Years Of Being – Page 4 – A blog of my cosmic (and less than cosmic) observations and ruminations.

Ignoring the Vengeful God

Many Christians insist that the teachings of Jesus require accepting the entirety of the Older Testament (ie, the Torah, Wisdom literature, the prophets, etc) in order to properly appreciate his new wisdom. Now, it is impossible to understand what Jesus taught without an awareness of the world (and religious underpinning) in which he lived. But it seems to me that in order to derive the available benefits, one need only read what Jesus said and ignore any supposed prior context.

Yes, I am of course aware of his “jot & tittle” comment, but basically every substantial commandment or suggestion that originated directly from Jesus flies in the face of the vengeful maniac who presided over the Older Testament. Buddhism is not Hinduism, though it has its roots there. Christianity is not Orthodox Judaism, though it grew out of it. Jesus, like Gautama Buddha, was an ethical and religious genius who was able to formulate a radically new morality while living in the midst of a millenia-old world view. Love thy neighbor. Turn the cheek. As ye care for the prisoners, so ye care for me.

I don’t need to reconcile Jehovah and Jesus. I’ve read most of the Older Testament. Taking that dark and vengeful “god” literally would be to willfully partake in the insanity his words and actions imply. The main takeaway, the truly positive idea, that came from Abraham and Moses (mainly the latter) is monotheism, and even that concept may have originated with the heretic Egyptian Akhenaten, a sort of “one-termer” pharaoh who, during his reign, forced the Egyptians to solely worship Aten, the sun. Oh, and I guess the codification of the Ten Pretty Obvious Commandments was another sort of breakthrough, though even those had their origins in previous Mesopotamian cultures. But then you have to also deal the 100 or so “minor” commandments in Exodus, not to mention the endless city ordinances in Leviticus.

No, I don’t care to reconcile YHWH with the red text in the New Testament. I have no problem whatsoever in reconciling Jesus and God, since there is no ontological reconciliation necessary: they are two completely separate entities. The latter, under the rubric of “I AM”, and depicted in the first several books of the Bible, is of course an embarrassing myth, but perhaps the best an unsophisticated tribe of nomads in 1000 BC (or so) could come up with. Like I said, their major theological leap was monotheism.

And what I mean about “YHWH as myth” is strictly the Older Testament depiction; I do not want to suggest that I deny a Creator, only that YHWH is a very flawed example. Every ancient description of The Creator/ Sustainer suffers from the mythological trappings of the specific cultures in which they occur. And all of those descriptions therefore obscure whatever transcendence must obtain to such an entity (if “entity” can be used to imply what is meant, which is problematic).

The genius moment that happened in the far mists of the past was when some human mind(s) made the leap to conclude that there was a beginning, and that something caused it. To anthropomorphize that cause, and imbue it with the powers of storm and lightning and fire and earthquakes, the most powerful forces imaginable, was the most natural next step. And certainly these attributes accrued to the chief god of the pantheons of all ancient religions.

And then someone (Moses?) made the reductionist conclusion that, given that power, a pantheon isn’t required: just make YHWH the sole mover, responsible for everything. Unfortunately, they maintained the anthropomorphism. And also unfortunately, that concept of monotheism never leapt from within the confines of the Hebrew tribes (I AM a god for your people; don’t pray to other peoples’ gods). Even Jesus mainly constrained his teachings to Judah and Israel. It took Paul to combine Jesus’ message with various aspects of Greek philosophy and Mediterranean “god-men”, and thus liberate Chrsitianity unto the Gentiles. But Jesus and Paul were men, which is one up the reality ladder from myth.

I maintain my conviction that Jesus was in many ways a theological genius, meaning that he was able to create Brand New Ideas. Most creative people just sort of reorganize whatever exists. It’s the Newtons and the Einsteins and the Buddhas and the Jesuses who make the gigantic leaps ahead, conceptual leaps so huge they almost seem like they came out of nowhere.

Teacher

I wrote this in honor of my high school mathematics teacher, Virginia Guthery, who celebrates 80 years of a most influential life this month. Not everyone is so blessed, but many of us in fact owe a tremendous debt to one or two extraordinary teachers, people who were instrumental in leading us to a never-ending search for illumination. Ms. Guthery was that kind of special teacher.

Teacher

In Honor of Virginia Guthery

How far beyond measure
Is the worth of the true teacher.
That rare soul who
Can lead your soul
To follow the endless search
Into what lies below
And what soars above,
And what connects it all.

