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Sunday, August 2, 2015

*On 'Crito' and How I Am Smarter than Socrates


Socrates had a demon. Of course, a daemon, but a demon. I’m reading Plato again, after 40 years, and I just thought I’d share the fact, that Socrates was a demoniac.

 Well, maybe not, but maybe. I’ve got the complete works, 1800 pages, and I’ll go through it over the next few months. I spent probably 20 minutes whiting-out the loopy girl-writing with which some deb had defaced a number of pages – you know, with hearts for i-dots and so on. It was intolerable. I don’t mind the pink highlighting, but the girl-writing all over the margins was too much. She read only the Apology and books 1,2,3 and 5 of the Republic, so it’s not too bad. I didn’t like the Republic the first time I read it, but that was the ‘70s and this is the ‘Teens, so maybe it got better.

 In the Apology, his defense at his trial, Socrates speaks of how he’s always had an inner voice that told him not to do any wrong thing. So he always knew he was doing right, because he obeyed the voice of his familiar. You might not call that a demon, but he does. He was accused of atheism, denying the gods of Athens while introducing other gods, and of corrupting the youth of the city. I won’t go into that. He affirms his belief in the city’s gods, and denies the corruption. Frankly, he proves his case, but he’d made many enemies, what with constantly proving how not-wise everyone else was, and the majority of his jury consisted of such people. It was a close vote – out of the 500 jurymen, if memory serves, a shift of thirty votes would have acquitted him – 221 to 279, then.

 The vote was corrupt. This was not justice. He did prove his case. He was innocent, according to the evidence Plato gives. In the next dialogue along, Crito, Crito comes as a friend and wants Socrates to escape. Socrates uses his method and demonstrates how he has no choice but to obey the verdict, and die. And here’s why I’m writing this. It’s not that Socrates has a demon. It’s that his logic is wrong. Yes, I, your humble author, am smarter than Socrates and Plato. And Aristotle. After nearly two and a half thousand years, I, even I shall bring light.

 First he gets Crito to agree that it’s always wrong to harm someone, even if they harm you. And this is true. Then again, it’s not. What is harm? It involves motive, and justice (eg, the surgeon and the cutthroat). Socrates is not against justice, and not against punishment – he argues for it. Punishment that corrects a wrong-doer is actually a good, a painful good; punishment that does not correct, hurts only, and is a harm to the recipient; it may be good for the city, good for justice, good to the gods, but it is harm to its victim. True? Yet the greater good is that justice be done, regardless of its effect on the person punished. So it is not wrong to harm someone, if they harm you; as here described, it’s justice.

 Next Socrates demonstrates that the citizen must obey the laws. To break the law is to destroy the city – we would say, it violates the social contract. And he is correct. Then again, he’s not. To break a law is not to destroy the law – it is an insult, a disrespect, but not an annihilation; to disobey a parent is not to kill a parent. If he planned to run away, the state personified would come to him and say, “Do you not by this action you are attempting intend to destroy us, the Laws, and indeed the whole City…? Or do you think it possible for a city not to be destroyed if the verdicts of the courts have no force but are nullified and set to naught by private individuals?” If his reply were, ‘The courts have wronged me’? The reply would be, ‘Was that the agreement? – or was it to respect the judgments’. Contracts must be obeyed.

And he’s right. Then again, he’s not. Here we need to get, uh, philosophical. What if the city is taken over and ruled by a tyrant? And the tyrant, whose word is the law, arbitrarily condemns? The contract is to obey the law, and thus here to cozen tyranny? What if it’s not a tyrant, but a corrupt jury? Is the citizen’s contract with the law, or is it with justice. Is it right to be complicit in the city’s corruption of justice and of the meaning of law? What is law for? What does it protect? Stability and power only? Or does it protect what is good, what is right, and just, and beautiful. Well, it’s only law, the product of politicians, but there is an ideal behind this sad fact that is the inspiration of what a society is – the communal striving for the greater good. Innocent people may be sacrificed for a great cause. A corrupt jury acting out of spite and committing judicial murder is not that.

 Says Socrates, “one must obey the laws of one’s city and country, or persuade it as to the nature of justice.” To persuade, one needs opportunity, which may require time. Socrates complains in his Apology that by law he had not enough time to properly defend himself. There is an illogic here: he is required to persuade, but not given what is needed to do so. The law requires what it forbids. Why doesn’t this most clear-sighted of men see this?

 If the City went to war and Socrates believed the war was unjust, if he yet agreed to fight he must do so. Or he could refuse and protest, and attempt to dissuade the city from the war, and if not convincing, he must accept the consequences, most likely of death. He must be true either to his agreement, or to his conscience. Neither is shameful. To refuse to fight and refuse to accept the consequences would be reprehensible.

 Likewise, Socrates agreed to obey the law, and to accept the consequences if he didn’t. Yet he had an obligation not only to obey the law, but to protect the city. He must do what he could to keep his city just, to keep it from committing injustice, to keep it from spilling innocent blood, in this case his own. That after all was why there was a curse and a plague upon Thebes – the gods were displeased by the unknown crimes of Oedipus. Socrates’ obligation was to not allow an innocent man’s blood to pollute the earth and curse his city. That it was his own blood was irrelevant.

 The truest argument Socrates makes is that it’s not the laws but men who wrong him, so he should obey the laws. But by obeying the law he is harming the men, by making them guilty of wronging him. And it is wrong to cause harm to those who harm you. Socrates is not being Socratic with himself. He does it so well, usually. Wonder what’s up.

 He wanted to die, and no argument could have changed this. At his trial he was given a voice to choose his own punishment, and he chose free meals for life – the appropriate response for his actions. His accuser urged death. In Crito, Socrates admits he could have suggested exile. You know, life. He talks about how ridiculous his life would be as an exile, but what does that have to do with justice? What has ridicule to do with the conduct of a righteous man? Why is public opinion a factor now, when it never mattered to him before? Irrelevant, inconsistent and illogical. Odd. Given the two posited choices, his multiple enemies chose the one that was, you know, a punishment. He arranged his death, conspired in it – a good defense, and if he didn’t get justice he wanted the greatest injustice. Doesn’t seem moderate.

 It’s not that his demon, in its silence, proved the rightness of his course. It’s that his demon, as is the wont of subtle evil beings, was truthful until the greatest harm could be done. For 2,414 years, a catastrophic argument has been supported by the authority of a man who was correct in almost everything.  Scores of millions of people have been murdered by totalitarian states because of the error.

The citizen is not the property of the state.


J

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Creepy Feeling

I haven't been active here, as once I was, save for the current and obvious project.  But I'm called to entertain the faithful readers of these pages with a report of a sort of communication that's been going on.  Every few years in the history of this blog there have been individuals who want me to be aware of them in a deeper way than is, well, normal.  If it's just some snarky punk, I'm pretty brutal.  But sometimes it's mental illness, in which case, frankly, silence is the most prudent response.  You don't know about the illness, though, for sure, unless you engage.  That's what's been happening.

Someone with an interest in arcana and a good internet connection appears to note individual words in some of the historical works I've posted, and then proceeds to dump virtually random excepts in the comments of a single post at Historic Christianity.  No rhyme or reason, no attempt at framing a context.  Now that it will be over, there will have been about 150 such comments.  No formatting or any attempt at such, very many multiple empty lines between items.  Chaotic.  Anonymous.

Below, the few comments I actually posted, with my own attempts at civility. The // represents multiple empty lines.  I offer it for what it's worth.

============


At July 8, 2015, Anonymous Anonymous said... 
As keen as I remain regarding internet socializing as something best avoided (multiple occasions of having had computers compromised, and other annoyances etc.) the misalignment of the pictured cruciform zodiac bothered me to distraction. Pardon the intervention.

[I've deleted the rest, very similar to what follows.]

At July 8, 2015, Anonymous Anonymous said... 
not relative to the post but rather than scatter notes everywhere

BABYLON

 לבב (lebab) and לב (leb), both meaning heart, come from.

 @ abarim-publications.com/Dictionary/l/l-b-b.html

 IDOLS

 Most significantly, however, maskit is used to refer to looking at "the chamber of images" in one's mind.

 (HEART / LE BAB) the mashith is the death of the self through the perversions of the maskit/imagination

 The seven headed beast of the Apocalypse represents the perversion of the reflected Seven Spirits of G_d (represented by the 7 branched menorah of the Temple @ godasagardener.com/2011/02/01/almond-tree-in-the-tabernacle: The Spirit of G_d [godliness/piety], Wisdom, etc., Isaiah ) by the imagination, that turn against the sinner at the approach of death

 At July 08, 2015, Anonymous Anonymous said... 
the following may not transpose to this format

 A/S beyond, beyond

 ____________________ ____________________

 K 1 beyond and manifest ____________________ ____________________ // C2 [Z/H] // ____________________ ____________________

 ^ ^ ^ ____________________ ____________________ // H // ____________________ ____________________

 T5 (5) etc… ____________________ ____________________ v I I ____________________ ____________________ C(9)6 > (7)C6 ____________________ ____________________ I I ____________________ ____________________ N(2)8 > (4)N8 ____________________ ____________________ I I ^ ____________________ ____________________ C2 [Z/H] B3 [D/P] MIM4 [D/P] B3 C2 [Z/H] ____________________ ____________________ I I ____________________ ____________________ G(6)7 >D04 (8)G7 ____________________ ____________________ I I ____________________ ____________________ H(3)9 > (1)H9 ____________________ ____________________ I I v ____________________ ____________________ Y5;10 ____________________ ____________________ // H ____________________ ____________________ v v v ____________________ ____________________ // C2 [Z/H] /// upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Blason_ville_fr_Toulouse_(Haute-Garonne).svg // Not gibberish - if it correctly transposed // from Ain Soph to the Kingdom (as evidenced in men of goodwill on Earth)… // The enneag. placement was there for a Sufi discussion and I chose to leave it as is // The circles of creation // Kether, Binah etc. containing the lightning strike // In the Greek sense (Plotinus the best reference) // the greater spheres reflect the qualities of Zeus/Hera Demeter/Poseidon Hera/Hades / they can be thought of as our sense perceptions - which time Cronos consumes // Apollyon and Artemis part of the principalities and powers (slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.) eclipse and sun… and so on //

 At July 09, 2015, Blogger Jack H said... 

I find your several comments to be indecipherable. We can get very much into our own particular studies, and fail to take the extra steps to avoid over-specifics and jargon. Communication must start with an attempt to be accessible. Thank you for your interest, though, and feel free...

At July 16, 2015, Anonymous Anonymous said... 

