Definitely not good enough

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Among the many books I have, there are three which I will never read.

Book 1 is independently published. I received the book as an entry in the Benjamin Franklin Awards, an annual book competition for independent publishers in which I am a judge. I will not tell you the author nor the name of this book. I do not want to embarrass the elderly man who wrote it.

Book 2 is Syndey's Comet by Brian Herbert, son of the late SF grandmaster Frank Herbert. I don't even like to TOUCH this book. It is that bad. I might touch it long enough to hurl it and lots of profanities at Herbert if I ever meet him.

Book 3 is actually the kind of book I'd genuinely LOVE to read. But, I'm not gonna.

It has nothing to do with the writing of the book.

It has a bit to do with the content of the book.

It mostly has to do with the way a handful of people treated me.

"Baker, that don't make a bit of sense, even for you," you tell me.

It's just the way I am.

The book cover is at right. Looking at the cover, this would be a perfect fit for me.

I ride and like it a LOT. I hugely enjoy philosophy. Combining the two for me just, well, it's a case of cosmic congruence for me.

Except it's about Harleys.

I have nothing against the Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Correction. I do have something against Harley-Davidson in a way, hence this column. But what I have against this American motorcycle has nothing to do with the bike, but everything to do with a few people who ride Harleys.

More specifically, just a few people I have met over the years, more recently one in particular in the county where I live.

I 'splain.

I ride a Honda 1100. I call it Purple Haze. It has the loudest exhaust of any bike in the county.

Some time back I was talking with some other riders who ride Harleys. I asked about the rides they take. For non-bikers, "ride" has a variety of meanings. In this case, I mean a road trip.

I was immediately informed by one of the riders that their rides are for Harley owners only. No one else is welcome.

My Honda and I are not good enough, apparently, to ride with them.

This is an attitude I've seen expressed by a number of other Harley riders. Sometimes it's done without malice or an intent to discriminate, such as pouring rice under an import ride at a bike show. The rice means it's leaking. That's just funny.

The rider I mention above was clear in his discrimination. I am not good enough to associate with them.

He's exactly right. I am not good enough. I'm too good to hang around people who insist on dividing the world based on arbitrary information and refuse to accept other people.

Anyway, as to the book - I tried to read it. I read the opening chapter. The author even discussed the Honda motorcycles. He said clearly, the Honda brand is a better, tougher, longer-lasting and more reliable motorcycle than a Harley (which is also backed up by maintenance and repair records from around the world). He also said there's just something about riding a Harley that cannot be found in any other motorcycle.

Agreed.

But as I read the author's musings my mind continually ran back to the rider who thinks I'm beneath him. I thought about other Harley riders I have known who didn't exactly express the same opinion, but made it clear through their actions that I'm a lesser rider because my steel steed is a Honda.

What infuriates me to no end is that this kinda attitude goes beyond HD discrimination.

What really makes me mad enough to chew nails is: This kind of attitude is pervasive in society. We judge people based on choices they make which have NOTHING to do with the kind of person they are. For instance, Justin Beiber fans are sneered at, as is the singer himself. When done without malice, this is funny. When done to create discrimination, it's just freekin' wrong. If someone like Beiber's music, that's their business! It's none of your business and should not affect how you treat them.

Exactly like that.

Even beyond that, what takes my anger to the outer limits is:

I do the same damned thing. I will judge people based on a factor that has nothing to do with who they are. I consider that factor and decide I am better than they are. I have even done so in this column, expressing an opinion that I'm better than the discriminatory Harley riders. Never mind it is a defensive reaction.

Dammit.

That is NOT the person I want to be, NOT the person I try to be and it pisses me off beyond belief.

I have simply got to do, correction, BE better.

You have no idea...

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The vast majority of people in the United States have no idea what they ingest or absorb on a regular basis.

As remarked this week at the County Commission meeting, sheep parts are often processed in things people put into their bodies. By parts I do not mean the meat as in lamb chops.

No animal testing needed. The four-legged sheep are dead.

"Lipstick from sheep guts." was a comment made at the Commissioner's meeting.

Really?

This page is a PIA to read. I suggest highlighting the text and it becomes easy to read. But it does tell you what sheep byproducts are used for, including cosmetics. "Also, fats and fatty acids play an integral role in chemicals; glycol is found in brake fluid and glycerol is the ingredient that makes asphalt stick together. To top things off, most people don't realize that products they use on themselves everyday, such as: makeup, cosmetics, tanning lotion, shaving cream, and hand cream, contain sheep fat and fatty acids."

