Seq B: Peyote > Qudlivun
The case for optimism re progessive futurity is poignantly, eloquently and beautifully made by the late Cesar Chavez: "Nonviolence takes time. I despise exploitation and I want change, but I'm willing to pay the price in terms of time. There's a Mexican saying, 'There's more time than life.' We've got all the time in the world." Such optimism may seem perhaps overly optimistic ("more time than life" is true in any event); whether longer lifespans might have any effect was not (but might have been) discussed in Seq 7. But our restless minds must race ahead.
Unlike some other progressives ([Depersonalisation Disorder sufferer?] Baudrillard's claims of futility amid terminal hyperrealism ["the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern cultures"] notwithstanding), Chavez didn't compromise his credibility by injecting (and apparently criticising) religion à la Marx (and, apparently, the*sequitrist), unnecessarily establishing a radical police state (à la Stalin [who attempted - in both directions - to interbreed humans and chimps for military purposes, wanting "a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."] and Castro), touting drugs and taboo sexuality (à la 60's Americans [good plan!]) or otherwise promoting socially unacceptable or provocative and unrelated, if valid concepts, crippling the possibilities of the social agenda.
e*sequitur 72: Dr. Seuss
[nom] [who escaped because he "hid well" à la Descartes], the prolific and upbeat socialist [That use of this and the a {atheist (noting non-worshipful a-types [cf. g {gullible}-types])} word || is forbidden in Free-speech and Freedom-of-religion America || provides clairvoyance into the future of American democracy {a concept that is, in itself, economically neutral || despite the disingenuous hysterics || of advocates of the sociopathic (and dangerously, distractingly obsolete) transaction-based economic model}, and even more profound insight || into ideas worthy of the reder's attention. Given this intellectual blackout, the inference {conclusion} that ideas || proscribed by those in power || have serious, power-threatening legitimacy || and that the ideologies of those in power are illegitimate || is inescapable.] educator, was another friend of our species. Seuss understood the power of a positive perspective in public persuasion, and taught optimism, gave hope and instilled a love of redeing [ideacquisition; indeed, his motive was said to be childhood literacy] and creativity in his charmingly eccentric moral fables. Seuss worked at the level of youth - far more effective than at that of adults - using subtle, creative satire and presenting constructive solutions. Seuss brought true morality to a generation that gained the embedded memes of anti-caste [anti-hierarchic] egalitarianism and disintermediation of bullies [Yertle the Turtle; anapestic tetrameter]; unselfish responsibility and accountability [Horton Hatches the Egg]; harmonic communitarianism [How the Grinch Stole Christmas]; anti-monarchism, anti-sumptuarianism and commonpeople dignity [The 500 Hats of Bartholemew Cubbins]; and collectivism in which the least is the most powerful (Little Cat Z in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back).
Like Seuss, John Maynard Keynes, the dismal scientist (economist), understood the importance of ideas. He observed (this widely quoted):
"But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, whom [sic] hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.... [S]oon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."
Keynes' assertion that ideas matter, is accurate; however, characterising ideas as dangerous is a misleading canard (and good/evil characterisation emotionally distracting as well as mediæval). Rather, the constructive strategy of collaboratively, critically and creatively looking to ideas for insight and innovation, and for humanity's mutual futural betterment is (in physician's terms) indicated. As Walt Whitman wrote (and Chavez would agree),
"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?"
Whitman (a talker-to of strangers) leading us to consider the possibilities of real relationships and
e*sequitur 73: Hopeful Monsters,
evolutionary "leaps" forward, contradicting accepted gradualism (and see koinophilia in e*sequitur 68). HMs inhabit the optimistic realms of catalysis and genetics, instillation of fear of which is a useful tool in a democracy ("Why, of course," page 278). Seneca's observation that
RELIGION IS REGARDED
BY THE COMMON PEOPLE AS TRUE,
BY THE WISE AS FALSE, AND
BY THE RULERS AS USEFUL
can quite easily be applied to any institutional concept. If the reder accepts Seneca's analysis, the next question might very well be: Is this the permanent state of affairs of humanity (see Plan B in e*sequitur 82]? That the majority of humans will always lack minimum quantum intelligence (mQI; see Satire), and that every majority-ruled generation on the human horizon must thus endure an unstable, violent and repressive present, and expect nothing more than an identical (A = A) future, in which unscrupulous wisewinkers and nudgerulers manipulate for material gain and sadistic entertainment, while fatalsentient custodians struggle to maintain the most minimal social stability, while food, health, population control, resources, habitat degradation, energy, sustainability, employment (constructively occupying people) and human dignity (the real, mutual issues confronting humanity) go unaddressed? But enough of this contingent speculation; let's rather escape to
e*sequitur 74: sadō
(not Salò! [see xxx*sequitur 8] amid cherry blossom branches and accompanied by the cherrywood hummel [Respect, Ulricus]), the tea ceremony (the study of which is "virtually endless," ensuring endless occupation),
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Two friends day (reflection)
In the garden in the winter
rainfall falling from the sky
rocks embedded in the glacier
now released to line our passing path
bonsai, birds of paradise and cacti
listening as we relate
life stories lush and sere
Shaped water; wending koi
every raindrop on the surface
a tympan lens on heaven
for the fish below
one blows two bubbles
the woman says it says tian
tian
* * *
as Exhibit A for habituated ritual, hierarchic order, oromanual gratification, aesthetics and nourishment, covering a lot of ground in terms of satisfying animal instincts (see*sequitur 93). At a higher level, to the foundling Sage of Tea, Lu Yu, author of Chá jīng (The Classic of Tea), tea "symbolised the harmony and mysterious unity of the Universe." Contrast this high ritual with
e*sequitur 75: disorder
and you can understand Hobbes' disaffection for a natural state. Whether or no dicey discord and discontinuity (theoretically discussed in Seq 7) have genetic disadvantages, they are literally disconcerting (witness the exhausting mental pain of e*sequiturs), and contradictatorially counter the moral criterion of conformity (which co-opts even exceptionalism as a conformist concept). Disorder brings to mind delusion (one of your e*sequitrist's favourites), and occasions e*sequiturs' second Award for Valour (close relative of Valium®; see*sequitur 18), hereby bestowed upon the American Psychiatric Association for its noble (and qualified) exemption of practitioners of organized religion from its definition of delusion (if everyone is doing it, it must be okey-dokey, jawohl? FYI, this is why G*d gave you testicles, male headshrinkers). On the subject of organized mass activities, knowledge of whether humans studied the
e*sequitur 76: termite cathedral
(mudpile, and the magnetic mound) or wasp daubs before creating adobe (Zuni: he:'awe) structures may exist in Egyptian or Coptic (from which languages the word arose) records. Phonocentric (oral tradition) Hopi (their leaders imprisoned at Alcatraz in 1894 in the US Government's attempt to "extinguish" their culture [Twain: {"sivilize" (page 388)}]) (whose anagogics include kachinas ["life bringers"]) "observe their ceremonies for the benefit of the entire world";
"to be Hopi is to strive toward (pacificism), which involves a state of total reverence and respect for all things, to be at peace with these things."
