I have heard that “the sins of the father” may be visited on the son.
Dad, if I could carry some of your burden I would.
Maybe I do. Maybe I am a positive number on your soul’s balance sheet. If I’m not, maybe I will be.
The nature of sin is that it’s gravity is rarely felt until after the act is complete or completely understood.
How was it for you? How is it for you?
Sin is like an avalanche sliding over generations.
Perhaps it stops here.
The battle is within.
4 pounds of pull on the trigger. Nothing.
What is a life worth to me?
Priceless? No.
Mine, yours, ours, family, friends. How do I calculate the arithmetic?
Liberty and safety are at odds.
The greater the freedom, the greater the peril, the greater the cost.
What price will I pay?
Who would I sacrifice to be free?
Who wouldn’t I sacrifice to be free?
What would it take for me to stand up?
4 pounds of pull and I set both of us free.
If we can give a corporation a life, surely we can give it a soul.
“Matthew 7
Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)
7 Judge not, that ye be not judged. 2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. 3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? 5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
NOTE TO SELF:
Discontinue the following practices prior to passing Biblically based judgement on anyone else.
1) Borrowing money for house, education, automobile, presents (especially CHRISTmas presents)
2) Fornicating outside of wedlock
3) Fornicating with myself
4) Watching other people fornicate
5) Thinking about fornicating with other people
6) Using Lord’s name in vain
7) Taking seconds when I’m not really that hungry
8) Saving money instead of giving it to people who are hungry
9) Sleeping in
10) Yelling at people
11) Thinking about how nice it would be if I had other people’s stuff
12) Competing with others to show that I’m better than them
13) Thinking I’m better than anyone else
14) Taking more than one of the free samples at the grocery store
15) Watching the food network
16) Watching the food network while fornicating
17) Keeping pets when there are people who are hungry (solution, feed pets to hungry people)
Don’t judge me. I’m doing the best I can. I’m a man, and nobody seems to be able to tell me what that means I’m supposed to do.
And doing is the one thing everyone does seem to agree I’m supposed to do. But what?
Be strong. Be sensitive. Be brave. Be fast. Be athletic. Be tough. Be mine. Be everyone’s. Be a player. Be a warrior. Be a leader. Be a caricature of a God damned archetype that didn’t make sense a thousand years ago when some damn fool came up with it. Measure up…
To whose expectations?
You want me to go get a job and suck it up and drive on and be miserable and isolated in rooms full of people?
You want me to hold and love and care and be available and listen and share and exactly where do you think I picked those skills up along the way?
I have emotions. Lots of fucking emotions and the only outlet any of you ever showed me was angry. Lots of emotions – one outlet. FUCK!
You do realize that coaches don’t pat you on the back for playing patty cake, right? Dad’s don’t get all excited when you put on mom’s makeup. Nobody jumps for joy when you play with dolls… But give another kid a concussion (on the field of course we don’t want to raise barbarians) and you’re a fucking hero.
I WANT TO BE A FUCKING HERO!
I spend the first 25 years of my life getting rewarded over and over and over for being the toughest fastest meanest most flip most uncaring…
I don’t care what anyone thinks of me (but of course I care what everyone thinks of me).
And even as you tell me you want me to be kind and loving and caring and supportive… I know what will happen the second I show my soft spot.
Vulnerable is weak. Weak is waiting to get hit. Getting hit hurts. AND I HAVE A LOT OF EMOTIONS WITH ONE OUTLET!
Who do you think I am, man? You think I rolled out of bed yesterday? Millions of years of evolution and you think I don’t know that everyone on the planet is gunning for me? Trying to knock me off of whatever little pedestal I’ve managed to scramble onto.
Why don’t you love me? FUCK YOU why don’t you love me? FUCK YOU and you and you and you and you and you. why don’t you love me?
Trust?
You must be kidding. I don’t trust anyone.
Go to work. Smile. Be charming. Go home. Smile. Be charming.
FUCK YOU
Do you know what little boys do to each other? They beat the hell out of each other. Do you know how you don’t get the hell beat out of you? You beat the hell out of someone else.
Go to work. Smile. Be charming. Go home. Smile. Be charming.
What is a man?
