Monthly Archives: January 2017

The World is Full of Magic: carole

Though some now say it comes to nil
The world is full of magic still

The end is nigh, soothsayers scry,
and from their parapets do cry
“Beware the evil that draws nigh!” –
though some now say it comes to nil.

The world is cracked and folding in
upon itself, and in the din
one barely hears the voice within:
the world is full of magic still!

But those who stand, in spite of fear
of loss of life and that held dear
sing out their songs, so loud and clear,
though some now say it comes to nil.

Excelsior! and “Forward, Ho!”
Against the grain, and tides, we go,
what weapons work, we cannot know;
the world is full of magic still

At some near point along the path
the bards may scribe our epitaph;
so fill the world up with our laugh,
though some may say it comes to nil

Reality is what we make;
there is no permanent mistake.
It matters not which path we take,
the world is full of magic still

Though some now say it comes to nil
The world is full of magic still

31 JAN 2017

Share This:

Science v Philosophy

I assume that one of the underlying purposes of psychoanalysis, of psychiatric treatment, is to get to a point where further psychoanalysis is unnecessary, that the neuroses in the patient have been identified, assessed, treated, and successfully mitigated or eliminated. In other words, the goal of therapy is to stop the need for therapy. To no longer be a recovering neurotic, so to speak, but instead to be a non-neurotic.

As someone who eight years ago stopped smoking cigarettes, I can relate. But for me, the key to quitting was to stop referring to myself as a ex-smoker, as a “recovering nicotine addict”. The only way I could stop, cold turkey, and never think of picking up another cigarette was to think of myself as a non-smoker. A non-smoker would never need a cigarette, whereas an ex-smoker might be tempted to fall back in the habit, you see.

There are a lot of atheists and agnostics out there who might, if you asked them to think on it, consider themselves “recovering” Christians. There certainly are a lot of neo-pagans who do so; and I suspect that a great many Westerners who have drifted to Eastern or other “exotic” spiritual paths consider themselves struggling and in recovery from their Western cultural roots. Even modern Satanists are either simply anti-Christians, or in the LaVey tradition, mere worshippers of Self as God. Likewise, those pagans who see an ideal world of myriad gods and goddesses, with temples on every corner are trying to replace their childhood Christianity with the illusion of something different. The Greeks, at some point, had it right, when they made their gods just a little more than human, and by doing, elevated man as the ultimate ideal – but they muddled it up with “divine” intention as well. As Richard Dawkins says in “The Magic of Reality” the wonders of science are diverse, fascinating, and “magical” enough, without interjecting some kind of supernatural into them.

I was raised non-religious, by an engineer and a biologist. One might suppose our holy trinity was Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and Henry Ford. I was exposed to religion, but never took part except voluntarily and as an absolute outsider/non-believer. In my late teens, I spent a lot of time looking for spiritual paths that seemed to tie the whole together; had I been born 20 or 30 years later, the ideas of quantum science and chaos might have drawn me deeply into the sciences. As it was, at least in my high school view, each of the sciences (i.e., physics, chemistry, biology) seemed their own separate fiefdoms, each requiring the share language of mathematics to progress to any degree. And mathematics, perhaps because of my father’s aptitude for it, was something that did not directly arouse my interest. I did better in geometry than algebra, if only because it seemed so much less abstract – although later in life, abstraction became quite a fascination for me.

As a result, I was never exposed to the idea that we are all “star-stuff”, that me and every other thing in the universe was in fact a product of the same source material. But maybe during the 1980s that idea was not yet so prevalent as it is today, and the need to try to connect everything through a single omnipresent divinity was more likely the idea. I don’t know.

It makes so much sense to me now, of course, except I still don’t grasp all the mathematics. They say that musicians often use math as a hobby, and that mathematicians use music in the same way, both having an affinity for what on the surface seems a diametrically opposed discipline. But they are ultimately both math, of course – music is horizontal and vertical intervals; matter and wave moving through time. It is physics; the only science subject I successfully navigated in high school.

