Directions to Eternity 2010©GaryCGibson (poem)

An infinite number of entrances exist
unto eternity and its dimensions
limitless numbers in each moment
passing in successions of opportunity
adhering to shadows and silences
being and nothingness
intervals and substance
structures like counterpoints to sensibility
creation, evolution and change
flowing through stability as time and motion
murmuring like dreams of a beginning
ever when

While the world’s hourglass phenomenalizes
irreversibly set to contribute order
we manufacture at the narrows into product and disorder
inefficiently depleting the possible
time and mass slip away
badly used with temporal forms of artifice
when we have nothing remaining
except visions of eternity
with infinite entrances
and just one narrow path to salvation.

President Obama-Dancing in India

This U.S.A. Today video of the President dancing with the kids in a Hindu religious celebration makes one wonder why G.W. Bush never thought of that? A sure-fire way to get a few points up in the polls.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/11/obama-does-the-diplomatic-dance-in-india/1

India is being squeezed between Pakistani Muslim terrorists and Government Spook Op planners and potential terrorist troubles in Bangladesh too. Presidential gunboat economic business diplomacy (10 billion dollars worth so far) may be a wrong practice as foreign trade is best left to private enterprise instead of the heavy feet of government trampling out the vintage (per Adam Smith).

What the President might have suggested to the Hindu crowd is that they start a Reformed Church of Brahma to get in step with the more monotheistic leaning suicide bombers on both sides. The Chinese atheist nuclear war preppies to the north also might better appreciate a Reformed Church of Brahma. God recycling the Universe every 50 billion years is a more plausible explanation to some others than a Vlahala group tossing snowballs on the planet Kolob. One must have a Universe before stars and planets and pagan neo-dities.

For 200 million dollars a day,with two aircraft carrier battle groups in the Indian Ocean, the taxpayers at least deserved taps on the President's shoes.

A Comment on 'The Farfarers' by Farley Mowatt ( entered at wikipedia-probably temporarily)

I wrote a science fiction novella with an ancient Irish voyage to and across America myself in 1994. Published in 1995 as 'Just Search for the Spirit', I used ideas motivated by my trip to Newgrange Ireland and the Earth-mound there at 54 degrees north latitude. I read of the curraigh and St. Brendan too. Living at 54 degrees north latitude at Wrangell Alaska later the obvious likeness of the petroglyphs at Wrangell and at Newgrange, along with the similarity of stone penance huts of Ireland with the small stone shelters on hills above the Stikine River debauching at Wrangell suggested the obvious conclusion; that ancient Irish had made the voyage.

I enjoyed reading Mowatt's book and learned quite a bit from it. It has the sound of truth to it. It has some very interesting historical reconstruction of the sociology of the Vikings at Iceland. We know that the Vikings plundered and killed the Irish monks that had discovered and settled the Island or at least followed up on the earlier Albs, what we did not know is that even the rugged, randy row-about Vikings of Iceland outlawed Eric the Red because of a murder he committed there. He had little recourse besides going a-Viking (these are the bad Vikings that search for plunder prospects and give water wings of lungs excised sometime to those they unfairly biased toward).

If the 900 a.d. time frame of the rise of Cahokia and Earth mounds at East St. Louis is right, it is possible that Albs traveling across America in that time period encountered or coordinated the construction. Certainly Vikings at Kiev became the first kings of the Rus. There is a precedent for ancient peoples accepting a foreigner or exotic for leadership such as the Democratic Party today). This is of course controversial for conservative historians, and entertaining for others

On Mysticism & philosophical Language

The point of mystical experience might be to be more than we are, or more than one is as an uncertain self. The Steppenwolf song 'Rock Me Baby' has the feminine wisdom of 'if all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know' and the further expression that there may be a promised land to hang on until then as best as one can. We intuitively know Jesus Christ as the atemporal Lord of transcendence whereof all other foundations are built, comparatively, on sand.

