The Two Brothers

"The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet." -- Novalis



The Hindu's describe 'self' as Brahmin, from the root, 'to grow'. "In this sense," Alan Watts, a pop philosopher, says, "[...] every self is modeled on and is a expression of the one self because you all feel individually that you are the center of the world and everything else is seen in circles--circling out, sphering out, from where you are." Each individual is an aspect of the greater consciousness. Your 'I'-ness is a symptom of the universe's 'I'-ness, which was a gift from God, as Christians would describe it. "'I'-ness being, as it were, the most fundamental thing in man, [then it] is also fundamental to the universe. It too is 'I', and your 'I' is a special case of it, coming out of it, coming out from the quote central 'I', like so many tits from the belly of a sow, or so many spined from a sea urchin, so many legs from a spider. And that is of course why the images of the Hindu gods are shown with many arms or faces because it is saying that all arms are the arms of the divinity, all faces are its masks." In this way, everything completes everything else because all is an aspect of a wider consciousness--this relationship can be reduced to a yin-yang relationship, and that is the relationship I wish to describe in this blog.

However, because of this same reason, the universe is like smoke. If you try to hold onto it too tightly, it will disappear in your hands. "There is nothing in the wave form that you can lean on, that you can grasp," says Alan Watts during his talk about the "Fundamental I". Like a relationship between a man and a woman, where one person tries to tie the other in chains like a caged bird. Everything changes, everything morphs, and it would be like stopping a bird from singing, robbing it of what it made beautiful in the first place. Of course this relates to my previous blog on the government's drive to control the market using Keynesian economics, or Western mystics description of the universe as a mist, but I will allow you to explore my previous entries on your own if you are curious. Here I will describe two brothers who appear time after time in history and mythology. The three relationships I will cover most deeply are between Dionysus and Apollo, Christ and the Anti-Christ, and William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon.

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A few years ago I was talking to a friend's father. He was a tall, intimidating man, who's energy radiated off his body like a small star. I wished to impress him, but I was struggling with what to say. I looked at the trees in the backyard, the plants he meticulously maintained. Why not talk about something I was passionate about? What I didn't realize is that I was breaching dangerous waters. He stared at me with his intense eyes. His lips seemed to quiver. Apparently, I had the daring to cross one of his most deeply held philosophical lynch-pins. You see, I had made mention of man's need for irrationality. I said it was an important counterbalance to 'rational thought'. He, on the other hand, believed in the complete opposite-- a man should be completely rational at all times, no matter the circumstances. He then claimed something I shall never forget, something I didn't believe was accurate then, and still don't. I will not dealve into it here. But I do know that a world of complete rationality would be a sterile one. There would be no faith, no love, and no charity. It would rob a man of the spices which make him interesting. It would be the world of A Wrinkle in Time's 'IT'--deadly barren of what makes life worth living.

For one example, when ancient Greece had reached its Golden Age, when its laws, learning, and arts had reached their zenith, something terrible was seething under the surface. The mad-god, Dionysus, was on the rise, affecting the masses' minds--making mothers kill their sons as in the story of Pentheus, stray men like Orpheus, and poor animals which dared to flee from their procession. These ravings would involve sparagmos (ripping of flesh) and omaphagia (the eating of it). Leonard Shlain says that "the dynamic growth of [this] cult coincided with the rise of the alphabet literacy, Greek rationality, and the flowering of classical arts" (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, 136). Dionsysus and Apollo were two gods who completed each other. Apollo was the god of reason, logos, science, and written culture, while Dionsysus was his polar opposite, the god of drunkenness, giving in, and madness--"figs, bulls, Muses, the moon, dance, music, moisture, serpents, sexuality, regeneration of the earth, the cultivation of plants, and the noverbal expressiveness of the mask, [which] were originally under the aegis of the Goddess" (139). He was said to live at Delphi for three months every year while Apollo flew north to Hyperborea.

Dionysus himself was primarily worshiped by women. He usurped traditional Goddesses like Demeter and Artemis (Apollo's twin by blood), creating the link between traditional dying-gods and the coming Jesus. "He could pick the imagination of mortals and tear open a minute hole out of which would gush creative inspiration" says Shlain, quoting Plutarch, "but this touch was a but a hair's breadth away from the inundation of insanity" (138). Apollo may have been associated with the muses, but they were firmly in Dionysus' retinue.

The importance of Dionysus, of irrationality, has seemingly been lost on our own Modern culture. Shlain makes great points on page 140, mentioning that laughter, faith, appreciating great beauty and art, sexual arousal, love, charity, and patriotism are all irrational activities. However, 'unreason' also has a dark side--hatred, lust, infidelity, anger, and suicide. These things are indeed terrible, but to not acknowledge their existence, or worse, try and extirpate them completely, would lead to a great terrible thing. Either the mood swings would get worse as the natural systems tried to correct themselves, or their would be a quashing of emotions completely. For what are emotions if not irrational? In the end, the result is a massive 'falling of a cliff' or a success and the destruction of our humanness. Neither of these corollaries are good outcomes.

Greece, with its heightened sense of masculine culture, found that "suicide was so common among classical Greek women that Plutarch reported that it had reached epidemic proportions in the city-state of Miletus" (140). Cadmus, the mythological founder of Thebes, brought a new sense of logos to the Hellenistic Greek culture. The great king eventually married the daughter of Aries, Harmony, and thus "the union of the alphabet and war resulted in generations of suffering and provides a metaphor for history that is both mythic and true. Every time there has been a great advance in science and knowledge assisted by alphabet literacy, it has been associated with war" (145). Cadmus' descendents were cursed to horrific deaths. Autonoe, their first daughter, suffered the death of her son after he was eaten by his dogs after witnessing Artemis bathing. Semele, the second, would conceive Dionysus but die in the process. Agave, the third, ate her own son, Pentheus, after being overtaken by Dionysus. Io, the last, died because she cared for Bacchus after his mother's death, making Hera jealous. Finally, Pentheus, the king who was torn apart by Agave, passed his rein to his son, Menoecueus, who's famous daughter, Jocasta, married her son Oedipus. Any child who passed through high school knows how that misbegotten relationship turned out.

Greek society was seemingly driven mad by logos. Suddenly people would be killed for having different political beliefs, for following another religion, or for their own philosophical beliefs (like what happened to Socrates). Even though the blind seer, Tiresias, tried to warn them and us, we have put all our hopes in the ego. Tiresias, the he-she, knew both dualities and could see by not being able to--we have forsaken half ourselves, the irrational self. It would be Jesus, a new son, who would strive to bring sanity back to the world.

