I came across this picture today, and it suddenly felt like a good time to make a meme...
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Saturday, December 31, 2011
The Beginning of the End of the Beginning...
2011 is about to close. I am not where I thought I would be, but I'm not where I used to be... and that is definitely a step in the right direction.
An old boss of mine once told me that the Indians have a saying: At some point in your life you will receive seven years of bad luck, followed by seven years of good luck.
From the beginning of 2005 til now, my life has become something I couldn't possibly have conceived of in my youth... I have had people tell me throughout this past year how amazed they are at my resilience, or how well I look, or how much I've accomplished... and I want to tell them that they really, truly have no idea. They don't know.
They couldn't know, really. Even the ones who are so close to me. And that is why I don't scream it at them from the rooftops. That is why I don't give in to all the terrible things that have torn off and eaten little parts of my heart over all this time.
I have been into the most physical manifestation of Hell imaginable: my own mind. Throughout everything, I have managed to be optimistic... I have managed to overcome obstacles because in my heart I have tremendous faith in myself, my family, my friends, and my love of others. I have been hurt, but my experiences have made me realize what is really important:
I spend time with people who want to spend time with me.
I cherish people who earn that affection.
I exalt those who compliment me and our shared ideals.
I appreciate the zeal of passion, the strength of intelligence, and the charisma of confidence, for I find people who can hold conversations with me for hours on end and who can see the world in a marvelous way as I do despite it all absolutely fascinating and beautiful.
I live for the moments when the people I adore demonstrate the reasons for my feelings; they are testaments to everything I believe in.
Above all else, I admire and applaud people who want to change the world, sincerely. I remember wanting to do things for selfish reasons when I was younger... but the resolve that grew in me over the past seven years has taken on a life of its own:
I WILL change the world.
It is as simple as that.
It may not be with a "REAL" job, as opposed to "Artsy" or "Theoretical" jobs, but it WILL be with every fiber of my being, with the core of my essence, with the last bit of breath in my body I will harness whatever strength is inside me and inside those who will join in my Crusade, and we will change EVERYTHING.
For Good.
For Always.
If Naren was right, my seven years are almost up... and I have less than two months left til I miss the "Death at 27" curse that seems to strike creative people who make an impact while they're young... and if his conviction and faith sustained him through everything in his life, it sure as hell can do the same for mine.
This entire past year has been better than the last, and next year can only be better. I have met so many wonderful people; I have had some marvelous experiences; I have loved life as if it were a precious, unsustainable gift... because that is exactly what it is.
The people who have made all of those moments, especially this past week, so unforgettable and invigorating... I hope you know how awesome this ride has been, and how you have contributed to it.
Thank you all, with all my heart.
Let us make 2012 the greatest year of our lives.
An old boss of mine once told me that the Indians have a saying: At some point in your life you will receive seven years of bad luck, followed by seven years of good luck.
From the beginning of 2005 til now, my life has become something I couldn't possibly have conceived of in my youth... I have had people tell me throughout this past year how amazed they are at my resilience, or how well I look, or how much I've accomplished... and I want to tell them that they really, truly have no idea. They don't know.
They couldn't know, really. Even the ones who are so close to me. And that is why I don't scream it at them from the rooftops. That is why I don't give in to all the terrible things that have torn off and eaten little parts of my heart over all this time.
I have been into the most physical manifestation of Hell imaginable: my own mind. Throughout everything, I have managed to be optimistic... I have managed to overcome obstacles because in my heart I have tremendous faith in myself, my family, my friends, and my love of others. I have been hurt, but my experiences have made me realize what is really important:
I spend time with people who want to spend time with me.
I cherish people who earn that affection.
I exalt those who compliment me and our shared ideals.
I appreciate the zeal of passion, the strength of intelligence, and the charisma of confidence, for I find people who can hold conversations with me for hours on end and who can see the world in a marvelous way as I do despite it all absolutely fascinating and beautiful.
I live for the moments when the people I adore demonstrate the reasons for my feelings; they are testaments to everything I believe in.
Above all else, I admire and applaud people who want to change the world, sincerely. I remember wanting to do things for selfish reasons when I was younger... but the resolve that grew in me over the past seven years has taken on a life of its own:
I WILL change the world.
It is as simple as that.
It may not be with a "REAL" job, as opposed to "Artsy" or "Theoretical" jobs, but it WILL be with every fiber of my being, with the core of my essence, with the last bit of breath in my body I will harness whatever strength is inside me and inside those who will join in my Crusade, and we will change EVERYTHING.
For Good.
For Always.
If Naren was right, my seven years are almost up... and I have less than two months left til I miss the "Death at 27" curse that seems to strike creative people who make an impact while they're young... and if his conviction and faith sustained him through everything in his life, it sure as hell can do the same for mine.
This entire past year has been better than the last, and next year can only be better. I have met so many wonderful people; I have had some marvelous experiences; I have loved life as if it were a precious, unsustainable gift... because that is exactly what it is.
The people who have made all of those moments, especially this past week, so unforgettable and invigorating... I hope you know how awesome this ride has been, and how you have contributed to it.
