Thank God We Still Have Courageous People Like Ned Flanders -Blast From the Past Written in 2013

Interesting how the left-hand becomes more relevant with time. See here and here. Below is a little parody that I wrote about a man who was harassing me. He and and his crazed friends post at this site.

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It was something I had encountered my whole life.

Though I could never find the proper words to express the depths of my dismay.  Everything would be going great until someone found out my big secret.

From then on... it was down hill.

Yes..I fully admit, it wasn't very hard for others to figure out my secret.

In truth, I loved to show it off.

I liked to act cool by showing off my beloved "special" body part. I was even known to wear a sock over it --- this was my way of "acting" like I was covering it.

When I think about it now, I was just a cane prancing fool --- a racquet swinging tool.

It was really just a covert way to invade my opponents mind... a subversive way to rule.

Though some would say that's not the worst of my behavior.

On another occasion, I tried to join a writing club where 85-90% of the people didn't possess my "special" attribute. I then went about flashing my unique, (in the past it was called sinister or evil,) body part at them. I would then crumple up their meager papers and throw them into the garbage.

"You people do not even belong in the same room as my ........ " I would yell.

I would then journey home. When I would arrive and retire to my quarters, I would then go about smothering "it" with the finest sweet smelling non-sticky ointments, wrap "it" in silk garments --- and proceed to call on "ladies of the night" to pleasure and satisfy "it."

Now, some would say... "With that sort of behavior... the freak shall get what he deserves."


I say, shall I?

Why Ned Flanders Changed My Life

My behavior went on like this for month and months.

Flashing and showing off my "special" body part. Crumpling up the papers of the lowly and the meager. Yelling at the sub-humans. Smothering my "special" body part with sweet smelling no-stick ointments. Covering "it" with silk garments. Having "its" respects paid by ladies of the night. (Men too.)

I lived a life of nothing but pleasure seeking and instant gratification.

I wanted nothing but beautiful words spoken to me about my "unique" body part. I wanted nothing more than the constant surrounding of mirrors that would reflect my OWN image back at me. I detested the thought of  an image of something higher than me. I couldn't bare the thought of going one day without the comforting warm breath and hands of the hired pressing up against my "it" --- my "special" body part.

I had no goals.... I didn't believe in anything anymore.

 
And Then it Happened

I saw this video. And I realized I was NOT the problem... everyone else was.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with me. I was being discriminated against. I was dealing with anti-leftetic attitudes. I was going through what my fellow comrades-in-hands had begun to label "typical right-handed bias." I had to fight this typical anti-left-handed prejudiced monster to the death.

I had found my goal in life. The time had come.

I would begin to push for more left-handed scissors equality in the schools.  I would set up think tanks to fight against the discrimination of the "left-handed path."

I would chisel my words on sacred tablets and carry them to the ends of the earth.

The sacred tablets would say:

Thy right handed brother and sisters --- know this, thou shall not hurt nor discriminate against thy fellow left handed ones! They are just like thee! They are made of thy same flesh and bleed thy same blood as ye when cut.

Come forth and hither, and rather pray for thy left handed brothers. 

As thy sacred social science shows... these poor left-handed people are more likely to be schizophrenic, alcoholic, delinquent, dyslexic, and have Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, as well as mental disabilities. They're also more likely to die young and get into accidents.

Pray for thy left handed ... my right handed brothers and sisters! Let us all live as one!

Further Thought on Genesis Part II

It just struck me as I was mowing the lawn that the story of Genesis seems to be about the problems of metaphysics and epistemology, or the problems of Being and Knowing. Being is elusive, and because of this, so is knowing. The first creation story is about Being, while the second story is about Knowing.

God is elusive in the first story, making knowledge also elusive. We also see there is nothing about knowledge in the first story, while this is all introduced in the second story.

I guess that is what I have been trying to say with my rambling Genesis posts. It could have been summed up in a couple paragraphs.

Further Thoughts On Genesis

Let me start this by saying I am far from being some sort of expert on the bible. These are just my idiosyncratic thoughts. I just like to look at different ideas in philosophy, science, myth or religion and see if they have a relationship to each other.

That being said, I am going to continue to look at the first creation story of Genesis. I will be going off the Young's Literal Translation.

First off...

