Werewolves

Posted on August 21, 2009 | 2 comments
 

These posts were first published in a Facebook group known as Why Are People So Fascinated By The Strange/Macabre/Horrifying/Alien???? , this group was founded by a very young woman who’s name is preserved in the open group. However, I am now one the administrators and she has moved on to greener pastures. Are you interested in werewolves? If so this is short… 
Post #1
You wroteon February 9, 2009 at 1:41pm
I think that whole it is perfectly acceptable to have a group like this that lumps a variety of phenomena trogether and it is true that all of them seem alien to modern urban life the actual answers to these questions must each be different. People are interested in anything that coud be dangerous and is unusual because despite the impression some might have the failure to be interested in such things would be complete insanity.

As with many other things on the list the tradition of werewolves must be approached from two sides that are very far apart. One side is the very ancient roots of the phenoenon and the belief in the phenomenon and the pother is modern popular culture and other learning based on a very long tradition that includes much of fiction.

In this post I am going to deal with the very remote origins of lycanthropy or werewolfism as it once changed the world. At one time many hunter-gatherer bands were often nearly starving and stagnating during the winters trapped in valleys surrounded by other tribes, clan and bansd or were otherwise isolated. During hard times killing and eating one another led to the roots of other legends such as vampires.

Then suddenly the first people to believe in werewolves were attacked on a full moon. The ice sheet reflected the lightas groups of of wolves and wild dogs pulled sleds of warriors into a circle around their camp . Wolves killed warriors as they were driven by men who howled and wore wolf skins. Many in the band were killed as these wolfpeople showed superior power in so many ways.

But the he wolfpeople subjugated and in a sense taxed the band. Secrets known to the wolfmen were guarded. The band now recieved trade goods by leaving them with wolf men and then there were carried far and fast to othere bands. Slaves and brides and warriors were sometimes blindfolded but only the learned were given access to hunting packs and sled wolves. Many had seen enough to know that these were not ordinary people but people who could become wolves.

When times were bad people ate some of the wolves. There were fewer bad times and canabalism was discouraged. The bodies of enemies were fed to the wolves and some part of each wolf man but burial rites signified liberation from canabalism. However, when the wolves were eaten werewolf priests and Shamanic leaders would remember that they had eaten men and that man became wolf and wolf became man. In time dogs would become ordinary in alll of these ancient tribes and the wolf rites, traditions and cults would appeal more to a group of mostly warriors in those peoples. However in some areas that original era of 100% real werewolves running things lasted for longer than we have had priniting presses.

My next post in this topic will be on lycanthropy since those early days. But the first phase is where the deep and powerful energy of the subject comes from.

Post #2
You wrote on February 10, 2009 at 8:29am
Over centuries as knowledge of wolves and dogs diffused among people who found little significance in these animals. Those warrior groups and other societies that preserved the secret knowledge of these early werewolves relied more on rituals, storie, secrecy and other esoteric elements to preserve their identity. People as humans have learned a huge amount from empathizing with, imitating and collaborating with animals. These societites would be in competition with horsemen/centaurs/early knights and some gorups of witches and others that used familiar animals.

So werewolf prospects were soon defined as those with warrior ability, a knack with anuimals and people who had a definable affinity with wolves. This “wolf in the man” (or “wolf in the woman” in some societies whiich had member of both sexes) began to be the basis of the individual centered disease/curse/gift kind of lycanthropy which is the basis of most books and movies. Through channeling and cultivating their wolf like qualities these people could reach parts of their human nature that were otherwise cut off from modern humans. They also caaried on a tradition related to the original phase.

These warrior societies occurred in many place where a dog-pulled travois could never be as fast as a dog sled and where large wolves were rare or unavailable. So in most places and times the groups shrunk and became less important. The tradition diffused and the werewolves survived as an increasingly shadowy phenomenon in most places relying on theatricality and attracting people who were more comfortable with dogs or wolves than people , who were violent outlaws and who had certain physical-mental conditions for which the old werewolf disciplines provided help and a cure.In most cases it was such small groups or individuals who provided the basis for ever richher stories as werewolves could not object anymore effiectively. While some more or less ancient werewolves survived the fiction and literature of all kinds was mostly based on these decaying and troubled forms. That does not mean they were all poor and insignificant. The silver bullet associated with killing werewolves in early modern times is the same projectile that was believed necessary to kill and a good and true king. Royal and noble families often were last bastions of older forms of lycanthropy.

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The Body

Posted on August 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

I first wote this on tax day of 2009 on Facebook. My April 15, 2009 note was under the title “The Body: More Unavoidable than Death or Taxes”. This has not been changed or corrected.

