Truth

Just a few quick notes on this topic. I might refine it later.

Knowing what is true turns out to be kind of complicated. You can avoid all the philosophy and just remember the last time you stubbed your toe or hit your head. It doesn’t get much more real than that.

Otherwise you have to start with definitions, and they won’t answer “why” and they will leave us with more questions. That’s the human experience. First, truth is that which comports with reality. Great start huh? Reality is that which we can demonstrate is true. That’s circular. I did warn you. Truth is demonstrated by collecting empirical evidence. That is done using our senses, and extending our senses with instruments, and extrapolating from those results with reason and logic. All of this can fail at any point along the way.

We can’t be certain about anything. Not even what I just said. We still say things like “settled science” or “that’s a fact”, but technically, we are always speaking of probabilities. A “proof” is something you do in mathematics. You define rules about numbers and prove that equations will always have certain results. You can’t do that with people, or history, or psychology, or pretty much any animal behavior.

However, not being able to prove anything is different than not being able to know anything with a high probability of being accurate. People didn’t know about the shape of the earth at one time, and they were way off on the shape of the universe. But their being wrong then says very little about how accurate we think we are now. Truth may always be elusive, but we know how much evidence we have, how well we have checked it, and how consistently our experiments have verified it.

We use evidence and reason naturally every time we take a step or hear something new. We may not use formulas or check every fact, but there is nothing we can use to reason away reason. As soon as you try to explain whatever else might replace it, you are using reason to do it. The best we have to extend our knowledge and our experiences, is each other. Together, we’ve done some pretty amazing things.

All models are wrong, some are useful - George Box

The Listener

I’ve been exploring the mytho-poetic a little more lately, something I’ve been doing on and off for many years now. I found some old recordings I had of a story told in a lodge by a fire, back in 2010. Now it’s on the internet for everyone. If you’ve never heard anything like this, or even if you have, a good place to start is part 2 of 4 at 38 minutes or so. In the story, the hero, well, let’s call him the main character, has just killed a few people.

This raises a few questions. That’s the whole point of telling stories around fires, to raise questions, but this one needed to be addressed. Death in a sacred story is not like death in our real lives. There is one story teller in this recording, but there are a few people, men, on the stage (the bench as it is sometimes called), and they all chime in. I know all of them and have spent some very special times with each one of them, but I’ll leave all those stories until the Q & A session, which is anytime on this media. Tom Gambell talks about Ghandi, Martin Shaw talks about being pulled by different characters in the story. You could back up 5 minutes or so and hear Malidoma Somé talk about his initiation rituals in his tribe in Burkina Faso, . You get a nice overview of what this is about in a just a few minutes.

Then you can go back to part 1, or go back to 20 minutes before my mark above to get more of that, or whatever you want. If you don’t want to listen to the guys chatting, there are indices on each of the four YouTubes and you can just hear the story. Won’t take long. There was no video of the conference, but someone added images. They are quite beautiful. You’ll see the room in some of the pictures. It’s a big room with just a few mics, but the sound was edited and most of it is clear, especially the story telling parts.

Stories like this are not usually on the internet. There aren’t many like it left and in 2010 we were not planning on making this something publicly available. We didn’t do it to sell some albums or get people to join our merry band. It’s kind of intimate. This isn’t entertainment, although there's nothing wrong with being entertained by it. My voice is in there and if I knew you’d be listening to it now, I might have said something different. But, times change, words sometimes need to be heard first one way, then another.

These stories are the stories that we need now. I’d go so far as to say when they were heard long ago, they weren’t completely understood. Maybe they aren’t understood much better now. But they need to be grappled with, talked about, told to the younger ones and see if they can do something with them. Love of these stories is love of the earth and love for each other and for people who are not yet born.

Malidoma says, you don’t know where you are going to end up when you go through an initiation story, but once you decide to go, keep going. As his elders told him, “You go backwards, you die, you go forward you die, so, what the hell, go forward and die”. There are at least two meanings of “die” here. We’re all going to die someday, so you might as well keep growing and learning as much as you can. The other meaning is initiation, the transition from child to adult, from the safety of the village to the unknown risks outside out of it. A part of you may need to die so you can survive that transition.

The other thing to know, this was the year of the Minnesota Men’s Conference when Robert Bly, the guy who started it, stepped aside. This is the story that was being told while he stood in the back of the room. On one of the nights, he said goodbye, we sang a few songs, and he went off to be part of some other stories.

Dave and Suzanne and Deanna and Riker

<>

While stopping for lunch, the edge of a book can be seen in Dave’s bag. Suzanne grabs it. Dave’s reaction?

S: Sooooo, what are you reading?

The book is Star Trek, Imzadi

S: I didn’t know anyone actually read these.

D: I needed something for a rainy day, since I thought I’d be alone.

S: Yeah, so, I don’t remember any rain yesterday and your bookmark is on page 57.

D: Okay, so I like Star Trek, I think I mentioned that. This story revolves around one of the most famous episodes from the first series where they find a time portal (The Guardian of Forever) and accidentally change everything so they are stuck on this planet and Kirk and Spock have to correct it…”. Dave was starting to run out of breath as he spoke. 

S: Suzanne saved him,“So, if everything changed”, Suzanne stretches out that last word with rising and lowering tones and makes exaggerated hand motions creating the wavy effect from old television shows used to indicate a flashback or alternate timeline. Or maybe she was creating some sort of butterfly effect with that hand waving. Then quickly asking, “how did they still exist?

D: “Because they are the stars of the show, you can’t make your stars disappear, there would be no show.” Pleased at his own cleverness, he couldn’t hold back a half smile.

S: Suzanne needed a moment to process the shift from nerd to joker, and whether or not that was a shift, “No, I mean really”.

D: “Well, ‘really’”, Dave’s elbows moved slightly but he suppressed the air quotes, “they were standing near the time portal and Dr. McCoy just jumped through, he had some kind of fever that was making him not think straight, so, anyway, they weren’t affected because they were in the proximity of the portal. It made ripples in time, and they were at the center of that ripple.” His hands were moving this way and that until he noticed them like a baby finding his toes for the first time, “Anyway, it wouldn’t be a very good time portal if you could go back in time and make the time portal not exist would it?”

