A Mendacious Triangular Trade (Part I)

In the "good old pre-Lincolnian days" (and dating back to the early 1700s) the American economy was sustained by what later came to be called "the triangle trade." English and French merchants shipped gunpowder and weapons to West Africa, took slaves as payment, traded the slaves to Carribean and North American "interests" for sugar and molasses, transported these "makings" back to home base where they were swapped for hard cash with which they bought more gunpowder and guns, and round and round she went for almost two centuries. Weaponry, slaves, and demon rum were the hard currencies of the day.

The industrial revolution and the Emancipation Proclamation killed this golden goose, temporarily replacing it with an eastward-looking opium-for-tea, more-or-less straight line trade, collapsing the triangle and depriving the Americans of their rightful share of the proceeds. But not to worry. America had been settled by a hardy lot, people who, by definition, were willing to risk the dangers of a trip into the unknown. Unlike Europe, which was people rich and land poor, the North American continent had land to spare but not enough people. Apart from a few minor skirmishes to rid the land of its original occupants (who had, in any case, never filed their quitclaims) the way west was an open invitation to industrious people everywhere. Europeans streamed westward by the millions, the vast majority of them made of the same sort of ambitious stock that had settled the eastern seaboard "in the beginning." The slaves of the triangle trade were replaced by free men and their women (women were not yet free) moving their ambitions away from the class-conscious confines of withering and war-plagued Europe. In no time, the American "colonies" were exporting more tradable goods than they were taking in. Wealth accumulated and, in defiance of the European model described by Oliver Goldsmith, American men did not decay, but grew in wisdom and stature.

Well, in stature anyhow. Wealth and power are apparently not deprived of their corrupting effects by rhetorical wishes and dreams. After two great "world wars" -- actually, eastern wars, European and Asian -- the northern region of the New World was finally established as the one great superpower destined to rule the world.

But "rule" had always meant exactly what it means today. It meant and means: "to consume more than a reasonably and morally justifiable share of the world's produce." If the British, French and Dutch had not ruled the seas, none of the great trade routes -- triangular, rectangular, or whateever -- could have survived for more than a few years. Rule entitled. Rule justified. Rule excused.

And rule destroyed.

[Hmmm. It just occurred to me that a circle of no more than 300 miles in radius, drawn on the surface of the globe with Antwerp as its center, would enclose all three of these great rulers of the pre-modern seas.]

To be continued.

The Mouse in Paranoia

[Two blogs ago I promised more on the economic problems presented to the U. S. by the emergence of Wal-Mart/China as a world power. That'll have to wait. A grievous error must first be corrected. Not my error, mind you. The Mouse is never wrong, but someone else's. Let me explain . . . ]

In the latest issue of The Nation Alexander Cockburn quoted himself as saying, "The country is being run by morons." He originally made this short-sighted remark just the other day to a group of peace marchers in his home town of Eureka, CA, and so far as I could tell from the rest of the article he wasn't speaking rhetorically. He seems actually to believe that outrageous claim. He's a moron.

Now I admit that the Current Occupant himself is, as they say, about two sandwiches short of a picnic, but at least he has sense enough to consistently mispronounce "nuke-you-lar" so when he gets it right the lower 9/10ths of his "base" will not think he's putting on airs. But then, he's not the guy who's running the country. He's just the guy who's supposed to be. The IQs of the real "runners" are as far above the Current Occupant's as his is above a genuine moron's, about 17 points. The authentic managers appear to Cockburn to be morons only because their objectives in running the country are 180 degrees out of phase with the beliefs of the people of Eureka, CA. Those naive Californians apparently haven't seen it yet that everything the administration does makes perfect sense.

Take this war in Iraq. Forget the WMD stuff. That was never much more than a PR gimmick designed to play well in Paducah. [See my blog of Feb 8, 2006, Mendacious Meeting.] The real aims of the war centered around the objectives of an empire building group that calls itself the "Project for the New American Century," (PNAC, or, as we Mousequeteers call it, "the Pea-Nack Gallery") whose membership reads like a Who's Who of the administration, including the VP, the SecDef, Asst SecDef (since departed) Wolfowitz (the brainiest of the war mongers), and even the Current Occupant's "younger, smarter brother," Jeb. These guys had seen (through true believing eyes) that if the U. S. was to remain viable as a nation in the 21st century it was going to have to deal militarily with some fairly powerful nations. What better way than to control the world's energy supply, and what better way to do that than to earn favor with the Saudi Arabians by toppling the secular governments of Iraq and Syria, and (as a lagniappe) marginally securing the future of the staunchest American ally in the region (Israel). One can just hear the clever Wolfowitz whispering in the Soon-to-be-Current Occupant's ear (in Austin, TX right after his first nomination as the Republican candidate for Occupancy) how grateful the world will be, how admiringly western history will look upon him after he has driven a stake into the heart of the emerging dragons of the far east by dribbling oil to them in quantities quite sufficient to assure their starvation. How wonderful! An alliance of Koran and Bible idolators against the atheists of China and the infidels of India!

Well, Cockburn might say, "Didn't they foresee that not all of Islam would go along with the game? How smart are these guys if they thought the conquest of Iraq was going to be a cake walk?" Good point, but surely, Mr Cockburn, you do not believe that these high IQ types had not foreseen the possibility that the conquering paleface armies would not be welcomed with flowers and kisses. If you had been a mouse on the floor there in the White House where the war was being plotted -- Rove in attendance -- you would have heard as I did (not) the clever Pea-Nackers pointing out to Rove and the Current Occupant that even if the war did drag on, the role of "War President" would play just as well in Paducah as the WMD threat has? "It's a win-win, Mr President. If the war goes well, the plan is on schedule, if not, well, you wouldn't frown on a second term, would you . . . sir?"

Morons? Far from it, Mr. Cockburn. These guys are experts at their game. Can they help it if you don't understand the rules? That's the problem with you multiculturists. You just don't understand. It's a jungle out there. Sheesh!

Mouse on the Edge

I didn't hear the sound myself, milady did. She said she would not have thought a small mouse could have uttered such a frightening cry. Our overweight cat was after the mouse, racing after it, round and round in the kitchen. Even after wife closed the door -- to corral the mouse -- the plangent cry could still be heard, a high-pitched and continuous scream that touched a place so deep inside it lacked a name. I had heard similar cries before, sometimes from people, once even from myself. The mouse simply wanted to live. The plaintive scream emerged from its fear that it wouldn't.

There ought to be something profound to say about this desire to live, but I think the scream of the mouse says it well enough. Whitman tried to put it into words and wound up with an onomatopoeic "Yawp," not so much a word with meaning, only a sound that speaks of all that is or can be, a sonic boom, every instant of life's scenery crammed into and bursting forth in a moment.

But why would a simple mouse, living hand to mouth on leavings, with no poetry or music, no dreams of a better world, with nothing but the day-in-day-out drudge of sameness -- why would it want to live? Why would it not welcome death as the final relief from a meaningless life? Perhaps the answer lies in the word "is," however we define it. In mouse-life, human-life, even in the lives of angels, is and is not possess unquestionable meaning, and the difference is everything.

We have in our real world great overweight systems, some born of reason, some of circumstance, but powerful in any case. But the systems designed to keep us alive do not themselves make life worth living. Life simply is worth living. That I think is what Whitman was saying . . . and the mouse in the kitchen. Whitman wasn't dying when he yawped, he was simply crying out in celebration, shouting his love of life to anyone who would listen. The mouse perhaps was dying, though from the evidence this morning he apparently didn't. He wasn't blessed with poetic vision. To declare his love he had to see life's ending here-and-now, he had to experience death as a real and present fact. But his cry and Whitman's were the same. They both loved life, and for them and everyone, nothing has more meaning than that simple fact. Whatever it takes, we want to live.

Well, finally, it looks like we may get a bit of rain. The farmers will be happy.

General Mouse-pital

Those who see the world as a conglomerate of warring tribes had best deal quickly and forcefully with the people at The Economist if they do not wish to see their own tribe economically wiped out by the Chinese. The worldly wise editors of that slick magazine -- arguably the best in the world -- offer, as this week's lead article, advice to the Chinese on how to make themselves richer. It's easy: just apply capitalist theories to the agricultural economy. Admitting that this policy may weaken the power of the socialist ideologues, The Economist contends that the move toward private property in the countryside will almost certainly lead to greater productivity and thus to a higher standard of living for the Chinese peasantry.

So, why is this a problem? Would not the world be better off if the Chinese people are better off? Well, no, not if the premise is correct, that the world consists of nothing but a bunch of warring jingos. The Chinese tribe is not only more numerous than any other, it is also smarter. The same bunch who hold with the "warring tribes" theory also places great trust in the findings of books like The Bell Curve which in turn places trust in the data produced by IQ tests and similar devices for measuring smartness. Earlier research (Jensen in the 60s) found that the Chinese score two standard deviations (2 sigma) higher than the average established by caucasians of the west. I do not recall the size of sigma in this case, but let us say it's 4. Thus if the average American WASP scores 100, the average Chinese scores 108. If the "smartness" measured by IQ tests tracks to predicted success in economic struggles, then in a fair fight we might expect the Chinese to be more successful than Americans.

Operating, however, on the theory that there is no amount of smartness that cannot be stultified by dogmatic socialism, it follows that those tribes in the west who wish to survive ought to be encouraging socialism for the Chinese. Certainly the editors of The Economist, capitalist to the core, ought not be aiding and abetting the Chinese by urging them to cast the socialist monkey off their backs. It follows also that those western politicians who are screaming for human rights for the Chinese -- for which we should read, democratic capitalism -- are committing economic suicide.

But then, there is perhaps another scenario playing out here. We should judge our politicians by what they do, not by what they say. Even though the current American administration seems to cry out verbally for Chinese freedom, they refuse to apply economic sanctions in any form to China. It is as if they see the same sort of logic I do, that a truly free China will overwhelm the world, so they speak of a free China but secretly do the smart thing. By posturing for freedom and implementing Chinese slavery, the Bush administration has the best of three worlds. One, it keeps the socialist monkey firmly in place on the backs of the Chinese, delayng (perhaps forever) the ascendancy of China's economy to anything like world domination. Two, it maintains China as a national sweat-shop, assuring the flow of cheap (but still over-priced) goods onto the shelves of America's retailers. Third, it courts and wins the approval of the dogmatic free-traders who own and operate the American banking system, adding grease to the cash-flow channels that permit the accumulation of debt. These "benefits" are sure to accrue to the black side of the American ledger in the short term and are just as sure to lead to destruction in the inevitable long run in which the perpetrators of the attrocities will certainly be dead.

More tomorrow. Wallace and Grommet are having a breakfast of "cracking good cheese," and the Mouse must hustle if he is to harvest even a few crumbs falling from their puppety lips.

One Mouse, Two Mice

[The following little story was written by my favorite author as the closing words in one of his unpublished works.]