So we appreciate the sentiment and purpose of discovery of mystical experience. One could suffer from chocolate intoxication and experience the withdrawal of mind and brain/balance unity perhaps-so don't overdo eating chocolate bars or donuts and stay away from that sort of sea-sickness and nausea of the phenomenal experience of mind in brain so disturbing of the normal placid unity.

There may be good paranormal mystical experiences in which one is extracted from one's environ while driving a car to be in another perceptible and more pure universe beyond space and time just to drop back into the driving-the-car along the Interstate experience of being. Well, nothing ever last forever and one must find a good paying job to have the mystical experience of a fully stocked refrigerator.

The effort to intentionally discover a mystical experience, such as described in 'The Cloud of Unknowing', might be a grace kind of thing at various points. It might be the proverbial aesthetic regard for God in nature, the Universe as the sublime and beautiful, though obviously the author meant more than that.

The difficulties of finding a solid ground to stand upon and describe mystical experience ought to exist in the same respect as making a quantum computer requires sampling the state of the particle-waves, collapsing them thereby into the classical realm and spoling the quantum super-positioning function of the waveforms.

I am not certain yet I think this is like making a quantum computer that can make every possible calculation yet if one looks inside the result box it makes the answers disappear. Possibly mysticism may be like that.

Human beings exist in classical solid state physics and would like to have the quantum super-positioning state of all possible worlds sorts of transcendence. Maybe that is a reaching to a confusing for the finite bounds of language for several kinds of infinity, yet perhaps not.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. We can say for sure that Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote that, yet we cannot be certain what he was thinking about when he wrote it.

Name Change ©2010GaryCGibson fiction

I awoke in the night before daylight savings time ended. It occurred to me that if it's impossible to find work, perhaps one must find a new identity. I have had a damaging slump with my own name; Carbon Story.

Finding a new name isn’t a simple matter. One can look over the most common entries in a phone book and consider taking one of those. Maybe after changing it some problems one hadn’t thought of arise that are associated with it, or some of the actual families with that name have issues one isn’t aware of either.

I think I might wait to change my name until after I can afford to purchase a used sailboat in order to leave the land of mythic and legendary dreams. My dream is not of the collective marketed sort, so it marginally actualizes just at the periphery of the new world order.

The Antilles islands where ants lived along with legendary free women of color seemed a basic attraction. To leave one’s identity behind in Corporatopia as expropriated seems good enough to be a plan.

If I were to skip the Smiths and Jones, Powers and Freeburgs maybe I could select something from the elements or gems. My is a good enough first name, and maybe Hydrogen or Zircon for a last. Something that would have the placid commonness of Steve Smith or Tom Jones—just another of the unit labels that don’t attract notice. Something not associated with my career and soon to be former life as a writer of a famous religious poem targeted for obsolescence by Corporatopianists.

It would be a cruel thing to set someone up for reverse identity theft-before I go- making him assume the identity of a somewhat obscure famous soul journeying on to another life away from that of the world of authors and establishment opinions. The dupe taking the persona upon himself would discover some of the liabilities of the identity soon enough. No, I will move on to the windward isles without pasting that name upon an opportunistic foreign invader on the way out of the country.

Mike Diamond is a good name. For the rest of this story Mike Diamond will be my name. You may think of me as Mike, and call me that too if we should happen to meet at some writers conference in a joint somewhere south of Havana. Also you should know that like my coffee very hot and with two sugars.

This name changing decision was brought about for several reasons mostly for convenience though. One wants to survive without being a target of expropriating authority stoking up power and revenue streams with one’s work. There are too many causes to move on to blame any one though.

Consider the problem of the church. It isn’t the body of Christ when it is not a priesthood of believers. With a one-level church all believers are priests and share with the regular service operations. Reinforcement of the well being of every Christian is ordinary rather than exceptional when there is no hierarchical priesthood to usurp the leadership of Christ as high priest over the egalitarianist priesthood of believers. This is a reason to change one’s name too as strange as it may seem. God will give a new name to each Christian one day, one that no one else besides God knows. For the time being, a name to leave behind- one’s identity as a writer and the triangulation of high-caste co-ops, is my own concern.