S: “I guess not. So does this book explain all that? Isn’t this the one where Shatner says “hell”? They just leave at the end right? Do they just leave something that powerful laying around?”

D: “Wow, you sure you aren’t a geek? I used to have conversations like this that went on for hours. No, or, um yes.” Shaking his head to get the scramble of questions sorted out, “yes, the book explains it. They set up a whole institute around it. They are still trying to figure the thing out in this book. It’s a talking time portal, but it just says profound sounding things that don’t make much sense, like, “all is as it was”, but doesn’t tell you what “was” should be or whether or not you’re currently on the correct “is”.

S: “Okay, I’m good.” A final wave of one hand swept away all those timelines. “This is why I’m not a Trekkie.”

D: We prefer “Trekkor”. Having practiced that clever line many times, he puts on a somewhat indignant face and remembers to raise one eyebrow in classic Leonard Nimoy fashion. He sees he has really stumped Suzanne this time. Is he a geek, or nerd, or just playing around? It’s his turn to break the silence. He chuckles, “I really don’t care. Maybe I did at one time. And before you ask, I do not have any costumes and I never dressed up as any of these characters. Am I stepping out of some intellectual closet here? This is a book, I read, there I feel better.“

That last bit quotes the comedian Bill Hicks, from the same bit that Suzanne and the waitress had their inside joke about earlier. Suzanne, relieved, she sighs with a smile then draws it back in with a snap as she realizes Dave knew the joke all along and was playing her.

S: “I’m glad you got the Bill Hicks reference this morning. But really why this book? What are you reading this particular book for?”

D: “I figured if you knew Bill well enough to use one of his punch lines, we’d probably get along. After the “geek” remark, I was having doubts.”

“Really, it’s light reading. I already know the characters before I even started it. The title is an affectionate name Riker uses for Troy, and this goes into detail about where that came from. The time travel stuff is just fun to think about, it’s how the people react to it and how it can play with alternate possible outcomes of their lives. This story starts out with Troy dead, but they find out that is the altered timeline. Riker sort of brings her back to life by fixing the timeline.”

S: Okay, slow down. Troi, she’s the one in the mini skirt, right? The one who can read minds?

D: Well, we’ve got a long day here. I don’t want to be the guy who recounts Star Trek episodes and explains costume choices or the difference between mind reading and empathic abilities.

S: But you could.

D:” I could”, he said as if he had glasses and was looking over them.

S: So you believe in alternate universes?

D: I don’t believe in much, just trying to get by like everyone else. It doesn’t matter anymore now anyway, does it? They tell us we were getting close to figuring that out for ourselves, that the multi-verse theory was the right one. What I believe is not going to change that.

Suzanne sees some defeat; he’s hanging his head, lost in some sad story. The place they stopped has a bike repair station and weather information (shouldn’t weather be on her phone? Maybe this is better somehow, or not everyone has a phone). She checks the weather and reports it. 

(Around midday the next day, while they are riding)

S: So you learning anything more from Imzadi what’s her name?

D: It’s Deanna Troi.

S: Sorry.

D: And it’s not clear who is learning from whom, that’s what I like about it. Riker is a bit of a misogynist, but gets on Troi’s case because she spends too much time studying psychology but doesn’t know how to go with her feelings.

S: “I remember she was a bit stiff.” She gives Dave a sideways glance as she realizes she admitted she’s watch the show, “The one or two times I saw her.”

D: “Riiight. I don’t know if Riker really wins the argument. He’s the puppy sniffing after her and she plays it cool.”

S: So, how did they meet?

D: At a wedding. One of those things about Star Trek that bothered me, every planet has some sort of wedding ceremony, similar to ours, everyone has laptop computers, everyone has starship captains.

S: Everyone has 4 fingers and a thumb.

D: Well, yeah, but at least on earth, that’s a common trait across all large mammals, so that could be something you could say evolution would produce even in different conditions.

S: What? What do you mean? Whales have fins.

D: Yes, but the bones in those fins look a lot like our hands.

S: Alright, well I won’t bother going down that road.

                Some thoughts

S: So, but, I mean, if you don’t mind.

D: That’s okay, We’ve got time.

S: Yeah, you know, is that it?

D: “I think I do know. But can you be more specific than ‘it’?”

S: Well, is that it? Evolution? Just the will to survive? You’ve got science and science fiction. Then you die?

D: No. You’ve only known me for one day. There’s Job for instance.

S: Old Testament Job?

D: Yeah. God said to him (Joe Pesci voice), “You think you know me? You don’t know me. You know nuthin’ about me.”

S: Is that what he said? I don’t think he said that.

D: Maybe not exactly, but I look at this ridiculous, flawed body, and this brain that is designed mostly for procreating. That all came from millions of years of being an animal out in some plain somewhere in Africa. Then I look up, and my Dad could do this, he could point to a star and tell you how far away it was and say something about photons from it hitting his eye. Then he’d go on about the eye, how it evolved from early animals and the animals came from vegetables before that. All of that had to happen for him and I to be there, enjoying that moment. That’s the universe asking ‘you think you know me?’ (Not quite as much Joe Pesci voice this time)

S: Right, right, doesn’t that make you a little sad, or feel small?

D: No, my answer is, I am all that.

S: Which? The universe or God?

D: Dave looked away to collect his thoughts. Suzanne only had the back of his head to work with, is he just looking at a bird over there, or is he gritting his teeth? What he wanted to do was change the subject, “So, the wedding, did I tell you about the part where they are naked?”

S: What, the bride and groom? No, are you going to tell me about the sex scene?

D: No. Troi and Riker.

S: So, they meet at a wedding then they go get naked?

D: “Noooo.” Dave was enjoying that he had her on the ropes,  “Everyone at the wedding is naked. That’s how they do weddings on her planet. It’s symbolic about not hiding anything or something like that.”

S: Oh, sounds like something my mother would do.

D: “Exactly what I was thinking. Riker, the first time he lays eyes on Troi, she is naked and he thinks she is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.” He fights to keep his eyes above her neckline.

