Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: we once were lost

I'll bet neither of those were read at any of Laurabot's poetry gatherings!

Beautiful poetry, Revere. After the exhilaration of the last few days it is balm for the soul.

May I add to your moment of pensiveness?

GATE

Once I came back to the leaves just as they were falling
into the rattling of magpies and the trailed flights
through treetops beyond the long field tawny with stubble
a scatter of sheep wandered there circling slowly
as a galaxy ferrying the grey lights that were theirs
wading into the shadows with the stalks whispering
under them and the day shining out of the straw
all the way to the break in the wall where the lane goes down
into the old trees to turn at the end and follow
the side of the cliff and I stopped there to look as always
I thought out over the pastures lying
face upward filled with the radience before sunset
one below the other down to the haze along the river
each of them broader than I had seen before
like skies with sheep running molten in the lanes between them
clonking of sheep bells drifting up through the distance
I watched the shadow climbing the walls and I turned
uphill to come to the top gate and the last barn
the sun still in the day and my shadow going on
out into the upland and I saw they were milking
at that hour and it seemed all my friends were there
we greeted each other and we walked back out to the gate
to talk watching the last night and our shadows gesturing
far out along the ridge until the darkness gathered them
and we went on standing here believing there were other words
we stood here in the autumn talking about ourselves

W.S. Merwin

O'Leary: Ah, the wonderful Merwin. Thanks. The world keeps turning.

Well, history and poetry have a way of finding themselves into obscurity. We may have had enough of the "iraq" war and i'll be the first to say that the lack of victory in the region is the reason the Republicans lost, fair and square. I will say though that this should be the last time that we hear about voter machines and dangling this and thats both chads and Bill Clintons, and that the elections were rigged...That in itself is a good thing. I work damned hard in the elections to make sure that everyone gets a fair shake and it was heartening because I too had watched the HBO special on voting.... It was crap and rigged in itself and they knew it.

In any event back to history and poetry and post election Superbowl Sunday. Today everyone is touting that the Dems have won a mandate from the people.... Not really. The so fart otal without the provisionals being counted so far put this margin at less than 1.1 million votes worth of change. It was less than when Clinton declared his mandate from the people. Now remember his first order of business....put gays in the military. Had to think on that one. Didnt do healthcare, didnt do welfare, didnt do big pharma, didnt do terrorism. Nope...gays in the military.

Okay, so the Dems have a very, very thin majority. Some of those Dems might switch parties if they start swinging for impeachments, investigation after investigation, hearing after hearing. Time to move ahead and get this thing done. Terrorists are dancing in the streets now and that was said by a pol sci phd Iraqi in the UK that advised the Clinton administration and the Bush. So a shifting of the gears is underway. We still have to address the issues and gridlocking the Congress is not the way to do it. The second they start a bunch of worthless hearings that might result in an impeachment, the Dems are on their way out. The country has had it with that crap too.

Poetry while cool might be all our epitaphs if they get terrorism and bird flu wrong. Bush and the Congress of the US might be the last one's we ever know. I for one want to see what great big plan the Democrats have to offer. It had better be really sexy for all of the special interest groups they had to suck up to get the votes they did. January awaits and we will have to see whether its a day sail or over the waterfall we go.

Thank you, Americans! You still seem to have courage to change the World! :)

Howdy Randy,

Funny, you should say... But, I (a 100% biological gay male) am already in the U.S. military -- unfortunately, I don't get paid or have benefits. Nor do I have a piece of paper/computer file acknowledging my citizenship. I can't even get same-sex married in my country...

At the moment I am (((ACTING))) 24/7 within Australia as the dear old "Jolly Swagman" (with just a backpack), who gets told by the "real Australians" to fuck off and leave them to their innane homophobic delusions and H5 pandemic denials...

A few years ago, via the internet, America took me under her wing. I'm more "American" than "Australian" at this point... As you well know, the Australian state and fed Aussie govs have supidly allowed a neo-nazi homophobia to creep into their public service -- Aussie closet queers are a tax payer rewarded pack of actors who project psych issues with sadistic (((VIOLENCE))) onto OUT gay men such as myself -- as you were formerly a part of my e-list you know my personal history...

Sorry, but the Dems won Congress due to millions of Yanks waking up to the fact America is heading towards systemic Neo-Nazi theocratic dictatorship (one pary rule, always).

For example: Senator Russ Feingold (Middleton, Wisconsin), honorary chair of Progressive Patriots Fund, concedes that this is indeed the current domestic case in the following e-list excerpt from progressivepatriotsfund.com...

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 06:06:44 GMT
From: "Russ Feingold, U.S. Senator"
To: "Jon Singleton"
Subject: Dear Friends and Supporters

"[Feingold] I want you to know that I've decided to continue my role as Wisconsin's Junior Senator in the U.S. Senate and not to seek the Democratic nomination for President in 2008.