As I consider these issues the snow is still falling outside the tent. Another winter in America’s Siberia this time in a cold camp. Another drink of ice coffee making me more cold then falling into the Chena River in January-because the chill lasts and the river immersion shock that sets in fades away after the iced clothes thaw and some days of torpor pass.

I will probably go ahead and buy a passport and change my name on it later- not trying to hide my identity, simply creating a new one to make it difficult for the social zeitgeist to have the same lem to lean on. Maybe Paul Zircon isn’t too bad a name either, there can’t be many zircons out there and everyone probably likes them if they think of them at all.

Being self employed most of the time when I have work times not stranded in this northern globalist resource colony, I have no concern about losing the use of my college degrees in applying for work. They were never worth anything anyway. Only the actual learning had a value for entertainment.

A short list of things to do before setting sailing eventually (sure I know the 1000 sailing things and won’t mention them here); talk to attorney about effects of name changes at copyright office registrations of my written works. Discovery how one updates a birth certificate regarding name changes in order that one has a birth certificate. Is it easy to change one’s name on and I.D. card or Driver’s license to the new name?

Naming a new sailing boat, or renaming an old one is nearly a sacred thing… It is probably a fun thing to do for oneself as well.

Senator Lindsey Graham to Obama; Consider War on Iran/Economic Answers

Senator Lindsey Graham has made the suggestion that attacking Iran’s Air Force and Navy should be considered by President Obama in order to discourage Iranian development of nuclear weapons. Perhaps the United States does not spend enough as it is on destroying foreign military assets , with the Defense budget being about a third of the federal budget its destruction of material items per financial endowment is rather low.

Shouldn’t the administration have some concern for the legality of foreign wars and missions of destruction even if some Senators do not? Is it actually illegal for a nation to manufacture and produce nuclear weapons? Isn’t the actual problem of owning nuclear weapons one of ultimate fate of a nation that attacks another nuclear-armed nation of being incinerated? With nuclear weapons that cannot be used, Iran’s next stop in war is total destruction, without nuclear weapons Iran might just survive an invasion by a future Admiral Mullins and a Gay Marine Corps (maybe the nuclear war option is better on second thought).

Seriously though, as funny as Admiral Mullins and an Uncle Sam Wants You! recruitment concept for a homosexualized military and nuclear war might be, responsible and sober citizens hope for a fair and balanced social environment. Some believe that getting rid of too much government is the answer. War is a form of governing through other means though, and too much war is harmful to economies too.

The too much government campaign has disingenuous aspects. Homeless poor people in Alaska that live in a too much government social environment would find that the Tea Partiers would oppose their building a cabin in summer on city park land or wherever a forest exists in order not to freeze, and also would oppose building campfires there too in order to heat up coffee. Some too much government theory is predicated on the idea of just enough government to defend my wealth theory and negate everyone else’s needs. Republicans may believe they could defend their own property from competition themselves, yet that is debatable and would need to be answered in civil war, anarchy and nihilist armed litigation. Really too much government, as in state or corporatist tyranny as Ronald Regan pointed out, is a dry well from which civil society may be cast with little hope of in vivo extraction.

Senator Graham of course has a savage’s comprehension of the effects of sinking naval vessels on polluting the ocean-basically none. The fire all the guns and watch the burning, burning, smoke on the waters and fire in the sky attitude dumps tons of oil and toxic chemicals, paints, metals and sundry things bad for fishing into the sea and sky. Capturing the ships and auctioning them on E-Bay might be a more environmentally responsible alternative the Senator could consider when he is moving his war games scenario models about his pool.

Nuclear weapons are plainly dangerous. If our policy in containing Pakistani nuclear weapons and terrorist training camps can be used as a measuring rod of our prospects for containing the Iranian and Korea proliferation problems, then its no worry.

So we may consider how to capture Iranian naval vessels and aircraft while in motion and return them safely to the used war equipment lots of Tijuana.

In each instance (Sea and sky) the launch of a small, steal interceptor intelligent sabot packed with hostile takeover technology items would contact the opposition force vessel and take control of its flight guidance mechanisms or render the crew incapable of resistance (that could be anything from bribes to super glue). An aircraft could be remotely piloted or a ship boarded by navy Seals after the power authority is transitioned.

