History is a despotic teacher.
Can you see de spot in your eyes?
Tag Archives: politics
Sobjectification
Sobjectification : (n) feeling sad that you feel bad about yourself for sexually objectifying people around you.
Lee’s body was shaking, his shoulders aching. He woke up at 2:12 a.m., feeling aroused and disappointed. Why had he objectified the women in his life yesterday, the old defense mechanism that almost went away but showed up again unannounced?
His body only shook like this when his set of states of energy were rattled severely — at the end of running a marathon on a 25 deg F day, the first time he kissed a woman and the first time he kissed a man, the first interview for a real desk job, the first time he made love to a married woman, standing in a funeral home parlour greeting friends and family of his dead brother in-law.
At his age, shaking could be the early signs of many neurological disorders, not just psychoemotional moments.
Lee’s chest felt like a tree trunk being struck by a hammer. He needed something to calm his nerves.
He turned to the script to check where in the current round of world politics his thoughts were supposed to be aligned…
23 November 1957. Open Letter to Eisenhower and Khrushchev by Bertrand Russell,” published in the New Statesman, followed by a response from Nikita Khruschev on 21 December 1957, with a reply on Eisenhower’s behalf by John Foster Dulles, published on 8 February 1958.
Lee’s shudders got worse. He wasn’t supposed to see he was stuck in an endless tape loop, the sound quality deteriorating playback by playback, his thoughts disintegrating into repetitious nonsense.
Shouldn’t he care where he stood on the alpha male hierarchy of his times? “To know is to do” he was told by the advice of history.
If the universe was here for Lee’s entertainment, why wasn’t his body as entertained as his pondered theories of social engineering?
Why did he revert to objectifying women’s bodies just when he was making a breakthrough?
Why did he let his wife’s withholding of her body for sexual activity influence him in any way, make him feel unwanted, unused, unworthy of attention by the opposite sex?
Was his body’s uncontrolled shivering related merely to caffeine withdrawal?
Yesterday, Lee was sitting in a room with his wife and two people interested in closing a deal to manage Lee’s finances for the rest of his life, taking his hard-earned millions and returning to him an annual “salary,” pension or annuity as a monetary security blanket to hold until he died, depositing his funds in a bank that contains the wealth of others in the entertainment business, from Hollywood to Nashville.
Money had no meaning to Lee. Never had, never will. He only understood purchasing power.
Money never bought Lee happiness. Lee was always happy in his pursuit of knowledge to aid his quest to reorder the words in his vocabulary, long ago knowing that something as mundane as the changing patterns of dust on a wall could entertain him for days.
Money bought Lee new knowledge — he could overwhelm his senses with knowledge or he could add to his knowledge base one coal pitch drop of tar at a time.
Nervousness had crept into Lee’s thoughts yesterday that he had shifted into the habit of sexual objectification to give himself the false impression he was above the petty feeling of being nervous, one of his passive-aggressive attitudes he wanted to change.
What if he had told the investors that he was nervous about his life’s fortune being managed by complete strangers and hadn’t turned to seeing one of the investors, who happened to be female, as sexually desirable at the very moment he needed to concentrate on third sigma distributions of financial risk management and Monte Carlo simulations?
What if he had told his dance partner, who complained of aching body parts, that he wanted to say he’d rub her foot if she’d rub his because his foot was really hurting but he was afraid admitting his foot hurt would sound like a weak excuse and worried, too, that the request to barter one foot rub for another due to his lack of cash fluidity would be mistaken as a sexual come-on because he couldn’t get the confusing sexual objectification out of the thoughts of the new Lee?
Self diagnosis of one’s thought patterns in the mental game of self therapy could or could not be as slow or fast as professional psychosocial therapy.
Lee was a cheapskate. His visions of life were not grand enough to include hoarding vast sums of institutional level financial security. He knew he had to depend on someone else’s financial expertise to keep him out of debtor’s prison but it didn’t mean he had to like the idea or be able to sleep fear-free at night.
