Who weren't the gods?

So much can be taken from and given to the gods, and in the myths so much the gods have created and destroyed. Perhaps it doesn't matter and it's as simple as a snow covered forest in the Northern Midwest. Or perhaps the question is essential, and what better place than to think about such matters than in front of a large hearth as the sun brightens a perfect snow and brilliant blue sky, with many neighbors to throw in their two cents.

New Lakes

Is it a lake or a pond, or swamp? All three are fine things, and what the locals call it gives the form and meaning to the body of water. To me it was a lake, because the locals called it a lake. It was a body of water covered with water lilies and surrounded by wildflowers, and deeply embdedded in the wildflowers were rabbits, possums, raccoons, and deer. I had run through the fields two months earlier and I learned I needed a hat because the bugs were vicious, and even with the hat they got the eyes and ears and neck and anything else. Paradise is guarded and you can't enter unless hardened, softened by swells, hands that don't move, the long burning sun of Paraguay. "I bought all of this land away from the developers. They wanted to put 36 homes in cul-de-sacs here, but I bought the land on both sides of the lake and I own the road that drives in to this park. 30 years ago I asked for an easement and 30 years later I am granting one."

"The first guy who owned this land owned all of it. He invented the RV with three winos in a barn in back of a bar. Was so damned big they had to tear down the barn. But he made millions but he was an eccentric. Criminal. His son bought him out, how many millions it took, I don't know. His son bought him out and now he's a near billionaire. His wife passed away recently. But he owned all of this, and made a great industry from what his father created with the winos in the barn in the back of the bar."

"I'm too old to chase away the rif-raf at night with my rifle. The drug addicts, the homosexuals, the hobos. I want to sell my land to a man who wants to build one home for himself and leave the land as it is."

"I managed 400 men in 4 plants. I've seen it go up and down. They are raising rates now and gas is too high. It runs in 9-year cycles, and this feels like one of them. I'm 72 and I've seen these things."

Looking for hidden transcripts

What would it be like to have no hidden transcripts? Would it be akin to a day among friends, playing cornhole, drinking beer, and grilling brats?

It's strange that at this hotel, people congregate out in the back courtyard at night, like they do in Brasil. Is there no hidden transcript here, or are they leaving the public transcript behind? Maybe the public transcript has gone away, and when there's no public transcript, there is no hidden transcript.

Perhaps this is what Moraline gets at with social media. Here, people grill and drink beer together. There is no large, alienating crowd, no mediating simulacra. Or perhaps people wind down at night and wear their hidden transcripts on their sleeves. It is small and intimate, perhaps that is where the good begins. The trouble begins with too much, too many people. This idea of surplus emerges again.

rain and mountains

The rain washes it away. It is far up there, the mountain. It has faced the sun and the sky like no one else. The rain comes and the snow comes.

There was that village, that village in the mountains. Do you remember the police officer in Argentina in his motor bike? You were trying to camp off a precipice. Instead of getting 'busted'; he helped you. He told you to ride to the military base. And there you rode past the destroyed bridge and met the attendant who said 'camp anywhere, I am not watching.' and from there the stars rained as if it were a day in southern Patagonia.

The River Etowah

My name is Toltec and I am from Guatemala. Since the gods created my people, I and my ancestors have lived free from the bondage of men. Many of my people have died bravely fighting other tribes and white men. And many of my people have died from spirits brought by the white men and rarely by their weapons. I was raised poor, unlike my ancestors, who ruled over my land. But as a child I knew I would bring my people back to greatness and lead them to a new epoch of prosperity and autonomy.

I left my land last year to drive a taxi in Rome. It was not the Rome of the great civilizations but a different Rome, one of men who lived off the land but in a harmony different than that of my people and culture.

Many times I would drive my taxi to the river to pick up those who had let the current carry them far from their origin. Many would be intoxicated by the native firewater. Many were women who would try to steal my seed and royal bloodline.