A question: // What do you mean by implying that this Tersin / Toisson fellow was Arthur (or Uther?) // His blazon was three lambs … how does this relate to the Pendragon? // www.theoi.com/Ther/DrakonKholkikos.html // … // Gettius Ursulus de Chapteuil // de Fay de Chapteuil

 At July 17, 2015, Blogger Jack H said... 
Now, Anonymous, you've left nearly 50 comments on this particular post, which seem in no way to be correlated to anything here. There appears to be much of interest in what you're leaving, and very much that is incomprehensible in its present form and lack of identifiable antecedent. Take the above comment/question for example. Nowhere in HEAVENS do I mention Tersin or Pendragon. Are your comments simply random? If they're meant to footnote some specific datum I've noted, I need a context for it to make sense. I've written millions of words, and do not remember every detail.

 At July 21, 2015, Anonymous Anonymous said... 
We can get very much into our own particular studies, and fail to take the extra steps to avoid over-specifics and jargon. Communication must start with an attempt to be accessible. // ~ // tumblr.com/search/william%20of%20gellone
[This is the picture that shows up from that address.]

 At July 21, 2015, Anonymous Anonymous said... 
William has arrived at Aigniennes. He entered the gate disturbed and lost in thought, often calling on the name of the true Father of Jesus. The porter was in a panic: “God, Father in heaven above,” he said, “what demon did this man come from? I’ve never seen a man of such stature, so ill-fashioned, so big, and so stoutly-built. Look at those shoulders, those arms and that body! I believe he's come from the depths of hell or from master Beelzebub. I wish he was in the depths of Montagu! - he would never come in here again. Holy Mary, where was such a man born?” // A few remained among the vaults, saying to each other, “We are lost! Antichrist has come among us! We will be destroyed by him.” // When the count saw this happen, and that all the monks fled at the sight of him, “God in Heaven!” said William, “What the devil have these monks seen? In my opinion they have gone out of their senses. May they all be hanged!” And then he realised what he had said, and went on: “God, what have I said? I am deceived! God, I have sinned, I want to be a monk, but my brothers have sent me out of my senses.” ... // Count William began to get angry: “God, Father who will judge the world,” he said, “I thought that I would put myself right with you and acquit myself of my mortal sins, but these people are giving me a lot of trouble. // They don’t want to approach me. But, by St Peter, it won’t do them any good! I will be a monk, no matter who gets upset about it; and I will serve and exalt the holy monks...” Then the lord began to weep. “God, Father,” he said, “have pity on me!” // cont.at Cardiff University; School of History, Archaeology and Religion // How William became a monk. cf.ac.uk/hisar/people/hn/MilitaryOrders/MILORDOCS2.htm /

At July 21, 2015, Blogger Jack H said... 
Dear Anonymous -- The above is in no way an improvement in your communication attempts. I apprehend your allegorical intent, but gnomic utterances and tertiary allusions hardly represent a striving toward accessibility. I don't publish the very much vast majority of your comments because I do not think they represent at actual attempt at responsive communication. You have intimated that some of your previous internet correspondences were problematic. I'm a disinterested observer, and I assure you that to some large degree the responsibility will be your own. I've used the words 'unintelligible' and 'incomprehensible' regarding your comments. You seem to know they arrive in a garbled form -- why send them then? Take the trouble to format them, or deliberately be an imposition upon your correspondent. You must surely know this. If you are not capable of change, no worries. Be at peace.


[The following quotes from one of my 'Psychology of Jesus' 
posts.  By "provenance"  is meant "context".]

 At July 29, 2015, Anonymous Anonymous said... 
provenance. // . // "Got it? It’s Jesus who went to a distant land to be made king. See? " // I 'see' … something entirely different. Had I presented a personal opinion, well, what is that? Whether or not one is articulate was never the point. An opinion is only worth as much as the facts it is based on… should someone agree with conceptions couched in the language of scintillating intellect, it is little more than flattery if the giver has failed to examine the facts. // In which case common courtesy requires material evidence be generously provided, so rather than occupy myself casting about for opinions to ballast a floundering theory I have done as much // in return my vision has been beset with images of foodstuffs of dubious providence and caloric content and enough vehicular pastiches to garnish a junkyard // (the occasional mountain range an excepted and welcome relief ) /

At July 31, 2015, Blogger Jack H said... 
The above seems to be an attempt at disrespect. Comments here are a privilege not a right. These posts are honest with some humor. The appropriate response is appreciation, or silence.


=============

And there was some response, which I lost while moving it here.  I regret that, because the use of the word "onerous" was unique -- my work is somehow "onerous" ... what is meant isn't clear -- he's used a big-sounding word with some sort of negative association and he thinks that's a riposte. His word usage is so stilted that I wondered if English was his native language; now I think he's just trying to sound smart.  (Son, drop the thesaurus and read good writers -- the Penguin translation of Montaigne would be a fine start.)  The lost last comment was a promise to be silent, henceforth, with some further attempt at being insulting, in parentheses.

Well.  My correspondent is either a quite socially backward young male, or a mentally ill adult male.   Because of the use of words bigger than he actually knows, like 'providence', I'm going with young.  I hope so, anyway, because social skills can be learned.

Dear Anonymous:  Yes, it's best that you don't leave any more comments.  I scan them for relevance, coherence, and honest intention, but you've seen what I think about the matter.  No insult meant, and I want to be gentle, but your communication skills are truly horrid.  Less cut and paste, more framing.  Because right now you give a sort of Ted Kaczynski impression -- whirling around in your own isolated imagination, an imbalanced flywheel tearing itself apart.  

Maybe I'm wrong, but please feel no need to correct me.  

If you have a copy of that last comment, though, I'd like to add it here ... it was precious.  

Again, I'm not trying to be unkind.  The truth just feels that way.  Again, not unkind.

Best,

J

Monday, July 6, 2015

*Babylon


Years ago when I delved into biblical prophesy I puzzled as to where the United States might be, in the contest of such great forces as Gog and the Sons of the East.  Were we perhaps the People of the Islands of the Sea?  How could such a great and godly thing as America go unremarked by the good prophets?

Now I think that we are counted as among the mere nations, no special country set apart, no people coupled in amity with Israel. How could this be?  From such a sacred and special beginning, like a city on a hill, like a family called out of the nations, like a child of the king, are we now no more than a wastrel living among pigs?

It may be, I think now, that we were never anything more than that -- a nation blessed as nations sometimes are, but with no special blessing, only of being used for a certain purpose.  A golden chamber pot is in reality no more noble than one of clay.

Admittedly, this is a dark view, and disrespectful of the highest aspirations of our history.  If however our American dream is just a fantasy, a national myth such as  every nation has, different only in our idealism -- well, there is much to be said for a myth that is an ambition, but we must know reality for what it is.  I say we must, even if reality makes us unhappy.  That's my own version of idealism: there are things more important than happiness.

There were true prophets who were not godly.  Balaam, for example.  More to the point, there were great national powers that were used for a time as an instrument of God's will, but which were condemned.  Assyrian Ninevah comes to mind, as we know it from Jonah.  More telling is Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.  What could be more filthy than Babylon?  Who could be more depraved than its king?  Yet Nebuchadnezzar was known by and himself knew God.

Is this it?  That is where we fall?  Are we Babylon, one of the many Babylons?    It may be that our increasingly erotic embrace of the mores of paganism is reversible, as a prodigal may repent and wipe off the pig shit that covers him.  The news of the day may somehow be a footnote and not a theme of our history.  Indeed, perhaps.  I don't wish to be direful, as I was in my formative years.  Optimism, pessimism, realism -- you know the studies, and who is happy.  It must be a temperament thing.  I crave reality.   Given almost every lesson of history, what does it take to reverse a civilizational trend?  Revolution, catastrophic invasion, plague, decades of famine -- you see the magnitude.  Nothing like anything in the brief history of the nation.  It's not a law of history. It's just the pattern.

 So I'm not optimistic.

The answer of course is to stop caring about idealism and work for what is attainable.  What is left for us to fight for?  It's coming as sure as abortion and gay marriage: churches required to officiate over such unions.  Unthinkable you say?  The Leftist movement against true free speech proves otherwise.  We no longer live under a Constitution with the rule of law.  Sorry, we just don't.  Law is whatever current and progressive opinion would have it to be.  If you deny it, I refer you to a June 26 Supreme Court ruling.

This is why I now come down firmly where I do.  We can't push back, and holding actions have inevitably, universally failed.  Over time, we lose, always, always.  Every victory was in battle, not in war.  Proof?  You actually ask for proof?  This is your proof: America wills that it shall never win a war.  Witness all the wars we have won, then lost.  The last one we didn't lose in this way was re Korea, and, my sweet naive friend, we will, will, will lose that one as well.  It's what we do.

This is why I have for so long been silent in these pages.  I don't want to be pessimistic, a negative voice, disloyal to what I have thought to be true.  All we have is faith, in this case a sort of hope that things are different than they seem according to the evidence.  Puts me in a bind.  So I've been silent.

Is it worth it?  To speak up?


J

Sunday, July 5, 2015

*Supremacy, Sodomy and Slavery


I have deeply wished to avoid this.  It's too much.  I find myself driven to it.  Therefore:

Last week the Supreme Court created a new right, a new institution, a new Constitution and a new country.  Apparently we, we, were asleep.  It turns out that we are the unworthy servant, given a talent which we buried; while the other side is the more worthy, the good and faithful servant to its cause, and will receive its rich reward now, regardless of what is to come.  Rather than be bold and resolute and fearless and energetic in our cause, we retreated into civility and adherence to rules and decorum, while they were brazen, fierce and successful.

Years ago for some reason in my disparate readings in history I came upon the tale of some Sheikh or Pasha or Emir who had purchased a pretty blue-eyed slaveboy and wished as was the custom to enjoy some sodomy. A Western traveler inquired of the potentate how such an insertion might be achieved, against a determinedly resistant sphincter.  Steady pounding, was the reply -- no resolve is sufficient to resist constant pressure upon such a minor muscle, designed as it is to keep things in, not out.  Test it for yourself.

I now believe it is inevitable that, given generational time, the Left will always prevail.  Erosion is a law of nature.  Attrition is the greatest general.  Degeneration is the rule of civilizations.  Entropy is universal.

Last week issued the irrefutable affirmation of the Supreme Court's supremacy, and of course at first as is my way I felt nothing.  Profound stillness, as the Spirit upon the Deep.  But I slipped the hold I have on myself and allowed emotion and judgment in, and concluded that this was truly the end of America, the end of American exceptionalism.  We are now just another country.  This fact brought only a dull depression, nothing profound, which surprised me.  About a day later I realized that my timing was wrong.  We stopped being America over forty years ago, with Roe v Wade.

Life is far more important than the institution of marriage.  We allowed the Supreme Court to well and truly assert its supremacy with that power grab, that plunge into insanity, where life itself is defined as not meaningful, given a woman's right to privacy.  As if life were not, above any other consideration, public.  Ah well, no matter.  How much less, the meaning of marriage than the meaning of life.  And conservatives are polite and will never impose, the New Testament commandment to be bold notwithstanding.  As it is the scorpion's nature to sting, it is ours to be silent and comply.