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Before I begin, I want to remind the audience that much of what I write is just as much a history of the growth of the human consciousness as it is the history of the world. The past is a mist or fog and only gains coherence when we choose to see it. With this in mind, I will lead you through several interlinking theories of Jesus' role in man's growth. The message I wish to get across is this: by containing the dualities of masculine and feminine, of good and evil, of the other and the self, by existing in a historical context, and by preaching of loving thy neighbor, Jesus existence was the catalyst for a new sense of self.

The Gospels of Luke and Matthew give different accounts of the childhood of Christ--there are altered genealogies, dates of birth, and accounts of who was present and where it took place. In esoteric history, this discrepancy can be explained away easily: there really were two Jesus childs that merged into one being. As explained in the Gnostic Pistis Sophia, when the boy Jesus and his twin met, they embraced and became one. Mark Booth explains that the "spiritual economy of the cosmos required him to do this, so that the boy who survived would in time be ready to receive the Christ-spirit at Baptism" (The Secret History of the World, 286). By becoming one, Jesus was said to have gained the ability to perform miracles like reading minds and communicating with the spirit world. This, of course, is the tradition of the Esoteric schools of Europe. History for them is not a random series of events but a controlled growth of consciousness. That is why Jesus descended from the heavens, to move humanity to its next stage of development. The tale of the two brothers is reflected in other stories as well. There is of course Romulus and Remus, Seth and Osiris, and many examples through Shakespeare's works. Two warriors complete each other. A modern film which showcases the completion of the two is "Megamind", starring Will Farrell and Brad Pitt. When one disappears, the other is distraught. He has to metaphorically absorb the role of the other to be complete again.

To that point, Jesus was the largest proponent of right brain thinking that the Western world had seen. According to Leonard Shlain in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, He "instructed [his students] to contemplate with their rods instead of scrutinizing with their cones. He advised them to use their left arms to ward off blows, but never to ball their right hands into fists to strike back" (217) and taught his students with the use of parables. Parables, a form of instructional myth, require the subconscious' knowing. Jesus also lowered the value of laws, the masculine code, by denigrating the Pharisees, who were the Jewish middle class and tended to be lawyers and scribes, as well as lowering the value of written words by refusing to write down what He taught. Perhaps His most right brain teaching, Shlain says however, is that He "prophesied that the end of linear time was at hand" (220). As he mentions earlier in the book, the left brain may be a very well-developed organ used to perceive time. It is where the ego resides and where the narratives of are lives are constructed. "Everyone knows his or her personal time, this life, will end someday," Slain says, "but Jesus prophesied that all of time, everyone's life, this entire temporal world, was about to end . . . and soon" (220). Christianity was partially based on agricultural religions who honored the Goddess' cycles. The Goddess is eternal in that she never dies like her male escort. Jesus predicted an era where man would return to this timeliness and throw the ego aside. However, one must remember that the ego also desires its own sense of eternity--that of complete sameness, a realm where time can no longer mame or stress.

Jesus, as opposed to many of his contemporaries, was a seeker of feminine wisdom. He did not refuse women, even when they were prostitutes or adulterers, and never preached of Eve's failing as those had before him. As written by the biblical writer, 'J', Eve was fashioned from a lesser rib, and separated from her mythological partner, the snake. It was her fault that man must toil during his life, and that, in the end, he must die. It is she that he must slave and be civilized for. Yahweh showed his negative affinity toward women when He made all the patriarch's wives' fertile after years of being barren, usurping a traditional Goddess role. He also treated Jerusalem, His symbolic wife, as a disobedient child. Jesus refused this heritage. Rumors swelled of His relationship with Mary Magdalene, with the apocryphal Gospel of Philip stating that "Jesus loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on ... ". Sadly, the last word was lost to the ages; but, according to Mark Booth in the The Secret History of the World, this may be an allusion to a passage from the 'Song of Songs''--"Let him kiss me with kisses of the mouth." If Jesus did have a sexual relationship with the lady, then His association with women is complete. In fact, it would make sense for much of what He spoke broke with traditional Jewish law.

When prompted from a Pharisee lawyer of the most important Commandment, Jesus answered, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest Commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two Commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt. 22:37-40). In other words, Jesus said that to overcome the illusion of ego, we must find selfless love. According to Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, you must "put yourself back in the position of Paradise before you thought in terms of good and evil" (82). Christ's sacrifice was an echo of the tree in the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve ate the apple from the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, they suddenly became aware of their own bodies, their own selves. They realized they were naked and were ashamed. Jesus died on a Holy Rood, a tree, or in other words, "the fruit of the tree, [...] the fruit of eternal life, which was the second forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden" (133). He was trying to return man to a sense of eternity, where desire and fear could wash away. "Eternity isn't some later time," Campbell says, "Eternity isn't even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now that all thinking in temporal terms cuts off" (84). No wonder the men in control were so frightened of Jesus. He was threatening left brain dominant thinking that their power depended on.

"So when Jesus says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself," he is saying in effect, 'Love thy neighbor because he is yourself" (139). Bill Moyers says this in response to Campbell's story of a policeman who refused to let go of a jumper's hand. There was a subconscious response inside the cop. It told him that to let the man go was to die himself--their 'two'-ness became a 'one'-ness. It is only the illusion of time which prevents us from seeing the truth. "As soon as there is time," Campbell opines, "there is suffering. You can't have a future unless you have a past, and if you are in love with the present, it becomes past, whatever it is. Loss, death, birth, loss, death--and so on. By Contemplating the cross, you are contemplating a symbol of the mystery of life" (140). One can find the four beasts of the Zodiac in the ancient palaces of the Middle East. The great lion, leo, the eagle who was scorpio, a bull who was Taurus, and the a man-beast, Aquarius. These beings represent the Four Elements (fire, water, earth, air) which, according to the mystery schools, held the material universe together. Jesus was often represented as the Fifth Element, in between them all, a "Sun god who comes to earth to spiritualize the Four Elements and dissolve matter" (Booth 301). Campbell says this theme is echoed in the children's rhyme, "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed I sleep upon." In other words, from the middle of the four points of the heavens, Jesus, eternity, would emerge and bless mankind. What Campbell says is this: "Those four beasts represent the veil of Space-Time, veiling eternity, and the Christ in the center is the break-through, the second birth, the coming of the Lord of the World from the womb of the universal goddess, Space-Time" (120).

