Thursday, September 30, 2021

Hello Again

Finally back in here after a long absence, everybody. Quite a bit has happened since my last post, dated January 2020. Maybe too much. I have not given up on writing, though. Started a substack in the interim, stupidly named Anonymous Catalyst. Only reason I say so is because it is no longer anonymous once you know I am the creator.

Anyway, I am glad I can finally get back into this blog, my first one. More to come, whenever.

Sunday, January 05, 2020

Happy New Decade?

The year twenty-twenty was all of two or so days old when the US government — in its infinite wisdom — launched an airstrike on Baghdad International Airport that killed one of the most senior-ranking Iranian military commanders, setting off a grave crisis.

At least that is according to the immediate reaction from very-online observers of the news, who employed the hashtag #WWIII almost immediately, even though at present there is no indication that Moscow and Beijing are about to establish a military alliance with Tehran.

One drone murder undid years of effort to stop the Iranian nuclear program, which now has every reason to exist. From the standpoint of the clerical regime that runs Iran, if it did not want to develop nuclear weapons before, now it is clearly in its interest to do so.

Imagine for a second that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps assassinated the CIA director in, say, Mexico City. Tehran would be in flames immediately, which suggests that the Supreme Leader is showing incredible restraint.

No one can credibly say what will happen next. There is no crystal ball. The past is not prologue, as the saying goes.

Then again, the last decade was chaotic and violent; so far there is no sign this one will not be as well. The hope is that the massive uprisings that the world saw in the early 2010s will continue, that people all over the world will overthrow illegitimate power structures, both state and corporate, that are killing the future.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

The Biggest Scourge Of This Time

Wrote the following in my journal on June 24, 2015: “Last night, one of the dinner guests said something to the effect of, The biggest scourge of this time is the New York Times-reading liberal, who is smug and conceited and does not act on all the bad news they fill their head with.” I resembled that remark, to my shame.

Maybe still do, to a lesser extent, four-and-a-half years later. Less so now with the “smug and conceited” but still got the latter half going on. It is true that I, as a New York Times-reading liberal,” do not act on all the bad news” with which I fill my head, but how can anyone do that? You can only change what you know you can change, a proposition vanishingly thin when faraway events come into the picture.

Even so, I do not accept what I cannot change, as the so-called serenity prayer bids people to do. How can anyone accept the fact that there will be no social justice on a dead planet, or that entire generations endure a lower standard of living than their parents, or that we have a barely functioning democratic system? These are not etched into stone, but serenity in the face of an ecological/economic abyss is not an option.

Last week, I dreamt that a colossally tall tidal wave gathered force in the distance, and people did not seem to notice, worry, or care about it. Only until the tsunami began to crest and tower over us all did people begin to freak out, as soon as it was too late for action. There was no longer anything to do but get annihilated, and then I woke up. People talk a lot about being “woke,” after all, and maybe it is a good thing to not sleep-walk through impending catastrophe.

No one can do everything but everyone can do something. That seems to be the folk wisdom, and it feels right. Burnout is a serious problem, as critical as inaction itself. The revolution, in whatever form it may take, is coming. The tidal wave approaches. Everyone has to do what they can so that collectively we can brace for what we know is on its way. Not sure if massive street demonstrations are what is needed, but they would not hurt.

Happy New Year.

Sunday, November 03, 2019

Yesterday Is Gone, Tomorrow Never Comes

The past is a ghost and the future is a phantom. All that is here and will ever be is the present. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow never knows, since the day never arrives. As soon as it is tomorrow it is today again. Even if one could somehow go back to yesterday—which is impossible, for the time being—it also would be today. These terms are abstractions, figments of the mind.

All we have, have had, and will ever have is the present moment, right now. Now. Now. Further, no matter where one is located, one is always here. Sure, one can “go over there,” but as soon as that happens there is no “there” there anymore. Saying to someone “see you there then” makes no sense. No matter what, one is always going to see someone here now.

Most people seem to think that time is linear, but according to quantum physicists, once we get down to the level of subatomic particles and elemental forces, there is no meaningful distinction between past, present, and future. Time is, perhaps, simply a measure of change, which is the only thing that never does. Indigenous conceptions of temporality likewise do not see time as an arrow moving from past to future, unlike the dominant Western construct.

This does not imply that one is wrong and the other right, but that there is no one way to perceive an eternal present usually divided into yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It is interesting that Wikipedia defines time as “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, to the future.” Here we see a linear progression portrayed, with the qualifier “apparently irreversible” thrown in.

