As you may have noticed, er, hm, I’m writing a story that seems to be turning into what is called a novel. Why a novel? No idea except that it’s not a novel idea.
Anyway, be that as it may and all the rest of the massacree, once in a while it’s good to just stop. Catch your breath, stop chasing after those characters who can run circles around you and disappear in the blink of an eye and you can’t find them again. So, I got ’em where I want ’em and I’m putting on the brakes and taking a break.
That being said, I found some questions in “THE” note book that I want to share, maybe get some feedback.
“Is an unenforceable law still a law?”
“If it is enforceable but no one wants to enforce it, is it still a law?”
“Is an idea that is in words only a valid concept? or Does it gain validity only when it is proven that it can be applied and that it works?”
“The future is not an extrapolation of the past, it’s doing things differently.” Does that mean that when we don’t do things differently we are not moving into the future but living in the past? I think that question is loaded and demanding scrutiny.
And a quote that most can probably identify with:
I look at my past life as at a field lit up by the sun when it breaks through the clouds, and I note with metaphysical astonishment how my most deliberate acts, my clearest ideas, and my most logical intentions were after all no more than congenital drunkenness, inherent madness, and huge ignorance. I didn’t even act anything out. I was the role that got acted. – Fernando Pessoa
And that’s all folks!
~Burning Woman~ 
That is thee amazing thing about writing and our characters, we never know where it is going.
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That’s the fascination with it. Reminds me of sailing little paper boats when I was a child. There’s the making of it, then putting it in a stream, then with a small stick, a little push here, push there, and the joy of watching it suddenly take off on its own for a while, without help, without guidance, and always hoping that it would keep on going like that, on its own, and to who knows where?
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Perfect analogy.
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Excellent, I love the quote.
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‘Tis a great quote yes? So is our life until we discover self empowerment, take responsibility and form a purpose for our life. Then everything gets turned on its head and now we’re the movers and shakers and we go through life with wide open eyes and in trepidation knowing that our passage does affect others for better or worse. And who would want worse? If we be human then, we become givers and reap joy. Are you listening, world?
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Beautifully writen Sha.
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Thank you…
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Good questions, good quotes. I must ponder.
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Ah yes, the pondering… heavy stuff.
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Pingback: This and That, Why Not? – The Militant Negro™
Thank you!
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Most human behaviour is governed by a built in law not an enforced law . When we get outside of civilised society sometimes this breaks down and bestial brutality breaks out , but even then this is a minority activity. Even when we are not being watched something inside says no I must not do that it would be a wrong action. Violence is something reporters search for , it makes good news and horrifies most of us , hence it it exciting reading. We assign the killing of our animal food to those who can do it but wielding the knife is not in most of our natures.
I walk down a lonely path as a short cut to my local shops , a shuffling slow grey-haired old man and often past a few local youths drinking a few cans of beer. My suspicion is if I was a sprightly youth they might well accost me , but they simply nod and I shuffle on to my destination.
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OK Kertsen, a challenge for you to ponder upon. Quote from your nice comment (and thank you for that) “When we get outside of civilised society sometimes this breaks down and bestial brutality breaks out , but even then this is a minority activity.”
Let’s break that up: “When we get outside civilized society sometimes this breaks down and bestial brutality breaks out.” One must define what “getting outside civilized society” means. Pre “civilized” man we know did not have the proclivity (or means) to engage in the kind of outright brutality civilized society continually demonstrates in exploitation, oppression, denial of justice, jailing, murder, raping and deliberately starving people for profit.
“even then this is a minority activity” – Do you think WWI, WWII, the Korean and Vietnamese wars, then the endless Greater Middle East wars conducted to protect hegemonic rights to oil to qualify as “minority activity”?
I see it as the other way around. In pre-civilized times the “law” was in the people’s minds and hearts, with exceptions that were dealt with in most cases humanely. In “civilized” times that law was supplanted by written laws made by, well let’s call them what they were and are, sociopaths, slave owners, elititst moguls, all-powerful churchmen. Gradually the inner law was silenced and society evolved into a vile, violent, uncaring, selfish, lustful, greedy and destructive mob led by the worst of the pack. Examples of this abound, exceptions (sometimes mentioned, sometimes praised and given little prizes for making society forget itself for a moment) proving the rule.
