felt the same as when I was a little kid and my mother took me in the women's restroom because she thought I was too little to go into the men's one by myself.
"I put a double knot in it," she informed me. At least that would stop the dog from trying to untie my shoelaces with his teeth, although it wouldn't do anything to stop him from twitching while asleep and flying off my lap into the wastebasket. I just hoped I could get it untied.
"This is embarrassing," I said.
She patted me on my arm, said, "It's a mother thing," and walked away. I pulled my hat down over my face so no one could recognize me and snuck inside the building.
Later, I wondered how liberals would handle this problem. They'd probably want a federal program for Certified Shoelace-Tiers located in an office downtown, on the off chance that in another ten years when I hurt my back again, I could hobble into their office and have my shoelace compassionately tied by Professionally-Trained Shoelace-Tiers. And every year, of course, the program would get more money. And the program would never, ever be gotten rid of. Think of all those Professionally-Certified Shoelace-Tiers who'd lose their jobs and be thrown out on the street! The heartbreak! The horror!
Heck, Frederic Bastiat could have written an article about it ("What is Tied and What is Not Tied"). All the millions of taxpayer dollars paying for those Professionally-Certified Shoelace-Tiers could instead be spent by me on, let's say, a chiropractor if my ding-dang taxes weren't so high.
There are worse things than millions of dollars for Certified Shoelace-Tiers. What if I had run across an Objectivist? She'd probably whip a tattered, much-read copy of Atlas Shrugged out of her purse and peruse the Sacred Text, seeking an answer as to whether it was in her Rational Self-Interest to tie my shoelace for me ("I swear, by my love of life, that I will tie no man's shoelace for him, or ask him to tie one for me"). I'd probably be called a looter or parasite if I was lucky, or maybe told to die in a train wreck in a tunnel if I wasn't.
The more I thought about it, the more I marveled at how easily society takes care of these things. No government involved, no weird, complicated crackpot "philosophies," no lawyers or politicians or taxpayer money . . . just a guy with a hurt back who got his shoelace tied in the street by a woman who decided that in every grown man, there's a five-year-old boy just waiting to be taken care of.
Hey, wait a minute -- wasn't what happened to me a version of the story of the Good Samaritan? And for that matter, isn't the State which takes nice people and turns them mean? And isn't it overwhelmingly society that keeps people nice?
Could it really be most everything we need to know we learned in kindergarten, like Robert Fulghurn says? "Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody."
I'll be darned. Such simple rules! Considering the mess the world is in, it makes me wonder exactly who are the children and who are the adults.
I was fine a) walking b) sitting c) lying down. However, going from one position to the other was the problem. Yeow. I had to figure out a sequence to get out of bed: first, throw the dog on the floor (a pug who always has a permanently reproachful look on his face like I'm a dog beater), then pivot like one of those arrows pinned to a board in a kid's game, so I could put my knees on the floor, then put my hands on the bed and ow! ow! ow! lever myself to my feet.
Once on my feet (sort of, since I was still bent over like Quasimodo), I had to put my left hand on my hip and rotate myself upright. I was reminded of that song, "Do the Hokey Pokey":
You put your right foot in,
You put your right foot out;
You put your right foot in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,
And you turn yourself around.
Okay, laugh. You just wait until it happens to you. I hope you end up like a friend of mine, who was too cheap to buy a cane when he hurt his back and instead hobbled around using a golf club to support himself.
Things got much, much worse, unfortunately. After I got out of my car downtown, I noticed my right shoelace was untied. Surreptitiously I attempted to tie it while hiding behind a pillar. Didn't work. I couldn't bend over.
Now here's where you're really going to laugh. A woman saw me and asked, "Do you want me to tie your shoelace for you?"
I instantly shrank from six feet tall to about two and a half. The same size as a five-year-old, I think. My pride and dignity evaporated and wafted away on the breeze.
"Well," I replied, "my back's out, and I can't bend over to tie my shoelace. So if you could, I'd appreciate it if, yes, you'd tie it for me." I couldn't look her in the eye. I probably would have seen my mother's face superimposed over hers.
So, she got down on her knees and tied my shoelace for me, on a sidewalk in the middle of downtown. People walking by smiled. I put my hand over my eyes. I felt the same as when I was a little kid and my mother took me in the women's restroom because she thought I was too little to go into the men's one by myself.
"I put a double knot in it," she informed me. At least that would stop the dog from trying to untie my shoelaces with his teeth, although it wouldn't do anything to stop him from twitching while asleep and flying off my lap into the wastebasket. I just hoped I could get it untied.
"This is embarrassing," I said.
She patted me on my arm, said, "It's a mother thing," and walked away. I pulled my hat down over my face so no one could recognize me and snuck inside the building.
Later, I wondered how liberals would handle this problem. They'd probably want a federal program for Certified Shoelace-Tiers located in an office downtown, on the off chance that in another ten years when I hurt my back again, I could hobble into their office and have my shoelace compassionately tied by Professionally-Trained Shoelace-Tiers. And every year, of course, the program would get more money. And the program would never, ever be gotten rid of. Think of all those Professionally-Certified Shoelace-Tiers who'd lose their jobs and be thrown out on the street! The heartbreak! The horror!
Heck, Frederic Bastiat could have written an article about it ("What is Tied and What is Not Tied"). All the millions of taxpayer dollars paying for those Professionally-Certified Shoelace-Tiers could instead be spent by me on, let's say, a chiropractor if my ding-dang taxes weren't so high.
There are worse things than millions of dollars for Certified Shoelace-Tiers. What if I had run across an Objectivist? She'd probably whip a tattered, much-read copy of Atlas Shrugged out of her purse and peruse the Sacred Text, seeking an answer as to whether it was in her Rational Self-Interest to tie my shoelace for me ("I swear, by my love of life, that I will tie no man's shoelace for him, or ask him to tie one for me"). I'd probably be called a looter or parasite if I was lucky, or maybe told to die in a train wreck in a tunnel if I wasn't.
The more I thought about it, the more I marveled at how easily society takes care of these things. No government involved, no weird, complicated crackpot "philosophies," no lawyers or politicians or taxpayer money . . . just a guy with a hurt back who got his shoelace tied in the street by a woman who decided that in every grown man, there's a five-year-old boy just waiting to be taken care of.
Hey, wait a minute -- wasn't what happened to me a version of the story of the Good Samaritan? And for that matter, isn't the State which takes nice people and turns them mean? And isn't it overwhelmingly society that keeps people nice?