An Awakening

There were two blind men, so-called “brothers-in-arms,” blinded in some past conflict, but separated by the fact that one was a Palestinian, the other a Jew. They were on a beach in the company of seven sighted pranksters. When the group happened upon an elephant, the ones who could see remembered the ancient story, and decided to have some fun with their blinded friends.

“Here, Abdul, Mosche, come, tell us what this is.”

The blind Jew was led to one part of the elephant, the Palestinian to another. Predictably, the two sightless men came up with remarkably different answers to the pranksters’ question, and in no time were heatedly arguing between themselves about the essence of the thing they had encountered. Their sadistic comrades found this extremely funny.

But here the story twists. The blind men’s squabbling did not provide lasting amusement, so the pranksters added a measure of humiliation. “Why you blind fools,” one of them screamed. “The thing is not what either of you said. It’s a blinkin’ elephant!”

The Palestinian and the Jew stopped cold in their argument. Almost at the same instant, they both realized that the thing was indeed an elephant, that the information their brief and partial encounter had provided was wholly consistent with what they remembered about elephants.

At first, they were angry, but their inner eyes sprang open and a question formed itself in their minds: “How could we have fallen into dispute over such a mistake? We should not even have to know the thing is an elephant to realize we were both talking about different aspects of the same thing.”

Then one of them spoke. “My brother-in-arms, the joke is on all of us here on this beach, for have we not throughout our lives all been as blind as you and I are now? Because we could not disbelieve what appeared different to us, we have believed the world is different, but...”

“Yes! Yes!” the other blind man interrupted. “There is only one world, one universe. How can it possibly be different?”

The pranksters laughed until their sides pained them, but the two brothers-in-arms walked unaided down the beach, never again in need of eyes to see.

It has been within the scope of this book, indeed, as its only purpose, to weaken the power of fatal beliefs, and to create, if possible, for every human being, the sense of his own power as a cause in the world. With success, an old man, a brother-in-arms, can rest in peace.

Cultural Mendacity (As God Sees It)

Plato’s mentor, Socrates, confided that an indwelling Daemon always told him when he was going wrong, but never said anything about the right way to go. We can shift those words a bit and presume that we humans don’t know what’s good for us, that we know only what’s bad, and thereby excuse our frequent failure to do the good. But when you think about the millions of terrible, death-dealing things and ideas we buy and buy into every day, knowing that they’re bad, we have to suspect that something must be working on us – or in us – to override the admonitions of our Daemon. We know tobacco’s a killer, but we smoke it anyhow. We know we’re wasting our time on General Hospital, but we watch it anyhow. We know when a war is a bad war, but we convince ourselves – or better, we let ourselves be convinced – to “fight it out.” So I ask: if we know all those things are bad, how is it we choose them anyhow?

Psych 101. It would be easy enough to answer that question by saying that our choices are shaped by people who have a clear idea of what they want us to believe. The political strategist knows that he wants us to see his policy in a perfect light. The cereal company knows that it wants us to regard Cocoa Puffs as a good breakfast. And both of these spend millions to identify the words and images that tend to make us see things their way.

But the fact that we’re manipulated by clever devils is not an answer to the question. Properly stated, the question is this: “What about us makes us susceptible to lies?” Or to ask the question another way, “Why did Plato think lies would work on the common people?” The answers are even darker than the questions.

Some five decades ago I rescued a book from the burn pile in the backyard of the school where I was taught the ABCs. The book, entitled Human Psychology, was written by a Princeton professor name of Howard C. Warren. It was copyrighted in 1919, probably already out of date when I salvaged it (ca 1954). The author’s acknowledgements credit some of the greatest names in American psychology, William James, George T. Ladd, E. B. Tichenor, John B. Watson, and many others. A scan of the table of contents reveals that the book pretty much covers psychology as it was understood in 1919: The Organism; The Neuro-Terminal Mechanism; Physiology of the Neuron; Stimulation, Adjustment and Response; Behavior....

There’s much more, but Behavior is an appropriate (and ironic) place to stop, because right on page 1, Warren defines psychology as “the scientific investigation of mental life,” and one of the authorities he mentioned, John B. Watson, had already (ca 1915) rebelled against the idea that “mental life” could be studied. Watson was the keystone of a branch of psychology called behaviorism, a movement that sought to elevate psychology out of the speculative quagmire into which Freud and his band of merry pranksters had cast it. The behaviorists’ idea was to consider as subject matter for study only those things that can be observed and measured, just like in the physical sciences. A behaviorist, for example, under contract to an ad agency, might observe a test group’s reactions to several different Cocoa Puffs commercials. When the competing commercials are shown, the behaviorist would tabulate favorable and unfavorable responses seen in the group. By analyzing the results he would determine those features in the commercials that elicited more joyful responses. The findings – and others developed by many similar tests – would be formulated into a behavioral guideline that might read like this: “People who see the color white in food commercials, show signs associated with feeling good.” The ad agency could then confidently connect the stimulus, white, to the response, Buy Cocoa Puffs.

The famous experiment with Pavlov’s dog suggests that this sort of stimulus-response mechanism works well. Doctor Pavlov trained his mutt to salivate every time it heard a bell ring. The dog learned that crazy lesson because after the bell rang it was always fed. There being no necessary connection between the sound of a bell and a serving of Alpo, this proved to Pavlov – and to behaviorists everywhere – that what had always been called “learning” did not necessarily relate to reality. The cause-effect connections we make between objects occurring in our frames of impression, though they may or may not be real, convince us they’re real because we get pleasure from thinking they are.

But Pavlov’s dog suffered from delusions. He seemed actually to think the sound of a bell related logically to Alpo. The behaviorists loved it that Fido made that mistake. They thought they had identified the “learning process.” But as plausible as their discovery sounds, it’s nevertheless not true that all learning experiences are as nonsensical as that one. True, when a newborn one of us connects the feel of its mother’s breast to the satisfaction of its hunger, it’s also deluded. It’s not the breast but what’s inside that satisfies (at least, that’s true until you reach puberty, if you’re a male child). The delusions suffered by Pavlov’s dog and those of your average newborn differ. It’s a fact, you see, that the easiest and most natural way for a day-old brat to get fed is by way of it’s mother’s breast. There’s something real, something natural about the connection the newborn makes between the feel of its mother’s breast and the satisfaction of its hunger. (That connection is true and beautiful.) But apart from its experimental value, Doctor Pavlov’s bell was only an added expense. The same effect – salivation – could have been achieved simply by shoving a plate of dog food under Fido’s nose.

The real payoff that lets babies (and dogs) know when they’ve got it right – though they might be wrong – is the feeling of joy they get from thinking they’re right. In behaviorist talk, “a measurable change occurs in the brain when we think we’ve got it right.” That change is the physical equivalent of what babies, dogs, and grownups joyfully experience as confirmation of their rightness.

At the conscious level, Pavlov’s dog felt joyful, but we must imagine that, if the dog were a very wise dog, and if he bothered to ask himself why he was salivating, he would have answered that he was drooling at the thought of Alpo, not at the sound of the bell. Doctor Pavlov had conditioned his dog to believe a lie. He had fooled the poor animal into treating the sound of a bell as something necessary to its life. The sound of the bell had become a “good” thing to the dog, when he should have regarded it as an irritant.

By a similar tactic, Cocoa Puffs are made to appear in the same ad-frame with multitudes of white goodness. Cocoa Puffs may be good for us, but clearly, all that white symbolism is not. We have been conditioned by aeons of experience to regard whiteness as a sign of goodness. But whiteness, as whiteness, is no better for us than the sound of the bell, by itself, was good for Pavlov’s dog. To see through the delusions created by the juxtaposition of symbolic goodness and a literally unknown object like Cocoa Puffs, we would need to commit a conscious act of reasoning, but carried away on waves of joy, we do not commit that act. And because of our neglect, we wind up believing that the yummy, crackly cereal – the centerpiece of the frame – is the cause of our delight. And that, of course, is a lie. We were deluded by whiteness.

Which leads to the second question, “Why did Plato think lies would work?” Plato may have had esoteric reasons grounded in a philosophy only he understood, but today we know that the answer is simple. Properly beautified lies work because the physical equivalent of “a conscious act of reason” requires more energy than automatic acceptance of immediate and joyfully approved impressions. And here I mean by “energy” exactly what Isaac Newton meant by the word. Like all physical objects and processes, the operations of the brain obey Newton’s law of inertia. Given an immediate impression of an experiential frame, and given an approving rush of joy that authenticates the frame’s “goodness,” the body – the brain – will immediately enter a physical state equivalent to the mental state of joy. The body/brain will tend to remain in that state unless disturbed by another “moving object,” another idea. And that other “moving object,” that other idea, requires the body to use more energy than would be the case if it had remained content with its first impression. As an enlightened Newton might say, “Unless energy is applied to a moving object, or to a stream of consciousness, the object, or the flow of ideas, will continue in the direction already set.” The enlightened Newton would know that every living thing can be thought of as both a body and as a stream of consciousness.

Socio 101. To an all-seeing eye, the collection of all men might thus appear as a hoard of distinct energy vectors, each with a slightly different heading. The omniscient eye would understand that the differences among the vectors were brought about by three existential facts:

(1) that people have all been subjected to different “bells” in different frames;

(2) that they have all responded to their different stimuli with bodies made slightly different by the necessities of their genetic inheritances, and

(3) that they have all responded out of personal histories made different by the first two facts.

But as unalike as all the members of the hoard may be, among them certain physical and mental affinities nevertheless exist, and those likenesses inevitably lead the individual vectors to reassemble as “bundles” of vectors, as nations and clans, brought together by their distinctive characteristics. It’s tempting to regard the individuals who make up the bundles as “identity-less” persons, the same as we regard atoms that lose their separate identity when amalgamated into solid objects. But there is a difference between men and atoms. We are grouped at birth and remain grouped, but only as long as the differences among us remain manageable. Individuals must, by nature, always remain essentially different, so despite our similarities, we each respond slightly differently to the same stimulus. Some of us do this, others that, while still others wait and see. Consequently, any reasonably large body of people – certainly any nation – exists in a constant state of variable dissention, held together – now loosely, now more strongly – by a need to survive as a body sufficiently conscious of its unity.

When, as must occasionally happen, the signs and sounds of internal dissention can no longer be disregarded, the nation’s leadership, feeling it must do something, will do as experience has taught it to do. It will employ a Pavlovian stimulus to which all, or nearly all, of its people will predictably respond in a uniform manner. The nation’s flag, its pledge of allegiance, the glory of its founding fathers – anything with common appeal will serve the purpose. Instead of being caused to drift apart by real or imagined differences, the nation will be stimulated by a unifying symbology to feel the joy of togetherness. However chimerical its individual symbols may be, however much the symbols may resemble Pavlov’s bell, the incentives of our affective heritage will satisfy our need for a unifying, steadying force to bring us together as a nation. (Until, of course, the symbols no longer work.)

