Dear Potter, part II

The Old Fool’s instruments have been silent these past weeks now. Once in danger of an early grave in the rubbish heap from overuse, they feel the cold grip of forgotten obsolescence creeping into their very cores.

He has never been this quiet before, has he? And even in troubled times, he always found comfort and solace in the work we help him accomplish. These days it seems it’s merely voices in a distance we hear; always different, always new ones, but with one homogenizing characteristic – the sadness, despair, and grief in the voices.

Could it be our beloved master has passed on, and we can hear naught but his mourners these days? Surely not…but then again, we have not heard his voice, his booming laughter, his commanding presence these past days. Sad strangers and murmurs have been our only company of late…could our work be finished now forever, what of…

The subtle click of the opening door is enough to silence the current idle talk, although repartee it was not. The door has been a constant barrier to the knowledge of what has actually occurred, and an expectant hush falls over the old fellowship. A soft lamp is reawakened, casting its warmth about, dispelling the dark cold that had roosted in the quiescent room.

An unheard gasp shocked around the room and reverberated in the undisturbed air as the collected instruments, the Fool’s constant companions, finally witnessed the invader to the formally dormant space – the Fool slowly settling into his familiar place.

Absently, his fingers flit and caress from one instrument to the other, the familiarity of years giving the task a surprising intimacy, “I have missed…” The words spoken so softly and ended in the thoughts of the fool would have been lost in the silence of a graveside service…but to the gathered audience they strike the sweet timber of life in what had been a dead space for far too long.

The searching hand settles on the most familiar instrument of all…whose employ had written more ideas into existence and commanded more things be done with a flourish of the Fool’s name upon an unassuming line than some could accomplish in several lifetimes.  Their mate pressed back into service, the reserve units eagerly await their own call up for today’s duty.  Yet, one by one they are bypassed by the unoccupied hand of their master until it settles on the small stack of unofficial stationary. These scraps of dried pulp, usually relegated to the mediocrity of a scrawled note pinned to an official document or creation, suddenly called to the front for first-wave duty.

Before the confusion sets, the deflowering words upon the pristine space clarifies the Fool’s intentions on this day…

Dear Potter,

Not again! So much silence, so much disuse…and for this we are called to duty again? Shall we never perform a service of value again?

Dear Potter,

What self-serving nonsense will it be this time? Wet dirt? Mudpies? Children’s crafts? Better to have been left alone than returned to this…

But this time, there is no hesitation in the Old Fool’s advance from the beachhead of these formerly hated words. Slowly, at times unsteadily, but always determined, the words march onto the page. The Fool keeps up the assault, unrelenting, unyielding; the grief ever more apparent from the old and darkening eyes that once held such spark. Eyes whose appearance now silenced the protests, as the Fool’s words march on.

Dear Potter,

I have been a fool. I have embodied hubris. I sought your succor, pleaded for strength, sought  the purpose you set forth. My beloved Potter, these weeks you have had more faith in me than I and my life should have ever engendered.

What shall I say to all those you’ve brought to my door these past few weeks? Those whose pain, sorrow, loss, confusion, despair, emptiness and ache has daily shamed me for every moment’s self-pity my own diminutive woes begat? Mistaking my shame, my unfound wisdom – my silence – for a good ear, their hears they’ve laid bare.

Sweet Potter, I have not the words, the wisdom, or the ability to quaff even one of these overflowing cups of suffering you’ve laid at my door. I have no consolation to offer but lie that is the silence they mistake for wise listening. I lack the refuge of separation, impersonal distance, for they are all my beloveds, those I love and know, their grief my own as mine has often been theirs. I alone am unequal to the task.

Loving Potter, this Fool is left with naught but to arrogate, supplicate, plead for your guidance…your wisdom…your aid. Will You see fit to give me the words, the wisdom I do not have, to show them Your succor? Will you give them the wisdom to find their answers on their own, and simply leave me the strength to listen?

Dear Potter, I asked you to show me that I was your clay, now I redouble the entreaty and beg to be molded…I lay my own self bare…help me light the way to the comfort they need. If you would take my wealth, my joy, my life in payment, I would gladly surrender it all. Their anguish echoes in my heart…I cry out to you, show me how to one day echo with their joy!