Could it really be most everything we need to know we learned in kindergarten, like Robert Fulghurn says? "Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody."
I'll be darned. Such simple rules! Considering the mess the world is in, it makes me wonder exactly who are the children and who are the adults.
I Will Never Vote Again
This is it; I've had it, I quit, no more. I've rearranged my thoughts and they have decided I'm never voting again. It only encourages politicians. It's like feeding French fries (oops, sorry, Freedom fries) to one of those obnoxious yappy little dogs; if you feed them they're going to keep begging, and if you quit they growl and give you dirty looks and tell you all the awful things that are going to happen to you... but never do. My response: the same as in the movie Something About Mary when Ben Stiller ducked and the family-jewels-chompin' dog flew out the window and then found he had several vertical stories to travel down to the hard, hard horizontal ground.
I voted for Dubya even thought I had serious reservations about the rather simian cast to his inbred head. The whole family appears to have been pithed and is now retro-evolving right before my eyes, which is good, because in a few dozen years they'll all be harmless amoebas, although with narrow, rudimentary heads and squinty eyes. Then they can sit on their tiny little microscopic couches with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other, and curse at whatever episode of Spongebob Squareturban they wish.
I cringe every time Dubya squints his eyes and wrinkles his forehead like he's giving birth to thoughts that are really hurting him as they shoot down his brain-canal. Is that what foreigners really think Americans are? A bunch of gooneybirds flying over to the Middle East and whacking hornet's nests?
Dubya looks as if he could be one of the bit actors on Planet of the Apes, only with the minimum amount of makeup. At first he appeared to be just an amiable, aimless sort of guy, with a puzzled expression that reminded me of an organ-grinder's monkey who vaguely knew something was wrong, but hadn't yet realized someone has stolen his cap. If it hadn't been for the war, I believe Bush would have been a happily mediocre President, pushing though a tax cut that would give me enough money to make one-and-one-third car payments. And that's for a Chevy Cavalier, which is sort of a glorified go-cart. Now Dubya's turned into a self-appointed Prophet of God.
When someone talks to God it's called prayer. But what's it called when the President of the United States thinks God talks to him? I don't have a punch line because it would have to be a joke to have a punch line.
My vote wasn't so much for Dubya as it was against the Gorebot, whom I truly believe to be a one-foot-over-the-line-and-the-other-slipping, not-quite-certifiable lunatic trapped inside a mutant version of Pinocchio. Gore is a perfect example of what the word "preposterous" really means: having your front where you back should be. It shows where Gore's head is located as a permanent fixture. Let's just say he can't sit down without smushing his nose. Just as bad, he appears to have been born with his brain not only put in backwards, but also upside down. Unless some wiseguy-joker aliens did it, and that wouldn't surprise me at all.
I knew there was only about .00000000001% of a chance my vote would make any difference, but who knows? The election could have been a draw, and my vote could have been the one that tipped it! It's one of those fantasies I have, like winning the lottery or being the star of Revenge of the Nerds, Part III.
Now, I've decided I'm never going to vote again. Since the State is a vast, disorganized criminal enterprise, I've decided the only people who make it to the top are A) criminals, and B) clueless knuckleheads who the criminals put up to be President. These are the kinds of people with whom I certainly don't want to share a Kodak moment. Why should I encourage criminals by voting for them?
Bah, I'd rather be ruled by the Mafia. Even if Marlon "Mumbles" Brando did have tissue stuffed in his mouth in The Godfather I'd still rather deal with him than Dubya or the Gorebot. Or Hillbillyboy and his big-booty Satan-girl wife. Ah, decision, decisions. It's like choosing between thumbscrews and a cattle prod.
I've decided politics is a rat-race. The problem with it is that whoever wins is still a rat. Even if the rats do wear suits and ties.
If the only choices I have are John Dillinger or Bugsy Siegel – or Mortimer Snerd or Alfred E. Newman – why should I vote for any of them? From now on, I'm going to assume all politicians have cooties. No, wait – they are cooties. I'd like to stuff nearly all of them into a spaceship and shoot them to a planet where they would be treated like the Zanti Misfits in the original Outer Limits. You remember the one – the episode about the big ants with human faces? Where people were stomping on them with their size-12 Army boots?
I used to say that the only people worse than politicians were child molesters. I've decided politicians are worse. They harm hundreds of millions more people. Child molesters are immoral and illegal; politicians are immoral but unfortunately still legal. I keep having all these weird thoughts, like God was really hung over when he created politicians. And then the next day He goes, "Oh, Man...did I really do that?"
As for the difference between child molesters and the leftist, chickenhawk, armchair-general warmongers known as neocons, child molesters at least have equipment that the neocons lack, which accounts for the cowardice that compels neocons to stand on the sidelines and babble worthless advice while others fight and die ("Okay, now throw the ball here. Now, throw it over there."). These are the kind of sleep-walking weenies who could accidentally destroy the earth, then say, "Uh, sorry...I didn't mean for that to happen." That wouldn't be good, because the earth is where I keep all my stuff.
I have ceased watching news or talking-head programs on TV, because every time I did this is what happened: "(Expletive)! (Semi-Blasphemous Expletive)! (Physically Impossible Self-Referential Expletive)!"
I've decided that the State is much like a runaway train with no brakes. Sooner or later it's going to crash. For example, the ancient Greeks noticed that republics turn into democracies, democracies turn into tyrannies, and tyrannies turn into monarchies. Right now, we appear to be in between democracy and tyranny. I plan on hiding if this happens, and if it does happen, will pass the time doing something useful, like turning a canoe into a grandfather clock, a trick I learned from the "Red Green Show."
Whenever politicians start bursting with ideas, the country always suffers. Is that phrase in the Bible? It should be. And now we've got the neocons coming up with what they think are completely foolproof plans to conquer a double-digit percentage of the world. They are clueless to the fact that complete fools (which is what they are) cannot come up with completely foolproof plans. And they have no idea of the ingenuity of the complete fools they are attempting to conquer! As Yogi Berri said, "It ain't over till it's over, baby." And apparently this war isn't going to be over for a long time.
The people supporting the plans for an American global policeman – an American Empire – are a big ugly Critters-like mass of self-deception, hubris, and blindness. Tell them they're wrong, and they won't believe it. Prove them wrong, and they still won't believe it. It's like trying to talk to one of those stuffed, mummified cats under glass at an Egyptian exhibition at the museum ("Sorry, but my brain was removed 2500 years ago.").