I'm laughing insanely right now.

The same people who would have conniption fits simply SEEING a pile of sheep fat have no problem smearing it on their lips and eating it. If you don't think you wind up eating the lipstick you wear, then you have cognitive issues I'm not going to be able to fix.

Then again, I have been wrong before. 

Really? Sheep placenta? Face cream?

Somebody needs to explain this to me.

It's entirely fine to wear sheep placenta (see right image) but lipstick made from sheep fat is right out. Admittedly a critter had to die to deliver up the rendered fat, but that's also a side issue. The sheep died to provide meat. enterprising folks learned to use the fat rather than just throw it away.

As for other uses for sheep byproducts, sausage casing is made from the chitterlings. Chitterlings are the intestines, in case you missed that. 

The hooves, bone and horns go into marshmallows, piano keys, gelatin desserts like ice cream, yogurt, and jello.

For you baseball fans, remember the outside is leather. The inside of the baseball "contains processed blood."

I am beyond amused right now because of the massive discomfort and revulsion some of you are experiencing.

Compounding my delight is the fact that the vast majority of people have no idea what they are eating when they eat "food." 

If people really bothered to learn about what they eat ... I don't know. Thinking more critically, I don't believe eating habits would change. People gotta eat or die. Given the choice, most folks will eat rather than starve.

Even more discombobulated than usual

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Most people have a stream of consciousness. Most people also have a mild, meandering creek that's lovely to look at and ride down. Me? I have a Class VI rapids stream of consciousness. Y'all know that, or should by now.

So with that in mind, I warn you now: Today's rambling may be more disjointed than usual. It's a topic I've been rassling for a good long while now. I do not expect to achieve a resolution in my mind, but I have to get this out.

I start with this news item from the HuffPo. You need to scroll down toward the end of the article to get to the good part. I am HUGELY looking forward to this experiment being repeated. If it is repeated and found valid, this it's going to amount to a bitchslap across the face of a lot of people. At the same time, it is NOT going to be 100 percent validation for a bunch of other people. If it can't be repeated, it'll be listed as yet another anomaly.

Ooooooo!

What we have here is a case of science possibly validating something that religion has long stated.

Oooooo.

So here's my conundrum.

I do not claim to be a scientist nor do I claim to understand everything science does.

Neither do I claim to be an expert of religion nor do I understand everything that God does.

So.

SCIENCE

I have read that accepted scientific fact at one time stated the earth was flat. We now have evidence the earth is round.

The science of A'Tuin.

I point this (and many other now-overturned scientific "facts") to certain people. The most coherent reply I get is that "What we state as fact is what fits the available evidence and our understanding of that evidence."

Meanwhile I mentally burn out another transmission."Yeah, but you (science) were wrong! Not just once but a BUNCH of times! So why should I trust everything you say now?"

"Because we're right," is the answer I get. I truncate here for space reasons. But semantically, that's exactly the answer provided.

And so a tautology is launched that would give Ouroboros a choking fit.


Of course the same exact thing can be said of religion. Further some of the scientific "facts" which were wrong were based on religious teachings.

F'dang. More tautology.

Occasionally I get an "I don't know" as an answer. When faced with that as an honest answer, the debate is over.

RELIGION

The chief question for religion is "why." Why anything and everything. Actually, the same can be said for science.

God at work?

Periodically someone who claims to have a skull-to-cosmic-consciousness connection to the great creator will write down (so to speak) what that creator dictates. Over the course of human existence, plenty of people have stepped up as a spokesman for the one true god. Most - correction - all are ridiculed. Ridicule is the resort of those who run out of intellectual ammunition. Both sides are equally guilty of that kind of fight.

Religion has often been proven wrong. The dogmatic move forward, ignoring or rationalizing away the mistakes of the past. And yet, science has proven as factual many things which religion has stated. Prior to the science proving it, it was pooh-poohed as bushwa.

Is any of this sounding familiar?

When asked for proof, the essence of the reply of the religious is "God said."

Calling Ouroboros. Paging Mr. Ouroboros...

Rarely, less often than in scientific circles, someone will stand up and say "Well, I just don't know." Argument over.