My physical health this week has been pretty bad while not being too bad for me to write a Facebook Note. It is probably mostly because of this kind of physical illness that I am wrting about the body. My parents have each had some kind of cancer scare recently. I have no health insurance. A life time of adventures leaves my body mapped with scars and if I look around I can find lots of reasons to wonder how long my body will hold together. I worry too about others and take an interest both in sports and in many other forms of physical activity. So I am writing a rambling and incomplete note about the body.

Humanity and the human body have been discussed at very great length by a very great number of writers. I am writing this series of Facebook notes not so much becuase I am confident that my doing so will add greatly to the total dialog or body of knowledge but more because I must do all I can for reasons not always easy to explain. Although 44 is hardly ancient, I have reached a stopping place in a very long and arduous journey. This is drawing upon a year of writing these Facebook notes. About the time my birthday rolls around it will be a good time to have completed this series of My Thoughts about a good number of topics. In one year one can map out a good bit of one’s mental and spiritual landscape. My own journey through this year has been aided by writing these notes which have been more personal than anything else which I have treated as much like a publication.

One aspect of the human body which is among the most important I have addressed a bit in an earlier note adressing the subject of Manhood. I hope that I am soon able to address the subject of Womanhood in another note similarly devoted to the subject. It seems abundantly clear to me that among the most important things about the human body is that it comes in two types we call sexes which cut across or organize all other types very significantly. We call this pair of types the sexes. But in this note I am dealing with sexual differentiation only very incidentaly.

The human body is of course at the very personal level of things one can discuss. The problems and concerns of society are more removed from our most personal concerns and feelings. Life impinges upon us very distinctly when it is made physical. Most people, if they are honest even with themselves find rape a much more certain and definable crime than sexual harassment. They find battery more easily pictured and more likely to be fairly punished than “intentional infliction of emotional distress”. The fabulous wedding ceremony and public anouncement are all well and good but it is sexual intercourse that consumates a marriage in most societies. Sickness is recognized as an excuse for absence from work far more often than most excuses not involving bodily impairment. We live in an age of movies, the internet, telephones, faceless bureaucracies and corporations that deal with hundreds of millions of strangers and we still recognize how real things become when they affect our bodies. It seems very likely that people living through all of the many other human generations were far more tied to the significance of the body.

Any experienced proclaimer of the Christian faith knows that– while many Christians disagree on how to express what Christ was doing in the Crucifixion, why he was doing what he did and what it meant to God and Man– all are agreed that it is intrinsic and essential to the story that Jesus was in great physical pain and that he laid down his bodily life and was executed after being sentenced to death. Both death and a very physical suffering are essential to the redemptive mystery of Jesus Christ. Jesus who fed and healed so many bodies in the course of his ministry of teaching and preaching was subjected to the grim arts and sciences of those devoted to destroying bodily health and integrity. Had Jesus simply been humanely poisoned like Socrates then Christianity would be very different indeed. Perhaps it would be nearly unrecognizable.The horrific violence of his death and his ministry of peace and healing are so poetic a contrast that they can be somehow distorted and exagerated. We can and indeed have lost sight of the other violence on Jesus’s side of the picture and the violence of third parties. But the physical violence he suffered is indeed essential to the whole story.

Michel Foucault, who was among other things a French Philiospher and cultural critic of some note, has given us a number of books which show the bodily aspect of social and cultural development and of political history. One of his books “Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity” focuses on how sexual understandings of the person and the body create a set of connections between political power and sexuality. Two of the other books are “Discipline and Punish” and “Madness and Civilization”. Foucault takes care to show how power over bodies is a vital part of the development of all real power structures. I think that I am aware of my own body slipping away from its maximum and best capacities and uses in very many ways. I am just so very far from feeling good even at times when I do not feel bad. But I do relish the times and ways in which I do feel well. For me and for many of us the body provides a sort of counter which like an odometer in a car records the mileage put on the vehicle. On the other hand, like a counter to a space launch it counts down minutes of vitality. We may have fortunate times when we are not so aware of trhe aging process but mostly we are aware of it. Life gets harder and less comfortable and the potential for doing any good dimiishes. This is not everyone’s experience. Although all who survive age, not all perceive it the same way. “Life is hell” may be a sincere exclamation for many but certainly not all. If one is happy in other ways the small inconveniences of aging are not such serious detriments. If one is fully engaged then life seems to go on tolerably apace.

I am wrting part of this having no room that is an office of my own and lying across the bed in a room which has ankle braces, a variety of nonprescription medication, reading glasses and other things remind me of how much goes into the small and somewhat shabby production that is getting me into each day and through its list of demands. I am grateful for these helps and for the decent mattress which is better than some I have had over the years. I would love to live near a practically swimmable body of water every day (and if the water is right then swimming is more or less the only exercise I can do daily). But I do some walking on the days when my feet are not excessively swollen or otherwise out of form. Of course the more I am able to walk and do so the fewer times these feet are out of commission. With ear canals damaged by years of altitude changes, firearms, infections, loud music and loud cities I cannot swim in our fish pond. Only the salt seas and swimming pools will work for me.