But what made Jesus so special? Mark Booth states that "because gods were no longer experienced as 'out there' in the material world, it was necessary for the Sun god, the Word, to descend to earth" (282). His mission, according to Booth, was to seed man's interior life, make it as grandiose inside his mind as the universe outside of it. But what made Jesus' path different? Many mythologies had similar themes of a dying-and-rising God, of a hero who died for the sins of the group, and of His message of love. Booth, in fact, calls Him a second Horus and says:

In Mary we should sense the presence of Isis; when the sun arose in the constellation of Pisces, the sign of Jesus, the constellation on the opposite horizon was Virgo. In Joseph, the patriarch carrying a crooked staff, we sense Osiris -- his staff symbolizing the Third Eye. The cave in which Jesus Christ is often represented as being, is the bony skull in which a new miracle of consciousness is about to be ignited. The baby in the manger has the luminous vegetative body of Krishna. The ox and the ass represent the two ages that have led to the new Age of Pisces -- the Ages of Taurus and Aries. The star that guides the Magi is the spirit of Zarathustra ('the golden star'). One of the Magi is Pythagoras reincarnated, and the Magi have been initiated by the prophet Daniel. The angel who announces the birth to the shepherds is the spirit of Buddha.

Many had come before him who foretold his arrival, but the major difference between them and Jesus was the Lamb existed in a historical context. An "apotheosis of the individual", as Helen M. Luke writer of Woman: Earth and Spirit calls it. She says in the same book that "[the inner truth] was revealed as an incarnate experience lived consciously by a single person at a specific moment in time" (32). Unlike the mystery schools, which Jesus was most likely an initiate based on evidence from the Bible, He revealed His secret to the masses with the public resurrection of Lazarus--one that, like theirs, preached of a dying-and-rising god who rose above the material plane to a higher realm of consciousness. This is a very feminine myth--one of eternity. But it also enlivened the individual spirit, reminding His students that one life could change the course of the world with a single decision. Based on His death, Helen M. Luke concludes that "the individual alone is the 'carrier of life' [... and] let us continually remember the dreams, the stories, the myths, which declare unshakeable truth that the single individual--you or I--may be the 'makeweight that tips the scales'" (33-4). Jesus preached a message of love, and His love would stretch across the history. However, His message was corrupted as soon as it was institutionalized.

In the secret tradition, a black magician was harnessing his power on other side of the world. He "worked to build up his supernatural powers over several incarnations, and he now threatened to pervert the whole course of history" (Booth 301). His power was modified through the use of human sacrifice and blood. Blood, a great mystery, calls the spirits down and maddens them. "Occultists know that humans can be killed in a particular way," Booth relates, "so that the human spirit is harnessed. [...] In occult circles it is know that black magicians can use the souls and spirits of others, their sacrificial victims as chariots" as Elijah did with his animal and vegetable selves. This black magician was confronted by another warrior of the sun named Huitzilopochtli, whose name is sometimes interpreted as meaning the 'left-handed hummingbird'. Booth opines that "when Jesus Christ was crucified, a huge power to spiritualize the earth was unleashed. When, simultaneously, the great black magician in the South Americas was crucified, a vortex opened up that would draw into itself the great currents of world history, the extremes of both good and evil" (304). It is important to remember that when Jesus died, He first descended to hell. Jesus and His duel in Mexico were the great linkers of history, of good and evil. Everything would form around them as they ushered in the new age of Pisces.



As mentioned by Booth, Jesus' sign was Pisces. Helen M. Luke puts it well: "In the sign of Pisces there are two fishes swimming in opposite directions--the Christ and the anti-Christ, his dark brother. The nature of true love is not exclusive. We cannot love and feed on the bright fish and refuse to recognize the validity of its opposite" (37). The fish that Luke describes are the yin-yang energies circling each other. Jesus was not only the acceptor of his good twin, his evil twin, and women--he accepted all the dualities. He vivified the elements, the material universe, and began to change humanity for the better. It was to discover the compassionate love for another which would change us all. "It involves a stern and clear-eyed recognition of evil as it is," Luke says, "the courage to confront and to fight it to the death, if necessary, on one level; but at the same time a compassionate acceptance of its manifestations in oneself or in others" (37). This is a very feminine virtue. A month ago, I got into a heated argument with a friend which revolved around this article. He said it was morally reprehensible and seemed angry with me for apparently justifying its existence. I replied that the individuals who had chosen to make fun of her were being crude, but that I could stand by its existence. The Mother loves all her children but the Father judges on his social existence; likewise, the internet shows the evil underbelly of mankind, but at the same time, I would kill a snake if it tried to bite me.

After his resurrection, Jesus' followers found him on the coast, preparing fish. Pisces' symbol is of a fish, a symbol that women are also linked because of the sea's deep depths. There is much life in her waters, and also much mystery. Helen M. Luke links the new age, Aquarius, which will proceeding Pisces one, with its mythic image of the water carrier. If our age, she claims, is one of stranded fish dying on the shore, then "the water carrier, who stands in the heavens pouring water from a never-falling jar down into the mouth of the stranded fish below him" (38) will resuscitate him. And this change may have been foreshadowed by the contemporaries, William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon.

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Rumors persist that William Shakespeare, an historical enigma, was the same person as Francis Bacon. This linkage is interesting. Bacon was a proponent for a material reality, or as Booth puts it, "Bacon realized that if you can observe objects as objectively as possible, very different patterns emerge from the ones that give subjective experience its nature" (405). Shakespeare, alternatively, wrote of a subjective reality--one "not of character types, which is what had before, but a jostling crowd of fully realized individuals, seething with passion and fired by ideas, so Bacon revealed a world bursting with quiddity, a scintillating world of infinitely various, sharply defined objects" (404-5). Booth claims that the various personalities during this time, Marlowe, Donne, and Cervantes being others, were a reincarnated Elijah moving in tandem. His spirit was split into many like a flock of birds. Shakespeare himself is compared to Jesus in that he "revolutionized human consciousness, yet left almost invisible traces on the contemporary historical record" (400). Francis Bacon, on the other hand, is well documented. In fact, he was in charge of the alotting of land in North America. What makes their connection fascinating is that they represent opposite sides of the a mythological whole. Like Apollo/Dionysus and Christ/Anti-Christ we can see a completeness in dueling brothers.

