Two for One Night at Little Caesars

I know there is a very large number; a number- with a whole lot of zeroes in it- of people who wonder what’s going on. They wonder why life is the way it is. They wonder, how come all this war and famine? Why all of this suffering? Why does history look like a blood-soaked mattress in a rat-infested alley? Why is there so much pain and ignorance? Why do some people have so much and others so little?

People handle this ‘unknown’ different ways and they get introduced to a variety of perspectives from the moment they get here, via their parents, environment and whatever educational system they are exposed to; formal and hard knocks variety. You add to that the uniqueness of their being that results in the complexity of their persona, each one exposed to something not duplicated in another human being; even when the same conditions apply- because they are not the same person and... you’ve got a snowflake in more ways than one. You’ve got a snowflake like no other snowflake and it is also melting and will soon be gone... back to where all of the water goes... but not entirely.

A snowflake is made from common water, momentarily individualized and to common water it returns, moving through all of the permutations of water. A human soul is different. Whatever happens to the housing of a human soul and the features of a human soul; the body, the personality, the emotions, the sensation of a personal mind... all the effluvia of our essence... that’s like the snowflake and the water. The soul is something different. The soul has individuality in spirit (of which it is composed) that, though it changes through experience, does not die and forever retains uniqueness no matter how high it flies.

Bear with me. All of this is prelude and not the point. The point is ‘why’ everything is the way it is. One might also ask ‘why’ everything appears to be the way it is. How does the way things are, the way things appear to be, match up with all of the explanations we have gotten from religions and philosophies and habits adjusted to getting by without understanding?

Although religion and philosophy may give us some comfort in the face of our trials, do they actually explain anything? Why are there so many different answers for the same thing? Why do these answers seem to contradict each other? Why, with these answers have we no solutions? Because nothing has gotten fixed has it? Our world has become more streamlined. Our comfort factor is generally better than the condition of kings in times gone by. Physical pain is more manageable but the conditions causing the pain, the age old tormentors from Pandora’s Box are still as active as ever.

It’s clear that some individuals have found an answer. You can see it in their face. They know something. Sometimes they can tell you what it is but even though you hear them you cannot apply what they have told you in the same way that they do. Something’s missing.

Looking at the world we see uncountable personalities pursuing myriad and often similar ends. You see them working and playing and reproducing in different ways. You see groups of them doing the same things. You see large groups speaking different languages, living according to the laws they have agreed upon. You see that these same things are in some cases more universally agreed upon and in some cases different from place to place.

Then you see one country warring against another. You see several countries joining together to war against several other countries. You see the same laws broken over and over again by new people who keep arriving and you see other people departing. Meanwhile there’s some mysterious balance that always brings things back to some sort of a central place no matter how out of wack it may get for a period of time. Somehow, in the aftermath of every storm, no matter how great, people and nations pick up again and go about their business once more until another storm hits. It's like what you see after you stir an ant hill with a stick. And it doesn't matter how often you do it. They build it right back in the same spot.

Here we see a nation in chains. Here we see a nation brimming with industry and confidence. Here we see poverty and want juxtaposed with castles on the hill. Here we see periods where the whole world is in a dark age and here we see movements of enlightenment sweeping around the globe until it all reforms into something else that eventually finds its way to another dark age.

Here and there an individual appears and their presence and their words cause millions to formulate a religion around them. A priest class emerges and immense buildings appear where people worship these beings. Sometimes these religions cause wars against other religions in direct conflict with the teachings of those upon whom the religions were established because the priest class chose to interpret those teachings in order to reflect the need for conflict.

Here and there social revolutions occur according to a philosophy based on the idea of a better life, a more equitable life, a more secure life- or even something created for a particular class- for the brief term of the lives involved and then each of these formulas find the need to make war upon the followers of another formula for whatever the reason that is given by those in a position to interpret it to that end.

Some of us see that all of these wars are initiated for personal gain and have little to do with any of the reasons given. Some of us see that no matter who was at the helm, or in what age it happened, these people always found a reason to make war and seek profit regardless of any lessons that might have been learned in the past. No matter what changes occur, the same conditions constantly repeat.

The reason for everything that happens here is because of two things; karma and reincarnation. Things are the way they are because this world, composed of four warring elements, performing on the soundboard of a fifth, is a stage set for souls clothed in these same warring elements moving through an infinity of circumstances until each soul has found freedom from the need to return in search of further experience.

The universal single self split itself into uncountable individual personifications of itself in order to experience life. The motivation is love. The end result is love and there isn’t any more to it except for what we constantly add which further requires our return in order to resolve it. Every thing we do is visited upon us so that we may weight the value of our every single thought, word and deed. People suffer because they choose to, because of what they have decided is real to them. Since none of it is real, experience is necessary in order to bring them to the point where they can realize this. Since there is nothing but the self and everything else is costume and romance; comedy and tragedy within the context of a play, there is no sane objective other than self-realization.

When this dawns and once that realization arrives, there is nothing left but the last remaining moments one must live through until freedom is complete. In the meantime it all continues across a landscape of time incomprehensible to the individualized mind. People can talk all they want on the way. They can wail like no one wailed before. They can steal all the toys and be on every lip for as long as that lasts but it is departing as it happens. It is all going away. You either let it go or you hold on until nature and compassion pry your cold dead fingers from the trigger of desire.

