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- okami
- former US Marine, retired police; in other words, professional babysitter. "Ah's jes' th' ign'nt sonuva po' ol' shahcroppah, yas ah is. . ."
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The Zen Of Motivational Posters
2009 0921 2020
I’ve found, over the past year or so, that the parody motivational poster--also known as the motifake or demotivational, among other things--is probably one of the best forms of one-way personal communication developed for internet usage. It’s short and it’s to the point. It’s funny and/or thought-provoking. It’s in your face, in a bare-bones form of speaking. It’s visceral: it hits you in the gut. It can speak to past events, current affairs, future possibilities, and eternal truths.
Although it has evolved primarily as a form of entertainment, it’s become a most valid method of presenting one’s viewpoints or observations on a multiplicity of moods and chains of reasoning. If I were to associate it with a form of religious or philosophical development, I’d say it was most akin to the Rinzai schools of Zen, which tend to promote enlightenment through a psychic shock, rather than the gradual awakening of the Soto schools.
Now, it’s possible that I may not have a lot of time left in this plane of reality, for various reasons. Not that it worries me, since I’ve been ready to go at any moment for the past few decades. However, there are things I’ve wanted to say and express. Over the years, I gave up careers in art, writing, the military and academia for others, not to mention having given up other things.
There’ve always been infinities of things I’ve wanted to say, with no way of expressing them.
For this reason, the coming of the internet is a boon, not only to me but to every human on the planet. At a minimum, it is as important as the creation of writing itself, and promotes the true formation of a ‘”world-mind”. It enables one to participate and share, communicate and discover, in a great many ways. It encourages oversight, debate, discussion and dissension, discovery, learning, education and exploration on levels heretofore unheard of.
If a person has always--or ever--felt alone, in thought, feeling, or deed, the internet has alleviated that isolation somewhat in that people of similar outlooks, interests, and viewpoints can meet and band together, even if they‘re physically separated by thousands of miles. If humanity survives, it will only continue to grow and spread, until potentially every human will have access to communication and information, regardless of location.
Although getting there’s gonna be a real motherfucker.
Through interaction with others--for example, through electronic activism--people who are widely separated can band together and take effective action in accord with their interests. Prior to the internet, using regular mail (if only that), such action was uncoordinated and diffused. It can now be electronically concentrated. The logistics of gathering thousands of people together are daunting in the interests of group participation, especially if they are spread across thousands of miles and have insufficient funds. With the internet, these people can become a concentrated electronic assemblage who will be noticed and heard at the speed of light.
It is also a form of relative immortality. For those who have no children (biological immortality), or those who believe or feel they haven’t shaped events during their careers (socioeconomic or cultural immortality), the internet provides a newer, different way of assuring that some part of the person will live on.
My problem has been that up until relatively recently, I’ve never been able to afford a computer of my own. Presently I still don’t have internet access, which is a bitch. Complicating this is that (1) my personal library is twenty miles away, (like my babies, but that’s a different, though more important problem) and (2) I’ve suffered a distinctive loss of IQ points, information and knowledge while raising a family and working at the police department, neither of which are environments conducive to creative thought or feeling. Finally, for most of the past year I didn’t even have a working computer; and, combined with my medical problems, I’ve lost more time in which I could have been doing something I feel useful.
It creates problems for me, and most especially others, to get internet access at present. There’s a library only two blocks away, but there is no straight route to it. I can’t go across fields with a walker. Also, there’s no ramp here for the stairs, no sidewalks betwixt hither and yon, and the only route goes along a major street. This means loading a backpack and wheelchair into a car, driving eight blocks to a place two blocks away, and then unloading same. Not to mention the hours it’s open, which is frustrating when someone has a job and a life of his/her own. And frustrating to me, who’s used to spending 12-18 hours at a time online.
I tend to feel very, very guilty over it. And frustrated. And absolutely pissed.
It’s not over yet, either. I won’t have even this while I’m learning to use my new leg. As with any hospital, the Veterans’ Administration hospitals don’t feel it safe to bring a laptop during a stay. And there’s always the probability of losing my other leg this winter, if not in the relatively near future. That’s not counting further possible problems. Although I feel the same as I always have, I’m not 18 any more. Physically, that is.
It’s perhaps for these reasons that I’ve settled on the demotivational poster or motifake as a major means--if not the major means--of presenting my viewpoints and comments on subjects. It’s short and to the point. It offers the best chance of saying a lot in a short space.
(NOTE: Please keep in mind that, without library or net access while I’m writing this, I’m solely dependent on my memory. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not always trustworthy, which is why online dictionaries and Wikipedia exist.)
This is the basic makeup of such a poster:
(This poster, and the one at the beginning of this missive, are not mine. I didn’t create ‘em. I wish I had. However, the remainder of those used will be mine, with any exceptions being pointed out.)
