lipstick, photography and james baldwin, old age and wisdom, censorship, rob reiner, ai | daily me
Technology does not halt evolution but rather redirects and accelerates it. The rapid pace of technological change suggests a faster and more profound transformation of humanity.
gratitudes, the master and his emissary, autism as a cultural norm, wisdom | daily me
is natural selection being skewed to favor autism in human beings?… is the problem we are having with rising autism due to the fact that we favor success for individuals that are autistic and therefore increase the numbers of them birthed into the population?… a really intriguing idea…
yesterday i was grateful for football with my brother…
today i am looking forward to getting holiday packages in the mail…
yesterday i was grateful for a delicious lemony turkey soup i made from the legs of a turkey i helped raise and slaughter…
today i am looking forward to further christmas preparations with holly…
we humans reach the height of our creative powers well before we reach the height of our wisdom… we create brilliantly whatever we are capable of creating before we have the wisdom to see the consequences… when we begin to see the consequences… we are discarded…
yesterday i was grateful for christmas tree lights and book club partying!…
today i am looking forward to dinner with steve and diane and the wynotte sisters annual christmas concert…
When G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers asked ChatGPT to fact-check an article for him yesterday, the chatbot couldn’t get its head around modern America. It told him there were “multiple factual impossibilities” in his article, including his statements that “[t]he current Secretary of Defense is a former talk show host for Fox News,” “[t]he Deputy Director of the FBI used to guest-host Sean Hannity’s show,” and “Jeanine Pirro is the U.S. District Attorney for DC.”
is incredulous ai a good thing?…
yesterday i was grateful for yoga with maryanne and spicy pork gopdol…
today i am looking forward to hanging christmas lights, baking cookies and partying with stanza books…
lying on the free table in front of the estate auction house on main street… an art magazine dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the birth of Peter Paul Rubens… i flip through the pages and find reproductions of his drawings and paintings of women… i love the feminine… i love womanhood… i tuck it in my backpack and continue down the sidewalk…
i am out for my daily walk… photographing… thinking… getting some exercise… i will arrive at Bigmouth coffee shop at 7, when it opens… i am shaking up my morning routine a little… maybe a new coffee shop environment will help break the creative block i have been experiencing… i have been unable to write or make photography consistently for a couple of years now… perhaps calling it a creative block isn’t quite correct… i have been exploring trans feminine space… this has involved a complete redo of my wardrobe… countless hours scouring the internet and local shops for dresses, skirts, blouses, shoes, makeup, accessories… what i have been going through has appropriated all creative energies during these years… clothing, makeup, jewelry, shoes… then testing new outfits in the morning at the local coffee shops… i have a good solid wardrobe now… there are still some holes in it though… shoes have been especially difficult… quality women’s shoes in my size are hard to find… last week i spent several hours shopping for shoes on line… i found some new sources… i ordered a pair of lovely red knee height boots and a pair of pecan brown leather kitten heal sandals… recreating myself continues…
even so, i am getting restless… the creative urge is building towards and around other expressions… photography, writing…
my new coffee shop routine will be sat, sun, Kitchen & Coffee, because Bigmouth doesn’t open till 8 AM on weekends… mon, Bigmouth… tue, kitchen and coffee because favorite baristas work the opening shift… wed, thu, fri, Bigmouth…
i stand in front of Bigmouth waiting… a little after 7 the door pops open and a Rubenesque young woman, with radiant smile and pleasant demeanor, pops out carrying a piece of sidewalk furniture… i wait for her to complete the transfer of furniture from inside the shop to sidewalk… when finished, she invites me to come in… i do… she takes up her place behind the counter… i ask her to remind me of her name… Chelsea… i place my order… i ask her how she is today… i compliment her necklace assemblage… she smiles and thanks me… she remembers me, which is impressive… i don’t come here often… she remembers i always ordered decaf… i can’t remember coming here enough to have an always order… i find two packages of coffee beans and request a chocolate chunk oatmeal cookie, which turns out to be the Godzilla of chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies… $50… mostly for the the coffee beans…
i haul beans, Godzilla cookie, coffee, iPhone, backpack and myself to the big round table in the back, my preferred table… after arranging self and things i decide to have a look at the Rubens birth anniversary magazine… i get to page 16 and am drawn to the words RAVISHED BEAUTIES and the adjacent reproduction of The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus… i read the caption…
According to Greek myth, Phoebe and Hilaria, daughters of king Leucippus of Messene, were snatched away from their husbands-to-be by Castor and Pollux, the twin sons of Zeus. Rubens delighted in such stories, which provided him with almost inexhaustible opportunities to portray his favorite subject: the female nude. **The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus** (2.25M x 2.10M), painted around 1619, is not a tragic picture: the maidens, like the impish cupid clinging to the horse's bridal at left, **do not seem unduly perturbed by what is going on**.