They think they can violate Natural Law and change the cultures of other countries through mass murder, mass destruction and mass theft. They think the invaded aren't going to fight back and instead welcome us with open arms as liberators? ("Yeah, I know, you killed my family, but, ah, what the heck, it was an attempt to free them from tyranny.") Violating Natural Law and saying "It's for a good reason" is the same as someone religious thinking they can bribe God. ("Ah, come on, it's for a really noble cause. Hey, now wait just a minute!" ZZZZOTZ!)
Our "government" is getting way too big. That's what always happens when States follow the Empire route (which is the Road to Hell. And that's not a movie with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.). And it doesn't even matter anymore who you vote for. The State just keeps getting bigger and badder. And what happens with the big, bad State? Well, in 300 BC Mencius wrote, "When good government prevails men of little worth submit to men of great worth. When bad government prevails men of little power submit to men of great power."
Or, if you want to take a hop over to ancient Greece, this is what Dionysius of Halicarnassus said in 20 BC: "A good government produces citizens distinguished for courage, love of justice, and every other good quality; a bad government makes them cowardly, rapacious, and the slave of every foul desire." Hey, William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Perle, don't you try to run! Smack.
Speaking of smack – as in smackdown – the story is that Norman Podhoretz once cornered Jackie Kennedy and professed his infatuation to her. If you've ever seen Podhoretz you'll realize he wasn't beat with the Ugly Stick – he is the Ugly Stick. Apparently she fixed him with the icy eyeball, and like a pin through a bug, skewered him and put permanent holes into his deluded self- importance with, "Mr. Podhoretz, exactly who do you think you are?" I'm going to have to think of a new word to describe people like Podhoretz – gork, maybe. A combination of "dork" and "geek." Soon after Podhoretz was involuntarily enlightened with the truth about himself, he begins his trek to the right, only taking his leftist baggage with him. What next? Maybe William Kristol thinking he has a chance with Julia Roberts? He wouldn't stand a chance with Rosanne Barr. He was, after all, beat with the Norman Podhoretz Stick.
Oh, yeah, this is just great. We're now being ruled by the tribe of monkeys that Rudyard Kipling called the Bander-Log. Every once in a while they got together, shook the treetops and yelled, "We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the Jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true!" And of course reality falls right into place if you just yell at it long and loud enough.
Dang it, I should be King. I'd follow the wisdom of what King James I said in 1620: "I will govern according to the common weal, but not according to the common will." Democracy – ugh. Democracy's what put Clinton and Bush into office, and almost saddled us with Gore.
My being King might just happen some day. It's on my list, although pretty far down. Way far down, actually. The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes said it best: "God put me on Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die."
But voting? Forget it. From now on I'll give the answer that the cowardly, warmongering chicken-hawk armchair-warrior Dick Cheney gave when asked why he avoided military service during Vietnam (with four deferments!): "I had other priorities."
I voted for Dubya even thought I had serious reservations about the rather simian cast to his inbred head. The whole family appears to have been pithed and is now retro-evolving right before my eyes, which is good, because in a few dozen years they'll all be harmless amoebas, although with narrow, rudimentary heads and squinty eyes. Then they can sit on their tiny little microscopic couches with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other, and curse at whatever episode of Spongebob Squareturban they wish.
I cringe every time Dubya squints his eyes and wrinkles his forehead like he's giving birth to thoughts that are really hurting him as they shoot down his brain-canal. Is that what foreigners really think Americans are? A bunch of gooneybirds flying over to the Middle East and whacking hornet's nests?
Dubya looks as if he could be one of the bit actors on Planet of the Apes, only with the minimum amount of makeup. At first he appeared to be just an amiable, aimless sort of guy, with a puzzled expression that reminded me of an organ-grinder's monkey who vaguely knew something was wrong, but hadn't yet realized someone has stolen his cap. If it hadn't been for the war, I believe Bush would have been a happily mediocre President, pushing though a tax cut that would give me enough money to make one-and-one-third car payments. And that's for a Chevy Cavalier, which is sort of a glorified go-cart. Now Dubya's turned into a self-appointed Prophet of God.
When someone talks to God it's called prayer. But what's it called when the President of the United States thinks God talks to him? I don't have a punch line because it would have to be a joke to have a punch line.
My vote wasn't so much for Dubya as it was against the Gorebot, whom I truly believe to be a one-foot-over-the-line-and-the-other-slipping, not-quite-certifiable lunatic trapped inside a mutant version of Pinocchio. Gore is a perfect example of what the word "preposterous" really means: having your front where you back should be. It shows where Gore's head is located as a permanent fixture. Let's just say he can't sit down without smushing his nose. Just as bad, he appears to have been born with his brain not only put in backwards, but also upside down. Unless some wiseguy-joker aliens did it, and that wouldn't surprise me at all.
I knew there was only about .00000000001% of a chance my vote would make any difference, but who knows? The election could have been a draw, and my vote could have been the one that tipped it! It's one of those fantasies I have, like winning the lottery or being the star of Revenge of the Nerds, Part III.
Now, I've decided I'm never going to vote again. Since the State is a vast, disorganized criminal enterprise, I've decided the only people who make it to the top are A) criminals, and B) clueless knuckleheads who the criminals put up to be President. These are the kinds of people with whom I certainly don't want to share a Kodak moment. Why should I encourage criminals by voting for them?
Bah, I'd rather be ruled by the Mafia. Even if Marlon "Mumbles" Brando did have tissue stuffed in his mouth in The Godfather I'd still rather deal with him than Dubya or the Gorebot. Or Hillbillyboy and his big-booty Satan-girl wife. Ah, decision, decisions. It's like choosing between thumbscrews and a cattle prod.
I've decided politics is a rat-race. The problem with it is that whoever wins is still a rat. Even if the rats do wear suits and ties.
If the only choices I have are John Dillinger or Bugsy Siegel – or Mortimer Snerd or Alfred E. Newman – why should I vote for any of them? From now on, I'm going to assume all politicians have cooties. No, wait – they are cooties. I'd like to stuff nearly all of them into a spaceship and shoot them to a planet where they would be treated like the Zanti Misfits in the original Outer Limits. You remember the one – the episode about the big ants with human faces? Where people were stomping on them with their size-12 Army boots?
I used to say that the only people worse than politicians were child molesters. I've decided politicians are worse. They harm hundreds of millions more people. Child molesters are immoral and illegal; politicians are immoral but unfortunately still legal. I keep having all these weird thoughts, like God was really hung over when he created politicians. And then the next day He goes, "Oh, Man...did I really do that?"
