Those Two Brave Men

Once, but maybe never again,

two men

standing in the cold

one young and one old;

they meet

but decline to greet

in the middle of a confrontation

on hallowed ground of a dividing nation.

They do not speak,

for all around them arise a peak

of anger and resentment—

a country devoid of contentment

in the cauldron of history.

Seems now it’s become a mystery

what has become of our unity,

as now we’re obsessed with impunity—

blame the younger, not the older one

as the chieftain wordlessly beats his drum;

but while the young man struggles to maintain a smile

the world wide web spews a viral pile

of all the blame that’s fit to hint

as talking head trolls make their dent

in the warp and woof of the data tide

in which we slavishly slouch to hide

the downing of civility

and the haughty thrusting of hostility.

We ride the wave of accusative gestalt—

let us assign a verdict who’s at fault.

But whose fault it is I think i know;

let’s blame it on the undertow

of madmen on the right

pulling young men into the fight,

or maybe let’s blame it on the leftist cadres

who would depose those maga padres,

while all the while the widening gyre

spins up in streaming twitter fire.

Hourly it whirls higher higher

while all the while it was nothing more

than a clueless kid who for one moment tore

our torrent stream of data angst asunder,

generating for a moment some online thunder.

So what once was our peace and tranquility

slips beneath the dearth of our virility.

’Twas on a cold gray day, I say,

we beheld it— but  for never again—

those two brave men

standing in the cold,

one young and the other old.

Glass half-Full 

This is for the birds

I thought I’d take a gander

at our nation’s slow meander

into polarized politics’ clown’d identities,

as chronic deficits  drain our amenities.

Meanwhile back at the ranch

not much chance in extending an olive branch

in  the present  state of our union,

cuz our leaders share no communion.

They find it advantageous to split  into camps

which somehow blows out our Liberty lamps.

So obsessed with the clown scenario showdown,

congress anoints the annual guvmint shutdown,

until  the farcical politics runs its course

while our nation’s deficit’s on a runaway horse.

Someday no credibility will be left in the US dollar

as Fed and Treasury in red ink they waller.

Someday dollars will be valued as turds,

cuz their politicking's all for the birds.

Glass half-Full

Dr. King remembered

I was a white boy growing up in the deep south.
In my life, 1951 . . .  a vivid memory stands out: the remembrance of this brave man:


. . . his life, his work, his service to mankind, his leadership in the perilous project of fulfilling our Creator's call to

. . . bring good news to the afflicted, . . . to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to prisoners . . . (Isaiah 61:1)
In my lifetime, I can think of no other American who demonstrated greater courage than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He persisted tirelessly in the sacred call to blaze a trail of opportunity for oppressed people. He persevered in the face of certain death, as he fully understood the vengeful opposition of other men--white and black--who  ultimately took him down.

The name assigned to him at birth, King, was appropriate, as he went on to conduct the life of a true leader, a born leader, an orator, an organizer who truly fulfilled  the declaration of our nation's founding principles:

We find these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,  that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.


In my lifetime, I can recall no other person who more deserves annual remembrance during a national holiday. Although he had his faults, his own sins as we all do,  he was a man of whom this world was not worthy.  In this world, he helped God and fellowman to "make a way where there is no way." He blazed a trail toward that "equal" status mentioned by Mr. Jefferson and the Continental Congress when they composed our Declaration back in 1776.

I am looking forward to meeting Dr. King in heaven, or whatever you call it. Many years ago, I wrote this song about him and an ancient leader named Moses:

Mountaintop

the Word BigBang

Way, way back in time, before all this stuff was here, even back before the Big Bang, something very amazing happened.


I was wondering about our universal origin, so I took a chance on a Wikipedia entry about it. This is what I found:

“ The (Big Bang) model describes how the universe expanded from a very high-density and high-temperature state.”