the news has been thick with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal… Epstein trafficked women globally… many of his victims were under age… highest level powerful men used his services…
highest level powerful men have also worked hard to burry the scandal… giving Epstein sweetheart plea deals… transferring his accomplice, Ghislane Maxwell, to sleep-away-camp prison and providing her with work release privileges… in exchange for her silence and/or misdirection?…
nothing to see here!…
in an ironic twist, the scandal has renewed legs because Trump’s MAGA base was promised full disclosure of the Epstein files to encourage their support… i think they imagined it would be mostly liberals who were implicated… they haven’t backed off now that “dear leader” seems to be among the implicated… sex trafficking minors may be one of the few bridges too far for them…
as i read the caption of the Rubens rape painting i see a 400 year old patriarchal permission slip for rape, interpreted exactly that way by the relatively contemporary caption… the accompanying article was written by a man and published in the June 1977 issue of The UNESCO Courrier… it would not be until 1993 that the United Nations would issue a declaration on violence against women… too late for this publication… one hopes better editorial decisions relative to the portrayal of women were made well before 1993…
i am less upset about the artist and the painting itself, than the patriarchal scholarly contention that the picture lacks tragic import because the women don’t appear “unduly disturbed”… it is difficult to stomach… the women have been rendered as the male gaze fantasizes them… they wanted it, didn’t they?…
in an unexpected twist, i read that the arrival of humanism opened the doors to the painting of female nudes, even nude rape victims… as long as it was grounded in myth…
an AI search summary of the purpose of myth…
Myths explain natural and cultural phenomena, provide moral guidance, and help individuals understand their place in the world. They also connect people to their cultural heritage and address universal human concerns such as creation, life and death.
they also serve to entrench and perpetuate the patriarchal and misogynous underpinnings of European society…
some brief poking around confirms that there is a greek myth about two young male gods, Castor and Pollux, who abducted Leucippus' daughters away from the men they are betrothed to, killing the fiancés in the process… such was the world back then… “they aren’t yours if you can’t keep them,” to paraphrase a line from the TV series Your Friends and Neighbors… in Castor and Pollux’s defense, they were gods and they did marry and have children with the women…
the abduction of women (what rape meant back in the day) has been a thing for a very long time… powerful men and gods do what they wish with the women around them…
how little things have changed… how unbelievably long they have been the same…
i have developed significant pain centered in my right shoulder… i have tried many things to deal with it… painkillers, heating pad, electric stimulation, etc… the pain is stubborn and persistent… the painkillers i have are ineffective…
my current theory is that it is repetitive motion injury… i do a lot of micro moving with my right hand and arm to operate my devices, iPhone mostly… in an effort to improve the situation i have decided to commit to analog methods of recording thoughts and information… to change the micro movements and relieve, or at least shift the stress… i’m still struggling with the pain, so it is too early to tell if this is helping, but I am hopeful…
i have shifted my journaling practice to a paper journaling book… i have reactivated my fountain pens which don’t need a tense grip or pressure on the page… i purchased 3x5 index cards for recording quick thoughts and highlights from reading… i have purchased letter size writing pads for working on longer pieces… that is how this post started… i then read my rough draft into the voice memo app on my phone and copied the transcription into drafts, my note transfer hub app on my phone… from there i send them to wherever i want to work on them next… i have purchased a weekly planner and will use that instead of the calendar app on my phone…
this is not the first time i have tried to return to analog… purchased materials and equipment to do it with… only to collapse back into the digital sphere, within days… this time seems different… there are health and comfort issues supporting and provoking the shift, which will, hopefully, help get me over the hump to a regular analog journaling and thought processing regimen… and a routine for transcribing the most important thinking and writing to the digisphere…
there are additional benefits to analog thinking and recording…
Throughout human history, writing, drawing, and recording information in physical form have been central to human culture, learning, and self-expression. From ancient cave paintings and early written language on clay tablets to personal journals and handwritten letters, the act of physically engaging with a surface to record thoughts is deeply embedded in the human experience. This analog practice is not only a reflection of our cultural heritage but also serves as a critical tool for supporting mental health, enhancing memory, and providing a space for introspection and creative expression.
–The Enduring Power of Pen and Paper: How Analog Practices Support Mental Health
there is a fair amount of support on the internet for returning to these centuries old ways of doing things… the acknowledged benefits are…
and there is also…
i won’t become a Luddite… but i will restrict technology use to what i most need it for…
the mystique of feminine
on one of my walks i passed a local realtor’s storefront in which there was a human size statue of lady liberty with an american flag wedged between the folds of her dress and a book or plaque with July IV embossed on it… my immediate thought was… liberty is feminine socialist… patriarchy is masculine fascist…
i have a strong preference for the feminine socialist spirit which i make evident in my appearance… you know, project the change you wish to see…
i used to believe the world would be a better place if women had power in numbers equal to men… i believed they would bring feminine socialist spirit to governance… then came Lauren Bobert, Marjorie Taylor Green, Kristi Noem and others… i was forced to reassess my women in power thesis…
i hadn’t read bell hook’s Feminist Theory yet… if i had, i might have known better… here are some things she has to say about gender differences and women in power…
The difference between the sexes is not whether one does or doesn't have a penis, it is whether one is an integral part of a phallic masculine economy
and…
Many participants in feminist movement sincerely believed that women were different from men and would exercise power differently.
and…
Although women do not have the power ruling groups of men often exert, they do not conceptualize power differently.
