Index 
Language Morality Science (Thesis)
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Journal Morality Thanksgiving at Cliff and Amy's:Thanksgiving, the family gathering with nary a word of thanks for anything. Email messages from people beyond the family gathering shared joyously all around the crowd. Food, lots of mediocre food prepared with love, obligation, and perhaps a little resentment of others who did not so give of their love. Only one person of 21 showed an inkling of interest in my discussion of Kant’s use of parallel lines (Euclid) to establish with certainty the possibility of God: God is a likely as not (from a later Bayesian perspective). One spark of awareness among a sea of blank stares. I raised the issue of 50% of women defecating in public after Jackie humorously and indignantly said someone defecated in a parking lot. Grady twin sister (an interesting aside is I couldn’t remember her name all evening though I know it well, sort of like my non-memory of the road to field camp I drove more than 50 times), said she would not put up with such mistreatment of women. I told her she would then get the shit beat out of her if she tried to use a bathroom reserved for men. She said she would die to defend her right. I agreed she would die if she tried to defend her rights, suggesting by my tone that was the wrong decision; as attested by the millions of women that shit in alleys of Indian cities. I shared my perspective on basketball years with Mitchell (could not remember his name either, had to ask my sister, Jeannie). He stared blankly. On the ride back with Jeannie, I expounded on and on about my wisdom. At one point she asked, “Do you think you are God?” I said, “Yes, at least as much as anyone I know”, but forgot to add, “and so are you.” I then launched into my universe as distinct from hers. Perhaps I should have pointed out that “God” is an artifact in each of our universes, unique to that universe, mine, hers, and yours if you are reading this. Just like an image of “galaxy” is unique and every other “image”. She then asked, “Am I God the creator of the universe?” I said, “No”. We are the “God” of our own universe which is an amalgamation of genes, chance, and choice. Is there a universe “beyond” mine? Of course, but I can know nothing about it, perhaps “of it”, but not “know” what it is. All I can know is from my genes, chance, and choices. Within that limited eternity I “am” the creator, the center of the sphere of photons and graviton reacting with my senses. Jeannie countered with, “That is not my opinion.” To which I replied, “Knowledge can recognize ignorance, but ignorance cannot recognize knowledge,” several time I think. She said, “I am not smart enough to understand such complicated subjects”, I said, “It’s simple,” but forgot to point out “simplicity” is getting rid of good and evil. Some say that is hard, I say that is easy. It is hard because many base their whole self-essence on pursuing “good” and avoiding “evil”, defining them not as “good=pleasure: bad=pain” but as “other worldly”, from beyond the senses, as “common decency” mostly concerned with “caring” for others, “empathy” as Jeannie puts it, “community”, “all is one”, “God”. Another observation from Thanksgiving and nearly all “family” gatherings. Jackie and her children Grady and what’s her name always reminisce about some family event that happened long ago, usually involving the dead son Joe who fell off a roof drunk as a skunk and broke his neck as a teenager. Often they reminisce for 10 to 15 minutes every hour or so. If anyone else begins a similar narrative about their own past, Jackie and her crowd ignore them, listening politely for less than a minute, and “over talking” them with their own story, who is talking to no one else as the story continues, then finally “joining” the conversation of Jackie and crowd. Kate was there, Grady’s trophy wife, beautiful, well coifed, smile that does not stop, perhaps Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Perfect Family”, like Jeannie, but more self-assured for now. Molly, fat like Heather. I hope she accept it and realizes many will wrongly think her self-indulgent. She got a lot of Momma Rogers genes. |
Mary, another beauty. I hope she doesn’t continue with a career in acting which is just “acting”, as my dalliance in dinner theater with Jane Luckey and crew so demonstrated to me. Acting is basically false, or if jobs are the issue, it’s a lot like basketball, very few make it to the next level, about 1/20th – HS, early college, late college, local agency, Hollywood and of those who make Hollywood only 1/100th get big bucks. So besides being false, it’s not a good career, lots of “downtime” between parts; ads, theater, TV, movies, agents, liars, cheats, promises broken, “stardom”, aging, rejection. It is all “image” and the youthful to old age actresses are also a hundred to one. We are in a “youth” obsessed culture (NFL, NBA, highest paid actors, internet “billionaires”, etc.). So beware Mary, I suggest you pay attention to my graduation gift. Cliff, the host. I shook hands but didn’t see him much, except he briefly showed a spark of interest in the Kant discussion with Grady. Three kids, college, obligation, family, job. I mentioned the Bears humiliation by Detroit, he said, “Don’t go there”. I didn’t. I guess it matter to him like a Purdue loss does to me, even now, but not so much as Cliff, Is suppose. Amy the hostess, a hug hello and a hug goodbye. A mother, career woman, but children seem fine, so she has “done good”. I often wonder if anything is there. I have never seen it but it must be in there somewhere. ISTMRN that many people are perfectly happy in the discontent. They find meaning, as I do, in pushing away discontent. I think many including me push that pursuit into pure imagination, but unlike most it seems, I am trying to imagine “what is” rather than what could be or even worse “should be.” The more convinced people are about what “should be”, the more they hate those who obstruct what “should be.” Worse yet are those that hate those who suggest alternatives to what should be, as I often do, contrarian that I am. Oh yes, I forgot why I started writing tonight. The evening started with Jeannie telling me not to snort snot, at least go the bathroom to do it. I told her “no way” starting the evening out. She objected and, as if to nail her argument said, “It disgusts and offends me and others, so I tell you this for your own good so people will not be disgusted by you.” I said, “The disgust is your problem, not mine, if my nose needs sniffling I will sniffle, even perhaps snort. I can only say, “God bless you Jeannie” from my heart as an avowed atheist. Chewy, the family dog was far more comfortable with my touch than any person there, with anyone’s touch, though others rarely or never touched him. One Note Language Science (Thesis) I was enamored of an author and used "enamoration" to describe the process of coming to my love. I wondered if it was a neologism or accepted variant. Comment left at Merriam Webster Dictionary via my Facebook account. I still don't know, May 5, 2020  I shall now model a continuum of ... changes that culminate in the present landforms. The (any) temporal model is only one of an infinite number of correct "solutions" to the problem of genesis; it can be no more. A logically coherent alternative is that forms and memories were molded by a race of super-technological wizards from beyond our galaxy one year before the first recorded observations. I reject this and an additional infinity of logically correct solutions in preference to the one that follows. abstracted from my PhD Thesis, page149, written May, 1978 |