But even a commonwealth unified by stabilizing symbols will from time to time be exposed to foreign pressures. Unable to control alien threats by the same tactics that maintain internal unity, the leadership may respond – if the threat is not life threatening – by leading the people to believe that the foreign pressure can be handled by means that will not affect the status quo, a mild sort of lie. As time passes, and as the number of threats handled by this method grows, as contradictory tactics and irrational compromises accumulate, the nation’s relationship with the foreign world will become more and more complex. Eventually, the people will be hard pressed to understand their nation’s policies, and because the degree to which individuals are able to understand explanations (or to invent them) varies from person to person, internal differences will increase. Clever leaders – those who see the problem – will be forced to exercise more and more of their rhetorical power in order to maintain the nation’s unity. That is, they will be forced to lie more frequently.

But if the foreign threat is so significant that it cannot be handled by peaceful means, the nation’s leaders will almost invariably stand firm upon the unifying symbols of the commonwealth, pretending to the people that the threatening force is wholly evil, that it deserves nothing but annihilation. In other words, that war is the only and last resort.

It may be overlooked that the leadership’s reaction, whether for peace or war, reinforces the same unifying message – that the nation’s current heading is right on course and perfectly good, even that it is sacredly ordained...which would also be a lie.

Perhaps that last requires some explanation.

PolSci 101. When a nation’s leadership affirms the present course, they are taking the path of least resistance, the one less likely to be opposed in a well established nation. To the extent that course can be explained without the use of “bells,” that is, to the extent it conforms to the nation’s natural reality, the course is probably a good one. But even then, there can be no absolute assurance that the leadership has made the correct decision. While every well established nation may feel that its natural reality is an inviolable covenant between it and the Gods, the probability of that feeling being true is exactly zero. The laws of nations are devised by men, national customs evolve in the hearts of men, and try as men might, even when they are scrupulously honest, their laws and customs require constant adaptation to history’s changing tides.

Consider Plato’s philosopher-kings. When Plato conceded that his kings were authorized to lie to the people, he did so because he believed that the ideas he had provided the kings were the capital-T Truth. He also believed that the kings, trained for their role from birth, could be relied upon never to take any action that could not be justified as an expression of the Truth. They might, for example, provide entertainments for the people as diversions to keep them occupied while the kings were busy maintaining business as usual. But the kings would never permit the entertainments to harm the people’s health or detract from their ability to carry out their assigned jobs. Consequently, the kings would provide only socially acceptable, healthy forms of entertainment, and permit no others. The people – their entertainments thus constrained – could not be said to be free in the dictionary sense of the word. Nevertheless, they could, like feudal serfs, be assured that their freedom had been sacrificed for a good reason.

But what if one of the guidelines developed by Plato for his kings to follow was that, so long as the people stayed within the boundaries of a prescribed body of law, they were free to pursue their own happiness? Being

(1) ordained to do nothing inconsistent with the people’s limited freedom, and yet

(2) being charged to assure that the republic would survive, and

(3) knowing that the second goal could not be achieved unless the people were strong in body and mind,

the philosopher-kings would face a dilemma: either violate their ordination by manipulating the “prescribed body of law” to prohibit all but healthy pastimes; or stand idly by and watch the nation dissolve into a Deserted Village where, indeed, wealth (earned by the selling of toxic entertainments) might accumulate, but men – and consequently, the nation – would certainly decay.

We might imagine that as the pursuit of decadent wealth develops at the center of the people’s attention, the strategies employed by the kings to keep the people on the straight and healthy path would become more and more a conglomeration of distortions, illusions, and outright lies. The noble idea of a free people governed by omniscient kings would soon become difficult to sustain.

Fast forward to a world governed by mere men, elected by the very same people who have to be lied to in order to keep them out of harm’s way, and perhaps you will understand why it is that no nation governed by human ideas and by human laws can truthfully claim to be sacredly ordained. We are all governed by variously clever strategies for dealing with the social turmoil stirred up by a fact Plato seems to have overlooked (or made light of):

We are all of us, all who are born of woman, absolutely, existentially free.

We do not derive our freedom from governments. We are born with it. We can do anything we are physically able to do, and when we are willing to suffer (or to deal with) their consequences, we actually do those things we are able and wish to do. And the things we do, our behaviors, can be depended upon to be as varied as the moon is steady. We are unpredictable. In every moment we are driven from the flow of law and custom by (and into) an incomprehensible tangle of ancient certainties, modern heresies, and “great ideas.” We’re constantly in motion, drifting apart, becoming “Selfs,” separated from the hoard by the flatteries of an inward-looking eye. We are giants among pygmies, frolicking in the rare air of mythical heights, levels we have reached by the hardest, and at which we shall remain...

until

...urged by an effective lie, we congeal into respites of relative sameness. We come together, we see ourselves momentarily surrounded by our own kind. We get high on the heady air of community, we feel as if we were the tide itself, not driven by history but driving it. Our whims take on power. We are a nation of giants, “too strong for mortal men,” filled with pride and patriotic vigor, magnificent, settled, predictable, together…

until

...once more, we awaken to our sameness, see ourselves as invisible men, virtual clones, insignificant, meaningless “things” hovering between birth and death. We drift outside, into danger, empty, and striving for recognition. We are become as a deviant species, as italicized things, confusing the eyes of a massed and crowded fauna, straining the usual...

And so on.

When our leaders are good at doing what they do, when with their rhetoric and charm they cast the moment’s course in the direction destiny appears to be taking the world, they and the nations they lead enjoy great success. But if they are bad at their work, or when the work becomes too much for any man. . . .

My fortune cookie says, “Do not stare too long at the sun, even on a cloudy day.”

Mendacious Math

Questions have always surrounded the notion of a Big Bang. The idea that such a “bang” occurred in the distant past is suggested by two primary pieces of evidence, the red shift we see in light from other galaxies (indicating an expanding universe), and a background radiation supposedly left over from the Big Bang explosion.

But the Big Bang is only one possible explanation of the evidence, and it may be – nay, most likely is – wrong. The most prevalent objection arises out of the notion of a “singularity,” which is the technical name for the small kernel of matter/energy that existed as “all there is” just before the Big Bang. But quantum theory suggests – beyond doubt – that if the state of “singularity” were ever reached, the result would not be a Big Bang but a Big Nothing. Nevertheless, the Big Bang theory has not gone away. It has morphed into more and more complex theories, nearly all of which are purely mathematical.

A year ago, on the invisible pages of the blog that exists in my mind, I described a logical error that I have since named, "mathematical extension beyond the known."

Let me describe that error.

We have a generally accepted theory, say, the Big Bang. But when we apply the mathematics to the theory, and base our mathematics on what has been observed and tested, we see that the theory will not hold water. But because we can conceive of no new theory to replace the Big Bang, we "extend" the mathematics "beyond the known." For example, (and here I am using the only example that comes to mind) we keep increasing the number of dimensions of space until the formula works. Hence, string theory with 1 dimension of time and 10 dimensions of space (7 of which are beyond, not only the known, but also the knowable). Now the Big Bang theory "holds water."

But then along comes a smartass new idea called "dark energy/matter" that explains the missing mass in the universe. But this stuff is also "beyond the known" and (so far) beyond the knowable. (By known and knowable I refer only to the criteria for knowing accepted by science, that is, objects subject to detection by the senses or that can be directly inferred. "Forces" are not detected, only inferred.)

Next comes a piece of known and knowable data that suggests the universe is not only expanding, but that at its farther reaches, the rate of expansion is actually accelerating. This "known data" contradicts the Big Bang theory even more fundamentally than the quantum equations, since no one (so far) knows exactly why those equations work, but nearly everyone knows that for acceleration to occur a force must be currently applied. But the Big Bang occurred in the distant past and cannot possibly account for the current force that's causing the acceleration.

Then comes an even smarter-ass amateur cosmologist (your favorite Mouse) who puts 3 and 0 together and gets 4.

Perhaps, he says, the expansion has always been an effect of the simplest of all forces, gas compression, where the "gas" is that unknown and unknowable (maybe) stuff called dark energy/matter (hereafter D(em)). Maybe the universe as we know it (which may be only a remote corner of the infinite universe as God knows it) pulses back-and-forth, contracting by gravitational force until a point (X) is reached where the force of gas compression causes the shrinkage to reverse. The result would be that, during the period of reversal, the universe would be expanding. But now, with the reality of D(em) assumed, the universe NEVER SHRINKS TO THE LEVEL OF A SINGULARITY BUT REACHES POINT X (BELOW ZERO BALANCE) LONG BEFORE THE DESTRUCTIVE FORCES OF "TOO MUCH MASS" CAN TAKE EFFECT. That is, the universe (as we know it) becomes an eternally pulsating object. We are currently observing it in its accelerating phase.

If there is a problem with this idea it's that "zero balance point.” We can imagine that the momentum of the shrinking universe would carry the shrinkage beyond the point where expansion should begin to occur. But sooner or later, the shrinkage must stop (at point X), the universe's "movement" pause, and expansion begin. In a normal system of this sort, the periodicity of the cycles should get shorter and shorter as the "friction" within which the environment is happening causes the effects of the applied forces to attenuate. The universe should come to a virtual and permanent stop on or about point X.

So . . . if the universe is in fact infinite (as can be inferred from this theory) then why hasn't point X been reached at some time in the distant past?

A couple of "bad" answers and one live one come to mind.

First, there is the metaphysical assumption that without an observer to witness its passing, time would not exist. Consequently, the infinity of the past (where presumably no observer existed) would not be bound by the 4th dimension, time. BUT . . . in quantum theory every particle interaction is an "observer event," that is, every particle is an "observer." If that idea is correct (and I am absolutely sure it is), then if there were in the past any two particles, there was time. End of that theoretical explanation.

Second, there is the possibility that at the D(em) level (where zero mass is the norm) friction does not occur. But if that's the case, then the whole theory is shot to hell since the forces of gas compression relate to the same natural causes that determine the reality of friction. If friction goes away, so does gas compression.

Third, there is the possibility that in addition to its eternal pulsing, the universe as we know it -- the one with galaxies and space between them filled with D(em) -- changes its form. D(em) somehow coagulates into masses greater than zero. Stars and galaxies appear and thus THE GRAVITATIONAL EFFECT AND THE GAS COMPRESSION EFFECT BECOME UNSTABLE IN RELATION TO THEMSELVES. That is, something that is not gravitationally reactive (zero mass objects) become gravitational bodies. The pulsations of the universe, responding to changes in the forces at work inside the system, would thus become irregular. The zero point would move with each cyclic pulsation, and thus would never be reached.

The only objection I see to the third explanation is this: How do zero mass "objects" become massive? What causes could possibly occur in an absolutely smooth and imperturbable universe? A possible answer to that question can perhaps be found in the "local universe" idea. The force that causes change "here" would thus come from somewhere not "here," that is, from some other universe that may or may not be of the same kind as this universe.