Future naval and air combat should feature capture technology in order to reduce the terrible and concatenating effects of pollution upon the planet. Plainly, commercial fishing should be halted in Alaska and simply subsistence and sports fisheries allowed to continue in order to restore the health of the fishery the next decade. Even with the crisis of over-use and exhaustion of the Alaska sports and subsistence fishery U.S. Senators as Lindsey Grahams are asking for increasing pollution of the worlds oceans through deposition of sunken war vessels, and that is reprehensible.

The traditional detergent for use of nuclear weapons by a belligerent nation on the United States or its allies is assured destruction. That should work for Iran too. I cannot help feeling that America’s incompetent and protracted Middle Eastern and Asian war policy of egregiously expensive militarism is in part a derivative of an incompetent and corrupt domestic economic policy. The perennial wars distract from domestic economic incompetence and provide work for the defense industry. There are more competent foreign policy approaches possible, including fixes to the Mohammedan problem of terrorism.

America with a population of 300 million competing against the billions of India, China, Europe and Latin America has one advantage that could restore full employment; a comparatively small population. A highly educated population with select global economic interests could exist in the U.S.A. with a fully employed, highly paid unskilled and semi-skilled workforce serving the non-physically working class if the non-physical workers would stop existentially seeking an instant narrow self-interest advantage in degrading the wages and quality of life of the working class and homeless through importation of foreign labor. Prosperous pimps of labor sink national interest. Temporal ego-glorification through extreme concentrations of paper money and power is not ultimately socio-environmentally healthful.

Protracted foreign asymmetric wars implicitly harm U.S. national economic progress. Secure borders, zero immigration and a tightened up labor market would enable a demand for more expensive domestic labor to find a better equilibrium with the higher paid office workers. A high unemployment, protracted resource and asymmetric anti-terror wars regime should be evolved out and replaced with a more effective, directed, selected anti-terror methodology along with a better composition of resource ensemble for the present U.S. cultural tool kit. Political intelligence needs to manifest in leadership that respects Adam Smith’s notion that private enterprise should lead the way on foreign trade-not the government. The government should focus upon encouragement and support for border security and invest in and prefer technologies promoting local resource use rather than imported, concurrent with ecosystem conservation, care and restoration.

With a corrupted, dysfunctioning U.S. economy the world also lacks a good conservative example of moderation, intelligence and socio-environmental rationality.

With a more educated national work force and a stable population even unskilled job workers will receive higher pay. It is the immigration of cheap foreign labor that lems up the U.S. economy and accelerates the concentration of wealth in the United States. Full employment in America would cost the middle class and wealthy the payment of higher wages to the lesser skilled workers, yet the fundamental relation of labor supply and demand to wages is the actual critical fact of present economic malaise in United States. So long as real cheap legal and illegal labor is brought into the United States, full employment will not occur, and a management class business advantage and corporate hegemony over government will debase security, sovereignty and financial well being of the United States.

On Extremism in U.S. Politics

The concept of avoiding extremism is useful enough. For those with any kind of an agricultural background though it may be somewhat urbanish.

Extremism in planting season, or in crop rotation--what are such things? The Congress is composed of clever and wealthy people, yet they are not terribly thoughtful intellectually on what social or political philosophy is/are I think.

There are those that have pride in America being a Republic instead of a democracy according to the Founders concepts, for whatever reason. Yet there are two ways to regard a republic such as America has, and several more in other historical contexts.

When representatives of government are regarded as contractors hired by the public through elections to serve their interests, then one doesn't regard them as royals free to dump whatever perfidy they deem appropriate on the hapless minions. If one hires a painting contractor one wants the guy to put quality paint on the building, though the particular method is discretionary for the painters’ expert knowledge. That knowledge might be compared to listening to the many public opinions of a constituency and selecting the most efficacious course in promulgating legislation.