Mentor, yogi, rabbi, shaman,
Teacher. The one who
Will not accept less
Than the best you have
And then demands that
Which is beyond your best.

The one who won’t reveal
The answer, but instead
Points to a path that leads there.
Who imparts knowledge,
But especially that knowledge
Which, when unwrapped,
Unfolds into a map.
The secret places do exist,
But only for those who seek.
They are not merely given.

We all sojourn alone.
The barrier between souls
Is infinite, but not
Impassable.
Students trudge in rows,
Endless empty faces,
And the chance is small
That any will encounter
A jewel in the classroom,
Will look up and see
A bright flare that ignites
Their fire to learn,
The zeal to discover.

There is no metric
That measures the worth
Of the ones who make
The universe your doorstep.

February 2017
© 2017 Chuck Puckett

Burn Down the Mission

The student riots in Tuscaloosa at the University of Alabama. May, 1970. I remember those few days vividly, wrapping up my freshman year. That year had started innocently enough. Buckling down to the books as I made the transition from the high school educational experience to the newfound freedom of college. Classes every other day, and stretched out over the day, rather than closely sequential. And more intense, or so it seemed at first. High school had always been fun, and comparatively easy for me, and of course I knew everyone, including all the teachers and their reputations. But college brought with it the apprehension of uncertainty, and my response was to focus on the courses and the assignments.

Second semester, I had a better grip on things, and started looking around and noticing the rest of the college experience. New ideas, wider perspectives. I even began to pay close attention to the national political scene. The Vietnam War was raging. and the protests reached a fever pitch that spring, mainly on campuses across the country, although Tuscaloosa had managed to remain largely unaffected.

And then Kent State happened.

Kent State was so horrific, and in some way, so personal, that even the sleepy Capstone was stirred into action. Students gathered in groups, then into crowds, chanting and singing. It was hard to tell how real it all was, but it was really happening.

I remember Jerry Pruett and I going out to protest, with my bed sheet sign hung between us, “Gestapo Go Home” printed in large letters across the linen (we weren’t very creative). We stood on the corner of University Boulevard right at the edge of campus, across the street from The Dickery, holding our sign and waving our fists at the police cruisers that paraded endlessly up and down the road. This was the day after the Tuscaloosa cops had raided the frat houses on University Boulevard, in particular the Deke house. (Those houses are all gone now; the Bryant-Denny stadium expansion razed all of them to the ground). The police stormed into the frat houses, their name tags taped over, billy-clubbing and arresting the frat guys. As a result of this excessive use of force, the governor (or somebody) had called in the (believe it or not) much more responsible and well-trained State Troopers to control the situation.

Jerry and I got thru with our “protesting”, feeling pretty good about our radical selves. We walked back to my house, which was a couple blocks away. As we crossed an empty parking lot, a Jeep holding 4-5 Crimson Tide football players (they looked like linemen), zoomed up, screeched to a halt in front of us, and the jocks jumped out, surrounding us. They took our makeshift sign, unrolled it and started threatening us, yelling “Commie Fascist faggots!”, etc. I tried to calmly explain that you can’t be a Commie and a Fascist at the same time, but, to my utter surprise, this logic failed to impress them. Then I tried the tactic of letting them know that a year ago, I had been a fellow football player myself, in Cullman. This attempt at comradery also had no mollifying effect.

We were pretty sure we were on the verge of having the shit beat out us, when a State Trooper wheeled in beside the Jeep. The officer got out, and the whole thing broke up very quickly. Of course, the jocks were just told to move on, but Jerry and I were more than happy to withdraw from the battlefield, skulls and other body parts intact.

It was a grand moment in my personal history. No, there was no massive change in the overall face of the Capstone. In fact, there were only two concrete results of the “Riots of 1970”: An old abandoned building down near the river was burned down, but no arrests were made, and (suspiciously) that was where construction began on the new Ferguson Center almost immediately. The other thing that happened was the University cancelled all final exams that semester. Yes! I guess we showed the Man!

No, I don’t think any lasting changes occurred in Tuscaloosa. But there has always existed a liberal undercurrent at the University of Alabama, sometimes very well hidden. Nevertheless, it is a strong and persistent force for the same reason that Blue Dots in Red States are strong: we know how isolated we are, and therefore always seek out like-minded spirits.

In Memory Of My Mother

We buried my mother, Martha Evelyn Black Puckett, four years ago today. I wrote this at the time. It bears repeating and remembering.