But that is a pure metaphysical answer that should be resisted by all sane people . . . where "sane" means, that state of being in which the known and knowable is the only reality, a neurosis dreamed up by God to keep us in our place.

But then, I'm sure you see the traps in that idea.

Metabolized “Mendacity”

In yesterday’s blog I referred – without elaboration – to a human need for the source of knowing to be given believable properties. A little abstraction only goes so far. We may call it “the light” or “God” or “inspiration” or a few other less emotion-laden names, but finally – though it may take centuries – any such calling must wear thin. Metaphors must stand for something.

Well, no. That’s not true. A metaphor need stand for nothing if by “nothing” we mean nothing real. We may imagine that something unnamed and apparently unnamable exists, and make up a descriptive word – a metaphor – to stand for that “something.” We can then speak of nothing as if it were something, and be pleased with ourselves that we have so cleverly “figured things out.” We may in fact believe so strongly in the nothing we have given a name to that our entire psychical makeup organizes itself around the figment as if it were the most authentic aspect of our being. Because the reality of our metaphor has remained nameless, it remains also limitless. We can make it mean anything. We can decorate nothingness with so many aesthetic embellishments that it seems more real than reality.

From this view of “creativity” you can perhaps catch a glimpse of the impulse that led the skeptical philosophers of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries to their ultimate heresy. Being relatively bright fellows they could see that the structure of belief erected around the metaphor “God” was almost completely shot through with imaginary properties. Examining those parts they considered genuine, they saw what they believed to be an accumulation of unprovable qualities. They saw the very body of intuitive knowledge Spinoza had described (not too well) in the 17th century, but because this reality could not be demonstrated by the method of induction (it could only be assumed) they treated it as if it were a mere convenience arranged by human minds to make the world seem real. Because they had been conditioned to believe God and his creation were separate beings, and because any semblance of reality he seemed to possess appeared to exist only in the created part, they came to the conclusion that if God were real his existence – like the trustworthiness of intuition – could only be assumed, not proven.

It did not occur to these people to see the relationship of God and intuition as an identity, even though they had Spinoza’s theory to guide them. God was supposed to be outside the world, not real within it. To imagine otherwise was apparently verboten.

I will not go too far into an analysis of the emotional fear for their lives that may have influenced the early skeptics, though it is not difficult to conceive that those fears were real. They had certainly guided Spinoza to withhold the publication of the Ethics and to publish anonymously his Treatise on Theology and Politics. When Kant himself was challenged to defend his own heretical Critique his defense consisted of a claim that the book was so “esoteric” it could not possibly be understood by the common people, a defense no longer true, since the work has been “translated” into plain words by many commentators. Suffice it to say (as they say) that, for self protection, Kant and the early skeptics sought to retain as much of the metaphorical God as could be made consistent with their philosophy.

So, what happens when we take the leap out of the superstitions of the past into reality? To put this question more practically: is it at all possible to transform the minds of the six-billion from their emotional attachment to the comforts of the unreal without risking the complete destruction of civilization as we know it? Can we imagine a movement from a world grounded in other-worldness to a world in which a critical mass of its people trust absolutely the dictates of reason? It is difficult for me to see how this could happen in a world in which our most fundamental reality continues to be spoken of in appealing metaphors. It is difficult for me to imagine that the brightest among us – the so-called intelligentsia – might switch off those of their mental genes that are so compulsively wired to a belief in the unreality of the real. It is difficult for me to imagine that minds completely inured in fantasy can become hard-shell realists.

Any optimism that remains for me traces in large, not so much to the so-called liberal religious movement as to the mindset of those who call themselves infidels, pagans, and atheists. They have made it through the most difficult of the transition, shucking off the more comforting beliefs of the old order. Resigned to a world of nothingness, they are perhaps more amenable to acceptance of Spinoza’s God. We shuck off much more rapidly emotions of sorrow than emotions of joy, and nothingness, meaninglessness, and Godlessness are certainly sorrowful states of being (or so it would seem to me). Failing the imminent transformation of the empty ones, I cannot imagine those filled with joyful error being moved off their “religion,” not without the birth (and crucifixion?) of a new Messiah.

Perhaps – call this a wish, a dream – the Coming is to be heralded by the emergence of a few new shepherds and wise men, people who sense the miracle but, like an humble mouse, are unable themselves to do much more than follow stars and listen to angelic voices, hoping beyond hope that words and ideas can do the work heretofore entrusted to the Creator.

Better yet, call it a prayer.

There's a Mouse in the Nous

As I mentioned here (or somewhere) on another occasion, and as Spinoza made fundamental to his philosophy, reason, as practiced by thinking people, is the second highest (and also second lowest) of the three forms of knowledge. The lowest, which the philosopher refers to as “opinion or hearsay,” consists of things we know by our observation of external objects and unquestioned ideas, or by our understanding of symbols or words. The top spot is reserved for intuition, that faculty by which we understand certain things that require no proof. To illustrate:

(1) We know by knowledge of the first kind what an automobile is. We may have come to that knowledge by seeing one and being told the name (word) that others have given it.

(2) We know (or learn) by reason how an automobile works, how it is that energy in the form of gasoline is converted into motion.

(3) We intuitively know that what we truly perceive and call an automobile actually exists. We cannot remain sane while doubting the existence of things that actually exist. We need no proof of existence.

Psychologists, think and write volumes about the deceptions of opinion and hearsay. E. A. Brill defined neurosis as a pathology in which the patient derives more pleasure or pain from a situation than is actually in it; they form a false opinion and generalize from that opinion to knowledge that can properly be reached only by the higher kinds of knowing. Abnormal results follow.

Research scientists and engineers exercise their minds to produce knowledge of the second kind. They analyze objects to determine the “how” and “why” of their existence, and produce an understanding of reality not available to us by mere opinion, not even by intuition. We do not grasp the workings of an automobile by mere sensation or heresay, and we certainly do not know it by intuition. The processes by which reason produces knowledge involve logic, but logic is not in itself knowledge of the second kind, though we may study the rules of logic in order to make better use of them.

The study of intuition as a means of knowing falls within the purview of philosophy, primarily that area of philosophy called epistemology – the study of knowing as knowing – but also falls within the broader area called ontology, the study of being as being. The epistemologist may ask how it is that we claim to know that the rules of logic actually operate as our intuition suggests; how do we know, for example, that qualities possessed by all things are possessed by a particular thing. You can see that questions of that sort overlap the study of being. The ontologist may ask how is it that we claim to know that existence is real; he may approach that question any number of different ways, and some of those ways may even convince some ontologists – candidates for straight jackets – that we cannot make such claims.

That last remark gets to the heart of the modern dilemma. Beginning with the first Critique of Immanuel Kant and continuing through the skepticisms of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Kurt Gödel, an assault was made on the entire array of knowledge obtained intuitively. Karl Popper, a philosopher of science, influenced by Wittgenstein’s brand of logical positivism, concluded that the scientific method produces nothing like truth, but only propositions that have not yet been proven false. That notion actually predates Kant, having been clearly deducible from the skepticism of David Hume. That young man – regarded by his own mother as an “impetuous child” – decided that science’s most fundamental assumption, the law of causes, cannot be known to be true, hence, nothing derived by reason can be trusted. Some argue that Kant’s entire project was an attempt to escape the iron jaws of Hume’s “logic.” [I put the word in quotes since if Hume was right, logic would be destroyed right along with science as a source of knowledge.]

The Mouse’s “adversary” over on the One Cosmos blog, harking back to Gnostic teachings that were prevalent in the first three centuries A. D., answers the modern skeptics with the claim that all of what has been called the human spirit is informed by the great light of wisdom, an innate ability to know the truth. I am as yet unclear as to how this light manifests itself, but I think it must abide, if anywhere, in or as the third kind of Spinozistic knowing. It is the most inclusive of all the intuitions , the one by which we know that intuitive knowledge needs (and perhaps has) no proof. It would thus be the highest form of knowing of the third kind. It is an admirable and completely justified answer to the Hume-Kant-Wittgenstein skepticism. How do I know that intuitive knowledge is true? I just know it and it’s up to you to prove that I don’t (an impossible task). [The interested reader may find the counterpart of this conclusion in Spinoza’s Ethics, Part Two, proposition 47, but “go not gently into that dark night;” the proposition is a study in itself.]

I do not mean by the parenthetical “an impossible task” that One Cosmos is impervious to persuasion (though he might be). I do mean that it is essentially impossible for the laws of genuine intuition to be questioned. To ask whether the law of causes – or any of the other predominant axioms of human understanding – might be false presents a direct paradox. We cannot question the law of causes with any expectation of success unless the law of causes is true. If the law of causes is false, so is the statement, “the law of causes is false.”

But our knowledge of intuition itself tells us absolutely nothing about the relationship of real things. We may know for certain that “equals added to equals produce equal results” but until we use our intuitively informed minds to reason upon such things as the properties of gasoline and other forms of energy, we will learn nothing useful of those things. On the other hand, as One Cosmos suggests, if we approach the world of things believing that the laws of intuition can be abrogated to suit our immediate needs, we will find ourselves living in a world that simply doesn’t work.

It is difficult to say to what extent the problems we are currently experiencing in the world can be traced to the mistaken notions of those who have taken Hume-Kant-Wittgenstein seriously. We can say that a world which directly and openly questions the existence of intuitive absolutes is bound to be a world that seems empty of real meaning. The same may be said, however, of a world in which the truth is projected outside the realm of being. If the content of intuition remains forever expressible only as a metaphor, never expresses itself as language, never becomes real in a practical sense, then the possibility of doubt will forever exist. We can believe in the ineffable only up to a point. Beyond that point . . . ?

Well, perhaps that’s where we are today. The truth of reality was for at least five-and-a-half millenia stoked by the wishes and dreams of superstition and religion. Humans were asked to believe what they could only believe by a suspension of reason. But to deny reason is at the same time to deny its substrate (I love that word!). If we intuitively understand the law of causes, without proof, then we are certain to be confused by ideas that demand causeless effects. If we are to understand that there truly exist properties of being that can metaphorically be likened to a great light, then the light must unfold in our lives as a believable possibility. We must, as ordinary, everyday individuals, be able to say such things as, “Oh, yeah, I know all effects have causes,” and truly mean it. “Oh yeah, I know the world is real,” and not permit the barest hint of doubt to be taken seriously.

Some reaoning is wrong. Maybe it was based on false premises, or resulted from bad logic, or bad observations of things. But any “reasoning” that questions the basis of reason cannot rightly be understood as a product of reason. I suppose, if we need a metaphor for such ideas, we could say they occur only in minds possessed by “the evil one.”

So, “Come,” as the man said, “let us reason together.”