I AM SO ANGRY… I am so afraid
The problem with mathematics is that it makes me uncomfortable. Not because I’m afraid I won’t understand it or that I’ll do poorly on a test. Both those things are true, but neither bothers me a bit.
For me, the problem is that math is so damned predictable. That’s sort of the point, I suppose, but if mathematics can indeed perfectly describe existence, there is very little room… actually no room… for free will. That makes me sad.
Math finds patterns; and patterns are predictable; and things that are predictable are predestined; that is to say they don’t have choice; and I want to feel like I have some control.
I take such comfort that there are things that are unpredictable. Unpredictable things make me think that, perhaps, while there are rules and a great deal of predictability in the universe, maybe there is also something else – a life spark – something that does not bow to the deterministic power of math (or rather the deterministic power that math describes).
Perhaps, bound as I am by the tides of existence, I may also have true choice.
Religion is most beautiful and nourishing when it exists outside the bounds of human knowledge. The problem with the old religions is that their scope was tethered to the outer limits of what humans knew at their conception.
As, over time, the purview of gods have become the purview of humans, the religions have, like children’s tales, lost their believability. That is to say, I can have faith in something unknown, but it is very difficult to have faith in something for which I have concrete evidence to the contrary.
We don’t need to abandon religion. We need new religions. We need a place outside our ability to understand. That is where magic and imagination live. Religion should be the result and source of our inspiration. Religion can help us expand and grow. What good is a religion that constrains the mind and soul?
Everything that could, or will, or has, or could have happened, is happening – at this moment and forever. That’s infinity. Perfectly big and small, in every way, all at once.
Dear Thomas Jefferson,
You had some really good ideas. I like the whole educated populace yeoman farmer thing. You were really down with the whole Enlightenment deal, and I dig that. And, listen, I get it, you were limited by your time and circumstances. We all are.
But, I mean, you were so close. All you had to do was apply this whole egalitarian all men are created equal stuff to all people and we really could have had something! States might have functioned sustainably with relative autonomy. The federal government might have stayed weak. I mean I get it, local, buy fucking local.
No really, I get it. Books and wine are expensive, and, honestly, who’s going to bring them to you if you let everyone go to U of VA, whenever they feel like it, for free?
You gave it over to the federalists! You said you wanted an academic and egalitarian society and then you FUCKED YOUR SLAVES!!! You fucking your slaves fucked all of us, because now five white guys with roman numerals behind their names and an Asian (who my public school education has given me just enough training not to call a Chinaman) are running EVERYTHING!!!
You wanted education for every citizen, but you didn’t want to let everyone be a citizen, and so like dumb chattel we’ve been giving more and more power to fewer and fewer people.
And, man, I know Sally must have been a dish, but maybe she would have stuck around even if you hadn’t had a title on her. I know you already had Martha, but you were a progressive kinda guy. Maybe the three of you could have made it work. Different strokes and all.
Seriously, who decides they need to disassemble a top down system and then leave a top down system? You, Tom… YOU.
AND YOU KNEW IT WAS WRONG!!! You said it was wrong? Fuck man, that ginger giant George gave up a kingship and you couldn’t be bothered to spend a little bit less money on Madeiras and STOP OWNING PEOPLE… WHICH YOU KNEW WAS WRONG!!!
You were greedy, Tom. You knew to rotate your crops, but you kept planting tobacco.
Aww well, you were only human… Man, you had some great ideas.
Education for all. Agriculture for all. Science for all. Arts for all. Local determination for all. Perhaps enough time has lapsed that we can leave the legacy of your hypocrisy and get on with the implementation of your ideas.
Ok, I’ve got it! Everyone’s gonna love this! We slash military spending to practically nothing. Then we take the money we save and buy all private citizens a bunch of guns.
My progressive friends don’t have to worry about going to wars, because we won’t have a military.
My conservative friends won’t have to worry about a tyrannical government, because the citizens’ militia will be… well everybody.
I’ll get some new toys.
And everyone – except the people in whatever part of the world where human rights atrocities will continue to occur because we won’t be getting involved – will be happy and drink sweet beverages from McDonalds and enjoy the delicious subsidized corn syrup that has made our country great!
… Did I mention you get a free gun?