As for the difference between child molesters and the leftist, chickenhawk, armchair-general warmongers known as neocons, child molesters at least have equipment that the neocons lack, which accounts for the cowardice that compels neocons to stand on the sidelines and babble worthless advice while others fight and die ("Okay, now throw the ball here. Now, throw it over there."). These are the kind of sleep-walking weenies who could accidentally destroy the earth, then say, "Uh, sorry...I didn't mean for that to happen." That wouldn't be good, because the earth is where I keep all my stuff.
I have ceased watching news or talking-head programs on TV, because every time I did this is what happened: "(Expletive)! (Semi-Blasphemous Expletive)! (Physically Impossible Self-Referential Expletive)!"
I've decided that the State is much like a runaway train with no brakes. Sooner or later it's going to crash. For example, the ancient Greeks noticed that republics turn into democracies, democracies turn into tyrannies, and tyrannies turn into monarchies. Right now, we appear to be in between democracy and tyranny. I plan on hiding if this happens, and if it does happen, will pass the time doing something useful, like turning a canoe into a grandfather clock, a trick I learned from the "Red Green Show."
Whenever politicians start bursting with ideas, the country always suffers. Is that phrase in the Bible? It should be. And now we've got the neocons coming up with what they think are completely foolproof plans to conquer a double-digit percentage of the world. They are clueless to the fact that complete fools (which is what they are) cannot come up with completely foolproof plans. And they have no idea of the ingenuity of the complete fools they are attempting to conquer! As Yogi Berri said, "It ain't over till it's over, baby." And apparently this war isn't going to be over for a long time.
The people supporting the plans for an American global policeman – an American Empire – are a big ugly Critters-like mass of self-deception, hubris, and blindness. Tell them they're wrong, and they won't believe it. Prove them wrong, and they still won't believe it. It's like trying to talk to one of those stuffed, mummified cats under glass at an Egyptian exhibition at the museum ("Sorry, but my brain was removed 2500 years ago.").
They think they can violate Natural Law and change the cultures of other countries through mass murder, mass destruction and mass theft. They think the invaded aren't going to fight back and instead welcome us with open arms as liberators? ("Yeah, I know, you killed my family, but, ah, what the heck, it was an attempt to free them from tyranny.") Violating Natural Law and saying "It's for a good reason" is the same as someone religious thinking they can bribe God. ("Ah, come on, it's for a really noble cause. Hey, now wait just a minute!" ZZZZOTZ!)
Our "government" is getting way too big. That's what always happens when States follow the Empire route (which is the Road to Hell. And that's not a movie with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.). And it doesn't even matter anymore who you vote for. The State just keeps getting bigger and badder. And what happens with the big, bad State? Well, in 300 BC Mencius wrote, "When good government prevails men of little worth submit to men of great worth. When bad government prevails men of little power submit to men of great power."
Or, if you want to take a hop over to ancient Greece, this is what Dionysius of Halicarnassus said in 20 BC: "A good government produces citizens distinguished for courage, love of justice, and every other good quality; a bad government makes them cowardly, rapacious, and the slave of every foul desire." Hey, William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Perle, don't you try to run! Smack.
Speaking of smack – as in smackdown – the story is that Norman Podhoretz once cornered Jackie Kennedy and professed his infatuation to her. If you've ever seen Podhoretz you'll realize he wasn't beat with the Ugly Stick – he is the Ugly Stick. Apparently she fixed him with the icy eyeball, and like a pin through a bug, skewered him and put permanent holes into his deluded self- importance with, "Mr. Podhoretz, exactly who do you think you are?" I'm going to have to think of a new word to describe people like Podhoretz – gork, maybe. A combination of "dork" and "geek." Soon after Podhoretz was involuntarily enlightened with the truth about himself, he begins his trek to the right, only taking his leftist baggage with him. What next? Maybe William Kristol thinking he has a chance with Julia Roberts? He wouldn't stand a chance with Rosanne Barr. He was, after all, beat with the Norman Podhoretz Stick.
Oh, yeah, this is just great. We're now being ruled by the tribe of monkeys that Rudyard Kipling called the Bander-Log. Every once in a while they got together, shook the treetops and yelled, "We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the Jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true!" And of course reality falls right into place if you just yell at it long and loud enough.
Dang it, I should be King. I'd follow the wisdom of what King James I said in 1620: "I will govern according to the common weal, but not according to the common will." Democracy – ugh. Democracy's what put Clinton and Bush into office, and almost saddled us with Gore.
My being King might just happen some day. It's on my list, although pretty far down. Way far down, actually. The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes said it best: "God put me on Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die."
But voting? Forget it. From now on I'll give the answer that the cowardly, warmongering chicken-hawk armchair-warrior Dick Cheney gave when asked why he avoided military service during Vietnam (with four deferments!): "I had other priorities."
Read This or be Assimilated
"Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." -- George Orwell, 1984
StarTrek: the Next Generation's "Q," that lisping interstellar drag queen, didn't impress me, and every time I saw Jean Luc Picard I thought, "Three hundred years in the future and they still can't fix baldness? Can't they reassemble him in the transporter with a full head of hair?" At least no one wore glasses, except for that Gordi LaForge guy with his goofy car air-filter visor. I kept expecting him to take it off and shake the dust out of it. What did he think he was, the carburator off of a '68 Barricuda?
I did like the original series, although I thought they should have dumped William Shatner and replaced him with James Coburn. And Sean Connery would have made a great Klingon. And I'm sure they could have found a place for Raquel Welch, too, especially in her One Million Years BC two-piece fur bikini.
I will give credit where credit is due: the Next Generation's Borg are the scariest villains ever on TV, even more frightening than James "Snakehead on a Stick" Carville. They are a perfect example of the welfare/warfare Empire (and all Empires are welfare/warfare, which is what causes all of them to collapse). Today, the US government is engaged in what I call "the Borgification of America": collectivism at home, including talk of "biometric" national IDs and Number of the Beast implanted microchips, and "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated" warfare abroad.
I don't know if the creators of the Borg knew what they were doing, or if they just chanced upon the concept. Either way, it's confirmation of Ezra Pound's comment, "The artist is the antenna of the race." They were portraying the universal truth that the cradle-to-the-grave mommy state is the other side of the coin of the let's-blast-them-to-hell warfare state. It's the way it's always been, and it's the way it always will be. I have resigned myself to seeing this as a law of human nature, although like all laws it gets broken. The upshot is that this is certainly one law that needs to be broken, and permanently.