I lived with 3 men from my village and all were loyal to me. We drove two vans and never ceased working. We purchased the two vans for $4,000 and they ran well; the white men told us they could not run but we fixed them with very little effort.

It was a Saturday and it was warm and the sun was to set in three hours. I received a call from a white woman who spoke my language. I picked her up 30 minutes from my home by the entrance to the river.

She handed me a cold drink and I accepted. It was warm in my van and she was pretty. Several minutes later I felt dizzy and pulled aside the road.

"You look tired, mudvein. Your nigger skin looks darn near white."

"I feel very tired and cannot drive," I told her.

The white woman pulled me from my driver's station and pushed me to the back of my van. I could barely move. She sat in the seat that I had found in a junk yard and installed with my three village friends. She drove off..

When I awoke I was in a canoe on the Etowah river, the same river where I had met this white woman.

My leg was chained to the canoe and she she sat with her back to the current of the river. We drifted down the river and she handed me a paddle and told me to begin to work.

"I don't want to see you drown. It would be such a waste of a slave," she told me.

I paddled down the ancient river. We reached a muddy bank and I pulled the canoe up the steep slope. She walked ahead as I pulled the canoe. As she walked across an old log, it snapped and she fell. Even though I was in chains, I felt for her and asked her if she was injured. I could not break myself free of the ankle chain and come to her aid. But like a brave princess I knew in a past life, she brushed off her injury and told me not to delay the portage of her canoe.

She walked ahead of me and led me to a field.

A great deer danced across the field.

"I have seem you run. I have seen your brown skin. You run like that animal. You are an animal, why I've got you chained. You will make us shelter now."

I took the paddles of her canoe and took her clothes to bring them together to make us shelter. Even though I was her captive I felt close to her, as if we had met at a mountain filled in its valleys with the blood of men I had killed when I was king.

But we did not, at first, go into the shelter I had built for her. I took the pale skinned woman and pinned her to the earth the gods had made for me. I pressed my lips to her and rid her of what remained of her garments. We joined and I put my people's spirit into her.

"I am free. Who is the man who has freed me from this curse of a river?"

"I come from warriors who have filled these rivers with the blood of brave warriors."

I threw my chains into the dark waters of the river.

I kissed my native princess. I carried her to my canoe and we drifted into the waters, now full with the rain and spirits of the river gods.

We arrived at the new shore and men came to our canoe and offered their fish and berries and bowed to us.

"There were men who were called Niggers who were said to eat anything. What is meant by this is that they were men of the river and of the earth of the gods. They could take the mud vein and turn it to life and food as did the gods when they made man and woman from the soil of the earth and mixed such life with the rain of the heavens. We now see the gods have returned to give new life to this river and this earth. We, as humble creatures of the gods, thirst for a new life and a new world. We will eat anything you, as our king, and she, as our princess, will give us."

Old Mountains

The roses, the nights of clear stars, the rocks the shepherds throw at goats while my wife makes love to me in bright sun. Lord, you have given me your Earth.

Deep Sand

Deep Sand

The light of the moon
appears in the sand
of the deep desert during
the night. Even the
horses sleep in its shade.
Even water hiding in barrels
for the wash of sheep skin
or butchered cattle
covers itself from a light
that brightens darkness,
never making darkness
complete, total, or at rest. 
In the morning there
is sun but little talk of
the moon. What happens
during the night? Why can't
we sleep? What is outside
hovering next to our
effort to fall asleep in the
sand, rocks, and dry scrub?
I can't say the moon is not
a wild horse. His breath visits
you for a slight moment in
the night, and the night, the
night is not the sun's death,
it is the patient pleading of
one star which awakens horses
in the North in dry Argentina.

Ring of Truth

Roger Scruton's Ring of Truth can be read in place of just about anything. I would implore Moraline and Chrome to get this on Kindle and read it. Its subject matter is so relevant to Moraline's struggle with his gods that it was almost written *in response*.Chrome will liken the work to goodtimecognac. I cannot speak more highly of the work.