S: “and he should know”

D: He should, and Troi, being empathetic, knows he’s thinking it, and completely ignores him the entire evening. So when he later arranges a date, very diplomatically and formally, she sees him as a bag of hormones.

S: And he sees her as an over thinking academic.

D: A match made in heaven.

S:  “But you know they get together in the end. Like you said, they can’t kill off the main characters. They can’t split up Troi and Riker. Or is this an alternate timeline thing.”

D: Another habitually annoying Star Trek thing. No. I’m trying to address that kind of rude question about me thinking I’m God.

D: I’m not God, or the universe. When I was a kid, I’d get into fights because I said I didn’t believe in God, any god, or anything supernatural. I didn’t start it, they just asked, like kids do. So then they’d say I am just a mass of hormones. We barely knew what hormones were, but they thought it was funny. I’d come home with my lower lip sticking out. My dad had to figure out some way to get me out of those dark places without telling me comfortable lies, so this star stuff story is what he came up with.

But it’s still a story. I’m not just a bunch of chemicals cooked in stars billions of years ago that happened to fall together as they did. I am that, but I’m also the result of something much bigger. But if you try to say you are part of that bigger thing, people will ask if you think you are God, or if you know more than God, or whatever. That bigger thing doesn’t really care about me, it doesn’t have feelings at all, but when I look at it, it sometimes seems like it’s mocking me. It wants to keep me small. And those hormones and chemicals want to be big, want to believe they are bigger than they are. Trying to be both won’t get you anywhere because you aren’t either of those. Sometimes it seems like the easy way out is being neither. “

His eyes go to the road just in front of him, his biking form is rhythmic, his breathing even. He pulls slightly ahead.

S: thinks – did he just hint at thoughts of suicide, did I do that? “Sorry.”

D: It’s okay. Sorry for the rant.

Suzanne wonders if this was their first fight? And who won?

Corona Blog

So, I’m a blogger, so I guess I should do this. It’s about change, about lots of changes through history and what that means to us now. I might seem a bit annoyed. If you want to get a teenager to read this, preferably one who doesn’t want to, they might get the proper tone of voice for it.

Everybody is talking about change. Of course we will change. Hasn’t every President run on that platform for the last 50 years? Make America Whatever or Hopey Changey, I don’t care. Throw the bums out. That’s a desire for change. But there is always tension, against the fear. Too much rapid change to greater rights for more people and a move toward socialism resulted in populism, on the left and the right. I have watched the constant battle between the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and the good old traditions since I was born in 1960. Look at what’s happened in the last 100 years since the 1918 flu pandemic. That’s in your parents’ or grandparents’ lifetime if you are older, so hopefully you talked to them. If you are younger, hopefully you know someone in the next generation up. They might have an old recording or at least some pictures.

They went through:
Nuclear weapons
Invention of vaccines
1918 flu
World War I (1914 to 1918)

Despite the pace of change having increased in the recent centuries, we haven’t developed new ways to cope with it. I don’t have much to suggest for that, but for me, getting some perspective on how much has happened, how far we have come in a short time, and how it has always been the people pushing leaders to change. That has helped me understand it.

My Public Education history spent too much on the days before the Revolution in this country, that’s my opinion. I always wanted to get to the World Wars and why those happened.

It was a major change in how the world worked. Before then, we were a world of royal families. Generals road on horses with colorful uniforms and battles lasted for a few days. With the arms buildup of the late 19th century, a result of the industrial revolution, these in-bred idiots who had no idea how to live in a time of electronic communication and world travel, put a match to the powder keg they built. To defend against heavy artillery, they created trench warfare, to breakthrough that they invented tanks, and on and on.

If you don’t want to have a love for history, don’t click here. Dan Carlin has a great ability to tell the story and provide the facts. His “Blueprint for Armaggedon” series is the story of WWI. 

Going back through the 19th century further you had:
The Industrial Revolution, steam engines, mechanics, oil. Horses were no longer the best source of power, but we still use the term “horsepower”.
Darwin published the Origin of Species in 1859.
Michael Faraday, who died in 1867, advanced our understanding of electromagnetism. That’s kind of important to whatever device you are reading this on.

Pause for a moment on this guy. He discovered the mysterious energy floating around that we could use to move things and to communicate across miles. Click to see David Tong giving a lecture in the same hall where Faraday gave his. Tong is talking about the newly understood forces of quantum physics, that we now understand are the fundamental forces behind all things. He’s giving that lecture in the same hall, with the same desk, that Faraday did. It’s like we just figured out stone tools yesterday, and now we all have scalpels in our medicine cabinets. 

While Faraday was alive, we were finally throwing off the last myths about race and changing laws so we could no longer justify slavery. There are still slaves in the world, I know, but most people know that’s wrong now. What will be commonly thought of as wrong by end of your lifetime?

Change takes a little longer in the centuries before that, but let me connect just a few more things. Once the empires that grew out of ancient history started bumping into each other and “discovering” each other, we started accumulating our knowledge, sharing it actually, but not always in a nice way. You might have heard of Thomas Aquinas, who tried to reconcile the Catholic religion with Greek philosophy. He had a little help from the Muslims by the way. Not too long after that, we had Protestant kingdoms, so there was a lot of fighting with the Catholics.

At the end of all that fighting, after the Thirty Years War, 1648, a treaty was signed called the Peace at Westphalia. It took away powers from the Pope and created a new type of nation. That’s what you live in, a Westphalian nation-state. Sure, your way of life is rooted in a Judeo-Christian/Western Civilization/Constitutional Republic/Democracy/melting pot, sure. But the basic structure of our politics has only been around for 400 years, and it was formed under duress, and it’s not working. A bunch of morons from the Middle Ages made it up to get the Pope out their business and we can get the billionaires out of our pockets if we create the next system.

Something else happened once the European Princes and Bishops quit making us kill each other. It was the British Royal Society, founded in 1660 to promote scientific thought and learning. It was the fertile ground where Isaac Newton flourished. Newton created the mathematics that got us to the moon (along with some of those other folks above). Computers were first put to the test during that work. That pretty much brings us up to where we are now.