Why this "let's be children at home and bullies abroad"? The desire for complete security, which is one of the curses of humanity. It's the belief in getting rid of enemies at home -- unemployment, poverty, lack of health care, drug use, cigarettes, potato chips, whatever -- through the idol of the State, and using the same idol -- a modern-day Golden Calf -- to rub out perceived enemies abroad. But it's a fake, self-deluded security. People think they can have security guaranteed by the State and freedom. But they can't. Security comes from society (and true law, which is Natural Law), which can only blossom when they are free from the State. As Proudhon wrote, "Liberty is the mother, not daughter, of order."
People who think they can have security -- to be enfolded all their lives in the arms of the mommy-state -- and freedom, are Borgifying themselves, only they don't know it. They think they're going to have security, but what will happen is that their "security" will disappear, and so will their freedom. As Benjamin Franklin wrote,"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety." The novelist Somerset Maugham (among many other people) noticed the same thing: "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose that freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose those too."
The reason, as Albert Jay Nock pointed out in his Our Enemy, the State, is because there is eternal warfare between Society and the State. Society is persuasion and freedom; the State, force and slavery. The State can only expand by destroying Society. Hence, when people give up their freedom for "security" they are turning themselves into slaves. When they finally look up and say, "Hey, no fair!" it's too late. Then people revolt, the violence starts, and the State falls.
The Borg are the ultimate collectivists. Commies in a Cube. Everyone has a place, and is taken care of from birth to death. There are a few unpleasant catches: the Borg have absolutely no freedom, and they are engaged in eternal war -- perpetual war for perpetual peace -- to annihilate their enemies through absorption. It's not the case of One-World Government; it's One-Galaxy Government. Whether you want it or not.
The people who are the Lego-blocks of the Borg have complete security, at least until they get in the path of a phaser or a photon torpedo. They don't even have to think anymore. They have no fear or anxiety. No unpleasant feelings at all, as far as I can tell (this can only be due to all those wires running into their brains, numbing the fear centers and probably stimulating the pleasure ones. This is a fairly old concept in science-fiction: the implanted wires are called "wire-heading," and the contraptions on their heads that control the wires are called "drouds.")
The Borg Cube is a gigantic womb, flying endlessly through space. No one has to think; everyone is taken care of from womb to tomb. That desire to return to the womb is a catastrophic problem for the human race. It's the desire to lose all unpleasantness, and in some ways, the desire to lose self-consciousness,and the ability to think. This is why when the Borg character Seven of Nine (played by Jeri Ryan) was detached from the Borg she wanted to go back. The only way you can have complete security is to give up your freedom and self-consciousness and thought completely. But it's not possible.
Mark Vonnegut (son of Kurt) has written exactly one book, The Eden Express, about his episodes of schizophrenia and his days on a commune. The title is about the desire of the human race to return to Eden, to give up freedom for security, to give up self- consciousness and the choices that go with it. He wrote that what he wanted was to "lose his consciousness." To return to not just being a baby, but to the womb. And he thought he could do it through drug use and living the ritual life of a commune. There is, however, an angel with a flaming sword barring the way back to the Garden. We can't go back to it, only forward.
The late Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, in his seminal book, Leftism Revisited, wrote that, "viewed from a certain angle, we are all subject to two basic drives: identity and diversity." Identity he calls "a herd instinct, a strong feeling of community that regards another group with hostility." He believes "identity and its drives tend to efface self, tend towards an 'usness' in which the ego becomes submerged."
He believes this is the basis of leftism and its various manifestations: Socialism, Nazism, fascism, Communism, liberalism. I think he would call the Borg a "terrifying, bigger and more pitiless conformity."
A blood brother of identity and conformity is equality. Everything that is identical is automatically equal. Two quarters or two pennies are identical and therefore equal. They're interchangeable. Writes Kuehnelt- Leddihn, "Therefore, all political or social forms that are inspired by the idea of equality will almost inevitably point to the concept of identity, and foster the herd instinct." Everyone in the Borg fits this description; they are identical, equal and interchangeable. At home, identical, equal, secure, and submerged in an oceanic unconsciousness; abroad, at war, to protect the home.
In the famous "Grand Inquisitor" scene in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky has the Inquisitor say, "For centuries...we have been wrestling with...freedom, but now it is ended and over for good." What, did the Inquisitor look up one night and see the Borg heading his way? No, he was commenting on the fact that many people want to give up their freedom to "authority." The Inquisitor goes so far as to claim, "they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet."
Erich Fromm, a confused socialist with occasional flashes of brilliance, wrote in his book, Escape from Freedom, that people will, in order to escape the burden of freedom and responsibility, even turn to dictators. They will bring their freedom to them and lay it at their feet. "The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton," he writes, echoing his better, Kuehnelt-Leddihn, "identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self."
There is in almost everyone a desire to be part of the Borg, to return to the womb, the Garden of Eden. It would be a world without anxiety or fear, without unsureness, without envy or jealousy, without self-consciousness. It's a world that doesn't exist, but the continual attempts to create it by the State always have the downside of war. Welfare and warfare are two sides of the same coin.
I have a lot of beliefs (most of which don't make much sense, even to me) but one that's holding up so far is my considering leftism to be "mother." This is why I call the leftist State "the mommy state." Leftism as mother isn't original with me; I've read it many times, through many years.
There is a theory that many women are naturally collectivists run by their feelings (hence their falling for Bill "I Feel Your Pain, and Monica Lewinsky, Too" Clinton and Phil "Dumped My Wife and Family, Married a Younger Trophy Wife" Donahue). I suspect this is why women have traditionally been denied the vote throughout history; the majority of them would vote Democrat and ultimately bring society down. Their desire for "security" trumps freedom.
This "mother" also exists in many (unmanly) men, such as boozehound "Couldn't Get a Woman Across a Bridge Without Drowning Her" Ted Kennedy. It appears to exist in all male liberals, whose views of the population are, "You're a baby and can't take care of yourself, so I'll be mommy and do it for you." (They're not playing daddy, whose view is, "You're a big boy, so you can make your own decisions and take care of yourself").
I don't know if it was a coincidence or a stroke of genius, but the Borg are ruled by the Borg Queen (played by Alice Krige, who I found hot even as a Borg, until her head fell off). Since the Borg Cube is a mommy state, a huge womb, logically it would have to have a Queen. The only thing missing is the Borg being vegetarians (leftist pseudo-spirituality), but for all I know, maybe they are.
Unfortunately, Mommies can't fight very well. So who has to protect them? Daddy, of course. That's why Daddy goes abroad and fights wars. To protect Mommy and all the children at home. But what happened when the Borg attacked the Federation? They fought back, of course. And what's going to happen when we attack other countries? Well, they certainly aren't just going to roll over like kicked puppies.