(For additional poetic insights, rede Acoma Pueblo Simon Ortiz's "Sometimes It's Better to Laugh 'Honest Injun'" [95¢ online] and note his observation that his people "have been able to survive insignificance" [cf. Cohen in e*sequitur 49].) Ironically, this primitive insect tower is cited as an example of spontaneous order (SO); It is notable that some current power elites and most executive clergy (to skip parenthetical content advance to A) (practicers of apologism [a technical term that you, dear reder, need to know, along with SO and catallaxy, a sinister {so unfair to lefties, this, etc.} pair of convenient, coincidental illusions {one speculates that one agenda of anti-interventionist proponents is to run the clock (wasting time, a
e*sequitur 77: thoughtcrime
[cf. Orwell's crimethink and thinkpol], a subject that bears considered analysis, and brings to mind the laws of thought, breakers of which are irrational [the reder, perhaps a Mandarin elite, may have had limited encounters with antiscientists, or, Romantically, may be an æsthetic Decadentist {not a 10-power toothpuller!} or mere [adult content] Decadent, in the company of Baudelaire, Beardsley, Huysmans, Lautréamont, Munch, Redon, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Wilde {"... we are all in the gutter, but some us are looking at the stars"}, et al.]; if one goes down this path, one discovers intuitionism; transfinity; the mind messing Aleph-null [see*sequitur 67], "the first transfinite cardinal number" or "the smallest infinite number"; and tautologically uncountable sets ["infinite sets too big to be countable"]) on the human conversation in order to get attention and food for themselves or, perhaps, from pure pomposity}, immoral and so far ineradicable members of a large family of rationalised, abdicative {irresponsible} philosophies, including anarchism, C*pitalism, fatalism, nihilism and objectivism], as opposed to meliorists [about which you also need to know; these concepts key to human interaction]) (A) characterise attempts to optimise society ("immanentising the Eschaton" aka achieving
e*sequitur 78: Heaven
on earth) as hopeless and naïve (and against their interests of holding people in an ironic state of hopeless [because life cannot be good] hope [because things will be peachy after an individual's death]). The former oligopoly is actually against efforts to improve the lot of society (because they intentionally intellectually dishonestly claim that it's an annoying waste of time [nothing new in claiming it's futile to challenge the status quo]); the latter takes the view that "quality of life" is not to be achieved until the afterlife (or Ultimacy [noting Abraxas {possible origin of abracadabra} the 365 orders of spirits {emanations}, including the therianthropic Anguipede {see*sequitur 90} and the 365 heavens, with the earthly sphere the lowest {natch}], the End [whenever; coincidentally perpetuating their soul-money-and-power franchise {and see*sequitur 46}]). Again, mark well the cruelty and blatancy that the retention of power requires and enables, bearing in mind the certain offensive and defensive behaviors in which these tyrants will reliably and relentlessly engage to maintain power and perverse popular subjugation.
You, kind reder, have only two questions to answer in your life. Consider for a moment, politically, why not try to optimise the condition of as many people as possible (even [or especially] if you think it's unachievable)? Do we as a species have something better to do (i.e., pursue selfish interests) with our limited time on this small and fragile planet? (If this is your subscription, see Plan B, e*sequitur 82.) On the spiritual side, what sort of deity would not want humanity to live as well as possible during physical life, or would not imperiously, omnipotently demand a social order that would thus so optimise? You know the answers to these questions: You can, if you choose, conduct your life as if you do.
A Bag of Tools
Isn't it strange that princes and kings,
And clowns* that caper in sawdust rings,
And common people
Like you and me
Are builders for eternity?
Each is given a bag of tools,
A shapeless mass,
A book of rules;
And each must make -
Ere life is flown -
A stumbling block
Or a stepping stone.
- R.L. Sharpe
* propagandist pretenders to ownership of the term "mainstream" to describe a humanicidal (sociopathic too gentle an adjective) economic agenda
[N.B. Your correspondent observes that the false dilemma in the last couplet in no way diminishes the benefit of the second choice: To help oneself and others. This, in conjunction with the included middle, is anything but all wet.]
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> Seq C
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Image: G*d's eye
Peyote motif Wixáritari nieli'ka (Huichol), by El Gallo. Permission pending.