To have that sort of creative energy, to allow the brilliant people of the day to discover something, you have to first have some degree of peace. You have to have a little extra left over at the end of the day to give to the general welfare, to build some roads, to have some nurses ready to take care of us instead of working overtime to pay off student loans and a mortgage from that house they bought before the bankers destroyed the economy.

What gets left out of historical discussions like this is none of it happens if we don’t care about people that we will never meet; people on the other side of the world and people who are not born yet. If we aren’t keeping the world clean and free from violence and filled with beauty, if we aren’t nurturing the people who grow our food, or who are sitting in a room somewhere coming up with formulas that who knows what they will do, but we can bet they will do something, then none of this happens. Then we slip back into using those stone tools to harm each other and take whatever we can just because we can. None of this happens if we don’t realize we need each other.


A note on the present: We aren’t purposely crashing the economy by shutting it down, just so we can save a few million lives. The economy would have crashed if we didn’t do anything because the hospitals would have been overrun. People would have chosen to quit interacting with others after it was far too late. Services would be much more disrupted because the closures would be random; we wouldn’t be choosing to keep groceries open as opposed to restaurants, we would be choosing from far fewer options.

It would not be some simple math of 2 or 3% more people dead. We would be surrounded by sick people and no one would want to touch them for fear of getting sick themselves. This would multiply the problems. Any normal illness or regular medical attention needed would be almost impossible. We would have new priorities, like disposing of the bodies.

The stock market selloff was recognition by those who understand how their system works, that it is not working, that it is not designed to respond to a problem like this. It is not designed to take care of the people that actually create the wealth that they accumulated. Ironically, it created the problem by changing the environment, putting workers under stress, and prioritizing profits over health. It put messaging over science. They know this, they saw it coming. They didn’t tell us until they cashed out. But cashing out is a strategy of the dying system. I don’t know what the next system will be, but it won’t be the current leaders who create it.

You're In My Light

In case you missed the news, I've abandoned the Atheism for the Religious series for now, maybe forever, and I'm exploring having some fictional characters talk about it.


The first 7 pages of a book I've been thinking about for a long, long time
Words in italics are just for me to keep track of things, they may or may not end up as headings in the final draft.

Last Updated: 4/26/2020

You’re in My Light

A Hero’s journey on the way to the hardware store

You’re in My Light

A Hero’s journey on the way to the hardware store

An attack on a drone

A few million years of evolution left the ape descendants with a fear of something rustling in the underbrush. Some ape like ancestor ran when they thought they heard something, and another ape never became anyone’s ancestor because they didn’t run. They became lunch. On a sunny day in Northern Indiana, in a world with satellites and self-driving vehicles, in some underbrush by a dirt road, there appeared to be a face taking shape in the leaves. The face appeared to have eyes. They were moving slowly higher. A bunch of leaves and branches that could be a face with eyes doesn’t all move in unison. It was eyes, and a face, and a person, with ash and clay smeared around them to match the brush.

 “What’s with the camo Pete?”, a second ape descendant blew his cover with a question that sounded like he was standing around at the neighborhood barbeque.

“Shhsh, it will hear us.”

“Of course it will hear us. It’s more sensitive than any animal on earth. It literally has advanced alien technology.” For someone being stalked by an alien drone, he seemed rather casual. His dress was too, khakis with some grass stains and a T-shirt with the names of several bands from the 70’s that were harvested out of the Midwest.

“Then what are we doing here? You said we were going to shoot at the aliens. You look like you’re having a picnic.” The intensity of battle was wearing off in this conversation but he wass still ready for a fight.

“We aren’t shooting at aliens. We’re shooting at a drone that people made with some alien technology in it. You’re reading too much Star Trek fan fiction and not enough of the tech journals.”

“I know it’s a drone. What I mean is, if we are taking on the aliens, and they can see us hiding here, how can we possibly hope to mount any kind of resistance?”

“Maybe history should be on your reading list. How did the Palestinians get the attention of the rest of the world? How did Afghanistan take down the Soviet Union? It was one helicopter at a time, sometimes getting civilians involved. This isn’t conventional war. They were out matched and so are we. It’s called ‘trying to win’.”

“Yeah, I read the ‘Freedom Fighters’ speech, bin Laden was a freedom fighter, and so was George Washington. They are going to call us terrorists and so on, but we’re not fighting for some religious ideal or against some despotic King, this is our planet. We aren’t just fleas arguing over who owns the dog, we have 4 billion years of biology behind us here. See, I read. But all I was told is shoot down a drone and run back to town.  I’m trying to figure out how all that fits in the master plan.”

An “m” started to form on the lips of Pete’s brother in arms as he tried to process this “master plan” comment but that question would have to wait. One eye squinted and his head turned to the side like a dog trying to hone in on the sound of something strange it had just heard. A whir caught their attention and the fight or flight response switched on, to fight. “Okay, we’ll talk master plan when we get back. Here it comes now. I need you for your marksmanship right now, not your political theories. One shot to get it to bank then it’s all yours.”

“This part I know.”

The drone whizzed by, noting the heat outline of a couple people by the side of the road, nothing to report home about. A shotgun popped out from underneath a blanket and was fired without taking much time to aim. The drone dipped sharply into a turn to avoid the spray. Pete had drawn his weapon at the same time (describe the gun) from under a poncho that was laid beside him. He tracked the arc of the drone as it recovered from its dive. The butt of the rifle was quickly up to his shoulder and followed the motion of the panicked drone.

Miles away in a room lit only by surveillance screens and low lamps over clipboards and small devices, someone set down their coffee and said, “Kids, we should put some ‘Deer Crossing’ signs back up, give them something to shoot at”. His screen showed a country road, forested on either side. It was mostly a blur and the horizon was not where it should have been. As the scene whipped back and forth, he just barely caught two figures silhouetted by their heat signatures. When the screen went blank he had a one word response, “Shit.”

“Nice shot. Let’s go.”

That order wasn’t necessary. Both men moved at double time down a deer path. Pete carried both guns. They split up as they started down toward a stream which they crossed at different points, neither one of them looked back. The forest turned to corn field. He moved down the rows swiftly being careful not to jostle the tassels above him. He slowed to listen as he neared the edge of the field, looked left, right, and more important above.