However, if the leftist mommy-state didn't rule at home, and all the children grew up and took care of themselves, then there wouldn't be any need for the daddy-army to destroy all the bad child-eating monsters in foreign countries. This are the main reasons I don't believe in democracy, and do believe in constitutional monarchy.
No country should ever be ruled by a Mother Queen alone. That's the way of leftism, of the Borg. It shouldn't be ruled just by a Father King, either. It should be ruled by both a King and a Queen; that's the way of balance.
Resistance isn't futile, unless you really do want to be assimilated.
"Might our ability to tell right from wrong be connected with our capacity to think?"
StarTrek: the Next Generation's "Q," that lisping interstellar drag queen, didn't impress me, and every time I saw Jean Luc Picard I thought, "Three hundred years in the future and they still can't fix baldness? Can't they reassemble him in the transporter with a full head of hair?" At least no one wore glasses, except for that Gordi LaForge guy with his goofy car air-filter visor. I kept expecting him to take it off and shake the dust out of it. What did he think he was, the carburator off of a '68 Barricuda?
I did like the original series, although I thought they should have dumped William Shatner and replaced him with James Coburn. And Sean Connery would have made a great Klingon. And I'm sure they could have found a place for Raquel Welch, too, especially in her One Million Years BC two-piece fur bikini.
I will give credit where credit is due: the Next Generation's Borg are the scariest villains ever on TV, even more frightening than James "Snakehead on a Stick" Carville. They are a perfect example of the welfare/warfare Empire (and all Empires are welfare/warfare, which is what causes all of them to collapse). Today, the US government is engaged in what I call "the Borgification of America": collectivism at home, including talk of "biometric" national IDs and Number of the Beast implanted microchips, and "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated" warfare abroad.
I don't know if the creators of the Borg knew what they were doing, or if they just chanced upon the concept. Either way, it's confirmation of Ezra Pound's comment, "The artist is the antenna of the race." They were portraying the universal truth that the cradle-to-the-grave mommy state is the other side of the coin of the let's-blast-them-to-hell warfare state. It's the way it's always been, and it's the way it always will be. I have resigned myself to seeing this as a law of human nature, although like all laws it gets broken. The upshot is that this is certainly one law that needs to be broken, and permanently.
Why this "let's be children at home and bullies abroad"? The desire for complete security, which is one of the curses of humanity. It's the belief in getting rid of enemies at home -- unemployment, poverty, lack of health care, drug use, cigarettes, potato chips, whatever -- through the idol of the State, and using the same idol -- a modern-day Golden Calf -- to rub out perceived enemies abroad. But it's a fake, self-deluded security. People think they can have security guaranteed by the State and freedom. But they can't. Security comes from society (and true law, which is Natural Law), which can only blossom when they are free from the State. As Proudhon wrote, "Liberty is the mother, not daughter, of order."
People who think they can have security -- to be enfolded all their lives in the arms of the mommy-state -- and freedom, are Borgifying themselves, only they don't know it. They think they're going to have security, but what will happen is that their "security" will disappear, and so will their freedom. As Benjamin Franklin wrote,"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety." The novelist Somerset Maugham (among many other people) noticed the same thing: "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose that freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose those too."
The reason, as Albert Jay Nock pointed out in his Our Enemy, the State, is because there is eternal warfare between Society and the State. Society is persuasion and freedom; the State, force and slavery. The State can only expand by destroying Society. Hence, when people give up their freedom for "security" they are turning themselves into slaves. When they finally look up and say, "Hey, no fair!" it's too late. Then people revolt, the violence starts, and the State falls.
The Borg are the ultimate collectivists. Commies in a Cube. Everyone has a place, and is taken care of from birth to death. There are a few unpleasant catches: the Borg have absolutely no freedom, and they are engaged in eternal war -- perpetual war for perpetual peace -- to annihilate their enemies through absorption. It's not the case of One-World Government; it's One-Galaxy Government. Whether you want it or not.
The people who are the Lego-blocks of the Borg have complete security, at least until they get in the path of a phaser or a photon torpedo. They don't even have to think anymore. They have no fear or anxiety. No unpleasant feelings at all, as far as I can tell (this can only be due to all those wires running into their brains, numbing the fear centers and probably stimulating the pleasure ones. This is a fairly old concept in science-fiction: the implanted wires are called "wire-heading," and the contraptions on their heads that control the wires are called "drouds.")
The Borg Cube is a gigantic womb, flying endlessly through space. No one has to think; everyone is taken care of from womb to tomb. That desire to return to the womb is a catastrophic problem for the human race. It's the desire to lose all unpleasantness, and in some ways, the desire to lose self-consciousness,and the ability to think. This is why when the Borg character Seven of Nine (played by Jeri Ryan) was detached from the Borg she wanted to go back. The only way you can have complete security is to give up your freedom and self-consciousness and thought completely. But it's not possible.
Mark Vonnegut (son of Kurt) has written exactly one book, The Eden Express, about his episodes of schizophrenia and his days on a commune. The title is about the desire of the human race to return to Eden, to give up freedom for security, to give up self- consciousness and the choices that go with it. He wrote that what he wanted was to "lose his consciousness." To return to not just being a baby, but to the womb. And he thought he could do it through drug use and living the ritual life of a commune. There is, however, an angel with a flaming sword barring the way back to the Garden. We can't go back to it, only forward.
The late Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, in his seminal book, Leftism Revisited, wrote that, "viewed from a certain angle, we are all subject to two basic drives: identity and diversity." Identity he calls "a herd instinct, a strong feeling of community that regards another group with hostility." He believes "identity and its drives tend to efface self, tend towards an 'usness' in which the ego becomes submerged."
He believes this is the basis of leftism and its various manifestations: Socialism, Nazism, fascism, Communism, liberalism. I think he would call the Borg a "terrifying, bigger and more pitiless conformity."
A blood brother of identity and conformity is equality. Everything that is identical is automatically equal. Two quarters or two pennies are identical and therefore equal. They're interchangeable. Writes Kuehnelt- Leddihn, "Therefore, all political or social forms that are inspired by the idea of equality will almost inevitably point to the concept of identity, and foster the herd instinct." Everyone in the Borg fits this description; they are identical, equal and interchangeable. At home, identical, equal, secure, and submerged in an oceanic unconsciousness; abroad, at war, to protect the home.