Thank you all, with all my heart.
Let us make 2012 the greatest year of our lives.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
With Strange Aeons, Even Death May Get A Life.
Whenever major events come up in my life, I tend to get distant, particularly from people I love and care for... there are certain days of the year which have special meaning for me, when I am difficult to find, or simply stay in all day, preferably with a book or perhaps just my memories. I have grown accustomed to being alone for long periods of time, either simply in a spiritual sense or in a physical way, too. Nevertheless, this can create problems for me when I become... shall we say, overstimulated: I love being in large groups, and interacting with people, but coming down off it leaves me feeling agoraphobic and estranged, like Emily Dickinson on speed.
I have little to complain of: my family is wonderful, I live in relative comfort, and those who count me as their friend truly are the best friends I could hope for. My life isn't where I would like it to be... but let's face it, who's is?
The simple fact is, there are horrendous moments of clarity in my interactions with people, where it suddenly dawns on me that, for all our conversations about quantum theory, the potential presence of god, the necessity of change, everything, that in, perhaps, sixty or seventy years, we will be dead, and none of it will matter.
I am not a hedonist or an atheist, but I see nothing wrong in living a life that advocates experiencing as much as possible WHILE it is possible and questioning blind dogma about ANY religious belief. I see nothing wrong in making decisions, good or bad, as long as they are made. And I see no point in clinging to mistakes, regrets, and lost loves in a vain attempt to change the past rather than learning from them to effect the future.
But...
Sometimes, I wonder, if I were given the opportunity to exist forever (as, most likely, pure energy, as I have postulated before in my play, Connections), whether or not I would take it. I think my situation and nature is uniquely suited for this... but would I truly want to see what we turn into? What becomes of us?
Strange aeons, indeed.
I have little to complain of: my family is wonderful, I live in relative comfort, and those who count me as their friend truly are the best friends I could hope for. My life isn't where I would like it to be... but let's face it, who's is?
The simple fact is, there are horrendous moments of clarity in my interactions with people, where it suddenly dawns on me that, for all our conversations about quantum theory, the potential presence of god, the necessity of change, everything, that in, perhaps, sixty or seventy years, we will be dead, and none of it will matter.
I am not a hedonist or an atheist, but I see nothing wrong in living a life that advocates experiencing as much as possible WHILE it is possible and questioning blind dogma about ANY religious belief. I see nothing wrong in making decisions, good or bad, as long as they are made. And I see no point in clinging to mistakes, regrets, and lost loves in a vain attempt to change the past rather than learning from them to effect the future.
But...
Sometimes, I wonder, if I were given the opportunity to exist forever (as, most likely, pure energy, as I have postulated before in my play, Connections), whether or not I would take it. I think my situation and nature is uniquely suited for this... but would I truly want to see what we turn into? What becomes of us?
Strange aeons, indeed.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
What Will Happen to Casey Anthony?
So, I normally try to stay out of things like this, because I think any time another "Crime of the Century" comes along, it distracts us from the real crimes of the century, which usually involve CEOs or the CIA or some other acronym doing something fairly nefarious and doing it for a very long time, unabashedly. We have a tendency in this country to fixate on anything and everything that will distract us from the tragedies of our own lives, as if the suffering and trauma of others will somehow make ours less painful by comparison or proxy. Sometimes this is good, such as when a person channels their pain and trouble into doing good for others, alleviating the pain of others, thus making their own burdens feel less staggering. Most people, however, go on witch hunts, insist that people are guilty or "wrong" because of the way they look or act, and operate without any facts at their disposal, just hearsay that they suck up like sponges from the media, judicial platforms, and even their friends and families. A prosecutor's job is to make you believe someone is guilty no matter what, just like a defender's job is to make you believe someone is innocent no matter what; never forget this. If you do, here are some broad examples of this sort of "guilty by association" reasoning, where the defender either didn't exist or had little to no power:
The Holocaust.
The Salem Witch Trials.
Eugenics.
The Crusades.
Slavery.
Proposition 8.
The Inquisition.
Rwanda.
There are millions of examples of this, some more direct than others, but the simple fact of the matter is that no matter how cool the technology is that we develop, no matter how fast we learn how to travel, no matter how much we understand about our universe... we are still, at base level, paranoid animals who are reasonably sure that we are good, and others are bad. This is flawed, but not entirely untrue, I'll admit; a better analysis would be that we are both good AND bad, all of us, and that judging people based on our opinions or what is masqueraded as fact should always be viewed in an extremely critical light.
Nevertheless, I cannot say that I know, one way or another, whether Casey Anthony murdered her daughter or not. Which was the point. As a prosecutor, when you go into trial, you had better have definitive evidence, visual, quantifiable proof, showing a race of people who predominantly survive (still) on instinct and sensation that THIS ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY IS WHAT HAPPENED.
Otherwise, as this country learns the hard way, again and again, reasonable doubt MUST be accounted for. Just because you believe something doesn't mean it is true. And yes, I'm talking to you, Nancy Grace. By the way, how are those lacrosse players doing these days?
