A Milestone

A Milestone in which only I am interested.

And I thank every one of you.

 

Thoughts as a Storm Approaches

Evening darkness early upon the land
Grey, sly clouds are hanging low, concealing
Growing strength that piles up, hiding power
Grabbing at stratospheric inspiration
Wind is gusting fitfully
With steel in its heart.

Traffic sounds a’hushing, worried faces,
Gusting stops as though the air is drawing
One deep breath in. Soon to let an angry
Unfeeling exhalation terrify
Early roosting birds,
Shelter-seeking humans.

Losing patience,
Years-long abuse,
Held in check no more
Blasting in gales
splitting the dark
with concussive blasts
Hurling both wet
and solid water. Breaking trees,
Hurling tides at
Suddenly vulnerable shores.

Howling! Oh the Howling.

Till after days, or maybe weeks
The air grows tired and realises
Tormenting man will never learn.
Enough of this warning and next time
Gaia’s Breath will be irresistible
With no man left to fear.

The Free Market; Maggots and Tapeworms

Yesterday, on Twitter, I was accused of being opposed to “Free Market”.

It led me to think seriously about humanity’s march from the Hunter Gatherer society to the modern Nation State. How has society changed and are there any lessons hidden in history?

In the dim distant past, our ancestors cooperated with each other. Had they not, then sabre toothed tigers would have sent us extinct before our ladies had a chance to learn about agriculture.

Then, without a need to hunt for food, we blokes muscled in on the agricultural scene and found a way to regulate it, to help it grow and to control it. Women could now be locked up inside the cave, for their own safety of course. This great new way of life also led to other human tribes invading and killing us which wasn’t the best thing for the cropping cycle.

Kings and Emperors and petty Princelings began to rule over us. Gods were invented and had to be fed, just as the other Rulers were. Of course there was a warrior caste whose job was not to farm but to protect the farms. They had to be fed as well. “Tax” was invented so the leaders, the soldiers and those who talked to God were able to do their thing without having to actually produce anything. The farmers were a bit of a problem but they bred freely so were always replaceable.

There was a lot of confusion about just how society should be ordered so a very wise King named Hammurabi wrote everything down in the world’s first set of Laws. Now everyone was happy so the status quo lasted for thousands of years.

OK. We are up to the Middle Ages

Still no sign of a “Free Market”

Then the peasants in France got upset and cut off the heads of everyone who had bullied them in the past. Suddenly there was the French Revolution and the American War of Independence. In an orgy of Democracy, and in a two hundred year blink of humanity’s eyelid, Rulers and their class lost their heads and were swept away.

In that tidal wave of Democracy, everyone was free. Well, almost everyone. Slaves were not really human so they could not be free and women were definitely inferior to humans so they didn’t get a say in anything. But everyone else was free!

Democracy is in a museum.
Is it extinct?

No! Of course the Orientals couldn’t be free. They weren’t proper humans either. If they were they would have invented Democracy.

So everything became free. And everyone had a vote. And of course the Market had to be free as well. Please don’t ask me why, it just had to be. Everyone still had to pay taxes. To themselves, of course since it was all democratic. Even your business had to pay taxes. That was something sacrosanct. It had been so since time immemorial when Pharaohs had to finance wars against Hittites.

Just as it had become a human tradition to attempt to reduce the amount of tax they owed to God, the King or to themselves. Even at the risk of losing their head or their liberty.

One problem with all this Democracy and Free Thinking was that the rate of invention went up and there were suddenly lots of new stuff around. Some of it was quite big new stuff and needed lots of cooperation to create. Sort of a throwback to the cooperation of the distant past when it was needed to create a dead mammoth. Lots of bloodthirsty savages temporarily working together.

So big ships, big telephone systems, big railways all got built by these cooperating savages. And everything got faster. And spread further. So the biggest of the bloodthirsty savages from all over the world finally got to cooperate with each other. But that is only a difference in scale. Not something new.

Perhaps there was something I missed. Something very early on I hadn’t seen.

Uh Oh.

I just spotted an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Hammurabi’s Laws needed someone to explain them. Throughout this Body of Law, some maggots began spreading. And they became known as “Lawyers”!

Through ages of interpreting, re-interpreting and, when all else failed, by rewriting the Law, Lawyers became the only ones who could understand it.

For much of civilised time, we ordinary mortals just shook our heads and got on with life. Male mortals, of course because women, slaves and Orientals could not hope to understand important stuff like that.

Lawyers noticed that Democracy had made everyone “free” and so some of them set their mind to determine the ramifications. If people were free, and we have a free market, then obviously the inhabitants of “The Market” had to be free as well. And so Lawyers determined that the Companies within the Free Market were as free as people. In fact that determination led to the conclusion that Companies are People as well.

Now, finally, we have found something new.

The Gods had been sort of people, incorporeal but existent, for millennia, yet they only lasted for a while before being replaced. Now we have Companies which are an incorporeal construct yet being treated as though they have a mind and a soul of their own. They must be people for they grow and grow and now cover the world.

Now is not the time to go into the 127 real born of woman, human people who control those Companies.

Instead we should look at the consequences of these Companies being People. These Companies are the Free Market. The Free Market, according to King Billy, I should be supporting. Supporting totally because I am free as well.

• Just as people in a Democracy have a vote, the Free Market Members have a vo -

NO THEY DON’T! But they can lobby and bribe and corrupt.

• Just as people in any Governmental system pay taxes, the Free Market Members pay taxe

NO THEY DON’T! Well, yes they do, within the limits that they allow the Government to tax them.

• Just as people in in any jusrisdiction who break the law go to jail, the Free Market Members go to ja

NO THEY DON’T! They do not go to Jail, except for an occasional “human person” scapegoat. They become too big to fail. They are certainly never executed for all the deaths they cause.

If Lawyers are the maggots in our body politic, then these Free Market Members have become the parasitic tapeworms within that body!

And so, King Billy, my response to you is, “No! I do not support the Free Market.”

My question to you is, “Do you support the right of tapeworms to suck the life out of you?”

The Purity of English

Dawn in Bunbury

Silent streets beneath a still dark sky
Family groups walking in ones and twos
Quietly gathering in tens and hundreds
yes, in their thousands.
All patiently waiting for the dawn.

Before the guarded, engraved stone.
The list of names of those who left
This old and close knit family town
and never returned.
Who would be embarrassed by the crowd.

Suddenly intrusive amplified speeches
Focus the attention of those present.
Those left who served march into view
With those who now serve.
Dressed in uniforms and civvies and pride.

Fire and sound bursts from the single cannon
Startling all who were not ready
A minute’s silence bugled with the Last Post
And then ended in triumph.
Wreaths laid out, by families, in memory of those not there.

The National Anthem sung unaccompanied
By a young girl with a glorious voice
And a proud audience cannot help
But to join in the words
Quietly and with private pride in nationhood.

Dismissed and slowly movement returns.
Some leaving early while others look at wreaths.
“This was for your great-great Grandfather
And this for your GrandDad.”
The young of today shown the past. Lest we forget.

Song For Liberty

I posted this song about 18 months ago.

It seems appropriate to do so again.

If only to free us from the tyranny of a suborned media for three minutes.

Sing along.

Song for liberty
G. Verdi – Arrgt A. Gotaguer / P. Delanoë – C. Lemesle – J. Johns
Interprète : Nana Mouskouri

When you sing I’m singing with you liberty
When you cry I cry with you in sorrow
When you suffer I’m praying for you liberty
For your struggles will bring us a new tomorrow

Days of sad darkness and fear must one day crumble
For the force of your kindness and love make them tremble
When you sing I’m singing with you liberty
In the void of your absence I keep searching for you

Who are you dream illusion or just reality
Faith ideal desire revolution
I believe you’re the symbol of our humanity
Lighting up the world for eternity

I can see why men die to defend you
Try to guard to protect and attend you
When you sing I’m singing with you liberty
With your tears or your joys I love you
Let us sing and rejoice make our own history
Songs of hope with one voice guide us to victory
Liberty, liberty

Oh The Places You’ll Go

Based on Dr. Seuss’s final book before his death, this is a story about life’s ups and downs, told by the people of Burning Man 2011.

Dr Seuss and flashes of nudity are not concepts I would normally include in the same sentence. For this is from Burning Man and of course there is some innocent nudity.

Mostly there is a thoughtful challenge.

Burgled from Dolce

I Am The Fork In The Road

I AM THE FORK IN THE ROAD

If people crammed chest to back
Two thousand people to the kilometre
I am half a million people from town

Totally alone in the startling silence
Too far for anyone to hear my cooee
Small in horizon spanning immensity

Yet here there is only one road
I can go forward or I can go back
Or I can stay here and find myself

Written in 2009.

I’m still looking.

Thoughts on the Improvement of Society

The ancients who wished to demonstrate illustrious virtue throughout the empire first ordered well their own states.

Wishing to order their own states, they first regulated their families.

Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons.

Wishing to cultivate their persons they first rectified their hearts.

Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts.

Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge.

Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.

K’ung fu-tzu

With thanks to Cybe

Joy at the Death of a Human Being

I am not upset at Osama Bin Laden’s death.

He chose that it should happen by fighting back.

However, and with me there is always an “However”, at the risk of upsetting some who may justifiably be feeling a combination of revenge and satisfaction there are a number of thoughts which come to my mind.

“Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper
darkness to a night already devoid of stars.” Martin Luther King

“Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate.”
Martin Luther King

“I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.” Abraham Lincoln

“The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good
intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack
understanding.” Albert Camus

“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.“
Albert Einstein

“After victory, you have more enemies.” Cicero

“Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.” Lao Tzu

“The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” William Shakespeare

Finally, to put me into context, from the bizarre blog of the very sensible Raincoaster:-

War is not my language

الحـرب ليســـت لغتـي

מלחמה היא לא השפה שלי

Quotes; War

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.
Agatha Christie (1890 – 1976), Autobiography (1977)

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955), (attributed)

War is not nice.
Barbara Bush (1925 – )

Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.
Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967), The People, Yes (1936)

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
George Orwell (1903 – 1950), Polemic, May 1946, “Second Thoughts on James Burnham”

War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.
Georges Clemenceau (1841 – 1929)

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.
Georges Clemenceau (1841 – 1929)

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
Jeannette Rankin (1880 – 1973)

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
Jimmy Carter (1924 – )

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948), “Non-Violence in Peace and War”

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
Mao Tse-Tung (1893 – 1976)

Either war is obsolete or men are.
R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983), New Yorker, Jan. 8, 1966

It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it.
Robert E. Lee (1807 – 1870), Statement at the Battle of Fredericksburg (13th December 1862)

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)

The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.
Solomon Short

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955)

Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.
W. L. George

Quotes; Opinion

I’m not sure I want popular opinion on my side — I’ve noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts.
Bethania McKenstry

Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth, or the only truth.
Charles A. Dana (1819 – 1897)

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
Elbert Hubbard (1856 – 1915)

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 – 1902), 1890

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest of violence.
Francis Jeffrey (1773 – 1850)

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

Don’t judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799)

Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799)

I have opinions of my own — strong opinions — but I don’t always agree with them.
George Bush (1924 – )

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
Katherine Mansfield (1888 – 1923)

Patterning your life around other’s opinions is nothing more than slavery.
Lawana Blackwell, The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark, 1999

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910), Wearing White Clothes speech, 1907

Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910), quoted in Mark Twain and I, Opie Read, 1940

Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910), Mark Twain In Eruption

Quotes : Vices

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)

Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)

It is a great thing to know our vices.
Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC)

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
Elizabeth Taylor (1932 – )

Hate no one; hate their vices, not themselves.
J. G. C. Brainard

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650), ‘Le Discours de la Methode,’ 1637

Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
Seneca (5 BC – 65 AD), Moral Letters to Lucilius, 64 A.D.

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)

Here’s a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.
Tallulah Bankhead (1903 – 1968)

For Japan

Radioactive smoke, radioactive steam, radioactive water, radioactive food.

Air masses moving eastwards around and around the Northern Hemisphere.

Reality

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955), (attributed)

Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable.
Cyril Connolly (1903 – 1974), “The Unquiet Grave”, 1945

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.
Garrison Keillor (1942 – )

The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.
Henry Kissinger (1923 – )

Realism…has no more to do with reality than anything else.
Hob Broun

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Jane Wagner, Lily Tomlin in “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe”

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.
Jane Wagner, (and Lily Tomlin)

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
Jules de Gaultier

Reality is a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.
Lily Tomlin (1939 – )

Reality is something you rise above.
Liza Minnelli (1946 – )

I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it.
Mary Chase (1887 – 1973), Jimmy Stewart in “Harvey”, 1950

Everything you can imagine is real.
Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982), “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later”, 1978

Humankind cannot stand very much reality.
T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)