A return to sanity -- the markets and the feminine

Since I was young, I have loved cities. The character built up on years of life, of blood, sweat, and tears. Little alleys and tucked in areas that only certain people can access. They are mazes--great big mazes constructed over years and from different minds. The city is like a bazaar, or even a social computer structure like Linux. They are put together, made beautiful, because of the different architects who decided to place their mark on them. Eric Raymond, in his essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", argued this same 'open-source' system could be applied to society at large. I think it already does inside the limits of the city. Here the soil is plotted by the physical infrastructure, property laws, and zoning and other regulations facilitated by the federal and local government, but is seeded and nurtured by private institutions. Later in this essay, I will use this framework to attempt to depict a deregulated system that is aided by the government and not hurt by it as is often the case in modern city management.

In my mind's eye I am constructing roads. They line the earth like a map and sink into the dirt. The physical land is ready to be drawn upon by man. The industrial sector starts to see promise in its easy-to-use layout. Workers quickly follow and the business worlds bustles, ready to construct building atop of building geared toward finance and economics. Each individual unit is ready to use his energy to improve the structure of the city. To lay a road here or build a bench there. Alleyways develop, gardens are planted atop of roofs, and a banker orders a fountain to be constructed in front of his building. This is the decentralized world which could be guaranteed through proper institutions. The government, instead of intruding, can actually facilitate private development by creating the proper infrastructure for its nourishment. However, for something like this to be realized, one must first understand the wildness of the market and the collective unconscious which drives it. I wish to showcase this tension for the reader and the danger man faces when he attempts to interfere with the actual mechanisms of the economy.

But first I want to set up a mythological set of images. Cities, as I have experienced, are where the doers do. The country, on the other hand, is where the passive stay passive. Nothing changes in Montana, but things change in the city all the time. They transform with each foot pushing into mud or a dime thrown in a bum's cup. In the southern district, people chuckle dismissively in a comedy club, a woman asks a man for a smoke outside a 30 story building, and a drunk pees on a red brick wall as a train passes by. Somewhere in the north, an ill college student writes his passions on the blank pages of his journal, on the floor under him two people make love, and under them is an older woman watching Starz. Nothing interests her tonight so she decides to go to bed early. Down below, far below, in an alley with a thrown over garbage can, someone is getting mugged. A man of great wisdom or terrible pride can render a city raw with the bite of his words or the tip of his pen. Revolutions can happen in the country, but they are always a result of a person inspired by vitriolic ideas from the urban world.

In Montana, the entanglement of branches, leaves, and bark with the high peaks in the West and the empty plains of the East have a sort of order to them as well, but what they lack is the energy and spirit of man's will. His desire to transform perceived chaos into order (blocks, ovals, window panes, side walks, cement). Both are necessary. Both realms of delight. But a city is where a man goes to construct his ego; the wilderness the place to dissolve it. It reminds him that nature is all-consuming, endless, and that man's world is a strict illusion. The city grows from the gifts of the earth and orders it to understand it, the earth is the foundation of man's world--they complete each other and are the masculine and feminine energies of the cosmos.

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It is my belief that modern Western man has blinded himself. He has focused his attention (as is the left brain's inclination) to the ego at the expense of the subconscious. This blindness has translated into Keynesian economics, and ultimately man's belief that he is the Earth's master and it his servant. Keynesian economics is, of course, predicated on the belief that the government can positively affect the market by enacting certain policies. It has also led to the establishment of fixing interest rates at near zero, the printing of dangerous amounts of fiat money, and the corruption of the private banking system. The Federal Reserve, created in 1913 by Woodrow Wilson with the Federal Reserve Act, is a socialist institution at the heart of America's 'free market'. This manipulation was only amplified further when in 1971 Richard Nixon abolished the last vestiges of the gold standard which were established with the Bretton Woods monetary system in 1944. After this, the American dollar was no longer tied to a commodity. It was primed for manipulation by the private bankers in charge of the Federal Reserve. The market, which was uncontrollable by a single man's will, was now under the purview of the men who did seek to control it. This system led to the growth of the military industrial complex, pork barrel spending, and overall, the average American's enslavement to debt. If the creation of wealth meant nothing but the pressing of a button on a computer screen, then America, as long as her currency was still respected, could do anything she pleased. And she did.

The markets themselves are not a masculine force; in fact, they are quite feminine. They mimic nature in that they are often cyclical, based on the seasons, and even the cycles of the day. The macro-economy is the collective unconscious of a greater body of individuals, just like 'nature' is the collective unconscious of the Earth itself. It represents the animal, plant, fungi, virus, and bacteria kingdoms, the deeps of the oceans and highs of the mountains. The economy is likewise separated into various kingdoms, industrial, financial, high-tech, etc. and their various linkages. And just like nature, there are individuals in the market's systems--huge organisms like multinational corporations and small one-cell units like people themselves. Man often puts an emphasis on bigger creatures, thus when a large firm fails, he feels the need to save it and the individual cells which make it up. This is often labeled 'progressive' and 'compassionate'. What it is is unnatural. Even elephants and tigers should be allowed to die if they are found wanting. It's called 'the survival of the fittest', and when this is not allowed to happen, the overall economy will become less able to provide utility to the masses and weather more severe storms in the future. It is only when man tries to direct the market's, nature's actions for his own need do they become corrupted by man's will. This is not to say that saving a good business (or animal) is an evil, especially if it was killed by something alien, like the government's will or a madman with a shotgun. However, if it dies because it can no longer compete, it should be allowed to perish. Just like nature, a new company will spring up to replace it, a better, more fit company. That is, if nature/the markets are working properly, which today, neither are.

This was a result of man's ego--his need to control nature for his own end. And it was and is arrogance.

It gave him a drive to control the world around him, to live completely separated from the danger that nature (the market) represents. There is nothing in science that detracts from the majesty of the universe. In fact, it enhances it. However, this knowledge (logos) also gives the holder a new power to weild--it makes him start to believe that he may be different than the rest of the cosmos, and this leads to a great deal of hopelessness on one end, or a sense of superiority and entitlement on the other. Nature is transformed into a mere resource that can be used, not something that can be worked with as an equal. In the history of humanity, this is the turning of the Neolithic to the Axial age. Goddess cultures began to waste away and give way to sky-god dominated ones. We can see a graphic representation of this in the Babylonian tale of the slaying of Tiamat by the new god, Marduk. This change seems to coincide with the invention of the alphabet and the growth of cities. With the collapse of female worship, women began to be treated as property, people's ownership of slaves, and the mistreatment of nature. Man's sense of self, something that is quite different in oral cultures, set him on a path of hierarchy, boxing, kings, and feudalism--and the creation of the great abstract god in the sky who denied the existence of the female half of Himself completely and could not be depicted in pictures, but only writing.