MAKING SENSE

In this debate which has raged ever since the first shaman clobbered the first person to question him, I find myself increasingly retreating into the statement Socrates made popular - All I know is that I know nothing.

Science, at least the hard sciences, as I understand it is an attempt to make sense of the physical world.

Religion, at least as I understand it, is an attempt to make sense of the human condition.

Move the most infinitesimal distance away from either of those positions and the two overlap. The overlap is where the arguments reside.

For those interesting in walking out to the far end of science, you can read of how our universe is one of many, perhaps unlimited, how our "laws" of physics don't apply in those other places, how our "laws"  and "facts" were created at the instance the universe was created and at least one noted big thinker who says gravity does not exist. Really. Boiled down to the essence, these advanced theories are the same thing as religion. To wit: Something happened. We don't know what, why or how. We're trying to figure that out.

The same stuff exists on the religious side with various levels or realms of existence, what happens there and so forth.

As Rebel says, "my head parts hurt."

ONE MORE THING

Science has not proven the existence of God one way or another. As my scientific friends tell me, lack of proof is not proof. In other words, saying "It does not exist" is not a valid scientific statement. Saying "We do not know if it exists" is a valid statement.

On the religious side, mankind is attempting to bring a human-order and understanding to a cosmic consciousness. Understanding that metaphors are always inexact, I tell you that trying to reduce God to a human understanding is is like trying to teach calculus to Hairball, my daughter's cat.

Blow 'em ALL up

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Many many years ago I said when I owned a house, I'd have book shelves in every room. People who've been to my place have seen shelves in every room.

Every room.

On two different shelves I have a set of books some of which have profoundly influenced me and helped shape me into the person I am today. They are also my all time favorite reads. The list includes The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dune, Tales of the Old Duck Hunter's Association and Other Drivel, My Health Is Better in November, Stand on Zanzibar and This Is Your Captain Speaking. The Bible is not included in this list because the above books are all first edition (except Dune) and cannot be replaced.

To this list I must now add Ralph Peters' work, The War After Armageddon. This surprised me immensely.

I found the book in a rack at a discount store, a chain of stores I routinely visit because I can get novels for about 20 percent or less of the original cover price. I nearly passed over Peters' work because I seriously do not like war novels and don't care for action novels. But the price and the fact that it was a novel of what could happen in the future made me buy it.

Egad.

The writing is good. Not great, but good. The character development is very good, not awesome, just very good.

The exploration of human interaction with politics and religion as the basis for those relationships is as good as anything I have ever read, including Dune. That kind of discussion cranks my tractor.

Peters, a former military man, uses war in the Middle East as a plot device for his exploration of what can happen when a large group of people is simply pushed too far. Egad. Egad. Egad. Egad.

The scenario he posits is frightening realistic and to my thinking quite possible. Religion and politics are not a metaphor in this book. It's reality and can be seen right now.

One of the statements which struck me hardest was made by the protagonist Lt. Gen. Gary "Flintlock" Harris. He said that if it was possible, he'd blow up every part of the planet over which war in the name of religion was fought.

Arg. Confusing.

He said he'd blow up any rock that caused religious division.

Yes. 

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes to the whatever power necessary to blow up every religious rock in the world that has sparked a war.

Blow them up. Turn them into dust.

If you serve a god that is more concerned about a piece of dirt than the people of this world, then Ralph Peters suggests and I clearly state your god has his priorities in the wrong place. Attaching so much religious significance to a piece of dirt or a building that you'll kill someone over it — No. Blow it up so it can't belong to any religion. If a religion tries to lay claim to it again, blow it up again. I say that knowing what the Old Testament states.

Peters' work in this book is infinitely forgettable for his writing ability, somewhat forgettable for his character development, but the message in the book is one that needs to be writ large, remembered and lived.

If you follow me, we're both in deep kimchee

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This not about church or religion.

Some time back I interviewed a Church of God pastor from West by God Virginia. He runs a church which his grandfather ran. He's been there more than two decades and has turned down promotions from the COG international office.

talk about a parking problem...

His church is on a leveled off mountain. At the time, the congregation was waiting for a mining company to flatten another mountain so they could build a bigger sanctuary.

He told me "The passion of the Christ is 'I will never leave you and I will never forsake you.' The passion of too many minister is 'I will leave you and I will forsake you.'" He went to to say a church pastor should buy a cemetery plot in the community where that pastor serves.

