Fear Not

Philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.

Friedrich Von Schlegel
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I am amazed at otherwise intelligent, rational people who can sacrifice all reason when they enter a church or other religious institution. People will listen with no comment and with some undeserved degree of respect and belief to the ignorant, egregious and often belligerent interpretation of their sacred writings. One religionist is praying for the failure and death of our president, another is advocating burning the books of a different religion, another is molesting children, one is claiming the divine right to turn people out of their homes, another is calling for homosexuals to be hung to death, and another is ordering a woman to be stoned to death for adultery. What madness!

Extreme religious fundamentalism is the scourge of the world and it has become rabid, a pandemic. All religious texts call for love, compassion, charity, forgiveness and brotherliness. But instead of hands of help the brotherhoods and sisterhoods of the earth are holding out sharp claws.

Margaret Thatcher wrote "Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy." I know for a fact that there are many intelligent Christians in this country and elsewhere. Some of the most important philosophers of the past and present have been Christians. They are hardly being heeded today. Instead there is a large group of professing Christians who are buried in a mental tunnel which leads nowhere. They will vehemently claim that this is a Christina nation. Well, it is. It is also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation and a nation of Atheists. Only a non thinker can't understand and accept that.

Ordinary people who can express themselves on their opinions about things back off into the tunnel when the subject of their religion comes up. Well, the Bible says so and so. My Pastor says such and such. I want to ask, "Yes, but what do YOU say?" One doesn't have to throw out one's Bible in order to think for oneself.

Now we are confronted with a silly argument about why the founding fathers never meant there to be a separation between religion and government. Here's the First Amendment to the Constitution
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

How can that be interpreted to mean that Congress is obliged to recognize one particular faith or set of beliefs as the official set for the country any more than it obliges it to allow only a certain set of speeches to be made? Many times I hear someone citing what the founding fathers really meant by the Constitution. An interpretation that is merely an opinion. Here's what Thomas Jefferson, the American philosopher and statesman who wrote that amendment, had to say: "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."

Fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the unexplainable. Fear of difference. Fear of others who are not like us. The unconscious, unacknowledged fear that maybe our faith is not right no matter how many words have been written about it. The deep down hidden fear of offending a God we do not understand. It is safer to hide in the mental tunnel of belief than to face the fears and "question with boldness" the reason for our faith.

Dana Bate - The Vagabond

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Searching The Grains

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Friedrich Von Schlegel
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I don't know everything. I don't know anything. I don't want to know everything about anything because then I would have nothing to learn. The universe is an infinite place but life is greater than the universe, it's greater than the infinite because it includes the universe.

Some people believe that life ends, that there's a stopping point. There's death. Or there's the "Great Reward" when we are judged for the life we lived and then are checked into heaven or hell to spend an eternity in torment or whatever it is that folks do in heaven. I think those concepts are very confining and not worthy of the universe in which we live.

Space scientists are among those who are looking for some form of life an other planets, and sooner or later they will probably find it. They should certainly continue the search. But until time travel is discovered all the information they get will be billions of years old. Even so, the search itself is the result of the need to know things, to learn things. To some it may seem to be like analyzing grains of sand on a beach, but the search is also a search into human life. Every discovery, each new thing learned, affects human mentality even if we don't notice it.

The search for life elsewhere in the universe is a search for life itself, for the knowledge of what life really is, outside of stars and planets, and the discoveries that affect our mentality, our perception of life, are also discoveries of mind and mind is what is greater than the universe.

In the mental gutters of the world the human mind seems to be used for nothing but a universe of dangerous, disgusting or pointless activities. Some people have risen out of those gutters, many have not. Those who have not are stultified by beliefs and are not in a search for anything beyond what they know. It can be seen in commerce, politics, government, the business of daily life, religion and, yes, even in art.

When we reach the level of understanding that even the stars and planets are not as important as mind, the true universe, real exploration will begin and real life will continue.

DB - The Vagabond
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SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?

4 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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Variable Views 8/09/09

Art and works of art do not make an artist, sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.

Friedrich Von Schlegel
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Welcome to my briar patch.
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Hurry and....
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The other day I had a brief conversation with a woman out on the sidewalk We don't know each other well but during our chat she asked "Are you an artist?" When I said "Yes" I thought about the paintings and drawings in my apartment, but I also wondered what there was about me that would cause her to think, in those few short moments of talking with me, that I'm an artist.