This is the work of the left brain, Saturn, who is the mythological representation of time and death, and to the Romans, civilization itself! However, it also leaves out the female aspect of the godhead, the Mother, she who represents eternity, wildness, and the invisible dimensions of our lives--the subconscious as opposed to the conscious. There is also a completeness to her that the masculine ego lacks. She is everything, not just the 'nouns' but also the 'verbs'. Saturn, on the other hand, is pure will. He is the Titan of individuality, boxing, of beginnings and endings. His desire is to control the Mother to his own ends. In other words, he wants to be free of her wildness, not having to worry about her mood-swings. The story I want to set up is this: Saturn's desire, the great material force in the universe, is not only to control the market, but to eventually eliminate it completely. In this case the great Titan is represented by the will of government to control a wild economy. This 'wild economy' is the Mother--a great, holistic force that is susceptable to the whims of the collective unconscious.

It is, indeed, a fallacy to assume that the goal of the market is continual expansion. It is analogous to saying that the ultimate goal of evolution is continual expansion from bacteria to higher creatures, to humans, and then to whatever comes after. It only gains this significance when man starts to form a framework of memories and desires, constructing a story from the patchwork. This is the masculine ego trying to take control of something it does not completely understand. A single person does this constantly. We form goals, a narrative, from our memories and hopes. This happened because this happened because this happened. In fact, studies have shown that much of our happiness depends on the forming of these false narratives. Viktor Frankl discovered this inside the horror of a concentration camp. And Maury Kelly concluded in a recent article for the Atlantic:

As studies have shown, depressives tend to have more realistic—and less inflated—perceptions of their importance, abilities, and power in the world than others. So those of us who benefit from therapy may like it in large part because it helps us to do what others can do more naturally: to see ourselves as heroes; to write (and re-write) the stories of our lives in ways that cast us in the best possible light; to believe that we have grown from helpless orphans or outcasts to warriors in control of our fate.

In other words, we can accept a bad event happening or our own egregious actions if it was the inevitable stepping stone to the person we needed to become. The error occurs when we start to associate too much with our 'roles'--when we forget that they are just drops which fell from the subconscious like rain from a cloud. There are, of course, many more where that came from.

Socialist Liberals often have it wrong in this regard. They argue for a government that is compassionate and will save everything, but at the same time ideologically chip away at the masculine half of nature. This makes no sense. They deny what makes the feminine special and instead attack the masculine with masculine tactics. Women are of the base. They nourish the soil, the roots, so the the masculine has a solid foundation to build from. Her basic desire is not to hunt, but to provide elements of a successful endeavor, not actually taking part in it. Many feminists may argue that this is somehow a lesser function, but it is important to remember that during Paleolithic times, the woman's role as mother, gatherer, and home-keeper was equally as important as the man's role as hunter. The man's quick spurt of energy and then instant success or failure was more heroic; however, if he did fail, then the clan would have to rely on the women's gathering abilities. She provided the fail-safe, the jumping pad which men felt comfortable enough to leap from.

Men and women during these times were on equal footing; however as civilization progressed and people moved into cities, her function was deminished. It is one of the great achievements of our age that her power is returning. It is the markets, a great equalizer, which will eventually return her to her status. Statistics support this fact. Feminists often bring up the pay disparity, but any sane individual can see these numbers are slanted. If it were true, companies would hire many more women to take advantage of their less-than-equal pay. This decrepancy, in the first place, is often a result of women leaving to take care of children and not advancing as far as men would in a similar period. It is also true that women are often attracted to careers that are not as high-paying as a man's. Should this be seen as unequal? I say no. Men often risk more in the jobs they choose and thus often receive higher pay. This is the essence of the hunt, of striking out on a quest and completing it no matter the risks. It is also supported by various financial equations that show that higher risk results in a higher value in the denominator, lowering the attractiveness of the investment. It simply makes sense. Many women feel disillusioned because they have lost the sense of the feminine inside themselves in a man's world. However, with the advent of the internet, which is highly feminine in the way it works, the continued interdependence of the world economy based on the market, and continued linkages via IGOs and NGOs, a return to equality is not only coming, it is almost here, at least in the Western world. However, as I will try to show, the goal of life is not continual growth as put forth by the left brain; nor is it the continual change acknowledged by the right. It is a balance between the two.

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The markets have 'gone wrong.' There is no denying that fact; however, some believe that it is the markets themselves that are inherently evil and not the system of government attempting to control them. When I say 'system', I am talking about the revolving door of the private and public sector, the gerrymandering of districts, the stink of lobbyists in Congress, the secret mechanisms of control, of private vetting, of criminal activities perpetrated by government employees, the nascent police state, the military-industrial complex, and the horror of self-inflicted terrorism on our home soil to justify it. Both parties, no matter their campaign promises, inflate the federal government's power when they are placed in office. This should reveal the duplicitous nature of the two-party system. It is a red herring to keep us distracted from the real corruption and evil. Enslaved with debt and overwhelmed with pop culture, sports' statistics, and social networks, people, in general, do not have enough energy to enlighten themselves on important things like the national debt, bills passing through Congress, or the drones filling the skies. They rely on the people in government to do what's right, and this is a dangerous assumption.

What we all must realize is that to attempt to control the will of the market is like trying to control the will of a river by damming it, siphoning off water for irrigation, or fishing from her waterways. Heidegger talked about a similar concept when it came to technology--on one end, we can see nature (or 'the market') as a resource that can be owned or, on the other, as something that cannot be owned but instead, worked with. Picture a boat atop the waves. It is still a technology, but it is one that doesn't destroy the resource. Yes, things like dams, irrigation, and fishing can be done sustainably; however, when put under the control of government, this result is unlikely. People and markets, for the most part, are rational. It is not in their best interest to destroy their livelihood (especially if they own it). And even when man is irrational, what is wrong with that? Wasn't man born to be irrational if he wants? Shouldn't the markets then reflect his irrationality? In theory, one person should not be able to affect the entire system if capitalism isn't corrupted anyway. However, with the engorgement of government, this will always be the case.