I have felt a lot better than I do today. Today I am in a good amount of pain. When I can, I often take Gucosamine for my joints, saw palmetto for my prostate, at least one decongestant, sometimes cough syrup, aspirin and ibuprofen for pain, an herbal mix for weight loss, a coenzyme for cardio vascular health and a mutli-vitamin. This routine of pill taking joins with my ankle braces and reading glasses as a daily reminder of how much I am struggling to maintain what is not a great level of health and fitness in the first place. I have had years when I was in better condition and years when I was in worse condition. However, the function and development and idea of the human body have long been of interest to me. I am much better for the time I devoted to athletic and fitness pursuits. However, I am not even average in a variety of ways. working out for me has always been something that produced mixed results. One of the fascinating things about having some distinct physical limitations throughout one’s life is that one is able to the world through a separate lense.

I will probably mess up the classic formulation, but in China a scholar was expected to be able to play chess, master calligraphy, create brush drawings of hard to reach sites and master the martial arts. While such a classic Imperial formulation may have been cruel to those genuinely gifted in some areas but challenged in others it did produce a great deal of the beauty, balance and productivity of several of China’s golden ages. As with the Western Renaissance I think we need to re awaken those balanced forces as values. There have been times when I at least approached these ideals — perversely as I write this bit of advocacy I am very far from such wholeness. My body is on the whole a bit run down and it has never met everyone’s standards although it has proiven satisfactory to me and many others on many occasions and in various measures.

When Jesus healed people it is mentioned sevderal times that those around him asked whether the person was sick or injured because of the injured person’s own sin or because of the sin of their parents. It seems to have been one of Jesus’s principal preoccupations as a teacher to distinguish physical infirmity from moral turpitude. Jesus’s own stance and examle is scandalous at times to a world which in so many ways is medically defined and dominated. He did order people to receieve the certified medical examoinations, did encourage exercise, warmth and full stomachs for many who would not have had them. However, there is no doubt that the historical Jesus was aware and a bit defensive about the fact that in someways he encouraged lower standards of hygiene than other religious leaders in his tradition. Despite exigent circumstances this is the one part of his legacy where I in good conscience have found something to agree with in the claims and criticisms of his critics and even enemies. I believe Jesus brought a lot of clean order to a messy world but he also exposed many to meesy and filthy parts of the world they might otherwise have been able to avoid. Jesus was far beyond almost anyone else’s courage and engagement with the wastes of the world in many senses. He must be portrayed as someone who rejoiced in and understood the body. He lived a life in the world of feasts, the desert, the seashore, grain felds, capentry, fishing boats, The Great Temple, woman and children. His body was engaged in his life, work, thought and ministry. It was not by turning off the body and the brain that he would find his way to heaven and lead his flock to heaven. Rather he said to those living active lives, the kingdom of heaven is within you.

His cousin John he often praised and John may well have spent some of his life as an Essene Monk. These wouldbe among the very few Jewish Monks in the history of Judaism. Jesus himself would often slip off alone to pray. But just as Jesus does manifest some of the qualities and experiences of the type of king who lives all his life in a palace and yet he is nothing like them in many ways so it is with monasticism. Jesus is the monk-like seeker of prayer and solitude who endures fasting. But Jesus integrates this with much more of his life’s many assets and aspects. He is in the world but not of it. But he is no less in the world. Jesus is no libertine but is sometimes thought to be one, he is very much one committed to living his life through physical experience. I myself was once very attracted to the life of Christian monasticism and I respect many teachings learned from Buddhist monks. The great Kung Fu and Zen traditions of Buudhist Monks in China and Japan respectively are powerful examples of the Body being magnificently developed even as it is constrained and disciplined.

When I taught in China I often tried to discuss the connections, contrasts and similarities between China’s ancient martial arts regimes and the Olympic Games which had just been played in Greece and would next be played in China. Watching the Olympics in Beijing was a powerful eperience even though I watched on television from the United States. I saw China struggling to find the fullness of what it can be in the future drawing on what it has been and what it can see as possible. I still love the Olympic tradition. As much as I enjoyed the recent NCAA Men’s basketball championships we call March Madness the Olympics is so much more. Amid so many idealistic and varied stroies we are bound to find one that inspires us.

Today my foot pain and fatigue and the last edges of some respiratory illness nag at me. I wonder if the nails, dog’s teeth, exotic insects, snake’s venomed fangs or crushing wheels which have injured my already imperfect feet during my life have left some additional microbial or neurological injuries or conditions which are going to show forth in new and mysterious ways. Few people succumb to rare diseases picked up long ago and forgotten but if one were to create a likely candidate for such a death it would be I. From world record setting drmant rabies, to tetanus to parasites with long and obscure names I could always be surprised within the realm of medical possibility. What is certain is that I hurt and feel poorly now. So I seek in memory and in other places for Olympic types of inspiration. Whatever shall be shall be. I may not be Michael Phelps but I can rush out to meet whatever challenges my life holds. At least I hope that I can.

