The price of love

     Scarcely 30 years after Jesus' crucifixion, Emperor Nero gave the order for Jerusalem to be overrun.  Most residents, men, women and children, were put to the sword immediately.  All those buildings and belongings which could be burned, were burned.  All those structures of brick, stone, and mortar, were razed, til there was not remaining one stone upon another.  the few survivors were scattered and sold as slaves in distant parts of the empire.  Just for good measure, the ground was then copiously salted.


     Jesus offered hope, he offered ultimate love, joy salvation, redemption.  But he did not offer an end to suffering or injustice, not at all.  Others following in his footsteps made such rash promises but He never did.

     From the earliest that I can remember in my life, I have been teased, ridiculed, criticized, badgered, abused, beaten, and belittled.  From the earliest that I can remember, I had faith that I could be happy, and not only that I could but that it was my right to be happy, to love and to be loved.  For a long long time I found events to be highly confusing, because it was precisely at those times when I felt the most joy that other people were most apt to put me down and try to hurt me.

     I went back and forth between trying to live as others told me I ought to live, and trying to live as I wanted.  Neither one offered any satisfaction, but only pain.  Til finally, I began to really feel God's love for me, to notice all the things, big and small, that He has done just for me.  He showed me how wonderful it is to do for other people.  Not so much giving material goods for those really have little value, but what people cherish the most is the giving to them of control, to empower them.

     That has not ended the persecution.  These days, in fact, the threats grow greater and greater, as totalitarian regimes, police states, central control, spread across the earth.  I sense more and more danger.
There is more and more jealousy emanating from desperate greedy folk who are terminally dissatisfied with what they have and always require more.  There will always be people who have convinced themselves that duty and obligation prevent them from loving, from being happy. Not enjoying it themselves, they don't like happy people spreading joy.  They don't like it at all.  The religious and secular leaders, as ever in cahoots, insist that joy is impossible, always out of reach in this life, and one must buckle under to a heavy yoke to have any chance of salvation in the "next" world.

     There will never be an end to pain.  There will never be an end to persecution.  That was never the point.  The point is, they have already been defeated.  Their own doom is just as sure as the fall of the Roman Empire (and of course, every other empire which has been built, before and after.).  Nothing that they build or write will endure, and everything they do is vanity, meaningless.  Only love endures .....

big brother

     Of course, the primary reason why I have not been blogging lately is the revelation about all of NSA's spying, as our country abandons the core values which it once held dear and plummets towards a police state, a dictatorship, a one party system, controlled by the handful of men who own over half the world's total wealth and treat everyone else like debt slaves.

     Snowden did us all a tremendous favor with his heroic personal sacrifice.   Most americans understand that, even if many are too afraid to say so.  But the net result is quite evident in this quarter's financial reports from corporate america.  Microsoft stock fell through the floor, Intel, Blackberry, Apple, IBM, Yahoo, they are all falling as their revenues decline, as their number of clients declines ....

     Citizens are going back to talking with one another.  Face to face.  So far, talk is still free.  So far, there are a lot of places in the country where people can talk to one another without fear of being surreptitiouusly bugged, recorded and spied upon.  Its pretty funny to see the electronic communications media slowly hemorrhaging like this, I couldn't think of anything they more justly deserve for their pandering.

     I wish I thought it would stay that way.  I do have the satisfaction of understanding language well enough to know that the oppressed will always have more creativity and versatility than the oppressors.  The word will get around, no matter what they try to do.  In the end they ALWAYS lose, but they are too arrogant, conceited and stupid to learn history.....

the end is near

     Most of my friends and companions happen to believe that everything this morning, the rain, the grass, the trees, the clouds .... it all smells a whole lot like Armageddon.

     My readings in history tell me that the odds that the book of Revelations is factually correct AND that the time period under discussion is NOW, are quite small. In fact, the Roman Empire, at the time known to be the entire civilized world, managed to collapse totally, over several centuries it is true, but nevertheless totally .... and yet, Jesus was not sighted, neither the antichrist or any of those other characters .... and certainly, many, many other supercilious, egocentric empires have also collapsed in the interim, and it has not meant the end of humanity, the end of the known universe, the end of time, or even the end of white bread.

     My opinions have never been widely read, never widely accepted, its just that, while I have always been somewhat early in my predictions, I have, fortunately or unfortunately, been correct ..... my opinion is that this is not the fall of man we are facing, however it is the fall of civilization as we know it ... in the next five to fifty years, the great  majority of the people now alive are going to die, in ways that they did not expect .....
and the age of technology, made possible by the use of fossil fuel, is now over, forever and ever .... those who survive will have to use the labor of their own backs, as well as that of animals and primitive windmills and watermills, built primarily with wood and other natural materials ...

...and the good thing is that they will be, mostly , vastly happier than you all are now, but that's kind of an intangible thing which is hard for me to explain .....

Economic Recovery

The following chart is copied from Zero Hedge who attribute the data to the Energy Information Agency.

Unlike most government-supplied statistical data, this chart data has not been massaged with "seasonal adjustments", "birth-death adjustments", "chained inflation adjustments", or any other kind of spin.