The guns were tucked in to the poncho he was carrying and then slung over his shoulder casually. He strolled toward the nearby barn.  Inside, he found the ring in the floor under some hay and heaved open a door that revealed many more weapons and ammunition. With loving care he unloaded and placed each gun in its designated place. Water and some grooming utensils that could have just as easily been there for the horses, were used to wash off the unnecessary camouflage and transform him back into just another boy in town. As he left the barn, he stuck his finger and thumb in his mouth to hold his tongue for a loud whistle. It was impressive with two notes even. On the other side of the house someone who looked like a farmer checked his watch then returned to making some motions that looked like working the land.

When Pete arrived in town for a well deserved adult beverage, the man who was his superior officer less than an hour ago was already well into an electronic trivia game. Pete asked what’s new and the standard reply of “nothing” actually meant something this time. It meant they hadn’t made the news, yet. Police reports of course, but he wasn’t worried about those, yet. Gun shots in a corn field in Indiana in late summer are not news. The shooting down of a federal drone would remain a matter for the Federal Government. Local police weren’t going to get involved until they had done some investigating. The next step in the plan was to see how the drone patterns changed or if police presence increased.

At the farm

In the southern half of the state, on a farm that was more of very large garden, in one of the out buildings, a Betamax video player whirred quietly as it played lecture #213. Dave was paying more attention to the lights and dials than the content. The home maintenance series was not his favorite, but there were still homes that needed maintenance and fewer people who knew how to maintain them. Not the homes around this farm of course.  He had been in just about every one of them and had tuned all of them like a Stradivarius. Some of the inhabitants were on to him that the best time to fix something was always just before dinner but now that money was not so important their informal arrangement worked just fine and the smiles and warm conversation over the table made it all alright.

The analog signal streamed out of the back of the player connected by cords with red, white and yellow connectors. It followed a winding bent path to the much smaller less dustier black box with one small green light on it.  From the other end of that box a thin gray cable went out through the wall. It sparkled a bit from the early morning sun coming in through the small window on the east side of the shop.  The signal finally found its way out to an antenna. Dave swore that antenna could not possibly do anything the first time he saw it. It was too small and the elements weren’t positioned in any way he’d seen antenna elements positioned. But according to all available evidence the now digitized signal was making its way to space.

When they gave it to him, Dave thought they were joking. He said it looked like they designed it based on watching a Jetsons cartoon. They just smiled. They do that a lot. They told him his father’s collection of educational lectures and demonstrations needed to be preserved. He asked why they couldn’t just take them and do whatever they needed to do. They said they don’t work that way. They say things like that a lot too. He didn’t care for that answer but couldn’t get much more of an explanation out of them.

They had come here from somewhere a little further out along the Orion Arm to save the planet, or so they said. They didn’t say it directly. They didn’t say very much directly. Although a few billion people now accepted that as true, Dave was still not ready to go with them. That they weren’t big on answering questions was one of his reasons. His grandparent’s generation had gone off to Europe and then Indochina to die without getting their questions answered. In his time parents’ time, people were beaten and harassed and couldn’t get decent jobs because there were people who had answers that couldn’t be questioned.

Introduce that they are offering to take people to other planets

Dave preferred hearing evidence and his father’s series on logic and logical fallacies was always right there, just below the little voice in his head that reminded him that being pleasant was more important than being right. Usually the voice remained in charge of his mouth, but sometimes not, and words like “that’s an argument from ignorance” came out at the most inopportune times. That could make for awkward conversations. But being convinced by aliens that there are other planets ready to welcome someone just like him was not just conversation.

Thump, thump, thump.

Dave snapped up from his day dreaming that had been initiated by the shiny cord going out through the wall. It was Marianne. Dave always thought that was funny especially since according to her hair she was a ginger, but not everyone got the Gilligan’s Island reference anymore, and after mentioning it four times, he figured out Marianne didn’t like it either. When he opened the door her smile retold that story and also said she needed something fixed and would like him to come by but only if he kept his conversation on gardening or canning or perhaps electronic gadgets. Recounting long stories of obscure science fiction characters was another thing he had figured out not to do.

The full, warm beverage she had was held in her palm and gently kept there with two fingers from the other hand. The breeze from the opened door blew across it and freshened the room with a hint of cinnamon and honey. It was raised as if being presented, not as if she was going to sip from it.

Remembering to let her open the conversation before he reacted to all the cues, Dave said, “Hey Marianne, what’s up?”

“I figured you were out here and working since early this morning, like always, without breakfast, so I brought you some tea.”

He suddenly made the connection between his inability to focus and his lack of sustenance. He reached for the steaming cup. Their fingers just touched in the exchange. Dave was thinking about that touch as he reached. He knew this was a good thing that helps people feel better about their encounters. Marianne had no specific thoughts about it. Encountering people wasn’t something that required that much thought for her.

“I probably should grab a bite to eat.” Dave finally returned her smile. Baggage from their past encounters slipped to the floor.

Marianne didn’t let the silence get awkward, “Sooo, having a little trouble getting my root cellar door to close tight. We should have a good harvest this year and I’d hate to lose any of it.” She trailed off, sort of suggesting good times for him to come by but hoping he’d help close her sales pitch. Graciously, he did.

“Yeah, yeah, today is good. When there’s good sun on it.” He moved to the doorway, where she was still standing, and they danced their way to an understanding that he was coming out. For a moment the tea and her breath and her hair transported him to a land of princesses and ballrooms. Marianne had no idea what he was thinking but like Ginger Rogers, she could do everything Fred did except backwards and in high heels. When the spinning was done, the two of them faced the rest of the world and greeted the morning that was already warmed and inviting.

The promise of a good harvest brought all the feelings of a healthy community out on display. From the eyes of people born before 2000, Dave and Marianne could see Halloween and Thanksgiving and just a hint of Christmas.  The smaller humans just saw the bounty of something that the old people did all day that magically made sweet and juicy things come out of the ground and end up on their plates. Their heads weren’t bothered with a man in a red suit arriving at a department store who also is somehow concerned with how they acted all year. They weren’t working on a costume so they could run around asking for candy. Why would they do that? They knew who had the best candy.