Christians are the only existing great religious community whose sacred scriptures refer repeatedly to the Olympics. The Olympics celebrate all of humanity but through the body. China’s recent olympics connected with its monastic martial arts tradition but saw the body celebrated openly and publicly in a defferent Olympics tradition. The New Testament discusses winning prizes, racing, boxing, the training of athletes in themselves and more strongly as metaphors for the spitiual life. Today I drag my body along a bit. Sometimes my body fuels my race through life. I wish all of you good and appreciated health.

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Novus Ordo Seclorum

Posted on August 19, 2009 | 3 comments
Novus Ordo Seclorum: My Views on a New World Order
This was first published by me on Facebook on Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 8:43am. Like my first blog here it came late in a long series of notes. I have reproduced it here with no improvements or changes whatsoever. Here it appears without tone or context and crtainly a bit the worse for wear. This is a bit of bloviation on the ideas I believe are important for human survival and prosperity over time.
 
If some of you were inclined to consider me a megalomaniac but just were not quite sure then this ought to help you feel confident in that assertion. This is my boldest note in this series. I ask nobody for anything in it but obviously it would require something of almost everyone alive. It is not the most ambitious thing ever published but it is close. I think in some ways it is also faithful to my American heritage especially.

The currency of the United States of America has a seal on it. The seal shows a pyramid which does not reach its zenith. At the place where the very top of the pyramid should be there is a small space to indicate flying or floating and the an eye in a triangle that fits the profile of the pyramid. Besides these graphic portrayals there are words which form part of the seal. Those words are “Novus Ordo Seclorum”, the Latin phrase translates as New Order of the Ages. The Founding Fathers of the United States believed and hoped that they were setting up a New World Order. To some remarkably high degree they succeeded. This my own view on the Novus Ordo Seclorum which I would devise from the vantage point of 2009.

I am closing in on the June 1 anniversary of my first Facebook note. I think I will try to lay out my own views of the world’s future and my own plans for a New World Order. When Osama Bin Laden lays out his views of the future the world knows that he has done a lot and and ended many lives and has fanatical followers around the world. When President George Herbert Walker Bush spoke of the New World Order and his vision for it the speeches were credible because he was the Chief Executive Officer of the world’s largest military and financial combination and a Nation with trade relations with and citizens from almost the whole world. When Stalin or Hitler or Lenin spoke of world change they were able to provide friends and enemies with similar reasons to believe listening to them mattered. When I am about to do it it will mostly seem arrogant and perhaps a bit delusional. The Realpolitik analysis is that I am not a lawyer or the holder of some well-known public office. The Realpolitik analysis is that if one were to stretch the total number of dangerous armed men in the world who might have a speedy response to my call to arms it would fall somewhere very far short of a division. The Realpolitik analysis is that unlike Popes Paul VI and John Paul II or even the Dhalai Lama I am not the titular head of all or a large part of a major religion. However, in the spirit of getting things off my chest this year I will discuss the ideas that I have had for quite some time and how they relate to the possibilities of a future for the world and for nations and peoples that certainly will not simply evolve. Therefore although it may do no more than provide definite grounds for certifying me as a megalomaniac or convicting me of some crime or other I will write down here the basic views I have as clearly as I can which have guided a sort minimal political activity of my own and some associates over several years.

The same side of the same Great Seal of the United States that appears on the same currency not only says “Novus Ordo Seclorum”. Rather, above the pyramid but not directly above its peak are the words “Annuit Coeptis”. That means “He (She or It) has favored our undertakings” and it is known that the designers intended the He or It to be either God or Divine Providence. That more or less Masonic quotation is very much in keeping with the spirit of true Judaism or Christianity. We do what we believe to beright in keeping with the Divine Will and he may bless our undertakings. We do not do nothing and hope to be rescued.

I am setting out these things in this venue as I have not yet ever set them outs so publicly. I have a five point plan in a sense although each point breaks down into a very complex outline. I think that if this plan is followed we will have many chances to make a huge mess out of our species an both our civilization (singular) and our civilizations (plural). If we do many tragedies and bad things will happen that would never happen if we did not do it. But we will have a chance for a future worthy of animals, plants and especially humans. We will have a future in which it is possible to hope that faith and idealism need not move towards becoming an ever more perverse joke.

I. The Great Israel Treaties
II. The Reform of the United Nations
III. The Human Habitat Expansion Treaty
IV. Formation of the Great Formal Federations.

Before I get really breaking down and laying out my plan I could ask the rhetorical question, why have a plan? Are to rephrase it, has being a collective clueless idiot served the human race well up untill this point? By my rephrasing you may guess that I feel and believe the answer to be “no”. But I will try to set forth some reasons for this position later on.