If you, as a defendant, did something, and they can prove it, just admit it. Don't go to trial; you will lose. You will fall farther than you already have, and pay a terrible price for it. The hardest thing for someone to do who has made a mistake is to accept it, and start moving forward. Casey Anthony now only has to admit to one mistake: She is a terrible liar. Like, seriously; beyond stupid. Reeeeally bad at it. Those lies brought so much upon her that she deserved anything the judge and jury threw at her for those charges. And I have no doubt she will continue to lie. She is a posterchild for the latest generation of attention whores and pathological liars, and I'm really looking forward to seeing Ellen Page win an Oscar for portraying her in the movie they'll undoubtedly be making soon: Monster 2 - The Casey Anthony Trial.
That being said, here is what I, personally, think will happen to her:
She will try to have a normal life, but it will be impossible. She is a pariah in her own country now, thanks to the media exposure, and having spent so much time in jail these past three years she will be completely unprepared to deal with it. Not even getting married to change her name will avail her; if she isn't lynched by a vigilante mob, she will spend most of her time hiding from the world, and eventually start doing drugs (and, since it's Florida, let's face it, it'll either be meth or scrips).
Because the media CANNOT SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT HER, she will be given her own reality show... probably right after and before, respectively, MTV's newest shows "Sarah and Bristol Do America" and "My Super Sexy Underaged Bachelorette Party." This will satiate anyone literally frothing at the mouth for more news of Caseygate, as well as appealing to all the die-hard folks who protest her innocence as well. Eventually, she will be seen on this show actually doing drugs... and she will be arrested.
The judge and jury, using ABSOLUTE, VISUAL EVIDENCE of her drug use, will give her the maximum penalty, especially if she doesn't plead guilty, and she will probably go for fifteen to twenty years, higher if they get her on Possession with Intent to Sell. Much like O.J., if you are ever in court but come out somewhat clean, don't do anything that could get you back into it, because if the first time around the prosecution does not get their pound of flesh, they will make it their life's mission to get you again and disembowel you the next time.
As we all know from historical examples, the only way to make sure someone famous goes to jail is to get them for tax evasion or drug use. Since this country seems to be headed towards turning into an anarchocapitalistic beaurocracy, without taxation or true representation, I'm betting on the drugs.
So that's what I think will happen. Come on America, you all know it doesn't matter if she was found innocent or guilty this time; what matters is how long it takes for her to screw up next time!
...right?
The Holocaust.
The Salem Witch Trials.
Eugenics.
The Crusades.
Slavery.
Proposition 8.
The Inquisition.
Rwanda.
There are millions of examples of this, some more direct than others, but the simple fact of the matter is that no matter how cool the technology is that we develop, no matter how fast we learn how to travel, no matter how much we understand about our universe... we are still, at base level, paranoid animals who are reasonably sure that we are good, and others are bad. This is flawed, but not entirely untrue, I'll admit; a better analysis would be that we are both good AND bad, all of us, and that judging people based on our opinions or what is masqueraded as fact should always be viewed in an extremely critical light.
Nevertheless, I cannot say that I know, one way or another, whether Casey Anthony murdered her daughter or not. Which was the point. As a prosecutor, when you go into trial, you had better have definitive evidence, visual, quantifiable proof, showing a race of people who predominantly survive (still) on instinct and sensation that THIS ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY IS WHAT HAPPENED.
Otherwise, as this country learns the hard way, again and again, reasonable doubt MUST be accounted for. Just because you believe something doesn't mean it is true. And yes, I'm talking to you, Nancy Grace. By the way, how are those lacrosse players doing these days?
If you, as a defendant, did something, and they can prove it, just admit it. Don't go to trial; you will lose. You will fall farther than you already have, and pay a terrible price for it. The hardest thing for someone to do who has made a mistake is to accept it, and start moving forward. Casey Anthony now only has to admit to one mistake: She is a terrible liar. Like, seriously; beyond stupid. Reeeeally bad at it. Those lies brought so much upon her that she deserved anything the judge and jury threw at her for those charges. And I have no doubt she will continue to lie. She is a posterchild for the latest generation of attention whores and pathological liars, and I'm really looking forward to seeing Ellen Page win an Oscar for portraying her in the movie they'll undoubtedly be making soon: Monster 2 - The Casey Anthony Trial.
That being said, here is what I, personally, think will happen to her:
She will try to have a normal life, but it will be impossible. She is a pariah in her own country now, thanks to the media exposure, and having spent so much time in jail these past three years she will be completely unprepared to deal with it. Not even getting married to change her name will avail her; if she isn't lynched by a vigilante mob, she will spend most of her time hiding from the world, and eventually start doing drugs (and, since it's Florida, let's face it, it'll either be meth or scrips).
Because the media CANNOT SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT HER, she will be given her own reality show... probably right after and before, respectively, MTV's newest shows "Sarah and Bristol Do America" and "My Super Sexy Underaged Bachelorette Party." This will satiate anyone literally frothing at the mouth for more news of Caseygate, as well as appealing to all the die-hard folks who protest her innocence as well. Eventually, she will be seen on this show actually doing drugs... and she will be arrested.