I should note that while I was waiting for my surgery, I wrote a whole book of comments to use for these things. I currently have about 350--not counting what’s in the book--ready and waiting to be made and posted. That’s how versatile a form of communication this is.
As with other forms of expression, such as the novel and the short story, there can be layers of meaning in such a thing. Take this one, for instance:
The picture by itself is funny, and indicative of the usual rush the media has to get its product out first, ahead of competing networks. CNN’s a bit bad about this kinda thing. On another level, though, it hit me as an manifestation of quantum theory on the macrocosmic level, especially as regards the gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) of Schrodinger’s Cat.
Until bin Laden’s actually found, we have no real proof whether he’s dead or alive. Just as with the cat: until you open the box, you don’t know the truth. Observation creates the reality (the Copenhagen Interpretation); and until the box is opened, the cat is both dead and alive.
All of this implies that (1) we create reality as much as we are created by it, (2) there’s a touch of uncertainty in everything, and (3) things that occur on the microcosmic level can manifest on the macrocosmic level, as well.
A somewhat similar--though more serious--poster is this one:
For those who haven‘t read it, No. 40, The Mysterious Stranger was Mark Twain’s last book, written shortly before his death in 1910. Several versions came out over the succeeding decades, as family, friends, editors and others put forward their own conceptions of the book, all somewhat different, all under Sammy’s name. However, there have been recent attempts to put together the book as it is believed he would have done. It would appear to me that only Sam hisself woulda known how he’d have wanted the book.
About twenty years ago, a series of TV movies appeared, based on some of the works of Clemens/Twain. This was one of them. It remains a favorite of mine.
Probability rules in the microcosmos. It can be stated that a particle--say, an electron--may be more a mass of probability than a physical object, and has no independent reality other than as a means of explaining phenomena. (“It appears to be a coin, but it probably isn’t.” - from the classic ontological science fiction story “E for Effort”.)
Of course, the same can also be said of science itself, religion, mathematics and other conceptual constructs as well.
There’s also the resonance of Twain’s thought with the religion and philosophy of the Orient, especially ancient Taoism and the development of ch’an, roundabout 600-500 BCE, prior to its further development into Zen and adoption into Buddhism after the beginning of the Christian Era. Twain’s statement evokes a similar thought made some 2000-2300 years earlier by Chuang Tzu: “And I awoke, and realized I did not know whether I had been Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I was a butterfly dreaming I was Chuang Tzu.” And then there’s the sage I-Tuan: “This is the Great Mystery: You do and you do not exist.”
(I dunno if Twain ever read any Oriental works. It’s probable. I do know that the Hindu Bhagavad-Gita was a favorite of some of the leaders of the American Enlightenment, such as Emerson and Thoreau. But that‘s another story. And poster.)
Events on the macrocosmic level inspired this baby:
I should note I couldn’t put my complete thought into this one. The sites available for making these have different restrictions, as to types of pictures (gif, jpg, etc), word counts, and so on. In this case it woulda only been a couple words or so.
Anyhoo, there’s still a lot of debris out there, even after 4.6 billion years (the Hindu’s ‘’Day of Brahma” is interestingly set at about 4.2 billion years, if memory serves. No limited 6,000-year-old universe there.) Though most of the mess has been cleared out, there remains an Asteroid Belt, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud (at least), as well as other objects whose orbits cross our own. Although a good number of people remember the impact of Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in 1994, funding for programs to detect hazardous near-earth objects (NEO’s) has been repeatedly and dramatically slashed, and not only in the United States.
It only takes one big one to slip in and mess up a lot of people’s days.
Such events can and do still happen. All planets, including ours, are repeatedly being hit, although usually by very small and mostly microscopic objects. The Tunguska blast of June 30, 1908 and the events of October 8, 1871 (Chicago, Peshtigo, etc.) were apparently caused by high-altitude bolides, meteors exploding in the atmosphere.
It should be noted that the Chief of the Chicago Fire Department at the time spoke of simultaneous, separate and multiple fires across the city. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of acres of fields and grasslands and prairies burned. The city and population of Peshtigo, Illinois, was virtually obliterated, with even the air turning to fire. The survivors I know of lived only by plunging themselves under the surface of the nearby river and waiting for the fire to pass.
And these events derived from the impact of what is believed to be cometary material alone. A more massive object might not have exploded, but survived to hit the ocean or ground, with far more devastating results.
And, to date, neither the documentaries nor the movies have been able to give a full depiction of a very large, massive strike. They all leave some things out due to time, financial, or other limitations.
A comet is basically quite fragile, being mostly (though not all by a wide margin) frozen ices and gases. The most informative and humorous description I ever read was a scene in Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, in which comets are considered as very, very large ice cream sundaes with chocolate fudge toppings and cherries. You should read it if you get a chance.
It was shortly after this book that Walter and Luis Alvarez first proposed the theory that the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction (dinosaurs, for you provincials) was caused by an impact event.