Your unworthy, foolish clay,

The instrument finishes the final stroke on that once proud name, and joins its brothers in silence as they gaze upon their once proud master. The concept, once so easily dismissed by the gathered fellowship, now reaching clarity. Not a child’s toy. Not a mudpie. Not dirt and dirty water. Clay. Not just clay…the Potter’s Clay. His clay.

And if the Potter’s clay commands us, drives us, applies us…what are we after all?

The Old Fool rises and with a slow breath steels himself to welcome the next visitor, he returns the room to its erstwhile darkness. As the door, once a prison gate, now the access to a refuge, closes again, the Fool utters just two more words, a self-reminder on the way to his new task, ”His clay”…

And with the final click of the door, an unheard chorus quietly fills an undisturbed room,

Us too, sweet Fool, us too.

----------------

Cry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX_xz5RYkXo



King Nothing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ9y4jzwXaA



Hero of the Day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPB3c6E7p44



The Unforgiven: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhryYbyTZ2M




--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

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Trans-Siberian Orchestra christmas...

From the wonderful musicians at TSO...it hardly gets better than this. ;=)

From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQNirj6lbGY



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDS8U08Swb4



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cswzeH93nM



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG3Fvi1pJh4



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjX9pdhQU4



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSHSzGzqwfs



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeriJcu1eJM



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b20WvdNpomg




--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

-

On writing

It is very interesting to me that for me, a person whose last year and next year will be very much focused on writing (papers, dissertation, reports, lecture notes, etc) and reading (homework, research papers, journal articles, etc), a relaxing hobby has become to write non-academic work.

I've always chalked it up to a passing fad, something I was doing just to while away some of the time...but I believe it is time to admit I may have a problem. :-) I recently did a bit of inventory, and between some autobiographical "memories" letters, prose, and a novel I'm in the middle of finishing, I have accumulated a lot more writing in the last 3.5 years than just "a passing fad". Depending on how one does their page counts, at last inventory I had between 400 and 600 pages of non-academic writing filling my "it's just a temporary fad" electronic ledgers. That number stunned me. Maybe not any of you who have been subjected to my overwrought verbosity, but it certainly did to me. It was like the "social smoker" who finally had to admit they were up to a pack a day...an eye-opener.

Another thing that has been extremely interesting to discover is exactly how this creative process works for me. I have long been a fan of Stephen King, and enjoyed just about anything he's ever written. When I have read his own essays on writing, and listened to interviews and missives he has from time to time released, as well as included in some of his fiction, he makes it very clear that he does not often (if ever) feel in control of the writing process. He seems to often describe it as somewhat of a spectator sport for him...he's writing a story, but it's almost because he's writing down something he's observing, and not necessarily planned and outlined out ahead of time.

The idea had always intrigued me, but to be perfectly honest, I had summarily chalked it up to "artistic exaggeration". After all, one does not really ghostwrite as he described, right? I mean, that was more the realm of fairy tales and bad horror movies...not real life.

And yet, after finding myself smack dab in the middle of a growing pile of words, I come to the realization of exactly how RIGHT he is. Almost all of my non-academic work that I end up writing down and either blogging, posting in a note, or filing away for my own eyes only, is very, very close to a first draft rough. I tend to move slowly through the writing (1-5 pages per writing session on my novel, for example, and spaced apart by days or months), but that's because of the constant pauses to "observe" what the characters are doing, and where this is going.

Most of the stuff I finish, and even post, follows the same pattern:

Put on some music (I can't work in the deafening world of just words in my own head without damping them out with the focusing effect of external stimuli...but I use music instead of TV because of the visual distraction from the TV)

Write it slowly, correcting words, usage, and structure within the current sentence only...rarely going back to revise the previous one(s).

Spell-check (not always thoroughly effective... :) )

Read through once to make sure I haven't made any glaring faux pas that will annony the living crud out of me later.

Put it aside to store or post later.

I find that if I spend too much time going back through and revising, I get lost in the changes, and they become eternally recurrent. It also seems to lose some of the original flow and idea. It seems...almost tarnished or dulled...a weird way to describe it, I know, but it's as best as I can describe the feeling of working over the writing too much.

A benefit of this "first draft" approach is that very, very, very often, my own writing is new and surprising to me if I go back and read it later. I am sometimes pleasantly surprised, and at times frustrated with myself for not writing it differently. More often than not, however, this latter feeling comes from having grown in experience and writing style from attacking other projects in the interim.