Scientists and dreamers like me have, for many and many a year, puzzled about what that “very high-density and high-temperature state” might have been.
I was pondering this development. My irrational dreamer self was wrestling with Reason as I attempted to figure out what that very high-density pre-Bang substance might have been. Being the 20th-century educated baby boomer that I am, my mind stumbled into an idea that I must have discovered in a science classroom somewhere along the line. Therefore, E=mc² banged into my big (bigger than a chimpanzee’s) brain.
Energy = mass x the speed of light squared.
Which means something like: When a very small chunk of (mass) material stuff gets its atomic parts whirling around at a certain extremely high speed, and when that speed is zipping along at a rate of that same velocity multiplied by itself (faster than I can imagine), the whole baleewick crosses some kind of transformational threshold and suddenly that mass of nuclear stuff gets changed Presto Chango! into something fundamentally different— Energy!
Waves and waves of energy . . .
Energy. . . hmm. . . whataboudit . . . Now I do know that there are many different forms of energy. There’s kinetic energy, like a bat hitting a ball, which then suddenly propels that ball to an absolutely reverse direction from the direction in which the pitcher had pitched it. Pretty amazing thing for a batter to do, when you think about it.
Amazing. Lots of amazing in this universe. Moving right along. . . don't blink or you'll miss something.
And then there’s potential energy, like Mr, Newton’s apple, which was, naturally, connected to an apple tree until, all of a sudden, something gave way and the apple dropped to the ground, which provoked Mr. Newton to ask:
Say what?
Which translates from 17th-century English to: what the heck is going on here? Or, if you’re an out-of-the-box kind of thinker . . . what the hell is going on here?
Potential energy instantaneously being converted to kinetic energy! That's what.
Perhaps it’s a little microcosm of the Big Bang, but on an exponentially smaller scale. The apple does make, you know, a kind of thud when it hits the ground, and then it transforms into a treat for an itinerant traveler to partake thereof.
Meanwhile, back at the tranche,  back to the the case of the macrocosm, the, as it were,  Big Bang, which was hypothesized as high-density matter being converted suddenly into kinetic energy, and subsequently expanding outward . . . (as John Lennon sang back in the day) across the universe . . .
and then, along the way, settling into a reverse of the mass-to-energy scenario, back into the energy-to-mass state of being, which brought forth . . . mass, stuff . . .
a Universe, duh . . .
I can only wonder, well, it is what it is, or . . . or it is what it has a become, as a result of all that instantaneous transformation, which has been transforming itself over 14.5 billion years to ravel as what we call “the Cosmos," and everything therein.
14.5 billion years of unfolding Universe.
Wow!
Francis Collins’, in his book The Language of God, described the beginning of the phenom, this way:

“For the first million years after the Big Bang, the universe expanded, the temperature dropped, and nuclei and atoms began to form. Matter began to coalesce into galaxies under the force of gravity. It acquired rotational motion as it did so, ultimately resulting in the spiral shape of galaxies such as our own. Within those galaxies local collections of hydrogen and helium were drawn together, and their density and temperature rose. Ultimately nuclear fusion commenced.”

All of this posited data reverberates in my 21st-century brain, settling into my born-again spirit, and restates itself as an expanded statement of Moses’ ancient, pre-science explanation:

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light; God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”

Makes sense to me. You?
 
Glass half-Full

Dr. King remembered

I was a white boy growing up in the deep south.
In my life, 1951 . . .  a vivid memory stands out: the remembrance of this brave man:


. . . his life, his work, his service to mankind, his leadership in the perilous project of fulfilling our Creator's call to 

. . . bring good news to the afflicted, . . . to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to prisoners . . . (Isaiah 61:1)

In my lifetime, I can think of no other American who demonstrated greater courage than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He persisted tirelessly in the sacred call to blaze a trail of opportunity for oppressed people. He persevered in the face of certain death, as he fully understood the vengeful opposition of other men--white and black--who  ultimately took him down.

The name assigned to him at birth, King, was appropriate, as he went on to conduct the life of a true leader, a born leader, an orator, an organizer who truly fulfilled  the declaration of our nation's founding principles:

We find these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,  that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In my lifetime, I can recall no other person who more deserves annual remembrance during a national holiday. Although he had his faults, his own sins as we all do,  he was a man of whom this world was not worthy.  In this world, he helped God and fellowman to "make a way where there is no way." He blazed a trail toward that "equal" status mentioned by Mr. Jefferson and the Continental Congress when they composed our Declaration back in 1776.

I am looking forward to meeting Dr. King in heaven, or whatever you call it. Many years ago, I wrote this song about him and an ancient leader named Moses:

Mountaintop

Where to now, Homo Developus?

