suburban sprawl, and explosion radius
It's kind of odd visiting home again, from a societal point of view. Ohio's economy is much, much larger than Maine's; there are certainly many more people, but it seems like there are more stores and places to buy Stuff(tm) per capita.
2-3 decades ago, I grew up in northern Cincinnati, in a town called Springdale, which was the outer edge of suburbia. All the main retail outlets were near us, it was glittering and shiny new. You could tell there was money there.
Now, all these glitzy new buildings are 2 or 3 decades older, and show wear and tear. Even the houses look older, which of course they are.
Last night, my wife and I had a dinner & movie date, and we headed further north, a couple exits up the highway, to the restaurant and the theater. There, 5 miles north of where I grew up, now looks like my area did when I was a kid. The radius of Cincinnati, or at least the suburban sprawl, is expanding.
It occurred to me that this sprawl expansion must look something like a nuclear shock wave in slow motion. Things heat up as they go outward, leaving slow decay in its wake.
Kind of a crude metaphor, I suppose. But it was an image that struck me, and I wanted to record it here for posterity. Perhaps I'll develop the idea more.
neuros
Well, it's Christmas morning, and I'm at my sister's house.
This will be a brief entry, I'm doing a bit of research on my new Neuros Digital Audio computer that Santa (aka, my beautiful wife) got me. There are some sites that help with using this device with Linux, and I wanted to document them here:
Sunset to Sunrise, twice
Wednesday afternoon at Sunset saw our now-traditional Yule circle, with the lighting of the bonfire. We keep the bonfire burning all night, on the longest night of the year, until sunrise the next morning. After we closed the circle at dawn, we returned home and I got several hours of sleep.
When I woke up, I showered, packed, and at sunset -- again -- we got into the car and headed south. Many hours later, we saw a beautiful sunrise in northern Ohio. There was a mist in the air, and the sun was behind trees moving by quickly, so we were actually able to get a glimpse of that stunning ball of fusing hydrogen atoms. It was gorgeous. My daughter loved seeing the newborn sun.
Prevenge
A few days ago, I wrote the following about the WMDs in Iraq, in the context of a government lying about a violent event to sway public opinion into beating the war drums:
we have the nonsense about WMDs in Iraq, that according to the Downing Street Memos turned out to be lies. Not "intelligence failures," but utter, premeditated deceptions hoisted on the American public and the world. This is so well-documented that I won't go into detail, but once again, a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.
It occurs to me that this isn't quite right. The WMDs were
not in fact a violent event; rather they referred to the
possibility of a violent event. One cannot forget this; for the first time in history a war was launched because someone
could attack another country.
This is significant, it is prevenge.
And we all know how "the meaning of Amurikan Justice(tm)" is based on revenge and not rehabilitation. After all, if Tookie Williams didn't qualify as being rehabilitated, then what does it take?
But the war against Iraq is not about rehabilitation, or even revenge. It is prevenge, retaliation for an act not yet committed.
And if revenge is wrong, prevenge is doubly so.
Free information vs. corporate information
There has been a story going around comparing
Wikipedia, an extraordinary online encyclopedia that follows the open-source methodology in the sense that anyone can write an entry or correct/improve upon previous entries, to the encyclopedia britannica. I must confess I'm a huge fan of Wikipedia, I remember when it started I thought it had tremendous potential, but it has grown by leaps and bounds in a very short time. I can't imagine what Wikipedia will look like in a decade. It's probably the closest thing we have to a sum total of the basics of all human knowledge in one place, or it will be at some point in the future.
Anyway, the
first story that came out about this comparison from Nature magazine claimed that Wikipedia's error rate was impressive, because it was only slightly greater than Encyclopedia Brittanica's: in the 40-something entries they compared, Wikipedia averaged 4 errors per entry to Brittanica's 3 per entry.
However, others have looked a bit more closely at the entries from each source, and found that on average, the Wikipedia articles are nearly 3 times longer (6.8KB per article, vs 2.6KB per article for Brittanica), with more information in them, so it would make sense that the error-per-article rate is larger in Wikipedia. But if you break it down to error-per-2KB of text, Wikipedia comes out much better, 1.3 errors per 2KB of text, vs Brittanica's 3.6 errors per 2KB of text.