Mendacious Commandments

We do no disservice to reason when we choose to believe that a man named Moses actually existed, that he led the Hebrew people out of Egyptian bondage, and that he became to them a great law-giver. We cannot, however, be certain that any of those things actually happened; Egyptian history says nothing of the exodus, suggesting that, if it did occur, the devastating events surrounding the Hebrew departure described in Exodus did not. Nevertheless, stripped of its obvious exaggerations, the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, their 40 years of wandering, and their eventual conquest of the Caananites involve the believer in nothing contrary to reason. The exodus may have happened just that way.

If it were not that some of the fabulous embellishments added by the writers of the Pentateuch have been made cornerstones of modern faith, the exodus story could be filed as a suspect description of a slice of ancient middle-eastern history, to be studied like any other for its relevance to a factual understanding of the place and time. Unfortunately, the fabulous aspects of the stories have been believed verbatim. The crossing of the Sea of Reeds (Exodus 14), the manna from heaven, the trumpets at Jericho, even the plagues inflicted upon the innocents of Egypt are still seen in some quarters as actual demonstrations of God's participation with the human race. Those fables, absolutely alien to reason, have been given a higher place in the heirarchy of truth than the believable events of the exodus. And people are still dying in Caanan.

The recent history of the United States has brought into sharp focus the previously muddled consequences of faith in the supernatural. Believing himself the "born again" intrument of God's will and our nation the modern "Chosen of God," the Current Occupant has embarked us on a worldwide crusade against the "Evil One." He apparently has seen the hand of Satan at work in the misguided antics of certain Islamic madmen, and laying aside the guidance of reason, has chosen to escalate the cause of justice to a "war on terror." How else justify -- other than as a departure from reason -- his attack of the secularist regime in Iraq when the seat of Wahhabi fanaticism was next door in Saudi Arabia? How else explain -- as other than a departure from reason -- the minimalist deployment in Afghanistan -- where abode the perpetrators of the crimes against our nation -- in favor of a full scale attack where they were not?

It would be fruitless to continue much further along the trail of Bush-bashing. Logic cannot produce useful conclusions from premises so completely obscured by supernatural beliefs. Better perhaps to revisit one of the incidents from the exodus, Moses' conversation with God upon Mount Sinai (Exodus 19-20) during which the laws now referred to as the "ten commandments" were given. There, by a tactic surely learned in Egypt, the supernatural power of God was conflated with the power of government to bring about a level of obedience secular enforcement could never alone have achieved. Moses enlisted God in the service of the law.

By surrendering any claim to reason, we might believe that Moses actually had a face-to-hindparts discussion with God, but given the foolishness of such a belief, we are left to believe either that Moses was schizophrenic (which I doubt) or that Moses (like the latter day prophet Joseph Smith three millenia later) dictated the "laws of God" to himself. After all, it could not have been God who told Moses to rope off Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:12-13) so that no one but Moses could hear what God spoke. God would have had better sense than to hide his presence from the people, knowing as he surely must have, that the authority of his laws would be more respected if the people heard him speak with their own ears. As it was, the people's belief waivered off and on for the next 1300 years between fervid obedience and defiant heresy.

In any case, the deed was done. The Jewish theocratic state was born. Laws written by men were elevated to the Godhead, as if, God being God, he would make laws that might be disobeyed. The union of God and government was not broken until the founding fathers of this nation wrote a constitution enabling men to govern themselves by the power of their own minds. True, they attributed their ability to reason to their creator, but in no way did they claim that the laws of this nation were laid down by God. We make our laws by the deliberations of ordinary people, not (until lately) on the tops of forbidden mountains, but in the clear light of day.

To make more visible the distinction between the laws of God and the laws of men, consider the difference between the two words freedom and liberty. By their nature, all men are free, made so either by God or by Nature. Our freedom is limited by nothing other than those of our qualities that inhibit our freedom to act. We can do whatever we desire and have the power to do. We can break, if we choose, all the laws laid down by men, and do so with a frequency that clearly evidences our innate freedom.

It is and was our understanding of the ill effects of absolute freedom that led us (and the ancients) to seek ways to regulate human action. Tyrants murdered to achieve those ends (and others less noble). Monarchs ruled by fiat and threat, oligarchies by economic and social pressure, philosopher-kings (when and if there ever were such) by the power of reason augmented by noble lies. Theocratic governments -- the subject here -- ruled (and rule) by the sorts of clever deceptions patented by the Pharoahs, borrowed by Moses, and perpetuated today by Islamic regimes. Like any "noble lie," theocratic illusions succeed only so long as they are not seen for what they are. They do not appeal to reason, but rather to its suspension.

Liberty is what we the people have left of our power to act (with impunity) after our innate freedom has been trimmed of its rough edges by the minions of law. We naturally prefer that our liberty match our freedom as closely as possible. We wish to be absolutely free to satisfy our desires, the more powerful among us being the more anxious to obtain a perfect match with freedom. The problem we in the United States face has not so much to do with our native freedom as with the meaning of two words in Section 8 (and the preamble) of our constitution. We're not altogether sure what the founders meant by "general welfare." To what extent is the congress empowered to raise taxes for the implied purposes of the "general welfare"? Obviously, those who are to be taxed are of a different opinion from those who are to benefit, and it is implied in the notion of liberal democracy -- at least insofar as it applies itself to obtaining the general welfare -- that a means be sought to balance the demands of both parties by a means contributing to social stability -- no easy task by anyone's measure.

And that in a nutshell is one reasoning man's understanding of the dichotomy of left and right. Strident voices on the right, believing correctly that human freedom is the natural state of affairs, but confusing the meanings of freedom and liberty, see any and all actions of a leveling nature as offenses against -- yes, even against God. The voices on the far left, screaming just as loudly, and voicing the shibboleths of "liberal religion," demand that the mighty hand of the law be used to unzip the purses of the wealthy and empty them on the altars of the poor until the distinction between rich and poor vanishes. Both sides preach foolishness, their "solutions" being in effect an easy way out of the difficulties imposed by those two confusing words, "general welfare."

And that, in another nutshell, is the difference between reason and imagination. We imagine ourselves as "a little lower than the angels," susceptible to moral and rational persuasion, when in fact the hard choice of the reasonable man is exactly that: to choose to be a reasonable man. We do not move closer to making that choice an easy one by claiming that out ideas are ordained by God. We are ordained only to have ideas, their goodness being not a function of our merely having them. We may imagine ourselves and our Gods to be perfect and above doubt, but then, so must the next fellow. The test of ourselves (God needs no test) has nothing to do with the reality of our relationship to God, but rather relates to the reasoning power we apply to the problems facing us as human beings and human nations. We know how Moses solved his and his nation's problems, and we know how poorly that solution worked. We do not yet know how a world governed by reason would work out, since that approach has never been tried (though the instrument is here in the Constitution of the United States).

To those who might trot out the objections of Wittgensteinian post-modern skepticism, I ask them to "imagine" first a world governed by the notion that nothing can possibly be true, and second, whether that world would be improved by the assumption that at least our desire to survive as a species and as individuals seems to be the truth.

Then to those not so beset by illusion as the Wittgensteinians, I ask that you simply look around and see what, if any, of what you see appears to be consistent with the truth the skeptics must finally admit. If you see anything like that . . . well, I cannot say it any better than St. Paul said it in Phillipians 4:8. "Whatsover things..." [Go read.]

Mendacity Lost

We were honored yesterday by a visit from one of Dr. Bob Godwin's alter egos, a sprite by the name of "Petey." The graceful Peteywin 'lowed as how the Mouse's knowledge of philosophy is somewhat "rudimentary." Jeez, that really hurt. This "wee sleekit, timorous, cowrin' beastie" ain't got a letter to his name, but even if he had, he doubts that his ability to shoot the proverbial shit could in any way match the merde-acious agility of the good doctor. The doc's recent dissertation on the eternal female far surpassed anything the Mouse might have squeaked on his best days. It doesn't detract a bit from its cleverness that it was all an imaginary concoction, in the same genre as Herr Hegel's master-slave allegory that has for a couple of centuries titillated the shrunken heads of Marxists. Equating the Virgin Mary with Adam's lady Eve is sort of like making Charlie Brown's little piano playing friend Schroeder the archetype of the Greek Muse. Makes a whole lot of sense, but has the effect of giving the Muse more reality than she ever possessed. She was an invention of be-mused Greeks who were stuck for a way to explain the appeal of poetry better than the mathematical rhythms of Pythagoras's heartbeat.

That's the problem with "spiraling" knowledge around the maypoles of ancient superstitions. We encode vast stretches of our neuronal territory with religious "truths" and from those imaginary premises, create an apparently "integral and consistent philosophy that embraces psychology, anthropology, metaphysics, political science, and various other fields." Sheltered by widely believed falsehood, our misconceptions protected from hard fact, we are unable -- perhaps ever -- to see their foundation. Obtaining "a relief from certain kinds of fear" from our creation, we abide in a veritable fortress, nursing our very real Yangs and Yens on the milk of imaginary goodness. Small wonder that "Everything in it [our philosophy] implies and entails everything else." Without the hard edges of fact to restrain our "muse" coherency comes easy.

That was another of the esoteric (and largely undetected) meanings Joyce stormed over the bridge with his two stream of consciousness novels. In Ulysses, he made the myths obvious, framed his plot on the trappings of an ancient poem, and by that device demonstrated, in a fairly superficial way, how great fictitious intrigues can be wrought of superstition and legend by the hands of genius. In Finnegan's Wake, feeling he had made a good first novel but that his point had been missed, Joyce threaded the myths into a fabric woven mostly of his own history, and consequently his own prejudices, and did it so obscurely -- ineffectively, that is -- that the point was still missed. We did not get it from Joyce that the shadows lurking between the stimuluses and responses of human experience are actually impenetrable. We still did not get it that when we build our philosophies and religions on inherited myths, we're building on the quick sand of the shadow.

Hence the appeal of empiricism to many grownups. They sense in themselves the ineffable myths of humanity's childhood, and because they hear in the word "myth" something immature and presumably untrue, they shy away from even their awareness of the shadow. In defense, they refer their conscious minds to so-called objective fact and by that disregard of the aesthetic, block huge areas of their psyches from direct experience of the greater world they might have seen had they waked up to the true nature of Oneness.

God is One. He was not made One by the insinuations of myth and religion. He is One because to imagine him otherwise is essentially impossible without applying to imagination. If God and the cosmos are truly one, we were not created, we became. God was never a creator God in any sense other than we might say Leonardo was a creative painter. God was and is a Becomer, an understanding of him that fits well with all the laws of physics and evolutuionary biology, while appealing still to the aesthetic substrate of human knowing.

If Spinoza were alive today, and if he were a blogger, he might observe that even though God usually appears to us in modal form, we occasionally become aware of his wholeness. We sense the infinite in ourselves, and call those sensations religious experiences. To deny their reality would be to deny the reported experiences of millions. They occur to believers of all religions and have generally been interpreted as experiences of another world. We have experienced something so different from the world of "things" that we surely must have been transported beyond the realm of ordinary life. When we return from our escape of its presence, we generally find ourselves no better able to distinguish the difference between substance and its modes than we were before, but that there is a difference has become for us a fact we subsequently have great difficulty denying. Having "seen" the infinite we more easily recognize the ordinariness of iron, dirt and "stuff."