Asteroids, on the other hand, are usually solid nickel-iron or the somewhat less dense chondrites, including the carbonaceous variety. Density remains, then, the only major difference between comets and asteroids. Speed, therefore, becomes the great equalizer.
Even a snowball can cause significant damage, due to the speed with which it’s thrown. It’s basically the same with paintball pellets; the speed at which they’re propelled enable them to tear flesh and damage tissue and vessels.
So when it comes down to speeds at tens of thousands of miles an hour, there’s not that much difference between comets and asteroids at all.
Now, this one hopefully evokes a bit of critical contemplation, I hope:
A friend recently asked why I was still posting things about the Bush Administration, since we now have the Obama Administration. For me, there are at least two answers: [1] The ideology and actions taken by the Bush Administration got the United States into a clusterfuck that has conceptually, poltically and socially attempted to take us back to 1860. Torture, human trafficking and slavery are only some of the things they brought back; they just haven’t done it to the people living here (at least, as far as I can tell).
We’re gonna be dealing with the consequences of their actions for the next 100 years. At least.
As for the second reason [2] WE SHOULD NOT FORGET. “Out of sight, out of mind” has its uses, but memory and history are essential to survival. They are a guide and a path to dealing with present and future situations. They present available alternatives, which we can hopefully use in dealing with a given situation.
(Not to mention the fact that I didn’t have a computer of my own for most of the time involved. . .)
Now, I don’t lay all the blame on them. Not for the downsizing of the military and the CIA, for instance, which began with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and was accelerated under Clinton. I don’t blame them for a lot of other things, either. But Cheney, Rumsfield and Bush all worked in previous Republican Administrations. Cheney goes back to the Nixon Administration. Cheney wanted the “good old days” of the Nixon Administration brought back and expanded. Rumsfield let himself get suckered by high-tech toys, and forgot that it’s the people who win wars; machines are good for killing others, but it takes a soldier to come in, hold the ground and win the war.
During the first four years of the Administration, Rumsfield and Cheney had a habit of ganging up on Colin Powell, so that he was able to get absolutely nothing of importance done. And this was the man who knew exactly what needed to be done.
As for little Bush, he was basically a failure at everything he’d ever done, save possibly for being a cheerleader in college. The first six years of the Bush Administration were dominated by Dick Cheney and his policies. Nearly everything I can remember coming out of Bush’s mouth--before prescreened and prepared “studio audiences”--was from Cheney’s book or that of the neocons.
He wasn’t a President; he was a puppet and a mouthpiece. A cheerleader.
And it should be remembered, too, that it wasn’t Bush who was always hiding in an ‘undisclosed location’.
It wasn’t until probably 2006, as I remember, that Bush actually started to say “No” to Cheney and mean it. It was clear to me that Cheney was more important than Bush ever was, which was why the Democrats tried to impeach him first. A Cheney Presidency would have made the Bush Presidency look glowing and full of joy.
This mess was exacerbated by both neoconservatives and neoliberals (Democrats) and their different yet dovetailing visions of ‘”bringing democracy to the Middle East”. Hussein needed to go, but not until we got bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban. He was no threat to us. The Bush Administration--and the sheep which blindly followed them, Democrat or Republican--let bin Laden escape, let the Taliban gather its strength and regroup, encouraged thousands of people to become insurgents and terrorists, and told the entire world to fuck off.
And the only WMD we found were the ones we sold Hussein during the Reagan Administration. Specifically, Rumsfield and company.
These are facts.
Study your geopolitics, foreign policy and strategic affairs. Unless you like being spoon-fed like a baby.
(Starting a two-front war is what fucked Hitler up. Even so, the Soviets did most of the hard work. That’s why Germany was so afraid of them in the last days, because the Nazis had really, really, really hurt the Soviet people.)
And the Democrats, specifically the neoliberals, made themselves every bit as guilty and at fault as the Republicans when they voted for or approved any measure that resulted in the loss of law, justice, liberty or life. Many of the things that have not been released will never be released by the Obama Administration, because Democrats signed onto them. Things were passed and approved without being read, studied, debated or considered. In fear and in the wake of 911, Democrats rubberstamped the same things Republicans did. Almost nobody stopped to think.
One of the few who did think was Senator Byrd of West Virginia; and when he was young, he was in the Ku Klux Klan. And he dissented when almost NO ONE ELSE did.
It was only later, much later, that a few of them on either side started using the brains God gave them. But by then it was too late; far too late. If the truth were brought out now, there’d be very few people left inside the House, the Senate, or the White House. It’d be as if the last plane had hit the Capitol, as it was supposed to.
In the meantime, this country’s become a blend of George Orwell’s 1984, his Animal Farm, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. If you haven’t read them, get them and DO SO. And then look around you.
Sheep. . .