so… more women in power, while important, is not the solution… those that get there rise within a, now, morally bankrupt capitalist patriarchal structure… they exercise power as defined within that social, political and economic system…
and yet…
i feel certain that feminine qualities of perception and interaction must find a way to make themselves known and felt… that “feminine socialist “soft power” needs to come to the front…
men should learn that embracing feminine qualities is not a failure of manhood… to be egalitarian, nurturing, centered on power with, not over, does not make a man incapable of manliness… anymore than a woman’s being assertive and authoritative makes her incapable of being womanly if she wants to be… the qualities of masculine and feminine can be embraced and enacted by men or women… we need a culture that values a fluid masculine/feminine spirit…
i hear there is a masculinity crisis… i agree, but i have a different idea about what that crisis is… the dominant social myth of manhood in our culture is lonely, one dimensional, violent and toxic… it is power over, not power with… it is narcissistic, petty and revenge oriented, as we see with the current administration… our society is so focused on this power over mythic model that there is virtually no other way for men to be and be respected… those that eschew the lonely macho cowboy model are not offered frictionless, socially viable, alternative models… thus… a crisis…
toxic, patriarchal masculinity walks hand in hand with capitalist system… all that matters is exploitative physical might… this is a morally bankrupt system of engagement with people and planet…
this morning i read about the dismantling of everything that suggests we are in a human made climate crisis… this, of course, serves fossil fuel interests…
it is morally bankrupt to center fossil fuels when deadly floods and wild fires of epochal proportion are raging across the landscape… it is morally bankrupt to abandon nutritional assistance and health support to poor people, at home and abroad, while giving deficit mushrooming tax breaks to the wealthy, and telling people the benefits will trickle down… we have at least 30 years experience with this model… it doesn’t work for most people… it makes a few people wealthier while the rest become poorer and more desperate…
i believe in feminine socialist soft power… i believe in the mystique of feminine… not the mystique which places women in a position of powerlessness and sexual objectification, but the mystique of mystery and power that is intuitive, inclusive and tolerant engagement with the world… i believe in the wild witchy power of feminine… i believe in the dangerous to toxic masculinity and therefore severely repressed sacred power of feminine…
the yinyang conceptual model of the cosmos maintains yin, the feminine power and yang, the masculine power, are inseparable qualities… together, in balanced relationship, there is a world of peace and harmony… however, a problem with the soft power of cohesion, empathy, humility and sensitivity is that the violent power of patriarchal masculinity overwhelms it… feminine socialist power brings flowers to the gun fight… raw, toxic patriarchal power only understands and respects raw toxic patriarchal power… we become trapped in a vicious, amoral, brutal and broken yang dominated cycle…
even so, i hope for feminine socialist soft power revolution… my approach is to be the feminine i want to see… to be my authentic self… i don’t suggest wearing dresses and lipstick is the way most men should go… rather, i believe a society that embraces my gender authenticity is open to feminine socialist soft power… being my feminine self is my revolutionary act…
i am a year and nine months into my transition to feminine presentation… i have completely replaced my masculine leaning clothing with decidedly feminine garments… i have invested a small fortune in cosmetics, mostly nail polish and lipstick… my morning ritual includes belly, chest, breast and face shaving… face and neck moisturizer/sunscreen… deciding on my foundational garment, then accessorizing… jewelry, headbands, scarves… and finally, lipstick… i haven’t developed a nightly face cleansing routine but i have the products for it…
during the past 21 months i became progressively bolder with my look… i moved from garments walking the line between masculine and feminine to garments, like flowy maxi dresses, that are unmistakably women’s clothing… i moved from barely noticeable flesh tone lipstick to shades of pink, copper and then bold red… it has been an extended normalizing process… for my wife, my family, my community, myself… i needed to get used to being womanly… wearing lipstick, jewelry and dresses in public… i needed to figure out how safe i was presenting as a womanly man in public…
i am lucky… wife, family, friends, community… all have been able to embrace this new me… my wife misses more masculine me… but she knows i am not a substantially different person in my thinking and beliefs and that feminizing myself makes me happy… my mother and sister don’t fully understand it, but both of them have been able to make peace with it because they see how happy i am… both have given me jewelry and/or scarves from their personal collections… my brother fully embraced and supported it from the beginning…
my father passed away a few years ago, which is fortunate because i am certain he would not have embraced my feminine… i would not have… did not… challenge him with it… to do so would have cut me off from my mother… in part, because of him, i kept my masculine facade longer than i might have… his death weakened the dam to my feminine, which then burst…
thinking about my life… i realize that feminine expression lurked in the shadows from an early age… i can recall my preteen self trying on my mother’s bras, which my sister saw and ratted me out… i don’t remember any serious consequences… my parents probably thought i was exploring as kids do… i wonder if my father even knew about it…