Anyway, it's an interesting study that in my view validates Wikipedia as a useful tool for learning the basics on just about any subject. Though, any time vast quantities of information are summarized in encyclopedia format, there are bound to be errors. It's just that the open-source methodology used by Wikipedia provides a means to correct these errors, which to me speaks of the inherent superiority of open, free information.
Pagan questionnaire
I recently participated in an online interview for a book project about spirituality and paganism. I thought the questions were interesting, and decided to post my answers here.
- What do you generally term/call yourself? Pagan, heathen, pantheist, agnostic, druid, witch, …? If you’ve chosen a specific path, can you explain why? What is it that makes you a pagan? (how do you define pagan?)
Most days I will call myself "pagan," simply because it is a very broad term, though in general I call myself "seeker," which is of course even broader. My spirituality is very eclectic, and draws from many sources. In general I feel to confine myself within a "box" of a term limits the possibilities of my spiritual existence. I am at least as informed by Buddhism, for instance, as I am by paganism.
In terms of how I define pagan, the best way I know to explain it (and my tongue is only partially in cheek here) is to say that "pagan" is Latin for "redneck." Put another way, "paganus" translates as something close to "country-dweller." And if you look at European history, the urbanization phenomenon along with the rising hegemony of the Catholic church have much to do with the demonization of pagans. The Church encouraged people to live in the cities, where they were more easily manipulated and controlled, as people had to rely upon one another on a much larger scale, creating a political and economic situation based increasingly on power-over. In a city, one cannot "live off the land" nearly as easily, and things like property ownership (as opposed to the commons of the wilderness) become much more important to survival. We also saw the birth of a money economy across all classes (as opposed to just among the aristocracy) for the first time in this period. As part of the drive to increase their influence and power, it became fashionable to demonize the heathens outside the cities, creating a culture of fear, to entice people to come to and stay in the cities. Hence the negative connotations of "pagans" and witches who lived "sinfully" outside the cities, and the witch hunt phenomenon, etc etc.
This phenomenon carried over, the "rednecks" (heh) spiritual traditions, their ties to the land and to nature, became swallowed over by the rigid codes of Catholicism, and the economic developments of capitalism, and the mechanistic thinking of the nascent scientific movement, all of which combined to turn nature from something wonder-filled, an organic whole of which humans are a part, into something to be "conquered," "owned," and "exploited." The persecution of witches/pagans was a necessary and brutal step in this accumulation of power, along with the brutalities of things like the Enclosure movements in that period of history.
So to bring my rant back from history/politics and into spirituality, to me the word "pagan" denotes a particular intimacy with nature, with natural cycles, an intimacy that is nearly completely alien to those of us in modern urban America, where our survival is not so closely linked to the natural struggles involved with living in the wild. We cannot relate to this; to us the closest thing to struggle for survival is a long line at the grocery store or agonizing over a checkbook balance. Something primal, full of awe and vitality, has been lost. It is this relationship to nature that I seek to restore in my spiritual reality. It helps me to see that all of life is connected, that we all are one.
In terms of pantheism, I don't relate to that term which means the Divine is everything; I prefer panentheism, which means the Divine is in everything.
- Do you relate more to Spirituality or Religion?
Definitely Spirituality. To me Religion implies a separation from the divine, in that the emphasis becomes adhering to a specific religious code, rather than one's direct experience with the divine.
- Has your faith ever come up on hospital or other forms, or socially or professionally? If so, how did you deal with it? Are you concerned about social/financial/legal repercussions of being openly pagan? Have you suffered from discrimination? Do you know anyone who has?
I have nothing to hide, I'm sure I put "pagan" on the forms or something like that. It's never been a big deal or an issue for me. I'm not really concerned about this. I'm sure discrimination against pagans has happened, but never to me. In general I don't associate regularly with people who would discriminate on any basis.
- How important is ritual to you? How important is ecstasy? Community? (specificially religious community- I suppose it would also be good to know how important community created by other means I to you?)
