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Jun. 14th, 2007
Two Headlines
Jun. 14th, 2007 10:14 amThe news behind them is actually about the same thing, but the titles just seem so funny:
And the news behind the headlines can be found here and here (video clip).
If you're interested in that sort of thing.
Atlantis' Return May Be Delayed
(Rise From Sea Postponed Till After Release of Harry Potter 7)
Astronauts Fix Torn Blanket
(Two Year Old Stops Crying)
And the news behind the headlines can be found here and here (video clip).
If you're interested in that sort of thing.
I'm here in town, without a coat. Just my street clothes, my "duty black".
Outside, it is pouring it down. The rain is colder than the warm showers yesterday, but at least the wind isn't biting, as it has done on occasion.
And I don't mind one little bit. It's still water. Valentine Michael Smith would have sat in the middle of this and grokked God and grokked and grokked until he discorporated. This rain, he would have said, is God sharing the water, wanting to make everybody God's water brother.
And Evie, at least Natalie Portman's hot Evie from V For Vendetta, would say something like "God is in the rain", which amounts to the same conclusion as Valentine Smith.
So it's pouring on the trees, on the grass, on the pigeons, meaning that God's sharing the water with every living thing. We are all water brothers. Even the rats and the bugs.
The rain is in God. Thou art God.
Just don't ask me to eat people today. It's Thursday.
Outside, it is pouring it down. The rain is colder than the warm showers yesterday, but at least the wind isn't biting, as it has done on occasion.
And I don't mind one little bit. It's still water. Valentine Michael Smith would have sat in the middle of this and grokked God and grokked and grokked until he discorporated. This rain, he would have said, is God sharing the water, wanting to make everybody God's water brother.
And Evie, at least Natalie Portman's hot Evie from V For Vendetta, would say something like "God is in the rain", which amounts to the same conclusion as Valentine Smith.
So it's pouring on the trees, on the grass, on the pigeons, meaning that God's sharing the water with every living thing. We are all water brothers. Even the rats and the bugs.
The rain is in God. Thou art God.
Just don't ask me to eat people today. It's Thursday.
The Nature of Evil
Jun. 14th, 2007 10:28 amToday, a headline in one paper rag: "Buried Under Rocks". Maddie McCann's apparently been left under some rocks out in the middle of nowhere.
Well, if they find her remains, at least there'll be relief of a sort for her family, and then the murder hunt can begin in earnest.
Next, another newspaper headline, this one a pompous editorial: "CALL EVIL BY ITS NAME AND DEAL WITH IT"
Please. If everyone started going around "dealing with evil", there'd be nobody left.
More to the point, they'd put me right at the front of the line leading to the guillotine, just because I wear black and I see things as they truly are.
Look hard, and you're going to find EEEVIL pretty much everywhere you look. But if you look closely, what you're looking at is not EEEVIL.
It is your own fear.
The people who look for EEEVIL in everything and everyone see everything through a contact lens of their own fears, their own anxieties.
There is no training, no education program, on tackling fear. We still strike out blindly when confronted by our fears. We still follow any political guru who promises an answer to the fear (and invariably this leads to Holocausts and Jonestowns and Heaven's Gates).
I'm going to list some quotes here, which will state my position on the paedophile issue (which is no more of an issue than the issue of "terrorism" or "honour killings" or wearing the wrong gang colours in some cultures).
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“What is hateful to yourself, do not do to another ... That is the whole law.”
- Rabbi Hillel
From the Strike the Root website:-
"“There are two basic reasons why people commit evil,” wrote Fred E. Foldvary, in "The Origins of Evil." “Some people are simply amoral. They lack sympathy and don’t think there is any morality. To them their victims are like rabbits. They think, if someone is weak or foolish enough to be a victim, they deserve no better ... But most evil is committed by people who believe they are doing good.”
"Presto. Or by people too lazy or programmed to reflect upon their actions.