in high school there was reason to don a toga garment in latin class… i loved the dress like flow of fabric around me and decided to stay dressed in the toga as i went to other classes until my latin teacher caught up with me and suggested it wasn’t playing well to my classmates…
i recall my high school girl friend giving me shirts she got from a relative’s business that were essentially blouses… there was a floral and completely transparent one that i was prepared to wear to school… my mother talked me out of it… i was not a kid that ever fit in very well… she had worked hard over the years to help me avoid being picked on…
during my first marriage i collected women’s hat pins, beaded purses, and other feminine accessory collectables… my second wife carried one of my beaded purses on our wedding day…
before i fully blossomed into trans-feminism, i purchased a couple of unisex maxi tunics from Rawganique, which i wore on ceremonial occasions… weddings, baptisms, etc… for a niece’s wedding i wore a long sleeve off white tunic and white, Truman Capote style summer hat… i was declared the best dressed man at the wedding by more than one of the young women attending… when i started using the same hair stylist my wife used i discovered the joys of a french braid, which became my signature hair style to wear with the maxi tunic garments…
as i said, all of this stayed on the borderline between masculine and feminine until my father died… the year after his death, a compulsive fascination with female mannequins and women’s clothing began to build… i wrote about it… i also read numerous books by women about being women… i photographed women’s shop mannequins on my daily walks… i was not conscious of where it was leading until i found myself ordering my first lipstick… flesh colored… barely noticeable when i wore it in public… shortly after that i ordered my first sweater dress which i wore over jeans in tunic fashion… my desire for feminine presentation mushroomed… finding clothes and accessories became an obsession consuming all my available creative energy for more than a year…
recently a woman friend shared a link to a facebook post written by a dad about his pre-teen son who liked wearing dresses… he was supportive and proud of his son’s courage… for the time being, he wrote, they are still using he/him pronouns to refer to him because, as his son put it, “i am just a boy that likes to wear dresses”… that is where i seem to have landed… i am a man that likes to wear dresses, jewelry and lipstick… i love to feel feminine… womanly… it’s hard to describe how good and complete i feel in feminine presentation… still, as i assured my mother, much to her relief, i don’t feel a need to become a woman physically the way i did to become a womanly man (wo-man?)… i literally could not control it… while i am sometimes sad i don’t have a woman’s body (ooh the tight fitting sexy dress possibilities!) i make the best of what i have… i am happy with that… true transitioning to a woman’s body is not compulsively essential to me… or worth the expense and risks of hormone therapy, surgery, etc…
returning to my community, i have been amazed by how embracing people have been… women especially… i have been gifted jewelry, clothing and scarves by many of them… some men… strangers, acquaintances and friends… have embraced me with friendliness… just the other day, two male acquaintances made a point of sitting down and talking with me, even as i was wearing a black linen mini dress, brass bead necklace and bold purple red lipstick… i am grateful… there are towns north, south, east and west of me that would not be so accepting… i moderate my feminine when i travel outside of Beacon…
The difference between the sexes is not whether one does or doesn't have a penis, it is whether one is an integral part of a phallic masculine economy.
–bell hooks, Feminist Theory: Margins to Center
i believe in the power of feminine… having learned that women are every bit as capable of exercising the power of patriarchal structure, in dominating patriarchal ways, i realized it was the egalitarian and nurturing qualities we associate with the feminine that were important and sadly withered across much of human history… i am trying to puzzle out why masculine has been so dominant since time out of mind almost… there are, i believe, some examples of matriarchal societies that deployed the power of feminine to organize and manage themselves, but they have not been common… in the world today there is a testosterone contest of powerful men going on… i want masculine to rebalance with feminine, yinyang fashion… both qualities are important but masculine is far too dominant and running amok in the present moment… if the rebalancing is half as positive for society in general as it has been for me, the world will be a much better place…
when Donald Trump was elected president, i worried i would have to return to the closet… i am still not sure i won’t… we appear to be in the early stages of constructing a police state… they have built an ICE detention facility in the middle of the Florida everglades… there appear to be plans for more facilities across the country… the big ugly bill just passed by congress contains billions of dollars of extra funding for ICE and immigrant “management”… if we are moving to worse case scenario authoritarianism, this police state apparatus will be turned to other uses when the administration is done with immigrants… LGBTQ+ people in general, and trans people specifically, have been targeted in far right rhetoric… it will be constant reassessment as things continue to unfold… for now, it is both my happy place and my anti capitalist, antiauthoritarian statement of defiance to wear dresses, skirts, jewelry and lipstick for all the world to see… resistance is essential, and not yet futile…
We’re not hierarchical, you see. We never were. But we are powerfully acquisitive. We acquire new life—seek it, investigate it, manipulate it, sort it, use it. We carry the drive to do this in a minuscule cell within a cell—a tiny organelle within every cell of our bodies. Do you understand me?