While I lived in New York City I had the privilege of studying with some excellent teachers. One of them was an inspiring old curmudgeon named Marshall Glazier. He had us drawing the model life size, on a piece of shelf paper, with a can of ink and a pen shaped bamboo stick. When I first entered the class I thought it was silly because there is nothing permanent about rolls of shelf paper, nothing to show what I've learned. But I soon got into the process and discovered that the act of drawing was the instruction. It brought out in me the invisible things about art, the things Von Schlegel speaks of.

Given the right surface an artist can make a beautiful drawing with a mud puddle and a stick. A sculptor can make a work of art out of some stones and a hammer. There was a street drummer in New York who played with his drum sticks on the mail boxes and parking meters. I think of the most primitive examples of the artist's output: cave paintings, scrimshaw, poems written on the walls of prison cells, an actor's audition.

Fortunately for the world, artists have a vast amount of materials to work with these days. But tools are just what they are, tools to use. The tools do not make the art. They rely on the imagination of the artist to use them. They rely on the artist's "sense and enthusiasm and instinct" to know how to use them, and so does the artist.

Now, when I work on a painting, I start with an idea, apply my sense, enthusiasm and instinct, the invisible things, the truly creative things of my being and let the process of painting tell me where to go and what to do. It's the same with writing. They are complimentary sports.

DB
__________________
Be a cool breeze for someone today.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Test thrice Albert. (5)
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WEEKEND PUZZLE
Splish Splash - this one'e easy.

Below is a list of waters. Your mission is to tell me which one of them does not belong on this list and why.

1 right answer so far.

Arctic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
Bering Sea
Bristol Bay
Buzzards Bay
Cape Cod Bay
Chesapeake Bay
Delaware Bay
Gulf of Alaska
Gulf of Mexico
Hudson Bay
Lake Erie
Lake Huron
Lake Michigan
Lake Ontario
Lake Superior
Long Island Sound
Massachusetts Bay
Pacific Ocean

Good luck
dbdacoba@aol.com

Vain Verisimilitude 7/14/09

What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.

Friedrich Von Schlegel
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Leave your pistols at the door.
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One of the advantages or hindrances, depending on your point of view, of being an actor is a developed sensitivity to honest behavior. A good actor can spot phoniness within minutes. At that point the actor has to decide whether or not he is going to play the game. Since I really dislike phoniness I'm neither comfortable nor acceptable in what's known as "polite society" simply because I don't want to join in the masquerade of verisimilitude and "polished caricature."

It has caused a lot of criticism to float my way on the gossamer wings of patronizing dismissal. "He just doesn't fit in, poor fellow." Good. I don't want to "fit in." I'd rather be alone than to be a phoney. I guess that's why I'm a vagabond.

Then there's the self-appointed couturier "My dear, you should never wear that shirt with those pants." As if the devil is going drag me down to hell if I don't appear in the latest fashion. Let him try it.

I was once attending a reception for a couple who were getting married. After trying to mix in with the other people around the cocktail lounge and not doing it very well, we were invited into the dining room. There was a string quartet playing in the corner and all the waiters were in full livery. When I went to the table assigned to me and found there was no seat for me I said silently "Oh, thank you." I left, bought a hot dog and a can of beer, went back to my apartment and dined royally. Social graces are not my forte. Bill can attest to that.

I did a recording session one day in New York for a client I had been working for for several years. On this day there was a new director. She came on strong with hardness and an insulting manner with everyone. There is a protocol for working in a recording studio which is in place because it allows the work to be done efficiently and up to the best quality. Anyone who works in the business knows that. It soon became obvious to me that this woman didn't know what she was doing. But instead of leaving it up to those who did she barked nasty at everyone, trying to indicate her superiority. She didn't fool any of us. After she left we all agreed not to take up that contract again.

Phoniness is by no means confined to the upper classes. It exists on the street, though in different forms. The guy who shakes your hand and calls you "bro" might be reaching for your wallet.

Watch out for the politician, the pastor, the salesman, the lawyer and the teacher. The best thing to do is to develop a sense of the phoney, be alert to caricature instead of character, check for it in others and yourself and don't be fooled.

DB - The Vagabond
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Pick a happy thing and think about it.
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SUMMER QUIZ

This is not a contest.



A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.



Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?



You have all summer to answer if you wish.

12 responses so far.



DB