"Like most folks, I’ll continue hacking at the branches of evil, and tell myself it is a good thing to do. After all, to strike at the root might require I get my hands dirty and acquire the proper digging tools. Who wants to do that? Most importantly, however, I would need the wisdom and ability to recognize the root when I see it and not mistake it for a fallen leaf."
One of my favourite sayings:-
"Hate cannot overcome hate. Only love can do so. This is an eternal law."
- The Buddha, but used over and over again in history by everybody, most notably Martin Luther King, Jnr., who also famously said:-
"Nothing good ever comes of violence."
- Martin Luther King, Jnr.
and:-
"Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
- Isaac Asimov
"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."
- Mahatma Gandhi
"In violence, we forget who we are."
- Mary McCarthy
"The cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. Only reverence can restrain violence - reverence for human life and the environment."
- William Sloan Coffin
Not enough people are trying to find out what hideous wound drives an offender to reoffend, what makes a man EEEVIL. What darkness is in his heart, put there by others in his childhood, untreated, unrecognised, festering.
“Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin.”
- Tori Amos
"I don't know. People always think that there has got to be a dark side to everyone, a closet with skeletons, demons under the bed. People think all kinds of things about one another. They feel compelled to make up fears and false assumptions about their closest friends. Truth is, I'll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So, we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind, a dash of optimism and a great deal of candour."
- would you believe, Tom Hanks
"There is nothing to fear but fear itself."
- Franklin D Roosevelt
But then, people don't like to think of EEEVIL as something coming from inside, do they? It's always a "Them" and an "Us" that's not EEEVIL. "They" are always EEEVIL, and if we dream for one second that the EEEVIL comes from within us, from our own internal, frustrated desires, our own selfishness, our own cynical, cheating, childish natures, then we are lost.
I have a dark side. But unlike most, I take it out. I take it on dates, talk to it, listen to its fears and moans. My own evil nature says to me "It's bloody cold out there, and you look silly in just a T shirt." And I say "Sometimes, you only want to make me suffer, Dark Side, so here you are. Only thing is, it's not me that's doing the suffering."
Once in a while, my Dark Side says to me "What do they think they're trying to do with new laws here and chemical castration there, and nobody's actually doing anything about the generational child abuse that turns people into monsters in the first place? Giving someone drugs to curb his libido's like putting a poultice on a bleeding stump. And those screeching women on the hustings stirring up a lynch mob can only make things worse.
"Why? Look at them. Look at their eyes. Recognise that look? Yes. It's the same look you find in the pictures of the perverts. Only nobody can see it, because when you're swimming in bloodlust, you can't see your face in the mirror."
If you want to defeat EEEVIL, kill yourself. So you want to live? Oh. Then that means that EEEVIL has won.
Except, it hasn't. And neither has good.
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
- William Shakespeare.
You will only ever be able to begin to fight a scourge like child abuse / terrorism / intolerance / racism on the day you finally begin to be guided, not by fear and violence and increasing punishments and ever more strident hysteria, but by reason and an inquiring mind and a courageous, unflinching eye: unflinching, because you will be able to look upon the face of evil and recognise its origins within yourself.
Thou Art God.
Well, if they find her remains, at least there'll be relief of a sort for her family, and then the murder hunt can begin in earnest.
Next, another newspaper headline, this one a pompous editorial: "CALL EVIL BY ITS NAME AND DEAL WITH IT"
Please. If everyone started going around "dealing with evil", there'd be nobody left.
More to the point, they'd put me right at the front of the line leading to the guillotine, just because I wear black and I see things as they truly are.
Look hard, and you're going to find EEEVIL pretty much everywhere you look. But if you look closely, what you're looking at is not EEEVIL.
It is your own fear.
The people who look for EEEVIL in everything and everyone see everything through a contact lens of their own fears, their own anxieties.
There is no training, no education program, on tackling fear. We still strike out blindly when confronted by our fears. We still follow any political guru who promises an answer to the fear (and invariably this leads to Holocausts and Jonestowns and Heaven's Gates).