But of all these projects, the novel has been the clearest indicator of the Stephen King effect in full-force. Every time I think I have a section all planned out, I'll get to writing it, and realize that this is not really what is going on...the writing changes on the spot, and I'm usually happy with the result. I am almost as surprised by my own tale at this point than an outside reader would be. I say almost, because I have a vague idea of where the over-arching story arc is headed...but each time I write some more, my certainty in the direction and contents of that arc fuzz up just a little more. And I'm not sure that the idea stems more from the plot prediction any movie-goer or reader may do themselves when coming across a new story, or from really having an idea of where this will all end up.

I must admit, however, that this third-person perspective in the creative process does somewhat attempt to dull the personal satisfaction in the work done...after all, I often feel like more of a reporter than a creator. And yet, even this is not enough to dampen how cathartic and relaxing this hobby can be.

Fact is, I enjoy it just for the sake of doing it. That I put some of it out there in the wide world of the web is merely to share some of that with my friends and family...but so far the store of what I keep to myself or very close to myself is growing as large or larger than that which I have let out...and I'm comfortable with that. :)

So, writing, writing, and writing it will be. Dissertation and papers for work, and missives, prose, and fiction to relax. It's a good thing I renewed my enjoyment of Aikido...or I could very well never have a reason to leave a desk. :)

Musing accompanying this latest episode of single-pass ghostwriting:

From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDQS1bFgjN8



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9IixYR_p-4


From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il-9_CudEu0


From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwbIkzDVVFQ


From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziThYl6B2vw




From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjZoIxCx-HY


From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmjNM85hbnA



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOVv39cPOKk




--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

-

Steps in an Empty Ballroom III

(Part 1)
(Part 2)


Gently cradling the tired and dusty one,
The visitor joins in the tears,
Two souls join in the mourning awakening demands
Words insufficient, unfound, yet superfluous,
In silence they mourn to an unsung dirge.

The weathered face struggles to look up,
With great effort, with last breaths,
Fear, unfathomable sadness from the dimmed eyes,
Accent the question rasped out,
"Must I? Oh, friend, must I?"

Fresh tears join the rivulets already forded
As the visitor holds the Fool closer,
Gently, tenderly, kindly, whispers,
"Yes, my friend, but together let's advance.
Let's stand, brothers, and face this final task."

His last breath expended, the Old Fool assents
One final nod, the realization complete.
And as they rise, the last of the spark drains,
On his feet again, the visitor alone remains,
A dry, dusty shell now all he's cradling.

Cold settles into the decrepit remains,
The Fool now released from his prison,
His victim gone, the visitor mourns now alone.
This righteous deed...the merciful murder...
The reasons feel hollow, plaintive, and numb.

The killer gently lays his victim on the dusty tiles,
A final resting place, an epilogue to a tale long done.
The executioner reaches out, and gently, tenderly, sorrowfully,
Closes those eyes of sorrow for the last time,
"Forgive me, my friend. May you find your peace now."

Before this plea is fully complete,
The murderer shrieks and jumps back aghast,
As the body before him crumbles like so much loose dust.
The dust is carried away, though no breeze is felt.
The wonder replaces the horror, as the room awakes.

Like a waking giant, the room seems to rumble.
The dust that had grayed this temple of sorrow
Washes away, slowly vanishes as the room brightens
Rapidly, years roll back, the heaviness of time lifts,
The room recalls its glory the world had long forgotten.

Stupefied and amazed, a murderer stands alone,
A living centerpiece in a dazzling miracle of rebirth.
As the brightness and light finish their invasion,
The furthest, darkest corner now bathed in life and glow,
The head table is revealed, and with it the truth...

...

With that, we leave our visitor, our murderer, our executioner,
To meet with his forgiveness, absolution, and validation.
And while what he met, what he saw, what he learned was for him alone,
We can leave you with this:

In the past lies both joy and sorrow,
Both ecstasy and pain,
Both need and satisfaction,
Both loss and all that is whole.
It is both the best and the worst.

But it is merely the past.

It cannot be the present,
And it can never be tomorrow.

It can be a lesson for life,
But it cannot be life.

It can inform the present,
But it cannot inhabit the present.

Most grasp this as self-evident,
But not all can so easily.
A past, forced to live in the present,
Is merely an empty, hollow shell.
It is death masquerading as life.