This type of behavior is irrational. It’s psychotic. It’s not conducive to winning a small conflict, let alone a large one. Idi Amin had more sense than this, and the Ugandan people had a LOT more. Because when they’d had enough of his crap, they got rid of him. I often believe we should do the same with our political leaders as the need arises. At minimum.
The problem is in creating an electorate half as intelligent as the Ugandan population of the 1970’s.
I should note that people in power do not like giving up power. Any of it. I sincerely doubt that Obama will voluntarily give up anything of importance that was stolen, taken, given, assumed, grabbed by or sacrificed to the Bush Presidency. He’s a good guy, but he’s no Cincinnatus or George Washington.
Some twenty-thirty countries already had more freedoms than the United States before 911. It’s only gotten worse in this country since then. What do you think it’s gonna be like for your kids, grandkids, or great-grandkids?
I have something of a personal stake in this, as well, since my oldest nephew, Shannon Wofford, is career Army. The illegal invasion of Iraq caused his marriage to break up, and he was barely able to hold onto his daughter. He’s now on his FOURTH TOUR in Iraq. After that he’s going to Afghanistan. I’d thought he’d already went over, but I was recently corrected on that matter. We’re currently connected via Facebook, and he also has a MySpace page..
What upsets me is that he considers me as one of the inspirations for his joining. Now, I’d enlisted in the Marines while Vietnam was still going on, but I never saw combat or served in what could be considered a ‘combat theater‘. I was one of the very fortunate few who was able to choose where I wanted to go. For those reasons I’ve never considered myself a “Vietnam Vet”. Too many real heroes there.
(Those who have served in any of the services will realize what I’m saying here.)
At any rate, to realize I’d influenced my nephew in that way is not only humbling, but brings on a measure of guilt. Though none of us in the early 70’s could have seen 911 coming, I can’t help feeling guilty about it.
Especially if anything happens to him or his daughter.
Meanwhile,
I know some people will get upset at this one due to its implications of, among other things, slavery. Well, I was born and raised in a state that used to be a slave state. My father was, among other things, a poor white sharecropper during my early years. I grew up picking cotton alongside poor blacks who couldn’t get other jobs.
I’m staying with my daughter presently, about 20 miles from home. For decades there was a banner, here in this town, hanging across the main thoroughfare reading “The Blackest Land And The Whitest People”.
I remember it well.
So don’t start. I’ve seen more than enough of what it does to people on either side.
About twenty years ago, a white officer I worked with was forced to shoot and kill a young black man who had a shotgun leveled at him. A near-riot ensued, but the situation was brought under control without any further use of force.
The thing was that the black population of Commerce created no problem at all, though some could say they would have had more than ample justification. It was white people who were flocking to Wal-Mart and anywhere else to stock up on guns and ammunition. Some of them were expecting some kind of black backlash or race war.
(One hundred years later, and whites still fear a black rebellion. Even now the fear exists, under the surface. And if they’re not to blame, their ancestors surely are. As well as anyone who taught them that fear and hate.)
At the time, I was a security guard for an apartment complex when I wasn’t working at the PD. Three quarters of the residents were black. The only weapons I carried were those I’d had at other complexes: a wooden staff and a length of chain. And I didn’t always carry them.
With or without them, I saw absolutely no difference in the behavior of the black population as a result of the shooting. It was white people who were scared, as far as I could see. And, because of the past and their own attitudes, they shoulda been.
Slavery is more a socioeconomic phenomenon than anything else. It’s been, I believe, worse here in the United States because it was ‘divinely ordained’ and justified by the New Testament; specifically the crap that was written after Jesus. (And I’ve got a few upcoming posters on that, too.)
And skin color’s a great way to identify people. Ask anyone in government service, especially law enforcement. Knocks out a lotta the population from consideration at one stroke.
However, slavery was becoming uneconomical, and it was beginning to fade when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. The probability is that it would have burnt itself out within a few decades, if not generations. With the spread of the cotton gin, however, slavery again became a growth industry for the predominantly agricultural South.
Unlike the Jews, who were commanded to free their Jewish slaves after seven years, or the Muslims, who were commanded to free their slaves upon conversion, it was only us whiteboy Christian types who sought to make it a ongoing phenomenon of sociocultural eugenics: the artificial breeding of a race to do our bidding, in the same manner we developed different breeds of dogs, horses and cattle.
At the time of the Civil War, racism was just as rampant in the North as in the South. And there were lots of good people on both sides, too. But slaveholders--no matter how good--usually considered blacks ‘property’. When the slaves were freed, the majority of the North just didn’t want them around. While it was primarily the South who used slaves, it was the North (specifically, New Englanders) who had gone and grabbed them, brought them here and sold the survivors of the voyages to the landowners of the South. Plenty of guilt to go around for everyone.
Hell, Lincoln himself said that he would have kept slavery if it would have prevented war.
