Escape to Here Now

  So we have lot's of problems, and some problems are clearly more serious than others. However, in general if you examine " problems ", you might find that many or at least a good number of these are , on a sort of root level, connected back to fear.   It is good to examine simpler problems to see how this works.  There are probably better examples , but you can see that in terms of " politics " in the U.S., many difficulties we have in implementing  effective policies, programs, or systems , sort of revolves around issues connected to a two party system which is effectively based on " fear ".  At it's core we are afraid of a single party -- sort of -- going off the rails, so we have two parties both of which now constantly asserting that the other party is --- off the rails ---.  Of course the rails are kind of imaginary concepts, because if we had " real " rails, then the U.S. government would be a train.  So the system was based on th...

  This, like the last post is a bit difficult because, although containing  some degree of reasonableness, it does, in my mind lack a bit of rigor or precision. But, at the core, it is mostly about how we deal with differences or perceived differences.  I think that at the center of any religious or moral structure, you must include as some kind of a foundation, the need to care for the vulnerable, the poor, elderly, and the young.  My quasi-perception is that there is an illusive segment of  almost all societies, a group which takes advantage of the vulnerable in various ways and to a large degree, the existence of such a group is to some extent the justification for the existence of a judicial system.  That this group exists I think is evident from history, because when this group comes to the forefront in a society all kinds of horrendous behavior and activities result. But it does seem that there is some kind of misguided sense of morality or ethics whi...

  Right off , I must say, this is probably not going to be easy, and at the end, you may experience some dissatisfaction with where it ends up. To begin with, both of these notions or concepts have one thing in common which is they might be considered subtle.  In the case of love, because it in associated with so many other experiences, like respect, compassion, kindness, patience, and perhaps many more , it ends up kind of complicated.  Likewise, for potential which can be associated with a variety of events.  Both of these things do seems to possess the attribute they they can be useful for understanding events, and both ideas can be pretty easy to accept and " kind of " believe in. So, in some ways, you can think of these things as what they are not, and then there is some kind of sense of direction associated with both.  In another sense, they are both useful in explaining things, and they also have a context of enfolding in time.  So, they both encompa...

 Henri Poincare did spend a good deal of time discussing science in various ways. Two of his works on this would be - Science and Method, as well as Science and Hypothesis. One curious aspect of science would be, it's ability to inspire almost boundless enthusiasm for tasks that might other wise be considered tedious and perhaps even boring.  Nevertheless, this seems to have caught on to the point that we now have large groups of people involved with these types of activities.  Today of course, it seems it has assumed a very important part of everybody's life, to the point were it seems very difficult to ignore. There, is another rather curious aspect of science which is some what difficult to understand, which is that aspect which seems to divide, in particular the life science areas from the non-life science areas.  This division I do not believe is implicit to science, but rather suggests more about how people respond to the world around them and try and sort thin...

So we've reached the point  about 75 years now, from the passing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and there are a few things that come back to me at this time. One, is my personal difficulty in separating  the  Jesus or the Christ, from the man.  So much of that spirit seems to have been embedded and integrated into his words and actions.  And so there is some strong connection then in all of our lives going back to that individual experience. But, it's hard to not reflect on some of his final words, particularly, " we as a people, will get to the promised land ",  that note of almost unstoppable confidence which were exuded in those words.  At the same time, it is kind of hard to wrap your head around it.   And I guess, I just must end with the question: can you believe it? or can you not believe it?

 It turns out that a conversation of this type went on for a long time in the early days of Christianity in disputes between orthodoxy and heresy.  It is useful to have a definition for heresy, which could be :  a person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted. Oddly all these folks considered themselves Christians.   And so, what does all this mean?  I'm thinking you best sort all that out for yourself.

  Of course, right off, it might be simple to just not connect these three concepts, and then have done with it.  Sadly, they all root from the same stem, liber. It would have been nice, if at the founding of this country, the founders had developed a device which would distinguish between liberal and conservative. Perhaps they did, and I just don't know about it.  It would make life so much simpler for us today, in trying to figure out who is " truly " conservative and who is " truly " liberal. Anyway, moving on ... So, this idea of liberty is pretty central to the whole notion of the United States, as we have this important line: Liberty and justice for all.   The individual who came up with that line, might have been in some rare mood, but there you have it and it stuck over the years.  So, what is this liberty ?  Well, mostly you would think that it has to do with some impediment or oppression or simply difficulty which prevents you from achieving ...

  And so, my father was a pilot and I think I learned the word, attitude, from him, which mainly had to do with how the air plane was traveling in the up/down direction.  In this context attitude means a lot, in fact it means, like everything, whether you get off the ground or not,  and like wise whether you get back to the ground.  So attitude can mean a lot in different situations, and of course, in this context, also meaning, whether what you are doing is " right ", kind of, keeping the shiny side up. Life, is funny, and being right can mean a lot.  But sometimes, just being right is not enough, like, yes, you can get off the ground, but then you also have to know where you are going, and sometimes, that can be as difficult as getting off the ground. Now, it's time for me to figure out what this means.  Maybe it means something.  I know that when I am thinking about this one element that seems to persist is what attitude can mean, as well as trying ...

Of course, many people have differing views on this topic, but to begin with I would like to assert quite strongly, the one thing religion is not is politics.  I believe they are significantly different. Now one very common perspective on this is that religion has a deity or not, and that the primary point is that the deity or not is all about punishing the wicked and rewarding --- the good or goodly.  Now, of course this produces some mental tension, because we tend to observe that the wicked do not seem to get punished more than the good or the goodly, which makes you wonder what the heck this deity or not is really all about. Of course there is a bit of a different perspective, that really religion is more about making our individual lives , and the lives of others, better, regardless of whether we are good - goodly - or wicked.  The deity or not in this case would really be more focused on providing good or valuable information how how and why we should be doing that....

 Not going to get into  etc., but maybe. So, I've been reading a lot about Rome, lately, and of course we think of Rome, as an empire, although, we also think in terms of Rome as a civilization.  Mostly, though we think about it in terms of wars, because the administration of Rome at whatever level was intimately connected to it's fighting of wars, which it did, mostly, successfully over many centuries. But  if you start the whole thing out on a dime, you have to admit that in many ways we are talking about agriculture, because it is unlikely that Rome would have been any where near as successful, without the success of Italian agriculture for that long period of time. So, you have to think of it as a long series of battles over centuries, or you can think of it as a highly successful agrarian culture. Obviously, an army of thirty legions, which  was about 300,000 men is going to consume a lot of agricultural products. Now, I must sum this up.  The human ra...

  When we think or discuss politics, it is frequently from the perspective of left and right, which is implicit for conservative and liberal.  The most effective terms for these ideas, I believe is caution versus more willing to take on risks.  In other words, more or less willing to accept risk.   It seems, at least in the U.S. there is a kind of up and down as well, because this country was founded on the notion, that oppression was not acceptable.  So, the ethics , also somewhat implicit in the documents that form our government, then, have this kind of perspective.  Down would be oppressive then, and up would imply less oppression. These concept of reducing " oppression ", was again, reasserted in the Civil War, during the 1860s, and concepts of this type have again , and again be reasserted. So ,my conclusion then is that as well as taking on the issue of  more and less risk, our left and right, it is succinctly important to take into account...