One may think it a shame that we can move through space and not through what is often called the fourth dimension, hence the continuing fascination with the idea of time travel. Traveling into the future is what we have always been doing, at the rate of one second per second, one minute per minute, one hour per hour, one day per day, etc. Of course, that implies a linear direction, but is it really possible to travel into the past? If so, what would that mean?

The past is a memory, an artifact, a photograph, a document, a recording. We cannot, apparently, return to it; all we can do is see the traces we have left now. It seems reasonable to assume that all we can do is move in one temporal direction, in the same sense that it seems reasonable to assume we can only move in three spatial directions. Imagine that everyone could only move in one spatial direction, or thought so. Space only going one way! It sounds absurd, but perhaps our experience of temporality seems as nonsensical to hypothetical higher-dimensional beings.

We live, then, in a “flatland” of time. The only reason we think of things such as days, months, or years at all is the planet spinning around, our satellite revolving around us, and our flying around the nearest star. The week, meanwhile, is wholly arbitrary, having no natural analog. “That was weeks ago”: what does that really mean? The cyclical nature of time is most noticeable around the change of the seasons, the solstices and equinoxes that mark out the regular intervals of endless solar revolutions.

A statement attributed to the Buddha went thus: “You shouldn’t chase after the past or place expectations on the future. What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached. Whatever quality is present you clearly see right there, right there.” Here and now, the only place and time anyone can be.

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Psyche Myself Out

I overthink everything
Who’s the I in that statement
Who’s the who in that question
Thoughts keep me in subjection
What did what when, why, to whom
Down rabbit holes circling doom
Get out of your head and go into your body
I overthink everything
Too much analysis leads to paralysis
Clues to decipher, the mind is a cipher
Always wanting to know what is this
Psyche yourself out of somatic experience
Astral projections just left them delirious
I overthink everything
I & I so say the Rastafari
Link together all our POV but cannot see
Outside the membrane of consciousness
Awaiting acknowledgements
I overthink everything
Greed destroys the heart of man
Mammon demands to know his plan
Some say you are not your thoughts
Battle lines that cannot be crossed
Who is anyone to say

as Spaceship Earth spins the day
All my thoughts are forever lost
They say we go dust to dust
Like metal oxidizing to rust
I overthink everything

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Dastardly Iran Vows to Defend Itself If Attacked

The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps announced that “Iran will pursue and seek to destroy any aggressor, even one carrying out a limited attack, ... after attacks on Saudi oil sites” on Sept. 14, which both Riyadh and American officials blamed on Iran,” Reuters reported, quoting Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami as saying that “a limited aggression will not remain limited” and that Tehran “will pursue any aggressor.

He added that they “will continue until the full destruction of any aggressor.

Put aside for the moment whether the Iranian military has the capability to destroy either Saudi Arabia or the United States, which seems at best doubtful. The enemy nation has the nerve to publicly assert that it will defend itself against military assault from the US, the Saudis, and allied emirates, showing their impertinence in describing hypothetical airstrikes against IRGC sites as acts of aggression,” when the proper terms are defensive” and limited.”

The report cited Brig. Gen. Ghadir Nezami, identified as the “head of international affairs and defense diplomacy at Iran’s General Staff of the Armed Forces,” declared that Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow would begin joint naval exercises in the Arabian Sea and the North Indian Ocean in the near future, according to Iran’s semiofficial news agency.

It is obviously outrageous that a country under crippling economic sanctions would seek to conduct war games with other regional powers, or declare that it would defend itself from enemy attack. If the tables were turned, there is no doubt the United States, by now seen by most of the global population as the greatest threat to world peace, would do exactly the same thing.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

All Our Days Are Numbered

Turned thirty-two almost three weeks ago, which is an age that is still considered quite young, but is no longer thought of as that young. It is a strange liminal stage that is past young adulthood and more fully into being, as the kids say, “grown-ass.” Expecting to live to my expected lifespan, I have at least another fifty years, including at least 30 more years of being not old.

It is really interesting to look at it in different units of time, like months, weeks, days, hours. It is a real shock to learn that all of 500,000 hours may remain of my natural lifetime, or in other words 3,000 weeks or so, the equivalent of 690 months.

Yet if I account for how much time until I am north of “retirement age” — while knowing that for most of my cohort we may never actually retire — that leaves only 2,000 weeks, or 460 months, or (roughly) 330,000 hours.

Three hundred thousand hours, give or take, is what I have until society will consider me among the ranks of the elderly. Time really is precious, so there is no point in wasting of any of it worrying over its passage. The truth is, all of our days are numbered; we just don’t know the number.