The judge and jury, using ABSOLUTE, VISUAL EVIDENCE of her drug use, will give her the maximum penalty, especially if she doesn't plead guilty, and she will probably go for fifteen to twenty years, higher if they get her on Possession with Intent to Sell. Much like O.J., if you are ever in court but come out somewhat clean, don't do anything that could get you back into it, because if the first time around the prosecution does not get their pound of flesh, they will make it their life's mission to get you again and disembowel you the next time.
As we all know from historical examples, the only way to make sure someone famous goes to jail is to get them for tax evasion or drug use. Since this country seems to be headed towards turning into an anarchocapitalistic beaurocracy, without taxation or true representation, I'm betting on the drugs.
So that's what I think will happen. Come on America, you all know it doesn't matter if she was found innocent or guilty this time; what matters is how long it takes for her to screw up next time!
...right?
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Oh Joy. Oh Rapture.
Okay, since today is one of the latest in a series of doomsday deadlines (and, as yet, nothing has happened) I thought it would be fun to write about it.
First of all, before I even get to playing Devil's Advocate and actually discuss the scientific analysis of the Rapture, I will explain the context of the idea of the Rapture itself.
From very early on in the Abrahamic faith called Judaism, there are stories of people taken up into the heavens, for whatever reason. Perhaps the best known examples are not found in many books because they were deemed apocryphal, yet the ravenous need to learn everything possible about the nature of god, the angels, and heaven has made this a small technicality. The Book of Enoch, the first of all the Old Testament texts which is written in the first person, describes an event which is mentioned oh-so briefly in Genesis:
"And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." - Gen 5:24
This is all you get in the mainstream religious stuff, but in the Book of Enoch you get a startling story of what today we would call an alien abduction, where Enoch is whisked up into a vessel in the sky where God and all the angels pilot it around. Each of them is named, and they have specific tasks they perform aboard this ship, and in the end Enoch is returned, but even though it seems like a very short time has passed for him (a year or two at most) down on Earth the flood has occurred and many decades have passed.
I should like to point out that this story, like all the stories in both the Old and New Testaments, is not fresh; an earlier story that is almost identical to that one can be found in the epic of Gilgamesh, written centuries earlier, and on a wall, which is a little harder to cover up and get rid of than simple papyrus.
Anyway, moving forward in time, you get Christ, and whatever else you believe about him, it is pretty obvious that no one can agree on what the hell he was actually talking about. While religion has the dubious distinction of being one of the only reasons people with money actually spend it on anything, it is also the reason why so few people can get along; knowing you're absolutely, positively right about something means that any seed of doubt must be eradicated, by any means necessary, which is why atheists are just as bad about all this as religious people... the only difference is, atheists live in a day and age where it's no longer acceptable to commit genocide just because you don't agree with someone, although I'm sure if they could have Crusades, they would.
Now, I don't really want to explain the Rapture, since I think it is either completely metaphorical or a colossal load of bullshit, so here is a wikipedia entry about it (the perfect forum for discussing this topic, I believe):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture
As you can see from this extensive entry, that's all that most people have to say about it; their opinions range from truly believing they will float up into the sky to high-five Jesus down to simply passing away quietly in their sleep. Whatever the case, the idea is that some massive purge will happen, leaving many behind to suffer. To me, this sounds almost exactly like what happens after a nuclear attack or meltdown, so I choose to look at it in a metaphorical sense. Anything that happens after the actual "event" is purely speculative.
Okay, so now we come to the mathematics used by this former civil engineer to arrive at both his original proclamation (1994) and his latest one (2011). Since we don't have Lewis Black to take a fossil out of his pocket and say "fossil," we'll have to have a little discussion about that, too:
There are these things called fossils. They take a very long time to form. They are usually the bones, carapaces, or debris left over from lifeforms who lived a long, long time ago, because when protected in the ground from the harmful forces that swirl over the surface of our planet at any given time, they won't decompose. Fossils range from being hundreds of thousands to millions of years old, and they tell us an awful lot about whatever God or the aliens or the flying spaghetti monster was doing before we showed up. Now, other cultures have stories which predate what Mr. Camping calls the beginning of the world; some of my favorites come from the areas which are now India and Pakistan, stories of great, big, colorful deities who wage war with each other and use humans as pawns.
...Krishna, by the way, was a carpenter, born on December 25th.
Now, as we look at the history of our time on this planet, there is one particular thing we must take into account: It is REALLY scary. Like, poop your pants scary. SO SCARY that for a very long time we didn't even know what the hell that big glowy thing was in the sky, and when it went away for a while each day we went apeshit, killing newborns and all sorts of other stuff. So, when there is so little to be certain of, you really need comfort, something that lets you know there's a reason you exist. Religion is great at this, because it's the same as just saying no: so simple, it's foolproof. Nancy Reagan had it right:
"But what if I start to think that maybe Gabriel really did show up six hundred years after Christ and try to help out the descendants of a handmaiden?"
"JUST SAY NO."
"But what if it seems strange that Jesus shares almost exactly the same story as Horus, an Egyptian god who was hanging around 4,000 years earlier?"
"JUST SAY NO."