This day is done, and we pass into a future already permanently altered, folding the day’s events into our hearts and minds. We have bade our last farewell, given a nod to the past, while simultaneously, though tentatively, accepting the future. We bow our heads in the acknowledgement that we are now unequivocally a generation on our own, a generation that must either either offer wisdom or else pretend we know it. Too much depends on this eternal fiction that must now transform into an ever-recurring truth.

I say a last farewell: Mother, Father, frail humans who did the best they could with the adventures Aslan sent them. If we do better, it is only because we carefully watched your footsteps and saw where and how you strove against the pitiless winds of existence, dealt with every success and triumph, how you were forged and tempered on the anvil of God.

If we do not, is only because we closed our eyes and ignored the lessons we were taught.

Thanks be to God.

The Thin Place

It is difficult to comprehend the extent to which there are two completely different Americas, existing side-by-side. It is like one of those science-fiction constructs, with two intermingling realities, separated not in time and space but by alternate perceptions so drastically and radically different that neither is even aware of the other’s existence, except in fleeting moments when they brush up against each other. Sort of like the Thin Place you read about in tales of the supernatural, that gossamer film between the real world and the world of Fairie. The inhabitants of the two worlds look on the same events, but see things the other would never recognize. If they spy a denizen of the alternate reality, it seems as if a shadow being is drifting by. A ghost at best, a dangerous threat at worst. The being in the other universe may speak, but the sounds, though they resemble English words, are difficult to hear, indistinct and they make no sense.

This difference in perception and conception does not mean, however, that both worlds are equally valid. Trump’s Press Conference of 16 February is a perfect example of this unequal regard. Before this split universe dichotomy had taken such a firm hold on our national consciousness, it would have been impossible to imagine that Trump’s behavior in that room would ever have been seen as remotely valid, much less admirable. But almost the whole of the Trumping universe perceived it as not only valid (and somehow comprehensible), but even praiseworthy.

There was a time when the incoherence and lack of focus he exhibited would have been perceived the same by every observer. But now we have a significant (a definite minority, but still significant) segment of the electorate who are vested in this maniac. Once they pulled the lever, they established a psychological investment that will find validation wherever and however they can. It will, I fear, be a long time before such a person can be pried away from their devotion and belief in Trump. The blatantly unconstitutional and even treasonous actions he has made his daily todo list either do not phase that loyalty, or else they do not understand that these actions are even improper, much less illegal in many cases.

No, it’s very likely that only a terrible disaster, possibly even a deadly disaster, or the war that Bannon wants, or out and out criminal prosecutions at the highest level (a low probability event, given Sessions as Attorney General); only such a drastic event will dislodge those hypnotized by Trump’s so-called rhetoric. And perhaps even disasters of this magnitude will not be sufficient to push them back through the Thin Place.

But when the jobs fail to materialize, that failure may be sufficient (although it will take time for this to sink in). If he succeeds in banning Muslims, the impact in our technical edge in the global marketplace may eventually be noticed. If millions of Latinos are deported, and somehow kept out, the sudden huge drop in the labor force, combined with a huge drop in contributions to the economy, will definitely be noticed. And if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, and no equivalent substitute is put in its place, there will be an outraged howl, raised from coast to coast, even among the hypnotized, so many of whom think “Obamacare” should be abolished, but don’t want anything to happen to the ACA.

The thing about the Thin Place is that it is thin. It doesn’t take much stark reality to punch through.

Never the New Normal

Is it just me, or does anyone else find themselves looking at “normal” life these days (and “normal” FB posts, and normal tweets and normal conversations) and think to themselves, “HOW CAN PEOPLE CARRY ON AS IF THINGS WERE NORMAL??! Don’t they realize WHAT’S AT STAKE HERE? Don’t they see WHAT’S GOING ON??!”

Look. I know I’m obsessed with this national catastrophe. And I realize that life goes on, oblah-di, oblah-dah. Hell, I’m in the middle of writing a musical, fer Chrissake, a Christmas musical, though I confess I wonder if there’s gonna be a place to stage it by then. And yes, being retired, maybe I have too many spare cycles to fixate on all of this. And yes, it does get wearying just trying to keep up with the Crazy Train to Trumpville.

But damn it, none of this is NORMAL! If I come across as a madman, please forgive me. If I seem irrationally perturbed, I understand the perception. But things are ricocheting out of control, and I feel like a ball on a billiard table in an earthquake, tossed from one outrageous event to the next, with no time to process it all.