1. Since about 1100 AD there have been no large suitable new lands or even realtively large new lnds to open up to human settlement. In my view this really began a new era of human history. It seems to me that this really matters a great deal more than is ever calculated by anyone with power and influence. We, as a species, have a real need to colonize seamounts, the craters on the Moon and Mars and submarine coastal flats. Whether or not we do those things will significantly affect our chances for survival as a species and will help determine in countless ways the quality of that survival if we do survive.

2. Indefinite population growth is essential for healthy and worthwhile human development. There is no doubt that we can not plan for that if we do not maximize recycling in a different way then ever conceived, colonize space and colonize the underwater environment.

3.We must strengthen ancient and vital elements of civilization like the nation, the state, the nation-state, the family and the military tradition. To do these things will require aggressive proactive planning and action which will offset trends of change in the last two centuries especially. We must do this without halting the engines of change which are vital for renewing and organizing the economies and growth into the future.

4. I and some number of other people must either devote ourselves to reforms like these or else choose some far less savory course of action. For some of us there is profound personal dissatisfaction with the world as it is. There can be no real lasting adjustment to the status quo and therefore, while alive we must struggle.

I want to go through my plan in brief here. I fully acknowledge that there are few if any elements that will be fully explained and disclosed in this note. Especialy, My own role in such a future plan is de-emphasized here compared to some other drafts. I am not sure why exactly that is the case. Perhaps because I am largely just a trapped and semi-tortured captive of circumstance disclosing secrets after a long silence. Perhaps because there are no long-term possibilities fo living out my life to a natural span which are not profoundly unattractive and so I do not give the proverbial rat’s ass. Perhaps it is becuse the ideas matter to me and so I am introducing them into the stream of geo polical dialog. More than likely all the reasons delineated in the previous sentence play a part.

I. I suggest that reparations be paid for the Holocaust ny many parties which beneiftted or inherited from beneficiaries. I suggest that a large part of these funds bepaid to purchase the Sinai from Egypt and then a separate portion be set up as a development fund. This fund would also include a fund for concessions to be paid for in which those paying in to the fund would be preferred. This Sinai would be a State of a greater Federal Great Israel. The other States would be the Principal State of the Republic of Israel, the Capital Sate of Jerusalem, and the State of Palestine. The Republic would receive slightly more land than it yielded to form the Capital State of Jerusalem in the from of five state military reservations in the Sinai. Palestine would receive a conceesion the size of Gaza which would be one of three districts in that federal state. The remainder of Sinai would be composed of several federalized districts and it would form the fourth and last state.

II. I would like to see the UN Charter and operations reformed in a number of ways.
First, I would propose that Permanent Members of the Security Council be given the titles Founding Permanent Members of the Security Council and they alone would continue to have individual vetoes. However, I further propose that a handul of countries be sent a confidential invitation based on their ecnomy, population, military capacity and cultural dominance with the understanding that no more than 5 more Permanent Members will be admitted to the Security Council ( nominees I would include would be Japan, Germany, Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Brazil and Saudi Arabia). The price for admission would be 10 billion US Dollars, cession of 50 square kilometers of their own land as a permanent UN posession and diplomatic and military reservation. These funds would be placed in an endowed Security Council fund able to provide operational funds for humanitarian programs of the Security Council.
Second, I propose that their be a founding auction when the Human Habitat Expansion Treaty (which I am going to discuss next) is made. I propose that the funds from auctioning off micro-state rights go into a permanent endowed fund to become the base of operations for the United Nations Space Authority. This would be the agency governing UN reservations on the Moon and Mars.
Third, I propose that the Vatican City be admitted as a full member and a number of other entities be granted membership as highest level of observer currently enjoyed by the Vatican.
Fourth, I propose a global house as a second chamber to our world government. This is the least likely change and the hardest to justify. I will not discuss it at length here but will discuss it again a bit in context as I discuss the formation of the Great Federations as the last section of this Note.

III. The Human Habitat Expansion Treaty is possibly the very most important of of aspects of my plan for the human future. This is really the challenge on which humanity will either open the path to a new future or else fail to do so. The other three aspects greatly affect the likely success and vibrancy of this part of the plan. I also think they have other important contributions to make to the human future but this is an entirely different level of importance.

The Human Habitat Expansion Treaty would make available for development in an effective way the surfaces of the Moon and Mars as well as many of the seamounts throughout the world. TheFormation of the great federations would modify the exact nature of the HHET compared to a world in which there is no such formation of Federations. But the the basic concept will be the same either way.