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You must not let propaganda influence you unduly , it loves war ,rape , brutality, blood and thunder and it hates satisfaction, contentment , peace and a jog along life style. Let me use some propaganda to uninfluence you. Fifty to eighty million were killed in world war one about 3% of the world’s population. Annually there are about 2.6 million registered deaths in the USA and about a quarter of those are due to heart disease. In London’s west end serious plays were performed to full houses and the interest in the arts led to the first subsidy of them.
So you see while many lived just as before a few poor devils had to face each other with deadly weapons.
As Kipling pointed out about the poor active soldier getting drunk:
Throw him out the brute
But its a thin red line of heroes when the guns begin to shoot.
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I am not quite certain how to respond to that, or if a response was intended. What is propaganda? To me it’s manufactured “news” or “history” purely to misdirect or influence in some way beneficial to whatever machinery is involved in manufacturing said propaganda. To the best of my knowledge, and however twisted in favour of the winners, the records of wars, genocides and ethnic cleansing which happened and are on-going isn’t propaganda. Sure, I can go running out in the park, meet other people, greet their dogs and babies, spend a few moments in light conversation, look at the trees, the river, the grassy banks and think, “God’s in his heaven and all’s well with the world” and carry on carrying on, the rest is none of my business because I can’d do anything about it. But that isn’t how I am made and my entire life has been dedicated to observation, analyzing and problem solving. And sure, at the end of it I can be saying… ‘We have not succeeded in solving your problem, in fact we are more confused than ever. However we believe we are confused on a higher plane and about more important things.” But there’s the part about trying and using what I’ve seen not only to become more aware (for I ‘know’ about mind continuity so there is a point to it) but also to share, if to a very few, the things that cause me concern and often deep sorrow.
On earth, that which is, is usually considered normal. The death of millions, either through wars, pestilences, or attrition are acceptable, part of the “natural” order. But comes a day when a mind evolves itself and looks at earth’s predatory system and rebels. “No more… no more!” it exclaims. Then it discovers perhaps by accident, that there are other worlds where death, disease, pain, sorrow, loss, hurt, any of those deliberately inflicted, have been conquered, eliminated and all simply by a change of mindset.
I know a world where the death of one child, just one child anywhere on the planet would cause an instant shock to all sentients. That world, faced with such a horrible event, would stop functioning until the event was shown to have been the cause of a freak accident and not a deliberate act of murder. Then the focus would be on making sure such a thing could not happen again. These people are empaths. They feel what happens to others, hence they continually seek to improve the lot of all that their own may also improve. They know from bitter experience in times long past, selfishness and self-seeking can only bring ultimate sorrow.
Earthians it would seem are a long way from grasping such a simple truth, being too willing to accept the sacrificial death of “others” if the end results benefit them in some way. That is what I absolutely object to. I call it what it is: a programmed horror that plays in every mind theatre, a bloody soap opera receiving countless, endless awards and standing ovations. The show has many titles but the most common and generic one is, The Poor must be Killed so the Rich can get Richer.
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Correction: ” To me it’s manufactured “new” or “history” purely to misdirect ” should read
” To me it’s manufactured “news” or “history” purely to misdirect”
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You have been reading too much Ursula le Guin who recently died at the grand old age of 88. I have not read any of her books but her death prompted me to listen to some of her conversations on utube.
If we take a true fact and chant it over and over again a small bit of the truth becomes magnified out of all proportion to the millions of incidents and facts that are taking place every day. A good example of this is when a loved one dies and for awhile we are obsessed with this one death amongst the millions that happen every day. The most dangerous propaganda is the true type that is magnified out of all proportion , fake news can be dismissed , conspiracy theories taken with a smile but repetitive truth is unbalancing.
In the UK we are very busy arguing about the national health service as if it was widespread and repeated throughout the whole global population. I notice that many are making comparisons with other European countries implying we are the bottom of the pile. They don’t pick on the African heath service or the Indian health service for their arguments.
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I for one am very pleased with your journey from story to novel; keep on expanding those horizons Sha’ Tara.
Law….ah me. This is the trouble with having been in public service work for too many years. I’ll just come along with the arcane statement. As long as the law is on the statue book it remains a law, whether anyone uses it or acre about it is another matter…the term is Desuetude… (there was a time when I loved my job…many years ago…..)