I have always considered the abstract notion of “evil” as extremely problematic. Greed, yes. Hunger for power, of course. There’s no doubt may bad people are motivated by these bad motivations. But evil, as some abstract, other-worldly force…? That takes a leap into a metaphysical quagmire. I often contemplated whether Cheney might represent a possible real example of evil. But ultimately, I believe that was simply a naked attempt at power and money, combined with a stupid ideology.

But this? What is this, if it’s not real evil at work? In every “textbook” description of evil (and I think of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien as prime examples), the goal of evil is simply destruction. Dissolution. Chaos. It’s easy to recognize that kind of force at work in the Trump administration. Particularly given Steve Bannon’s public statements to that effect. And to hear Kelly Ann Conway distort perceptions so skillfully, and willfully, is to imagine the serpent whispering to Eve.

And if it’s not the evil goal of utter chaos, what is the end game? What do these people truly want? It seems to me that Trump is a mere tool, a pathetic megalomaniac, whose only agenda seems to be enrichment, aggrandizement and adulation. A man pitifully easy to manipulate in order to accomplish whatever goals are hidden behind the curtain. But wherefore the chaos? Wherefore the inward-directed destruction? Who benefits?

The only clear thing in this roiling shitstorm is the fact that the sheer volume of chaos will undoubtedly conceal the real goals very effectively. And it therefore behooves all those who resist and oppose to never falter from closer observation. Because eventually, the end game will be revealed.

Until then, we can never accept even an iota of this new world as even remotely “the new normal”.

Guessing (The End) Game

“What has happened down here is the wind done changed”
– Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927

The United States of America in January 2017 appears to be a madhouse. All the clichés being bandied about seem completely inadequate: unchartered territory. Terra incognita. Off the map. Never seen this before. The Twilight Zone.

Indeed. The sheer numbers of conflicting and absurd actions spewing out of the White House is enough to keep our collective heads spinning. Each new day brings a new craziness, and it seems impossible to discern any pattern. What in holy hell do Trump and Company have in mind? Where are they trying to take us?

What’s the end game?

Look, everyone knows by now that Steve Bannon is an avowed Leninist, bordering on anarchist. As recently as 2013, he said as much in an interview with the Daily Beast. He claimed he wanted to see the Establishment come crashing down, all of it. The chaos that has so rapidly become the norm, less than two weeks into this Presidency, certainly seems to bear out that strategy.

The Muslim Ban, in all its ineptitude, lack of prior dissemination to the very people required to implement it (Justice, State and ICE), and internal contradictions (eg, including green card holders and permanent residents), is a perfect example of orchestrated chaos. Trump issued the thing without prior discussion or even announcement, and ICE and Justice were suddenly faced with implementing a drastic action, while having absolutely no forewarning or direction. Of course, all hell broke loose. Meanwhile, the entire top echelon of the State Department had been fired only a few days before. So any possible nuanced international response was spayed from the gitgo.

Bannon must certainly be happy. Bannon almost certainly orchestrated the whole thing. God knows Trump doesn’t have the mental wherewithal to conceive, much less implement, such a long-term (ie, 2-3 days) tactic. Anything beyond 140 Tweet characters is quite beyond his ability to focus.

But even postulating Bannon as the mastermind (and, just to be totally Ian Fleming about it, we should include Vladimir Putin’s “invisible hand”), surely to God we can’t expect the entire entourage to buy in to such a “plan”. Pence, for all his abhorrent ideology, is the furthest thing from an anarchist. He requires an operational government in order to further his personal religious agenda against abortion and LGBT. Kelly Ann Conway is an attack dog with no detectable ethics, willing to lash out at anything that moves in the Opposition, but probably not interested in destroying the government. Priebus? Come on, he’s about as Establishment as you can get.

The cabinet nominations are also not noted for their anarchical tendencies. Jeff Sessions is a lap dog (and, please God, find some way to derail his confirmation; the Monday Night Massacre at Justice and ICE have revealed exactly how much regard the Trump administration has for an independent Justice Department. Answer: Zero). Besides, Sessions is incapable of even imagining the country under attack from within.

DeVos, Pruitt, Price all have ideologies, but they seem mainly constrained to dismantling the specific department for which they are targeted. Oddly enough, the one silver lining is perhaps Rick Perry, who, while obviously not the sharpest tool in the shed, seemed genuinely surprised to learn what useful things the Energy Department does, and even eager to do them. Not that he’d be given any leeway to act.