"But what if it turns out that this was all just some huge fluke, or worse, an experiment by extraterrestrial beings who now feel kind of ashamed of all the tinkering they did with our genetic make-up and have since left us relatively in peace to quietly destroy ourselves, thus freeing them from any responsibility to the consequences of the project?"
"WHAT PART OF JUST SAY NO DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?! BURN THAT HERETIC!!!"
Now, clearly you can see I'm somewhat biased here. I do try to be open-minded, but blind devotion to ANYTHING is a bad idea, be it politics, religion, or a country club. If we were meant to be a herd, we would be; we would all believe the same thing, and original thought would hold no quarter in the development of our species. But it does, so I must, in good faith, dispute the irrevocable and irrefutable nature of religion as hypothesized by so many over such a long time. Besides, I don't think I would enjoy sitting in heaven if I had to listen to Kirk Cameron babble on all day about tricking your own intelligence, or whatever.
So... back to the Rapture. While many people subscribe to this idiotic notion, the REALLY crazy ones pick specific days. Setting yourself up for failure is not something pretty to watch; I take no delight in seeing peoples' hopes and dreams dashed. I feel terribly sorry for the people who waste away all their life savings, drown their children, or feel compelled to suck others into their mania simply to feel right about things. OF COURSE the world is in bad shape: it was in bad shape when Revelations was written, too. All doomsday prophecies are reflective of the times they were written in; they're cryptic not because there's a hidden message in them for a specific date or time period, but usually because they were poking fun at the current establishment in a way that would ultimately lead to being nailed to two sticks of wood, or worse. The fact is that EVERY SINGLE GENERATION has had a moment where they assumed the end of the world was nigh... and the smaller your world, the more likely it is. We aren't seeing a tremendous ramping up of doomsday believers, we're seeing an increasingly more connected world, where you can listen to the ramblings of a man two continents away, or see pictures of earthquake devastation thousands of miles away, or see the earth from space any time you want on the NASA channel and watch massive hurricanes twirl across its surface. The possibilities are endless, and so, while I cannot subscribe to the myth that God and/or Jesus and/or Muhammad will come back to take away all the "good" people, I must endorse the very real possibility that all life on this planet could, indeed, be obliterated. It may be by our own hand, but it is much more likely it will be by something far beyond our control, like an asteroid or the Yellowstone supervolcano. It is this uncertainty, this terrible inability to fight back against forces greater than ourselves, that makes us so pathetically desperate for some rhyme and reason in the universe.
Alright... now I'm going to blow your minds.
First of all, here is my favorite part of this recent hoop-la: instead of rational people coming out saying "The world is not going to end at 6p.m. on Saturday, May 21, 2011," OTHER religious folks who would not otherwise seem fanatical under normal circumstances simply repeat the same clunky piece of verse over and over again:
First of all, before I even get to playing Devil's Advocate and actually discuss the scientific analysis of the Rapture, I will explain the context of the idea of the Rapture itself.
From very early on in the Abrahamic faith called Judaism, there are stories of people taken up into the heavens, for whatever reason. Perhaps the best known examples are not found in many books because they were deemed apocryphal, yet the ravenous need to learn everything possible about the nature of god, the angels, and heaven has made this a small technicality. The Book of Enoch, the first of all the Old Testament texts which is written in the first person, describes an event which is mentioned oh-so briefly in Genesis:
"And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." - Gen 5:24
This is all you get in the mainstream religious stuff, but in the Book of Enoch you get a startling story of what today we would call an alien abduction, where Enoch is whisked up into a vessel in the sky where God and all the angels pilot it around. Each of them is named, and they have specific tasks they perform aboard this ship, and in the end Enoch is returned, but even though it seems like a very short time has passed for him (a year or two at most) down on Earth the flood has occurred and many decades have passed.
I should like to point out that this story, like all the stories in both the Old and New Testaments, is not fresh; an earlier story that is almost identical to that one can be found in the epic of Gilgamesh, written centuries earlier, and on a wall, which is a little harder to cover up and get rid of than simple papyrus.
Anyway, moving forward in time, you get Christ, and whatever else you believe about him, it is pretty obvious that no one can agree on what the hell he was actually talking about. While religion has the dubious distinction of being one of the only reasons people with money actually spend it on anything, it is also the reason why so few people can get along; knowing you're absolutely, positively right about something means that any seed of doubt must be eradicated, by any means necessary, which is why atheists are just as bad about all this as religious people... the only difference is, atheists live in a day and age where it's no longer acceptable to commit genocide just because you don't agree with someone, although I'm sure if they could have Crusades, they would.
Now, I don't really want to explain the Rapture, since I think it is either completely metaphorical or a colossal load of bullshit, so here is a wikipedia entry about it (the perfect forum for discussing this topic, I believe):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture
As you can see from this extensive entry, that's all that most people have to say about it; their opinions range from truly believing they will float up into the sky to high-five Jesus down to simply passing away quietly in their sleep. Whatever the case, the idea is that some massive purge will happen, leaving many behind to suffer. To me, this sounds almost exactly like what happens after a nuclear attack or meltdown, so I choose to look at it in a metaphorical sense. Anything that happens after the actual "event" is purely speculative.