As I say, there is too much to say.  How did this perversion creep into our system?  It was inserted, like a penis, by John Marshall with his invention of Judicial Review, whereby the Court upon a merest majority may nullify any law.  Which is a good idea, in principle, but it had the effect of making the smallest, least, most inconsequential branch of our Federal system into the most powerful.  This is undeniably a profound perversion -- a check without a balance.  What business had the court to say a law is unconstitutional?  The job was to adjudicate cases under the law, not over it.  If the court deemed a law unconstitutional, would not the proper recourse have been to refer the matter back to Congress?  Breathtaking in its audacity.

Allow me to state the obvious: the Supreme Court is supreme only over our Judicial system.  It is not supreme over the Constitution, nor the Legislative nor the Executive Branch.  The President is the supreme Executive, and the two houses of Congress are the supreme Legislators.  See how that works?  No one else ever seems to have noticed this before.  There are three Supremacies, the least of which is the Court.  Andrew Jackson was a disaster and wrong about almost everything.  He was right about the Court, in his putative statement, that the Court had made its decision, now let it enforce it.  No government official takes the oath of office to support and uphold the Constitution as the Supreme Court asserts it to be -- rather, it is one's own conscience and intellect that must dictate conduct.  This very easy fact is made somehow impossible to grasp.

Precedent and custom have made this essential to be nugatory.  What remedy?  A movement  on our part for a constitutional amendment?  -- to repudiate the specific of gay so-called marriage? -- or to forbid the Supreme Court from making law and inventing so-called rights?  A hopeless cause.  Can't unring a bell, in any case.  The gays have invented a new thing, destroyed an old one.  It hath made  me mad.  We shall have no more marriage.

But here's the thing.  We cannot have judges dictating the course of our civilization.  We can't have that.  True, some three-fourths of the states had gay marriage, prior to the impositional diktat of the Supremes, but that was largely because state judges had struck down state bans on gay marriage.  See how that worked?  Now it's national.  All from judges.  So much for the fantasy of democracy.  We were fools ever to use the word.

How then shall we rein in our overlords, this rampant hyper-minority, this quintumvirate, this gang of five?  Well, simply, by each of the two now-subservient Branches of government, Executive and Legislative, asserting a right of Review over the Courts.  See the symmetry of it?  So elegant.  Marshall invented the idea, and it was a good one.  Laws need to be checked for Constitutionality, and the Supreme Court is the correct body to provide that balance.  In the same way, the Court needs to be checked.  The President checks Congress via his power of veto.  Congress checks the Executive via its control of the budget (ahem, we must suppose it to be so). Where, where, where is the check on the Court?  Mere nomination and consent is an initial step, but some of us remember how stealth-candidate Soutor  came to the bench -- approved as a conservative and manifesting as a liberal.  Initial steps alone are insufficient.

Impeachment is a theory, but it addresses wrongdoing, not incompetence or insanity.  While a justice, John Rutledge tried several times in several rivers to drown himself -- he was "much deranged" and  subject to "mad frolicks".  Henry Baldwin was confined to an asylum in his third year with "incurable lunacy".  He remained a member of the Supreme Court for another eleven years.  Nathan Clifford was described by a fellow justice as "a babbling idiot" -- not an invective, but a diagnosis; he refused to resign and died on the court.  Ward Hunt refused to resign because he wanted the penison -- he was paralyzed and could not speak; Congress voted him a pension to get him gone.  Frank Murphy bought illegal drugs from his pusher twice daily.

Therefore, Congress must assert its power to nullify (a word fraught with history) odious decisions of the Court -- as, say, Dred Scott or Plessy v Ferguson.  There was no recourse, no remedy for such perversions, save Civil War and civil disobedience unto martyrdom.  There must be some more political answer, or we are a people not free but subservient. As indeed we are, but should not be.   Likewise, the President must assert his ethical and sworn duty to uphold the Constitution as he understands it.

There are several means of amending the Constitution, but the only one that's succeeded is where two-thirds of both the House and the Senate agree to send a proposal to the state legislatures, three-fourths of which agree to make it law.  A high standard.  John Marshall did not adhere to such rigor, and I suggest and propose that no one else need do so. We need not amend the Constitution to curb the abuse.

Congress shall assert its duty, as an element of its legislative mandate, upon a quorum vote of two-thirds (or three-fourths) of both Houses, to reverse a decision of the Supreme Court which Congress deems to be obnoxious ... to a reasonable interpretation of the historical understanding blah blah blah.

Likewise, the President, as the chief law-enforcement officer of the land, has the positive duty to enforce laws enacted by Congress, and no duty to enforce laws enacted by Judges -- which in any event is an impossibility.  Because of the deeply political nature of the office, the conduct of the President will be checked by popular opinion, party politics and imminent elections.
.
Will this happen?  Yes, because my blog is a National Power and I myself am a force to be reckoned with.


J

Monday, June 8, 2015

Saturday, February 7, 2015

A Response to Steve Roth's "Hamlet: the Undiscovered Country"

I had thought I'd been away longer than this.  Just barely remembered how to log in.  I'm like that.  Indeed, I've been quiescent.  But I have my passions, and the following is a peek at one of them.  I'm currently immersed to bathyspheric depths in Hamlet, looking for the best commentaries etc, and, why, just today finished Steve Roth's Hamlet: the Undiscovered Country. (I really don't care for the ebook format.  What shall we do when there are no more books?) Being me (and I still am), I was overwhelmed with an irresistible compulsion to respond, so as I read through it I jotted down (can one jot when one types? - typped down) some various, um, responses.  I agree that it's a tad obscure for anyone who hasn't read the book, or play, but I refuse to be bound by your petty demands for conformity. (An easy way to get the full text into your brain is Kenneth Branagh's movie Hamlet.)  Anyways, this seemed like something I might as well refresh my little Blog  with, here.  So, the letter I just whizzed off to the author.  La!


**********

Greetings Steve –

 Taking you up on your H:UC ebook invitation to correspond. I had meant something brief regarding only your thesis that Hamlet is aged 16, but, well, look what happened. I just kept going, and decided to note some sundry responses, reading generously but critically – what more can we hope for? I state some of the following in a declarative rather than subjunctive mood, because it’s tiresome to write, and read, a lot of “it would appear,” “it might seem,” “one should think,” “may we suppose” ... it’s tiresome already. Also, I note issues as I go, so this is unconscionably disorganized. Oh well. At least I prof red for topys.

 I expect your opinion is intractable, as is mine, but to begin, this: If Hamlet is sixteen or so, Horatio is also, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and maybe Laertes; you assert that Fortinbras is. So it’s all teens, then? Elsinore 90210? Seems literally incredible. Teenagers, yea, eleventh graders ... high school juniors. Not reliable. Judgment questionable. Foremost on a teen’s mind is not the law’s delay or the insolence of office, but whether that pimple on his nose will be gone in time for the hop, mash, mosh or whatever the kids are grooving to nowadays. Over the decades I have dealt with very many 16 year old boys; never once met one who was a man. Kings do not habitually (or safely) use schoolboys as emissaries, agents and envoys (John Q Adams, and Alexander, and other teen prodigies notwithstanding). There is much more to say, but words words words. (If Romeo was a teen it may support your argument, but Bandello, the apparent source, has him as 20 or 21.)

 You cite Young Fortinbras, his unimproved mettle, his delicate tenderness, the (disputed) time of his father’s death, as corroborative proof of Hamlet’s most extreme youth. It’s not young Hal [Henry V] (age 16 in 1Henry IV) or Essex [sometime favorite of Eliz I] or Edward IV, it’s accomplished Hotspur [in Henry IV] who would be Fortinbras to Hamlet’s Hal. Is that clear? Hamlet is to Hal as Fortinbras is to Hotspur. (Hotspur in actually was some 20 years older than Hal.) Re F’s “unimproved mettle”, it’s not about youth, it’s the ‘heat’ and ‘fullness’ of war – get it? the mettle is hot? ( Ho ho, good one, Shakespeare! ... that young Fortinbras, always spoiling for a scrap, just like his father! Scrap mettle! Very unimproved of him.) “Delicate and tender” can refer to extreme youth only if Hamlet is willing to use the same term of himself, his mettle being “dull and muddy” but as young. Seems more likely that Hamlet is being ironic. Fortinbras, Strong-Arm, warlike, willful, is not tender and delicate, as Hamlet is not dull and muddy.

 Re Caesar and Alexander, it is not their youth that would be foremost in the minds of the Elizabethans, but their world-conquests and their untimely deaths. Essex was “young”, and recently executed at the play’s opening, but aged 35, a year younger than Shakespeare (for some reason you refer to a teen Essex in your first appendix). Youth is relative. To me, 35 is young and 16 is incunabular. Elizabeth was 30 years older than her young paramour.

 Horatio was there on the ice to see Old Hamlet frown when he smote the Polacks, which bespeaks combat experience; how long ago were those Polacks smitten? (That Horatio knows the armor, need not mean much -- perhaps it was on public display.) Likewise, Ophelia states that the mind of Hamlet, courtier, soldier, scholar -- having such an eye and ear and sword -- is overthrown. Soldier: not a metaphor, since Hamlet is a scholar, and at if not in the Privy Council, so a courtier. When list-building for character traits, items should harmonize.

 Re the authority of Quarto 1 [a pirated printing of 1603, which has the Gravedigger/Clown give dates that make Hamlet aged 16] -- the fact that it reproduces the text of many passages in Q2 [authorized, 1604] and F1 [collected works, 1623], in many places word for word, and punctuation -- it seems likely to me that it was compiled via a combination of memory, perhaps note-taking, and certainly some number of actors’ scripts – who were given their own lines only and perhaps entrance cues. So when there are significant differences, it would be, say, an actor (mis)remembering other actors’ lines. I mean, really? -- “To be or not to be, aye, that’s the point...” There it goes. This hypothetical collator probably wasn’t running the numbers, doing the math to figure how old his out-of-his-butt numbers would make Hamlet. Far less authority than you would give it, that version. I suppose I could parse those lines, 3 7 12 sexten sixteen 23 30 [various year numbers that contradict in the different texts] in a variety of not entirely depraved ways. Better to let Hamlet’s conduct etc suggest his age. Not a wispy teen.

 Hamlet is clearly called youthful and young. The age range will be debatable. But when Ophelia cites his “blown youth ” – blown means mature, full-blown, like a fully blossomed flower. This is not age 16, or 17. The maturity of a young man is well out of the teens. Indeed, we would not expect a mid-teen to have a beard to be contemptuously plucked. A figure of speech? He has a pate and a face and a nose and a throat ... but no beard? I suggest the actor, Burbage [lead actor at the Globe, who first played Hamlet] say, had a real or glued-on beard for the part, as he would have worn black. Suit the word to the action.