Valid ideas? From my surface knowledge of science it appears there are many valid ideas which have not been proven because we don’t yet have the machines to do so. Of course in the worlds of Economics and Politics you can pretty much make up anything you please and some folks will believe you are talking ‘facts’.
Past and Future? In some cases could be argued to be the same thing from different perspectives.
As for the quote…..I’m not so sure. There again in years past my general grasp on any reality was tenuous; it was a survival technique.
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Thanks for the kudos on the book, Roger. It is proving increasingly exciting to follow it along with the keyboard.
Desuetude, now there’s a descriptive word that’s about to describe the general condition of society if current predatory capitalism remains unchecked. Had to throw that in.
The law question was a philosophical question, like is the Coliseum still a coliseum or just a ruin for tourists to gawk at? Is an Olympic gold medallist figure skater riddled with arthritis still a gold medal winner? If something is no longer used, or can no longer be used, or no one wants to use it, is that thing, well, still that thing, or has it become something else? I think that maybe “desuetude” can be compared to entropy, something that “man” has shown a great disregard for, either to study or to engage to his own detriment. (Example, ref. the recent “garbage crisis” emanating from China’s decision not to import the West’s garbage any longer.)
As for ideas being valid or not, you get the idea. DaVinci and later, Tesla, had amazing ideas, some which were proven true in appropriate times, some that still remain untested mostly because their success would undoubtedly upset the status quo and that holds all of the political and economic cards at the moment.
Past and future, it appears, are discretionary judgements society in general holds some sort of agreement on but that’s about it. Some people, particularly New Age gurus like to preach that there is no past or future, only the present. I like getting into that one. If there is only the present, how extensive is your present? A second? A year? Does it include all of the past and future? In which case doesn’t it become a meaningless concept? I do know what they mean, that you are supposed to only focus on the task at hand, but again if you do so, how can you ever learn from the past, or how can you plan for your own future?
The Pessoa quote shows a person who has not, as yet, apprehended the necessity of becoming self- empowered.
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Characters are so fickle! They come and entertain you, then, just when you think you’ve got to know them and even like them, they b off and leave you to ponder life’s great mysteries.
There are laws that define how the physical universe works, so far as we can understand for the time being. And there are laws agreed upon by society (or not) in an attempt to regulate human behaviour and protect those deemed to be threatened from the activities of others. The first are largely immutable – at least until they succumb to closer investigation. The second can be amended by agreement or decree. All such laws are potentially enforceable so long as those making the laws are prepared to deploy the necessary resources and penalties. They become unenforceable once the population at large, or those with greatest influence, change their priorities.
The past is a strange place we think we know – but ask anyone who was there with you and his or her perception is vastly different to yours. The future is unknowable but it is possible to calculate the probability of certain events occurring and to plan accordingly. That does not mean, either that those things will happen, or that your plans will be capable of responding adequately to them.
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Thanks for your comment, Frank. Interesting things to ponder and wonder about, letting the mind free for a moment from the hum drum to wander the microcosmic and the macrocosmic. I like how you brought in the great universal laws. I hadn’t thought of that aspect. If we take out all the “spooky” from our life (something I could never do, but never mind that!) I wonder if the strictly Darwinian evolving man simply drew from those greater laws that keep planets from smashing into each other yet cannot totally control all disasters, and designed his own social interaction laws from those? Would that be a way to explain how we arrived at ours and why they only sort of work? As above, so below?
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Good questions that deserve further pondering!
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Thank you, and yes, I agree. But the wondering and the pondering, isn’t that what makes us what we are?
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I think that’s part of it. But it seems that some other species also ponder over things…last I observed this was with the little chimpanzee who had discovered a lock at the zoo.
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Human hubris thinks only of itself as that which invents and creates change! All of life is in motion as our worlds plunge heedlessly it seems at amazing speeds through space and time. Everything is affected by movement and either it adapts (evolves?) or it vanishes. It’s not necessarily the classic struggle for survival, it’s two things as I see it: keeping up as applying to the vast majority of “things” and inventing, pushing, creating the future for the more daring kinds. Wondering, pondering, acting…
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