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Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
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A limerick of an abstraction
There was a faith-healer of Deal
Who said, "Although pain isn't real,
If I sit on a pin
And it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel."
(Author Unknown)
L I F E and am I my brother's keeper is how I started this series of short
essays. But, what about other species? And why must I limit my concern to
just my brothers (and my cousins and my extended family or my family, my
clan, my tribe, my country, my kind? Why not all life? And how conscious
is the rest of life or are we the most conscious creatures on this planet?
Is that consciousness so complete you believe you can grok Fritz, your
German Shepard or Miriam, the cat?
(Novelist Robert Heinlein invented the word "grok" which means "deep,
internalized understanding of something or someone. It was a reference to
the Martian in the 1961 science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land
and the word itself is Martian. The word today is slang meaning to
thoroughly "dig" someone or something.)
There are not many of us who would not argue with anyone disagrees, that
the animals we live with have a complete but different consciousness and
they are VERY aware of a lot more than even other humans in _our_
relationship with them, whether they are Fritz, Miriam or CoCo-Pop.
I can acknowledge that abstracting is not exactly their forte, but so
what. Maybe they are a lot better off without it. At least without
abstracting animals don't create a lot of very complicated symbolic forms
which on any level tend to confuse and obscure the things which are a
whole lot important, like the feelings we have.
Take George Bush for instance. Maybe you don't want to take him and
neither do I, but as an example, he abstracts about liberty and freedom,
whatever kind it is he thinks the Iraqis don't have but must have if they
are going to be happy -- even if he never says the word - so "freedom is
on the march" in an abstract sense. That is all very confusing to a lot of
Iraqis who really can't dig it that freedom means many of them have to die
so some rich folks can control their oil and rich Iraqis have to be put in
charge of it.
Take Pakistan for instance. The CIA is going to bomb and kill civilians
there, in order to kill a few members of al-Qaeda and that is good,
according to this gang in Washington. By that reasoning, they could nuke
the entire country. and as an abstraction all the members of al-Qaeda who
are there would be dead. To get all of al-Qaeda in Pakistan would be a
successful mission by Bush's reckoning, right - by the abstract reasoning
they just used to justify bombing civilians? But it would not be too good
for Pakistanis.
It is not that I hate people, I just hate so many of them (and I feel that
way more often now than I ever did before); the ones like Bush and all the
other Republicans who think the way he does. I really prefer Coco-Pop, who
incidentally is a Chihauhau, to that moron in the White House.
But that is not what this is all about:
This is about thinking about existence and how to collectively make a
difference. I do think one person can made a big difference. You have seen
the damage one man who has no talent, who is intellectually deficient and
can't even communicate very well but can steal two elections and change
the world.
Now the bad feeling I have. I really do think there is a good chance these
crooks (crooks, who steal elections and steal lives) will steal the
election in 2008, if not 2006. They are using the same voting machines
which we know are bad. The exit polls will show they lost but they will
win. I believe there is a good chance that they will not give it up. The
question must be, will enough people know it, and if it becomes obvious in
2006 will the remaining Democrats in Congress revolt?
Hank Roth
Continued....
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