--Octavia E. Butler, Dawn
my wife is a big sci-fi fan… i like sci-fi too… our local book store, Stanza, runs a sci-fi reading group… we joined it…
last month we read Dawn, by Octavia Butler… the book is remarkable… nuanced, imaginative and thought provoking… a compelling exploration of human nature…
Dawn is the first book of a trilogy chronicling the human/Oankali story… it takes place on an Oankali spaceship orbiting earth… Lilith, a human who has been brought out of suspended animation after a 250 year slumber, is the main protagonist… she is one of the few survivors of nuclear war on earth… the far more advanced Oankali “rescued" her and others from certain death, and are in the process of resuscitating the species and returning them to earth… but, there is a catch… humans have been resurrected by the Oankali to “trade," as they put it, genetic material with them, which is what the Oankali have evolved to do…
the Oankali have spent a very long time searching for a species to resuscitate… they choose a species that has come to its end because of its own destructive actions… they distinguish between species that truly want to cease to exist and commit species suicide, and species that still have a will to exist… it will be no surprise that the humans are not entirely enthusiastic about their “good fortune"…
the humans are a pretty sorry lot as rendered by Butler… they are fearful, suspicious, intelligent, stubborn, scheming and violent… any affection one could have for them comes form being one of them, or being the Oankali, who are enraptured with them… upon being woken up, the humans immediately begin fighting and trying to kill one another and their captors…
the Oankali come off much better than humans… they work hard to undersand and manage their humans in a “humane” way, and to establish a viable repopulation and recombination strategy, while maintaining strong, Oankali, ethical treatment boundaries… they are not intentionally cruel… in many ways they are kind, caring and loving… and they are beneficial… in addition to rescuing humans from complete oblivion, they cure them of cancer and provide them with the most profound sexual experiences they will ever have…
we are given reasons to dislike the Oankali… they manage humans like children, giving them agency only within the boundaries they set, which widen as the humans “mature” by adapting themselves to their circumstances… as long as humans pursue constructive goals with the agency they are granted, the Oankali don’t intervene…
the Oankali are incredibly ugly and frightening to humans… they are controlling, coercive and manipulative… they are borderline parasitic… they indulge in something adjacent to date drug rape in pursuit of their own pleasure and a strong bond between the humans and themselves… still, they believe their actions are benefiting humans even as they benefit themselves…
The principle of evil consists in messing into other people’s affairs.
i preferred the Oankali to the humans… it wasn’t even close in my mind… but i was surprised to find i was in the minority on this… 2/3’s of the reading group thought the Oankali were creepy at minimum, and many seemed to think they were downright evil… i argued my case as best i could, but did not persuade any of the “humanists" to my point of view…
when one group member said this was their second reading of the book and that they found the Oankali much more creepy than they had the first time, i decided to re-read the book to see if i had missed something that would bring me around to the majority opinion of the Oankali… having read it twice now, i am prepared to double down on my Oankali fandom…
Butler clearly intends for the option to side with the humans against the aliens to have a strong pull… we are tribal creatures and stick with our tribes… my country right or wrong… my political party/candidate, right or wrong… my species, right or wrong… Butler creatively plays on fear of "the other" while presenting the Oankali as a species we can learn to love if we can get past their otherness, particularly their ugliness, and their total control of us… i wondered if siding with the humans was a matter of human solidarity… my species, love them or leave them…
for a long time i have had the idea that humans almost universally assume they are at the top of the intelligence pyramid and that any further development of intelligence will happen through and because of them (thus AI?)… i think this in spite of all the literature and cinema we have that suggests we know better… cinema in particular is full of encounters with more technologically developed (and therefore more intelligent?) alien life… aliens are almost always hostile and well equipped to subjugate us… we prefer happy endings, so we almost always find a way to free ourselves from alien dominance and carry on… we live to fight another day…
in Dawn, humans had already defeated themselves--an uncomfortable truth about the likely outcome for the human species that we also constantly explore in art, literature and cinema, even as we stick our collective heads in the sand and fail to act…
i had no trouble accepting the idea that humanity was fatally flawed--though i am not sure i agree that intelligence + hierarchy = self immolation… for me it is primal instinct + technological advancement that will do us in… or, our tendency to become genocidal/suicidal extremists… Hitler and Nazi Germany for example… or the evangelical Christians who are all in on nuclear war as long as it starts in the Middle East per prophecy… many actively work to bring it about while others pass memes around declaring their acceptance of Jesus Christ as savior and lord, and their preparedness for nuclear immolation and the rapture…
Butler’s premise aligns with my own conclusions about humanity… as far as i am concerned, humans had blown their chance at unfettered agency by destroying themselves with it and were likely to do so again if given the chance… the Oankali offered some level of existence into the future, which would be cancer free, long lived, and offer the most profound sex ever… i could imagine myself accepting the Oankali gene trade bargain…
and so, i wonder, why am i open to the Oankali proposition when most of my group of fellow humans are not?… is my lack of loyalty to my species pragmatic?… evolved?… or a failure of self and species preservation instincts?…
The principle of evil consists in messing into other people’s affairs.
– Ezra Pound via The Gift, Lewis Hyde
Civility requires working on yourself, not just leaving things as they are, but making them over. It involves a struggle to reshape ourselves.