Because then we have Tillerson. It seems blatantly obvious that one critical move in the end game (or perhaps this is more in the opening gambit), is to reverse the sanctions on Russia due to their Crimean invasion, and thus open the way for Exxon to finally take advantage of its half a trillion-dollar investment in Artic drilling in Russia. Cleaning out the upper management at State, while putting the nation at a severe disadvantage in normal avenues of diplomacy, is nevertheless a perfect first step towards that goal. With no one to gainsay anything, no expertise left in house, getting the sanctions cancelled will be much easier. As for other potential barriers, one must at least wonder how many Congresspeople own Exxon stock. I’ll bet it’s popular. In fact, CNN Money reports that Exxon is among the Top Ten stocks owned by members of Congress.

The point is, it is almost impossible to detect a cohesive and structured end game for all the insane machinations being instigated by Trumpville. Is it a coup to gain autocratic control? Seems like the military would have to be involved down to the last battalion, and that seems absurdly unlikely. Even with Mattis as DoD. Is it just a blatant grab at self-enrichment on a colossal scale, via Russia and Exxon? Is it somehow possible that Bannon is orchestrating a way to destroy the Establishment, and by some trick, no one in the inner circle has noticed? I can imagine Mike Pence playing a waiting game, thinking that impeachment is inevitable (a good bet), and standing ready to step up and take the reins. Maybe Priebus and other minor players are simply intoxicated by being on “the inside”. The allure of proximity to power has corrupted many with far more integrity than this bunch has exhibited.

And maybe there simply is no end game. Maybe this Hieronymus Bosch landscape is simply the natural result when the “man in charge” has no policy nor agenda whatsoever, while the various factions that do have agendas are all playing their own games, and the result is a chess board that obeys no rules.

Whatever the case, rest assured that when checkmate does occur, the end result will not advance national harmony or prestige. In fact, the end game may simply be the board and all its players summarily thrown off the table.

Game over.

Flights of Infancy

It is not rare, when relating some exploit of my youth, to conclude with the statement, “It’s a miracle I’m still alive today!” This is an admission that many of those exploits were, to say the least, ill-advised. Life-threatening is neared the mark.

I have managed the feat of self-powered flight twice in my life. The first time was in the third grade, in the tiny Alabama town of Weaver, which is just outside of Anniston, over in the “mountainous” part of the state. Mt. Cheaha, the highest elevation in Alabama, is nearby. And no, I did not leap off Mt. Cheaha. I mention the place merely to point out that there are some distinct hills in the area.

In fact, the little subdivision in which we lived was built on a steep slope. It was a new subdivision, back in a time when the very word “subdivision” was a fairly new coinage. We lived in several “new subdivisions” while I was growing up. I am fond of telling people that I lived in 21 different houses by the time I graduated from high school. We moved a lot, and this often meant buying a house that either was brand new, or had only one or two previous owners. Not a lot of trees, the landscaping still sort of raw and in need of attention.

Our little home was at the top of the hill. The developers had carved each lot into the hillside, so that on the downslope side of our yard, there was a ten foot drop down to the next yard. The yards formed a set of “giant steps”, and it was eight or ten feet down to each successive step. This arrangement was not conducive to “playing”. If you threw the football to your brother, he could easily disappear over the parapet in his eagerness to catch it. Not saying I ever did such a thing, only that the dire possibility always existed.

But then one day… One day, we bought a new refrigerator. And after it was delivered and installed, suddenly we had one whole cardboard refrigerator box with which to do just about anything. A refrigerator box is like an electric stimulant to a kid’s imagination, at least it was in those days. The possibilities were infinite and magical.

The box was about six feet long, and maybe a foot and a half deep and a couple feet wide. For some reason, I collapsed the box so that it looked basically like a giant rectangle, with a little hump running down the middle of the long side. And I was suddenly struck with a brilliant inspiration!

I didn’t remember what it was called, but I had read enough science to know that the Bernoulli Principle was what gave an airplane the ability to fly. The wings just needed a little hump in the middle so that the air went faster over the top of the wing than it did on the bottom.

A little hump exactly like the one I was looking at in my refrigerator box.

With my brother’s help, and lots of tape, we secured some supports inside the box so that the hump would stay in place. Next, I added a couple of rope handles on the underside of the “wing”, just wide enough to reach with my arms extended. Then we dragged the device to the front yard, to the edge of the yard furthest away from that ten foot precipice.

The wonderful thing about the mind of a third grader is that the idea of mortality is completely absent from any consideration. It is instead capable of seeing pure imagination. It is capable of seeing one’s self in full flight.