The reader can judge for himself what kind of economic recovery the USA has been experiencing since the collapse of the housing bubble and the resulting stupendous responses by the Federal monetary authorities.

Incidentally, the reader may also question what has been trumpeted in major media and elsewhere as a great oil renaissance, the current reduction in crude oil imports, which is often extrapolated to predict total energy independence in a few more years.

my type

     I guess its safe to tell this story:

     Some little while ago, Star and I happened to be invited to a weekly session of Karaoke at a local redneck bar.
     Star of course was in her cups.  She did not mind a bit if everyone else there were so self-absorbed they hardly even noticed her.  She so enjoys being on stage, singing her heart out, and well, being the Star that she is.
     We happened to be sitting at a table with one other guy, the young man who invited us, and about seven women.  I guess that there just aren't that many guys who sing.  I liked the odds.
     One of the women started to introduce herself to me and familiarize me with her story.  She was likeable enough.  She was reasonably educated and traveled, even had a few insights.  Her experiences with Africa had been somewhat different than mine.  This woman was modestly attractive although she might be criticized for having one too many french fries upon occasion. What the ladies like to call "curvaceous" but the medical profession has other terms for.   But padding can be fun to play with.  And I'm always happy to get attention.
     The conversation continued, and Star kept on singing in the background.  Careful examination revealed to me that this woman was approaching that age of femininity where a whole lot  start to show signs of that "deer in the headlights" look, particularly those who are single, and most particularly those who have used their sexuality as a trading tool.
     Then, she had the audacity to suggest to me that Star was "not my type".  I suppose we don't fit the mold.  An old, troll-like white man from an NPR background and a very young, lithe woman from more of a club background.  But that's precisely why both of us like it so much.
     I just rankled at the suggestion that this strange woman who was focusing on me, knew about what my "type" was.  What did she know of what I had seen and done in the last 62 years?  What I had enjoyed, what I had accomplished, or the people who had hurt me and how they had done it?
     As the evening progressed and the waitress became more familiar with our empty glasses, the temperature in the room began to rise by several degrees.  This pudgy lump of Crisco in front of me was definitely starting to soften, even to liquify a little bit.  I can't say that I was not affected.  However, I began to surmise that her ulterior motive was to induce me to go home with her, thereby leaving Star to fend with herself.  Typical of a white woman to be thinking something so crude and unmannerly, I thought to myself.
     So I gave her my phone number and explained to her that I am not so crass to abandon any date to her own devices after bringing her out myself, and I turned back  to have a word with the center of my attention.
     When I next reversed my gaze, the bitch was already working on another man.  I of course never heard from her again.

       They still don't get it, do they?  Once you go black, you never go back.   And its not just because chocolate tastes so good.

Grillo

     This is supposed to be the land of the free, isn't it?  this is supposed to be the home of the brave, isn't it?

     Would someone please tell me why there has not been one american, not one, brave neough to get up in front of a crowd and say things like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eyCpidT53nY

hierarchies

     It seems to me that I can say there are three basic styles of peoplle participating in any kind of economy.  There are leaders, there are followers, and there are independents.
     It seems to me that the leaders who build new systems, new hierarchies, are great, gifted men with immense vision and strength .... we can be talking about a new industry, like Henry Ford built, a new system of government, like Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Madison, and all the founding fathers built ... we can be talking about a new religion, like Paul of Tarsus and all the apostles built.  Men whose strengths lie in inspiring others to change their direction and fall in behind.
     It seems like the far and away the most number of participants are the followers.  These are people who may be less gifted but their strength comes in doggedly cooperating for the sake of companionship and cohesion.
     And it seems like out in the fringes, most of them only tolerated by society, are the real thinkers, the artists, the musicians, the single shop keepers, the novelists, the movie directors, people who act alone and give everyone else the real meat of civilization, all the stuff that makes life worthwhile for everybody else,
ubt somehow it never seems to be absorbed and accepted and loved until after those individuals have passed on.  In their day they suffer different levels of ostracation labels and straightjackets of supposed madness and sometimes involuntary incarceration,  persecution, even crucifixion.

     And the problem comes in with hierarchies, institutions, organizations, that have some age to them, some level of expectation that they will always be around.  The problem always seems to arise, sooner or later, that inferior men, with inferior vision, less that selflessness, come into positions of power within the hierarchy.  Usually they are born into it, children and grandchildren of great men, who have the particular affliction that they always feel personally inferior to their forebears and feel the burning need to try to outdo them, but always the only way to accomplish that is to cut corners, introduce flaws, weaknesses, prejudices, little points of potential failure, until inevitably, just as night follows day, a nail falls out of a horse's shoe, of the general leading the army into battle or,a rivet made cheaply shears, the bulkhead gives way and the ship floods, a country priest sins against an altar boy and his higher-ups all try to cover it up instead of correct it, and the whole hierarchy collapses.

     And so it is now, with globalization, a worldwide economy, worldwide manufacturing, communication  and trade and distribution system.

     Can't you just feel it?