Like many Americans, I am excited by the results of the November 7th election. My fourteen years in the Senate have been the greatest privilege of my life and I am extremely pleased with what we have accomplished. During so much of that time, however, we Democrats have not only been in the minority but have often been so deeply mired there that my role has often been to block bad ideas or to simply dissent. That is a very important role but I relish the thought that in this new Congress we can start, not only to undo much of the damage that one-party rule has done to America, we can actually advance progressive solutions to such major issues as guaranteed healthcare, dependence on oil, and our unbalanced trade policies...

There is Christian fundamentalism, Muslim fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism, etc., but is there such a thing as atheistic fundamentalism? Either 1) openly acknowledged as such by atheists (i.e., atheists who will say "Yes, I am an atheistic fundamentalist," or 2) existent, but denied (or at least not acknowledged) by atheists?

The above question occurred to me after reading Dylan's Oct 29, 2006 11:52 PM comment following revere's (Revere's?) sermonette about atheist books and atheists. In response to an earlier comment I had made, Dylan wrote, "I can attest to the fact that Revere is a genuinely decent human being ... which is why he does not seek Heaven. He does not need it."

In response to his comment, I asked: "I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying there are no genuinely decent human beings who seek Heaven?" (Unless something "on my end" is malfunctioning, Dylan posted no response.)

At any rate, it occurred to me that if I were communicating with someone who said "I can assure you that (name of person) is in fact a genuinely decent human being ... which is why he is a (name of religion)," I would get the feeling the person might be a fundamentalist within that religion.

(To make sure I did nothing that could distract any attention at all from the election, I did not post this last Sunday following the sermonette involving staements made by JFK.)

ssal: I can't speak for Dylan (although I appreciated the compliment he paid me), but I read it to say that atheists don't need the promise of Heaven to act in a decent way. I wouldn't consider that fundamentalist, and while I suppose there are some atheists that could be called fundamentalist (although I'm not sure what that would mean), by and large most atheists I know are much more tolerant than the believers are. Separating Church and State is an absolute for most atheists but its in the Constitution. So the Constitution is then an atheist fundamentalist document. If that's what you want to say, fine with me.

revere (and other atheists): I wasn't really thinking of the Constitution. I was thinking in terms of religious fundamentalism being the source of an awful lot of trouble in world. (If you could take the fundamentalists of all the religions and somehow transport them to another inhabital planet, I'm guessing the rest of us would get along much better.)

I don't know how to precisely define fundamentalism, except that one aspect of it is when person A feels like there's something "of lower overall value" about anyone who doesn't believe pretty much like person A believes.

Not to call Dylan an atheistic fundamentalist (especially since I don't know exactly what he meant), but his comment made me wonder if there are atheists who, because of the intensity of their conviction about atheism in and of itself ("in and of itself" referring to "intensity," not "atheism"), are quite similar to Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other religious fundamentalists in that they tend to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

I'm guessing that there are such atheists. I'm curious to know what atheists would say about it, though.

Jon, sorry if you misinterpret me on the above. It wasnt gay bashing. I dont do that. One of the guys in my unit was gay and one of the best troops that I had. No, my point was that either the newly Democrat Congress gets to work or the people will show them the door too. I dont understand how you are in the military in the US and openly gay though. As for the Neo-Nazi thing I would agree in part with you. The Republigions who are so flamingly anti anything that aint God their interpretation of God on it took over the party a while back and this election has put them back in the box for about the next two years. Moderate Republican is what I am and I am sticking to it. There are certain things that I think should be allowed such as stem cell research, use of embryo's that would end up in an incinerator anyway, abortion until the at the time ability of science to say that the fetus is not viable, and sorry no gays in the military. Dont take that wrong Jon, its not personal its medical. They were able to determine from the annual medicals that the ones that had an HIV status that there were one hell of a lot of come out of the closets...in the doctors offices. We never found out the percentages but a lot of bi rather than homo it would seem. They also never told us the percentages of the military population that were straight and had it either. You would just turn around and get a chit for so and so to report to the orderly room and then he/she would be gone. You could set your watch by their birthdays and the annual physicals, one week to two months and they were gone without so much as a ta-ta for now.

I wonder if the poetry above is really worth anything more than giving one pause about fighting a war? If it were Hitler or the Japanese we were wailing on in perspective, I wonder if anyone here thinks that what we are doing in Iraq was wrong in getting rid of Saddam. He had UN verified WMD's that have yet to be found in a state the size of Texas. As best I have been able to determine from my Dem friends, it wasnt that they were against doing Iraq it was more that we werent DOING Iraq. It kind of surprised me. They werent so much for cutting and running but more to cutting them down and send them running. Very strange. This may just have been a miscommunication in what the message was from the Dems. Now mind they are Southern "Yalla Dog" Democrats and they lean a lot farther right than New York or Boston. But it did surprise me.

The first poem is particularly worthy for a subset of the bird flu watchers, who seem to gravitate toward the coat-tails of anyone offering the illusion of certainty on the topic. Such followers-of-the-self-assured become almost fanatical in their devotion to their 'leader' and deny any challenges to the theories held by that individual as true.