Technically, we may say (with Spinoza) that the ordinary things of the world have been "conceived through something else." We may also agree that our extraordinary perception of God can be axiomatically explained by thinking of his substance as "conceived through itself." But our religious experience does not depend upon our understanding of Spinoza’s definitions, since millions have experienced God in that way who have never heard of Spinoza. We are caused to experience wholeness because the whole of God is real and we are integral parts of whatever he is.

Spinoza attempted to describe the nature of God as it is possible for human beings to understand him. To do that, it was first necessary to strip away aeons of imaginings. If Spinoza succeeded, then we have in our possession an unchanging structure upon which we may erect a finite and changeable picture of the world as we see it. Whether we succeed or fail will be a function of our understanding of God and Nature. Sin is the fruit of ignorance, with the worst sin of all, temptation of the ignorant by clever pretense, masking the ancient and fatuous superstitions of the past in the shrouds of eloquence.

It is not that many have seen God. It is that a few would have us believe that only they have seen.

Believe me. They lie.

Mouse Trap

The second mouse gets the cheese.

Those of you who clicked over to Dr. Godwin's One Cosmos blog may have seen that the man occasionally presents his klan with factual data, some of which actually checks out. My problem with him doesn't trace to his facts but rather to the deductions he makes from them. As a clinical psychologist he must know that, to the mind, facts are logical premises. The behaviors we exhibit on the basis of those facts are logical conclusions the premises force upon us. The reason different people react differently to the same facts traces to several meta-facts. One, our minds naturally and automatically organize all "new" facts around what we already know. Two, the way our minds process facts is unconsciously conditioned by how we imagine the future will unfold, either well or poorly and all stops between. Three, we all have different ideas about the nature of "the good," and our minds judge all facts on the basis of how well or poorly they fit our ideal. And four, we're all somewhat physically different, a fact that affects not only our ability to process new facts but also our ability to retain and recall. These factors operate in the here-and-now to control the way our minds fit new facts into our "data base." Once there, the new facts form a part of the already-in-here-known by which the future activities of the mind -- and thus of ourselves -- will be determined.

We see, for instance, Spike Lee being quoted on Dr Godwn's blog as having said something that could be interpreted as "the government blew up the levees in New Orleans." That's the sort of thing that could be processed as a "new fact." Depending on who we are, we might behave toward that "fact" in many different ways, among them being . . .

1) If our idea of "the good" characterizes us as strict empiricists, we might notice that Mr. Lee said nothing about how he learned this "fact." We will thus store it away as mere talk. For us, our data bank contains all sorts of data, but the data we treat as our "selves" is always the data that has been "objectively proven."

2) If we consider ourselves as street wise guys who identify with Mr. Lee's "in-your-face" style, we might store the data away as a prima facie fact. Mr. Lee has merely coroborated our dark opinion of "the government."

3) If we are, on the otherhand, politically influenced individuals, always on the lookout for "facts" to use as ammunition against our political opposites, we might elevate Mr. Lee's statement into an "issue," demand an investigation, either of Mr. Lee for saying such a stupid thing, or of the deceitful government, depending on our idea of "the good."

4) But if we are truly clever devils, say, of the far right wing of the political horizon, we might recognize the stupidity of Mr. Lee's remark and bodily transfer him and his remark onto the heads of anyone on the left, even though the people we link to Mr. Lee's stupidity may see him exactly as we do.

Being a clever devil myself, I of course aimed all along to arrive at process (4), that being the behavior pattern Dr. Godwin employed -- as a matter of fact -- in reaction to Mr. Lee's stupid remark. Rather than place judgment on Lee -- where it belonged -- Dr. Godwin chose to identify the whole of the American left with the remark, thereby making the left seem as stupid, in this case, as Mr. Lee himself.

The left itself uses similar tactics, choosing to denigrate the nation's entire right wing for the mistakes of the Current Occupant. But some of the ideas traditionally associated with the right are great ideas, and some emanating from the left are, in my opinion, not so good. But so long as our minds remain fixated on a left-or-right axis, we will find ourselves behaving as if all the ideas from the side we favor are right and all the others wrong.

The first disagreeable statement I made to Dr. Godwin -- moderately rude -- was that his obsession with a left-right dichotomy could perhaps be excused by a consideration of his relative youth. He reacted with anger, as perhaps any youngster would have. I suppose if I had asked him politely to explain how he came to the belief that the left was all evil and the right all good, he might have responded differently, but given that my later understanding of where he stands epistemologically places him squarely in category (4), I rather think that no matter how I had behaved toward him, sooner or later, I would have been banished from his presence. Goodbye reason, hello Waco.

A Mendacious Cult

In a blustiferous and insulting essay on what he calls the “liberal ghost dance,” Dr. Robert Godwin describes the American left as a failed cult. He may be right, at least about the "failed" part. As I wrote yesterday, if the events perpetrated by the right seem tragic, it is not good enough simply to blame the Current Occupant outright. The left – along with the sane members of the right – failed when it permitted the Christofascists to come to power. Dr. Godwin, apparently as well aware of the tragedies as the next fellow, could have used his ample powers of observation to see the world as it actually is, but instead, like the more disturbed of the neurotics he treats in his practice, he has chosen the path of self-delusion.

I am not qualified to analyze the innards of his mind. Who is? But I do feel quite capable of seeing and evaluating objective reality. I see, for instance, that the major television news media are all owned by mega-large corporations, and am able to deduce from that seeing that if the media do tend to be biased, their leaning will predictably be to the right rather than the left. It was after all, the media who carried water for the Christofascists and sold us on the war in Iraq. It is the media who still focus our attention on kidnappings in Aruba, car wrecks in New Jersey, and the devastation wrought by natural events, while remaining silent on the economic perils of the Wal-Mart business model, by which I mean, the model of the entire American non-food retail sector. It is prime-time CNN who harps night-after-night on the evils of illegal immigration, while failing – again, night-after-night – to recognize the humanity of the people involved.

Dr. Godwin seems to believe that Adam Smith, with his invisible hand, and Herbert Spenser with his social Darwinism, have invented a system so imbued with logical perfection that any deviation from its dogma would constitute social suicide. He, like the hard core right, has conflated laissez faire capitalism with pseudo-Christianity, producing a world in which western values are to be treated as the world’s values, and western Christians as the new chosen of God, the “fittest,” who are to survive in a great and gory struggle for world domination. He demagogues so-called “multiculturalism” as a major root of evil, but turns a blind eye to Reason, favoring what appears to be a fuzzy religiosity based in feelings and imaginings perceptible only to those, like him, who are the true messengers of righteousness. When asked to explain how he could be opposed to multiculturalism while holding to pure subjectivity as the criterion for truth, he chose not to answer but rather informed the questioner (me) – in quaint ad hominem terms – that he was not welcome to the club. [Actually, he did say something that may have sounded to the faithful like an explanation, to the effect that “multiculturalism” is the belief that all value systems are equal, but without explaining how we might, without reason, with only “imagination” as a criterion, separate the sheep from the goats.]

I earlier had explained to an old friend that I would refrain from asking the physician to heal himself, since it seemed, at first glance, that he might be conducting one of those “all blue-eyed people are stupid” experiments. It did not seem possible to me that a man of his education and obvious talents could have failed to see the many logical contradictions being traded as currency by him and his flock. It seemed possible that his spiel was a fraud to see how many of the faithful he could rope in. That idea was somewhat weakened when it became apparent that some of the more virulent of his victims were actually him using alter egos made possible by the magic of blog space, like a rigged voting machine, to deepen the illusion of his power. I still have not given up the notion completely that One Cosmos is an experiment, and that in a year or so, we shall see Dr. Bob on Oprah explaining how he peddled his outrageous “logic” to the gullible souls of hyperspace. If it were not so truly dangerous I would admire him for his creativity, but the possibility is still out there that the man is serious, and that those he preaches to take it all in as inspired gospel, some even managing to believe he’s preaching real Christianity.

. . . Proving once again the old adage, “Nobody ever went broke by over-estimating the gullibility of the American people.”

Mouse Talk

The talk went well. The Q & A lasted 1 1/2 hours, ran overtime, and sometimes ranged far afield from my theme, while staying loosely connected. A simple idea ran through my remarks, that the form of government is not primary in determining the happiness of the people governed, but Reason is. A "lberal democracy" led by fools is just as likely to produce tragedy as any other type of government if the others are led by men of wisdom. I made the point, though, that "a truly liberal government, founded on democratic principles and operated by men of integrity and wisdom would be superior to any other form of government. The problem with liberal democracy, as reflected in the example of it with which I am most familiar, is that men of integrity and wisdom cannot be elected to high office . . . The media, having discovered what sells, deals in trivia. The infamous OJ trial, the constant barrage of “mother kills her babies” stories, and the occasional hostage event in New Jersey, tell us nothing fundamentally necessary for our understanding of the difference between good and evil. Consequently, in a well-financed and widely-advertised race against the charlatan, the honest man has almost no chance to succeed. By definition, the honest man is restricted to the truth, whereas the charlatan, also by definition, is free to use all available forms of chicanery to make himself seem more fit for office than the man who actually is. So what we have in America are races among charlatans, some of whom are out-and-out fools."

But the "fools" are not more foolish than nature has made them. No one of a right mind would doubt that the nations of the world, the religions of the world, and the cultures of the world are different. What may not be quite so admissible is that few of the world’s people can truly be said to be “of a right mind.” We have become members of our nation, culture, and religion by means so personal, so private, and so automatic that we are, by our nature, convinced that our “molecule” is the one ordained and prescribed by God to be His gift to humanity. This is natural. A body can explain away only so much difference. Rationalizations are needed. But so long as we hold to the belief that our molecule was ordained by God, we will not, and perhaps cannot comprehend that the members of the other molecules feel equally as certain of their righteousness, no less convinced that their God has created their molecule as the perfect representation of His design. In that regard, few of us or them are of a right mind.

If we need an excuse, well, then let us excuse ourselves on the basis of our ignorance, for we cannot possibly know all the data relevant to any matter, much less one so complex as the differences among the world’s cultures. Okay. We’re excused…but we must not make the mistake of believing that our ignorance, that our powerlessness, that the suppression of our freedom by governments, families, and religions has justified our neglect of the way we relate to the world and the way the world is. We cannot claim that our leaders are responsible, and not ourselves. Bush is not “Bush;” he is us, for we have empowered all our leaders to do what they do. The blood shed by their commands stains our hands, and condemns our souls, as well as theirs. True, we did not listen to the arguments for and against, we did not decide, we did not issue the orders. We simply approved in advance. If we were not altogether clear when we gave our approval, if we were exposed only to an advertiser’s cleverness, only to fuzzy symbols, and only to gussied-up pictures of the people we have authorized to act on our behalf, our ignorance may be twice removed, but our responsibility remains. It is not exculpatory for us to argue that we were not possessed of a right mind. To become active forces in the world, and not its passive victims, we must take all the responsibility upon ourselves. If we have, by our passivity, permitted our minds to be enslaved…well, we are, by a nature we cannot change, our own masters…and thus, our own slaves….