Everybody knows that a few years ago we had a big economic breakdown. There were many reasons to explain what happened in 2008.
Let’s step back in time a little and consider what has taken place on our Industrialized Earth.
During the 1800’s and 1900’s our developed nations undertook a vast, worldwide surge of industrial development, which was accompanied by a universal expansion of business and corporate prosperity. This hyper-expansive phase of human development required very large-scale extractions of natural resources, which were then transformed into mega-stocks of consumer goods.
An abundance of consumer goods brought forth an abundance of consumers.
Consuming.
Consuming the goods, consuming the planet.
The end of the 20th century brought a vast slowdown. It happened in the fall of 2008, and regardless of what the bullish analysts and stimulus-chasers declare, we are still mired in that big slowdown of ’08.
And will continue to be. This is going to morph into a vast leveling out. The industrial age is over. Our planet will not tolerate another 200-year extraction expansion.
Now we have entered into the Age of Sustainable Technology and Appropriate Industry.
And herein a question arises.
Who will run the world?
Is there a cartel of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Edison and JPMorgan-types out there who will forge a new system to transform the old Industrial Infrastructure into the new Sustainable Society?
As the next surge—the post-industrial phase— is being initiated by a new breed of Industrialist . . . the Gates, the Jobs, the Bezos and Buffets . . . the industrialized Civilization stumbles into a new Electronified Zone.
A digitized twilight zone, as it were.
In the wake of the great ’08 Slowdown, we encounter a host of questions that define the logistical problem of where to go from here.
During the Investment Segment’s breakdown of ’08, a lot of very complicated financial engineering became unwound.
One financial analyst, John M. Mason, recently offered an explanation that includes this analysis of what happened in the financial world during the decline of our industrializing phase:

But, in the developed world, the presence of lots and lots of liquidity means very little in the way of corporate capital investment. The environment of credit inflation, built up over the last fifty years of so, has created a culture of financial engineering in the business community and, consequently, corporations act differently now than they did when most of the current economic models were constructed. Government stimulus gets built into greater risk taking, greater financial leverage, and financial investment, like stock buybacks.

(https://seekingalpha.com/article/4233178-supply-side-world-europe-well-united-states?ifp=0&app=1.)
So it seems to me that the financial guys—the wallstreet wheelers and dealers, etc—having running out of real new industrial infrastructure to invest in, turned to MBS schemes and CDO games in order to keep their game going. Instead of their oversized financial whirligig running on old Industrial Growth stimulants, they rigged it to run on the fumes thereof.
Now in a post-industrial age, we find ourselves as a species, Homo Developus, scratching our heads and wondering where do we go from here?
It just so happens that, in the wake of the Great Industrial Expansion of Planet Earth, there emerges a vast bureaucracy of Smart People—number crunchers, economic theorizers, technocrats, academics, programmers, bureaucrats, not to mention the mysterious ghosts of AI —who propose to reconstruct the detritus of the industrial age into a systemic quasi-social Union that will make sure everybody is taken care of.
And so I’m wondering, what’s the best way to administrate such a civilization?
What’s the best system for governing a federation of post-industrial nations?
What’s the the most effective strategy for managing a cushy, highly-developed Society?
What’s the most humane political structure to assure income and health for all citizens?
Should Europeans, for instance, appoint multiple layers of bureaucracy to enforce labor laws so that every person has a guaranteed income?
Should the State take control of business so that everybody gets a minimal piece of the pie?
And these philosophical, or sociological questions arise:
What motivation compels some individuals to seek opportunity and then develop that opportunity into abundance and prosperity?
What drives the go-getters to excel in economic pursuits? What motivates them to acquire work, money, property, resources, and then manipulate those assets into an overflow of wealth?
What incentive impels them to take care of themselves and their families?
On the other hand, what compels some other people to, instead, take charge of bureaucratic agencies in order to administrate a Society that assures everyone a minimum of economic assistance?
What drives some analytical people to write laws and devise policies for systematically managing governmental bureaus to assure that everyone is taken care of?
Who is in charge here?
Who is going to run the world?
Will it be the go-getters, the pioneers, movers and shakers, developers, entrepreneurs, rule-breakers, industrialists, business mavens?
Or will it be the wonks who manage the world—the academics, the specialists, bureaucrats, rule-makers, policy-crafters, the tweakers of governmental largesse?