Genesis 1:1	In the beginning of God`s preparing the heavens and the earth
Genesis 1:2	The earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters

It is never stated what God is, the only clue we have from the creation stories are the words OUR, HIS and HE. Making man in OUR image, according to OUR likeness from 1:26, and then HIS and HE in 1:27. It doesn't say who created this God, or where this God came from. Who or what is God? And what about the contradictions between OUR, HIS and HE?

This may be telling us that we will always be limited from grasping what God is from our vantage point. It could also mean, that God was a group who are neither male nor female, but both. But, Genesis 1:27 doesn’t seem to play the latter group speculation out:

Genesis 1:27

And God prepareth the man in His image; in the image of God He prepared him, a male and a female He prepared them.

This line is really strange. To me it seems to be saying that GOD or BEING is incredibly elusive. The contradictions are there for this very reason, for you to know that you will never know what God or Being is. God will always be elusive and greater than we can ever consciously fathom. God is about paradox. This makes me think of Kurt Godel and his incompleteness theorem.

Next, it says "in the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth..." what does this mean? Possibly that there was something around for God to prepare them with, kind of like God baking a cake. God already had the ingredients for the cake. We can think of chemistry and the raw ingredients of matter. This also explains the second line:

"the earth had existed waste and void."

Meaning, God may not have created the earth, but merely, began to subdue and shape it. Possibly fashion it after God's liking or plan.

This next part: "and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters..."

and the following lines:

Genesis 1:3	and God saith, `Let light be;` and light is.
Genesis 1:4	And God seeth the light that [it is] good, and God separateth between the light and the darkness,

Show us that light is good. At least for God. Light has been associated with many things, Lucifer being one of them. It also seems to me to be saying that darkness and the void are not only a natural state; they are THE natural state before the spirit of God and light bring things into separation. The spirit of God reminds me somewhat of Hegel's geist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77VJshmKPIs

I think it is important to remember that no matter how interesting Hegel's idea of Geist might be, it is a human idea. Being so, it seems limited and selective from a human point of view, though we can speculate that God could possibly work in somewhat of a similar way. The human mind would have a hard time wrapping itself around the actual process though. If human beings tried to, they might be seen as a hermetic.

Hegel was a philosopher in some people’s eyes, in others he was a hermetic:

http://www.amazon.com/Hegel-Hermetic-Tradition-Glenn-Alexander/dp/0801474507/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338612982&sr=1-1

Some believe a hermetic is not a philosopher because a philosopher does not claim they have a firm grasp of what wisdom actually is. On the other hand, a hermetic does. Possibly a philosopher sees more of the void while a hermetic is more hubristic about claiming the light. This light claiming seems like it will always be limited. I would say much of our modern day ideologies have grown out of Hermetic thought. Communism, Fabian socialism, positive freedom, progressivism, the modern day state and capitalism. Selective history and the evolution of progress being others.

It is also interesting that God "saith" things. This speech is after the introduction of light. God uses symbols to separate, classify and conceptualize. This is all well for God, but what about when man, the reflection of God or Being does this? The only way man can describe reality is through symbols. He has to break reality into parts and categorize it with symbols and concepts like mathematics and words. The problem is, unless man has an absolute knowledge of the whole of being, all his knowledge with always be limited. This does not mean that man is not powerful, it only means he is limited in the knowledge of the application of his power, so he must be sure to take care of any application of power he has.

Continuing on with God's speech or words, it reminds me of DNA. Isn't DNA a code or a language? They were using linguistics to decode the genome. Could evolution be enacted through the code of DNA from random mutation and natural selection alone? If DNA is a code or a language, could our language have come about by this? Could our language be improved by random mutation and natural selection, (in the theory of random mutation and natural selection there is no such thing as "improved.") Could we use random mutation and natural selection to write advertisements, books or software programs? Would we get something better? Would they even make sense? Could we even do this or would the process of having to randomly mutate and select these have to be "programmed" by "intention?" Is random mutation and selection the right word for what happens in evolution?

What is intention? Is there a difference between information or a design and a pattern? Between a software program, a book, or a map on the one hand, and a snowflake or a tornado on the other? To me, it seems that if random mutation and natural selection are true, it could also mean that we are devolving, not evolving, because there would be a loss of "information" from the mutations.