Ecstasy is at the core of my spiritual practice, and is the single most essential ingredient to spiritual existence for me. Ek stasis, in the original Greek, means "to stand outside the self," and for me this is the key to ritual: to snap ourselves out of our normal, mundane lives and open ourselves up to limitless being. Normally I accomplish this through music, that's at least the most familiar for me. Though body work of various types is a close second (ie, massage, sexuality, etc).
Community is also essential for many reasons. Perhaps the simplest explanation is synergy: various energies that entrain together become more than the sum of their parts. Therefore, it is in the best interests of magical/energy workers to entrain their energies together to increase the energetic throughput.
Also, on a practical level: shared joy is increased, shared joy is lessened. This, to me, is the essence and purpose of community.
- Do you have pagan "stuff"? (ritual tools, clothing, decorations) Do you have a special place set aside in your home? (altar, cupboard, yard) Do you set certain days or times aside for faith based activities?
My family still does have pagan "stuff." I don't find "stuff" as necessary anymore as I did when I first began pagan practices nearly 2 decades ago. A beginning pagan needs to learn how to step out of the normal contexts and get into that altered state of consciousness for ritual. After enough practice, the tools aren't necessary any more, at least that's my experience. Though I do still have a soft spot for candles and incense, in a variety of contexts....
- What do you think is the background of Neo-paganism (built up from earlier romantic or magical movements, or survivals from much earlier paganism?)
Well, see my above answer for my view on the context of neopaganism. There has clearly been a revival and expansion of the neopagan movement since the mid-20th century. In this age of mechanization, there is some element -- a magical, romantic, organic element -- missing in our everyday experience. Neopaganism is, in my view, a natural response to this void.
- Do you use ritual to create a sense of Sacred?
I actually try to be aware of the sacred in all contexts, not just ritual. I don't actually use ritual all that much anymore. As a panentheist, I think that all that exists is suffused with the divine, the sacred is all around us. But mostly, I feel that the sacred is something that we experience, and therefore it exists primarily in our own consciousness.
- How do you celebrate holidays? Which ones do you celebrate?
We celebrate the main 8 solar holidays, mostly in the context of community; these tend to be celebrations/parties. We also gather occasionally on full moons, for more introspective or intimate work on deeper soul levels.
- Do you get inspiration/training from books/movies not technically pagan? What books of any sort were important in your pagan development? Have you studied/explored other religions?
I try to get inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. This includes books. I gain a lot of inspiration from philosophy texts, particularly metaphysical treatises, as well as literature.
I began as a pagan from many of the familiar sources: Starhawk, Cunningham, Farrar, Campinelli, Buckland, etc etc. I have read many of these books, and sort of assimilated them over the years.
I have also drawn a huge amount of wisdom from the Arthurian legends, and specifically the Grailquest. I see the Grail as a (perhaps the) central theme in my spiritual life, the idea of a quest to reconnect the seeker with the divine.
There are several Buddhist texts that I find full of wisdom as well, Old Path, White Clouds is among my favorites.
I was raised Catholic, but walked away from Catholicism shortly after becoming an adult.
- When did you decide that you were pagan- both your age, and when (about what year- trying to place it in the spread of neo-paganism in the last half century)
I first got into paganism in late 1987, after graduating high school. A girlfried at the time was into it, and I remember being oh-so-supportive (not) by telling her "when are you gonna drop this hocus pocus bullshit and get real?" So, yeah. My first exposure to it was closed-minded, to say the least. I was still a good Catholic boy at the time, so I felt I knew all about hocus pocus bullshit.
- You've probably been aware of the growth of the neo-pagan movement, what about it has appealed to you, and what has turned you off?
It's been fun to watch. Paganism attracts the freaks, not to mention the drama queens/kings. Which of course is part of its charm. Pagans are, I think by definition, more individualist than, say, Christians who adhere to a fairly narrow and rigid religious code.
- Is there any reason(s) you haven’t been more involved in the "movement"? (busy with other things, like kids or work, turned off by certain individuals, not able to find others to work with, not interested in ritual, not able to relate to the ones you did find)
Well, without sounding pompous, the best thing I can do for the "movement" is to pursue my own spirituality as authentically as possible. There are very few elders in the pagan movement, some days I joke that I'm an "elder in training"... heh. I'm only in my mid-late 30s, so a few more decades of training, and I should be ready....