First, Free Access to Space will be preserved as the legal doctrine governing all orbits, asteroids, gas giant planets and minor moons. A few heavenly bodies would be placed into a provisional status. However, The surfaces of Mars and the Moon would be divided by legal right. About 10% would be permanently reserved under the direct control of the United Nations Space Authority. About 10% would be reserved for entities that are neither the United Nations nor a Nation State, about half of this auctioned off to the highest bidder for the creation of 50 colonial microstates on Mars and the Moon with the UN Space Authority holding the proceeds in a trust fund bearing interest for support of its programs. Each nation would receive one or two cessions on each sphere of about equal size if they are two. The amount of land received would be determined based on a four part analysis:
1. 20% of the whole surface would be divided equally among all nations without any difference.
2. 20% of the whole surface would be divided by all nations proportionate to their share of the world’s total wealth and economic output.
3. 20% of the whole surface would be divided by all nations proprtionate to their share of the world’s population.
4. 20% of the whole surface would be divided by all nations based on a score from a formula awarding points for their contribution to space, spacefaring capacity and capacity to currently plan and execute space colonization.
These national grants should each include a crater of varying quality which can be developed as Crater Cap Colony. These lands should border on the UN reserves on at least on small side and should be made withnatural borders from surveys and unique shapes where possible. Having said all this within those rubrics they should be squared or rectilinear where possible.

Seamount Colonies should also be discussed in the HHET but I willl merely state that here. The Waterford habs and fields radiating from a series of small artificial island mad of inert waste surrounding an umbilicus of air and electricity and elevators. A small port, solar and wind plant on the top of each Island would join fish processing and recreational facilities These busy surface areas would have no permanent residences however all of which would be underwater. There would be a small submarine port at the bottom of each island.

IV. The formation of the Great Federations (of no more than Six and no less than Four with Five as the ideal) would form a Security Council for the other new global house of the UN and would be observers in the other currently existing international house. These Federations would sign the HHET. They would also receive a grant on the Moon and Mars. The goal would be for 95% or more of all the world’s nations to join a formally recognized federation. This would be a huge constituional project. Doing the wrong thing would be worse than doing nothing. But such a goal is a vital part of optimizing the other goals. However, while I have written at great length about such federations in notes of my own this is not the time to go public with details.

Should all this impossibility become reality then I think we have to hope fro about a hundred years of relative peace. The reforms would increase the likelihood that our descendants will blast eachother aprt in figthers orbiting Jupiter. They would increase the chance of warriors starving out cities on Mars. However, they would decresase the prospect of Erth’s total ruin and the obliteration of humanity.
I am very serious about all of this. I say that not at all sure that I will be able to work on making any of it happen. So I have now exposed my major delusions of grandeur and am able to face the end of this annual cycle of Facebook Notes with peace. This new order of the ages would be an undertaking that could shape and channel human energies for at least 1000 years as for as its design goes. Our species has reached the age where we must take some real responsibility for the future of our descendants.

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Manifestos and starting a blog

Posted on August 18, 2009 | 2 comments
First posted on my facebook site as
 Wednesday, May 6, 2009 at 10:12pm
This was written late in a series of notes on Facebook and I have not even corrected the spelling and typos or read it over as I posted it here. I was just starting to get something up to start this blog and it seemed like a note about manifestos and other predecessors of the personal blog might be a place to start. I have just added this first papragraph. However, I may edit the note later. We will have to see.
Perhaps the best literary quality of what might be called successful political manifestos and plans for cultural change would Saint Augustine’s City of God and the collaborative Federalist Papers of America’s founders Jay, Hamilton and especially Madison. Not so long ago in the East Chairman Mao Zhe Dong actually produced a book of some literary interest — the once ubiquitous Little Red Book was a sort of mutlipurpose book which was a reworking of Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” , Mao’s own art of war which any cultural conservative with his resume would have to produce having had his experiences and on the other hand it was a radical experimentation with making Marxian and Hegelian theory and the Communist Manifesto into something Chinese. It is a sign of Mao’s talents that he could create a brief and readable book which largely accomplished these goals.

I have never read Hitler’s My Struggle or Mein Kampf and the fact that I mention it is probably more than I am normaly inclined to do in writing. I have not read The Turner Diaries although I believe that the author is still alive and is my fellow American. These I think are manifestos which resemble mine in being personal although the Turner Diaires are unique in actually being a novel. I do not despise all anger and violence and the sense of an urgent need to do something. My disdain for these books comes from another place and embodies other criticisms.Hitler was a socialist who is somehow lumped with the right like Mao he killed a lot of people in his own country. Mao admired George Washington far more than most foreigners of his stature ever have and maintained that admiration his whole life. Hitler imitated some of the American experiment but I have always despised Hitler and yes I have always admired Mao. I visited his tomb in Beijing with great respect and bought mementos as gifts. However, I could certainly have schemed against him and shot him if we had been fated to meet as adversaries. I simply would have done it with respect.