My argument for the restriction of government is not that it is inherently evil, but that it is so easily corruptible. Yes, it is nice to imagine a perfect utopia where the government is controlled by people who are selfless and intelligent, but this can never be the case if humans still act like humans. Unless you are willing to fundamentally alter mankind to extirpate his natural desires for power, sex, and wealth (and believe me, some people really are), then a perfect benevolent system of government can never be. The alternative to father government, some people wrongly believe, is America's capitalism gone wrong--the conglomeration of banking, MNC's, and government into something of a corporotacracy. But again, this system is one where government is still too big. By planting seeds in the market's soil and burning down an overgrown, dying forest, there can possible be real 'green shoots.' This, however, requires a recognition of life and death. People fear death. They fear change. To allow something to die is against the ego's natural tendency. The subconscious, on the other hand, has an innate knowledge that everything will eventually perish, but the parts that make it up never will. There is only change but never true destruction. In the West, death is hidden away in a hospital bed. It is a terrible sad event and people only mourn. We can be controlled by our fear of death, you see, and we often are by those in control. After we realize that death is simply another illusion we can progress into a healthier and saner way of seeing of the world.

The government's role should not be a masculine one. It should, instead, upkeep a feminine one. In other words, a structure which the 'hunt' can leap from. The soil from which his seeds can grow and reach for the sky. How can it achieve this goal? (1) By providing the proper laws which assure the rights to property, due process, and free speech. (2) Guarantee a certain level of autonomy--the right to be able to own guns, alcohol, and drugs. (3) The right to equality not based on aptitude but on guarantees of being fairly treated no matter age, race, sex, or sexual orientation. (4) A pledge of transparency, and a law on the book that will oust the government official if he does not perform par standard. (5) I call for the end of the private Federal Reserve banking system, for fiat currency, and the end of impeding other country's right to self-determination except in some cases such as genocide and/or war crimes like torture. (6) As well as make illegal the taking of private money from large MNCs and banks once elected to a position in government unless voted on by his constituates. (7) A police force and army should be maintained to enforce the laws. (8) I believe it is better for the government to have a monopoly on certain sections of the physical infrastructure like roads and energy. This is proven in easy to understand graphs which economists can produce. Issues like education, health care, and insurance can be solved by allowing the market to out compete the government. Here I call for deregulation--people will go to the best and the best will prosper, guaranteed. (9) And lastly, the right to fail. The stakeholders have a right to take over and do as they see fit once bankruptcy is declared. This gives the potential for a new, better business to birth from the ashes.

Of course, I have a certain love for research funding and higher education. This sort of thing invests in the future of the country and should continue if it is what the people want the government to do with their tax money. For my part, I think this would be a much better investment than pointless wars and saving dead companies. As far as the tax system goes, I see a fixed tax of something like 10% being the most fair. Some argue falsely that taxing the rich at a higher rate is 'fairer', if that is a word; however, statistically, richer people save more so this money would end up in new, more advantageous investments from the banks anyway. This seems right and a more progressive stance on the future of the country's economy. Once emotions become involved in the government's decisions, it results in lame attempts to help which often result in the complete opposite outcome. The government, in turn, should be the boat on the river helping us coast on the waters of the market, not the dam, irrigater, or fisher. Remember, the market is a feminine force and should boost not only the elephants but the worms when it is working properly.

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I bring you this last section in a moment of clarity. Looking back at my progression over the past two semesters of college, I have learned of the limits of one's love of another. This love can only extend as far as the person loving loves himself. With this in mind, I will speak of a theoretical hero who will save us from our sins. It will be he who loves himself as much as he loves mankind. This is not to suggest that this theoretical person is full of himself or arrogant; instead, it implies someone with the conviction to extend his love as far as it will go. Compassionate love that does not interfere with another's life, but enhances it. It coasts on the waves of his waters, not altering or impeding his flow. This man will come from a place not from the desire for his own gains, but his love for all mankind.

I often speak of the meaninglessness of politics as a cynical college senior; however, if someone could emerge from the masses not wishing for material wealth, fame, or sexual liaisons, I could stand behind him fully, willing to give myself over for his cause of a better world. A world not predicated on a Utopian paradise, but one of respect, compassion, and most of all love and a knowing that God's love does not come from his desire to control our every action and thought, but a God who respects our freewill to make our own choices. Did God not know we would be thrust from Paradise always longing to return? If He is all that they say He is, then the answer is yes!

Understand what I am saying: I want an end to the counterproductive cynicism towards politics and 'the system', and instead, a call to rise above it! I long for an age that respects the individual as much as the community, a true balance between the masculine and feminine aspects of our inner selves. I also say this knowing that ultimately the respect of the community comes from the respect of the individual. By respecting the 'negative' rights of the individual, there can be true growth. The grand buildings will rise, spinning their webs, layer after layer, making all of us wealthy again. Making all of us respect ourselves again--a true love that comes from inner light not from thankless help.

Life, Literature, Consciousness, Language

According to a recent article written by Jeff Grabmeier, "'losing yourself' in a fictional character can affect your real life." New studies performed by researchers at Ohio State University have shown that after reading a book, a person's thoughts, at least temporarily, may start resembling one of the novel's characters. In other words, the reader's 'real life' will be affected by events and people from a fictional world. "In one experiment," Grabmeier opines, "the researchers found that people who strongly identified with a fictional character who overcame obstacles to vote were significantly more likely to vote in a real election several days later." These changes, called 'experience-taking' by one of the study's co-authors, Lisa Libby, are ratcheted up if the characters and the situations are similar to the person's outside experiences. In another experiment, 70 heterosexual males were asked to read a story about another student. If the character was revealed to be gay near the end, the students had a higher incidence of 'experience-taking'. Geoff Kaufmen, the graduate student who led the study, said of the results, "Experience-taking changes us by allowing us to merge our own lives with those of the characters we read about, which can lead to good outcomes." However, it doesn't happen on cue. The person reading must forget about their own person and start to fully identify with the character in the story. This would be why first person stories had a greater effect on the research subjects, and may also explain why many novels and movies contain a 'straight man' that introduce the audience into the author's world.