- Do you have "cyber-pagan" contacts, although you don't see people face to face? How does this feel to you?
The net is just another communication medium. As long as the people you communicate with are being authentic, then there is no problem with it. If they aren't, well, then the problems will reveal themselves in good time. In general I prefer online communication to snail mail or telephone. Of course, nothing beats face-to-face. But there are several people I know -- mostly introverted empaths -- who have an easier time communicating honestly and authentically in this medium than in any other. It's certainly useful in those situations.
But regardless, it's a useful communication medium in many contexts, pagan or otherwise. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to do this interview.
Opportunism, Lies and Wars
Where to begin.
I've been thinking more about 9/11, and about how the official story of the buildings collapse -- that the twin towers, along with building 7, collapsed due to structural damage from the plane impact and the heat from the fires which melted the steel supports -- just don't make sense and clearly do not hold up to scrutiny.
And of course, this event was instrumental in swaying public opinion to support the BuShite "war on terrorism." Given the drive of the BuShites toward war, it is no dramatic leap in logic to conclude that the BuShites were interested in opportunism when it comes to Nine-Eleven(tm).
So what if Nine-Eleven is a lie? Or at least, the explanation of Nine-Eleven(tm) is a lie? To put this into context, we must look at the long, rich history linking government lies and wars.
Let us begin -- for the sake of brevity -- at the dawn of the 20th century.
On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in the Havana harbor in Cuba. The popular media at the time blamed the Spanish forces, despite warnings from military commanders in the area to look at all possible explanations before blaming an enemy for a premeditated attack. These commanders were lambasted in the media for "ignoring the obvious" conclusion that Spain was The New Enemy. "Remember the Maine" became a rallying cry in the US, and the Spanish-American War was launched. Later, it was shown that the USS Maine exploded due to coal dust mishandling. So: a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.
On February 27, 1933, a fire broke out in Berlin at the Reichstag building, which was the German house of Parliament. Hitler immediately used this occasion to seize power; he blamed the Communists, creating the local culture of fear and the imagined enemy of the time, was able to have himself appointed chancellor, and repealed many of the human rights provisions of the Weimar Republic (the government of Germany at the time, in place since the end of WWI). After the fact, of course, well after Hitler seized power, The Communists(tm) were acquitted in starting the fire, but by then it was too late. All of Europe and much of Asia were involved in a huge war that ended up killing millions of people. So: a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.
December 7, 1941, "A Day That Will Live In Infamy." The popular story goes that there was a surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But of course, years after the attack it was revealed that the US government wasn't at all surprised; not only were they aware that the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor, they knew the location and trajectory of the fleet. After the attack, public opinion swayed in favor of war with Japan, and by extension Germany, and the US plunged almost gleefully into war. So: a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.
The Vietnam war is a bit more complicated, because for the first time we have a unique motive for war. And I don't mean halting the spread of communism. I mean the creation since the cold war of the military industrial complex in the US; huge, vast corporations, so huge and such a threat to freedom and peace that Eisenhower warned the American people in his Farewell Address to the nation:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
There had been skirmishes in Vietnam for years, and there were a handful of American troops in the area. And there is evidence that Kennedy was going to reduce American involvement in Vietnam in the summer of 1963. Soon after, Kennedy was dead, and Lyndon Johnson was in power. Beginning in 1964, American involvement in Vietnam began to steadily and rapidly increase.
Which brings us to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The Johnson administration warned the US about the dangers of The Enemy(tm) in the Gulf of Tonkin, attacking (or imminently attacking) US forces there on or around August 4, 1964. He used this phantom menace to escalate US involvement, passing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution on August 7th, which gave Johnson the unprecedented executive authority "to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force" to assist allies in Southeast Asia, without a formal Congressional declaration of war. It turns out, of course, that there was no threat. So: a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.
In October, 1990, a young girl, identified as a Kuwaiti nurse, appeared in Washington before the House of Representatives' Human Rights Caucus, tearfully claiming that Iraqi soldiers had ripped hundreds of premature babies from their incubators, leaving them to die on the cold floor. This story was carried by the US media, pounded into our heads, with Bush Sr using it to emphasize the need to deal wtih the Baghdad Butcher and get him out of power. A huge outcry followed, and America marched to war. It turned out that this girl was actually the 15 year old daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, who had been trained in acting, and that the story was a complete and utter fabrication. So: a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.