When Albert Einstein came here and settled in at Princeton, New Jersey, he found the town virulently racist. He fought it for years while he was at Princeton University. After his death, artifacts and documents pertaining to his civil rights struggles were placed in the Smithsonian Institution, along with his more ‘famous’ scientific works.
As of a couple years ago, the Smithsonian still wasn’t displaying Einstein’s work in civil rights and race relations. As far as I know, they’re still boxed away and shoved into a dark corner.
If only for that alone--and you damn sure don’t want me to start talking about the native Amerindian tribes--we got a lot of things to answer for. A helluva lot.
It’s probable that, if the Civil War had not occurred or if the South had won, eventually technological development would have continued to occur, in the South as well as the North. In the same manner that tobacco was succeeded by cotton as the main staple of the South, technology would have slowly encroached and made the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery unworkable. It would have been superseded by something else.
What would have happened to blacks in that case? I dunno. Coulda been a race war; they coulda gone to a different country; they coulda been fully assimilated; they coulda started their own country out west; we coulda had a series of civil wars that so weakened us that we were conquered by an outside nation. Lotsa possibilities.
I do know that, even though slaves were ‘freed’ with the close of the Civil War, Jim Crow Laws kept slavery going here another 100 years. It just wasn’t as blatant as it had been, is all.
There are two points I’m trying to make here. The first point is that (1) we cannot forget where we came from. We have to acknowledge and accept the less desirable aspects of ourselves, as well as those we deem ‘decent’. This means recognizing the bad as well as the good. They’re part and parcel of each of us and all of us.
If you continually try to eliminate everything that offends, eventually there won’t be anything left.
For this reason, I’m as much in favor of keeping the Confederate Flag as I am the Stars and Stripes, or the Lone Star. Good or bad, it’s part of us and our history. To say it didn’t happen--to act as if it didn’t happen--is a lie, both to the oppressors and the victims, as well as to ourselves. And I’m so very, very tired of histories that lie.
Disney does enough of that in virtually every film it makes.
The second point is that (2) we have choices, and we make choices. Once we make those choices, WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONSEQUENCES OF THOSE CHOICES.
All my problems, including the loss of my right leg, are due to the choices I have made. The directions this country has taken since its inception is due to the choices it and its people have made.
We chose Bush, but we also chose Washington and Lincoln. We chose Obama, but we also chose Harding and Nixon. As Krishna says in the Mahabharata, “No good man is entirely good. No bad man is entirely bad.”
There’s no need for any of us to look for scapegoats. I don’t give a good goddamn if it is Biblically sanctioned. We remain just as responsible, just as guilty, because our choices--to act or not to act--have resulted in what has occurred.
That’s what freedom really is: making choices, and taking responsibility for what comes with those choices.
I’m responsible.
So are you.
Refusing to look at facts and refusing to look at truth is the coward’s way out.
So accept it and deal with it.
This goes for any form of extremism in any and every religion (again, space limitations on the sites). The universe is too vast and wide and varied. Humans know nothing and have learned virtually nothing in the past 50,000 years or so.
Our toys are just a bit prettier and fancier.
The Jewish Haggadah states that God has continually created and destroyed other worlds. Jesus spoke of his Father’s “many mansions”. Hindu and Buddhist scriptures speak of the multiplicity of worlds.
In the latter 1500’s, while Tokugawa Ieyasu was busy preparing to consolidate Japan into one nation, building on the work of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the Italian monk Giordano Bruno wrote On The Multiplicity Of The Infinite Worlds. He postulated that the stars of the sky were suns like our own; that some of them were accompanied by planets; and that some of those were populated by peoples of a different sort, thus enhancing the glory and creative magnificence of God.
(In later decades, Immanuel Kant had somewhat similar thoughts, but that’s another story.)
For his trouble, Bruno was taken by the ‘Holy’ Inquisition, placed in a dungeon and tortured for nine years, but he refused to take back one word. When he was brought out for the final time, he told his accusers that “Perchance ye who pronounce my sentence are more afraid than I who receive it.” He was executed and burned at the stake.
Which had several repercussions immediately after. Rene Descartes, who had been drifting into astronomy and the possibility of other life, decided to change his focus into other, safer areas of philosophy, and thus remained relatively left alone. Even though Galileo Galilei was a friend of the Pope, his own smartassed attitude took him too far for the likes of the “One True Church“. He recanted before the Inquisition, no doubt thinking of the example of Bruno, and continued his studies as best he could while under supervised house arrest for the rest of his life.
The goddamn scientific community--especially xenologists and extrasolar planetary scientists--should press the Catholic Church to make Bruno a saint. Events of the past 20 years alone should demand that.
(For the same reason, Washington D.C., which was built by black slaves, should have a goddamned complex of monuments built to document the crap that’d been pulled on blacks. And Amerindians. And others.)
I have often observed that while people talk about Jesus, their actions reflect their real beliefs, in pre-Gospel and post-Gospel Scriptures. The former was supposedly washed away by Christ, while the latter sought a return to it. As if Jesus hadn’t even showed up.