– A Secular Age, Charles Taylor
has evil ever been defined so succinctly…
as Ezra Pound did
and…
evil is not…
a foundational condition of the universe…
but a capacity of intelligence
is evil…
a bug…
or a feature
and…
can messing into others affairs…
ever be justified
to stop…
destruction of others…
or self
to stop…
selfish exploitation
and…
who decides…
what is acceptable messing into
and…
if there is no level at which a being can choose…
do evil and good exist
and…
what is the role…
of religion…
of government…
in circumscribing evil
and…
what is the inflection point…
between…
greater good and tyranny…
between…
benevolent authority and despotism
that…
civility intercepts evil
but…
we have to agree to civility
and…
when we have…
maintenance is required
that…
desire for power…
invites evil to walk abroad
that…
ignorance…
is a vacuum…
into which evil easily expands
that…
accumulate power…
creates a differential space…
into which evil easily slips
that…
accumulate power…
of individuals…
of corporations…
of institutions…
compromises civility of society
that…
accumulate power…
of an ignorant majority…
is no less prone…
to breaching the civility membrane
that…
much of what the people argue about…
is the messing into their affairs…
by government…
by institutions…
by corporations…
by powerful individuals
technologies…
that…
facilitate messing into people’s lives…
on an unprecedented scale
that…
victimize…
through technological bait and switch…
offering tenuous, addictive, chimeras of community…
in exchange for the datapoints of our existence
that…
we have given a great power differential…
to the collectors…
managers…
and exploiters of our data
to stop…
the techno-fascist juggernaut…
by choosing friendship and hugs…
over click warfare
to return…
to the civility…
of face-to-face, respectful, discourse…
of knowing our neighbors…
of coffee with friends…
of potluck suppers…
Hmmm…
Do we proclaim civilization dead then?…
I experience both good and evil as real, and see them as necessary opposites; but while evil can, goodness knows, locally overwhelm good, it cannot subsume good into itself. The goodness of love can embrace its opposite; the evil of hate cannot. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
i have been rereading Reclaiming the Sacred by Jeff Golden… i have reached the place i originally felt was a little over-the-top “woo-woo”… a kind of new age mysticism of love is the answer, we are stardust, and so forth… i struggle with this kind of message… it seems naive… it seems to ignore the calamities that unfold in the universe and the pure evil that humankind too often manifests … it seems to ignore hate…
in the quote above from The Matter With Things, i am offered a framing that allows me to believe love is the answer, even as i understand love can lose locally… greed, hate, arrogance, covetousness, etc., which are centered in the materialist-capitalist world, can overwhelm it…
in The Ballad of Love and Hate, by the Avett Brothers, a similar belief in the largeness of love is expressed…
Love has been waiting, patient and kind
Just wanting a phone call or some kind of sign
That the one that she cares for who’s out of his mind
Will make it back safe to her arms
Hate stumbles forward and leans in the door
Weary head hung down, eyes to the floor
He says, “Love, I’m sorry” and she says, “What for?”
“I’m yours and that’s it, whatever”
“I should not have been gone for so long”
“I’m yours and that’s it, forever”
“Your mine and that’s it, forever”
the power of forgiveness…
this is in tune with statements like, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”… Dr. Martin Luther King favored a non-violent approach to resistance, is this love embracing hate?…
when the current physical universe began, cosmologists tell us that…
… The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the early universe. But today, everything we see from the smallest life forms on Earth to the largest stellar objects is made almost entirely of matter. Comparatively, there is not much antimatter to be found. Something must have happened to tip the balance. One of the greatest challenges in physics is to figure out what happened to the antimatter, or why we see an asymmetry between matter and antimatter.1
metaphorically, this feels like the imbalance suggested between love and hate above… there is enough love in the world to subsume hate… creative existence wins over annihilation…
The Matter With Things is a long argument that we have lost our way… a long argument for the existence and necessity of God… McGilchrist is Christian… his concept of god, while grounded in Christianity, is expansive in ways i have not encountered before… his God is not all knowing, all powerful, or vengeful… his God is a co-creative consciousness with us of all that can be experienced… this God is the creative imbalance that leads to something, not nothing… love embracing hate… the long moral arc bending towards justice…
Jeff Golden writes:
Yet these saints and sages are pointing to something quite different: the divine as dynamically (beautifully, wondrously) transformed, expanded, recreated in every moment, through each of us and our experiences—through you. (Reclaiming the Sacred: Healing Our Relationships with Ourselves and the World by Jeff Golden)
as McGilchrist noted, locally, hate can overwhelm love and wreaks havoc… we have no right to expect immunity from havoc, which has been my fortunate experience for most of my life…
there were dark ages once…
an empire fell and it took five hundred years to recover, if that’s what we did… the hard truth of the moment may be that we are witnessing the collapse of the Western Euro-American empire… we may be embarking on hundreds of years of something utterly different…
i wish we could fast forward however many hundreds of years it will take to move through this collapse, if that is what is happening, to something better… i know we can’t… but i refuse to allow the darkness i believe is coming to overwhelm my joy… i choose to embrace hate with a straight jacket of love of community…
what do you think is going on and how will you meet the moment?…
The world had grown thoroughly disenchanted, and its feverish obsession with politics and its leaders had thrown up so many palisades that had prevented us from experiencing the presence of anything remotely like the spirit, the sacred, or the transcendent – that holy place where joy resides.