I started running toward the edge of the yard, going as fast as I could possibly run. I felt the refrigerator box trying to lift me into the air. I hit the edge of the yard, and leaped out.

And I flew. I flew, almost to the middle of our neighbor’s yard. It was one of the greatest moments of my young life.

Before my brother could take his turn at glory, my mother came running out into the yard, yelling pretty loudly. And that was the end of Puckett Aviation. I guess someone had spied me floating by outside their window. I’m a little sorry nobody else got to experience that thrill, though it’s just as well. I imagine there was more than a little luck at work preventing broken bones or worse.

But I had flown. And I had used my mind to work out the whole thing, from principles of lift and what I understood about airplanes. I was kinda proud of that.

The other time I flew… but that’s another story, for another time. Suffice it to say that, rather than resulting in a bit of pride at the power of my mind, the next time I flew, I was much closer to actually being out of my mind.

But one thing’s for sure: It’s a miracle I’m still alive today!

Over the Rainbow

You know what’s hard these days? Obtaining any kind of perspective. The swamp that was not drained has instead managed to mire many of us in a deadly quicksand. Reach for a vine to pull yourself out, the vine turns out to be an anaconda.

It’s next to impossible to climb to the top of the jungle canopy and see any hopeful light. Everything is a gloomy pall, and behind every bush and thicket, it feels certain there lurks nothing but more pitfalls and predators.

But this constant depression is unhealthy. Unless we can at least envision an alternative to this current darkness, somewhere, sometime down the road, then we’ll never find the strength to pull ourselves out of the quicksand. We must at the very least keep the shining City On the Hill as a goal in mind.

Don’t confuse this notion with some sort of Pollyannaism. It’s going to be bad. It’s going to be awful. The effects of the losses and setbacks this nation is about to experience will be with us long after I have left this terrestrial vale, and our children will be dealing with it forever. Climate change alone will not recover from the deregulation and unconstrained excess that will be unleashed, and our offspring will certainly reap that whirlwind. Clean and healthy water, air, food and a host of common necessaries will be compromised, and only vigilant consumers will protect themselves. Education will be undermined even more than it currently is. The recent incredible advances in clean energy will be reversed, and the entire initiative scrapped. With Big Oil firmly in control, and nothing opposed, it’s katy bar the door. The party is ON, dudes! Grab it all now, it’s never gonna be easier.

The situation w.r.t. the intelligence community and the State Department is horrifying, and probably the greatest existential threat of all. Executive orders are, I think, all that is required when the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. all report directly to the President. I don’t know what, if any, Congressional oversight applies in these areas, but I am pretty sure that we can expect essentially NO such oversight or interference from the current Congress. At least not until massive damage has already been done.

So, yes, it’s going to be terrible, awful, horrible. What effect will these changes have in our daily lives? That’s hard to say. At the very least, as wealth concentrates even more densely into an obscenely rich oligarchy at the tippy top, and no jobs of any consequence appear for the middle class, I expect greater economic hardship. Health care is about to take a nosedive, and that will certainly be felt in many households. But it will take time for the effects of deregulation to work their black magic on the environment, water and air. And if they actually succeed in privatizing Social Security and Medicare, it’s doubtful that those currently enjoying the benefits will be immediately affected, although new cohorts of retirees come flooding in every year, and they will certainly feel the pinch.

Whether the promised rollback and “restructuring” of intelligence agencies will affect the everyday American is a more subtle question. We can almost certainly expect even more Russian election (and commerce) hacking as our cyber protections are compromised. So the midterms could well be affected, as well as individual companies and industries

So how to best cope with the certainty of imminent darkness?

I am convinced that we must never lose sight of the goal, of the the world that will eventually replace this inevitable dystopia. What is upon us will be a passing storm. All things must pass, change is the only constant. But without a firm vision of the outcome we wish to take its place, it will be the easiest thing in the world to become hopelessly (the word is specific) mired in the Badness.

Yes, things will be irreversibly changed. Yes, those changes will not be pleasant, will even be dangerous. But then we will persevere and prevail and come through them. Unlike the apocalyptic view of the world favored by evangelicals, this will not happen because a Cosmic Judge descends from the heavens, and with lightning and cataclysm destroys the unrighteous and restores the kingdom of justice. It will happen because good people, with good intentions and a clear vision of hope, never failed to keep working for that vision.

And never failed, by all legitimate means, and at every step along the way, to oppose the Darkness.

The Telomeric Irony

[Reposted from 2011, a post that was lost when the Years Of Being blog was destroyed.]