Doing and Having: Freedom

"In addition it is necessary to point out to "common sense" that the formula "to be free" does not mean "to obtain what one has wished" but rather"by oneself to determine oneself to wish" (in the broad sense of choosing). In other words success is not important to freedom. The discussion which opposes common sense to philosophers stems here from a misunderstanding: the empirical and popular concept of "freedom" which has been produced by historical, political, and moral circumstances is equivalent to "the ability to obtain the ends chosen." The technical and philosophical concept of freedom, the only one which we are considering here, means only the autonomy of choice. It is necessary, however, to note that the choice, being identical with acting, supposed a commencement of realization in order that the choice may be distinguished from the dream and the wish. Thus we shall not say that the prisoner is always free to go out of prison, which would be absurd, nor that he is always free to long for release, which would be an irrelevant truism, but that he is always free to try to escape (or get himself liberated); that is, that whatever his condition may be, he can project his escape and learn the value of his project by undertaking some action."

Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pps. 483-484

By the city, then the stream

"You're no explorer," she said. "You're a boy scout."

"Back in the day that would be a fine compliment," I said. "Take me back 100 years and I'll take boy scout."

"You're a spy and a sneak and a fake," she said.

"Madame, perhaps we've met, but I thought you were long gone," I said.

"You think you went your away for yourself. You think you had your 'experience.' All you did was uncover what should have been left alone. What's the matter with you?", she asked.

"I didn't try to write anything. I just wrote my war diaries and my captain's log. I kept it simple. I'm not famous. I didn't write any guide book. To do it, you still have to have your own motivation and drive. So don't call me a spy. Go ahead and follow in my footsteps," I said.

The old woman got up, fell backwards, and turned into dust.

I put in three quarters and began to shoot. I thought of hot days and lonely days. I remembered Santa Claus when it was hot and sunny in November. I remembered the white sand of Minas Gerais. If I was a boy scout, I had left my troop. But Sam Houston left his troop, too. He picked up several letters of marque. Then he beat Santa Anna, then he went into seclusion because the war between the states was shit.

Look what China was doing 12,000 years ago. Why did language occur? Did 'we' do it? Was there a prompt from the 'outside?' If there is no outside, no inside, no noumena, no phenomena, then the old woman blows hot air for no good reason. "Get up that mountain," I tell her.

On the Several Yuga

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuga

Characteristics of each Yuga

• Satya Yuga: The first and best Yuga. It is the age of truth and perfection. Caste system is very flexible. Brahmanas are capable of achieving miracles by mere fiat of will. Kshatriyas are endued with superhuman physical prowess. Humans are gigantic, powerfully built, handsome, honest, youthful, vigorous, erudite and virtuous. The Vedas are one. There is no agriculture nor mining as the earth yields those riches on its own. Weather is pleasant and everyone is happy. There is no religious sect. In the earlier part of the Yuga, all humans were Brahmanas and lived as siblings. There was no disease, decreptitude or fear of anything. There was no music, song, dance, buying or selling. There was no caste system. No animals were slain in sacrifices. There was no city, town or nation. In the later part of the Yuga, civilization is established and the Brahmanas, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras perform their duties well. Human lifespan is 100,000 years and humans tend to have hundreds or thousands of sons or daughters. People must perform penances for thousands of years to acquire Samadhi and die. Significant people born in this age include Prithu, Ikshwaku, Nahusha, Yayati, Pururavas, Vishwamitra, Hiranyakshipu, Ravana etc.

• Treta Yuga: Treta means third. In this age, virtue diminishes slightly. At the beginning of the age, many emperors rise to dominance and conquer the world. Wars become frequent and weather begins to change to extremeties. Oceans and deserts are formed. Majority Brahmanas become slightly less powerful. People are divided into various cultures and people of mixed classes are born. People become slightly diminished compared to their predecessors. Agriculture, labour and mining become existent. Significant people born in this age include Rama, Lakshmana, Hanuman, Dasharatha, Raghu, Aja etc. Average age of humans is around 1000-10,000.