 A point that seems not to have been noted is in the usage of the terms student, scholar and school. Horatio is Hamlet’s fellow “student”, the only appearance of that word. Horatio is a scholar thrice and Hamlet once. Rosecrans & Guildenstern are called “schoolfellows”, and Hamlet’s intent is to go back to school, at Wittenberg. The point is, what need be they schoolboys? Why not teachers? All references to being a student and schoolfellow lay in the past; Hamlet is NOT a student, at Elsinore; current is “scholar”, which at best reads ambiguously, since staff and students are scholars, and teachers “go back to school”. “Truant” can be, and is, a joke. R&G were sent for, and came to Elsinore, but whence they came is not told – we may, but need not, presume it was from Wittenberg. Thus, R&G have graduated and are available agents; Horatio is an instructor; Hamlet wishes to go back to Wittenberg doing whatever it is he does ... study, or teach, or act in the company of the Players of that City. You outright beg the question on your p.35 (“he’s a student”).

 The Gravedigger/Clown is undeniably a sexton, regardless of variant spellings of 16 or sexton. Gravedigger is a very meaning of the word sexton. So there’s that. Parsimony and Occam’s Razor. When in doubt, settle on what is sure.

 Re the three (or seven – Q1) years of which Hamlet has taken note: an idiom of 7 years denoting, uh, the unspecified passage of a while? – the 3 years since K James I took the throne? – or the passage of the Poor Laws? ... in any case, Hamlet has spent some considerable time taking notice of political and social changes. Not something a boy would do from the perspicacious coign of his pubescent 13, or his ‘tween 9, years. Adolescent means NOT an adult, but becoming one. You would apply the three/seven years to Hamlet’s contemplation of WS’s specific life-details. I refer you to the exegetical precept, and diktat: no scripture is of private interpretation.

 Sadly, any info, chronological or otherwise, that we glean from a know-it-all and logically fallacious Clown is not secure. It is (I don’t want to say absurd, or ridiculous) unrealistic to think Hamlet is 3 years out of puberty. It is bothersome that he be 30. Both irritants come from the clown, an unreliable witness. Argal, shall we dismiss this troublesome pest and go with the many statements that Hamlet is young? Well, no, you would have the data as meaningfully obtrusive, indismissible.

[The Clown as been sexton since the day Old Hamlet overcome Old Fortinbras.  When was that?  Answers the Clown, "Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that.  It was the very day that young Hamlet was born..."  Well.  We're told right there: every FOOL will tell you this.  What will someone say who gets his facts straight?  Something else.  And one wonders what church would put a BOY in charge as sexton; there were no adults available?  Did the clown have an assistant then, as he does now?  Was it another boy?  Suggest that he's been employed for 30 years, man and boy, and after he became a man he become sexton.  Denmark is not run by kids.  All chronological data re Hamlet's age come from the Clown.  Hamlet is not 30, and he's not 16.]

Re Yorick and his stench, we take the context to be ‘rotted away’, not ‘just starting’ to rot; somehow we just know that a body doesn’t last 8 wholesome years in the ground, and only then start to rot. If the time be nine years, then the rotting is done, and whether it be 12 or 23 years after his death, the smell will be gone by nine, let alone the 12/23. So Hamlet is making a joke, or Shakespeare is adding verisimilitude for the audience. Nothing to do with 30 years or the Clown’s facility or lack-thereof with numbers.

 Re sexten/16, if you can believe it I’ve put a short but dull discussion in an actual appendix to this letter... call it a PS. But, a reality check: if the wayward memorialist of Q1 had happened to have the Clown say he was a “Foremen” rather than a “Sexten”, would that make Hamlet Foureteene rather than Sixeteene?

 Via punctuation you can make the sexton say he’s been at it 16 years, and he’s 30 years old. Via idiosyncratic and highly elliptical punctuation (not at all natural to the text, despite contrary assertions), which amounts to a dialect and a soliloquy. Why not then a dialect of pronunciations? First and second clown, after all. Comical rustic bumpkin and so on. Look at how they pronounce words! What a scream! I’m just saying.

 Given that his six known signatures have five spellings, none of which are “Shakespeare”, that WS should write or permit to be written sexton as sexten etc. is no wild surmise. Kind of seems like what he’d do, in fact. Sixteen certainly can be spelled sexten: 

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED46870&egs=all&egdisplay=open

 A shaky sort of backward reasoning allows us to suppose, then, that sexten might be spelled sixteen. Shakespeare wasn’t an antiquarian or a philologist. But he hyperloved wordplay, and didn’t mind being obscure. What might we expect of a man who writes with a feather.

 Re John Shakespeare’s “spiritual testament”, as it is called, I quote Peter Ackroyd’s ‘Shakespeare: the Biography’, p. 25: “It has been shown to be a standard Roman Catholic production, distributed by Edmund Campion, who journeyed to Warwickshire in 1581 and stayed just a few miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. ... It was printed or transcribed, with blanks left for the specific details of the testator. ... In this Catholic testament there is reference to the danger that ‘I may be possibly cut off in the blossome of my sins.’” The boilerplate document was not unique to William’s father, so need have no special resonance with the son. Shakespeare was simply aware of Campion’s document.  [Roth on his p.47 says "blossom(s) of my sin(s) is not a commonplace; my searches reveal no similar usages in any Elizabethan literature."]

 Typo p. 55: you mean “jibe” not “jive”. And you’re too absolute (for your then-adduced evidence) re the “at most two months” at sea ... “longest possible”. How about two and a half months, rounded down? How about something happening Jan 1, and speaking about it March 31? – two months. Hamlet’s “sudden” return may mean unexpected, rather than quick. The voyage was aborted only in that it didn’t end at England; no necessary reference to duration; so “certainly less than a week” simply misstates the case.

 When has Hamlet ever been in a hurry? A couple of months at sea accounts for his teenage attitude adjustment, as you will. The “checking of his voyage” (a falconry term meaning “turned away from the purpose”) may have been noted in Hamlet's letter, which is notable to Claudius. ‘Most Divine Potentate of the Infinite Nutshell Prison! Harken Thou! I, Hamlet the Dane, herein and -with and -al inform Your Puissant and Beautified Glory that the Sacred Envoy to England is aborted, and I hawklike intend not to complete it! Nay, rather, ‘pon the nonce I am suddenly returned to thy Boreal Littorals after lo these several months, maybe a month and half rounded-up, or perhaps two technically-calendar months but really closer to three, I can’t be sure, I’ve been preoccupied, what with all these ghosts and pirates I’m always dealing with!’ Something like that? 

Just playing now, but R&G “hold their course for England” could be King of England, and course meaning ‘fate’ ... they meet their destiny with that king; they vaguely “go to it” because Hamlet doesn’t yet know the outcome. Yeah, I know. But of your questions, most important, and neglected, is How did the English Ambassador arrive 1 day after Hamlet, to announce the deaths? It is impossible that there not have been a significant delay. It’s not a one-day trip by sea, here to there, and back. (It was a three day horse-ride from London to S on Avon; messenger-time from Wittenberg to Elsinore was 7 days.) It is not impossible to interpret the letter as allowing the passage of an infinitude of time. Perhaps I exaggerate slightly. (Laertes may already have been in Denmark, perhaps gathering an army for a coup plotted by spymaster Polonius; and there are weird sisters involved, and calibans.)

 (For linear clarity you might put your evidence for a sudden return in an appendix, not losing the discussion but more clearly supporting your following 38 days with the pirates.)

 Re Caesar’s 38 days with the pirates, if Shakespeare wanted events to transpire between Twelfth Night and Valentine’s Day, it could be at most 39 days – the pirates could have taken Hamlet on the first rather than the second day, and delivered him anytime short of Feb 14. For S to make it a deliberate echo of Caesar, he would have counted off days on the calendar, as you did, and been just as tickled at the opportunity. It’s the kind of thing a clever person might do, but it’s meaningless; it took 400 years for anyone to notice? Ah, the energy I’ve wasted on that sort of game.

 Re Ophelia’s flowers, well when do flowers come, in Denmark. Mid or late March? Then it may be real flowers. Otherwise, “fantastic”. Paper flowers, dried, herbs, twigs, crayon drawings or just crayons ... what is not the case is the mentally ill, pantomiming object interaction. That’s bad theater. The Nicol Williamson film of Macbeth has mad Lady M pushing a phantom-Macbeth out of the room. No. “Glassy stream” means “still”.

 Re Gertrude’s age: Claudius’ public naming of Hamlet as his heir is an artless complication which must later be retracted, if he’s planning to get a dynasty upon a nubile Gertrude. If, at her age, the heyday of the blood is tame – well, her sexual urge is manifest, so what shall this mean but her menopause? – which fits a Hamlet born to a teen mother, 30 years prior. (I have no problem with an, um, impregnable Gertrude. Is it Dover Wilson who so stresses Hamlet as heir?) The Oedipal issue is deeply unconvincing. Shakespeare would have known it only as incest, which Hamlet is so very incensed against. One might suppose this to be a conversion reaction, but Freud was wrong about almost everything.

 You have it that Denmark controlled “a good chunk of Norway’s territory”. This may be true, and is true historically, but the text doesn’t say so. Old Fortinbras lost some holdings under contention, but why must they have been in Norway proper? – if that’s what you mean to imply by “Norway’s territory”. All “those lands which he stood seized of” could be duchies and cities in Poland or Saxony or etc. Had Fortinbras of Norway seized lands in his own Norway? Only maybe; maybe Denmark, maybe Sweden, maybe who knows where. This is just a point of clarity; of course Denmark is an Empire. Claudius is a negotiator, subtle, and my supposition is that the scars upon England were inflicted by Old Hamlet, the warrior. Claudius does not say, “under MY Danish sword,” or “under the sword of MY Danes”. Shakespeare doesn’t show Claudius in such a light.

 That Horatio the outsider should be more tuned in to local politics than are the officers Marcellus and Bernardo, when Hortatio doesn’t even know local custom re incessant wassail-cannon-blasting, tells us that Horatio is there in these instances to allow plot explication for the groundlings. Surely Denmark is unrestful, but soldiers know gossip. It’s a narrative device, not a hint at allegiances. If Hamlet is 16, he is cadet age, and would train with those of like ability; if officer age, with officers. Falconry cries are exchanged between those who know the sport, whether they hunt together or not – Hamlet exchanged such cries with French falc’ners maybe? Swiss Guard were royal guards, de rigueur. (It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s that the strongest case is made by acknowledging and answering objections.)