Our minds have a tough time separating 'reality' from the world of a book, as reported by Annie Paul in her article for the New York Times. When we read words, the same area of our brains that are activated when we experience them 'light up', as shown by Spanish researchers in 2006. “The brain” according to Paul, "... does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Keith Oatley [...] has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that ‘runs on minds of readers just as computers simulations run on computers.’” More research has gone far to prove that the limits of self and perception are still far from known. In one study, subjects fitted with goggles which streamed video directly into their eyes of another body could feel what was being done to it. This is known as the ghost limb phenomenon—when an amputee feels like the part of them missing is still there. “These experiments have demonstrated how remarkably easy it is to ‘move’ a human centre of awareness from one body to another,” a Swedish group of researchers write and is reported in an article in Wired written by Alexis Madrigal. “This speaks directly to the classical question of the relationship between human consciousness and the body, which has been discussed by philosophers, psychologists, and theologians for centuries.” Experiments like the ones I described above may explain the spiritual aspect of reading. These characters, the works themselves, contain figurative spirits which can influence our perceptions of the world around us.



(Susan Schaller, author of Man without Words)

It is often the ego which goes the furthest in influencing our perception of self because it tells how we are doing based on our relative position to those around us and the narrative it constructs of past events. Leonard Shlain, in his book The Alphabet versus the Goddess, says that the invention of the alphabet fundamentally altered the way our consciousness functions. The act of reading requires the pin-pointing of our vision (like hunting) and also allows our mind to conceptualize abstract ideas better, as well as start seeing ourselves as individuals cut off from everything else. I have covered this much better in other blogs and Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy goes a long way to show this dichotomy. An article written by Greg Downey for Neuroanthropology.net asks what "human thought would be like without language?" I want to emphasize that there is a huge difference between being literate and being in an oral culture. I am not sure if the author of the article is aware of this, however. Downey, for his part, describes the author Susan Schaller, who wrote Man without Words. In her book, she describes teaching a deaf Mexican man not only sign language, but that there was language at all. In this passage, the man finally comes to the realization of the shared symbology of language:

What happened is that I saw a movement. I stopped. I was talking to an empty chair, but out of my peripheral vision I saw something move. I look at Ildefonso and he had just become rigid! He actually sat up in his chair and became rigid. His hands were flat on the table and his eyes were wide. His facial expression was different from any I’d seen. It was just wide with amazement!

And then he started-it was the most emotional moment with another human being, I think, in my life so that even now, after all these years, I’m choking up [pauses]-he started pointing to everything in the room, and this is amazing to me! I’ve thought about this for years. It’s not having language that separates us from other animals, it’s because we love it! All of a sudden, this twenty-seven-year-old man-who, of course, had seen a wall and a door and a window before-started pointing to everything. He pointed to the table. He wanted me to sign table. He wanted the symbol. He wanted the name for table. And he wanted the symbol, the sign, for window.

The amazing thing is that the look on his face was as if he had never seen a window before. The window became a different thing with a symbol attached to it. [emphasis added, GD] But it’s not just a symbol. It’s a shared symbol. He can say “window” to someone else tomorrow who he hasn’t even met yet! And they will know what a window is. There’s something magical that happens between humans and symbols and the sharing of symbols.

That was his first “Aha!” He just went crazy for a few seconds, pointing to everything in the room and signing whatever I signed. Then he collapsed and started crying, and I don’t mean just a few tears. He cradled his head in his arms on the table and the table was shaking loudly from his sobbing. Of course, I don’t know what was in his head, but I’m just guessing he saw what he had missed for twenty-seven years.

This is the perennial tension between the masculine right and feminine left--a battle which has stretched back to the beginning of time, according the secret tradition as chronicled in Mark Booth's The Secret History of the World. As humanity progressed from a hunter-gatherer society, to an agricultural one, and into the modern world, peoples' minds also began to transform. These changes seemed to coincide with the invention of language, the alphabet, typography, and now, the internet. Of course correlation does not mean causation. However, many have pointed out that a child's ability to form memories happens around the time they begin to talk. Is collective humanity not similar to a child learning to speak? Research by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf (not the Klingon) suggest that "language biases perception, affecting how people are capable of perceiving, making some ideas or even qualities of the phenomenal world, more or less difficult to perceive." For example, Schaller discovered that the deaf man had the hardest time understanding the concept of 'idea' of everything they discussed. She also discovered that Ildefonso found Western man's sense of time to be strange. Schaller gives this example:

I try to meet him once a year and I always ask him, “When was the last time we saw each other?” I ask him a “when” question because it tickles me. Time was the hardest thing for him to learn. And he always prefers to say “the winter season” or “the Christmas time.” He wants to point to a season or to a holiday. It’s not a cognitive problem. To this day, he thinks it’s weird that we count time the way we do. He can do it, but he doesn’t like it. Think about it. For twenty-seven years, he followed the sun. He followed cows. He followed the seasons. It’s that rain-time of the year.

This is similar to an oral society's sense of time. a need for lists, catalogs, laws, and calendars seemed to arrive with literate culture. Shlain goes as far to suggest that the right brain itself is a complex organ to perceive time--"death is the mother of beauty". All tragedy and stress comes from our knowledge that some day we shall die. But a pre-literate culture puts more emphasis on the cyclical aspects of nature, not a beginning and end. This is obvious from their stories passed down to us--they are a patchwork of different voices, meandering, and never truly ending. Rather than being homophonic, like pure speech, they are the polyphonic sounds of the community echoing the natural world. Downey says that "anthropologists still tend to agree that understandings of time can differ, and that Western treatment of time as a kind of flow through undifferentiated, measurable durations is just one version or inflection of the sense of time with its own distinctive emphases." The language we speak preconditions us to think a certain way. It may even blind us to what is directly in front of us, similar to George Orwell's 'Newspeak' which set out to eliminate words so the Authoritarian-controlled populace had less words to use.

In fact, once a culture develops language and then writing, it seems to change the way they think in drastic ways. They actually begin to forget the way they had once thought. Scholler says of her friend, Ildefonso:

The only thing he said, which I think is fascinating and raises more questions than answers, is that he used to be able to talk to his other languageless friends. They found each other over the years. He said to me, “I think differently. I can’t remember how I thought.” I think that’s phenomenal!

Knowingly, Downey says of Scholler's revelation, "Language was not simply an addition to his cognitive repertoire; it may have displaced or disrupted other forms of thought and interaction." When a culture develops an alphabet, it is highly unlikely they will go back to the conditions before there was one.