this message brought me home to myself and shined a light on my path of resistance… i will refuse to let politics, politicians and this difficult moment steal my joy…
i am rethinking my mental, emotional and behavioral landscape… my affiliations… my sources of information… my avenues of action… i no longer believe politics and politicians can take us where we need to go… i don’t believe Kamala Harris, had she won, would have made my life appreciably better, though i do think she could have kept it from getting the kind of worse i expect from 45’s new administration…
in truth, my life is pretty good now, but i don’t know how long that pretty good would last under either Republican or Democrat management… corporations, capitalism and materialism will not unwrap their malignant hands from around the throat of our potential to be happy… the system is rigged ever more in favor of greed and selfishness… the only answer i can come up with is to disengage… have as little to do with corporations, capitalism and materialism as possible… be the change i want to see…
i have decided to change my party affiliation from Democrat to Independent… i won’t be able to vote in primaries (something i think should be changed), but i need to mentally occupy the space of “what have you done lately to win my vote?”… of course i am assuming there will be meaningful voting in the future… there is also something about putting myself in the neutral independent ground that i believe will allow me to think more critically about the system in general…
this morning i read an article about lab grown salmon and chicken… according to the author, it is getting pretty good, especially the chicken1 … the supposed excitement here is for meat eaters committed to stopping the abuse of animals in factory farms and attendant greenhouse gas emissions… they will have a tastes good alternative that doesn’t abuse animals and throw methane into the atmosphere… this is not a step forward… it’s the further corporatization of the food chain… it is another step away from having an intimate connection with the planet and cosmos.. i don’t believe in factory farms… i think they are horrific… a sign that we are societally sick… but one of the reasons we are sick is we have lost connection with animals themselves… for most of human history we were in a more respectful relationship with fields, forests, rivers, streams, oceans, plants and animals… we ate mostly plants and insects… our diets were not centered on meat… killing an animal involved ceremony and thanksgiving as did harvests… we understood that we were an intimate part of, not separate from nature… it is hard to see how lab grown food is a better future…
in Jeff Golden’s book, Reclaiming The Sacred, there is a top five list of actions we can take to reduce our individual impact on climate and animals… my wife and i have made three of the five changes suggested… we don’t fly much, we don’t drive much and we have a hybrid car so, when we do, we use a third less gas, we don’t have children (he suggests fewer children)… eating a plant based diet and purchasing renewable source energy are what we have left to do… did i mention we have solar panels on our roof?… we don’t draw much energy from the grid to begin with… still, we need to opt into renewable source energy from the grid… related to this last change, we still heat our house and cook with gas… we will renovate our kitchen soon and move to all electric… we will explore alternatives for heating…
when we get home from Block Island i want to initiate monthly pot luck suppers with friends and community… i feel a need to be face to face with my people…
i have decided to stop watching TV news… even Nicole Wallace, who i grew to love during the pandemic… TV is designed to be compelling… the most compelling kind of story they can present is a train wreck… it’s in their interest to create the impression of a train wreck even when there isn’t one… and when there is, make it seem worse than it is… it’s in their interest to instill fear in us… it may well be that we should be afraid right now, but i doubt TV news will make me any more prepared for the oncoming train wreck… i will read the news instead… i am working on curating my sources now…
how are you preparing?…
if the common refrain about the taste of an exotic protein is “tastes like chicken”, what does it mean to produce a lab grown meat that “tastes like chicken?” ↩︎
i have, just now, finished the closing chapter of The Matter With Things… an argument about left and right brain hemisphere roles… the author, Iain McGilchrist, tells us the world has settled too much in the left-hemisphere, and ignores a right-hemisphere way of seeing and understanding, which he says is more complete and approaches nearer to truth… he argues that science in tandem with materialist society have driven us this way…
in the end, his book becomes an argument for the existence and necessity of God… i am agnostic, but i am compelled by his idea of God… this God is not an over and above one… not vengeful… not omniscient, not all powerful… this God is coming into being as we are coming into being… we have a co-creative relationship with this god…
he centers on Christianity as what makes most sense to him, though he discusses many and diverse religious traditions in a positive light… he believes that we need religion and that it should be pursued in community through communal-traditions and rituals to be most effective…
i struggle with Christianity… i am not sure i could return to any Christian church… i am agnostic on the subject of god… i believe in sacredness and some concept of the divine… but organized religion always seems to go astray… Christian fundamentalism runs amok in the background of the current political moment in my country…
i was surprised by McGilchrist’s pivot to God… but as i contemplate this, i realize that a number of books i have recently read argue that a return to some kind of sacred mediated relationship with the earth and cosmos is needed… all five of these books do…
i wonder how coincidental it is that i finish The Matter With Things, which i started at the end of the pandemic, at this painful moment in my country’s history?…
i recommend The Matter With Things highly… it is a long read, but there is substantial reward for the effort…
In the same way we can best understand the furies of war and politics by remembering that almost the whole of each party believes absolutely in its picture of the opposition, that it takes as fact, not what is, but what it supposes to be the fact. (Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion)
Intuition is also a threat to a world-picture based on administration, adherence to ordained procedures, the power of technology, and a belief in the superiority of abstract mentation over embodied being. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary reason many of us will never know love. It is impossible to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth when the core of one’s being and identity is shrouded in secrecy and lies. (bell hooks, All About Love)
… i have been thinking about this quote for the past couple of days… i have been thinking about what it has to say to my trans-feminine exploration… from my point of view, my spiritual growth has been enhanced by this truth coming to the surface… i can’t say i was hiding it, lying to myself and others… i don’t feel i repressed it… rather… it was a latent part of my being that stepped forward vigorously at a moment in time that was ripe…
