20130901 (J)
Journal: September 1, 2013
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Appearance and Reality                         Death                         Gender Rights                         Morality                         Epistemology                         War

Citizenship and Death: In this country “naturalized citizens” (what an absurd, reality-denying term) must swear an oath of fealty to the United States. I assume also in most countries. As a “natural” citizen by birth I am assumed to have taken the same oath. My personal experience confirms my oath. I was called for conscription to the army at the height of the Vietnam War. I would possibly give up my own life under the command of a superior officer with no recourse but execution by him for disobeying a command under battle conditions, an action rarely taken but often enough to demonstrate the power. That seem to me now to be a condition of slavery, though it didn’t at the time. I am sure there are people that would want to kill me if they knew I thought the America they worship is but a beast risen from the depths of hell (which I don’t because I suspect there is no hell). Heaven and hell are just other expressions of denial of “death causing nature”.

Nobility: Sarpendon put it in the Iliad, “Why not kleos and die now or not kleos and die tomorrow?” Duh! “So off to battle.” Kleos is a term Homer uses in the Iliad for something like glory or fame after death commonly measured by songs sung by bards after a warrior’s death.

According to many, this is not “life denial” or “reality denial” as Varki claims, but rather life’s acceptance and celebration. And if you don’t die, you get gold, silver, and sex from the loot. You just killed all the men so the women need protectors anyway, so one cook’s as good as another, or so women are allowed to think or die of hard labor, perhaps even that after he tires of your pussy. Of course this timê (Homeric term for something like honor) is available only to nobles. Nobility is gained originally by usurpation of the strongest man, and thereafter by birth if your family survived assassination or other usurpation by other “nobles”. The strongest is surrounded by the strongest men in the commons, soldiers. The boss gets the pick of the litter (women and loot) then down through the ranks. The foot soldier gets pottery and ugly women, but ugly women can sometimes fuck best.

Where does food come from to feed all these warriors while warrioring? The Greeks, ten years at Troy, so they say, living by their beached ships? The Trojans, ten years inside a walled city? Of course you know the answer; farmers. Who were these farmers? Riff-raff mostly, living in hovels, some barely able to keep out the rain; animals in the hovel as well, seeking warmth or food.

The “lords” of course took what they need to “warrior”, but a drought in one valley could cause its usurpation by another with good climate for crops. The ship weren’t beached the whole time, food raids were conducted all the time along the Aegean coast: some by agreement of no looting, the local lord would supply food.

The warrior lord could buy more weapons with the loot by “feeding” sword and chariot markers. I suspect the “excise tax” hovered around 15 to 20 percent of yield of crops. In the time of Achilles, farmers could not read or write; few warriors and nobles could. I don’t know what the “slaves” thought before Nietzsche's “slave morality” won. Or does Nietzsche imply that such slave morality existed in the farmer class and that Jews were extraordinarily successful in tying themselves to the concept? I suspect most bought into the “rights” of the rulers to their due share, always bitching as now, “it’s too much”, while saying so legitimizes then rulers’ rights. And because most bellies were hungry or sated at the same time due to weather, legitimacy of nobility was accepted, rather than the alternative which was likely death.

Soon after Achilles time farmers began to be conscripted for “foot soldiers” during warring times (aren’t they all). Sun Tzu summarized how to lie, cheat, steal, cajole, deceive, and confuse both your enemy’s and your own troops based on careful observation on everything and quick focus on relevancy. I learned the same tricks at Sandia as “system engineering.”


Here I should dispel any allusion one might draw about the evils of system engineering. I am just a valueless scientist describing a valueless method of observation, i.e. system engineering. Good and bad people can put the tool to work for good or bad objectives in all good-bad combinations: GG, BB, BG, GB. So please absolve me of any responsibility for my tools. Reserve responsibility for conclusions I draw with the tools.

Or so the usual “apologia” goes for “science”. As a student of Sun Tzu and Sandia, I know that “weights” must be assigned to tradeoffs at interfaces among subsystems, e.g. the cost and strength of a steel bolt. Weights can significantly affect the conclusions, and such weighing is based either on ignorance (uncertainty) or value systems of the “weightor.” Often weights are obtained by polling to reflect proper “values”, i.e. “average” of those who were polled. Great debates rage currently about how to best represent “the people” in our equations. The “golden mean” of Aristotle is often chosen as the most “representative.”

ISTMRN the whole notion of “representative” is quite limiting. Humanity lies in variance as well as its central tendency. Many claim the “diversity” is a goal to be pursued: diversity of races (though we claim to be non-racist), sexes (though we claim to be non-sexist), and culture (their costumes, not their moral values).

Diversity is robbed of any value except the delusional (some would say “spiritual”) by the belief in absolute “equality” of all humans before God and the law. This despite the fact there is not a single thing I can see, hear, touch, smell, taste, name or measure that does not vary from one person to another. Strange, very strange.

So where does this thing called “equality” live? And its fellow travelers, “human rights” which are no more than advantages for some people at the expense of others? (diversity and the golden mean again). In that great spirit world more real than the one that shines bright in human consciousness, some say a light from God. That’s where. Strange, very strange.

Compassion is almost always linked to suffering. As my sister defined it, “feeling the pain of others.” She asked if I would be compassionate (sad) if my granddaughter died. I said probably not to which she confirmed as my inhuman ways. I am quite used to that label by now, at least back to Mary Kelly in 1968, now again in 2013. As my wanna-be Buddhist discussion leader says, “How stupid! Taking on someone else’s suffering when you are trying to get rid of your own, as if you could claim other’s pain as your own.” Some others say, "The more pain, the more compassion. Bring on the pain for me to be compassionate about!!"

Despite common calls for “diversity”, we do so under the ludicrously contradictory banner of “equality for all”. The seeming resolution is mass homogenizing. Currently our races or haplogroups in current scientific jargon (scientifically races don’t exist because 95% plus of variability is NOT tied to common racial stereotypes, by the way this dismisses all rock classification systems in which rock types always share more than 95% of defining characteristics) are interbreeding at rates much greater (obviously with absolute numbers of people, perhaps even proportional to group size) than probably any time in human or even mammalian history. We have mixed up the biosphere so its “original” condition before human influence is no longer possible --- EVER. Isn’t that the case for every NOW?

Sigh ….. I am at the end of the book and I still haven’t closed the circle. Yet have I? Perhaps this journal is really about the fact that the circle doesn’t close. The answer is not to be had. Loose ends forever dangle out there in spirit land, always just beyond reach. Good or bad? We still ask.