On the other hand, could the spirit of God be enacted through man and evolution by some sort of "change" that is written in like a software program rather than through random mutation? Could we be in a software program? It leads one to think that if one was in a program, how would one be able to get out to see if there was a programmer?

Maybe inside the software program there would be strange paradoxes like how knowledge, the self and happiness seem to be fleeting illusions. These could be clues that something is a little fishy about the reality in which you live.

This also makes me think about chaos and complexity. There are many things that we think are random in our life, but they really aren't. What is randomness anyway? How much do we have control? Possibly a plan is acting through all of us and we don't even know it, sort of like individual knits on a carpet... each knit makes up the complete whole of the carpet.

Continuing on, we see there doesn't seem to be a radical difference between man and woman in the first creation story. We remember in the second creation story there is more of a distinct difference of man and woman in the garden of Eden. This may be because the Garden of Eden provides a metaphysical horizon to humans so they have the ability to make these distinctions. We also see no mention of evil. Nor any mention of knowledge of good and evil. Only good... and the things God praises as good are all the natural things that are created. There is also no mention of a tree of life or anything about death.

This makes me think of a couple things. First off, in the Hegelian theory of Geist, freedom is the goal, and it begins to reveal itself through the process of progressive evolution:

http://www.hegel.net/en/spirit.htm

That is one possible thought. Another could be somewhat of a warning.

If man does not have some sort of metaphysical horizon, or, if he becomes forgetful of Being and that he is only a reflection of it---he will progressively become to believe he is all knowing and all powerful. In this process, he will begin to see himself as more and more like God by using the light for himself. In this process, man will see all things as good because he will no longer be able to make any real distinctions.

Man is the master of the earth, and sees himself as the whole and no longer as the reflection of being. He will think he is all knowing and all powerful. But, there is only knowledge of good and evil inside the Garden of Eden and when man eats the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he is thrown from the garden of Eden and will surely die.

Man is no longer alive, the tree of life is inside the Garden of Eden, inside the metaphysical horizon. Man and Woman may end. This may mean they morph into something else or they die all together.

VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization

The Problems of Knowledge vs. Opinion or Ideology

This video from Heidegger provides a good example of the elusiveness of being, and because of this, the problem of absolute knowing. Heidegger's "being-in-the-world" or "thrown into the world" is much the same as the "fallen" conception from Genesis.

Some questions:

1. When one is too hasty with thinking they are utterly sure of being, will they take on a form of absolute "knowing?" Is it also possible they will think they are in possession of "true" knowledge? Hence, the "Self" and "Happiness", both of which seem to be rather elusive.

2. Are anxiety, depression and alienation only symptoms of something deeper? These are attempted to be solved by an ideology of relief: i.e.- psychology, medication. But there is no relief, only illusions.

Is extremist political thought a form of "this-worldly" escapism? On the other hand, what about extreme pacifism and obedience to authority? Are these escapes from seeking being? Are we forgetting about the distinction between nature and techne? The Greeks made a distinction between nature and techne. Is man becoming more alienated as he embraces more technology and forgets that he is a part of nature? This alienation brings symptoms of depression, anxiety and mental illness.

Inevitable symptoms: over-reliance on the media for an image of the self and its goals, overeating, drug and alcohol abuse, abundant pleasure seeking, mindlessness, living vicariously through others, willingness to be led by technology and have decisions made for the self, over-reliance on authority, seeing politicians as demigods or institutions as saviors, political utopianism, "this worldly salvation," (collectivism, socialism, communism, fascism, corporate centralization or vulgar capitalism,) hyper consumerism and materialism, over-reliance on public opinion for beliefs, using technology or the media to enforce public opinion, propagandize, provoke fear or anger, over-reliance on law and security with an under reliance on ethics and rights, (legal positivism,) the rise of a scientific technocratic dictatorship, exploitation of humans or animals with technology, technocratic sadism, a world run by a technocratic elite, pervasive mistrust and fear, (surveillance society,) the rise of a "faith" in a pseudo-religious secularism which is actually just a scientific dictatorship using technology and pharmaceuticals to "purify" the world into "normalcy", extreme double think, all the ism's.

Is there any worldly "salvation" from the anxiety of "being-our-selves?"