How was Lee going to deprogram his sexual objectification when he was nervous?
He finished a mug of Earl Gray tea, never quite sure if the caffeine calmed his nerves, his writing calmed his nerves or if an unknown script writer gave the actor Patrick Stewart a character named Jean-Luc Picard who moved a lot of people to drink Earl Gray tea because they really believed that they themselves discovered it tasted better than other flavours of tea, coffee or sources with “natural” stimulants.
Lee mentally apologised to the women he saw yesterday, setting in motion his newly-minted curmudgeon self to tell the next woman he saw, “Look, I’m a bit nervous. Either I can share with you what’s really going on in my thoughts right now, which are really not socially-kosher at this moment, or I can stare at your boobs and ass. It’s your choice.”
Suddenly, an image of the J.K. Rowling character named Dobby riding a wrecking ball while nude and speaking Russian passed through Lee’s thoughts.
Lee smiled, the shaking subsided but not completely gone.
History may repeat itself but Lee was going to enjoy the ride, even if it meant he was going to throw up because he was dizzied by the scenery flashing so quickly through his thoughts.
The Rock is My Foundation
I don’t know how often I’ve veered away from the main storyline of this blog to tell you about my beliefs, the beliefs of the author of this blog, who I’ve been told should take this type of blog entry and make it the “About Me” page.
I’m sure there’s enough about me in the characters who appear here, either as a simulated first-person “voice” or as Lee.
Basically, I only know what I know; that is, my upbringing has determined who I am, including family lore, Christian religious training, Western European-centred world history and U.S.-centred economic politics, supplemented by subcultures as “advertised” via the stories, news headlines and entertainment in mass media, with direct influence by the people I’ve met.
The core person who writes this blog stands firmly upon the foundation of his youth, comfortable in the fact that he can only be who he is at this moment, a perfect example of his subculture, embodied in 51 years of existence.
That means his parents, his extended family, his teachers, his pastors, his friends, his coworkers and other fellow members of society are/were perfect examples, too.
He is not going to evolve into a fish overnight.
He knows that the faith of people who raised him is based on a belief in the immortality of a Jewish carpenter commonly called Jesus, taught that Jesus is the son of the Creator of the Universe, a god, (THE God), supernatural, omniscient and omnipotent.
Their faith, their belief, resulted in actions that improved his singing and public speaking.
Regardless of his belief, his personality is mainly composed of people who follow the written teachings of Jesus and his disciples who were reported to be knowledgeable about the pre-Jesus “Old Testament” portion of a religious text known as the [Christian] Bible. Some of these people interpret the Bible based on their literal understanding of the context of the words. Some of them don’t even try to interpret the context at all.
So it does not matter to this writer what his belief is, his exemplifies the subcultural traits of a person raised in a Christian home.
One can further define the points of what it means to be a Christian and the lack of perfection involved, plus the variations called denominations with their unique rituals and dogma that differ from or share similarities with other denominations.
But this blog entry is not a debate on what being religious means.
Instead, the blog entry simply lets the reader know that this writer, not a first-person voiced writer behind the curtain of the Internet, is Christian by design.
His belief in or nonbelief of deity-based creation stories neither adds to nor takes away from his childhood when the Ten Commandments, marriage as a heterosexual union between a man and woman, and mass media that was censored to conform to Christian-based decency were considered the norm.
The stories of the Christian faith are thousands of years old, tens of thousands of years in the making.
This writer is not just going to toss the Christian faith out the window with the latest whims in subcultural practices.
He was raised in and has greatly benefited from the teachings within the Christian tradition.
The character in this blog who appears to be the writer of this blog (but not this blog entry) is an empty vessel. The real writer of this blog, typing this particular blog entry, is not an empty vessel and appreciates the readers who are concerned about his set of thoughts (i.e., his “soul”).
Do not confuse the writing with the writer who uses the medium of the written word to develop plots and storylines for his novel-in-progress written in the form of an online diary that seems to weave the past, the present and the future together, the seams clearly tattered, threads (“Irish pennants”) pointing this way and that on the uniform of a blog.