In the famous "Grand Inquisitor" scene in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky has the Inquisitor say, "For centuries...we have been wrestling with...freedom, but now it is ended and over for good." What, did the Inquisitor look up one night and see the Borg heading his way? No, he was commenting on the fact that many people want to give up their freedom to "authority." The Inquisitor goes so far as to claim, "they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet."
Erich Fromm, a confused socialist with occasional flashes of brilliance, wrote in his book, Escape from Freedom, that people will, in order to escape the burden of freedom and responsibility, even turn to dictators. They will bring their freedom to them and lay it at their feet. "The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton," he writes, echoing his better, Kuehnelt-Leddihn, "identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self."
There is in almost everyone a desire to be part of the Borg, to return to the womb, the Garden of Eden. It would be a world without anxiety or fear, without unsureness, without envy or jealousy, without self-consciousness. It's a world that doesn't exist, but the continual attempts to create it by the State always have the downside of war. Welfare and warfare are two sides of the same coin.
I have a lot of beliefs (most of which don't make much sense, even to me) but one that's holding up so far is my considering leftism to be "mother." This is why I call the leftist State "the mommy state." Leftism as mother isn't original with me; I've read it many times, through many years.
There is a theory that many women are naturally collectivists run by their feelings (hence their falling for Bill "I Feel Your Pain, and Monica Lewinsky, Too" Clinton and Phil "Dumped My Wife and Family, Married a Younger Trophy Wife" Donahue). I suspect this is why women have traditionally been denied the vote throughout history; the majority of them would vote Democrat and ultimately bring society down. Their desire for "security" trumps freedom.
This "mother" also exists in many (unmanly) men, such as boozehound "Couldn't Get a Woman Across a Bridge Without Drowning Her" Ted Kennedy. It appears to exist in all male liberals, whose views of the population are, "You're a baby and can't take care of yourself, so I'll be mommy and do it for you." (They're not playing daddy, whose view is, "You're a big boy, so you can make your own decisions and take care of yourself").
I don't know if it was a coincidence or a stroke of genius, but the Borg are ruled by the Borg Queen (played by Alice Krige, who I found hot even as a Borg, until her head fell off). Since the Borg Cube is a mommy state, a huge womb, logically it would have to have a Queen. The only thing missing is the Borg being vegetarians (leftist pseudo-spirituality), but for all I know, maybe they are.
Unfortunately, Mommies can't fight very well. So who has to protect them? Daddy, of course. That's why Daddy goes abroad and fights wars. To protect Mommy and all the children at home. But what happened when the Borg attacked the Federation? They fought back, of course. And what's going to happen when we attack other countries? Well, they certainly aren't just going to roll over like kicked puppies.
However, if the leftist mommy-state didn't rule at home, and all the children grew up and took care of themselves, then there wouldn't be any need for the daddy-army to destroy all the bad child-eating monsters in foreign countries. This are the main reasons I don't believe in democracy, and do believe in constitutional monarchy.
No country should ever be ruled by a Mother Queen alone. That's the way of leftism, of the Borg. It shouldn't be ruled just by a Father King, either. It should be ruled by both a King and a Queen; that's the way of balance.
Resistance isn't futile, unless you really do want to be assimilated.
"Might our ability to tell right from wrong be connected with our capacity to think?"
My Retirement Plans
I have two retirement plans. The first one involves buying gold and silver because they always keep their value. Let’s put it this way: a good suit of clothes during the Roman Empire cost an ounce of gold. Today, a good suit of clothes cost an ounce of gold. I can’t think of anything else that’s held its value like precious metals.
My second retirement plan involves a shopping cart I found in an alley. I plan on living in it if my first retirement plan doesn’t work out the way I want it to. I find I can fit quite comfortably in it. This is good since I might be sleeping in it someday.
There are other things I have stored along with my shopping cart. Plastic trash bags, for instance. With a little imagination you can work wonders with them. They’ll make an ideal waterproof roof for my shopping-cart home. They also make cheap but very good raincoats. Even clothes, if it comes right down to it.
Let’s not forget the duct tape, which I believe will last for years. It’s great for repairing tears in my plastic garbage bags. Obviously this isn’t very stylish, but if I do end up living in my shopping cart, plastic garbage bags and duct tape are much more important than mere pride and dignity.
I also have a big stick. A staff, really. It’s about two inches thick and four feet long. It has multiple uses. One is as a cane, which I might need when I’m 75 years old and living in a shopping cart. It’s also a weapon, which I will need to smack other retirees attempting to steal my shopping-cart home, my plastic garbage bags, and my duct tape.
I also plan on using this stick to smack pigeons, which I’ve heard are pretty good eating. I estimate I might be eating pigeons because I doubt the $1.98 a month I’ll be getting from Social Security will buy much of anything.
I also have a Swiss Army Knife, the kind with all the implements. I’ll need it to clean the pigeons I smack with my stick. Then once I cook them on the grill I made out of clothes hangers I’ll use the knife, fork and spoon to eat the pigeon.
Let's not forget the spool of fishing line. Since I was raised near a lake, I learned how to catch crawdads, which I’ve also heard are pretty good eating. If you take a length of fishing line and put a little piece of bread dough at the end, when you drop the line into the water near the edge of a lake, after a few minutes a crawdad will grab onto the bread dough. Then up he comes and down he goes, after the appropriate amount of time on my clothes-hanger grill.
I was raised halfway in between the city and the country. Because of this, I know some of the edible wild plants. Wild onions, for example, which I think would go just fine with pigeons and crawdads. Wild bamboo has many uses. It makes great fishing poles, and when splintered makes great toothpicks, which I’ll probably need since I doubt I’ll be able to buy toothbrushes.
I also have a pipe. Since I doubt I’ll be able to afford tobacco, I’ll just take cigarettes out of ashtrays and use the leftover tobacco in them. A pipe will last for years, and it’ll save me having to buy rolling papers. I figure I can sit by a lake, smoking my pipe, with my duct-taped plastic garbage bags on my head to protect me from the rain, while I fish with my bamboo fishing pole.
I also have some boxes of baking soda, which is just wonderful stuff. It’s great for indigestion, which I might suffer from considering the fact I’ll mostly be eating pigeons and crawdads cooked with wild onions. Baking soda is great for sunburn, which I’ll probably get considering most of my time will be spent fishing at a lake or else sitting on a park bench waiting for pigeons. It’s also great for teeth and gums, and will make a fine addition to my stock of wild bamboo toothpicks.