People bitch about posting the Ten Commandments. I don’t see them bitching about posting St. Mark, 12:29-31. There is all the religion that needs to be said, known, shown or expressed. Nothing more is needed than those three little verses. The entire Bible is nothing but a frame for those three little verses.
But the human is a very ignorant and very silly animal. Unlike bees and ants. Or dogs and cats.
So. . .for any zealot who believes the Bible is the literally irrefutable “Word Of God”, I have something to say: If you believe that, you don’t believe, at a minimum, in the social and technological developments of the past twenty centuries.
Put your money where your mouth is.
Get yourself a mud hut, and shear some sheep for your clothes. Have nothing more advanced at your home than a water wheel, some sheep and goats and donkeys. Grow your own crops.
If your kid talks back, kill him.
Don’t forget the sacrifices.
Then you’ll be living by ‘God’s literal Word’.
It’d solve the healthcare crisis, that’s for sure.
Goddamned hypocrites.
(sigh)
A lot of my posters have to do with religious thought or belief. Do I have problems with religion? Hell, no! I have problems with ‘’organized” religion; i.e., religion for the masses. One of the first things I learned, decades ago, is that ‘organized religion’ is an environmentally-dependent means of social and political control.
Quite a difference between ‘organized religion’ and ‘religion’. To me.
And I’ve never liked being controlled. Unless I consciously allowed myself to be controlled. Usually by a good-looking redhead. Special weakness there. But I digress. . .
In virtually every case where religion has sprung up, the social environment--and often the physical environment--have immediately altered that religion to fit the needs of that environment. We then see the Hindu practice of suttee (the burning of the wife) during the burial of the husband, as well as the caste systems of India, China and Japan.
We see black slavery--not slavery itself, but slavery focusing on blacks--and the rejection of learning arising in the West in the wake of Pauline and Augustinian Christianity, with slavery “of our sort” specifically beginning with the Portuguese in the 1400‘s. Pauline Christianity was also used to justify the Divine Right (Haw!) of rulers and the power of the monarchy. And I have yet other posters coming up concerning the status of women, as expounded by “The Divine Word”.
We see the doctrines of diet and cleanliness laid down by Moses, quite sensibly meant for survival in a new and unknown desert land now, to an extent, biologically and emotionally bound to the believer. Original Taoism, which was in the beginning quite scientific and philosophical, devolved into magical rituals and rites, much like those of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
And previous beliefs are never completely eradicated, but are often adapted to the new ‘religion’. Throughout Central and South America, where Catholic Christianity was brought to the population, many of the previous shamanistic traditions continue. This is manifested in such things, for instance, as the Mexican ‘Day of Death’. African tribal beliefs persist among peoples who have been ‘converted’ to Islam or Christianity, and are incorporated into the ‘new’, ‘true’ religion.
Buddhism among peoples of the Himalayas and Tibet is not Buddhism, since elements of the preceding religion--Lamaism, spirits, demons, etc--become part of their specific type of ‘Buddhism’. Mohammed could not succeed in promoting Islam without agreeing to keep earlier forms of worship, including that of the meteorite enshrined in the Kaaba in Mecca.
Local pagan beliefs were often--sometimes aggressively, sometimes reluctantly--incorporated into local Christian jurisdictions. Christian churches and temples were built on the site of previous pagan temples and places of worship. Local deities were altered and brought into the local Christian belief structure. This was as true among the societies of Europe as it has been among the peoples of Africa.
Even though the major structure of the dominant religion remained the same, local variations always developed: sometimes as a consequence of the physical environment, sometimes as a consequence of the culture of the area, often as a consequence of both.. The Christianity of the Coptic Egyptians differs from the Maronites of Lebanon; both differ from that of the Russian or Greek Orthodox and Catholic Churches; and all differ from the multiple Protestant sects of Christianity, which themselves include variations such as the Baptists, Quakers, or Episcopalians.
“One true religion”, my ass.
Only in Taoism was a small though significant gain encountered. The search for a magical elixir of immortality by degenerate Taoists led to an early form of alchemy, which would later be mirrored in the West by the quest for the Philosopher’s Stone, or the turning of lead into gold. These practices aided in the creation of chemistry and its later fusion with physics. There were gains among other faiths, yet none seem quite so important to me, personally.
And it was the Muslims who (for the most part) preserved the knowledge and wisdom of the Graeco-Roman past, destroyed by the early Roman Church and later barbarians, retransmitting them to the West, while simultaneously bringing new knowledge from the East.
I have always considered the greatest crime against humanity to be the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, Egypt in 323 CE. First, by Julius Caesar, while helping Cleopatra fight her brother for the throne; second, by the Christians who also took and murdered Hypatia, the woman who was the last Chief Librarian and a polymath; and finally, by the Muslim Caliphs who destroyed the remaining books as superfluous or heretical to the Koran. (Do I hear a foretaste of the Inquisition and McCarthyism and the Taliban and the Iraqi invasion here?)