Consider Esther Lynch’s observations:

The ETUC has watched the rise in precarious working conditions in Europe—platform working, zero-hours contracts, bogus self-employment and so on—with deep concern. Research in the UK found that young people on zero-hours contracts, for example, were far more likely to report mental and physical health problems than their counterparts in stable jobs. A study by the University of Limerick in Ireland warned that people on non-guaranteed hours could become ‘trapped in a cycle of poverty which strengthens employers’ control’, generating a fear of being penalised if they raised grievances about working conditions. In response, the Irish government has taken steps to prohibit the use of zero-hours contracts, unless the employer can show a genuine business need. Guaranteeing transparent and predictable working conditions would have wide-ranging benefits, in terms of workers’ health, work-life balance and employee retention.

  (https://www.socialeurope.eu/tackling-insecure-work-in-europe)
What does the peaceful development of Civilization require? Management by one, or the other, of these two types? Or Both/and?
Is Civilization founded upon a principle of every man/woman for hmrself?
Or will it settle into BigBrotherSister administering a vast Guarantee for All?
Or something in between.
Keep your eyes open to watch what develops.
Smoke

The meaning of suffering

In this life, suffering is part of the territory.
We must learn to deal with it.
God told Cain that sin was crouching at his door and that he must “master it.”
Cain did not oppose the bitter/resentful part of himself. Rather, he took his bitterness out on someone else—his brother. He killed Abel.
People who allow the bitter badness of this life to defeat their attitude--those people end up taking their frustration out on other people.
A person who has been corrupted by his own bitterness/anger will likely turn to destructive behavior to express his/her frustration. That person may concoct an evil plan to hurt/ kill some person who has gotten in their way. Or worse yet, that person may go ballistic, sociopathic, and decide to go on shooting spree before turning the gun on himself.
If we do not cope with suffering, if we do not contend the resulting resentment, it will master us, instead of us mastering it. 
If and when that happens—if the urge to extract vengeance takes control of us—instead of us controlling it—we buckle under the pressure and things get worse.
Such evil also manifests collectively in historical ways. In the 1930’s-40’s, the Nazis took out their bitterness agains other Europeans who had previously defeated them militarily. They also embodied depravity by inflicting their hyped-up vengeance against Jews, because they entertained the lie that Jews were responsible for their social/cultural failures.
The fundamental struggle in this life—both individually and collectively— is to somehow accept that shit happens (we will have a certain amount of suffering) and then contend against our own bitterness, and thereby defeat the urge to take out our troubles on others.
This requires a certain acceptance of suffering. No person escapes it entirely.
Understand that suffering is a part of life. Trouble is built in, because (in my view) opposing it builds godly character.
So we must overcome the urge to blame others for our troubles. We need to take responsibility for our own lives—our own failures, as well as our own successes.
But it’s not easy; we need help.
The follower of Christ realizes that we cannot undertake that battle without our Creator’s help.
Like it or not, God has constructed this life in such a way that we must admit our inadequacy and turn to Him for help, so as to overcome the destructive influences of this world instead of turning those destructions on other people.
And he has given us his Son, who contended with evil and suffering to the nth degree—to the very end of his own tortured life—in order to demonstrate that suffering is not meaningless. It’s just part of the territory in this world, especially if we resolve to do any "good."
Furthermore, the inevitable death that is the result of this troublesome life--that dreaded death lands us--if you can allow yourself to believe it-- in a place that is even greater than this present life—resurrection into eternal life.
So accept that this life is difficult, and suffering is part of the territory, and don’t take out your anger on others. Do unto them what you would have them do unto you.
Life ain't no bowl of cherries. That much is plain to see. It's no walk in the park.
Deal with it. Master it. Turn it over to the one who endured the absolute worst suffering as a consequence of his living  life totally void of destructive resentment. Otherwise you may hurt yourself badly; and if that is not enough you may hurt someone else. Don’t go down that path.
Rather,  when you find yourself at the crossroads of bitterness and injustice, take up the deepest challenge that this life presents. Accept your suffering  willingly. Endure, persevere while manifesting love and goodwill, and thereby defeat the urge to do wrong to others and to yourself.

King of Soul

Believing, or figuring it all out?