The relatively right wing manifesto which I relate to the most easily is not a manifesto. It is a retrosepective document written by a man who I think wished he had written a manifesto but was swept along by history too swiftly to do it. That is Jefferson Davis’s Rise and Fall of the Confederate Nation. I visited his shrine Beauvoir on the Mississippi Gulf Coast several times with my new bride on my honeymoon. But manifestos written after you give up cannpt really be counted.

A manifesto seeks to set out something about the writer’s view of the future and his understanding of how he could manage it. Manage to make it different. I am in this very brief note seeking to create a kind of manifesto. Perhaps in a sense to cast a manifestoesque quality over the rest of these notes. For something as brief as one of these notes to be any kind of manifesto it would have to bring in other infromation and restate it within itself somehow or other.

Usually a manifesto is written in the context of some kind of major crisis. Usually it comes from a sense of not so quiet desperation although it may also come from many more elegant and noble parts of human nature as well. I am reflecting in this 50 of my intended 52 notes before my birthday and some things that make me feel some feelings approaching desperation. After my divorce I came to two conclusions if llife were ever going to become what I considered to be really tolerable on this planet then it would require me to take a bigger role in the transformation than I had ever wanted to take in any serious way. The second was that I was not likely to ever play such a role. I have had the realization for a very long time that no matter what I do I can certainly fail at meeting any given difficult challenge. So this is a manifesto about what things I might do.

The future is harder to study than the past. Letting go of any illusion of certainty however, we can attempt to understand the future a bit after all. Facebook is particularly well populated with people who do take an interest in predicting and understanding the future in various limited and organizedways which many people would recognize as yielding some good results. I have already written the future specificaly in a note relating the future to science fiction. I have decided that in this note I will discuss the future as I might try to make it. I suppose that in a small way this is a manifesto. Perhaps not as challenging and directly confrontational as a manifesto ought to be but a manifesto nonetheless.

I just want to make clear that I am going to disclose a bit of myself in this note. As the countdown to end this series of Notes draws down I an ready to put out some more information about myself which I have usually guarded. I have gotten closer to the point where there are no options competing with disclosure.One thing about me is that I have an enormous capacity for animosity. I have never found the right way to work that into typical sexual banter, a job interview, a curriculum vitae or ai first encounter with someone from a culture which is knew to me.

As I disclose these things about myself I am more able to address certain social and technical questions to which my personal experiences are relevant. In many ways I think that my foray into Facebook came at a very good time for me to find a little closure and focus in my life and experience. It has enabled me to bring together in one electronic place a fairly wide range and broad sampling of my interests, ideas and associates. Of course the vast majority of my friends and associates, acquaintances and enemies are not on my Facebook Friends List. But there is still a great deal that is representative about this list.

Besides self revelation which is alway a bit uncomfortable and dangerous for any one at certain points I am further discomfited by having to say that describea quality of mine which is named by a term which is either a technical term or a tleast a term of art. But it is a term I have grown up hearing and using throughout childhood and adolescence and which As an adult I once took some pains to understand. The term is “ego” a term by which Siegmund Freud did some linguistic remaking of the Latin word which translates as “I” into something related but different. I am also neither a licensed psycologist nor a trained Freudian scholar but I am willing to state that I have a strong personality with a strong “id”, a strong ‘super-ego” and a strong “ego”. But that strength of personality is not what I am singling out here, rather it is strength of ego.

I think that some people who read this might already know it but I want to make clear a point of relevance. Whatever many are few things separate me from measurably politicaly successful leaders like Mao Zhe Dong, Stalin, Napoleon, William the Conqueror, Charlemagne, Lenin, Ghengis Khan or others you can imagine the difference is not that my ego is smaller. Whatever separates me from moderate successes measured by that standard like Jefferson Davis, Prince Meternich, the Marquis De Lafayette of the the several revolutions, Che Guevarra or Davy Crockett — the difference is not that my ego is smaller. Whatever separates me from apparent total loser lunatics like Charles Manson, Jim Jones, Blackbeard the Pirate, or any of several of the captains of Free-lances and white companies who mostly destroyed themselves and all around them — the difference is not that my ego is smaller. I really do not think that very many people alive or recorded in history have or have had a larger ego. A handful have and I thinksome are well camouflaged. I suspect that Shakespeare had a huge ego but was well hidden from such observation by the nature of his life and work. The facts of my life might not seem to bear out that claim. But it is the kind of claim where correct measurements are hard to come by and bad ones are easily found.

I am a relatively broken man perhaps. Not so strong or bold as I once was. But there is still a union and identity between the dimensions of my commitments and the dimensions of my resources. In other words, there is still a kind of devoted egomania in me. There are many things that come together to create a personality with this trait I find in myself. One factor is that I never really remember feeling that things were OK. As I have often said in thse notes, my life is and has been a nightmare. I give humanity D and F grades on the important stuff most of the time. Of course that in itself is a complex phenomenon and also one that is found in people who are not posessed of enormous egos.