 Dover Wilson observed long ago that Hamlet was observed during the To Be speech. Hamlet was hardly ever alone. [Hirsh link dead.] If Hamlet knew he was observed, betrayed by Ophelia, prior to the Nunnery outburst, then he’s just being needlessly cruel to her at that point. He is civil until then – which per Wilson is the point the spies are suspected and he tests her by asking where her father is. In “The Heart of Hamet,” Bernard Grebanier has it that “To be” is NOT a contemplation of suicide; I would have it in such a case as an assessment of the deadly risk associated with deadly action: “To get killed, or not to get killed” (which really does work much better). “It lacked form a little” best refers not to Hamlet’s preceding soliloquy, but to his raging with Ophelia ... because, you know, it lacked form a little.

 “The officers join with Horatio in duty to Hamlet, not to Claudius” -- because Horatio is Hamlet’s friend. A friend of Claudius would have reported the ghost to Claudius. Horatio is recruited by the officers not because of his allegiance, but because of his scholarship.

 Claudius committed the perfect crime, and only his conscience accuses him. No doubt the corpse of the viper was produced, a la Antony & Cleopatra. Claudius doesn’t trust Hamlet, but it’s not because he fears “that Hamlet knows something he’s not revealing,” but a coup. Two months prior he’s against sending a merely morose sonephew to Wittenberg; now he will send him mad to England. At no point so far is Claudius malevolent – aside of course from that offstage background stuff, adulterous incest and fratricidal regicide. Point is, the sea air should do Hamlet some good, and it does – if England does him harm, well that would just be a shame.

 There’s no “power play” between Claudius and Hamlet. At most Hamlet is playing quibbling and adolescent word games to unsettle Claudius, which Claudius keeps deflecting. When power is played, Claudius has it all. Off to England, not Wittenberg. That word games are adolescent doesn’t mean people grow out of them ... Shakespeare didn’t.

 Claudius the “cutpurse” isn’t about Hamlet’s ambitions but the killer’s motive – he killed for the crown. Hamlet evolves and upon his return he cites his electoral hopes. Of course Hamlet is aware that his uncle became king. But too much is made of his supposed right. Under an Electoral, non-hereditary Nordic constitution he had no more right than Claudius, and less skill. Sure, all us rabble wanted young King Hamlet, cuz he’s so handsome and popular. But as prudent Electors know, men not boys lead warring kingdoms. More, if Hamlet were underage and had clear rights, Claudius would be regent.

 Polonius’s reference to confinement would never be about prison – banishment to a country estate was the practice, among non-Borgias. Too bad they didn’t confine Ophelia. Laertes is most surely not a natural ally of Claudius, however much Polonius is. He is after retribution, and so makes an alliance. Since Gertrude’s hope was that Ophelia would be Hamlet’s wife, Claudius, so bound to his wife’s pleasure, seems not to have feared an heir from that union. Why Polonius sought to suppress a marriage that would so advance his house does speak to his loyalty to Claudius ... unless P has plans for Laertes. But that’s getting into “children of Lady Macbeth” territory. What is clear is that neither Polonius nor Laertes wants Hamlet as an inlaw. Had WS meant for us to suspect it, Claudius would have been made to imply such a marriage was most retrograde to his desire.

 A pregnant Ophelia is much stronger speculation than a 16 year old Hamlet. Lots of sexual innuendo; only one “sixeteene”. If Ophelia’s death were witnessed, as by Gertrude, there would be no doubt re suicide. If G were a witness of the broken bough, floating clothes, songs and quick sinking, a queen in her gown may not be expected to jump in after for a rescue.

 Your point re quick marriage disinheriting Hamlet is interesting. But that caudle has already done its besmirching, so what can Laertes mean? – especially if he is so tightly wound in Claudius’s camp? Nothing to do with inheritance.

 In your first appendix you give four reasons for the textual disagreement re Hamlet’s age: a needed revision, meaningless data, WS’s bad memory, or an age revision that wasn’t rationalized in previous acts. A fifth choice is that the clown is a clown who talks just to be talking and is not meant to be taken seriously (meaningless data, but serving to make a fool a fool), and a sixth is the Q1 cobbler just got it wrong, bad memory or bad penmanship or what have you. A seventh is that the obvious disagreement between whatever age the clown would have, and the Hamlet-actor’s manifest age before the audience, got a laugh – you had to be there ... you could see him counting backwards to see how old the clown would make him? the look on his face ... priceless! An eighth, likewise, is that the manifest absurdity of the age 16 was an outright and ever so clever joke, the key to which was lost with the season; or an inside joke by one author for the benefit of some other(s), as per the Theatre War – given the graveside clown-head, such a reference only needs proof to be true! (Ah, those troublemakers, Truth & Proof. How easy everything would be...)

 You may wish to move some of your Appendix D into the text prior to your Hallowmas - 12th Night - Shrovetide discussion. It reframes the discussion from Shakespeare as calendar wonk to him being plugged in to deep tradition and normative practice. [“The Stars of Hamlet” “Usher” “illustration” links dead.]

 I have taken Horatio’s “hundred count”, the officers’ “Longer, longer” and the “Not when I saw it” response to mean: on the previous two nights the officers saw it for longer, but on the third night, when H saw it, only a hundred. Perhaps everyone knows this and I’m being obtuse as to some other mystery. Purpose would be to indicate the ghost had a goal, and could/did hang around all night ... waiting for Horatio or Hamlet no doubt.

 Re the star Alderamin in the shoulder of Cephus, and its being rubbed off on the Globe at Middle Temple: Just playing here, but Middle Temple remains from “The Temple”, headquarters of the Knights Templar, which puts one in mind of the freemasons, which brings us back to Al Deramin, the strong shoulder and forearm of Cephus. (Let’s not think about Fortinbras.) Absolute speculation allows us to assert with overweening certainty that over the centuries freemasons have wrought some solitary rite which entails a right thumb firmly pressed upon such and such a spot of such and such a celestial globe, thereby wearing away a certain star. Who can prove that it’s not true? Argal... (I think Bernardo’s Star is just a poetical conceit.)

 There. I got that off my chest. Some points. Hamlet’s being a mid-teen is not a minor point. You provide many interesting thoughts worthy of discussion, but haven’t I gone on long enough? More of a conversation thing anyway, and given how reclusive I am, well, what an artist the world loses in me.

 Kind Regards,

 Jack H

 And as promised, tah dah:

 PS: Re sexten, your discussion (http://princehamlet.com/sixeteene.html) certainly proves that 16 had variant spellings. We can be etymologically sure that 16 would never reasonably be spelled sixtOn. The EE sound must be somehow preserved. But SEXTON is another matter. Here https://books.google.com/books?ei=qH7EVKPPPKvIsATytIC4DQ&id=3-QhAQAAIAAJ&dq=variant+spelling+sexten&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=sexten Sexton appears to be rendered Sexten. In any case, it could – not need be, but could – be spelled as a phonetic or homonym sixteen. I adduce the history of the word: Medieval Latin sacristanus, Old French segrestien, Norman French segrestein, Middle English sekesteyn (and sacristan).

 What a Stratford dialect might favor I do not know; but what was Shakespeare’s inclination? To go for wordplay, ambiguity and equivocation (for which he was not hanged). The final syllable of sexton is clearly mutable: long A, short A, long I, perhaps long E, and I know not what; was it accented? – was it a schwa?

Surname variants are Sexten and Sextain; Sexstone, Sexon, Seckerson, Secretan, Sekerstein, Segerstein, Sekersteyn, Segrestan and Secrestein - here 

https://books.google.com/books?id=5sVq7VQlNwcC&pg=PA2799&lpg=PA2799&dq=reaney+sexten&source=bl&ots=hQlK5IwFJi&sig=tlESSkeIDpuO-iBbqRT8lXwgH4g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=g4vEVNvIOpHGsQSf2IGIBA&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=reaney%20sexten&f=false

 And here 

https://books.google.com/books?id=IGYEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA129&dq=variant+spelling+sexten&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qH7EVKPPPKvIsATytIC4DQ&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=variant%20spelling%20sexten&f=false

 we have surname variants of Sexten as Saxton; and as Sexdecim, which rolls into Sextenedale and Sixteendale as placenames after Yorkshire families; Sexdecim has the placename S. Valles; Sixtedale, Sixtendale, Sexendale, Sixendale etc. all are troublesome Brit variant of Thixendale, “a village on the wolds in the East Riding.” Hm. Is it valid to analogize surnames, placenames and jobnames? That is the question. If it be, well then. Observe that in this usage, of placenames, sex is rendered six, contra your Kindle p. 29.

 JH

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Hope

Of course I've said it, innumerably, before.  Honesty, about things I'm honest about, is easy.  My relationship with God is extremely bad.  I am ... immobilized with resentment.   He is waiting patiently for submission.  I say: can't I just be given mercy, and he says: you had it for many years.  I say: patience is not mercy, and he is silent, enigmatically.  I say: how about relenting and see how grateful, thankful I can be.  He says: no, now.  I curse him, and refuse, yet, to die.  He offers a bit more pain, and I have no choice but to accept.  Thank you, God, for this pain.

What do you do when God does not believe your promises?

The irony is not lost upon me.  My own immune system, which I have tended so carefully for a lifetime, is turned against me, broken, piercing me, riven, rent, wracked, ruined.  We are allowed no other refuge.  And I curse in my anger.  My strength is my weakness.  And I curse again.  Because I have been, always really, so utterly imbalanced, then imbalance shall be my undoing.  Oh, no, I appreciate the craft of it all. Thank you, God, for such artful lessons.

My God is the God of implacability.  My God is the no-win God.  No-win, I mean, for me.  No win for him either, of course, since he's not playing a game.  My god is, of course, not the real God -- part of my imbalance again.  This One is modeled after my father, a hard and untender man, to me, very little more than a judge, commandment giver, punisher.  The mantra of my childhood was, "who did this?" -- barked as an angry imperative. Likewise, my brothers: to me, brother is a word synonymous with betrayer.  No matter ... everyone suffers.  Somewhere into this imbalanced idol I have to wedge Jesus.  You know, so God is not a monster, or Satan.  My theogeny is incomplete.  

I have friends, but we do not speak in any meaningful way.  So I remain isolated and deeply discouraged.  I choose this.  It is the outworking of free will.  

I am undertaking heroic interventions, re regaining my health.  I haven't had a bad carb since March.  I'm juicing greens and sprouts everyday.  I haven't cooked anything to speak of in a month.   I eat -- well, drink -- clay.  It's a detox thing.  And so on.  We shall see.  It had been digging into me for a year and a half, so I can't expect a few weeks or months to undo the problem.  Call it a test of the natural-healing beliefs that I've been open to all my adult life.  At least it's not cancer -- not a fatal thing, so if it's all lies, this natural healing thing, the only harm would be in the futility of it.  But perhaps it will work.  I'm using this test as a test.  Chemotherapy has to remain only as a last resort.  I suppose I'm not willing to suffer forever.  But maybe I am.  But if I'm not, and healthfood is a lie, well then Obamacare will save me.  And I will have been proved wrong in yet another core belief.