Or so it seems to me.

Commenting on Mendacity

Tomorrow I am to make a talk to the Spinoza Society in D.C. I'm a trifle queasy about this. The audience consists of genuinely knowledgeable people, several of them professors and professors emeritus, all of them certainly with more education than the Mouse got at Murphy High School and night school classes at the University of Alabama Mobile Extension.

But it's not the talk that concerns me. It's the Q & A session afterwards. While I think I know as much as the next guy about my subject, the chances approach unity that I'm wrong about that. If it weren't that they are all nice guys and gals who can be trusted to go easy on a poor defenseless mouse, I'd really be scared.

In any case, I'm so uptight I can't think today of anything original to post here, so I'll just cut and paste a couple of paragraphs from my talk. I trust I have selected a passage that does not contain too many references outside itself. In any case, it's the best part (from which you may judge my reasons for being frightened about the reception the rest will receive).

---------Excerpt Follows----------

The “last man” aspect of his thesis reflects a fundamental flaw in Fukuyama’s understanding of what humanity is all about. By connecting the evident emergence of liberal democracy to an imagined struggle for recognition, Fukuyama repeats Nietzsche’s claim that, in the modern world, the slaves and their mentality have won the day. Consequently, the “last man” – a Nietzschean construct – is seen as a subhuman specimen who has “[given] up prideful belief in his or her own superior worth in favor of comfortable self preservation.” Fukuyama’s belief in this regard could easily have been derived from the Herbert Spencer oration that I called to your attention earlier, that nature drives the human species ever upward by natural selection of “the fittest.” But whereas Spenser regarded the search for knowledge as a virtuous adaptation, Fukuyama, echoing Nietzsche, believed that what is truly and uniquely true of human beings is their willingness to risk their lives for something other than the rational ends of “mere” survival, or “mere” enjoyment, or “mere” knowledge. By that way of thinking, mankind grows toward the Ubermensch only by recognizing the hollowness of the rabble’s supposed virtues. Nietzsche for certain believed that man is distinguishable from “the other animals” by his desire to transcend the herd mentality. To Fukuyama/Nietzsche, those “last men” who find comfort in equality stand as barriers on the bridge between man and Superman. Nietzsche regarded the destructive behavior of Hegel’s “first men” as the cutting edge of a purifying spirit barging its way through history, destroying pedestrian banality by tooth and claw. He attributed to the Ubermensch the ultimate “good,” which is essentially to escape the comforts of the monkey-like masses. When Nietzsche claimed that the ideals of Ubermensch go “beyond good and evil,” he was being ironic; he meant simply that the real good consists in exactly that frame of mind held by the iconoclastic Superman, that the virtues that are are by definition evil.

But if the struggles of Hegelian “first men” were actually pissing contests between libido-driven madmen, what then would we say about the triumph of the so-called slave class? What if the real thread running through history has not been a struggle for recognition, but a striving of man’s existential freedom to discover and to live by the dictates of right living? If that has been the case, then in history’s approach toward an end point we would expect to see among the “last men” a gradually unfolding awareness of the illness of history’s “great men” and a diminishment of ignorance. We would expect to see the irrational search for recognition being replaced by an intensifying attempt to identify what is good for man and what is not.

[Wish me luck]

"Finnegan's" Mendacity

The "Fairhope Lady" suggested I ought to read the blog written by a clinical psychologist that calls itself, "One Cosmos." I did, read it with interest. The recent entries struck me as having been written by a relatively educated and erudite individual, but one who on some matters regards himself as a "seeker." (On others, he pretends to be a "having founder," but I'll save that for another day.) He speaks of the many different views of God that have been recorded by many different people, the early and modern Christians, the Buddhists, the Hindus, and (I suppose if I read all the way through) all the other people who have at one time or another "seen" God as this or that apparition.

Interestingly, he also declares an affinity for James Joyce's "masterpiece" Finnegan's Wake, an experimental novel Joyce intended as a death-knell for exactly the sort of exploring "One Cosmos" gets into. Finnegan's Wake cannot be comprehended unless the reader possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of all the mythologies of nearly all the races of man, a working knowledge of all the actual (real) neighborhoods in which Joyce once lived, the people who dwelt there, and of the ideas that occur only in Joyce's mind as he meshes those components (and countless others) together into a simulation of the way human consciousness streams itself together. Most readers of the book miss the point. Joyce is saying that all minds work exactly that way, and that for anyone to make absolute sense of the way life unfolds as individual activities, would require exactly the kind of knowledge Joyce possessed of his material -- a virtual impossibility. There are, after all, six-billion-plus minds, all operating out of different experiential material. Consequently, when we engage in an exercise designed ostensibly to find the key that unlocks all the doors to all the world's religions, we're in effect wasting our precious time. The answer, in an absolute sense, is unobtainable because it would involve us in an understanding of minds long since dead-and-buried, and which would, in any case, have been just as complex as the minds Joyce depicted in his book. And Joyce was talking about consciousness. Who knows what lurks in the unconscious.

Okay. "One Cosmos" is only a clinical psychologist, not an anthropologist. (But then, the Mouse is neither.) And again, maybe he's not really interested in finding the absolute truth. He may be, as he implies, only enjoying the struggle. But that doesn't seem all that likely either. He speaks off and on of his preference for the "vertical" as opposed to the "horizontal" life. He means by "vertical" a looking upward in our mind's eye, searching as it were for Godness, as opposed to looking around horizontally in the world. My criticism of his method traces essentially to the horizontality of his vertical look. By delving into the fuzziness of the ancient religions, and apparently trying to jibe them with his own in a detailed sort of way, he adds unnecessary complexity to his struggle. I would rather simply say, "Those people were looking for God," and then move on to a search focused more on the here-and-now. That's what the Mouse did years ago and wound up with Spinoza's God, an absolutely simple concept of the divine. God is all there is and that's the end of that. Thus "the more we know of things, the more we know of God," and the vertical search becomes horizontal. Know the world, know God.

"Truth is beauty and beauty is truth, that's all we know and all we need to know..." or someting like that.

But I envy the guy his felicity with words. He makes a lot of God-awful wonderful puns.

Mendacity at 1600

Our president, speaking in India on 2 March, said the United States should welcome competition from the far-eastern nations. There was a picture of him -- open collar, big smile -- holding an ancient hand plow across his shoulder like a rifle. I don't want to make too much of the picture, but it's just possible that George's handlers knew the trade message would not play too well back home, so they threw in the primitive "machine" to give us a false notion of what we're competing against. The president also suggested -- aloud -- that the 300 million people of India's middle class were anxious to purchase American goods. I suppose it's possible that Indian people dream about having air conditioned homes, and 12-cycle washing machines (made in Mexico), but the numbers say otherwise. Just like us, they're buying most of what they buy from foreigners, not from us, but from neighboring China.

But that's not what's at the heart of the problem. Your president is asking American workers to compete with economies which, for one reason or another, have a distinct advantage. The Chinese worker, for instance, works where the government tells him to work, for wages set by the government. It would be a stretch to call China's economy "slave-based," but that's what we had been told to call it for half-a-century. Only now, when America's transnational corporations are branching out to the world, have we been asked to regard China as "fair competition."

Americans, still remembering 9-11 (even if George isn't), may wonder why he's threatening to veto any attempt by Congress to cancel the deal to turn over operation of our major ports to a company doing business out of the United Arab Emirates. The veto threat is clearly not about security. It's about so-called "fair trade." If the U. S. puts up a barrier to trade for security reasons, the lobbyists for the corporations claim the precedent set by the barrier will inhibit their clients' ability to exploit foreign markets and labor pools. The only way to undestand the threatened veto is to recognize that in the mind of your so-called "security-conscious" president, security is not the highest priority. That place is reserved for corporate interests.

But then, some people always knew that. The rest are beginning to catch on.

[The above is my latest editorial in the local newspaper. After press time, the company in the UAE pulled out of the contract, relieving pressure on our mendacious leaders. Draw your own conclusions.]

Instant Messaging Mendacity

Beatrice: Sometimes I think you're just messing around in my head.

Dante: Sometimes?

Beatrice: You're a bastard. You know that, don't you? Don't pretend you don't know it.

Dante: I'm not pretending that I don't know.

Beatrice: You've been doing this for five months and I've finally decided I'm not going to let you get away with it anymore.

Dante: Can you be more specific?

Beatrice: No. You know what I'm talking about.

Dante: Okay.

[Long pause]

Beatrice: All these riddles...all this round and round in nowhere.

Dante: You mean the simple little puzzle you haven't been able to decipher?

Beatrice: Simple! Simple! You call it simple!!!

Dante: But it is simple.

Beatrice: I'm not a fool. It isn't simple.

Dante: Do you want me to repeat it again for you?

Beatrice: No.

[Longer pause]

Beatrice: Okay...tell it again...how many times have we been through this?

Dante: 127...not counting yesterday.

Beatrice: Why not count yesterday?

Dante: You kept screaming. I don't think you even read what I wrote. It would be unfair to count that one.

Beatrice: Count it. I don't want any favors.

Dante: Okay. 128.

Beatrice: :(

Dante: Okay...here goes...now read carefully...don't miss a mark. Smile when you're ready.

Beatrice: :)

Dante: Okay..."A man had a dollar"...alright so far?

Beatrice: Shut up you bastard. You know I'm "alright so far!" You've said it a thousand times. "A man had a dollar..." I've got that part. Go on.

Dante: Okay. "A man had a dollar and he went into a bar. In the bar he bought himself a drum for fifty cents and two drum sticks to play the drum with for ten cents each."

[Pause]

Beatrice: Go on...what are you waiting for?

Dante: Yesterday you started screaming at me just when I got to the drum sticks.

Beatrice: I'm not screaming today. I'm concentrating with all the brains I've got.

Dante: Okay. "...He bought himself a drum for fifty cents....

Beatrice: Just write it "50c". I'll know what you mean. And the drum sticks..."10c ea"...abbreviate.

Dante: We've been through this before.

Beatrice: But I never understood it, I mean, why you can't abbreviate.

Dante: That's because you haven't got it yet. Once you catch on, you'll see why it has to be spelled out like that.

Beatrice: You've said that before too...a million times...not just about the money...about everything. You keep telling me I just haven't seen it yet. You're right about that...I haven't seen it...and maybe I never will.

Dante: If you think that, why do you bother to listen?

Beatrice: I don't know.

Dante: Shall we continue.

Beatrice: Of course, don't we always.

