Escape to Here Now

  I have become somewhat obsessed with: E pluribus unum  one from many And just what does that imply? Well, it seems to me that such an arrangement of that kind, would require a good deal of trust, as to how, why, and what is going on. Really kind of hard to know how that: one from many  would work realistically without trust. 

  One thing right off, evil does seem a little less evil than Evil. Based from previous post, I was reflecting a little bit on those  things which are available to us to make us less uncertain, and  I began to think back to The Stand, again from Stephan King,  which contained a lot of the " sense of evil ".   The turning point, I believe, occurred when everyone was able to gather together and gain strength and clarity from what was in effect  unity in their thinking and feeling. This created a sense of direction which allowed them to, in the end, eliminate that " sense of evil ", with which they had been plagued. So, I am simply pointing out how that sense of unity is important in focusing such qualities, as strength, persistence and perseverance, which can often eliminate some of the uncertainty, which this period of time seems so thoroughly " infected ".  

  So, I have to mention an experience that happened last night in which Stephen King, was able to project a sense of " genuine " evil in one sentence, which to me was kind of frightening. Of course he has worked at that skill for some time, but I found it quite unsettling.  His wiki page follows; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King So, I'm pretty sure only he could explain how he can do that, and I expect he might have something to say about what exactly it is, this " evil " thing. It obviously has to do with with a sense of fear about some situation that might - potentially - occur, and so that sense of what might happen, but a lack of certainty.  So, it appears to me that -- evil -- , in the sense of our experiencing that feeling or sense of evil, has a compositional quality.  It has two distinct qualities of -- uncertainty -- and  also fear. So where does that uncertainty come from?  I think uncertainty is a quality embedded in our experience, whi...

  I guess I happen to be somewhat fortunate in that I live in a place that has a great deal of ambiguity build into it, about what is east and what is west.  I say fortunate, but that ambiguity has caused me some difficulty over time.   Nevertheless, even here, we do have an east and a west.  The existence of this somewhat nebulous reality has a variety of ways of making itself known, on  lots of different levels.  Of course, in this nation we also have east and west, and even in the state I live in there is  such a thing as well.  Then we have extended this even to the globe. Now, that has always been very difficult for me, because, how  do you determine what is east and what is west on a globe?  You can stare at a ball, for a long time and possibly never be able to determine, what is east and what is west.  Nevertheless, some how we have managed to divide our globe into a quite distinct east and west.  But if you wake up...

  First, generally, it is my personal belief, that to dismiss religion out of hand is what I can only describe as --- unwise ---.   I say that simply because almost every civilization that has ever existed on earth has always been connected to a religion of some type.  Beyond that, simply the accumulation of information and data connected to religion is of course, entirely enormous and incredibly detailed. So there is something, there, which has pre-occupied many, many people, for many, many generations. On a personal level a conversation on this subject which always sticks in  my mind occurred between P.A.M. Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli probably in the late 1920's , possibly at Solvay, during which Dirac argued against the possibility of the existence of God, presumably some argument in which geometry played some role, to which Pauli replied, " Dirac has a religion, it is the religion of Paul Dirac "., ( not necessarily an exact quote but pretty close).  ...

  And so, I was fortunate to hear Howard Zinn, this morning on Democracy Now, and he did mention I believe this issue of totalitarian-ism , ( ism, it, whatever ). It was a rebroadcast of a speech and interview with Howard Zinn. https://www.democracynow.org/ I know for sure that one of the greatest fears/scares of my youth was the black and white , British, version of 1984, I think it was from 1956. I was a pretty big fan of horror at that time, like Frankenstein, etc. One of my really big scares when I was about 5 years old, was a live broadcast of a play about Dracula.  Anyway, just the notion of totalitarian stuff,  was and I still think is, a big fear for me as well as others.   There is another big fear from my youth, which still persists to this day, which is the end of the world, or at least the end of the world as we know it, because it is seriously difficult for anyone to really create a decent definition of what  -- world -- , might mean.  Bes...

  So, this can be a difficult subject, because the word is used in a vast number of contexts, and therefore has a vast number of really different meanings depending on exactly the context in which you are focused.   So, looking at  a simple example, if a group of people are traveling from one location to another, the leader would most often be the person who has made that  trip the most, because he would have the best indications of how to go, landmarks, and distance and things of that sort.   But, of course, generally the kind of leadership we are looking for involves going to someplace you have never been before, meaning generally, the future.  Since no one has been there before, it's pretty hard to know the best way to go.    Of course, this is not really hopeless, for various reasons because, we do it all the time.  Often, we have issues about who might be the " best " leader, but in fact, in practical matters, the leader can be...