1-16-17 —– What would become of the rich and powerful without the poor and weak? They would cease to be rich and powerful, of course. What would become of the poor and weak without the rich and powerful? They would cease to be poor and weak, of course. This should be obvious to any one with a modicum of common sense, all propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding.
1-16-17 —– It takes a thousand year for a redwood tree to reach maturity, thirty minutes to cut it down, a few days to reduce it to lumber, a few weeks to shape it into a house and only a few decades before it is bulldozed into rubble to make way for some larger construct. Are we mad! What in the name of common sense is the rush? Were in the name of wisdom are we going?
1-16-17 —– In the stew of societal turmoil, nothing less than a crisis in evolution is brewing. Gathering and synthesizing quality, wisdom and spirituality into a force greater than science, technology and commerce is the great, human odyssey we must undertake in the first century of this new millennium.
1-16-17 —– In the ultimate macro view, everything in the universe is in harmony. In the ultimate, micro view, everything is in conflict. Those who see nothing but a world of commerce, competition, conflict, and combat have tiny, pinched, impoverished perception and perspective.
1-16-17 —– The moment a leader is elevated above a follower by income, authority, prestige or anything else, you have neither leader or follower. You may have manager and subordinate, master and servant, owner and slave, tyrant and tyrannized, executive and human resource, but not leader and follower. The latter is a mutual, voluntary, relationship in pursuit of common purpose in accordance with shared principles, hot a hierarchy of authority.
1-16-17 —– Only those blinded by ego, envy, avarice or ambition would argue that holders of surplus money, through fictions called capital and corporation, should own in perpetuity the benefits derived from the intelligence and labor of others, or be entitled to the benefits derived from the earth itself, to which all living things should be entitled by right of birth. To call that liberty, equity, or democracy is a cruel charade.
1-16-17 —– The ocean moves as the pebble is cast. The weather changes with every breath. The intelligence of the universe alters with every thought. We are at one and the same time, creator and created.
1-16-17 —– Wherever and however people are confined against their will they are imprisoned. A prison need not be made of steel or concrete. People can be confined against their will by the bigotry of a community, by the dominance of a religion, by economic conditions imposed by government, by constraints of employment, by lack of education, or of income. Far more people are confined today by the global financial system and global corporatism by than have ever been confined by tyrants, or by police judge and jury.
1-2-17 —– Homo sapiens scientificus, has had a good, long run at presenting the earth with non-negotiable demands, at least in man-time. But man-time and earth-time are not the same. Nature, in accordance with its own time, is steadily presenting mankind with non-negotiable demands of its own. We like to believe that science can circumvent those demands, but there is no evidence to support that belief, and no indication there ever will be.
1-2-17 —– Rufus, the great horned owl, floats silently in the fading light to his favorite evening perch on the tip of a small dead tree outside my study window. Silhouetted against the dying light, he scans the grassy hilltop looking for a careless rodent on which to dine. Here I sit, day after day, cooped up, getting a numb butt, fretting over money to be made, a book to be written, speeches to be composed, property to be maintained, while Rufus lives free, goes where and when he likes, free of ego envy, avarice and ambition, trusting nature to provide sustenance, taking no more than his daily needs when there is plenty, calmly enduring when there is not. Which is the wiser creature? I really don’t want to know the answer.
1-2-17 —– Intent is in the composer. Interpretation is in the conductor. Rendering is in the instrumentalist. Perception is in the listener. Sound is in the notes. Rhythm is in the intervals. Music is in the relationship between them all. Truth, beauty, even life itself, are not this or that; everything is harmonious relationship.
1-2-17 —– Age that mourns the passing of youth and attempts to emulate it is a sad thing. Would a luscious ripe fruit whine because it is no longer a blossom, or a blossom try to contort itself back into a bud?
1-2-17
It is not right,
It is not right,
that slow and slow the slight
moon moves the night,
and slow and slow the night
drags dawn’s dim light,
and slow and slow the bright
day pales at sight
of my pathetic plight.
It is not right,
it is not right!
1/2/17 —– The propositions of mathematics are all synthetic. The discoveries of science are all approximations. The properties of machines are all inexact. All are constructs of man. Useful as they may be, there is nothing of certitude in them. Why then, do we assiduously create societal organizations in their image? Are we fools worshiping our tools?
1/2/17 —– Several minds are better than one, and many often better than several, not because they are less fallible, but because they are less likely to go wrong in the same way at the same time for the same reason.
12/29/16 —– Every morning I rise thinking “I’ve won again!’ At my age, every morning is a victory.
12/29/16 —– Remove the rhetoric and hyperbole from Trump’s plan to make America great again and it amounts to this: Greater wealth for the wealthy, greater power for the powerful, greater privilege for the privileged, greater all three for the Trumps, greater wars for the warriors, greater diminishment for the middle class, greater poverty for the poor, greater devastation for the envIronment, and greater incarceration for those who rebel.
12/29/16 —– There is no evil that a well organized, energized minority cannot impose on a disorganized, apathetic majority.
Trump is the proof of it.
12/29/16 —– Eighty eight years searching for the meaning of life, and all that while, it has been searching for the meaning of me. I suspect it has been on the right track.
12/29/16 —– We spend our lives admiring that which is respected while ignoring that which is respectable.