Their little voices added a soundtrack to the scene. Screams could be heard, and they were pretty sure they were joyous, but sometimes it was hard to tell. One of the critters broke from a group that was running by and latched on to Dave’s leg. She looked up at him with her brown eyes surrounded by a milk chocolate face and started telling a detailed tale of adventure and romance. None of the words were in a language that Dave knew, or anyone knew, but they flowed like a sailor singing a song after returning from whaling in Kachemak Bay.

Dave provided the chorus of “uh-huh” and “mm-hmm” on queue as he lifted her into his arms. Somewhere in there he interpreted the word “crackers”. As she said it, she used the non-violent resistance technique of going limp, laying her head back toward the dining hall. Dave did not need to hold her for questioning, so he rolled her to her feet that were already running before they touched the ground.

These weren’t just any crackers, these were Marjo’s sourdough crackers, merely a byproduct of a weekly batch of sourdough bread. Bread that sustained this community like it had sustained communities for thousands of years. It was not the kind of bread that comes in a plastic bag and has to be sliced by a machine because it is so delicate that a human hand would rip it to shreds. It was the kind that you keep on the counter wrapped in a towel. The kind that you break and experience the chewy crust, experience it kicking in enzymes in the mouth and your whole body settles as the soothing process moves toward your stomach.

Marianne could see he was now on a mission and she waved him off and headed for the fields. Dave caught up to his little friend pushing against the large dining hall door. She put all of her body into it. She called upon the power of her ancestors to move that massive door that was between her and crackers. Dave used a few fingers over her head and gently guided it to balance her back to vertical and to release that kinetic energy across a big room full of empty tables. Marjo knew to have a plate of crackers for dirty hands to grab so they wouldn’t intrude any further into the baking area. Dave also respected that barrier. She would invite him to cross it if he waited for the invitation.

Marjo always had that look for Dave, a smile with a little sadness. Not quite, “bless your heart”, but not exactly “hey, you been working out?” Marjo was the big sister Dave didn’t have, the girlfriend that might have been if she were younger, the mentor he didn’t want, and the drinking buddy who actually didn’t drink, all rolled into one. He was not in the mood for the story of yeast again so he had been working on his cheeriest “good morning” from a couple steps before hitting the door. Marjo was always a few steps ahead of him though.

Marjo meets Dave – this could come earlier

Before the arrival of the Orions and their space port, Dave had happened upon this kitchen while biking in the well known hills in and around the farm that he now called home. He held a flat tire in his hands and a sheepish grin on his face. Marjo knew he needed a hug and also knew that wasn’t going to happen. This wasn’t her first flat tire. Back then, the nearby University was thriving. People came here from all over the world, to learn from the best minds, to see the beauty, to improve their art, to demonstrate their athletic skills. Most were not that aware of the people who lived there all year round. They were just there for ambience or something.

So a flat tire out in the country was an inconvenience, not a chance to interact with a real person. Most people like that couldn’t just have a flat. There had to be a lot of pacing and hand wringing and tales of schedules disrupted and questions of why this happened to them, with some certainty others did not have this same problem as frequently as they did. Dave however just had a flat. It wasn’t about how much it was bothering him or how suffering the flat was somehow different than suffering the muscle pain of a long uphill pedal. He was just as happy doing the work of fixing it as he was doing the work of riding the bike.

Or was that just as un-happy? The flat tire wasn’t bothering him but something was. Marjo could see there was a shadow a step or two behind him. Something he could keep ahead of by biking or fixing things or doing whatever else he did other than slow down enough to let that shadow catch up. Of course it would, they always do. If that was all there was to it though, she wouldn’t give it another thought. But she had seen so many shadows.

Marjo’s story

Years earlier, her uncle came back from Iraq with no scars, just a bit weathered from the desert sun, but she knew there was something wrong. Everyone treated him differently. No one talked about it. Marjo was given specific instructions not to. She knew she had to live by the rules as a little girl, but she also knew it would be different when she grew up. But childhood aspirations can turn to adult frustrations. She watched as more and more men and women were not allowed to grieve for the lives they had ended. When a war ends, there is a time for rebuilding and for reconciliation with the enemy, but in endless war, that time never comes.

The time for celebration never comes either, as the war is never won. In Vietnam a hill would be taken one day and lost the next night. In Iraq whole regions were liberated and then soldiers who did the liberating watched the news from home as those places were occupied by the latest group with some new initials. For some, the best way to deal with it was to go back. At home, you hear more about how war is tearing the country apart, or you see that nobody really cares, or someone wants to debate it with you. You can’t grieve the deaths of your friends or of the people in the country you occupy, but at least you can get back and try to find that person you were.

Marjo watched this grief go undigested. Not digested by the culture because the culture that developed it was one that was accustomed to knowing that a victory would be followed by a new escalation somewhere else. Not by the government because the military budget just kept growing and debt along with it. There was no job at the Pentagon or anywhere that could undo this, but she resolved to make some sort of dent in this collective un-grieved loss.

Her uncle came over for game night one evening. He brought a grocery bag full of snacks. He pulled out a big bag of pita bread and two different tubs of hummus. Mother gave her that look that said, “don’t ask”. After a while, when people were commenting on the good company and good food, he said, “That’s what they eat. The people from around where we were based. We would load up on that, a big pile of pita bread. Have it on the plane while we were bombing them.” Marjo locked her eyes on his. “Kinda sick really”, he finished. She started to smile because she didn’t want to just stare at him like an idiot. She held that back and matched the droop of his eyes. Whatever move or turn it was in the game kept that from going on for too long.

She knew there was work to be done in the world. She didn’t know what that would be but she had a sense that whatever it was, it would not be found on television or on some glossy pages. She didn’t want to cut herself off from the world but she wanted to be around people who were using their hands, not just consuming culture but creating it. Creating it in the way it had always been created, by listening to the voices from the past and taking the best of what they had. She sought out the mentors, the marginalized, the ones they called old fashioned. In them she found the roots of all that stories that had been synthesized in to pop culture. They were in those old stories, those stories that were not even written down.