You may believe, as I do, that we were created long ago in the image of God.
Or you may think that we evolved, even longer ago, from lower life forms,
Since we don’t really really know exactly how it all spun out, let’s consider these two scenarios for a moment.
What if one of our hominid progenitors were set aside in a select place and given a “special” touch by the LifeForce, so that the new being would share a certain spiritual characteristic or two with its Creator? . . .
instead of being just, you know, another dumb critter.
What if some of us, caught up in this mysterious thing called human history, chose to identify with the special Creation?
What if others of us just continued to evolve the rough-and-tumble way, acknowledging our primeval struggle through the long ranks of evolving, biological creatures. . . vertebrates, primates, hominids, neanderthals, and ultimately homo sapiens?
What if the Creator (aka the LifeForce) set up both paths of human development—one being “special’ and the other being the long, gradual process that Mr. Darwin sought to explain?
And what if, according to our human predicament, you were able to choose which model of development you would subscribe to, and thus pattern your life by?
Which would you choose?
Come let us reason together.
Could it be that the LifeForce ignited that first big shbang, and then later selected a spot from whence to spark something new, called “life”, beginning at the very lowest level? and then took a sort of sabbath break from creating while allowing the life process to move forward in a natural way over a vast expanse of time?
On the other hand could it be that, at some point in said development, that LifeCreator sovereignly made a supra-natural selection, setting a particular primate aside and, sprinkling in the dust of the earth, and initiated thereby a spiritual, civilizing character through the soulish man and his other half, the loverly (wo)man?
I’m thinking that scenario would render some of us Sons or Daughters of God, while others would be sons or daughters of nature.
What if—way back when— the Sons of God saw the daughters of Men? And then, finding them desirable, chose to hookup with them?
What would we have then?
Perhaps we have a human race torn between simply believing versus trying to figure it all out—a homo sapiens species somewhat divided between them who settle for the simple wonder of believing . . .


versus them who propose to analyze it and document the results:


Which would you be?
I have made my choice, because I have not yet been able to figure it all out.  How about you?
 
King of Soul

What Joe said . . .

Ponder what he said, long ago. This lesson pertains to forgiveness, and other truths . . . destiny, injustice, endurance, faith and human nature.

“Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Please come closer to me.’ And they came closer. And he said, ‘I am your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.’ “
“ ‘Now do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, but God sent me before you to preserve life.’
“ ‘For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.’
“ ‘God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you alive by a great deliverance.’
“ ‘Now, therefore, it was not you who sent me here, but God . . .’ “

For more about Joseph and his brothers, read Genesis 37-48.
Also, consider Peterson’s lecture on this subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7V8eZ1BLiI

King of Soul

Fidelity

Marriage is the best.
I believe it’s better than all the rest,
safer, more satisfying, more productive than the horde
of various pairings, trysts, hot encounters this fast life may afford.
While Frank did croon back in the bygone time
of old love affairs being like fine old wine
I find fidelity to be the best kind.
Sleepin’ around aint worth a dime.
I’m entitled to my opinion, you know,
‘cause our Constitution says it’s so.
I know you may disagree with me,
and that’s your right, as it should be.
I’m just sayin’ one man one woman is the way to go.
Since way back when and long ago.
I mean I know in our g-generation
we thought we had some great revelation
that it was all about free love and blahblahblah,
but when the dust settled, race was over and last hurrah
’tis best to settle down with just one mate
and plant your seeds, your vines, and you know—procreate.
I find that children are where it’s at;
watching ‘em grow—nothing better than that.
Long time ago
in the big flowerpower show
Steven sang to love the one you’re with
and while it seemed a cool idea, it’s really just a hippie myth.
I’m glad I found the grace to settle down
instead of baying like some heated hound
at every pair of flashing eyes and bouncing breasts.
I’d rather have our shared memories in the old hope chest.
Judy blue eyes, joking, compared Steve to a dog;
the audience laughed, re-visiting their summer-of-love fog.
But where have all the children gone,
long time passing,
where have all the children gone
long time ago?
Where have all the children gone?
Gone to divorce, so many of us,
spirited away by lust, mistrust, diamonds and rust.
When will they ever learn?
When will we ever learn?
I mean I know its the cool thing to say
to let us all be trans and bi and gay
but give me marriage straight any day
and time will reveal it’s the best way
‘cuz when you get old and gray
you’ll have a mate with whom you stay.
Yes, Virginia, a lifetime of shared fidelity
is more precious and productive than wild revelry.
That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it,
‘though you are free to live however you want to do it.
You go your way and I’ll go mine.
Just give me my wife for the rest of my time.

King of Soul