J

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Things As They Are

If we say, for example, "the Republican Party", what is meant?  Most, we  must mean the Party that does not fight.  Whether from a lack of conviction, or from enervation, or complacency, it's not so much a one-sided fight, or a war of attrition, as a mudslide, faster than continental drift but just as universal.  Show me a revolution, and I'll show you degeneration.  What can we expect of a party? -- that it stop degeneration?  As much to suppose human nature can change.  Only individuals can change, and that, mostly, only after a searing of the soul.

I started this blog some years ago because I needed a place to express myself that was socially acceptable and unchallenged -- a volunteer audience, no peril of me gauchely intruding.  I stopped writing here some seasons ago because the tone was becoming unrelentingly oppressive, re my health and the direction of this country.  But my need to vent is legitimate.  If Job can write a book extolling his own righteousness, I suppose I, like Jeremiah, like Jesus, can weep for Jerusalem -- like David for Absalom, like Peter for himself.

The Party of Lincoln, formerly the Whigs, was one of national expansion and improvement.  No fear of big government -- but government concerning itself only with roads and canals and bridges, and those details specific to their times, such as tariffs and coinage.  A party that understood that making money is what must have been meant, by the pursuit of happiness.  Not materialism, but material turned to human purposes.  Seems, to me, an approach consonant with reality.  Because the individual is important, slavery was odious.  But this importance is honored as a function of the general welfare.  My but doesn't that Constitution have a lot of applications?

The Party of Roosevelt, TR, Progressive, is certainly Republican, as the Radical anti-slavery wing was Republican -- because the alternative was the Democrat Party, drunk like the Whore of Babylon on the blood of the oppressed, grossly pandering to the ravenous rabble.  What's that I imply?  The working man is somehow ignoble?  Please, it's not hard to follow.  The self-seeker is ignoble.  The generous is great of heart.  Thus patriotism is not about love but about sacrifice.  Takes it out of the realm of feeling and into that of action.  Feelings ... like a woman, a child ... like a Democrat.  I jest of course.  It is necessary to be complete.

So Republican progressivism attempted the individual welfare -- using the corrective power of government to correct corporate monopolism.  Monopolies will always lead to corruption and abuse, whether corporate, or labor, or government.  There must always be checks and imbalances.  There must always be a court of redress, an agent of succor, a god to oppose a titan.  What is wisdom, but an appropriate response to an ambiguous situation?  Reality has only two elements: people, and things.  Happiness lies in the balance.

Now we find an America that is unspeakably mutilated.  What nation does not defend its borders? Empires that fail in this, fall.  Nations that fail are subsumed.  In Obama's Niagara of scandals and incompetences, this latest, the Children's Crusade, is among the most shameful.  Betray us, by releasing literal disease, TB and scabies and hitherto undiscovered mountain/jungle contagions, into literally unprepared communities.  Yes, a monumental human tragedy, brought on of course by the invitation to, well, just come.  But of all the things that can be said of this, the most heart-rending is that it is unconstitutional.  Because the US Constitution, with its institutions and its rule of law, is/was the only material salvation the world has/had.  Everything else, throughout history, has been whim -- the righteous pagan's striving for harmony, answered always, as a function of the passage of time, by the passion of the barbarian.

I may speak here, I may, of such merry follies as gay marriage and recreational drug use, legalized.  My disgust has been inchoate and remains unarticulated.  If I do speak, be prepared for a jeremiad of unrestrained vitriol.  Somehow my country has ceased to exist.  Orphaned, widowed, bereft, traduced, betrayed, beaten, raped and robbed, infected, possessed by swine, vampiric, changeling.  Well, this might happen to any country.  American exceptionalism?  We are not excepted from the ruinous consequences of unwatchfulness.

If the wolves creep in and devour our children, it must be because we wished it so.  Was the night not full of howling?  Might we not have closed and barred the door?  Just as hope is not a plan, nor luck a skill, neither is regret a remedy.  When it's too late, the only vigorous action is revenge, which is not the redoubt of a noble spirit.  Passive acceptance, resignation, perseverance under duress ... examples of varying edification to future generations, but no remedy for present evil.

Evil is the word.  What have you done?  What have you done?  You should have fought.


J

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Godz Fuul Dot Com

No, I'm not really back.  But I've gotten a few emails wondering if I'm, well, alive.  I'm alive and kicking, albeit with only one leg.  The other one, the knee, it's not so great.  I won't darken the air with details about my degenerative health issue.  But there are a few things to say.  Phrase-maker that I am, it occurred to me that this is either a tragedy, or ironic, depending on whether or not there is ultimate meaning in the universe.  The other thing is:

I have been in open rebellion against God since the early Aughts.  I am a publicly optimistic person, but inclined to private bitterness (this blog has been considered private).  So when tragedy overtook me and mine, lo those many years ago, I didn't handle it with equanimity.  Well, as I say, if there is meaning in the universe, then God shepherds those he has chosen.  Tough luck for everyone else.  Part of that shepherding includes chastening.  We know the parable Jesus tells about leaving the flock to go after the wayward sheep.  What Jesus didn't say was that it was a shepherd-industry practice, for a sheep that continually wandered off, to break its leg.  Can't get to far, hobbling.  As I happen to know.

It's not, or need not be, punishment.  It's chastening, to get attention from the willful, toward what is important.  It's a nice difference, between punishment and chastening.  The form may be the same, and the intent, and the outcome.  Neither is about pain alone.  The difference lies in the relationship.  Punishment is about justice as much as correction.  Chastening is just about learning.  So what came to me, last week or so, was, as these things sometimes do come, with the clarity of a resonant voice, this simple and super-obvious fact:  God is not mocked.  See?  That's what I've been doing, for many years.  My blog is riddled with it.

God has been patient.  I don't even think he's mad at me.  But if there is meaning to my infirmity, it is in the fact that now, finally, God has my attention.  I said, decades ago, to a nice guy who was confused about God, that it's great to think of God as a friend, but you'd better think of him as God, too.  Well, talking is easy.  But in my case it takes constant pain and the inability to, oh, run, or walk down steps, to listen to the things I already know.  My genius is surpassed only by my stupidity.
 
I do have a plan, another plan.  Everything I've done so far has been ineffective, so the plans, the inconvenience, necessarily become more extreme.  Now it's very strict detox.  I already cut out literally every bad carb -- they are inflammatory.  No joy.  Next level, then: detox.  Serious green juicing, and bentonite clay (I won't elaborate), and a few other things.  I'll write a detailed case history, if it works.  If not, I'll spew bitterness like a volcanic mudhole.

To my amazement it turns out to be very easy to publish on Kindle.  Some years ago I edited the earlier part of Forgotten Prophets into manuscript form, and then, being me, did absolutely nothing with it. Last effort was 4 years ago, per the save-dates on my computer files.  But now I've uploaded it onto Kindle.  What, $6.95.  To make even one sale would take marketing.  That's unlikely to come from me.  But it's there, for posterity to discover, in a far more manageable format than the inchoate outpouring of the blog itself.

What's that? -- you'd be edified and delighted to read it?  Of course you would.  You may find it HERE -- under the inexplicable title of "Godz Fuul Dot Com: ...".  Why not "Forgotten Prophets Dot Com"?  Because I am a marketing genius.  Oh, there is no actual website by that name.  I suppose I should lock it in, but if there's any rush to beat me to it, it would just be malice.  Who could possibly bear me ill will?  You can "Look Inside" at the first few entries.  I'm not displeased.

J

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Human Nature

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is a cornerstone, capstone, keystone of understanding the universe as it is. The position and the velocity of an electron, say, cannot both be known. To measure one is to change the other. Observation is active, not passive. It is not only a participant, but a key player. Einstein loathed this idea, and made numerous attempts to disprove it. Eventually he devised a thought experiment whereby it could be shown that even though the two attributes, of position and velocity, could not both be known, they did both exist. The import being that the wave aspect of an electron was an artifact of an incomplete theory, quantum mechanics, rather than a manifestation of actual reality.

The pragmatic response to this was, per Wolfgang Pauli, “One should no more rack one’s brain about the problem of whether something one cannot know anything about exists all the same, than about the ancient question of how many angels are able to sit on the point of a needle.” Very pragmatic. Einstein’s response was that reality is what it is, regardless of what observation can determine at any given moment. Reality is innate. A falling tree makes a noise, whether or not anyone hears it. As opposed to the idea that, not only is there no noise, if unobserved, but there is no tree, or forest, or sustaining continent. Observation manifests the universe.

So, two intellectually antagonistic worldviews. My response is that nothing can ever be unobserved. The universe is just a set of dimensions in which sundry behaviors occur, like a movie on a screen -- playing out not for the attention of the players, but for an audience not on the screen. Call it what you will -- I would call it God.

If so, then quantum mechanics is certainly incomplete. It fails to factor in the idea that it is not observation, but second-level observation, that limits certainty. That first-level observation, divine, is what calls into being, and sustains, the universe. Truly, what is unobserved would not exist. It’s just that there is no such thing as something that is unobserved.

Not helpful, though, my quibble, unless it answers the dilemma in the controversy under discussion. We cannot after all argue the mind of God. Falling trees and dancing angels take us only so far. But to exclude the question, to suppose that because we cannot measure something, therefore we should not trouble our minds about it, is, if nothing else, deeply unscientific. To suppose we can never find the answer is to say we should not look. Sounds like church doctors, refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope because they already know the answer. Thus, Einstein is the more noble in his approach.

It seems, though, that to transcend the uncertainty of this universe, we have to view it from outside. Rather a supernatural requirement. Needing physics to become metaphysics is too great a demand to put on a physicist, though. Physics, requiring measurement, observation, reproducibility -- scientific method -- cannot evolve into something else and yet remain what it is.

So. The universe plays out its drama upon the stage, the screen, of a stretchable, relativistic space. The ultimate … Ultimate Watcher sees it all, position and velocity -- proscenium arch and painted sets and scene changes and the artifice of the entertainment. The players see none of this -- perceiving only the action and emotion of the drama of which they are a part. They may focus, as a character, upon the action, and remove themselves from the emotion -- cold and analytical, that fellow. They may focus on the emotion rather than the objective -- we all know people like that. Thus, position or velocity, but not both completely. You cannot fully participate and observe.

Both views are correct, relativity and quantum. It’s not just that they have a different focus, macro and micro. For all that the maths of one become irrational when applied to the other, the contradiction is one of misapplied tools -- a radio telescope for an electron microscope. Yes, of course there’s more to it than this. But everything is metaphors.

A few weeks ago some friends held a sort of intervention for me. I say it jokingly, and it’s quite witty, but truth be told. I spent a good while in discussion with my son, who is one of the few people to whom I will listen, and one of the few who dares challenge me. Long story short, after some probing and self-examination I came to the question of how is it possible for someone to change. And of course the application to myself. The answer I got was … well I can’t find a brief way to say it. Disturbing, and sad. Posit a question about the nature of life itself, abundant and joyful. I have two responding questions: does it matter, and am I worth it. Apathy and self-loathing. That’s what made me sad -- to see how defeated I am, in my soul.

