Posted by
Sam Heath on Sunday, October 29, 2006 2:01:41 PM
It was a real treat this morning awakening to AMC playing The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Mummy, and Frankenstein one after the other. While I have enjoyed some of the remakes of these old classics nothing can ever take their place. Nor can anything take the place of seeing them for the first time as a child before Hollywood began to devote itself to blood and gore in “living color.” Just as plastic cheated children of those old balsa and tissue model airplanes, modeling clay, water paints, Tinker-toys and Lincoln Logs and before electronics became “toys” just so did Hollywood begin to cheat children of their imagination.
But despite Hollywood, despite all the enormous efforts on the part of philosophers, theologians, and scientists dedicated to understanding them, life and death remain the two great mysteries they have ever been from the beginning of human history. A “something” animates the clay and we call that “life,” then it departs and we call that “death.” No system of belief whether metaphysical or scientific has moved us one iota closer to understanding these two great mysteries, though there be no lack of pretenders to such knowledge throughout history and continuing without let.
The words eternal and eternity, infinite and infinity, immortality and hereafter are part of our vocabulary. And while these remain labels in lieu of understanding we have a sense or intuition they are real, that they exist in fact though we do not understand them.
Regrettably coming to the conclusion late in life, I will not credit words in books or the words of “prophets” concerning life and death, the issues of philosophy or religion all the while confusing beliefs for certain knowledge of facts. What I “know in my bones” without evidence I do not ask others to accept as facts. I require the same courtesy in return. The whole world might have some hope of surviving were this the case with nations.
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union: “The principal sin of the neoconservatives is overbearing arrogance. It is not so much that they have been wrong. It is that nobody has ever convinced them that they have ever been wrong.” And this is the problem with those who expect others to accept them as authorities on subjects of life and death, to accept their beliefs all the while offering no evidence but rather endless anecdotes of such beliefs. This is nothing more than the sin of arrogance.
Are the pyramids and the Sphinx, all the hammered stone and such throughout the ages monuments to ignorance and superstitions or do they have real relevance to understanding? We still do not know. As to ignorance and superstitions no truly civilized person can countenance the barbaric and brutish religion of Islam though a billion people pay homage to it. The world is certainly not bettered by these billion people continuing to attempt to appease a bloodthirsty deity through horrific acts of barbarism. But civilized people are demanded to “understand” this barbaric bloodthirsty religion, even bow to it.
The barbarism of our Federal Triune Dictatorship is in little better case, refusing to secure our borders and our ballots, continuing to foment slave labor to benefit the few wealthy at the expense of We the People. The barbarism of Mexico transported to America will certainly not encourage any advancement of civilization here in our own nation. But our own leadership is dedicated to this growing barbarism in America for the sake of slave labor. Yet the barbarians in office and those attempting to gain elected office ask for our votes while offering nothing but a perpetuation of such barbarians continuing to use elected office as a license to steal.
While most polls show all the bums should be tossed out, Walt Kelly has the fox Seminole Sam asking the question “Why doesn't anybody think of that before they throw the rascals in?” To answer the question it is an evil system that promotes scoundrels to positions of power and authority, that promotes a system of government where the truth damns and consequently none dare speak the truth if they wish to win an election. The song and dance act purporting to be “news” on TV blathers about all the negative ads by politicians. I agree with Henry Thoreau that gossip if taken in homeopathic doses can be therapeutic, but the fact remains when the choices are nothing but bums and the resulting gossip begins to overwhelm it may take another War for Independence to change things for the better. And the way things are going I wouldn’t bet against it.