Telomeres

The human telomere. A bit of material at the end of each chromosome. Some have likened a telomere to an aglet, that piece at the end of a shoelace that generally has a bit of plastic on it, making it easier to thread the holes when you lace up your shoes. And just as an aglet over time becomes somewhat frayed, and finally almost totally useless, the telomere sitting at the end of the chromosome “shoelace” gets a little shorter each time a cell divides. Until finally there is no telomere left. But whereas you can keep stuffing the frayed aglet into the eyelet of a shoe and lace it up one more time, when the telomere is consumed, the cell can no longer divide.

It’s “lifetime” is over. Kaput. Dead.

As you yourself will eventually be. Because when, say, the cells of the liver cease replicating, the liver is pretty much left with what it has at that time. And therefore it’s ability to repair itself becomes more and more compromised over time. No more new liver cells, and then when the old ones finally wear out, too bad. Just have to “do more with less”.

And so it goes with all the body’s organs and systems and bones and tissues. Over time, their ability to rejuvenate weakens and abates, and so the body gets less and less flexible and less and less adaptable. And weaker. And the hair grays. And the skin wrinkles.

You age.

And then you die. All because some arbitrary mechanism exists whereby DNA has a built in long-term self-destruct mechanism: the telomeres.

Among scientists who study such things, telomeres are the primary (and obvious) suspects as the agents of aging and death. Most of us consider aging and death pretty much as givens, like taxes. But unlike taxes, which are after all, a pure invention of the human mind, aging and death are inexorable. After all, we essentially have to agree, collectively, or be forced to agree, that such a thing as taxation will be enacted. Death stalks us whether we will or no. It is so ubiquitous, so universal, that the fact of its existence, its raison d’etre, is never questioned. We may substitute eternal spiritual afterlife as some sort of alternative. But the fact that we age and die? No, we fully expect that.

But why? I mean (without trying to be too tongue-in-cheek), what’s the benefit in death? Why should the primary replicative structure that subtends all life have a built-in mechanism that terminates that life after so many revolutions? A moment’s thought should reveal that there really is no particular, inherent, fundamental reason that even begins to make sense. If the telomeres did not get shorter on each replication, the world would be a very different place. Oh, death would still happen. Cut off the oxygen, slice off the head, drop the body off a cliff, death will occur. But not dying from old age, because there would be no old age.

Of course, one can argue that, without telomeres, without a built-in mechanism to kill an individual, then the species would have a much harder time adapting via natural selection. Only when individuals die off do they take their lousy genes with them. Telomeres are perfectly suited to enforce the mechanism of natural selection.

The problem is that this argument is itself a teleological argument. “Telos” is the Greek for “end”. Hence, telomeres are at the end of the chromosomes. A teleological argument is an argument that starts from the end, the “end justifying the beginning”. Natural selection may indeed require telomeres to operate. But need does not constitute cause. I need to make a car payment. That does not cause the money to appear in my back account. Natural selection is, at its root, a completely random process. Just because an animal in the desert would benefit from organs that conserve water will not produce a camel. But if a series of accidental mutations produces an animal that carries water bags in its humps, then natural selection will favor that animal in that environment, and thus we see more camels in the Sahara than hippopotami.

So the fact that natural selection itself “needs” telomeres is not a sufficent reason for them to exist. Furthermore, any mechanism that inherently kills the individual is not a good candiate for a trait that would likely be passed on. In fact, such a mechanism is absolutely counter to the existence of a particular individual. It is the opposite, as far as an individual is concerned.

And in any case, this is not a genetic trait that is “passed on”. It is an integral part of the genetic machine. It precedes and defines the generic machine. Oh, individuals may have longer or shorter telomeres (and the length itself seems to be an inherited genetic trait), but the basic fact of telomeres, and their operation, are part and parcel of the structure of the chromosome. Telomeric activity is inherent.

And here’s a cosmic comic thought: Telomeres may be the most powerful argument ever encountered for some sort of “intelligent design”. But definitely not in the “let’s make man in our image” style of argument usually proposed. It’s more “let’s create this random generation mechanism involving DNA and mutations, and let ‘er rip, and see what it produces. But let’s make sure the life forms that arise will automatically die off, so that evolution will be forced to take place.” It’s not so much God walking through the Garden as it is a monolith descending from the cosmos, ordering the mechanism that subtends life itself to include this automatic “cash in your chips” activity, just so natural selection will operate correctly.

That’s a very spooky form of intelligent design. In fact, it’s almost diabolical, at least from the individual’s perspective. From my perspective, that telomere just downright sucks.