Will you choose life?
Will you live?
Or will you become merely the echoes of steps in an empty ballroom?

---------------------------

From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I10Cxv7qHJ8

--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

-

Ayn Rand Quotes

http://www.working-minds.com/ARquotes.htm

Some of my favorites:


We would do well to pay attention to the following one:
"The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government."

"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with." ('Atlas Shrugged' 1957)

"There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist."


"A rational man is guided by his thinking – by a process of Reason – not by his feelings and desires."


"Reason is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice."


"We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality."


"The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence." ('The Virtue of Selfishness' 1964)


"In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is – i.e. he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge) and the nature of the universe in which he acts – i.e. he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance."


And also from: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand


If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase to make money. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.


...observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists—amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for 'harmony with nature'—there is no discussion of man's needs and the requirements of his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision—i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears...


You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they’re not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict--and they call it growth. At the end there’s nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass.


America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.


Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.


Remember also that the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.


Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action.


The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system—and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.


“Free competition enforced by law” is a grotesque contradiction in terms.

--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

-

ASBO Jesus

Thanks to Josh H. for the link to this great comic. From the archives, here are my favorites:

Comic located at: http://asbojesus.wordpress.com

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/795/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/787/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/789/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/784/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/774/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/692/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/689/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/642/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/587/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/579/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/552/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/473/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/433/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/358/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/339/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2007/10/21/187/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/185/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/175/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/136/

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2007/05/16/29/






--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

-

Passing the time

So, I'm in the middle of adding to the writertopia word count on the front page of my blog. I'm at a difficult juncture in the wiring process of that project. Honestly, I have been putting off continuing this writing for a while because I didn't necessarily want to face this section head-on. But, here I am. So, I invited Mr. Alejandro Sanz to forge ahead with me this fine evening, and he is keeping me company with many fine a' tune.




From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTr9eSaCcL4





From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I10Cxv7qHJ8





From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4NS7C3cQ5Y





From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Et2rf9mq2U





From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxU8ep2enE4





From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIaQ-ZTx7vg





From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g44vso6s9k0


--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

-

A pox on the fundamentalists

[Rant]

I'm really surprised by the self-important, aggrandizing, hubris-filled crap spewing from the mouths of those who pride themselves on supposedly being pious and Christ-like. I don't know when it became popular among some of the young Calvinists/Reformed in my friends to compete in the gameshow nobody wins: "are you as fundamentalist and theocratic as the Taliban?". I pray that they are but a fleeting blip in the history of theology, or we're in for some horrible futures.


If that crap is what it will soon mean to many to be Christian, then label me pagan or something far, far from these fools. As Thanksgiving approaches, I find I am thankful to only have to deal with these deluded souls impersonally and infrequently, such as on Facebook, rather than have to put up with that revolting spew in person, in my work life, or in social circles.


That moronic stew of theological stank seems to only work into guilt-tripping the already "believers" into becoming more fundamentalist. If this approach has ever worked on anyone outside of the faith not already prone to submit to any cult like Jim Jones or the nike-wearing comet chasers, I would be exceedingly surprised.


Wow...[/Rant]


Strangely, though, i feel better. To all those of you in my life who nourish and uplift me...thank you for not being the above, and for being yourselves instead. :)



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEw2OMe10tM



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnDugewHPoI



From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbvs9FNcjRI





From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVi3TAVjo4o



--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

-

Ugh. Again.

Well, I've got a trip coming this weekend. And the feet are acting up again. It's not something to be done lightly, but I decided to take this poison preventively, and hope that I can stave off a few days of serious trouble.

But, today the news reminds me that whenever I feel I've had a bad day, I need to be ashamed that I even began to consider it to be so. God bless and comfort the families at Ft. Hood....

Good night.


--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

-

John Galt's Wisdom

Some pearls of wisdom from the Ayn Rand character, John Galt, in his rousing speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged...

Excerpts:

* * * * *
"Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. his body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch - or build a cyclotron - without a knowledge of his aim and the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think.

But to think is an act of choice...............reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct."

* * * * *
"If there are degrees of evil, it is hard to say who is the more contemptible: the brute who assumes the right to force the mind of others, or the moral degenerate who grants to others the right to force his mind. That is the moral absolute one does not leave open to debate.

I do not grant the terms of reason to men who propose to deprive me of reason.