Part of my manifesto would be that I do not espouse or advocate any program to turn all of civilization into a machine for destroying the human ego. Ayn Rand’s books ‘The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” are both recent manifestos which defend and propound the right to have an ego. They are more than that of course they are celebrations of capitalism. Other books related to really understanding ego are Machiaveli’s “The Prince”, Castiglione’s “The Courtier” and retrospectively the excellent book by Barbara Tuchman “A Distant Mirror”. I have read these three books. The largest ego in history I believe was that of the meek Jesus of Nazareth. For me he is an almost inexhustible source of both insight and understanding of paradox.

Along with ego and animosity I value kindness and generosity. I have performed many acts of generosity which are rarely performed and performed them repeatedly. However, unlike the ego thing there are more generous people around and there are much more generous ones in the historical record.
But I am pretty generous, I have seen it modeled and have learned how to do it. I had a knack for it anyway. I think that generosity should be supported and fostered.

I believe in creating a balance in life and person. I think that given what has been available to me I have done that fairly well. I tend to respect people who have some breadth. I value being well read and reading well. I believe that all people should know something about sex, fighting, food and childcare in proportion to their total knowledge and in accord with their state in life. I do not think that we can become full and complete human beings by accident. On the other hand I believe we all inherit some basic rights to life, liberty and property. We do not earn this set of rights mostly by becoming decent and mature people although our behavior can affect these rights.

I think that I should work to produce a society which rewards this ancient kind of balance so highly valued by many of the most accomplished and prosperous cultures of history. I believe that the person is very important. I believe that it ought to be understood that full personal development is a major part of the obligation or program of a full society. However, it is not the only program and obligation of a society. Societies somehow or another have to discharge duties relating to habitat and environmental preservation and the enhancement of the environment and expansion of human habitat. They have to deal with defense, security and war with all the issues which they bring. They have to deal with economic growth and issues of prosperity. part of my political manifesto woulld be that I believe that we must support the people who are actually engaged in dealing with the realities of what society is about and for and supposed to be doing.

Eventually if I ever really emerged into a public life again it would be clear that I am not afraid of leadership, inequality,aristocracies or rank. Also it would come out that in some models I have sketched in various composition books, discussion groups and other venues I have not shied away from taking on both the trappings and the perquesites of leadership. Anything that I write about politics and policies always comes with a kind of admission that in a last resort at leat I would take as much power and responsibility as necessary to make those policies real — in theory at least. There are exceptions:
1. I am never up for total war.
2. I am never up for abolishing the institution of marriage.
3. I am not up for the abolition of all private property.
4. I am not up for the destruction of all protocol and parliamentary procedure.
5. I am not up for hurting the innocent whom I love deliberately.

That covers a lot of ground really. By historic standards it is pretty limiting. But I just want to make it clear that while I spend a lot of time feeding animals, washing dishes and taking out trash and can see numerous paths ito the future in which I end up sleeping under an overpass or living in some other ignominous position I really am willing to go just about to the limits. Everyone has some limits. Some totally commiteed people are never kind or merciful that is also a limit. Many of my limits are moral and procedural but I choose them. As GK Chesterton said of Shakespeare’s Macbeth “He shows us that a good man can be as bad as he chooses to be.” I am not claiming to be a good man nor that I could be purely bad but the Chesterton line has a certain relevance.

I no longer belong to a political party. It has been years since I really pretended to have politicaly oriented carreer or anything approaching it. I never have felt a great attraction for just screaming at whatever ” the establishment” was nearby. However, I have never write any social criticism or propose any ideas just as a way of inspiring others. Everything I write I do with a sense of how it can all connect to fists, wallets and ballots. I have taken quite a few things to the point where I thought it would probably end my life. I am serious about that. Most political systems in recent centuries have become greater and greater subtractions.

On of the parts of my political philosophy which is most important is that I believe we must try to undertake cost effective and large scale space colonization as soon as possible. That would be real expansion and requires a more expansive point of view. I wrote earlier in this Facebook Note that a manifesto that is written after you have given up does not really count as a manifesto. For me I think that means that even if this Note were not so rambling and were otherwise a perfect manifesto you could discount its significance as such. You could discount it by about 85 %. I have gotten about 85% of the way to giving up. But of course this is really a rambling personal and impressionistic Note like the others. Therefore perhaps even with the help of all the other notes it does not really constitute a manifesto discounted or not.

But, for what it’s worth I am actually propsing the things I propose. When I say I think something ought to be done I actually maen that I probably have tried and would try again to do it. Complexity is a ctually a value I cherish. Multiple branches of governement, federalism and many other things. I have also valued experimentation. One day when I have enough to lose someone will possibly dig up a speech or notebook addressed to avery limited audience that says some things most people are not able to relate to very much right now. I know that if I had enough to lose this could be discomfiting. But I want to make clear that I have never said I was just an average guy with average aspirations.

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