Visible sings: ♫ The World is a Rumor ♫
'The World is a Rumor' is track no. 8 of 13 on Visible's 2007 album
'The Sacred and The Profane'
Lyrics (pops up)

The Thin Veneer of Civilization

Carl Panzram once said that he wished that humanity had one single neck so that he could strangle them. Carl would have been very comfortable with the Bush administration, the same way that Ted Bundy was comfortable with the Young Republicans.

Bad leaders don’t scare me nearly as much as humanity does. Bad leaders come and go but humanity manages to continue to be small minded junkies no matter what happens. It’s like an endless sheet of Formica laid over a seething caldron of fear and self-interest.

You don’t get Valens and Valentinian or Bush and Cheney without a choir in the background. It’s like the audience I saw on Limbaugh’s television show some years ago; doddering, self-important Nimrods.

This is the reason that the press lies and why they don’t teach you to think in school; why ‘dumbing down’ is a very real process. People want to be led and asking too many questions will just leave them feeling low for finding out something they didn’t want to know.

I’ve been in crowds that panicked and I’ve seen what people are capable of when they become afraid. It’s not pretty and it shows an unfortunate truth. It shows how thin the veneer is that overlays civilization. The capacity to remain calm is a much underrated virtue. Panic leads to the kind of thing a mouse runs into when, in fear of the cat it leaves its hidey hole where it is already safe. Sure, you have to think and react sometimes. Poise in the face of danger is often a good protection against avoidable pain.

The period of time between 2002- and 2012 is a time of great transformation for the human race and these might prove a little dense reading for many; see ‘dumbing down’ previously mentioned. But I include these links just to show that this period is under discussion in a lot of places. Google will show you just how many. Even Nostradamus had a whole lot to say on the subject; you can make a lot of assumptions from Nostradamus and so I don’t spend any time trying to translate just exactly what he was saying.

The point is that a lot of people are aware of this time period and have been for hundreds of years and furthermore, you are right here inside of it and surely you can see some of what is going on. It appears that there may well be a ‘destiny that shapes our ends’. However, it is equally important to remember that, ‘a wise man rules the stars.’

I don’t want to spend this time talking about the stars or predictions. A rare handful actually possesses the ability to read the course of the heavens and fewer still have ever predicted anything the way it actually turned out. But we are all seers to a certain degree. Any of us could predict that if we keep walking toward a ledge we will fall off of it if we don't stop. We stay alive every day due to judgments made about predictions and the possibilities of rash actions. Larry Craig and Ted Haggert and many others knew the possibilities that could happen from their actions.

We’re just not very bright as a collection and being real bright is no protection against being stupid; if that makes any sense.

Religious anthropomorphism; sexual attraction, the will to power, the will to gain, the call of the wild are all conditions that contain potential for ruining your life and, unfortunately, the lives of others as well. You see it every day. Many of us can look at people and predict some of what they are going to run into if they keep going the way they are going. It shouldn’t be a stretch to look at humanity and make fairly accurate predictions as well.

Depending on the collective mix of the generations at any particular time you are going to get a certain kind of leaders. Sometimes it is better to go away somewhere while humanity goes through whatever it is facing. A lot of us want to get up on soapboxes and save the world. None of us are going to accomplish that in any universal sense. When people get stupid and greedy and self-involved it becomes necessary for them to go through certain things to wake their ass up. The same goes for humanity as it does for the individual. Having the right kind of self-interest under such circumstances is a precious commodity.

I can predict that barring the appearance of Al Gore that Hillary Clinton will be the democratic nominee. I can predict that, regardless of the pains being taken by the press and powerful interests behind the scenes, that Ron Paul is going to have a much bigger impact than the general public presently assumes and I can predict that that may well lead to an unfortunate event. I can predict that Americans are going to get even fatter than they are now and that their general health is going to get worse. I can predict that things are going to get worse in the Middle East before they get better. You can probably predict all of this too.

The cost of the political adventurism of the stupidest and most venal president in American history is going to be greater than many people realize. Hundreds of thousands of men and women are going to be coming back to America at some point and they are going to be suffering from various maladies running the gamut from exposure to depleted uranium to mental problems. Some of them are going to go postal.

I don’t have the space here to list the complications that are going to arise from the lies and profiteering at work during this administration. Life is not what it once was. The positivism that existed previous to this sad spectacle has been transformed into uneasiness and apprehension. Comparisons could be made about the weather generated by collective humanity and how natural weather conditions also behave according to their composition.

This is a dry and clinical; antiseptic essay. It’s intentional. Numbers do not contain emotion. Tragic periods of history look like so many words on paper when seen from a distance. Like you, I often wonder, “What were they thinking? Where did they think they were going?”

Nations have destinies just as individuals do. Is there a mysterious force that molds them or is character fate? Probably some of both and certainly something more as well and it will remain as indefinable and incomprehensible as it always has. We don’t seem to learn. We just shift from one theater of experience to another and go on swallowing transparent lies in exchange for being allowed to muddle on.

You can feel the texture of the dream that contains us. It sweeps along like a river, sometimes wide and lazy and sometimes narrow and roiling. You wanted something out of your life. You held some things in your hands for a time and you worked and struggled for something that never showed up the way you imagined that it would. You look back at the choices you made and you wonder about them. You wonder if it all really happened the way you remember it. You might even- some few- wonder who and what you are, because you still don’t know the answer to that.

I wish you luck humanity. I hope something wakes up in the heart of you and that you will get better leaders and address more care to all of the little incidents that compose your life. I’d like to think that you make your way out of this. Forward we go and no matter where we go it will always be right now except in our minds.

Visible sings: ♫ It Always Breaks Your Heart ♫
Lyrics (pops up)