She tried sitting around fires and getting lost in the rhythmic drumming and the voices of the story tellers. She gained friends and insights, but it was too passive for her. She tried working with wool from the time it came off the sheep, spinning it into yarn, then working it into fabric, but there was too much surrounding that, too much animal husbandry and complicated machinery. She found she could stand in a wheat field and just watch it flow and lose herself in that. She learned that the wheat we grow today was once a much smaller grass and it changed our culture as we changed it into those amber waves we see now.  

When she discovered bread making, she found her muse. It was one a lost arts she should pursue. She looked at bread making machines but immediately had a vision of it sitting in a back alley waiting for garbage day next to someone’s treadmill or whatever other piece of unused good intentions that might be found there. She bought a cook book but she could tell that there were aspects of this that could not be put into a recipe. She started looking around for anyone with a little flour on their clothes, any hint of a passion like her own. It didn’t take long to find a class in sourdough bread making.

She was amazed to find out that you didn’t need a yeast packet, you just add some water to some flour and put it in a clay crock and throw a towel over it. The yeast finds it. It’s in the air. When she first saw it growing, she stammered and asked if this made sense. To be letting something attract mold and bacteria didn’t seem like such a good idea. But that’s not what was happening. The starch in the flour doesn’t attract that less healthy stuff. The yeast though, takes that nubby living seed and transmutes it into something that sustains life.

She hadn’t just found out how to make bread, she had found her story. The yeast that she couldn’t see in the air was like the sadness that she saw that others did not. It grew and generated carbon dioxide and lactobacilli bacteria and just a little alcohol. This gave the bread that sourdough flavor and in the same way, she knew she could let sadness express itself and help digest the sorrows that are always growing their hardened seeds. She became that person that knew there was always something going on with you and everyone else knew she was the one to come to when they needed that big shoulder to bury their face in. Dave was more of a long term project.

She didn’t know if she’d ever see him again after that first random encounter. She didn’t try to draw anything out of him. He talked of his love of the hills in the area, noting that he hadn’t spent too much time on the flat spots like the one they were on. He loved thinking about the wall of ice that had been there twenty four thousand years ago.

North from there it had scraped clean whatever was beneath it bringing bits of it south as it slowly pushed forward. As it receded, it washed into the landscape that it hadn’t reached, creating a less organized work of art beyond its reach. Rivers formed through hilly landscapes and underground, exposing million year old sedimentary stone. This land was not good for a whole lot in the world of commodities like the flat land the glacier had created. Marjo mentioned Aldo Leopold and Dave said he felt a kinship with him, seeing value in land that did not do well as a real estate holding. He found comfort where others would see imperfection and obstacles.

“Hungry?” asked Marjo, keeping her eyes on the little one, but speaking to Dave. A few crackers in the face were enough to keep those little legs energized, but Dave would need a little more. The bread makers on the farm rotated, so each could tend to the rest of their lives while all of them together maintained the supply, enough for their families, plus a little extra for whoever might wander through. Yesterday’s sweet rolls would be a good start for Dave and hopefully the chickens were producing too.

“Yes actually”, he replied before stuffing his face. “I get focused on something in the shop and forget to eat.”

“Life is what happens while we’re making other plans.” Marjo, always had the pithy sayings.

“And then you find out you’re not alone in the universe.” Dave meant that in the human race sense, but Marjo lowered her head a bit, giving him that look from her third eye. Then glanced down to the cup of tea is in hand, knowing where it came from.

“Yes, Marianne needs something fixed. And that’s all. You know that’s not going anywhere.”

“I don’t know much. I know there will be a dance in a couple weeks, maybe a hay ride later, and you haven’t considered the contents of your closet.”

“Does new rain gear count?”

“It does not.”

“Well, I need to get to Chicago. I suppose I could do some shopping.”

“Chicago! That’s a hike. Or are you taking the shuttle?”

“Shuttle? Are you forgetting who you are talking to? I’m looking forward to a week and a half on the bike. I’ll stop by the Tippecanoe River to see some friends and the reason I’m going is for parts, so I’ll see Old Dave at his electronics shop.”  

The storefront for that shop actually said The Electronic Shoppe. Old Dave thought it was funny because you can’t be an electronics shop and be pretentious. If someone looked at the sign and thought it was pretentious and didn’t come in, then he didn’t want them coming in anyway. No one called him Old Dave either except this younger Dave, and Dave’s father, while he was alive. He had been there when new Dave was born and Dave’s father didn’t like the idea of calling him “Uncle” although he knew this man would hold that special place in his life. He would be the one who could tell his son the stories of what his father did before he was born. He would be the one who could tell him when it was okay to break the rules. Dave’s father would play the role of father, the one who had to enforce those rules.

Not understanding the words, but sensing the grown-up talk, Dave’s little friend exited through the screen door, letting it slam.

Marjo never forgot who she was talking to, “Oh good”, she said without stopping the kneading, the checking of the oven or the other tasks she was managing that Dave could only guess. He had just revealed something to her, but he wasn’t sure what it was. He thought about correcting the awkward situation by offering to help, but that would just take them down a different awkward road. She knew who Old Dave was and how important it was that the two of them see each other now and then. Dave, young Dave, would use the excuse of keeping his mouth full of food to justify the silence. He salted his second boiled egg from the jar on the counter, being careful to do so over the garbage can of course. He was eating outside of the scheduled meal time which meant he had to clean up after himself. He brushed some crumbs off the counter, waved with the egg hand while grabbing his tea and juggled it all out the door.

Happy 2020

Yes, I've been remiss in my blogging duties. My writing energies have turned to fiction. My attempt at a blog series to explain my spiritual "Theory of Everything" petered out. Not so much petered out, as I realized that either I get a degree in something like history of the psychology of religion and write some obscure paper on a detailed aspect of the mind, or, I try to write something people will actually read. So, that's what I'm doing these days.

Maybe I'll start publishing excerpts.

BTW, there is no year zero, so this is the end of the teens decade. Just like you normally count. Do you start counting at zero when you are counting something? No. You are not a computer. You count, 1,2,3, up to 10. That's a decade. Your welcome.