Philosophy, they say, is supposed to the the science that imagines, and then verifies (although the methods for verification here are somewhat nebulous) the truth of that imagining, a single underlying (or overarching, or connecting, or unifying) principle that connects all knowledge (and by that is meant scientific knowledge from both the “hard” and “soft” sciences). What I wonder is if there has been any serious current collaboration between philosophers (a great many of whom were originally mathematicians, or in their early stages, “natural” philosophers, who contemplated the nature of the physical world around them and in the process, invented the other sciences) and scientists (e.g., physicists, biologists, chemists) to more deeply and completely understand our world and our place in it – particularly given recent advances in science toward unified theories of existence.

One great obstacle in that cooperation seems to be philosophy’s current focus on the theoretical for its own sake, to prove or make points with or against another philosopher, not to advance humanity’s knowledge, but to smugly poke holes in the net we’re all using to catch that knowledge, without really repairing it and making it more useful. I see “theorizing”, like theoretical physics which seems to advance theories as a way of proceeding to practical demonstration of that theory’s usefulness, in a more positive, forward-seeking way. That could just be my perception, of course. I recently quipped that philosophers primarily seemed interested in diluting, diffusing, deconstructing, or discrediting the work of other philosophers. Of course, we all stand on the shoulders of giants, and behind true science is always the idea of finding and correcting the flaw in a predecessor’s proof so as to go beyond it – perhaps in a completely different and unexpected direction.

But I wonder, of those scientists and philosophers who may be working together right now – how many of them are “recovering” Christians, or Hindus, or Buddhists? How many still try to reconcile the idea of Divine intervention with the seemingly obvious natural magic that is reality? How many still fight against the urge to defer to an unseen entity as the prime mover?

Can one trace, as Huxley did in The Perennial Philosophy, the journey on the road to find out, where a set of single underlying, non-supernatural principles is universally (i.e., across many earth cultures) understood to be the basis of human reality, without relying like Huxley on non-scientific input from faith-based mystics, gurus and saints?

Inquiring, skeptical minds wanna know.

30 JAN 2017

Share This:

Don’t Worry, Be Happy: canzone

Canto I. Don’t Worry

There is no cause for worry or alarm.
The world will carry on despite your fears;
true love will never languish in the arms
of its emotions’ mirror once there found,
though those who seek destruction may surround
and threaten to destroy the cause of life.
Who cares what fools decide to rally ‘round
this tired and jaded banner of deceit?

There is no cause to fear the coming storm:
at least, that’s what the pundits tend to say;
and who, believing their opinion best,
would dare to contradict such acumen?
Believe, believe, and trust your overlords;
it serves their common interest to thwart
what thoughts of revolution might ensue
should you and I begin to doubt and think.

There is no cause for worry, for no harm
will come to those who meekly bow their heads;
the cannon fodder used to fire loud guns
is manufactured from the irksome weeds.
What good is it to argue, in a rage,
against the great inevitable truth?
What difference does it make that a great lie
has molded us subservient since youth?

Canto II. Just Believe

Who calls this thing for what it is? The truth?
In whose inane philosophy of life
does anything not bite that grows a tooth
or fail to cut whose hand may hold a knife?
Where is it written that all men are just,
that goodness lurks inside the human breast?
We see an enemy because we must,
and separate our good from all the rest.

Who when they are attacked, turns either cheek,
or answers with meek love the fatal stab?
There is no place in this world for the weak;
and doubtful, much space there beyond the slab.
When mirth and goodness fill the world, at last,
when virtuous and kind men rule as kings,
perhaps when that great loaded die is cast
will anyone care much for these fool things.

Who reaches out for what they think divine,
and moves and acts according to the good,
forsaking lustful urging for what’s mine
that makes no sacrifices, even when it should?
What men believe reflects in how they move;
their words mean next to nothing, if their acts
would they and their vain gods, both liars prove.
This is not my conjecture, just the facts.