I'm going to list some quotes here, which will state my position on the paedophile issue (which is no more of an issue than the issue of "terrorism" or "honour killings" or wearing the wrong gang colours in some cultures).
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“What is hateful to yourself, do not do to another ... That is the whole law.”
- Rabbi Hillel
From the Strike the Root website:-
"“There are two basic reasons why people commit evil,” wrote Fred E. Foldvary, in "The Origins of Evil." “Some people are simply amoral. They lack sympathy and don’t think there is any morality. To them their victims are like rabbits. They think, if someone is weak or foolish enough to be a victim, they deserve no better ... But most evil is committed by people who believe they are doing good.”
"Presto. Or by people too lazy or programmed to reflect upon their actions.
"Like most folks, I’ll continue hacking at the branches of evil, and tell myself it is a good thing to do. After all, to strike at the root might require I get my hands dirty and acquire the proper digging tools. Who wants to do that? Most importantly, however, I would need the wisdom and ability to recognize the root when I see it and not mistake it for a fallen leaf."
One of my favourite sayings:-
"Hate cannot overcome hate. Only love can do so. This is an eternal law."
- The Buddha, but used over and over again in history by everybody, most notably Martin Luther King, Jnr., who also famously said:-
"Nothing good ever comes of violence."
- Martin Luther King, Jnr.
and:-
"Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
- Isaac Asimov
"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."
- Mahatma Gandhi
"In violence, we forget who we are."
- Mary McCarthy
"The cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. Only reverence can restrain violence - reverence for human life and the environment."
- William Sloan Coffin
Not enough people are trying to find out what hideous wound drives an offender to reoffend, what makes a man EEEVIL. What darkness is in his heart, put there by others in his childhood, untreated, unrecognised, festering.
“Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin.”
- Tori Amos
"I don't know. People always think that there has got to be a dark side to everyone, a closet with skeletons, demons under the bed. People think all kinds of things about one another. They feel compelled to make up fears and false assumptions about their closest friends. Truth is, I'll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So, we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind, a dash of optimism and a great deal of candour."
- would you believe, Tom Hanks
"There is nothing to fear but fear itself."
- Franklin D Roosevelt
But then, people don't like to think of EEEVIL as something coming from inside, do they? It's always a "Them" and an "Us" that's not EEEVIL. "They" are always EEEVIL, and if we dream for one second that the EEEVIL comes from within us, from our own internal, frustrated desires, our own selfishness, our own cynical, cheating, childish natures, then we are lost.
I have a dark side. But unlike most, I take it out. I take it on dates, talk to it, listen to its fears and moans. My own evil nature says to me "It's bloody cold out there, and you look silly in just a T shirt." And I say "Sometimes, you only want to make me suffer, Dark Side, so here you are. Only thing is, it's not me that's doing the suffering."
Once in a while, my Dark Side says to me "What do they think they're trying to do with new laws here and chemical castration there, and nobody's actually doing anything about the generational child abuse that turns people into monsters in the first place? Giving someone drugs to curb his libido's like putting a poultice on a bleeding stump. And those screeching women on the hustings stirring up a lynch mob can only make things worse.
"Why? Look at them. Look at their eyes. Recognise that look? Yes. It's the same look you find in the pictures of the perverts. Only nobody can see it, because when you're swimming in bloodlust, you can't see your face in the mirror."
If you want to defeat EEEVIL, kill yourself. So you want to live? Oh. Then that means that EEEVIL has won.
Except, it hasn't. And neither has good.
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
- William Shakespeare.
You will only ever be able to begin to fight a scourge like child abuse / terrorism / intolerance / racism on the day you finally begin to be guided, not by fear and violence and increasing punishments and ever more strident hysteria, but by reason and an inquiring mind and a courageous, unflinching eye: unflinching, because you will be able to look upon the face of evil and recognise its origins within yourself.
Thou Art God.