Nothing, it seems to me, would have been as significant to the development of humanity as those books and scrolls. It took over a thousand years--in some cases, almost two thousand--to rediscover the concepts that had been lost. Through pure ignorance and the love of destruction.
If that knowledge had been preserved, we would have been past Alpha Centauri by now.
Fortunately, the few remaining fragments were preserved and returned by far wiser Muslims. But it was far too little, and far, far too late.
I was raised in the Church of Christ. Grew up in it. But I found that every faith has common threads, if you’d only look. I found them all the same, differing only by environment, culture, and what others added or took away.
It makes no sense to me for men to preach and women not to; the early, real Christian church let women preach and prophesy just as much as men. (And there were many early versions.) It makes no sense to me to gather people into groups and give them an ‘approved’ version of religion. It makes no sense to me to shut up God in a box to perform magical tricks. It makes no sense to me to limit God. It makes no sense to me for a ‘responsible adult’ (now there’s a contradiction) to require a mouthpiece. It makes no sense to stop a funeral for a ‘commercial break’ in order to take advantage of the situation to gain converts. It makes no sense to eliminate all music from one church, instruments only in another, singing only in another, and forbidding dancing in another.
Especially if they all say they’re “Christian”.
And, in my very limited, ignorant and humble opinion, God doesn’t give a flying fuck about abortion, stem cells, politics, truckers, NASCAR or any type of sports. She/He/It’s got more important things to do.
(For that matter, there’s more evidence for abortion in the Bible than against it. Look it up; I‘m not gonna do all your damn work for you.)
I damn sure never read any of it in the Bible. Or the Koran. Or the Upanishads. Or the Dhammapada. Or other places. That’s for sure.
You want miracles? Exodus is nothing. It’s an independent account of the destruction of Minoan civilization by the eruption of Thera (Santorini), and its effects on the eastern Mediterranean. It dovetails beautifully with Plato’s Timaeus and Critias. In other words, it describes the destruction of Atlantis and its aftereffects, albeit from a safer vantage point. Just get all three books, some geological maps (plate tectonics, volcanism, that kinda thing, y’know) and go to town.
Might take some work, though. And thought. Can’t guarantee that. At least, not nowadays.
Elisha, Elijah’s successor and one of the biggest assholes in the Bible, was a showoff, throwing ‘miracles’ right and left. Even so, he was enlightened enough to know you didn’t torture prisoners.
Jesus? Well. . .several posters upcoming. Quoted directly from the Bible. Keep in mind that he didn’t do anything someone else didn’t do at one time or another.
But it seems that still isn’t enough for some people.
Miracles, ya say? Ya wanna miracle? Here’s a miracle:
Look up his life. Read about him and his work. He’s a miracle. Just like Helen Keller was.
He should’ve died decades ago. But he’s still here. Despite his handicaps. Despite his disabilities.
Wimps.
And if you’re still not convinced, there’s one other proof: look into a mirror.
(Just don’t let it go to your head.)
These are among the reasons I believe that the only true religion is the one developed by oneself. Otherwise it’s propaganda, and governments do that enough already.
Now, those who’ve taken the time to go through my folders will see that I at least attempt to humor people as much as I want them to think, and I want to offend as much as I want to affirm; at least, if either will make them think. That’s my nature. I do have to be a bit prudent on MySpace, because kids as young as 13 are there. Though I detest and loathe censorship in any and all forms.
However, I’ve reached the point in which I have nothing worth worrying about losing, so the hell with it. Take it or leave it. Some are funny, some aren’t. Some are sexual, some aren’t. Some are rebellious, some aren’t. Some are blasphemous, but only in your eyes. Not mine.
` I could’ve used that before I got married.
(sigh)
Finally, there are three other perennial subjects which I love to use. The first is music. . .
Those of you with some experience and/or memory will immediately recognize the lyrics.
I’ve used everything from the 50’s on up, including Chubby Checker, Steppenwolf, AC/DC, Ted Nugent, The Edgar Winter Group, and, of course, that perennial favorite. . .MC Hammer. . .
Music’s a wonderful tool to use in these things. Ah luvs it.
This one’s also a bit of a promo on the upcoming movie. Those of you who grew up reading Marvel Comics (like me) should know that a movie of Thor is coming out in the next couple of years.
Seems to me a lot of these are gonna show up. I just wanted to get ahead of the rest of them. Get in on the ground floor, so to speak.
The second subject has become a worldwide phenomenon over the years of my life. . .
In a manner of speaking, we were born together. The first movie came out at about the time I did. Godzilla symbolizes quite a few of the things about the nature of the world and humanity, good and bad. I’ve had notes pertaining to the philosophical, religious and scientific aspects of Godzilla for some time, and I plan to put them “on paper” when it’s feasibly possible.