• Dwapara Yuga: Dwapara means second. In this age, people become tainted with Tamasic qualities and aren't as strong as their ancestors. Diseases become rampant. Humans are discontent and fight each other. Vedas are divided into four parts. People still possess characteristics of youth in old age. Significant people born in this age are Krishna, Balarama, the Pandavas, the Kauravas, Shantanu, Bhishma, Drona, Karna, Draupadi and Abhimanyu. Average age is around a few centuries.

• Kali Yuga: The final age. It is the age of darkness and ignorance. People become sinners and lack virtue. They become slaves to their passions and are barely as powerful as their earliest ancestors in the Satya Yuga. Society falls into disuse and people become liars and hypocrites. Knowledge is lost and scriptures are diminished. Humans eat forbidden and dirty food and engage in unrestrained sinful sexual practices. The environment is polluted, water and food become scarce. Wealth is heavily diminished. Brahmanas become ignorant, Kshatriyas become weak, Vaishyas employ questionable business tactics and Shudras treacherously acquire power. Families become non existent. Average age of people is barely 100 years though by the end of the Yuga, it will be upto 20 years.

The Ages of Man

From Wikipedia:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man

 

Hesiod's Five Ages

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Silver Age

Virgil Solis, The Iron Age

The first extant account of the successive ages of humanity comes from the Greek poet Hesiod's Works and Days (lines 109–201). His list is:

• Golden Age – The Golden Age is the only age that falls within the rule of Cronus. Created by the immortals who live on Olympus, these humans were said to live among the gods, and freely mingled with them. Peace and harmony prevailed during this age. Humans did not have to work to feed themselves, for the earth provided food in abundance. They lived to a very old age but with a youthful appearance and eventually died peacefully. Their spirits live on as "guardians". Plato in Cratylus (397e) recounts the golden race of men who came first. He clarifies that Hesiod did not mean men literally made of gold, but good and noble. He describes these men as daemons upon the earth. Since δαίμονες (daimones) is derived from δαήμονες (daēmones, meaning knowing or wise), they are beneficent, preventing ills, and guardians of mortals.
• Silver Age – The Silver Age and every age that follows fall within the rule of Cronus' successor and son, Zeus. Men in the Silver age lived for one hundred years under the dominion of their mothers. They lived only a short time as grown adults, and spent that time in strife with one another. During this Age men refused to worship the gods and Zeus destroyed them for their impiety. After death, humans of this age became "blessed spirits" of the underworld.
• Bronze Age – Men of the Bronze Age were hardened and tough, as war was their purpose and passion. Zeus created these humans out of the ash tree. Their armor was forged of bronze, as were their homes, and tools. The men of this Age were undone by their own violent ways and left no named spirits; instead, they dwell in the "dank house of Hades". This Age came to an end with the flood of Deucalion.
• Heroic Age – The Heroic Age is the one age that does not correspond with any metal. It is also the only age that improves upon the age it follows. It was the heroes of this Age who fought at Thebes and Troy. This race of humans died and went to Elysium.
• Iron Age – Hesiod finds himself in the Iron Age. During this age humans live an existence of toil and misery. Children dishonor their parents, brother fights with brother and the social contract between guest and host (xenia) is forgotten. During this age might makes right, and bad men use lies to be thought good. At the height of this age, humans no longer feel shame or indignation at wrongdoing; babies will be born with gray hair and the gods will have completely forsaken humanity: "there will be no help against evil."

Who Were the Gods? Do You Wanna Be A Bird?

It was a tough homework assignment by Moraline: Who were the Gods? Because he wasn't asking a straight-forward question, and he knew it.

No, the question of "Who were the Gods for the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus," is one thing.

Then, the question of "Who were the gods for the Inuit?"

Well, that was the trick question.