It’s best to not put all your eggs in one basket. Backup plans are always good. I don’t like having this second plan for retirement, but since the creation of the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank the dollar has lost 95 percent of its value in less than 100 years, I think having my shopping cart is a good idea.
Now if only the government would cut all taxes by about 90 percent, get rid of about 90 percent of the job-destroying regulations, and stop destroying the value of our money by inflation, my – and everyone else’s – income would skyrocket. I’d have plenty of money to shove away for retirement. Everyone else would, too.
Then I could buy an RV and travel the country after I retire. On the other hand, if someday you see a guy pushing a shopping cart down the street, dressed in duct-taped plastic garbage bags, and smoking a pipe, toss him a quarter.
He’ll appreciate it, I guarantee you.
My second retirement plan involves a shopping cart I found in an alley. I plan on living in it if my first retirement plan doesn’t work out the way I want it to. I find I can fit quite comfortably in it. This is good since I might be sleeping in it someday.
There are other things I have stored along with my shopping cart. Plastic trash bags, for instance. With a little imagination you can work wonders with them. They’ll make an ideal waterproof roof for my shopping-cart home. They also make cheap but very good raincoats. Even clothes, if it comes right down to it.
Let’s not forget the duct tape, which I believe will last for years. It’s great for repairing tears in my plastic garbage bags. Obviously this isn’t very stylish, but if I do end up living in my shopping cart, plastic garbage bags and duct tape are much more important than mere pride and dignity.
I also have a big stick. A staff, really. It’s about two inches thick and four feet long. It has multiple uses. One is as a cane, which I might need when I’m 75 years old and living in a shopping cart. It’s also a weapon, which I will need to smack other retirees attempting to steal my shopping-cart home, my plastic garbage bags, and my duct tape.
I also plan on using this stick to smack pigeons, which I’ve heard are pretty good eating. I estimate I might be eating pigeons because I doubt the $1.98 a month I’ll be getting from Social Security will buy much of anything.
I also have a Swiss Army Knife, the kind with all the implements. I’ll need it to clean the pigeons I smack with my stick. Then once I cook them on the grill I made out of clothes hangers I’ll use the knife, fork and spoon to eat the pigeon.
Let's not forget the spool of fishing line. Since I was raised near a lake, I learned how to catch crawdads, which I’ve also heard are pretty good eating. If you take a length of fishing line and put a little piece of bread dough at the end, when you drop the line into the water near the edge of a lake, after a few minutes a crawdad will grab onto the bread dough. Then up he comes and down he goes, after the appropriate amount of time on my clothes-hanger grill.
I was raised halfway in between the city and the country. Because of this, I know some of the edible wild plants. Wild onions, for example, which I think would go just fine with pigeons and crawdads. Wild bamboo has many uses. It makes great fishing poles, and when splintered makes great toothpicks, which I’ll probably need since I doubt I’ll be able to buy toothbrushes.
I also have a pipe. Since I doubt I’ll be able to afford tobacco, I’ll just take cigarettes out of ashtrays and use the leftover tobacco in them. A pipe will last for years, and it’ll save me having to buy rolling papers. I figure I can sit by a lake, smoking my pipe, with my duct-taped plastic garbage bags on my head to protect me from the rain, while I fish with my bamboo fishing pole.
I also have some boxes of baking soda, which is just wonderful stuff. It’s great for indigestion, which I might suffer from considering the fact I’ll mostly be eating pigeons and crawdads cooked with wild onions. Baking soda is great for sunburn, which I’ll probably get considering most of my time will be spent fishing at a lake or else sitting on a park bench waiting for pigeons. It’s also great for teeth and gums, and will make a fine addition to my stock of wild bamboo toothpicks.
It’s best to not put all your eggs in one basket. Backup plans are always good. I don’t like having this second plan for retirement, but since the creation of the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank the dollar has lost 95 percent of its value in less than 100 years, I think having my shopping cart is a good idea.
Now if only the government would cut all taxes by about 90 percent, get rid of about 90 percent of the job-destroying regulations, and stop destroying the value of our money by inflation, my – and everyone else’s – income would skyrocket. I’d have plenty of money to shove away for retirement. Everyone else would, too.
Then I could buy an RV and travel the country after I retire. On the other hand, if someday you see a guy pushing a shopping cart down the street, dressed in duct-taped plastic garbage bags, and smoking a pipe, toss him a quarter.
He’ll appreciate it, I guarantee you.
I Ponder Learning Teleportation
I've recently been thinking about teaching myself teleportation, but I realize there are some pretty bad problems associated with it.
For one, the spin of the earth. The earth spins at about 1000 miles an hour at the equator. Let's say I jumped from either pole to the equator.
I'd go from barely moving at all to going 1000 miles an hour! You know what would happen? I not only would be killed, I'd be nothing but a very long red streak.
Now if I was to jump from the equator to either pole, I'd appear at the pole and instantly be going 1000 miles an hour. I'd just shoot off into the air, and of course the g-force would squash my innards flat.
I could jump from either pole into space, and have no problem as long as my spacesuit went with me. But again, from the equator into space, and I'd materialize doing 1000 mph. The inertia would pancake me.
As best as I remember, the moon is doing about 60 miles a second, so I could jump from the earth to the trailing edge, and have no problem. But if I appeared on the leading edge, I'd hit at 60 miles a second.
Now that I think about it, I was conned by Star Trek. That damn transporter would not work at all, unless the Enterprise was in a geosynchronous orbit. Otherwise, splat.
I don't even want to discuss the idea of being disintegrated and reconstituted. That's just too horrible to even imagine!
For one, the spin of the earth. The earth spins at about 1000 miles an hour at the equator. Let's say I jumped from either pole to the equator.
I'd go from barely moving at all to going 1000 miles an hour! You know what would happen? I not only would be killed, I'd be nothing but a very long red streak.
Now if I was to jump from the equator to either pole, I'd appear at the pole and instantly be going 1000 miles an hour. I'd just shoot off into the air, and of course the g-force would squash my innards flat.
I could jump from either pole into space, and have no problem as long as my spacesuit went with me. But again, from the equator into space, and I'd materialize doing 1000 mph. The inertia would pancake me.
As best as I remember, the moon is doing about 60 miles a second, so I could jump from the earth to the trailing edge, and have no problem. But if I appeared on the leading edge, I'd hit at 60 miles a second.
Now that I think about it, I was conned by Star Trek. That damn transporter would not work at all, unless the Enterprise was in a geosynchronous orbit. Otherwise, splat.
I don't even want to discuss the idea of being disintegrated and reconstituted. That's just too horrible to even imagine!
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