So that’s one aspect of what I call the Telomeric Irony. The fact that telomeres exist at all is cosmic irony of the first degree. The only reason I will die a natural death is not even a defensible reason, unless I postulate a cosmic engineer who arranged it that way. Not exactly the sort of deity I am prone to worship.

But let’s get past the primary irony, the ontological irony implied by their mere existence. Let’s just take that as a given, since there’s not much to do about it, and no profit in bemoaning it. It was Death and Taxes before we knew about telomeres, it’s Death and Taxes now that we do know. So we die. Okay.

Because, really, I don’t think infinite, conscious life is a particularly inviting prospect. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way ready to cash it in, nor am I the despairing, despondent type. Far from it. I would run just as fast as I could away from that Far Country, I will not go quietly into that dark night. But face it: infinite life is an ego-crushing concept. Even heavenly, spiritual infinite life. My daughter once observed that the prospect of singing Hallelujahs forever was just unbelievably depressing. It’s that idea of our individual consciousness existing without end that is so numbingly oppressive. The idea that this internal monologue, the observer that is ME, would go on, commenting and assimilating and rearranging and THINKING without end, amen, that idea is just so overwhelming as to be horrific. How many times can you sing the Hallelujah Chorus, for God’s sake. Or for Whoever’s?

I think most of us, at an almost unconcious level, think in much more finite terms. “When we’ve been there, 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun”. So begins the final verse of Amazing Grace. “10,000 years.” Gosh, it seems so long. But what if it had said, “ten million years”. Or ten trillion. Or a google’s worth of years. That’s 1 followed by a 100 zeroes worth of years. Chew on that for a bit. Consider what that would really mean. Gad.

The second aspect of the Telomeric Irony is then this: why the hell were we given a mere three score and ten, on average? I mean, talk about arbitrary. Why not a couple of hundred, like a tortoise. Or even a thousand? After a thousand years, I think even the most creative soul that ever perceived and conceived would have exhausted all the possibilities. But seventy? Just seventy? I mean, most humans take five or six decades just to figure out how most of this crap really works. Then (to quote Dave Matthews), it’s “lights out, you up and die”. That is the really grating irony. Death is not that bad of a concept, it can even be deemed necessary, if for no other reason than to make room for everybody else. No, it’s the early exit that sucks. It’s just not commensurate with our consciousness, with the kinds of things we can conceive and invent and make and manipulate. This brief candle is probably the heart of greed and rapaciousness and gluttony and excess. Knowing you’re going to check out 3-4 decades from now doubtless motivates some personalities to start grabbing everthing in sight, and taste, touch, do, try, go: hurry, hurry, hurry!

It is especially pissy when juxtaposed against the thought that some architect put the damn telomeres in there in the first place. Hey, Grand Cosmic Designer! Yes, You. Why the heck didn’t you cut us some slack here? Seventy years might have seemed a decent choice in the Nelolithic when homo sapiens enjoyed 20 good years on average before saber teeth or bear claws or other cave dudes cut him down. Not such a good idea after the people start writing symphonies and invent literature and music and so forth. In fact, pretty much right after we managed to get enough spare time to look in the mirror and recognize that Self who is I, that was when the arbitrary time limit took on its truly tragic aspects.

Arthur C. Clark often wrote about the recurring theme that informed “Childhood’s End” and “2001: A Space Odyssesy”, the idea that humankind was on the cusp of the Next Great Step, symbolized by the enigmatic Star Child that appears at the end of the movie rendition of ”2001.” Perhaps this transition happens soon, perhaps it is happening now. Perhaps the 95% of our DNA currently classified as “junk”, since it does not seem to transcribe anything useful, will suddenly blossom into the Indigo Children of the near future, the Heroes, the Star Children. One can also consider oft-repeated fictional device of the Immortal, a person who, for whatever reasons, lives for millenia, watching the endless parade of history roll by, hiding his eternal nature from those who would be murderously envious. Perhaps there are individuals whose telomeres don’t slough off, and are therefore, for all intents and purposes, immortal.

Perhaps. And perhaps the Indigo Children, when they break out of their cocoons and morph into Destiny and Possibility, perhaps there will likewise be something in that genetic flowering that drastically lengthens those tender little telomeres, extends the neohuman lifetime and retains the vigor of youth. Or else they might interbreed with Immortals.

Because it would be a tragicomic pity to blossom into godlike consciousness and capabilities, and still be constrained to the three score and ten of your forefathers and mothers.