… as i have written before, a number of things happened that cleared the space for it… the death of my father… the current hyper intolerant conservative political scene (which my father supported)… being retired… living in a liberal community… all made space for my feminine to blossom…
… i recently discovered that some Native American tribes describe what i am experiencing as two spirited… a person who’s sense of self doesn’t match what the prevailing culture expects from people with their biological sex… two spirited people often become spiritual leaders… they are viewed as having a fuller spiritual connection because of their two spirited nature…
… i don’t want to appropriate a culture that isn’t my own… but it is a good way to get at the spiritual growth bell hooks is talking about and i am feeling… spiritual growth requires honesty with self and before the world… from a position of honesty, growth happens and one can aid others with their growth journeys… only from a position of honesty can one love themselves and those around them in the sense that bell hooks writes about…
Usually, fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslim, or any faith, shape and interpret religious thought to make it conform to and legitimize a conservative status quo. Fundamentalist thinkers use religion to justify supporting imperialism, militarism, sexism, racism, homophobia. They deny the unifying message of love that is at the heart of every major religious tradition. (bell hooks, All About Love)
… there is, at this moment, a serious threat that Christian fundamentalists will gain control of the government in the United States… high on their agenda is the repression of LGBTQPlus communities… trans people in particular are targets of their enmity… they are enabled by power lusting politicians… there is no love in such religion and politics, as bell hooks points out…
… society does, of course, have an interest in curbing some forms of behavior… murder, rape, incest, theft, destruction of property… the list is long… people engaged in this behavior may be living out a kind of truth in themselves… they may be acting out past trauma that leaves them unable to love themselves and live truthfully… either way, these behaviors harm other people… tolerance and compassion blaze a trail for spiritual growth of self, community, and society, but stop at the threshold of harm to others…
… the difficulty is distinguishing true harm from supposed harm, or when the growth opportunity warrants an attendant harm…
An important read. Chaos in this election is baked in. Voting in huge numbers is a must.
September 2, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
The celebration of violence is now deeply embedded in the MAGA movement with leaders like North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, who recently attacked an assortment of enemies and assured his audience: “Some folks need killing!” As Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo wrote on August 27, this violent tendency has become for MAGA Republicans a fantasy about deploying the military against American citizens.
In schizophrenia, as in modernity, there is a relentless antagonism towards nature – both in humanity and in the whole natural world. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
Life-threatening nihilism abounds in contemporary culture, crossing the boundaries of race, class, gender, and nationality. At some point it affects all our lives. (bell hooks, All About Love)
… i am feeling more hopeful these days… the shift in the US political situation allows me to think the nightmare we have been living through might come to an end…
… still, the world in general is a hot mess…
… capitalist system divides both materials and living beings into exploitable commodities… this exploitation oppresses many, enriches few… power flows to the enriched…
… i want to believe that humanity, rather than destroy itself, will be able to move away from exploitation and oppressive power dynamics to a relationship of compassion and reciprocity with one another and the planet… there is no cosmic law that dictates that outcome… that dictates people survive at all… it is our responsibility to figure it out, or not…
… what would a system that didn’t exploit look like?… can we imagine it?… can we bring it into being?…
… the world as it should be meets the world as it is…
Everywhere we learn that love is important, and yet we are bombarded by its failure. In the realm of the political, among the religious, in our families, and in our romantic lives, we see little indication that love informs decisions, strengthens our understanding of community, or keeps us together. This bleak picture in no way alters the nature of our longing. We still hope that love will prevail. We still believe in love’s promise. **(bell hooks, All About Love)**
… love is powerful…
… love is not all-powerful…
… love does not eliminate strife…
… love makes strife bearable…
… love does not free us from hard things…
… love itself is a hard thing…
… we expect from love what love cannot give…
… better to think of love as a capable captain in stormy seas…
… still, sometimes the ship founders and all is lost…
Lydon sees the world that we have traditionally thought of as “woman’s work” as a place to discover godliness through the act of creating domestic bliss. A blissful household is one where love can flourish. (bell hooks, All About Love)
Some ideas about the nature of men, women and work, expressed in the style of bell hooks.
Masculine and feminine are complimentary approaches to the world that require each other. I do not think of masculine residing only in the male body, nor feminine residing only in the female body. Men and woman can, and should, have a range of qualities from masculine to feminine and feminine to masculine. For many in American culture, masculine and feminine have been stuck in perpetual opposition by the myths of Marlboro Man (extreme masculine) and Marilyn Monroe (extreme feminine). Patriarchal structure has led to a Marlboro Man domineering culture, where women are valued only for sex and procreation. This has been changing, though we are at an inflection moment where it is possible to go backwards.
In the above quote, I would change “woman’s work” to “nurturing work.” Nurturing work is feminine in character. Both men and women can nurture. Likewise, “men’s work” becomes “power work.” Power work is to be understood as work that requires strength, narrow focus and aggression, which combine to affect change in the environment. Power work is masculine in nature. Both men and women can exercise power.
Presently, women are as likely to be engaged in power work as men. Most of the power work women engage in supports and perpetuates the capitalist patriarchal system. Men are more engaged in nurturing work than they were, but still not as much as women.
Capitalism and patriarchy make too much of power work and too little of nurturing work. Power work and its effects have overrun the planet, causing much harm. A new balance needs to be struck between power work and nurturing work.