Canto III. Be Happy

Is ignorance of evil really bliss,
so any knowledge can bring only pain?
What kind of life is made from thoughts like this,
that would eschew all sunshine for a rain
to wash away all purpose and desire
and in its place leave just some bland ennui,
that keeps just above freezing, with no fire,
the heart just barely beating, almost free?

And what is happiness, in such a place,
without an individual life-spark,
a gray and dismal world without a face
with eyes only accustomed to the dark,
whose hope is but a pipe-dream, with no point,
the vain illusion of childhood and youth,
who seek some strengthless victor to annoint
who conquers without battle, strife, or truth?

But still, no cause for worry, friends of mine;
the world is not designed to pass away.
what wills itself to live, will all be fine,
and can survive all trials, come what may.
The crucible you’ve called for has arrived!
Rejoice! They have now standardized the test,
and soon, there’ll be no need for shuck and jive
to separate the chaff from all the rest.

30 JAN 2017

Share This:

What is Beauty: cancione

So what is beauty, really?
As a requisite to love
it seems far too subjective,
just some desire’s beguiling
design to snare a victim.

So what is beauty, really?
A figment caught by the eye
(or nature-made to seem thus)
to overwhelm reason’s care,
let loose the reins and run wild?

So what is beauty, really?
One sad half discovers whole,
making the universe sing
a melody so haunting
its croaking voice sounds lilting.

So what is beauty, really?
The eye knows only deceit;
the ear, a fading echo;
the mind, pale comparison;
the heart, hopeful delusion.

So what is beauty, really?
A single moment’s passing,
that folds future and present
up into both shroud and veil
for wedding, and funeral.

So what is beauty, really?
The weak, finite majesty
of illusion stitched in time,
the knowing of unknowing
that is a thing in itself.

27 JAN 2017

Share This:

A Thing Survives: byr a thoddaid

So: can a thing survive a fall,
then lift itself enough to crawl
from where it lands to some safe place, to heal
and hide its bruised, scarred face

until the foe that pushed it down
has doubt it ever was around,
then too late, as the counterstrike arrives,
regrets its choice to leave a thing alive?

26 JAN 2017

Share This:

The Simple Life: a bucolic

The simple life, that free from care
and vain illusion we once led,
in whose embrace our flourishing
and true existence found their height,
and with such grace evolved from beasts,
abandoned filth and savage ways,
escaped the snares of worldly pride
and sought for truth in nature’s maze.

Such self-absorbing righteousness!

That such conceit we still embrace,
and seek as blessing, ignorance,
employing rusted tools, like faith,
to end mind’s curiosity
and in its place, raise slavish kings
who vilify a need to know,
and would in place of growth and life
sow stagnant rot along the rows.

Such self-deluding avarice!

To see the world, not as it was,
but in nostalgic make-believe,
a children’s picture book of lies
that in beasts’ mouths puts fancy speech,
and names as princes, lords, and queens
those fools who mock the sciences.
What folly, to convince the world
that free and soft, it ever was.

Such self-important bull!

There is no sweet and simple life,
and yet, those stories will outsell
the honest, plain and dirty truth:
that the world is rough and raw;
that those, when you seek bread, give stones,
are at least dealing straight enough
to offer tools, not empty air.

25 JAN 2017

Share This:

Hope and Despair

How fleet of foot is dream-spun Hope;
and how Despair, her lead-shoed sister,
trips a clumsy way to fill her place!

How fair and rosy Hope’s sweet cheeks;
and how their bloom is lost to mind
as glum Despair’s sad visage fills our eyes.

How fickle, that our foolish minds
oft mark these twins we woo unequals
as we come and go through life’s wide rooms.

How quick to judge, and hurt from judgment,
paint another’s Hope, Despair;
gloat to see another’s sorrow.

How fleet of foot is our sweet Hope;
across the room, her doorway shadow
hides in double dark, Despair.

How soon the tables turn eternal –
spin, reflecting like a mirror;
Hope and Despair mere phantasms.

How we dance, by Hope enamored;
hounded by Despair, we crawl.
Constant changes make life’s music.

24 JAN 2017

Share This: