The Fly Is Undeterred

It’s been nearly 10 months since my last post, which is probably not important since nobody reads this blog anyway. But I’ve been off doing a number of things, one of which has been genealogy. I’ve had quite the fun time turning myself into a busy researcher, hunting online for records, links and photographs of grave stones. Even as a child, I always had a fascination with the dead; it’s much more personal when it’s the dead you’re descended from.

It has been a totally fascinating journey into the past, a history of farmers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, housewives and more. I discovered my Great-Great-Great Grandmother, who died when the pipe she was smoking caught her clothes on fire. She was around 100 at the time. Or the Great-Great Grandfather who lost two daughters, ages 6 and 12, in the same month to scarlet fever. The photograph of a Great-Great-Great Grandfather taken when he was probably in his late 20’s. He looks amazingly like me. Or vice-versa. How strange to see my own face staring back at me from a century or more. I also discovered the Grandfather I never knew, who divorced my Grandmother fifteen years before I was born. He died in 1978 and it wasn’t until late last year I finally saw a photograph of him.

As a boy, I always wondered where I came from. What were my ancestors like? My family never really talked much about the distant past, so I had a lot of questions. I know so much more now to pass on to my own child, when she’s ready to ask the questions. When you pore over census records, chronicling the children lost, the long and successful marriages, the wives who died young, the men who lived through terrible wars, it’s hard not to see yourself as nothing more than the current link. Their blood all flows through my veins, so I’m the part of them that has survived. I feel responsible in a way, to carry those bloodlines forward, to try and remember the centuries of laughter and tears for those who can no longer do so. If they were up there somewhere watching me, those lines of Grandparents, I wonder what they would think of the world today.

A hundred years from now, will someone carry on the history I’ve started, with my own name concisely summing up in a little box all that I’ve lived and experienced? Two dates neatly bookending a life; is that all at the end? At least I know that despite their certain flaws, on the whole they were a group of people I’m proud of, and when I’m a tidy footnote in the pages of history, I will be in good company. I hope those that follow me will be equally proud.

My high school class is celebrating a reunion this year, so I’ve been getting the nonsense in the mail from the “reunion committee”, which I picture as several ditzy girls from my class sitting around a folding table, sending reminders to all and sundry. The image has balloons and confetti too, for some reason.

Anyway, I filled out a bio for the ‘Memory book’, but as usual have no plans to attend. I’m too far away, even if I really wanted to go. But for the first time in a long while, it made me curious about how the rest of my classmates have been doing the past (blank) years. So I went to one of those ‘alumni’ sites where you can sign up and read or email ghosts from the past. I paid my $10.00 fee (and am still getting email reminders to join up and show my ‘alumni pride’), and went exploring. The problem is that these sites don’t have everybody. There’s always that strange guy, or that cute girl, or someone that you’d really like to know about (that is, make sure they’re not doing better than you!). But I read what they had, and it was very depressing.

Most of my class seems to be married with kids, living ordinary lives. And that was what bothered me – weren’t we going to be the ones who were going to change the world? Sure, every class says that, but we were special! What happened to all those hopes and dreams from graduation? Life, I suppose. It also bothered me that a lot of them have kids who are now older than they were the last time I saw them. This group of 17- and 18-year olds now have children in their twenties. Huh? It’s hard not to feel that as a group, we’ve been lapped, and are now out of the race.

I actually wrote to one girl (girl; a middle-aged woman with two kids, 18 & 13) I knew. We shared quite a few classrooms together, but never spoke much or became more than just vaguely aware of each other. Of course this girl (let’s call her ‘Beth’) was in a higher ‘caste’ than I was all throughout our school years together. She was also pretty smart, and I always considered her a real mental rival. She could spell ‘gymnasium’ in fifth grade, which was impressive at the time. So I sent Beth a friendly email, saying hi after all this time, I remember this and that, read your bio on the site, here’s what’s up with me. She wrote back the next day with a very bland ‘Oh I enjoy hearing from anyone from our class, I’m this that, yada yada’. This girl who was such a genius all through elementary school, middle school, high school… is a dental hygienist. Not that it’s not a good and important job, but somehow I expected more from her. I wrote her again with more memories, and a thought that while we were never in any sense of the word ‘friends’ in school, now that so much time has gone by, maybe we could email each other once in a while and say hi, here’s the latest, and so on.

My feeling on that is as time goes by, we all grow ever more distant from the people and events that shaped us. It would be nice to be in touch with someone who remembers the same teachers, the same faces, the same culture. I’m finding as I get older that to my great surprise, I miss that more and more over the years. Beth and I spent many years of our childhood together but separate in the same classrooms. It would be nice to put aside the childish feelings that kept us from being pals and enjoy the common experiences we had in those rooms so many years ago.

I guess to nobody’s great amazement, Beth never wrote back. Maybe she felt I was trying to hit on her, or set myself up for being the stalker she’s never wanted. Maybe I thought after all this time, we could move beyond playground resentments or superior feelings. Once more I was too naive for my own good. I haven’t written anyone else.

Last night I dreamt I was back at high school, on the last day, and we were getting our yearbooks. The books seemed full of pages about various people, with several of them getting a multi-page layout. Finally I found a page with a grid that filled almost all the space, showing what events or activities everyone was involved with. On the far right side of the page was a column of photographs of the students. It seemed to be more important to note what everyone was doing than what they looked like, or who they actually were. In the dream I felt all the loneliness and futility that high school was. The feeling that I missed something important. I woke up somewhat depressed, and was in a funk most of the morning.

Is it any wonder I don’t go to the reunions?

The scene: The American people, disillusioned by two terms of corrupt and unethical Republican government, turn to a Democratic outsider, someone with fresh ideas for change. Someone with obvious intelligence and charm, who only a few short months ago was unknown to nearly everybody outside of his home state. His name: Jimmy Carter.

It would seem that once again, the electorate is prepared to shoot itself in the foot. Barack Obama has managed to work a triumph of style over substance by denying the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. As I write this, it remains to be seen if Obama can do the same with John McCain, who, despite being a Republican, has obvious appeal of his own, and may yet emerge victorious, ushering in another four years of misery for the United States, both at home and abroad.

Obama has captivated the young vote, the black vote, and many people who are just tired of the quagmire the Bush Administration has gotten us into, both with a war nobody but Bush & Cheney wanted, and a host of domestic issues. But if Obama were to take the White House, the question would be how long could he work his slight of hand before the people that voted him in become his worst critics? In terms of his overall agenda, he’s not too far from Clinton on many issues. One notable one that has been bypassed by the feud between the DNC and Florida is that Obama is not a fan of the Space Program. If he wins, look for postponement if not outright cancellation of the Constellation plan to return Americans to the moon. Obama wants to move that money into reading programs for children. A laudable goal, but certainly if he is the agent of ‘change’, why not use the money saved by fighting corruption in the Military? Why jeopardize jobs and US prestige by shutting down manned spaceflight? Or is it a good change to rely on Russian Soyuz modules (and their increasing bumpy landings)?

Obama (if he were to win in November) would face many of the same obstacles that Carter faced in the mid 70’s – OPEC pressures, increasing saber-rattling from Iran, open hostility from Republicans and more and more of his own party as his term progresses. It’s probably no surprise that Carter himself has heartily endorsed Obama. Jimmy Carter is a good man, a decent and honest man, but he has trouble dealing with duplicity and tended to overthink when he was President. I don’t think Obama is as honest, but he has shown a similar tendency to think himself smarter than everyone in the room. Which means eventually he’ll underestimate someone and find himself painted into a corner, much like Carter was with the Iranian hostage situation.

The upshot is that Obama would find his real options for change very limited, since he would be relying on the beltway insiders to carry out much of his idealistic program. He has an appalling ability to piss off the very people he needs, such as anyone living in a small town, or people who wear American flags on their lapels. These people do vote, after all. When the Democrats in Congress get tired of being blamed for contributing to the chaos he’s come to town to ‘change’, watch out.

But at this point, it’s even money between Obama and McCain. McCain has his own problems, alienating the right wing of the Republican party, and appearing as a “Democratic Republican”. Obama has to deal with all the Hillary fans who are mistrustful of someone with such little experience, and too much confidence. I admit to being in the latter group. I think it would be interesting if everyone in both parties who don’t like either candidate to write in Hilary’s name. It might be “Dewey defeats Truman” all over again.

The news out of London and Paris over the last few days regarding the disruption of the Olympic torch seems to be a surprise only to the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Protests over China’s human rights record and the recent crackdown in Tibet have led to scenes of near-chaos around the torch. In Paris, the torch was snuffed out no less than five times and trundled aboard a bus to escape the demonstrations. Eventually the relay was abandoned. Similar scenes are forecast for San Francisco and other stops. The IOC has as usual, dug in its heels, saying the Olympics are a “sporting event, not a political one”.

Well, the IOC needs to pull its collective head out of its collective ass. Of course the Olympics are a political event. They always have been. In 1936 with the war drums beating, Jessie Owens, a black American of all things, beat the pants off the Aryan Nation at Munich. And right in front of Herr Hitler. And what about the U.S. and U.S.S.R. refusing to attend each other’s games in the late 70’s – early 80’s? In fact, the whole concept of athletes competing as nations makes the games political. Some countries make huge investments in their teams in terms of training, equipment, concessions, etc. Isn’t that political?

Sadly, as the murder of Israeli athletes in 1972 proved, many groups with a grudge to nurse try to use the Olympics to further their own ends. No doubt this is how the Chinese see the current squabble about Tibetan protests. But nobody as far as I can tell is protesting the games themselves, or anyone competing in it. Their beef seems to be allowing a country that has such a poor record regarding their own citizens, as well as those in outlying provinces that may or may not actually be a part of said country, to host games of sport and fellowship among peoples of the world. It all seems a bit hypocritical. So for the IOC to bury its head in the sand again just makes them look ignorant. Insisting the Olympics are not political is wishful thinking at best, downright stupid at worst.

It’s too bad that the athletes who take part are as aways, the ones caught in the middle. But by this time next year, the games will be a distant memory. The medals and records will be noted, the world will have forgotten about the protests, and nothing in China will have changed one bit. And we all know it, don’t we?

First, I know it’s been awhile since the last post. A lot has changed, hasn’t it? I still hope Hilary wins; A ‘President Obama’ would be another Jimmy Carter at best. But I digress…

I was watching a show the other night about memory, these leading neurospecialists all admitted that even now, nobody is quite sure how memories are formed or stored in the brain. We know that memories (as well as all mental processes) are carried between neurons as electrochemical exchanges from cell to cell. But how does that translate into remembering an event I experienced thirty or forty years ago? What happens in my brain that makes me relive a time long ago in the past? It is nothing short of a miracle.

As regular readers of this blog (if any!) will no doubt be aware, I’m no fan of organized religion; it’s a sheer drain on the species that we’ve long ago outgrown. However, this does not mean I’m an anti-spiritual person. I don’t think I am. I just object to the layers of dogma and nit-picking that have wound up as seemingly essential baggage on the train of every religious belief. But, I feel neuroscientists are trying to work from a ‘bottom-up’ position. What if instead, consciousness worked as a top-down experience?

Some people might be tempted to call this a ‘soul’, but that word has connections that I’d just as soon reject out of hand. I’ll stick (for now), with a top-down approach. The funny thing about consciousness is that we take it for granted to such a degree, we often fail to appreciate how amazing a thing it is, stuck there in our skulls as we walk around. No other species on the planet has anything like the cognitive skills we use every day without (if you’ll pardon the pun) a moment’s thought. And why have we developed these skills? We seem wildly overdeveloped for survival on the grasslands of Africa. Billions of us exist with scant notice of the fact that we do exist; and when we think about it at all, it strikes many as perfectly obvious that we should exist. But should we? Why? And why as such intelligent creatures that we are capable of progressing beyond our own basic physical needs? We can contemplate the distant past, the far-flung future, the subtle nuances of complex emotional interactions, to say nothing of music or art or even symbolism, language, writing, math and a host of other cerebral gymnastics that leaves our ape cousins and even the dolphins far behind.

Consciousness, our consciousness, is not so ordinary that it should escape our notice. Instead it’s the rarest, most precious commodity in the known universe. We are self-aware, and yet with all our ability, we still can’t even describe our own knowing. It does not seem possible that the jelly between our ears can reproduce the moment of our first kiss, or the loss of a loved one, or eating a really good sandwich. But it does, and all the time. I have to believe that somehow we are generating the chemicals and electrical impulses, but they are the footprints, not the foot, of our thought. It’s as if we study the hammers of a piano and wonder how they can organize themselves into the music of Bach. The point is well and truly missed.

Happily, I can contemplate this without the need for Jesus, the Prophet, Buddha or any other divine messenger. What if we die and discover that we have been our own gods all along? I know, there’s no proof, but nobody can explain how my brain can let me retrace a long-ago summer’s day, when the world seemed perfect and eternal. My own personal miracle.

The crumbling house of cards that’s currently Pakistan may be providing important lessons for the United States government. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong kind of lesson. While President Bush may be calling Musharraf and urging him to unsuspend Pakistan’s constitution and free the imprisoned Supreme Court justices, privately he or Vice-President Cheney may be taking notes on how to proceed in a similar fashion in America.

It’s no surprise to anyone that the current administration, led by Cheney, has gone far in the past seven years in eroding the United States consitution, and American prestige around the world. Consider the following:

• We have been led under false pretenses (searching for WMD) into a war in Iraq that has escalated into civil war between two religious groups. Last time I checked, only Congress has the power to declare war. When did they do so? Was there really evidence of hidden weapons, or did Bush plan all along to invade Iraq, even before he assumed the presidency? Did 9/11 just give him a pretext to do so?
• When the president signs a bill into law, he has the option of including an executive order that gives some guidelines as to how the law is to be put into effect. Bush has exploited that like no other president before him, using these guidelines as an extension of his authority that has no check or balance. While possibly not illegal, it’s certainly an abuse of the intent of this function.
• Vice-president Cheney was previously a senior executive of Halliburton, which supplies equipment to the armed forces (think $300 for a toilet seat or hammer). Cheney has had meetings at his office in the Vice-presidential residence, but repeated requests for access to the visitor logs has been denied. Bush has declared ‘executive privilege’, even tho the logs are supposedly available to the public or media.
• The fiasco of Alberto Gonzales at the Justice department has been a whole can of worms on its own. Not only does it appear that Gonzales hired and fired according to political slant (obviously acting on orders from above, which is in conflict with the job description of the Attorney General), but several top-level aides quit in disgust, and several lower-level aides were forced by the White House to disobey a direct subpoena from Congress, demanding they testify regarding the whole affair. Gonzales ‘doesn’t remember’ being at key meetings where it was revealed later he attended, and Bush once again clamped ‘executive privilege’ on the aides in barring their testimony.
• The nominee to replace Gonzales at Justice said he cannot comment on an insidious practice known as ‘waterboarding’ as possibly being torture until he gets the job and can be briefed. What does that mean? Is being placed on the rack ‘torture’ or do you need to be briefed on it first? What about thumbscrews? flogging? Waterboarding has been recognized as torture by the US military, the EU and the UN. Why is a briefing required?
• The United States has been spying on American citizens (wiretapping, reading emails, etc.) without obtaining approval from a judge since 9/11. Clearly illegal, the Bush administration claimed to be fighting ‘the war on terror’.
• Guantanamo Bay – Hundreds of people detained without charge, trial or legal representation for years. Never mind trampling the Bill of Rights in the mud, what kind of case does the government have on these foreign citizens? If guilty, charge them; if not, release them. The few that have been released, such as a handful of British citizens (after much arm-twisting from the UK), have all been sent back and released without charge. What does this say to the rest of the world about the ‘land of the free’?

And of course, this is just the obvious things. Anybody wonder how the exit polls from Ohio in the last presidential race (the key state, much as Florida the election before) seemed so wrong compared to the results? And Bush carried Ohio by a whisker. Makes you wonder how much different would the world be if the ‘hanging chad’ from Florida had gone Gore’s way back in 2000.

Anyway, when President Hilary gives her Inaugural Address in January of 2009, and she says that she will begin pulling troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, will anyone be surprised if Cheney jumps up and takes the microphone, declaring a coup? I think it’s a possibility that should be considered. I’m sure he is. There’s little doubt that the Democrats will take the next election, and Clinton will be the candidate. Can Bush and Cheney just sit in front of the rotunda in the cold and listen as she begins to dismantle all they’ve done? I think Pakistan will be very much in the mind of the Vice-president (the real power behind the throne) over the next few weeks and months leading to the election. Remember you heard it here first.

I’m starting to come around to the idea that religion is more of a curse than a blessing, if you’ll pardon the pun. The whole point of religion in the first place was to answer some basic questions of humanity, with “Will I survive death?” being the biggest one. Things like moral codes (“How should I live my life?”) grew out of preparation for an after-death experience. Along the way, dislike of people who had different beliefs made a mockery out of religion in general.

As an aside, it should be noted that unlike advances in systems of thought concerning nearly every other sphere of our lives, religion is virtually the only one still untouched for hundreds (or in some cases, thousands) of years. We no longer believe the sun revolves around the earth, or in the four humours of the body, or even Newtonian classical physics; why do we insist on carrying the same ideas about an afterlife that ignorant peasants had a millennia ago?

Anyway, it strikes me that more people today are afraid of other religions than are comforted by their own. Catholics are afraid of Islamic fundamentalists, Christian Orthodox are afraid of Catholics, Islamic fundamentalists are afraid of Jews, Jews are afraid of Muslims, and so on. The 21st century is supposed to be the opening of wisdom and equality for all people; instead it’s an ongoing series of pre-emptive strikes against other faiths. The Buddhists perhaps, are the only ones who don’t give a shit. They must be ripe for taking over.

It’s hard to keep any faith in the goodness of man when teenage boys are blowing themselves up on crowded buses with women and children. Sometimes I wish religion was true; it would be hard not to smirk with self-righteous glee to see Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Krishna and a few others show up one day and turn white with mortification at what’s been done in their collective names.

And let’s get back to the central question – Has religion offered up any hope for life eternal? After all this time, do we have any more proof than before? Of course not. The faithful would say that proof is not required. Of course when dismissing other belief systems, they scream for “proof” the competition is better, wiser, greater, etc., then sneer with triumph when none is produced. My personal opinion is that there is either nothing after you die, and it’s all been a sham perpetuated out of fear for centuries, or there’s something much more wonderful and sacred than the tiny little sand castle scenarios each religion offers up. Either way, it’s not something to be slaughtering the innocent over. If you believe otherwise, then you’re stupider than I’m giving you credit for.

Some years ago, I was driving to work when I had an epiphany. I suddenly saw myself as I was – an American white male, living in the latter half of the twentieth century. Good health, somewhat affluent, in short, nearly the cream of the crop as far as life experience gets. And the question that bubbled up in my mind was… why?

Why was I not born as a poor African, sick and starved in some rain-forsaken dust bowl? Or an oppressed peasant deep in the backwoods of some underdeveloped Asian country? Or one of a myriad of other unpleasant and probably short-lived lives around the globe? How and why did I end up so high the ladder of desirable conditions, suspended between two eternities? I remember being really shaken by the cosmic roll of the dice that put my consciousness in such a ‘privileged’ place. The population of the world was probably close to four billion when I was born, and if you were to line up everyone alive at that time by how well off they were, I would have been well ahead of most; certainly two-thirds of humanity, if not five-sixth.

Twenty years later, I still don’t have an answer to this question. I still wonder why I’m me, and not already dead of malaria or malnutrition or infection, or barely clinging to my miserable life. I’m saying this not to brag about how wonderful I am, or how well-deserving I’ve been of my status as a White American Male (WAM), but more about how really shocked I was when it came to my realization that it could have so easily have been very different. Of course, the fact my own personal consciousness appeared at all is another amazing thing, considering I could have been born in the Stone Age, or the 13th century. But that’s just another small sub-facet of the same question: Why am I me, and not someone or someplace else? Why? It’s a question that still shakes me to the core; If you think about it hard enough, it should shake you as well.

What’s this world coming to if we can’t find a single lost little girl? Dammit Dammit Dammit Dammit. After nearly a month, where is she? No wonder we can’t fight the ‘war on terror’ or stop the drug trade. We may deserve whatever we get.

A dangerous religious fanatic who tried to force America to bend to his will has passed away, in the training center he set up to indoctrinate young recruits to follow his beliefs. Yes, Jerry Falwell, self-appointed voice of the “Moral Majority” has died at his Liberty University at age 73. While I’m not the type to shout “Hooray” when someone shuffles off this mortal coil, I have to admit a certain relief that this loonie won’t be around anymore to inflame situations with his inane ranting. Remember, this is the same Dr. Falwell who blamed 9/11 on Gays, Liberals and other loose-living people. In my opinion, Jer and Osama are two sides of the same coin. One kills and murders in the name of his god, while the other, I suspect would have liked to. Good riddance, I say. Fundamentalism, no matter what religion, is the cancer of the 21st century. It’s very sad we’re saddled with this medieval nonsense after all this time.

I was watching a financial news show on tv the other day, when the presenter said “controversy”. No big deal, you think; but it’s how he pronounced it: ‘con-trovisy’. Say what? It’s ‘con-tro-versey’. How did you read it just now? I hear a lot of this going on lately. News readers just toss off new ways of saying words we’ve all used without trouble for years. When did alternative pronunciations become acceptable? I don’t recall voting for any of it. I’ll have to start compiling a list as I hear them and post them here so you don’t think I’m making any of this up.

Going back to the first paragraph in a way, I had a visit today from two older gentlemen dressed in nice black suits. I was friendly enough until I spotted the leaflet they were trying to press upon me, with the cow-eyed Jesus and the words “Christ the Redeemer”. I said no thank you and shut the door in their faces. I don’t have any time for niceties when it comes to this sort of baloney. It’s my house, and they come to my door unannounced and uninvited to push this stuff in my face? I don’t think so. What do they really expect to happen? Could it be that I’ve never heard of Jesus Christ, and I fall upon my knees in gratitude for being enlightened as to him and his message? Odds are I’m aware of who he is, and am free to choose if I’m interested. If I am, I don’t need them coming to my house waving their leaflets. It’s a case of literally ‘preaching to the choir’. If I’m not interested, I’ll slam the door in their faces. Maybe they were nice grandfatherly fellas, but religion is like cockroaches: you have to use excessive force to eradicate the pests or they’ll take you over. I think going door to door is just a waste of time. You don’t see Rabbis or Mullahs wandering through neighborhoods, ringing bells and shoving pamphlets through mailslots. Makes you wonder how they can keep recruiting if they don’t work the wards.