It just struck me very strongly that the fact that DUELING was still popular and apparently accepted among at least some of our founding fathers SHOULD BE TAKEN AS A WARNING.
My opinion of “originalism” in Constitutional interpretation just deteriorated. Not that it was high to start with.
Why “Conservatives” want to conserve the barbaric concepts from the past is something I fail to understand. At the time of the founding of the country, we gave lip service to equality. It’s time to take action to elect and support people who will work to promote equality. And trying to act like we can have equality in the US when it’s not present all over the globe is a farce.
May all beings be happy. May all beings have the causes of happiness.
Balance is the core element of all true spiritual paths. The human condition consigns us to be killers, whether of plants, the insects or fungi that would have otherwise have eaten them, or “higher” life forms.
The salient question is what we make of the inevitable pain we cause. Since without evil, we wouldn’t even know what good is, some evil must exist in for good to be recognized.
But balance in real life is much more complicated than choosing good or evil. Most of the time we don’t know which one we are choosing until years / decades later, and even then, what appeared evil may end up being the compost that brought forth the beautiful flower of a later, larger good.
So what else might we consider trying to balance? The food we consume and the energy we expend? Now there’s a huge effort right there! The amount of work we do and the time we “relax”? The amount of money we earn and what we spend? The skills we develop versus the friendships we nurture?
Of course that last one isn’t really an either / or. We can build friendships with people who are working on similar skill development, or those we mentor or are mentored by.
How do we balance our feeling of integrity when fighting for justice against people who disagree with us?
Is the United States setting itself up for a major internal conflict with the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice?
Isn’t it time for humanity to vomit up the remains of the undigested apple of knowledge of good and evil? It was always a false choice. That was the greater sin. Believing that we could KNOW GOOD AND EVIL, rather than focusing on pragmatic realities for the benefit of all.
I feel depressed and disgusted when confronted by the actions of people who think they are doing good by forcing women to bear unwanted children.
How many people existing today were actually PLANNED by their parents? When I was in the home-birth education course, decades ago, we were the ONLY couple of 10 who had actually planned that conception at that time. Those working against abortion are basically saying “I (or others) suffered, so must you.” Could it be perverse cruelty that drives them? Why is the unborn more important than the born? Only because we are tied to values that date from the time when a group kept its property by having soldiers to defend it to the death. The perceived necessities of group survival morphed into forcing individual behavior.
In most cultures on the earth today, the worst thing that can happen is to be burdened with the care of undesired offspring. I see many friends and acquaintances whose lives and dreams were put on hold for decades, or forever, by having to become parents before they were ready. The price of a moment’s passion or victimization can be steep.
I have never seen any historians specifically state that the need for armies was due in large part to the filling of the parts of the earth where it is relatively easy to survive. This 5000 year old imbalance is philosophically starting to tip back, but without renouncing our belief in the possibility of self-righteousness,I think attaining balance will be tough job.
May all beings be happy, and more importantly, may all beings have the causes of happiness.
To achieve that, we must promote education and basic security for all. That will be much easier if we promote policies that ensure children are born when they have a nurturing space in society awaiting them. Right now, the dominant world culture promotes misery for most.
Now Linda could think more clearly. Now her true thoughts came to the surface.
Linda’s nascent understanding of who she was started to grow.
She started to catch some of her perceptions on their way to being modified; on the way to becoming thoughts, feelings and knowledge.
Part C
Linda started to experience awe more often. She devoured the literature on consciousness. She learned that chimpanzees can covet their neighbor’s sexual partner. Chimpanzees can covet their neighbor’s social status. But chimpanzees can’t ask “Is there another I, besides the one in this body, limited to these sexual partners and this place in the social structure?”
Part D
Linda started seeing her limitations dissolve. Linda knew that she was no longer a toddler, a kid, a teen, a college student, an independent head of household, with all of those incumbent burdens.
Part E
Linda no longer saw the fields of green, the flowers of red. Instead she saw the blades of ancient grasses. She saw her far ancestors harvesting the few golden wheat seeds which clung to their stalks. She saw the flowers with the eyes of the bee, so much closer to their real glorious colors.
She saw, through the eyes of the mole, the worms wriggling under the dark earth.
She experienced the jubilation of Hypatia, at the knowledge stored in the modern library of Alexandria.
She experienced liberation from care, after sitting at the feet of Patanjali.
She saw the sunlight. She no longer needed artifice from a venerable human to create interest in the world.
Part F
Linda walked to the fridge. She still needed to eat. She saw that old magnet declaring Hare Krishna! This time she understood. This time she knew what awaited her, the next time she chanted the name.
Part G
This time she knew that she didn’t need to chant the name. She was home.
I have always been a rebel. Osho says society can’t tolerate the Rebel. That’s probably at least part of the source of my problems!
You might enjoy listening to a short story I wrote about the source of our myths that evolved into Mother Mary, and The Goddess in many of her forms. This was humanity’s first major attempt to avoid the worst of the vagaries of nature.
You kindof have to be a bit rebellious to think that, as an outsider, you understand something that all the specialists missed.
I am a bit disappointed that no ancient historians have ever contacted me about The Convolution of Knomo Choicius, a sci-fi novel whose protagonist is a history professor. How many such novels can there be?
Nothing to flaunt at the playground. I will flaunt this rainbow, although it is not too bright in the photo!
I didn’t know what to write for flaunt as a prompt, so clicked on “Try Another,” and was taken back to 2015… with “Ode to a Playground.”
Boy did that bring back memories…of my elementary school playground. There was a small group of us, girls and boys from a mixed first and second grade class, before the boys started going into the their girl hating phase, who met, every recess, in a small “boat” made from concrete blocks. It was the outline of a big row-boat, and we sat on the block “edges” of the “boat” and pretended to be going somewhere. When we got bored, we went over to a big tree stump, that was just starting to rot in the middle. We’d put in acorns and dead leaves and pretend to be making soup. The hole got bigger and bigger, and when I went back to it in high school, the stump was almost completely hollowed out.
A far cry from the electronic games that seems to be the only thing that holds kids’ attention these days, I doubt any of them would be impressed if I tried to flaunt the fun times we had on the concrete boat near the dead tree stump.
Camille Pissarro (French, 1830 – 1903 ), Self-Portrait (Camille Pissarro, par lui-meme), c. 1890, etching (zinc), Rosenwald Collection 1953.6.115
It’s a monotone sketch. Dark background and he wears a dark coat, clinging to his shoulders, with the neck opening hidden by a fleecy beard. Said to be a key figure in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art movements, his dark eyes look out of his medium toned face. The eyes don’t stare, and maybe don’t even gaze, over the tops of the reading glasses perched fairly high on the bridge of his nose. The eyes look, his right eyelid a little lower, his left iris looking up, while the right perhaps focuses inward. Wearing an almost triangular hat, again light colored to balance the beard, Pissarro keeps his lips closed, the mustache hiding the slit between the partially exposed pair of lips.
The light must be coming from the lower left of the image, shining toward the subject-object of the work. Not at all photographic, he was afterall, an Imressionist artist. The glint of the light brightens the left side of the glasses, left as seen by the viewer, while the lack of light bouncing back at us from the right side of the glasses allows us to see through to the artist’s lower eyelashes.
Only now, I notice the hair, protruding from under the semi-triangular cap. The cap and face together form a bright capital T in a sea of darkness.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/observe
Another piece of writing from our writing group prompt today…
Querencia
Having never learned Spanish, this word sounds like it means something totally different from what it is said to mean by sources purporting to be truthful, or at least accurate.
Que usually indicates the root in Sanscrit referring to what. This root is used to make the word aqua. In other languages derived from Sanscrit, including English, there is also a relationship between what and water. In German it’s was and wasser. In Hebrew, ma and mayim, which is supposedly not related to Sanskrit. Anyway, my Hebrew teacher said it was because an untasted source of water was always a mystery. Always a question. That was my introduction to the name of the science of philology, which I had long loved without knowing her name.
So querencia sounds like what and hacienda kindof merged. What House? What home? The fantasy home that we can only have in our dreams. The home where there are always fresh flowers in the windows during the day, and a light at night. The home where someone awaits our arrival with open arms, a glass of wine, and a plate of cheese and crackers. The home where the sound drowns us not, but laps pleasantly around our feet, rising in gentle waves to bathe us.
Or is querencia a type of question? Yes, it brings us back to what, the exemplar question word. Like query and hence querant, the person coming to the Tarot reader. The one who wants to know. Kennen. Connaitre. Know. See. See what? See the eye. The eye is what sees what there is to see. Window is the eye for the wind. The wind carries spirit. Spirit knows all. What? What? Querencia. My final querencia is not the fantasy house. But the question. What? What lies where I can not see? What? The querant must query.
Almost always been a grouch. Since the age of four, according to my mother.
I think it is because I was very sick that year, perhaps had a near death experience. That’s my after-the-fact explanation, anyway.
Decades later, I learned the word curmudgeon. One of my mentors was known as “the curmudgeon’s curmudgeon.” He had a heart of gold, and he became a good friend. Never had to paste a fake cheerfulness on my face when I was with him. Yet, he called me “Sunshine.” Haha. I really felt that was funny. This was still during the multiple decades when my first thought every morning was “Fuck. I’m still alive.”
Things are significantly better now. I have even had some stretches of months where my first thought was “at least I can understand waking up and thanking the Great Spirit for bringing me back to life.” But I always sink back into my curmudgeonly ways. It’s not that I’m ungrateful for the comforts I experience. I simply can’t overlook the enormity of the suffering caused by obstinate adherence to outdated moral codes. That is the biggest thing holding most of humanity in bondage, and however blessed I find my person, I wish the Great Spirit would give up its attraction to horror movies.
The March 18, 2018 Ionia Sentinel-Standard ran an opinion piece which had a comparison of the USA today and the impending doom of the Roman Empire, way back when.
The writer noted that another writer had commented on the “Breakdown of the nuclear family…. [which had provided] a common set of norms and values and in turn drives the moral compass of a nation.”
The problem isn’t that parallels are not visible. The problem is that the Romans did not have a nuclear family structure, which could have broken down.
The Romans, like most ancient peoples, had other family arrangements, more extended than nuclear. And women and the young had little or no rights. Maybe it’s a good thing the Roman family structure broke down, and maybe ours will eventually get some needed improvements in this same manner.