The quandary of every drug addict. Wanting to change. In love with the poison. Well, first, it’s hard to do these things alone. But actions come from ideas, but ideas change through actions. Whether you want to or not, and regardless of belief, do what is right. If we are players on a stage, we will act out the drama. We don’t know the script. We only know our character. In this dialectal universe, uncertain, velocity or position, emotion or action, loathing or love, free will or predestination, the free choices we make must count as destiny.

It’s odd how the idealists are pragmatic, and the realists are idealists. The quantum mechanics school supposed that there is no electron, it’s just a Platonic potentiality, until it is measured, so let’s not worry about it -- dancing angels. Einstein maintained that there is a concrete reality regardless of observation, and this matters regardless of our being able to know it. The universe seems to be more quantum than relativistic, deep down, deepest down. So it seems, to us. But unobserved electrons exist, regardless. There is always an observer. What shall we trouble our heads with? I’ve offered many paired-opposites here. What is the opposite of apathy and self-loathing?

I had hoped to come to a practical answer, a distinction and application of the limited observer, a quantum observer, that would rationalize the paradox. We see electrons as waves until we actually see them, but by turning an electron into a point we get position, a snapshot, and not a movie. The blur of motion is lost in the fast-shutter of a clear still image. But this is just more metaphor, certainly not original; the thesis and antithesis resolve in a synthesis, surely, here, of God. In other words, the answer is metaphysical. That is, unanswerable. As with all things, uncertainty is answered only, always, and ultimately by faith.

 Most unsatisfying.


 J

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Hump

Is there something I wanted to say? Some attempt to convey a meaning, some thought or feeling otherwise utterly covered by impassive flesh in stoic visage? Perhaps the celebration, acknowledgment of an anniversary? Solemn and sacred event of lifeshaking import. So often though conception goes unobserved, and we enjoy the fruition much later without concern regarding causation. Perhaps the onset of my undoing lies deep in the past, physical, psychical or spiritual. Who can say. I have to resign myself now, though, to the seemingly obdurate fact that I am ruined, physically.

 Have you had the amusing experience of observing me in motion? It’s quite comical. I hobble. A little hop, or a slow prance, high stepping and careful footfall. Put it to music and add witty commentary and it would be classic. I’m a clown.

Truth be told, I am ashamed. I mask it, bury it, subdue it with anger or humor or stoicism, but I do not feel, no longer feel like a complete man. I got a hint of something equally deep, or moreso, when I was looking into painkillers. I have refused for a lifetime to drug myself, but I’m getting past that. One must after all function. And in my reading I see that nsaids have a number of side effects. Well I knew that. One of the problems is possible erectile dysfunction. Potential loss of potency? As remote a concern to me as spontaneous breast-development. But when I read it, I thought, oh, I don’t want that. Is this what people, men, have to be concerned about? Gut fat and impotence and balding and visible decay before its time? Well now I am crippled, and so I must learn empathy from my own vulnerability, rather than from a tender heart.

It is an unarguable fact that God is incompetent. Just can’t get done what needs doing. Only capable of one thing, administering his own will to the exclusion of any other. Sort of a monomania. We hear, persistently, of his goodness. Also unarguable. From whom all goodness flows. But not all that flows is goodness. There are other wellsprings. In the world, we drink where we may and are inevitably polluted. God in the by and by will set all things right, but that includes the separating of sheep from goats. Oh well. Ho hum. Lost sheep are found, and speckled sheep are in the same fold as white. If I have to wait until I’m dead to walk without five or six different limps, I shall bide my time in rejoicing and good works.

If the blackness of pain stretches out like the shadow of the moon in front of the sun, ‘tis but a thorn in the side, to humble the flesh and its pride. Life? Life is that thing we hold on to even when we no longer know why. Ashes are sweetness. Morning brings renewal. You will not hear my actual voice raging, you will not see me break things or throw things or commit violence. I rage, I admit, in solitude, but I don’t break things. Hardly ever. Years and decades might pass, between such occurrences. I do not pretend, I don’t paste a false smile upon my lips, because I think pretense is dishonest. It would be more thoroughly honest of course to communicate, confide, seek counsel and comfort in fair fellowship, but you must know by now that it isn’t only my lower extremities that are crippled.

It will not be an insult to those I care about, if I say there is no person I feel comfortable confiding in, to reveal not just circumstances, physical details, but the actual degree of my despair. I know in fact I’m incapable of it. I am certain that only sobs and gasping are available to me. So I keep my communication confined to the level of words only, that which is expressible. For me to trust anyone deeply enough to reveal how crippled I really am, it would feel like death. I’d rather be dying, than actually die.

Well, not utterly ruined. I have a few plans. Swimming, cold and hot, would no doubt help. I wish I weren’t so crazy. The doctor I went to mentioned chemotherapy. Before that, if I can manage it, ice baths. A shock to the system severe enough to reset the immune system? Just a theory, but that’s what I’m good at. Nothing else I’ve tried, and it’s a lot, has made an appreciable improvement. And I expect I’ll have to go on a long, quite long juice fast. If that doesn’t work, I suppose I might fast outright. My thinking is to so stress the body that the immune system stops attacking me and gets its act together. I did a total ten day fast many years ago, and it’s not so very hard. But I don’t want to lose a lot of weight. One of the times I lost one of my boys, I accidentally stopped eating, out of grief, and got into the 150s. Pounds. I’m 6 4. So I know how to not eat. What’s that? You think my priorities are confused? Well that’s your opinion.

Every morning I wake up, unrefreshed, but somehow, stupidly, hopeful. I test my limbs, my hips, knees, toes, somehow expecting the problem to be gone. It’s not unreasonable. I’m doing this to myself. It’s my immune system. My disappointment amuses me. What a fool. God and his refining fire. It’s my heart’s one desire. Burn now, or burn later. Such great expectations he must have of me, to be so patient and so unrelenting.

I just wish he weren’t silent, or rather so general in his communication with me. Unreasonable to expect visions, and the purpose of these trials requires that they include no comfort. The eloquence of wretchedness. God isn’t a moron, but you’d think he’d be able to find some other tool.

I am honest, but I’m not completely honest. I do know what is demanded of me. I just don’t want to do it. God speaks, with complete clarity, through conscience. I hate that.

I am ashamed of myself, my body, my health. I don’t want people to see me like this. Most members of my family have not seen me for, well, a couple of years. I’m supposed to be healthy.

---------

Huh. I wrote that yesterday. Today is another day, and as God is my witness I’ll never be angry again, for a little while. I wasn’t going to put this previous up. I write this way more than on anything else, now. Complain complain complain. I know God is bored with me, and you’d be too, if you had to endure a fuller presentation of my bitterness. But I’m bitter. Why, oh why can’t I make you see that. There are other facets to my semi-preciousness. Just recently in fact I got done celebrating one. My intellectual arrogance. Here, let me educate you on the matter.

More than two decades ago I lured some Jehovah’s Witness to my home to argue theology with them. I was like that in those days. Later the internet came along, and I posted this: Cross or Stake. No need to read it; it’s highly specific and on a frankly incidental topic -- was the Cross a cross, or a stake. JWs, you know, have some odd passions. Well, so do I. I am pleased to suppose that my discernment leads me to reality. Be that as it may, searches and surfers do find their way to that blog and that post, and today for the first time someone left a comment. “You are in serious error.” Etc.

And I responded, and he, and I, and he, and so on. Comments.  It’s irksome, the discourtesy, when people just leave comments spouting their own view without addressing the actual evidence I’ve laid out. They do that. Like with my chronology of Easter week -- read the dang thing, and try to understand it, before you try to make your own case. Standard debate procedure. Please, follow the rules. Arguing is about your own side; discussing is about your side, and the other. If you want to argue, go find your girlfriend. These guys who leave a link to their own voluminous writings, expecting me to go and believe. If I go, I’ll either skim lightly, or deeply review the whole thing, and write a long analysis. Too much work. Like reading books by atheists about atheism. Why bother.

But now I feel guilty. You know, that intellectual arrogance thing. Because I wasn’t striving to annihilate him, but I was condescending. I didn’t want to get all verbose -- the issue is minor -- but my tone was so superior, and the brevity of my response, so elliptical, giving only the conclusion of a rebuttal rather than the formulaic proofs that would lead him to follow the reasoning. I allude to commonly-known rules of logic that I don’t spell out, and the guy seems clearly to not know the rules. That sort of thing. It’s snidely discourteous, or can seem so. And I reference Asbergers. Problem is, I’d bet money that it’s a factor in his life. Obsessive energy and encyclopedic attention to fringe topics. And the conspiracy, the secret-knowledge, the gnostic, puritanical demand for pseudo authenticity. It’s great to be authentic. I strive for it. But affectation is impure. Otherwise, it’s robes and sandals, and the Taliban is right in spirit if not practice.

Almost everything is a compromise, and communication is always a judgment call. You can just see that Kenneth has all his ideas front loaded, and wasn’t looking to interact, just to, uh, be admired for his erudition and his purity. Like me. Difference is, I respond -- I make a diligent effort to react to what is actually before me, rather than overawe someone with a Niagara of predigested information. Going into archaic alphabets is my kind of thing -- but it’s pretty autistic to think anyone else wants a data dump out of the blue on the matter.

Nevertheless, I feel a bit guilty. Maybe Kenneth is not sensitive, and has dusted off his sandals. But what if I’ve done some harm, even if only slight?

You see a man beating his wife. You rise up in righteous wrath and grab him by the neck and slap him with a humiliating open hand across the face, again and again, until he weeps and quivers and soils himself, begging for mercy. You tower over him and point down and warn him with ferocious indignation that he will never again hurt a woman for the rest of his days, or else, for no helpless woman will be abused in your presence while breath remains in you. And some time later, hours or weeks, the rage of his humiliation burns in him until he bludgeons the woman to death with a broken table leg. The heroism, the righteous clarity, what you meant for good has returned only as evil, and no trembling lip or nostril of regret will undo the harm.

How are we to know? Subtler minds than my own have urged for gentleness. We touch each other in countless ways, like sunlight on skin, for any human purpose an infinitude of photons acting as if randomness had meaning. It’s all too much to deal with. I’ve used my intuition and perceptiveness indelicately. I feel guilty. Too late though. (Well, actually not.  He left 11 more comments.  I'm over it.)

Last night my foot, the one that’s about twice as thick as the other, was almost normal, and I felt my spirit yearn for a chance to be humbled by the mercy of God. But this morning it was thick again. I will not be tricked by false mercy. I don’t need a normal foot when I’m in bed. I need it when I’m trying to walk. Don’t toy with me, God. The way I can be arrogant, because I have greater gifts? -- God should be better than that.