Leonard Shlain argues that the masculine left brain has been waging a winning war on the feminine right since the invention of written language, with Mark Booth imagining Saturn/Satan/Set (Saturn being the Titan of time and civilization) as a great snake trying to kill the Mother via the Western esoteric tradition. One can examine the works of Francesco Colonna in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili near the invention of typography and see its relation to Marduk's slaying of Tiamat in the Babylonian culture near the invention of the cuneiform and see just how closely they resemble each other. The feminine right brain is linked with the untamed, holistic, natural world. There is no sense of hierarchy, boxing, or separation, only one identity moving in tandem with everything else, a real sense of change NOT building toward something. It is framework of 'home' and 'support'. The masculine left brain is instead tied to order, geometry, hunting, pin-pointing, and the sense of ego and self. Its great desire is a static universe, completely boxed and controlled. It is the conscious and the right is the unconscious (the part of our mind which controls breathing, our heart-rate, walking, blinking, etc.). The feminine is also joined with the spiritual, the invisible/mirror of typical experience, while the masculine puts an emphasis on what can be seen, the material aspect of existence. The magical aspect of reading, where we commune with inner spirits which cannot be explained and can interfere with our lives, is the Mother's sphere playing out in us. The masculine deals with written culture's need for a beginning, middle, and end--a complete story--and Western man often translates this need to his own life.

An abstract God was given birth to by one of the first written cultures, the Hebrews. This culture famously denigrated the female half of consciousness. It symbolically cherished the matzah, a dry, flat bread that resembled the desert the Hebrews walked through. It was also made without yeast, a classic symbol of female sexuality--growth and rising. "Growth is implicitly associated with the female," Shlain writes, "Dough composed of four elemental feminine symbols--water, salt, grain, and yeast--becomes the quintessential foodstuff called 'the staff of life.' Dough rising slowly in an oven is metaphorical for a baby growing in a mother's womb, 'a bun in the oven' in modern parlance" (108). Instead they honored a King-God who offered his servants manna from above. The Hebrews also forced new brides to shave their heads (hair is a symbol for fertility) as well as disallowed females from participating in important religious ceremonies. Pigs, likewise, were forbidden. This may have had to with their love of rolling in mud--another Goddess symbol. Demeter, a Greek Goddess, was often shown with a pig by her side. This change began with written culture's tendency to honor the conscious over the unconscious. The examples I gave above dealing with free-floating identity do not fit well with the masculine ego. It centers identity strictly in the head, with its memories, emotions, and desires. The female half recognizes a more complete picture of existence. The morphing, cyclical world that contains both good and evil things. It is more willing to accept the horrors of life, while the left brain tries to sweep them under the mat until they emerge again, more terrible than before.



An article on The Guardian website titled "The brain... it makes you think. Doesn't it?" has a neuroscientist and former professor of geriatric medicine debate whether the conscious or unconscious has a greater effect on society's actions. David Eagleman, the neuroscientist, says that "a person is not a single entity of a single mind: a human is built of several parts, all of which compete to steer the ship of state. As a consequence, people are nuanced, complicated, contradictory. We act in ways that are sometimes difficult to detect by simple introspection." Raymond Tallis, on the other hand, argues that to understand a single brain is as silly as trying to understand the "whispering of woods by applying a stethoscope to an acorn." In other words, he argues that the unconscious is unimportant in the scheme of things. The human world is instead driven by the masculine ego--the hunter, the pin-pointer--and its interactions with other egos via social and business-like interaction. Tallis even goes as far to claim that if the unconscious really is such a driver of human action, then how would Eagleman be aware enough to write a whole book about it? I see the tension of the masculine and feminine conscious playing out in a strange way here. Usually it is the humanities-focused person arguing for a more inclusive reality based on reading/unconscious experience and the natural scientist on the other, rallying for the hardline material ego to have its day (which it usually does). Now its the social scientist angered with the scientist's thought of an feminine 'unconscious' controlling the minds of men instead of the masculine 'conscious'. Again, like always, we should meet in the middle.

The Pokédex, Part 3

Seeing as this will probably be my final entry and the first after finals week, I am exhausted, but I feel like I never wrote a satisfactory farewell. It kind of hurts to let this blog go. I invested a lot of time into it, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears... To be honest, when I started writing entries I was just trying to live up to the guidelines: write one for every class. Then as I was assigned weekly updates for the English capstone, I thought posting them here would give me a high incentive to do a good job on them. It did.

In last semesters, I felt like I didn't do everything I could to make my blog for Sexson's class all I wanted it to be. I got lazy, others things were going on, etc. But I realized that this was such a great opportunity! Seriously, you get to read your classmates' thoughts, their style of writing, and it's a great forum for it. I have learned more about writing in previous semesters in Sexson's class than any other, except for maybe grammar. I was always fascinated by Tai's writing style in the Biblical lit class. It was hilarious and informative. This semester, I was inspired by Ashely, the kicker of puppies, not so much for her writing (which is also awesome) but the passion she has for these old authors. I mean, being into writing is cool! Jennifer of the Falling Waters was amazing and I hope she finishes her book--I really enjoy the way she is constructing her story. I also think it's fair to say that Shelby sweet & spicy's presentation broke all of our hearts. This summer is going to be an interesting one for me. I will be living in Guam, a little island in the South Pacific owned by the US government. It will hopefully be a revelatory experience. Exotic climate, scenery, cuisine, peoples. But, yeah, it is still the United States. At any rate, I am hoping to continue blogging into the summer in some way, at least dealing with my trip--If I have the energy, that is.

You may notice the title as being "The Pokedex, Part 3." I chose this for several reasons. I love Pokemon, and the blogs with a lot of pocket monsters have been popular via Google. So why not? This is like the 'Mew' of blog posts anyway. The last and kind of sucky. It is also alliterative with 'poptart,' a name I regretted choosing almost immediately. But hey! We live with our mistakes every day, but even random choices and occurrences have profound meaning. Par example, watching "Cabin in the Woods" last weekend, I noticed the stoner in the movie, Marty, had an Apocalytic moment when he linked 'poptarts' with 'puppeteers.' I had my own revelation--that's what poptart means! Not to imply I am a puppeteer... but it's just so cool, right? (Won't grandstand, won't grandstand...) Why did I choose poptart anyway? I have to admit to being a fan of Alex Jones, and sometimes he makes a joke about people being from planet 'poptart.' For some reason, this always bowled me over in hysterical bursts of laughter. It was 'Nick of Poptart' without the 'the', by the way. But I like 'Nick of the Poptarts' better anyway. So that's it. Again, like always, blogging was a great experience. I enjoyed everyone's. Remember, never stop learning from what other people are doing. It's fun to get swept up in a new intellectual endeavor you are passionate about--to your left brain, never stop growing, and to your right brain, never stop changing. Namaste? Oh why not...