My last eternal theme is one that you’ll all recognize. . .at least, those of you who’ve known me more than one hour. . .
Cats.
It may not be that surprising that the cat has taken over as an avatar, if not the eternal symbol, of the internet. It’s nothing against dogs, but dogs derived from wolves domesticated some 12,000-15,000 years ago. There has been plenty of time to artificially shape the dog--physically or behaviorally--into a form more compliant and compatible with humans.
On the other hand, cats were the very last animal domesticated by man. They still retain a lot of the characteristics which have been bred out of dogs: spontaneity, originality, independence and unpredictability. The internet itself is a relatively recent technological phenomenon, and itself still retains a great amount of independence and spontaneity.
(We should keep it that way, if we can. We must.)
I have nothing against dogs. I love them with as much of my being as I have any nonhuman, just as I have loved any nonhuman more than I’ve ever loved a human. I knew many growing up on the farm; to me, they weren’t ’owned’ or ’mine’; as with cats and other species, we were part of each other. There was one dog who was with me for roughly 19 years, from about the time I could walk until I went into the Marines. In his latter years, his best and only canine friends were a cocker spaniel and a rat terrier.
I still remember them and pray for them every night, as I do all the cats I’ve lost.
For the last 19 years, though, I’ve lived with cats. As few as one at a time, as many as 21 at a time.
It’s been a learning experience.
I’d have dogs if I could now, but I can’t afford a fence around the house, the house itself isn’t fully paid for, and I’m gonna need modifications due to losing my leg. Perhaps extensive modifications. Including new floors, a couple walls, new water pipes and electrical wiring. Not a lot different from the underground storm cellar we had on the farm, growing up.
(Living in a cave is an experience isn’t exclusive to terrorists or primitives. It’s also something that many Americans have shared in, if only temporarily.)
Now, I admit I could move, but I won’t leave the graves of the ones I’ve lost. Again, my choice.
When I get home, it’s gonna be a bitch enough walking with an artificial leg among them. Near-impossible with one leg and a walker. Found that out already.
I don’t know where or when it started, but as the internet was made accessible to the public, people started posting pix of cats on the net. There’s a place on the net called 4chan, where absolutely anything goes, from the most sacred to the most profane. (4chan is very, very definitely still around, and as obscene as it ever was, Praise God.) A lot of its people developed the habit of posting pix of cats every Saturday, and it came to be known as ‘Caturday’. . .
(This one isn’t mine. Again, I wish it was. In this case, a lot.)
As I remember the story, a couple guys looked at 4chan and Caturday and decided to get on the bandwagon. They formed the site icanhascheezburger.com. It initially focused primarily on the phenomenon of posting cats, but it’s grown, and cats are now a subset of its activities. There are now separate pages on the site for the creation of posters concerning dogs, politicians, entertainers, news, graphs and charts, failure, and ‘broken engrish’.
(I recall ‘Broken Engrish’ being a separate website. Mebbe they bought them out. . . )
There are three different methods of posting, including the type of motivational posters I’ve been talking about. The site has a selection of pictures that can be used by anyone, and you can upload your own. If you think you can do a better job than someone else, you can take the same picture they used and try it yourself.
It’s also a bit of a social site, and it can be fun.
As for the demotivational poster itself, that started with despair.com. They created their site to make fun of the motivational posters found in boardrooms, meeting rooms, and other places in the past twenty years. They still make their own, but they’ve also branched out, too, with lines of merchandise for sale.
Their own creation site is at diy.despair.com. You can make your own, but it has to be saved to your own computer; they don’t provide spaces for saving posters others make. icanhascheezburger.com, on the other hand, saves your original pix, your posters and allows others to view and vote on them. You have your own personal page. Every day they send a selection out via newsletter. Similar sites have sprouted up since theirs gained popularity.
I use both of these sites a lot. I’m also increasingly using motifake.com, which not only allows for creation onsite, but for the uploading of similar posters made elsewhere. Again, the work can be voted and commented upon. One of the more popular ones I have there is this one:
So I’m not acting my age? Good. I’ve noted, over the decades, that all bodies get older. On the other hand, virtually no one ever “grows up”. As for me, I was born old and I get younger every day. . .
And I won’t change. Not that way. Never.
It’s now 0720 hours, 720 am for those of you who are chronologically challenged. I’ve been sitting here writing this and working on this for eleven (that’s 11) straight hours. I think it’s best I end this here, since I’ve gotten a few things I wanted to say outta my system. Mebbe you can understand a few things about this, mebbe not. So I’ll just go, much the way our troops are finally starting to leave Iraq. . .
Technorati Tags: motivation,demotivation,humor,fun,religion,science,war,conflict,politics,history,race,civil rights,motifake,godzilla,cats,quantum theory
Sayonara, bitches.
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