J

Sunday, January 12, 2014

A Long Letter Home

I wasted a few hours mildly observing a very silly tv program, America Unearthed. It is, theoretically, exactly my sort of thing. I have the notes and research done for a book on the subject, Pre-Columbian Old World contact with the New. Very cool. But I did that work in the mid 90s, and it’s unlikely I’ll ever put it together. Point is, this little tv show (taking an hour to present 7 minutes of material) is exactly, or rather precisely, worthless.

 I’ve seen episodes before. Something about a super-secret Illuminati megacomplex under the Denver Airport; also the Georgia Guidestones. Something about the Masons building and controlling Washington DC. A giant buried rockwall in Texas built by giants.  Conspiracy crap. Oh, I love a real conspiracy. I love them for their rarity. This episode was about an ancient Egyptian presence in Oklahoma; and Celtic. And then one about a medieval Englishman buried in Arizona. Indeed, these things could be true. I’m entirely open to it. I believe there is some very reasonable evidence to support this sort of thing. I like anomalous data.

 But the Egyptian evidence, so called, is a flat 500 pound sandstone rock carved very clearly with an Egyptian style Apis bull.
 I am rusty on this topic, but I used to be pretty confident -- ancient history was the focus of my undergraduate interests. It is clear, in any case, that the Apis carving is certainly meant to be taken as authentic. Is it?

 I googled this particular example and found a nice little skeptical blog addressing the tv show. The bull is dismissed primarily on the grounds that the head is too small -- considered to be a basic error of fraudsters and beginning art students, who do not first chalk out their subject, and thus must artificially squash up the image to make it fit their miscalculated space. (I’m so inept at graphic representations that it’s actually funny -- but doesn’t it seem more likely that an artist would start drawing at the head?  And it seems like a right handed person would start carving, hammer and chisel, from the right.  I'm just saying.) (They left the front-left leg unfinished.)  In any case, of course the carver was an amateur, perhaps gifted, whether ancient Egyptian or modern fraudster -- what, an expedition into the wilds of an unknown continent traveled with a vast retinue of specialized craftsmen?

The blog writer is a scholar of petroglyphs, but certainly not an Egyptologist. His criticism is convincing until one actually looks at authentic Apis bulls. They are characteristic in their small-seeming heads. I remembered this, and checked it again on what you people call the internet (man, it makes superficial research so easy -- which is why we can expect an increasing surfeit of hoaxes). The bull is certainly a fraud, but not because the head is too small.

 The stone was supposedly found by a couple of young men out looking for fossils or somesuch in the Oklahoma River. Oklahoma has a river? Hey dude, check this out! Bitchin! An ancient Egyptian Apis bull carved into this flat boulder in the shallow river! Farout! Let’s pull it out and call up some tv guy! And I looked at the two young men, and as they spoke I posited three options: truthful, lying, or I can’t tell. I could tell. Lies lies lies. One of them couldn’t wipe a sneaky little smirk off his face.
 Perhaps it’s just that he’s not an actor and the camera evokes this behavior? And the other could not help but shake his head, no, constantly, with every word he uttered.
 Perhaps it was him indicating dismay at the amazing thing that truly happened? No. Lies lies lies. (Here’s how to determine if someone is lying: be still, listen and observe.)

More telling, to my formerly somewhat trained eye, was the erosion pattern of the inscription. Insignificant. After supposedly 3000 years. Much of that time spent in a riverbed? -- certainly in the wind. Consider: an inscription, inscribed, carved into the stone; exposed to sustained weather patterns -- a current of water, or prevailing direction of wind. What must happen is that one side, leeward, of an inscribed line would be more eroded than the other. What would not happen, in an exposed inscription, is uniform wear. Which is what was in evidence.
Sure, the lines were somewhat rounded, as if someone had made a desultory attempt to simulate age. But really, totally, completely unconvincing, to the point of obvious deceit. Like a little smirk or a constant head-shake negation.

 Well, it’s fine as a puzzle: is this genuine? Like an Encyclopedia Brown mystery. But this is deliberate fraud, which is precisely analogous to counterfeiting. Isaac Newton was Master of the Royal Mint, and looming large among his duties was to oversee the execution of counterfeiters -- if memory serves, by partial hanging, then drawing and quartering. Trust must not be debased. To vandalize truth is profoundly corrupt, if such a quaint conceit can have meaning in Obamerica. These punks need to be caned. The tv guy is just making a living, soft-selling with deliberate naiveté and faux enthusiasm what he must know is not genuine. We expect scholarship from scholars, and entertainment from entertainers.

 The other episode? The medieval Englishman memorialized in a bodiless Arizona cave? His name, according to the runic inscription just outside the cave opening, transliterates as Rough Hurech (HRK?). And indeed, record of a 12th century Peter Hurech is to be found in England, the last of his line. This is where the voiceover guy starts asking the Could it be… questions. These shows are all about open-ended questions that never get answered. Could it be that space aliens built this 43,064 year old megalithic undersea structure? (No.)

 As for Rough Hurech, it is indeed runic script. In “English”, reportedly. No meaningful erosion, and undocumented and unobserved as of a 1984 report by state museum officials on the cave’s genuine Indian petroglyphs … but maybe since then the stone was uncovered and for some reason moved outside and left exposed by, uh, souvenir hunters? What is absolutely a problem is, if memory serves, that runic was a completely archaic form of writing, even 200 years prior to the supposed time in question; it was a first millennium alphabet. Anyone who knew runic, later, would know Latin, and my expectation was that the vulgar tongue would not be used, and that person also would not inscribe in runic. I don’t think there are any examples of authentic High Middle Ages runic inscriptions, by which to see what convention would dictate: it was not a practice, to have a convention.

 In my family are preserved old hymnals and prayer books, brought over from the old counties, Denmark and Norway -- they are printed in that hard-to-read Gothic font. Well, 140 years is a long time. It is completely unreasonable to expect to find such a usage in any contemporary communication, except that which strives deliberately to be obscure. My point is obvious. Rough Hureck may have come to America, and may have been buried in an Arizona cave, but this would be entirely by astronomical and infinitesimal coincidence, and we surely do not have his gravestone.

 As worthless, but not moreso, are the Alien Hunter shows. Any large stone piled onto any other is evidence of space aliens. It’s comical. Likewise the Bigfoot Hunter shows, and the Ghost Hunter shows. I haven’t actually watched one, but, well, I haven’t seen animal pornography either. I’m sure it has its interests. They are all of a piece, Honey Booboo by another name, silly and uncouth behavior for its own sake, or disguised as investigative adventure. There used to be really bad sitcom tv, Three’s Company and Married with Children. Now there is unscripted amateur bad acting of obvious vignettes concocted by producers who are not gifted storytellers. Every cohort has its own expression of lowbrow culture.

 So, in this, I do not despair. It is not the continuing corruption of popular culture that distresses. Yes, it is coarser, by orders of magnitude, but youth become desensitized to the same degree. Rather, I am unspeakably distressed in this: I believe the American spirit has been, finally, ruined. Gay “marriage”, mandatory government-dictated “insurance”, unpoliced “immigration”. Consider our wars. Our military wins them, and our politicians then lose them -- we must say, spurred on by popular opinion. I care not for platitudes; it is results that speak truth. Pols do only what they are allowed to do. Look at what we have allowed, confirmed. Now, in my extremity, when for the first time I am in need of medical doctoring, the American medical establishment is being ruined. Ah well, how ironic. The tragedy lies in the abandonment of, shall we call it Americanism. I won’t belabor it. It is the loss of freedom, as an ideal, that unhinges me. More government, less freedom. It is a self-evident logical formulation.

I believe a number of frankly weird things. I don’t have a problem with conspiracies. I require however evidence sufficient to sustain a claim. Extraordinary beliefs need extraordinary support. Thus I believe in God rather than in randomness. My life is random, as is, now, my health -- as if a lifetime of care did not earn benefit. Ah well. No justice. But the alternative is that randomness produces complexity, and that is impossible. God allows injustice, but physics does not allow the merely mechanical abnegation of entropy. Life does not come from non-life; I have faith insufficient to sustain such a belief. Ergo, God.

 I spend a fair bit of time, at night, in bed, attempting to manipulate my chi. Directing it to the sundry points of virulent inflammation that are crippling me (you can walk without a knee, or hips, but how can you walk without the bottoms of your feet?). It’s just a way of trying to reset my immune system. Any paradigm might do it -- prayer or visualization or hypnotism or meditation or aura work or chakra activation. Whatever. Is it working? Not in the least. My working hypothesis is that God won’t allow me even to trust my good practices. All that lifelong focus on fitness and health? No smoking or drinking or drugs or dead things in my diet? A reed I have leaned upon, that has broken and pierced my hand. On what then might I lean? Wherein shall I place my trust? In the God who allowed my family, my two other sons, to be taken from me? -- lost as far as I knew into a void as black as the abyss? Somewhere I must have misplaced my faith, for him to countenance such a thing. But God is a fanatic, an all or nothing sort of triune personage. We are allowed it seems to love only, only, only God, and nothing else, or he will take it from us. What do we value? Our children? Our health, our self-control, our diligent observation of hygienic practice? For nothing. From the four quarters of the earth Job will lose his cattle and his sons and his health, and the only comfort he will get comes as blame, until God comes in a whirlwind or a peeping voice and informs him unanswerably that all his blamelessness counts for nothing but an invitation to agony. And still must we trust him.

 I defy you, urge you, beg you to prove me wrong. Prove with, you know, evidence, like you’re disproving a ridiculous but prevalent conspiracy theory. I am of course taunting you with futility, asking the impossible, because the only answer does not come in the form of reason. No one can out-reason me, in this. My argument is not in interpretation, but in the evidence itself. Look at what has happened. It speaks for itself. There is only one appropriate answer, to discouragement. I do not know how one might communicate encouragement, through silence. Well, yes, I suppose I do. Because I have done it. Words don’t do it. It’s the conveying of empathy. I know this because I’ve done it, and it works. It’s how you comfort a child. Shut the hell up with the yammering words and hug him. There’s hardly anything in the universe sufficient to convince us we’re not completely alone. We find courage through empathy.

Well, it is true that Job got replacement sons. So never mind then. Do over.

 I have not suffered enough yet, though. It is my belief that God really is trying to break me. There is worse in store for me, until I yield. I am fully capable of never yielding. I’m crazy. So it’s an adventure. Who can hold out the longer. God, with his fiery hailstones and plagues and slaughtered loved ones, or me and my capacity to accommodate increasing debilitude.

 Here’s the deal, God: when I’m swallowed by a great sea creature and spewed up onto an eastward shore, I’ll stop fleeing to the west. Either that, or peep a little more clearly -- I’m not thoroughly convinced of the sincerity of your empathy.


 J