It leads to a dangerous rigidity of thought, and obsession about issues that don't really matter except as quibbles to bolster or refute the leader's credibility.

ssalS: In my view fundamentalism today is largely a reaction to modernity, something atheists are not prone to. So I would say there are not atheist fundamentalists in the same sense as there are religious fundamentalists. That doesn't mean there aren't militant atheists, some of whom may be very obnoxious.

Sticking to poetry, may I offer this piece by Frost?

Thank you for the Brecht which I hadn't read before. I sent it to my 15yo who is thinking hard about how to move decency from theory to practice (and doing a pretty good job of it IMO).

Lines Written in Dejection on the Eve of Great Success

By Robert Frost

I once had a cow that jumped over the moon,
Not on to the moon but over.
I don't know what made her so lunar a loon;
All she'd been having was clover.

That was back in the days of my godmother Goose.
But though we are goosier now,
And all thanked up with mineral juice,
We haven't caught up with my cow.

POSTSCRIPT

But if over the moon I had wanted to go
And had caught my cow by the tail,
I'll bet she?d have made a melodious low
And put her foot in the pail;

Than which there is no indignity worse.
A cow did that once to a fellow
Who rose from the milking stool with a curse
And cried, 'I'll larn you to bellow.'
He couldn't lay hands on a pitchfork to hit her
Or give her a stab of the tine,
So he leapt on her hairy back and bit her
Clear into her marrow spine.

No doubt she would have preferred the fork.
She let out a howl of rage
That was heard as far away as New York
And made the papers' front page.

He answered her back, 'Well, who begun it?'
That's what at the end of a war
We always say not who won it,
Or what it was foughten for.

Brook: Wonderful. New to me. Perfect.

revere: "~atheists don't need the promise of Heaven to act in a decent way."

Heaven, indeed. I've lately taken the opportunity to review the various contentious models and find that the Muslim martyr's perspective has some merit despite the daunting prerequisite. Somehow, I suspect a solitary suicide ducking the final ugly stages of bone cancer by sucking on a helium fueled exit rig will not qualify. Add in the likely outcome to the debate about whether the virgins are really white raisins and the raison d'etre become righteously shriveled.

I've also been thinking about McKenna's contention that inhaling vaporized DMT "is the most astonishing experience this side of the yawning grave." Peering into that beckoning abysmal yawn still leaves me with DMT as the benchmark for astonishment. The DMT space does however resemble "an ecology of souls" as Terence also describes it.

I've a number of personal experiences that have left me with a wide open mind when it comes to assessing the probability that personal instances of consciousness survive the last breath. Life outside the womb all begins and ends with a breath. With some good fortune and the proper priorities, there's plenty of heavy breathing in between, as most men know that exercise, sexual communion and occasional moments of spiritual ecstasy are good approximations of something more like "heaven" than earth.

On the other hand, if galaxies can combine with little to show for their prior existences, then who can say with any confidence that instances of personal consciousness routinely recycle? Context from previous incarnations seems to have been well concealed in this one.

Many, Stan Grof in particular, say you have to look deeper and it's best to do that in an altered state (say, using holotropics; heavy breathing to evocative music - yes, my little raisin, it works). Then there's the odd communication from beyond the veil. Aldous Huxley, an erudite fellow who took LSD in his final hours, appears to have arranged such a transmission.

The atheist's perspective is attractively tidy, particularly if you want off this damned wheel and nirvana looks not to be in the cards (sounds dull anyway, though a meditative glimpse or two has been heartening). Seems a tad doctrinaire as well as tidy and what's the harm in a more expansive perspective? Good for a smug look if you happen to find "yourself" dancing in the last bardo, does not require a belief in god and brings to "mind" the shibboleth that freedom is only another word for nothing left to lose.

tymp: Since I, too, have been thinking a lot about the end of life (for somewhat different reasons than you) I find your responses very instructive. There is a very interesting book about the controversey between Hume and Rousseau (Rousseau's Dog) by the same guys who wrote Wittgenstein's Poker (a better book but this one is good, too). In its final chapters it describes David Hume's last days as he was dying of bowel cancer. I find it enormously comforting. The other thing I find comforting is the iconic view of the earth from space. It puts things in perspective in a particular way for me. I see us as just another species, like ants maybe, crawling around on the surface of the earth. The fate of an individual ant doesn't seem that significant from that vantage point. I'm sure many readers here will be horrified but it is very comforting for me. Each to his own, eh?

Found a copy of Rousseau's Dog on Amazon for less, including shipping, then it would cost to drive to the library for a look. Thanks for the pointer.

I've always (since I was old enough to worry about such things) thought we have an inflated opinion about our importance here and in the universe generally. The human neocortex is surely one of the more complex things around but species extinction may well be warranted and perhaps is overdue.

Each to his own when it comes to comfort, aye sir.