My guess is that Moraline was challenging the reader to re-arrange his vantage point. The Inuit had no gods. That term, "gods," isn't the word to use. No, better use "spirit," as does Carpenter.

If this is true, did Moraline ask the question to point out that the Inuit in fact had no gods? That the very structure and point of reference of "gods" had no relevance or meaning to the Inuit?

If so, Moraline's work points at a huge divide in human experience: those that had helping and hurting spirits, personal, changing things that were part of life and shared and understood as a community, something normal, sane, and adaptive; and then something bifurcating, estranging, and alienating: that of the omniscient, omnipotent, beyond time and space.

Moraline's initial reaction to my extra-terrestrial theory was: "Look, you don't even need to get there to get there." And that's true if you can point to helicopters in the Amazon today. We're there right now, is his point.

But I am going to be difficult and say: Yeah man, but what about, say, 8,000 years ago?

What's my point here? You have tales that Heidegger calls "orginary," coming out of ancient Ireland and Greece. Far-fetched, crazy-assed shit. Far before Homer, and across more than a few ancient cultures. You have a dark ages that lasted 2,000 years before Homer and Hesiod. It happened after a period of very advanced civilization on Earth (Sumerian, in particular). It happened after the Greeks already reached a level of state building. What followed afterwards was a loss of the ancient Greek language. Homer and Hesiod did not understand the Greek that had occurred 2,000 years before their time. But the Greek that was 2,000 years before their time was more complex.

That means that so much time had gone by in Greece that by the time Homer and Hesiod were literate, their ancestors were mythical and nearly unintelligible to them. Yet their ancestors had huge civilizations, huge governments, huge surpluses.2,000 years of primitive darkness had passed in the interim.

Hesiod comes out of nowhere and writes about basic ways human can survive. He says he hates the sea, and says how to gain independence by farming and storing. He warns of government and disputes.

This is some crazy talk of gods. It's a phenomenology of man's reaction to a radically different other, what I think is ancient man's reaction to super-modern technology. I understand the human protest against even paying attention to some high tech visit 8,000 years ago or even further back. Because the phenomenology of the matter would ax most of it to the epoche. You'd still point to the cabin in the wilderness, to the traditional family in the wilderness, and point out, correctly, a fucking space ship, a fucking so-called 'dominant' class, really can be tossed in the trash can with the tossers, with the sitters.

You ever hear a bull frog in the dark? 

Who Were the Gods?

Moraline's contribution to the answer was more significant than he realized. Because he took a phenomenological approach; Husserl would have been happy.

The natural attitude gives a blunt answer that makes impotent and meaningless man. The phenomenological attitude (of which I consider Moraline) liberates man.

There was a dominant class that arrived a long, long time ago. Whether they influenced or created man isn't clear. Hesiod says they were the great race--but he doesn't say they were the great race of men, as they weren't men, but Gods. And this leads one to recognize: the term 'god' means drastically different things.

You have the same story, at the same time, on other parts of Earth. You also have incredible and sudden advances in mathematics, language, 'government,' engineering, etc. Of course, all of this 3000 B.C--India, South America, China, Middle East, Ireland. Yes, the Irish. Once cave men, suddenly building landing strips 5000 years ago. 

It then vanished and reappeared.'It,' what was 'it.' Why did Hesiod's voice, coming from the 'dark ages,' so dark that humans didn't even have crude oil lamps, much less language? Why did an illiterate refugee suddenly write epic poetry? Why was Homer a contemporary of Hesiod? What were these men writing about, how did these men learn to write when the advanced language and culture of the Greeks was decimated? Note that the Greek of Homer and Hesiod was new. Language itself had been dead for 2000 years. How did it somehow come back?

Perhaps what Moraline uncovers is the hidden transcript of the individual. The Inuit, for example. They either were unlucky to wander to such a cold and hellish place, or for them the independence was worth the cold. My take is that the Inuit were not idiotic, aimless wanderers. They got there and survived there because they did not want what they left. Scott speaks of the hill peoples of Asia, running from legibility.

Independent from what? It doesn't matter. Yes, they (the Inuit) are a community. But not dominated so easily by some force, perhaps what is called a force of legibility.

Yet to understand that the bully might have not been from Earth is something either new or ancient. Hesiod's account of the Gods agrees with the Irish, the Indians, the Hebrews, the Mayans, and Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Chinese. These are systemic tales, these are tales of sophisticated, organized violence. Being and Time suddenly is a clear account of the matter.

Who were the Gods? It depends on who you ask. Is your god your guiding spirit? Or is does your god strike you down with fire? Why is the aquifer of the Dead Sea radioactive?

Hills and deer

I run along a 10 mile path along the lake. Outside the lake you have the hills, and the hills are steep and beautiful. I rode past a local who was walking to the spring and after the traditional "Merry Christmas," he said "You got it, almost to the top." It was a wicked, steep hill. And then I saw the whole City and the river they call the lake and you would not know there is any bustle or hustle. I was soon lost in the hills. I asked a man in dread locks, walking with his family, how to get back. Of course, they asked me what I wanted to see. In my life, when lost, people always assume I am on a journey. "You can take the green belt, or you can head back to the spring," he said. The point was  don't miss anything.

I made it back across down the hills and past the river and over the bridge.

They came to the town for the energy, for the hills and the spring. The birds smile, and the deer are well-fed.

Roger Ebert and First Blood

"What we can't buy in this movie is the message. It's handled in too heavy-handed a way. Stallone plays a returned Vietnam veteran, a Green Beret skilled in the art of jungle survival and fighting, and after a small-town police force sadistically mishandles him, he declares war on the cops. All of this is set up in scenes of great physical power and strength and the central sections of the movie, with Stallone and the cops stalking each other through the forests of the Pacific Northwest, have a lot of authority. But then the movie comes down to a face-off between Stallone and his old Green Beret commander (Richard Crenna), and the screenplay gives Stallone a long, impassioned speech to deliver, a speech in which he cries out against the injustices done to him and against the hippies who demonstrated at the airport when he returned from the war, etc. This is all old, familiar material from a dozen other films clichés recycled as formula. Bruce Dern did it in “Coming Home” and William Devanein “Rolling Thunder”. Stallone is made to say things that would have much better been implied; Robert De Niro, in “Taxi Driver”, also plays a violent character who was obviously scarred by Vietnam, but the movie wisely never makes him talk about what happened to him. Some things are scarier and more emotionally moving when they're left unsaid. 

So the ending doesn't work in “First Blood”. It doesn't necessarily work as action, either. By the end of the film, Stallone has taken on a whole town and has become a one-man army, laying siege to the police station and the hardware store and exploding the pumps at the gas station. This sort of spectacular conclusion has become so commonplace in action movies that I kind of wonder, sometimes, what it would be like to see one end with a whimper rather than a bang. 

Until the last twenty or thirty minutes, however, “First Blood” is a very good movie, well-paced, and well-acted not only by Stallone (who invests an unlikely character with great authority) but also by Crenna and Brian Dennehy, as the police chief. The best scenes come as Stallone's on the run in the forest, using a hunting knife with a compass in the handle, and living off the land. At one point he's trapped on a cliffside by a police helicopter, and we really feel for this character who has been hunted down through no real fault of his own. We feel more deeply for him then, in fact, than we do later when he puts his grievances into words. Stallone creates the character and sells the situation with his presence itself. The screenplay should have stopped while it was ahead."

The Rambo Apple

"According to author David Morrell, the apple provided the name for the hero of his novel, First Blood, which gave rise to the Rambo film franchise. The novelist's wife brought home a supply of the fruit as he was trying to come up with a suitable name for the protagonist.^[6] It is uncertain whether David Morrell's wife brought home Rambos or Summer Rambos. Summer Rambos would have been much more common, but since his wife bought the apples at a roadside stand, either is possible.

James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier Poet, sentimentalized the Rambo in his poem, The Rambo-Tree which appeared in his 1902 collection The Book of Joyous Children.^[7] The poem includes the repeating chorus:
For just two truant lads like we,When Autumn shakes the rambo-tree
There's enough for you and enough for me
It's a long, sweet way across the orchard.

A similar sentiment was expressed by "Uncle Silas" in his column for the September 1907 issue of The American Thresherman: "What has become of the good old apples we used to eat in the long ago down on the farm? The Rambo, the best apple that ever grew in an orchard, is fruit vouchsafed only in memory. [In Missouri,] no apple was ever enjoyed like the Rambo.... A boy would go farther to swipe Rambo apples, and subject his pantaloons to greater exposure from ugly dogs than he would for any other kind, and boys know on which tree the best apples grow. A drink of cider without any fixin', made of Rambo apples, will go farther down and awake the molecules of mankind in a greater degree than any other kind of cider. The world is growing wiser, but not in raising Rambo apples."

The claim that the Rambo was the favorite apple of Johnny Appleseed is false. Johnny Appleseed did not grow or sell any grafted varieties, and for the Rambo or any other variety to be perpetuated, it must be grafted. As Michael Pollan indicates in his chapter on the apple in Botany of Desire, John Chapman (1774–1845), for religious reasons related to the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg, believed grafting was an unnatural practice. Chapman was given the nickname "Appleseed" pejoratively for his highly unusual practice of planting trees from seed. The apples grown from seed are almost all small and poorly flavored, so with very rare exceptions, his trees would have been good for making hard cider only. Back when the frontier only extended as far west as the state of Indiana, that worked fine for Johnny Appleseed, since cider was a staple and the pioneers didn't have any other choice in suppliers. The apple tree in Nova, Ohio, that is more than 175 years old, can either be the last surviving apple tree that Johnny Appleseed planted or it can be a Rambo tree. It cannot be both, despite any marketing claims."

Intelligence

The smart guys don't know what to do with themselves. They are so smart, they play with the world like a piece of used gum.

I'm happy now that I've concluded I'm only average. I took a test for law school and the result was that I'm OK, but not great.

I then took a test for accounting and the result, statistically shows, again, that I'm OK. But they are nice guys and open the gates.

For me this is great because I tried to do the great Black Diamond ski run of philosophy and it was like a kid in Junior High getting knocked into the stands at an NBA game.

Let those fucked-up philosophers gnaw on each other.

What I learned about other cultures is that the lay-out of the earth is incredibly different. It is a beautiful planet to see and smell. I highly recommend Earth.

Past that, I won't say anything else. See all of Earth when you're alive, if you can. If not, then you get to know the part that the explorer never got to see better than anyone else.

Beer, wine, and cognac along the way.

Cheers.

Kastles

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and philosopher whose published works mainly belong to the genre of science fiction. Dick explored philosophical, sociological, political, and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. In his later works, Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS.^[1] Later in life, he wrote non-fiction on philosophy, theology, the nature of reality, and science. This material was published posthumously as The Exegesis.

The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963.^[2] Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens one day to find that he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975.^[3] "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Dick wrote of these stories. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real."^[4]

In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime.^[5] Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty,^[6] eleven popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, The Adjustment Bureau and Impostor. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923.^[7] In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.^{[8][9][10][11]}

The Great Walk

From Africa.

China, however you want to categorize it, is the oldest civilization, civilization defined broadly as a project of organization and legibility.  Ignore Chinese history, and you are terribly ignorant.

For Western men, claims of ignorance come with feelings of inadequacy, fear, shame, or, if things are going well, excited belligerence. Yet I sit in my favorite spot, and no one is speaking English, they are speaking Chinese, and I am desperately downloading Pimsleur Mandarin.

The Chinese have been through all of this several times for several thousands of years. They were the first ones, from the walk from Africa, to settle down, formulate a standardized language, create government, and build a large fucking wall. Why did the Chinese build a wall?