The amazing chart of everything

I’m a little embarrassed about how much of this chart I’m familiar with, but I’ve had to look up these things when seemingly intelligent people bring them up and tell me I should be concerned about them. I admit at one time I thought there might be something to the Nostradamus prophecies, but then I simply read what they said. The actual words don’t match the theories about how he predicted the Kennedy assassination. But the guy who made this chart seems to be serious about it, and I’m sure you all know someone who is very serious about at least one of the items found here.

My obsession with this is partially just curiosity, partially the human tendency to gawk at disaster, but it is also rooted in academics. I was in an African American Studies course in my freshman year in college when the people following Jim Jones all killed themselves rather than disband their group and reconsider their life choices. The professor asked us to think about how this happened, particularly why middle class black people joined this group.

Part of it is mind control, making them repeat the ritual without using real poison and barraging them with long speeches about his view of the world over a loud speaker all day long. But cults almost always begin with some reasonable ideas that seem intuitively good. Those roots are usually not well documented and get swept under the longer story that is easily found once the group has some fame. It seems obviously wacko to outsiders at that point, but those who accept it have a history that has altered their intuitions about what is right, so they can justify the wackiness.

Each one of these nodes has a story like that behind it. A story of how it began as someone asking questions that seemed reasonable. They become conspiracy theories when answers are provided that aren’t based on facts, evidence, and logic that is interpreted by people familiar with the full context. People choose the simple answers of the complex inclusive data. This could remain a small group of gossipy neighbors or grow into a political party with actual power.

In this chart, most of it is real names of people, corporations, and organizations, but the connections and the arrows are almost always a stretch. “THX 1138” was really a movie by Steven Spielberg about a guy who escaped a domed city where the government controlled everything with lies and kept people sedated by prescribing drugs. Why that is right next to the “Birth of the Internet”, I don’t know. Further up, in the historical section, the Rockfellers really did monopolize oil in the USA and they did it with nepotism and corruption. Why that is right next to “Ritual Magick” on the chart, who knows?

Harder to miss, the big arcing arrow from scientific discoveries of the modern world to “DEPOPULATION”. You would need to read a lot of stuff that would challenge your credulity of the authors belief in what they were writing to know why Monsanto and Flouridation are on this chart. You might feel like brain cells were trying to escape as you read it, hoping to find a place where reason and logic still exist. What this chart shows is evidence is not needed once you’ve decided to live in a world of fear where you have no power. In that world, it’s better to give up your powers of reason and, according to the logic of that opposite world, then you’ll see what is obvious.

In the world of facts, people do horrible things to each other in plain sight. I couldn’t find “Organized Crime” on here, but we know the names. They walked around in major cities and people loved and adored them. They were treated like the ones who were fixing the problems that the government and police were causing. Meanwhile, they were building their private armies and throwing bodies in the river. Pablo Escobar appears. He financed social programs while also bankrolling corrupt politicians, guaranteeing that those social programs would not have democratic oversight. They got the blame for what was wrong, he got the credit for doing what was right and the power that comes with it.

When you decide that what you see is not real, that you were taught nothing but lies, and that anything that comes from a respected source is actually designed to control you, then everything is part of the giant conspiracy and your best strategy is to do nothing except tell everyone else about how you figured it out. By saying you are questioning everything, you get to feel powerful, but by not using your powers of logic and reason, by claiming your theory is beyond question, you’ve relinquished the power you actually have.

There are of course bad things in the world. Caligula, near the top in the Antiquity section, was a vicious narcissistic ruler. That’s why we say Rome was “falling” at the time he ruled. Democracy was conceived, then faded and came to light again over a thousand years later. This chart seems to connect that re-emergence more to the Illuminati than to the formation of nation states full of free people. No explanation is provided.

Alchemy was a waste of time but as the chart notes, it led to gunpowder. There are good and bad uses for gunpowder but you could say it would be a more brutal world without it. Many items appear on the chart without comment, so it’s hard to say what judgment QAnon is passing on them.

The paradox of “conspiracy theorists” is they will use real conspiracies like Nixon and Watergate, The Gulf of Tonkin incident, Bush lying about weapons of mass destruction, and Jeffrey Epstein as their evidence that governments and rich people are really corrupt, but it’s not “conspiracy theorists” who uncover those conspiracies! The mainstream information sources that are supposedly covering up the conspiracies are the ones that brought those to light.

Conspiracies that actually happen like a President lying on a daily basis or a small family getting rich off of a Pharmaceutical company selling pain medicine, are not included in this chart. Epstein is being investigated even after he died because living people conspired with him, but this chart only has “Pizzagate”. The same people that missed the Epstein conspiracy are now making up stories about how he was killed by the Clintons. This chart was made in 2018, before the Epstein and Sackler stories broke and the QAnon writers are now catching up with them.

There is a big difference between conspiracies where powerful people are lying and hiding information and working for themselves while saying they work for us, and decisions made in the regular course of people trying to figure out how to make a living in a decent and ethical manner. We use toxic chemicals and precious resources to make life better for most people on earth. Billions of people sleep soundly knowing their taxes are supporting a military operation somewhere on the other side of the world that they would never consider participating in. We do our best to discuss decisions like this, requiring layers of oversight and regulating whatever industry gets to profit from the lesser of evils that we eventually choose. We hope that we get the chance to work on the new problems that we caused by implementing the solutions to the original ones. None of this belongs in the same category, on the same chart, as lizard people using the Denver Airport as their secret base.

This chart is the modern version of Greek mythology; mixing historical figures with imagined monsters and giving them all personalities and character traits that attempt to reflect human traits and failings. But the words and actions of the stories didn’t happen in the real world . It’s done in an attempt to try to explain the crazy world we live in, to reconcile what we know is right with all the wrong that we see. It skips over the hard work we need to do to uncover those wrongs. I hope this type of thinking fades and the methods of science prevail and continue to be improved but there is no guarantee. The record of civilizations is not that great, they kind of come and go. Fortunately, even when the powerful and the structures they built fail, we still have each other.