This writer enjoys the emotional highs and lows that come with feeling and empathizing with behaviours that seem to reveal the thoughts of people he meets who become models for characters in this online soap opera.
This writer knows who he is, he is generally happy, and wants to consume everything he encounters — the air, the sunshine, the food, the colours, the sounds, the touch and everything in-between of the people, places, things and ideas — he makes no apologies for being a bull in a china shop, barely concerned with the opinions of others, stated, implied or left unsaid.
He suppresses his personality for the sake of his art, using talents developed during his childhood to see, sense and write about levels of perception we humans use to make our lives last as long as we do.
He is a product of his times.
Just because he suppresses his personality does not diminish the importance of the influences in his life that formed his personality.
He may write about the benefits of an atheist’s life.
He may write about the scientific advances made during the reign of a corporate dictatorship.
We learn through observation but observing is not the same as becoming one with what one observed and reported.
Seeing who we are sometimes takes looking at what/who we are not.
The stronger our beliefs, the less we have to spend time shouting so loud about our beliefs we can’t hear ourselves think.
A solid set of beliefs allows us to explore the lives and thoughts of others who may enrich our lives without changing our core selves.
How strong are your beliefs? Do you feel like you have to keep repeating the tenets of your beliefs in order to keep convincing yourself that you believe and act upon them without thinking? What kind of faith is that?
I am pleased to be a set of states of energy right here and now. How and why they came to be and what will become of them has been explained to me by members of my subculture, including explanations in complete opposition to one another. The fact is that the set of states of energy exists regardless of explanation, allowing me to write about whatever I like because I know I am not going to change who I am, if I have one reader or a billion.
Glass spherical atmospherical at most fear a gull
I don’t know what it is about the objects in this room but some of them have a life of their own.
The crystal ball, which is not really crystal but a thin layer of glass, hummed when I walked into the study this morning.
A 60-Hz hum, as if some unseen creature — a gnome, fairy, elf, dwarf or gremlin? — snuck in and plugged in the crystal ball’s AC power source.
Ah, yes. The crystal ball has electronic junk in its trunk.
For centuries, the crystal ball had relied on the magnetic alignment of layers of rock deposited for millions of years onto Earth’s crust as the planet’s magnetic poles flip-flopped.
But I wanted more power.
I wanted to make the future a reality, not just some foggy image forming out of the inside of a ether-filled dome.
Sing it! “Ee-thur, eye-thur, nee-thur, neye-thur,” ether-aether, “let’s call the whole thing off”-kilter.
Anyway, the crystal ball’s powered profundity projects onto the book covers, picture frames, walls, ceiling, overhead light fixture and my eyeballs a future where we ask ourselves why income inequality has become a buzzword domestically, imagined internationally but not universally.
A spinoff of Virgin Galactic, under a new shell corporation not directly tied to Sir Richard Branson in order to avoid confusion about mission statements, offers a higher boost into suborbital space for the terminally ill, taking their money but not promising them a flight in time before they die, that gives the passengers a longer time in the weightlessness of space and then an incendiary cremation upon reentry, the painlessness of sedatives a personal option, their ashes spread into the upper atmosphere of the only planet they got to know, sparking a new travel industry nicknamed “Your Final Exit” after a book written in the 20th century.
Discovering energy conversion that has nothing to do with atomic structures opened up planetary exploration and galactic travel, completely and forever changing our image and opinions of ourselves as the center of the universe — it’s not the energy level that counts, it’s how you use the paradigm shift to reinvent the way we model our sets of states of energy in the cosmos.
Spending more time nurturing our species’ children during their formative years offset our longterm investment in the spook business that tried to compensate for the messed-up mindsets of adults turned against society, which changed the way we perceived ourselves as [un]fairly-treated cogs in the wheels of the politicoeconomic conditions we used to define our place in society, including the reformation of the public/private education system that used to depend on a mix of caring/sadistic [un]tenured teaching staff and [non]motivated students.