A dozen years later, of course, we have the nonsense about WMDs in Iraq, that according to the Downing Street Memos turned out to be lies. Not "intelligence failures," but utter, premeditated deceptions hoisted on the American public and the world. This is so well-documented that I won't go into detail, but once again, a mistruth about a violent event swayed public opinion into a frenzy in favor of war.
So with this context, where does that leave us in terms of the "official" explanation that 3 huge steel buildings were toppled solely by airplane fuel? Does the fact that NOT ONE steel skyscraper has ever collapsed due to fire, ever in the history of metallurgy, not once, zero, zilch, nada, enter into anyone's mind?
Does the fact that all three buildings that collapsed behaved much more like controlled demolitions than chaotic destruction from airplane fuel splattered thousands of feet in the air make sense to anyone?
That countless witnesses observed controlled detonations, explosions perfectly in sync going off in sequence all the way down the building?
It's nonsense. It defies common sense. I'm not by any means claiming that I know what happened, but these official explanations make less sense than the magic bullet theory of the Warren Commission explaining JFK's murder.
And finally, "credible academics" are getting into the act. Perhaps the most intriguing to me is David Ray Griffin, who before he retired was one of the pre-eminent scholars of Alfred North Whitehead, who happens to be one of my favorite philosophers.
A new one is Steven E. Jones, a professor of engineering at BYU, who has recently caused controversy by publishing a detailed examination of why the buildings collapsed.
He indicates the overwhelming evidence supporting the notion that these were controlled demolitions that brought down the buildings, and then asks perhaps the most pertinent question about motive:
Why would terrorists undertake straight-down collapses of WTC7 and the Towers, when "toppling-over" falls would require much less work and would do much more damage in downtown Manhattan? And where would they obtain the necessary skills and access to the buildings for a symmetrical implosion anyway?
If the buildings were demolished in a controlled way, and the evidence is overwhelming that this is so, it makes no sense to assume that these highly skilled procedures would have been carried out by terrorists, who would have had a motive to destroy as much as possible. If indeed the towers came down because of heat from airplane, the likelihood that they would have fallen straight down, collapsing on themselves,
in all three cases is so tiny to be negligible.
This implies that the destruction of the towers was carried out by someone other than Saudi Arabian boxcutter-wielding terrorists.
The question is, who?
I have no idea who did it, but I know who benefitted from it, and I know who has carried out acts such as these before. And I need look no further than my own government.
"It's just a goddamned piece of paper"
I've written before about
how I feel about the US Constitution. In short: it's a definite political line-in-the-sand, and it's better than many forms of government, but I don't feel it is worthy of the intense fetishization that most Americans give it.
However, if we are going to change the Constitution, I think we should move more in the direction of justice, liberty, and peace, and not away from it.
George W Bush, on the other hand, wants to move closer to despotism (big surprise). In a recent GOP meeting in the Oval Office, they discussed renewing the more offensive provisions of the USA-PATRIOT act:
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
"I don’t give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."
"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"
So for once, I actually agree with Mr. Bush. It is, after all, just a piece of paper, and is held in too high esteem by most of America. I think changing it is a good idea. Though I am certain we have quite different views on how to change it.
But then again, I haven't sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States....
myspace
We've created a
myspace.com page for Freakwitch. It's a very interesting virtual/imagined community online. Check it out, and network network network.
not-an-iPod
OK, it's official. If I had to pick one iPod like device, it would be the
Neuros Digital Audio Computer. They do everything I'd want, play mp3, ogg vorbis, has an 80gig hard drive on board, records via built-in mic or line input to wav or mp3, and will broadcast locally to FM radio. And it's on sale for only $299. Very cool.
I wonder if Santa is listening....
The RU Sirius Show
I just discovered the
RU Sirius show online. Very interesting guests, including
Rob Brezsny,
trademark_g,
Richard Rorty,
Jack Sarfatti, and several others.
For now I'm downloading the mp3s manually. But this show is first and foremost a podcast, and my favorite audio player will do podcasts, but only a newer version than what I have.
Mmmm, upgrades....
