Make Nice

Any form of government will do if people would just be nice to each other. 

Revolution is a Song of Hope 

When history has no answer to the question it has posed 

and oppression’s dark grasp constricts the heart 

When ideas are empowered over happiness 

and opportunity’s lustrous glow dims Flickers And goes out 

They talk of revolution 

Each foaming fleck of tide perceives itself possessing a direction 

And revolution is its song of hope 

The moon it is 

That pipes tide's tune 

And the singing flecks of tide’s ovation 

The pull 

The sweep 

Of history’s dark sway 

Assures the next dark movement of its day 

And to the small still-rooted reed 

Their song of hope is the birth-cry 

Of the next oppression 

The Chicken, the Egg, and Virgin Birth

Just for the fun of it let’s conduct a little imaginary experiment. Let’s take a cubic meter of space and shield it from all penetrating particles and all pervasive waveforms, then let’s identify and remove all bits of anything that exist within our test cube. What we have now is a cubic meter of nothing. And not your garden-variety colloquial nothing, but the real thing: real nothing. Our defined space is wholly empty: but there is room only for what will fit within it; the gorge point at present would seem to be matter at the state found in the interior of black holes.

There has to be nothing or there wouldn’t be room for anything (this was pointed out to me by my precocious daughter at age six). The presence of anything defines space, and perhaps defined space is the ultimate nature of everything. Absolute nothingness is devoid of properties, and string theory could be described as nothing achieving propertyness. As to why it would do that, well that is another question….perhaps it was bored.

Absolute nothingness has no dimensions, no time, no space. And all it takes to create an eternity of endless space is for the merest infinitesimal something to take form. Everything that exists (including an idea) has the true measure of its existence only when compared to Nothing.

So it is obvious that Nothing, in the first Virgin Birth, was somehow pregnant with Space-Time. And the rest is history.

The Real Non-verbal World



There is no real non-verbal world
Of which no accurate pronouncement can be made


With conjecture or without
The stone falls
No contradistinction left or right
Anymore than up

And though the illusion that opposites exist
Will serve as fact of common sense
The properties of all things and phenomenon
Are not
And cannot be
Contained
They exist not in contrast


Everything that exists
Exists at once
And all movement in this net of simultaneity
Called the Universe

Is some degree of lateral


In the real non-verbal world



.

Light and Dark

Allusion to “Light and Dark” may be the most ancient religious metaphor in common usage: the forces of Darkness, the transforming power of Enlightenment. And always light and dark are presented as a contrast of opposites. Well, they are not.

Darkness is the abode of light. Light does not displace the dark: light infuses the dark. And those who would eschew all familiarity with the dark are just as misguided as those who would romantically embrace it.

Manichean separation of elements sets them at war. Darkness is given a power that belies its inherent passivity. Light is left homeless in a vacuum of ignorance: agar plate for dangerous imaginings.

Self-knowledge is not concerned with protecting the thought-forms of naivety, but with informing the dark with light.

Shadows


The setting sun has set the sky ablaze

Trees loom black
Shadows reach long

There are shadows without
There are shadows within

Vacancies in luminance
When perceived appear


As creatures of a nether light

Industrial Feudalism

Feudalism is the default system of human communal intercourse, and we have in the space of some few hundred years made an epochal shift from agrarian feudalism into the age of industrial feudalism. Industrial feudalism has an identical hierarchical structure to agrarian feudalism but is based on the production of goods to such a point that even agriculture is subsumed as an industrial product. There are lords; there are serfs. Lords own the means of production. Serfs are bound to labor in production no less than they were a thousand years ago, and the middle class as an economic class is a falsehood. The real middle class is not the management class serf, but rather the artist, craftsman, and small business operator. And again this is unchanged from its previous agrarian constellation.

Government is quite another matter. A democratic republic is founded on the common dignity of all beings, and on a rule of law dedicated to such principles. All government is imperiled by hubris, disenfranchisement, and ennui.

Reciprocal respect for the dignity of individuals is the only hope for civility to survive civilization. And if we are unable to grant to others the dignity of their confusion then there can be no dignity at all.

Equality

we hear a lot of preaching these days

about equality

there is no equality

never has been

nothing is the equal of anything else

equality as an ideal denigrates the low

and debases the high

it is an idea invented by the jealous to enflame the ignorant

and it is an affront to nature

the sanctity of our uniqueness is the foundation of human dignity

and the test of dignity is as we extend it to others

this is the sum total of all the equality that ever was