Mapping the new global culture on top of centuries-old subcultures was as fluid as the ocean tidal currents, tide charts predictable but local tidal basins fluctuating minute-by-minute. Protesting the advent of global branding missed the natural evolution of a species in transition from multilocal to a global set of traits. Embracing the concept of optimising profits made the antiglobal movement an effective tool in strengthening our longterm economic sustainability — every person was encouraged to realise we are individually a laboratory of new ideas, making conformity, normality and mimicry as quaint as synergistic symmetry.
The crystal ball hummed louder and louder until I realised that the wallwart was overheating. Time to get a new transformer before the house burns down!
Found in my father’s papers
My father was an adjunct professor for over two decades and enjoyed learning from his students as much as he enjoyed teaching them. One of his students shared his cultural/religious/scientific view with my father via a report — interesting to think about as we debate military action in and around Syria:
I hate Edward Snowden
I’ll say it again, I hate Edward Snowden. His whistleblowing has ruined my fantasies of leading the hidden, covert life of a doublecrossing secret agent. I wish him a miserable existence as a man without a country, forever on the run from haters like me, worse off than Salman Rushdie with a bounty on his head.
If it weren’t for paying expensive health insurance premiums, my wife and I would be fully retired already?
The past two weekends, my wife and I combined a visit with family with a trip to the college football stadium.
This weekend, we visited with my cousin and her [second] husband, whom we have embraced as a member of our family. He humbled us by saying we’re like the family he hasn’t had since he doesn’t know when.
The previous weekend, we spent time with my mother, my sister and her [second] husband, whom we have embraced as a member of our family. He humbled us by saying a few years ago we gave him a present that was greater than any he had ever received before.
I live with a head full of thoughts, many of them self-deprecating, which science tells us is not an unusual phenomenon.
When other people tell me how nice I am, one of my automatic thoughts is that they must be lying to me to get something from me because I know I am not a nice person.
That thought alone says something — if I think it and have written about it more than once, then is that who I really am?
Is that why suicidal thoughts creep into my day, wishing the cruel, devious person that drives me out of bed every day would be dead and not influencing the world?
Our society is packed with history and textbooks discussing this very issue, offering various solutions.
The hope that drives me past my cruel side is that I’ll outlive my worst tendencies and die a happy man, having made one good contribution to our society at large, if just in one simple act of kindness I never knew about.
Otherwise, I’ll continue to be what many people refer to as one of their “weird” friends whose thought patterns run tangentially to the mainstream, running parallel occasionally through good brainwashing during my formative years.
Time for this set of states of energy to meditate upon the nothingness of the mundane.
Have a great day!
“When the only tool you have is a hammer” department
It’s from me it’s for you. It’s from you, it’s for me. It’s a worldwide symphony
The U.S. president stood at the podium and looked at the camera.
“Earlier today I authorised a large-scale mobilisation of our naval and air forces to converge on Syria.
“I have not made this decision lightly. In fact, I consulted with historians as well as your elected representatives on both sides of the aisle.
“Based on the advice I graciously received, I instructed our armed forces to take the following action.
“One, we have a brotherly and sisterly love for the Syrian people. Our first order of business is to flood the cities and neighbourhoods of Syria with leaflets warning of our plans we are declaring in full disclosure to every country that wants to interfere with our humanitarian mission to prevent more senseless bloodshed, offering a peaceful solution backed by our military might to restore order.
“Two, a massive airlift is now underway. We will soon drop air cargo loads filled with blocks of pure, nutritious American cheese from our country’s heartland to feed the Syrian people in dire need of real food.
“Three, to address the rumours of starvation driven by despair and depression and to prevent any chance of malaria or other tropical disease, we will spray the people of Syria and their beloved geography with a special formulated mix of pest-deterring organic cannabinoids and low-concentration psilocybin, which I have been assured by both scientific and medical experts will restore the appetites and happiness of war-weary inhabitants of the City of Jasmine and other metropolitan areas ravaged by over two years of civil war.
“Four, we will offer a trade-in program for citizens on all sides of the Syrian conflict. Every gun, tank, missile, ammunition or other weapon not authorised for the strict use of American military to protect global citizens in Syria is eligible for this program. If you turn in a weapon, we will provide you with enough food and clothing to last you a year. In addition, we will send you to a nearby training centre to provide you the trade skills and business acumen to start your own business to compete in the world economy.
“My fifth and final announcement on this important issue. We ask not only the Syrians but all the people of the Middle East to open their stores and shops to people of any race, creed, national origin, political or religious difference. If you do so, your family will prosper. At the end of the day, isn’t that what we want for ourselves and our children?
“That’s all that the United States of America is trying to do here, provide Syrians with a peaceful path toward prosperity, cementing a healthy relationship with the rest of the world. No other country can offer or is offering you such a solution.
“My administration will keep our phones and doors open for Syrians. Talk to us after you read our leaflets.
Thank you. No questions.”
The president walked off the platform and turned to his closest advisor. “Okay, now that that’s over, do you have the latest update on Tiger’s golf score?”
Is civility civil in “civil war”? Does it matter if it’s Spanish or Syrian by nature?
Yesterday all the past. The language of size
Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion
Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;
Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.
Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion
Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;
Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.
Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards,
The divination of water; yesterday the invention
Of cartwheels and clocks, the taming of
Horses. Yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.
Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants,
the fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley,
the chapel built in the forest;
Yesterday the carving of angels and alarming gargoyles;
The trial of heretics among the columns of stone;
Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns
And the miraculous cure at the fountain;
Yesterday the Sabbath of witches; but to-day the struggle
Yesterday the installation of dynamos and turbines,
The construction of railways in the colonial desert;
Yesterday the classic lecture
On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle.
Yesterday the belief in the absolute value of Greek,
The fall of the curtain upon the death of a hero;
Yesterday the prayer to the sunset
And the adoration of madmen. but to-day the struggle.
As the poet whispers, startled among the pines,
Or where the loose waterfall sings compact, or upright
On the crag by the leaning tower:
“O my vision. O send me the luck of the sailor.”
And the investigator peers through his instruments
At the inhuman provinces, the virile bacillus
Or enormous Jupiter finished:
“But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I inquire.”
And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets
Of the evening paper: “Our day is our loss. O show us
History the operator, the
Organiser. Time the refreshing river.”
And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life
That shapes the individual belly and orders
The private nocturnal terror:
“Did you not found the city state of the sponge,
“Raise the vast military empires of the shark
And the tiger, establish the robin’s plucky canton?
Intervene. O descend as a dove or
A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend.”
And the life, if it answers at all, replied from the heart
And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city
“O no, I am not the mover;
Not to-day; not to you. To you, I’m the
“Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped;
I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be
Good, your humorous story.
I am your business voice. I am your marriage.
“What’s your proposal? To build the just city? I will.
I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic
Death? Very well, I accept, for
I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain.”
Many have heard it on remote peninsulas,
On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fishermen’s islands
Or the corrupt heart of the city.
Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower.
They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch
Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;
They floated over the oceans;
They walked the passes. All presented their lives.
On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot
Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe;
On that tableland scored by rivers,
Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever
Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond
To the medicine ad, and the brochure of winter cruises
Have become invading battalions;
And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin
Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb.
Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom
As the ambulance and the sandbag;
Our hours of friendship into a people’s army.
To-morrow, perhaps the future. The research on fatigue
And the movements of packers; the gradual exploring of all the
Octaves of radiation;
To-morrow the enlarging of consciousness by diet and breathing.
To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
the photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty’s masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician,
The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.
To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.
To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death,
The consious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder;
To-day the expending of powers
On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.
To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette,
The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scraping concert,
The masculine jokes; to-day the
Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.
The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
treetrunkdings 