Okay, so now we come to the mathematics used by this former civil engineer to arrive at both his original proclamation (1994) and his latest one (2011). Since we don't have Lewis Black to take a fossil out of his pocket and say "fossil," we'll have to have a little discussion about that, too:
There are these things called fossils. They take a very long time to form. They are usually the bones, carapaces, or debris left over from lifeforms who lived a long, long time ago, because when protected in the ground from the harmful forces that swirl over the surface of our planet at any given time, they won't decompose. Fossils range from being hundreds of thousands to millions of years old, and they tell us an awful lot about whatever God or the aliens or the flying spaghetti monster was doing before we showed up. Now, other cultures have stories which predate what Mr. Camping calls the beginning of the world; some of my favorites come from the areas which are now India and Pakistan, stories of great, big, colorful deities who wage war with each other and use humans as pawns.
...Krishna, by the way, was a carpenter, born on December 25th.
Now, as we look at the history of our time on this planet, there is one particular thing we must take into account: It is REALLY scary. Like, poop your pants scary. SO SCARY that for a very long time we didn't even know what the hell that big glowy thing was in the sky, and when it went away for a while each day we went apeshit, killing newborns and all sorts of other stuff. So, when there is so little to be certain of, you really need comfort, something that lets you know there's a reason you exist. Religion is great at this, because it's the same as just saying no: so simple, it's foolproof. Nancy Reagan had it right:
"But what if I start to think that maybe Gabriel really did show up six hundred years after Christ and try to help out the descendants of a handmaiden?"
"JUST SAY NO."
"But what if it seems strange that Jesus shares almost exactly the same story as Horus, an Egyptian god who was hanging around 4,000 years earlier?"
"JUST SAY NO."
"But what if it turns out that this was all just some huge fluke, or worse, an experiment by extraterrestrial beings who now feel kind of ashamed of all the tinkering they did with our genetic make-up and have since left us relatively in peace to quietly destroy ourselves, thus freeing them from any responsibility to the consequences of the project?"
"WHAT PART OF JUST SAY NO DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?! BURN THAT HERETIC!!!"
Now, clearly you can see I'm somewhat biased here. I do try to be open-minded, but blind devotion to ANYTHING is a bad idea, be it politics, religion, or a country club. If we were meant to be a herd, we would be; we would all believe the same thing, and original thought would hold no quarter in the development of our species. But it does, so I must, in good faith, dispute the irrevocable and irrefutable nature of religion as hypothesized by so many over such a long time. Besides, I don't think I would enjoy sitting in heaven if I had to listen to Kirk Cameron babble on all day about tricking your own intelligence, or whatever.
So... back to the Rapture. While many people subscribe to this idiotic notion, the REALLY crazy ones pick specific days. Setting yourself up for failure is not something pretty to watch; I take no delight in seeing peoples' hopes and dreams dashed. I feel terribly sorry for the people who waste away all their life savings, drown their children, or feel compelled to suck others into their mania simply to feel right about things. OF COURSE the world is in bad shape: it was in bad shape when Revelations was written, too. All doomsday prophecies are reflective of the times they were written in; they're cryptic not because there's a hidden message in them for a specific date or time period, but usually because they were poking fun at the current establishment in a way that would ultimately lead to being nailed to two sticks of wood, or worse. The fact is that EVERY SINGLE GENERATION has had a moment where they assumed the end of the world was nigh... and the smaller your world, the more likely it is. We aren't seeing a tremendous ramping up of doomsday believers, we're seeing an increasingly more connected world, where you can listen to the ramblings of a man two continents away, or see pictures of earthquake devastation thousands of miles away, or see the earth from space any time you want on the NASA channel and watch massive hurricanes twirl across its surface. The possibilities are endless, and so, while I cannot subscribe to the myth that God and/or Jesus and/or Muhammad will come back to take away all the "good" people, I must endorse the very real possibility that all life on this planet could, indeed, be obliterated. It may be by our own hand, but it is much more likely it will be by something far beyond our control, like an asteroid or the Yellowstone supervolcano. It is this uncertainty, this terrible inability to fight back against forces greater than ourselves, that makes us so pathetically desperate for some rhyme and reason in the universe.
Alright... now I'm going to blow your minds.
First of all, here is my favorite part of this recent hoop-la: instead of rational people coming out saying "The world is not going to end at 6p.m. on Saturday, May 21, 2011," OTHER religious folks who would not otherwise seem fanatical under normal circumstances simply repeat the same clunky piece of verse over and over again:
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Intermedio...
I think it may be a good sign that I'm not writing as much in my blog these days... it means I'm too busy with everything else going on in my life to really dedicate the time necessary to keep it poppin' fresh.
However, there will be more posts soon, I'm sure. Stay tuned!
However, there will be more posts soon, I'm sure. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Resistance... Is... Inevitable...
When this country really started ramping up and our transcontinental railway system blossomed, new avenues of commerce appeared, and one in particular was the transportation of live fish. Now restaurants could get huge watertight railway cars to bring fish wherever they needed it, without needing to cure it, dry it, or freeze it: fresh fish would be most desirable, AND most profitable.
So they started trying to do so: they filled these tanks with water and stuffed them full of trout, salmon, catfish, whatever they thought they could transport within such a limited space. Around the country, trains hauled massive catches from coast to coast, ready to bestow their bounty on new shores, or even in the interior, where transportation had always been a burden.
...And nearly all the fish died. Massive railway cars were opened upon arrival and nearly incapacitated the workers with the smell. Fish died in droves, scores, leaving thousands if not millions of dollars wasted in time, effort, and storage. The people in charge of transportation and the people invested in the fishing industry were tearing their hair out: this seemingly brilliant plan was costing them a fortune. Captivity was not something that had truly been tried yet: zoos would not even exist for many years to come.
Like all great capitalists, they threw money at the problem: they made the tanks bigger; they made the number of fish crammed into the space smaller; they put all sorts of things in the water; they tried everything they could possibly imagine, but it was no use... the fish died, for no apparent reason.
Finally, as all great capitalists do when the environment eventually forces them to examine what they are doing, they consulted someone who probably should have been onboard since the beginning: a marine biologist. Admittedly, such a person was a bit of an oddity, especially in a country just getting its legs into the 20th Century. This man was brought in and told the whole sorry story; he was shown the watertight tanks and given exhaustive data about the mating habits of fish and their needs (much of which he, himself, had written). He listened and read intently, never saying a word, just nodding periodically in a way that infuriated both the laborers and the people who paid them to labor. Finally, after his thorough debriefing and several days thought, he called a meeting with the men who had reached out to him. They sat in a small room, expecting him to tell them it was a disease, a plot to poison Americans, something, ANYTHING that would explain why they simply couldn't get massive numbers of fish with plenty of space and breeding opportunities to survive.
He said, very calmly: "Put a shark in the tank."
...The men in charge were very quiet for a while. Eventually one of them, beet-red, called him a nasty name and wanted to throw him out, but the others, desperate, calmed him down some. They then demanded why someone with his level of expertise would suggest something as incredibly stupid as putting a large predator into a vast food source that was their entire supply.
The man replied: "They have no resistance. Without resistance, animals have no reason to advance, to fight, even to live. Without someone to attack us, we would never grow strong enough to defend. It is the same with all organisms."
Stunned, the men assaulted him with questions, and he returned with answers:
"Won't the shark eat all the fish!?" "No. A shark eats when it needs to eat, and then no more. It also will eat less if its supply is abundant."
"Won't it stress the fish, make them taste badly?" "On the contrary, they expect it; their instincts will be engaged, and therefore they will thrive rather than give up."
"Won't the shark grow too large for the tank?" "A goldfish grows only as large as the space into which it is put; a shark will do the same. It is pure survival."
"What about fish that don't live in the same kind of water as sharks?" "Anything above them on the food chain will do. It is, quite simply, the resistance that is the key."
Now, these men were concerned, but could see no recourse; they had no better counsel to consider. So, experimentally, they filled one tank with water, put in the salmon... and then added a shark. The workers thought they were crazy; admittedly, the men felt a little the same way. The train took off from the East Coast and finally came to rest in the West. When the tank was opened, people crossed their fingers and peered within.
...The fish lived.
Just as the man had predicted, the animals had survived the long journey, and their bodies were even more succulent than anticipated: the drive to escape the shark, the constant pressure of survival, day after day, had invigorated them. Insofar as a fish can have a sense of purpose, theirs had been restored: they had a reason to live.
Now, obviously, people are more advanced than fish. Usually. But the key here is that animal behavior is important to us because it shows our deepest motivations, the reasons we do things, controlled by that part of the brain that is working even when the top of it has gone to sleep. For decades, people have lamented how rarely animals breed in captivity; unfortunately, given how dangerous it is in the world for many of them, their choices are few. But the lesson here is that resistance is the key.
Resistance is the reason you get up in the morning.
Resistance is the reason you try to achieve your goals.
Resistance is the reason you play sports, exercise, educate yourself, have children, fight for something, take a stand against anything.
It is the thing that makes you want to live.
Resistance is the most fundamental aspect of survival, because just about everything in the universe is continually trying to kill us, from black holes to bacteria to that guy eyeing your promotion to that crocodile living in the pond near your house. Resistance comes in many forms, and there are always perils involved. Some fish will die, but without something to fight against you never prevail: without resistance, no one will ever make the world better.
The next time you feel defeated, cheated, abused, misused, ignored, frustrated, hurt, shaken, trampled upon, or just plain fed up...
Remember that Michelangelo took four years to finish the Sistine Chapel, the way he wanted it, no matter what.
Remember that Stephen Hawking, in addition to his other fantastic achievements, has lived longer than anyone ever imagined possible, thwarting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis even now.
Remember that George Washington, commanding farmers, backwoodsmen, young boys and old men, was able to bring forth a new country despite impossible odds and an enemy which at that time was the strongest on Earth, becoming leader of the first nation in modern history to win its freedom from its mother country through direct conflict.
...And remember that, without the shark, the fish would not fight so hard to stay alive.
So they started trying to do so: they filled these tanks with water and stuffed them full of trout, salmon, catfish, whatever they thought they could transport within such a limited space. Around the country, trains hauled massive catches from coast to coast, ready to bestow their bounty on new shores, or even in the interior, where transportation had always been a burden.
...And nearly all the fish died. Massive railway cars were opened upon arrival and nearly incapacitated the workers with the smell. Fish died in droves, scores, leaving thousands if not millions of dollars wasted in time, effort, and storage. The people in charge of transportation and the people invested in the fishing industry were tearing their hair out: this seemingly brilliant plan was costing them a fortune. Captivity was not something that had truly been tried yet: zoos would not even exist for many years to come.
Like all great capitalists, they threw money at the problem: they made the tanks bigger; they made the number of fish crammed into the space smaller; they put all sorts of things in the water; they tried everything they could possibly imagine, but it was no use... the fish died, for no apparent reason.
Finally, as all great capitalists do when the environment eventually forces them to examine what they are doing, they consulted someone who probably should have been onboard since the beginning: a marine biologist. Admittedly, such a person was a bit of an oddity, especially in a country just getting its legs into the 20th Century. This man was brought in and told the whole sorry story; he was shown the watertight tanks and given exhaustive data about the mating habits of fish and their needs (much of which he, himself, had written). He listened and read intently, never saying a word, just nodding periodically in a way that infuriated both the laborers and the people who paid them to labor. Finally, after his thorough debriefing and several days thought, he called a meeting with the men who had reached out to him. They sat in a small room, expecting him to tell them it was a disease, a plot to poison Americans, something, ANYTHING that would explain why they simply couldn't get massive numbers of fish with plenty of space and breeding opportunities to survive.
He said, very calmly: "Put a shark in the tank."
...The men in charge were very quiet for a while. Eventually one of them, beet-red, called him a nasty name and wanted to throw him out, but the others, desperate, calmed him down some. They then demanded why someone with his level of expertise would suggest something as incredibly stupid as putting a large predator into a vast food source that was their entire supply.
The man replied: "They have no resistance. Without resistance, animals have no reason to advance, to fight, even to live. Without someone to attack us, we would never grow strong enough to defend. It is the same with all organisms."
Stunned, the men assaulted him with questions, and he returned with answers:
"Won't the shark eat all the fish!?" "No. A shark eats when it needs to eat, and then no more. It also will eat less if its supply is abundant."
"Won't it stress the fish, make them taste badly?" "On the contrary, they expect it; their instincts will be engaged, and therefore they will thrive rather than give up."
"Won't the shark grow too large for the tank?" "A goldfish grows only as large as the space into which it is put; a shark will do the same. It is pure survival."
"What about fish that don't live in the same kind of water as sharks?" "Anything above them on the food chain will do. It is, quite simply, the resistance that is the key."
Now, these men were concerned, but could see no recourse; they had no better counsel to consider. So, experimentally, they filled one tank with water, put in the salmon... and then added a shark. The workers thought they were crazy; admittedly, the men felt a little the same way. The train took off from the East Coast and finally came to rest in the West. When the tank was opened, people crossed their fingers and peered within.
...The fish lived.
Just as the man had predicted, the animals had survived the long journey, and their bodies were even more succulent than anticipated: the drive to escape the shark, the constant pressure of survival, day after day, had invigorated them. Insofar as a fish can have a sense of purpose, theirs had been restored: they had a reason to live.
Now, obviously, people are more advanced than fish. Usually. But the key here is that animal behavior is important to us because it shows our deepest motivations, the reasons we do things, controlled by that part of the brain that is working even when the top of it has gone to sleep. For decades, people have lamented how rarely animals breed in captivity; unfortunately, given how dangerous it is in the world for many of them, their choices are few. But the lesson here is that resistance is the key.
Resistance is the reason you get up in the morning.
Resistance is the reason you try to achieve your goals.
Resistance is the reason you play sports, exercise, educate yourself, have children, fight for something, take a stand against anything.
It is the thing that makes you want to live.
Resistance is the most fundamental aspect of survival, because just about everything in the universe is continually trying to kill us, from black holes to bacteria to that guy eyeing your promotion to that crocodile living in the pond near your house. Resistance comes in many forms, and there are always perils involved. Some fish will die, but without something to fight against you never prevail: without resistance, no one will ever make the world better.
The next time you feel defeated, cheated, abused, misused, ignored, frustrated, hurt, shaken, trampled upon, or just plain fed up...
Remember that Michelangelo took four years to finish the Sistine Chapel, the way he wanted it, no matter what.
Remember that Stephen Hawking, in addition to his other fantastic achievements, has lived longer than anyone ever imagined possible, thwarting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis even now.
Remember that George Washington, commanding farmers, backwoodsmen, young boys and old men, was able to bring forth a new country despite impossible odds and an enemy which at that time was the strongest on Earth, becoming leader of the first nation in modern history to win its freedom from its mother country through direct conflict.
...And remember that, without the shark, the fish would not fight so hard to stay alive.
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