I do not enter discussions with neighbors who think they can forbid me to think.

I do not place my moral sanction upon a murderer's wish to kill me. When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him - by force. "

* * * * *
"The restriction they [the immoral, the irrational, the socialists, the new philosophers and mystics] seek to escape is the law of identity. The freedom they seek is freedom from the fact that A will remain an A, no matter what their tears or tantrums - that a river will not bring them milk, no matter what their hunger - that water will not run uphill, no matter what comforts they could gain if it did, and if they want to lift it to the roof of a skyscraper, they must do it by a process of thought and labor, in which the nature of an inch of pipe line counts, but their feelings *do not* - that their feelings are *impotent* to alter the course of a single speck of dust in space, or the nature of any actions they have committed.

Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their *feelings*. 'Things ar they are' are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason, and they become 'things as perceived by your wishes.' "

"They proclaim that every man born is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his 'minimum sustenance' - his food, his clothes, his shelter - with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright.

To receive it - from whom? Blank-out.

Every man, they announce, owns an equal share of the technological benefits created in the world.

Created - by whom? Blank-out.

Frantic cowards who posture as defenders of industrialists now define the purpose of economics as 'an adjustment between the unlimited desires of men and the goods supplied in limited quantity.'

Supplied - by whom? Blank-out.

Intellectual hoodlums who pose as professors, shrug away the thinkers of the past by declaring that their social theories were based on the impractical assumption that man was a rational being - but since men are not rational, they declare, there ought to be established a system that will make it possible for them to exist while being irrational, which means: while defying reality.

Who will make it possible? Blank-out.

Any stray mediocrity rushes into print with plans to control the production of mankind - and whoever agrees or disagrees with his statistics, no one questions his right to enforce his plans by means of a gun.

Enforce - on whom? Blank-out.

Random females [now celebritards] with causeless incomes flitter on trips around the globe and return to deliver the message that the backwards people of the world demand a higher standard of living.

Demand - of whom? Blank-out."

* * * * *
"The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute, and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right, and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting a responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube."

* * * * *
"As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man's demand for your help. To demand it is to claim that your life is his property - and loathsome as such a claim might be, there's something still more loathsome: your agreement. Do you ask if it's ever proper to help another man? No-if he claims it as his right or moral duty that you owe him. Yes - if such is your own desire based on your ownselfish pleasure in the value of his person and his struggle.

Suffering as such is not a value; only man's fight against suffering, is. If you choose to help a man who suffers, do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his fight to recover, of his rational record, or of the fact that he suffers unjustly; then your action is still a trade and his virtue is the payment for your help. But to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of his suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim - is to accept the mortgage of a zero on your values."

* * * * *
"When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made the factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think and whom you spend your time denouncing.
...
Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but it's only the degree to which he thinks that determines the degree to which he'll rise.

Physical labor as such can extend no further than the range of the moment. The man who does no more than physical labor, consumes the material value-equivalent of his own contribution to the process of production, and leaves no further value, neither for himself nor others.

But the man who produces an idea in any field of rational endeavor - the man who discovers new knolwedge - is the permanent benefactor of humanity. Material products can't be shared, they belong to some ultimate consumer; it is only the value of an idea that can be shared with unlimited numbers of men, making all sharers richer at no one's sacrifice or loss, raising the productive capacity of whatever labor they perform.

It is the value of his own time that the strong of the intellect transfers to the weak, letting them work on the jobs he discovered, while devoting his time to further discoveries. This is mutual trade to mutual advantage; the interests of the mind are one, no matter what the degree of intelligence, among men who desire to work and don't seek or expect the unearned.

In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention recieves but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns.

But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, recieves an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability.

The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time.

The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains.

Such is the nature of the 'competition' between the strong and the wak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of 'exploitation' for which you have damned the strong.
...
You decided to call it unfair that we, who had dragged you out of your hovels and provided you with modern apartments, with radios, movies and cars, should own our own palaces and yachts - you decided that YOU had a right to your wages, but that WE had no right to our profits. that YOU did not want us to deal with your mind, but to deal, instead, with your gun. Our answer to that was: 'May you be damned!' Our answer cdame true. You are."

* * * * *
I only wish the BSG phrase could now resound: "So say we all."

Good night, and sleep well with dreams of rational thinkers surviving somewhere underground as the looters and new mystics of the "social" take over.


--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

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