Instead, the representatives and Senators of today have become the minions of concentrated wealth and globalism. Extremism might be construed as following the will of a powerful minority. Just 19% of the income of those earning more than 10 million dollars a year is earned through wages and salaries. The rich own the media and the political philosophy the public is programmed with--that is extremism.

The reality TV quality Presidential races may be produced by and for the powers of concentrated wealth and anti- Adam Smithian capitalism with a focus on serving the interests of a democracy and all citizens best instead of those of a concentrating class of wealth.

Extremism in the lexicon of American politics has often been a pejorative term applied to those dissatisfied with the status quo, concentration of wealth and power and so forth. Today we view extremism as Muslim political philosophy and method like as not, though we wonder if today’s mosque demolition in Pakistan that killed fifty worshippers was a Shi'a or a Sunni facility-C.N.N. did not say...

If the mosque was Shi'a then perhaps the usual Sunni suspects were just using the ongoing terrorist extremist agitation in that nation in some ways directed toward Kashmiri independence and against the west, Indian Hindu foe religionists and the Shia as an opportunity to purge a little domestically. Mohammad was involved in something like 14 battles as his proselytizing outward. We note the same determination to rule the world in many of the Muslims that are extremists for detonating themselves and others.

Perhaps extremism is basic change, or an increase of information in a holographic universal state, that alters the social pattern of being economically and environmentally. Planners should work for the good of all possible people in the quest for a prosperous and intelligent ecotopia. Climbing to the top, with faith and submission to the will of God on the ascent, may be a challenging task to try, for mere human beings alive for just a time.

All extremists are not created intellectually equal. Some move with a definite wrong self- accepted programmatic content. Some people may live in a foe social environment through design or circumstance. Foes are not necessarily reasonable, unbiased or fair in subverting the vital interests of their 'be yas'. Dumb and dumber extremism will not create that perfect renewable social and ecological environment acceptable to God.

There are essential lines of opposition in determining right and acceptable social boundaries. There are collectives in government and corporations including not only access to material wealth but also in compelling select conformity of thought. While God is no respecter of persons, humanity must be or the right of self-defense response is to aim for the belly and pull the trigger on the 12 gauge if necessary.

The broadcast media today is a pervasive violator of the boundaries and freedom to go about one's social life without an unfair and unbalanced Orwellian super-commentator programming the masses. Individual boundary security interests would reallocate the broadcast wavelengths to individual citizen use via the Internet. I personally have enough audio material to recycle my own freq a few days. Concentrated broadcast power is technologically anachronistic and politically corrupting.

Creating defensible boundaries in a complex and crowded social environment is difficult. Some fail to comprehend that the basic human conflict is organismic--to keep that amoeba out there from eating one against one's will. In modern terms and in more complex organisms the amoeba desire to consume is a political will to power and to subjugate others not of kith and kin.

Perhaps that’s enough for this essay. I will need to write another time on what a terrible general Robert E. Lee was for a civil war, and why the south needed someone more dynamic like Julius Caesar to win a civil war against Pompey. Lee was too taciturn and subordinated to President Davis. Lee did not want to leave Virginia except go to Gettysburg to lose a battle to General Meade. Lee did not have the charisma or personality to command the volatile southern generals. Lee was a good engineer and a respectable man who had been commandant at West Point, but if the south had a unified commander-president, perhaps Longstreet, they might have had a better chance of winning the war early before U.S. Grant got up to speed and took over in 1864.

The confederate generals were extremists and emotional, brave and prone to dueling and fighting. The southerners sought to establish a kind of shadow reflection of the northern government with slaves when they needed a dictator for a year as ancient Romans had during war. Unfortunately for the confederacy, General Thomas chose to fight on the Northern side though he was originally from North Carolina. Probably George H. Thomas was the best military mind on the planet; his work for the Army of the Cumberland at Chickamauga and in wrapping up General Hood was methodical and inevitable.

Those that view extremism as a departure from the ideal, more ecotopian course of human development have little patience for those that believe that mass consumerism and high-entropy economics is not extreme itself. It is the mass, essential extremism pushing humanity toward existential extremes.