Dante: Would you rather talk about Spinoza?

Beatrice: No. I know I'll never understand Spinoza.

Dante: That's cool. You're right. If you can't get the riddle, you'll never get Spinoza.

Beatrice: The riddle's more important then, more important than Spinoza?

Dante: You'll have to decide that after you solve the riddle.

Beatrice: That's what I mean. If I can't understand Spinoza until I understand the riddle, then the riddle's more important.

Dante: I guess, but that's not exactly what I said.

Beatrice: Okay. No matter. Go on.

Dante: "He bought himself a drum for fifty cents and two drum sticks to play the drum with for ten cents each. Then he bought himself two beers. In those days, beers were 10c each."

Beatrice: Whoa!!!!! 10c!!!!! You always wrote it out before, and you just said...

Dante: You're right. I made a mistake. Let me back up....

Beatrice: You made a mistake? You've never said that before.

Dante: Yes, I know. Can I go on...or would you prefer to talk about Spinoza?

Beatrice: No. Go on. I've got to solve the riddle first.

Dante: "...Then he bought himself two beers. In those days beers were ten cents each....

Beatrice: You left out the comma. Between "days" and "beers". Before, there was always a comma there.

Dante: Are you sure?

Beatrice: Look! Just scroll up the screen. You wrote it with a comma.

Dante: Hmmm. You're right, I left out the comma this time. But which is right, with or without?

Beatrice: I don't know which is right, but you always wrote it with the comma.

Dante: You mean yesterday and all the other days? I always inserted a comma between "days" and "beers"?

Beatrice: Yes. I distinctly remember.

Dante: Okay. I'll take your word for it. "...In those days, beers were ten cents each." Is that right now?

Beatrice: Yes. Go on.

Dante: "...beers were tencents each. After the man drank his beers, he took his drum and his drum sticks and his ten cents change and went to the corner to wait for the bus." ...Before I go on, make sure you read and understand every word of that. It's very important that you get every word etched solidly in your mind.

Beatrice: You made a typo...you didn't space between "ten" and "cents". But don't repeat it...I'll just pretend there's a space there.

Dante: Okay. Study those words carefully and let me know when you're sure you understand them.

Beatrice: I've got those words written down in a notebook...I copied them down the first time you asked me to study them. That was months ago, maybe years.

Dante: When exactly was it?

Beatrice: I don't know...years ago...centuries ago.

Dante: Okay. Just let me know when you're ready to proceed.

Beatrice: I'm ready.

Dante: "...When the bus came, the man got on the bus, put his ten cents in the fare meter (in those days, bus fare was ten cents), went half way back into the bus, carrying his drum and his drum sticks with him, and sat down in an empty seat. The bus driver drove two blocks, then stopped and threw the man off the bus. Question: Why did the bus driver throw the man off the bus?" That's it. The riddle has never changed. Do you get it now?

Beatrice: Let me think.

[Very long pause]

Beatrice: No. I don't understand.

Dante: Just where do you lose it? Do you understand where it says the man "sat down in an empty seat"?

Beatrice: Yes, I see that part clearly, and I know people don't get thrown off busses for sitting in empty seats.

Dante: Maybe I should repeat the beginning for you...again. "A man had a dollar...."

Beatrice: NO!!! I understand that!! He had a dollar!

Dante: No, not "He had a dollar", "A man had a dollar"...and don't overlook that the "A" is always capitalized.


Beatrice: You've insisted on that a thousand times, and I still don't see how the letter "A" capitalized or not is relevant to the riddle.

Dante: Everything in the riddle is relevant...or at least you must presume it is until you have a clear and distinct reason for disregarding this or that word or phrase...as the case may be.

Beatrice: Yeah! Clear and distinct! You're a bastard, no doubt about it.

Dante: Can I ask you a question?

Beatrice: You've already asked me a question...a million times... Why did the bus driver throw the man off the bus...WAIT!!!! I think I've got something!!!

Dante: You've said that before, too, at least a hundred times.

Beatrice: I know, I know, but I think I'm really onto something this time. Tell me, did he throw off the drum and the drum sticks, too? Or just the man?

Dante: By "he", do you mean the bus driver?

Beatrice: Yes, did the bus driver also throw off the bus the man's drum and his drum sticks?

Dante: That's not clearly stated in the riddle, is it?

Beatrice: What do you mean? Do you mean you don't know if he (the bus driver) if he threw off the drum, too. You yourself don't know?

Dante: I merely said, the riddle doesn't make that clear. But I can tell you this, it's possible that some things relevant to the solution are not expressly stated. You have to extrapolate from the given to the unknown.

Beatrice: Then that's it!!! He threw the man off the bus because he wanted to steal his drum and his drum sticks. But being constrained by law, he could not simply overpower the man and take away his possessions. That would be highway robbery. But he (the bus driver) is authorized to throw people off the bus, so that's what he did (he, the bus driver). He threw the man off the bus, but left the man's drum and drum sticks there in the empty seat where he (the bus driver) could later claim them as lost property.

[Pause]

Dante: Interesting...but it's clear you have missed at least one important point.

Beatrice: What important point!!!? Oh God!!! I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean it. You're going to do it again!!!!

Dante: I'm going to do what?

Beatrice: Repeat the whole thing all over again...don't do that...I've heard it a thousand times.

Dante: Okay, but you did miss a major point. Do you mind if I try to help you this little? You've said before that you prefer to work it out without any hints.

Beatrice: It's okay, just so long as you don't repeat the whole riddle...not again.

Dante: By the way...I still have a question to ask you...not the riddle question.

Beatrice: Can it wait?

Dante: No. I have to ask now.

Beatrice: Okay. If it's important.

Dante: Is your name really "Beatrice" or did you just take that name because I had previously called myself "Dante"?

Beatrice: Will this help me solve the riddle?

Dante: No.

Beatrice: My name is not "Beatrice". It's something else.

Dante: Okay. I just wanted to know.

Beatrice: You're not going to ask me my real name?

Dante: Would you answer me truthfully?

Beatrice: How would you know if I did or not?

Dante: Good point. Well, then, let me get back to the "hint", as you call it.

Beatrice: Good.

Dante: Pay careful attention to these words...."A man had a dollar and he went into a bar...." It's clear, from the cock and bull story you made up about the bus driver's plot to steal the man's drum and his drum sticks, that you have missed the most basic point of all....

Beatrice: Yes, I know. I've missed that most basic point a million times. The son-of-a-bitch had a dollar and he went into a bar!

Dante: Now, don't start screaming again.

Beatrice: I won't, I promise.

Dante: Good. I detest violence.

Beatrice: Do you think it would help if I heard the words aloud...I mean, the secret might be revealed by something in the inflections of your voice. You hear those inflections as you type the words, but they don't come through the IM to me.

Dante: That's quite true, that my inflections don't make it all the way through to you, but I really don't think hearing them would help. In fact, those inflections might constitute hints, and you've said you don't want hints.

Beatrice: Did you get hints? When you heard the riddle, did you hear it aloud, or was it like this, little black letters coming out of hyperspace?

Dante: Now you're getting warm. I'm sure if you proceed along this path, it'll finally come to you.

Beatrice: Then tell me. Where did you hear it? How was it delivered?

Dante: I didn't hear it. I made it up.

Beatrice: That's impossible.

Dante: Impossible? Why do you think it's impossible that I made up the riddle?

Beatrice: I don't mean that. I mean, I don't mean it's impossible. It just doesn't seem likely that something this complex, something so deep, could possibly have been "made up".

Dante: That's absurd. Even if I didn't make it up, someone else would have. Every riddle that's spoken in words is either made up by me or by someone else. One or the other.

Beatrice: That sounds like Spinoza. I thought we weren't going to talk about Spinoza.

Dante: Not unless you want to.

Beatrice: I want to solve the riddle first.

Dante: Okay. "A man had a dollar and he went into a bar. In the bar he bought himself a drum for fifty cents and two drum sticks to play the drum with for ten cents each. Then he bought himself two beers. In those days, beers were ten cents each. After the man drank his beers, he took his drum and his drum sticks and his ten cents change and went to the corner to wait for the bus. When the bus came, the man got on the bus, put his ten cents in the fare meter (in those days, bus fare was ten cents), went half way back into the bus, carrying his drum and his drum sticks with him, and sat down in an empty seat. The bus driver drove two blocks, then stopped and threw the man off the bus. Question: Why did the bus driver throw the man off the bus?"

[Extremely long pause]

[Another long pause]

Beatrice: I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know...I'm not screaming...I just don't see anything.

Dante: There must be some word you're not reading, or a word you're giving a meaning other than the intended meaning.

Beatrice: That might be, but how would I know? I mean about the meaning? I'm reading every word, I'm saying each word aloud as I read it, but I don't know if the words mean to me what they mean in the riddle.

Dante: Precisely.

Beatrice: Precisely?! Is that all you have to say?

Dante: Yes...or better, precisely.

Beatrice: If I finally give up, if I ask you to tell me the answer...will you, I mean, will you give me the real answer, or will you just continue with all this crap?

Dante: I will do as I have always done. I will give you exactly what you want. If you want the answer, if you want to surrender, admit defeat...sure, I'll give you the answer...such as it is.

Beatrice: What does that mean, "such as it is"?

Dante: Let me put it this way: I lied to you a little. I didn't make up the riddle. A man told it to me, but he's dead now, and he never gave me the answer. When the answer came to me, well, it might just as well have been the truth that I made it up.

Beatrice: I'm not surprised that you lied to me. You're a terrible person. You know this only makes it worse.

Dante: Yes, I know this only makes it worse.

Beatrice: Let me think.

Dante: Okay.

[Hours pass, then days and weeks of moments.]

Beatrice: I don't want to know the answer...I mean, I don't want you to tell me.

Dante: Good. You're a real mensch, Beatrice.

Beatrice: What's a "mensch."

Dante: I'm not sure, but it sounds like something heroic. It's probably not a word.

Beatrice: Right. You mentioned a "hint".

Dante: Yes. If I'm to give you this helping hand, you must promise me that you will listen as you've never listened before. Intensely.

Beatrice: I promise. I will open the ears of my heart.

Dante: Okay...here goes...for the last time..."A man had a dollar...."

Beatrice: AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Dante: "...and he went into a bar."

Beatrice: AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Dante: Shall I continue?

[Pause. Pause. Pause.]

[Very long pause.]

Beatrice: Can we talk about Spinoza?

Dante: Of course. As I said, anytime you want to change the subject, we will. Where shall we begin?

Beatrice: How about at the beginning.

Dante: I'm smiling.

Beatrice: Why?

Dante: I don't know. Maybe Spinoza will tell us. Let's begin at the beginning and see what we see: "Definitions: 1. By cause of itself I understand that whose essence involves existence..."

Beatrice: I don't get it.

Dante: Well, let me explain it...”A man had a dollar....”

[Long pause.]

Dante: r u there?

[Interminable silence.]