As the COG pastor said, it takes an average of 18 months to get to  the point of trusting someone. So, just as the congregation is willing to trust the preacher, he's gone.

I brought this up a while back on FB, about how church leaders are experts showing up and leaving in short order. Some preachers don't even bother to unpack, I believe. I know a few who absolutely will not stay in one place for more than six months. I also know a few people who won't hold a job for more than a few months. Ahem. Anyway, the average pastor stays at a church for 18 months.

A friend reported a conversation from another pastor who said "I know it's time to leave when they start looking to me instead of Christ."

I suggest the pastor in that case ain't doing his job.

Except that he very well may be.

He's dealing with humans, after all.

The problem is when the Bible describes us as sheep, it was dead right on. We need a leader. Even the most devout anarchists I know pledge allegiance to leaders. They espouse the views offered by others. They demand everyone walk down the path someone else created. They look for inspiration from others.

Leaders worth following are a rare commodity. Even more rare is that individual willing to stand up and say "I'm going another way. You can follow me if you want to, but I am not your leader."

I hesitate to say that humans want to be accepted, but I believe that to be the case. Even the most misanthropic person on the planet wants to be included, whether or not he or she will admit to it. That inclusion may be only one other person, but the isolationist is going to want someone. The Unabomber comes to mind when I think of an isolated person. And yet it's still obvious from his writings that he wanted to be a part of, not apart from. If he truly wanted isolation from humanity, he'd have never written his manifesto.

A good cult!

The problem is people are far too willing to attach themselves to someone who is a good salesman and not a good leader. Cults are made by people who can fake a connection to other people with such sincerity that it reaches a primal need for a human to human connection. This is why I say the pastor who said he was leaving may have done his job. It's also why I criticize the pastor.

This is also why this nation has elected the same person with a different face to be the president for as long as I've been an adult. It's the Cult of Personality.

This is also why we are splintering into an increasing number of factions.

Until we are willing to break away and find a leader worthy of the title, even if that leader is ourselves, don't expect much to change. When, and if, we do manage to rally behind a leader worthy of leading us, I doubt most will have the intestinal fortitude to be led.

Let 'em get in the way

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This article posits a query which has been going on for as long as I can remember.

Full disclosure - I often have problems remembering last week. So I really have no idea how long this debate has been going on.

No problem here.

But still. If the boy wants to play with dolls, let him. If the girl wants to be a ninja, more power to her. Let the kids be kids.

More to the point, get involved with the kids. When they want to do something, help them do it. In raising my two, I did stuff with them. Lots of stuff. Whatever they wanted to do which included (when they were small) riding around checking on the cows.

We did things together. Now my son is 16 and my daughter 14. Both hug me regularly in public. In front of their friends.

Neener. Neener Neener.

Even MORE to the point, get your little ones to help YOU.

When my two were small, I got them to "help" me frequently.

It took twice as long to accomplish the task v. me doing it by myself. Doesn't matter.

Atta boy!

I showed them I cared. I showed them they mattered to me. I taught them that they could. They now have skills. They can do, by themselves, what we used to do together. They can even doing it faster than I can in some cases.

I also taught them skills that are sadly lacking in today's world. My two can put food on the table straight from the source. They have fed the family several times over in fact.

I spent time with them, time that can never get retrieved. They spent time with me. We did things that had to be done and things we wanted to do. The two were not always the same.

The point is, WE did it. How many of you parents can say the same thing? You new parents, will you be able to say it years down the road?

What I did is not hard. In fact, it was beyond easy. I capitalized on something.

Children absolutely LOVE to help. Guaranteed.

I can take ANY toddler, no matter how scared he or she is of me and hand the little one something and say "Can you help me take this to (insert some person a short distance away)." The kid is zooming off with whatever it was in his hand. It gets delivered, He hauls back, zooming past me and giving me a High Five at the same time.

Children have a major desire to be needed, wanted, to contribute and feel useful. When you feed into that, you build real character into that child. You teach him or her that they can matter, they do matter and what they really will make a difference.

It's now so ingrained in my two that they go out looking for things to do to help other people. Unfortunately this has not translated into doing stuff around the house. Someone else's house? They are all over it.

Getting back to the original subject, if the kid wants to play with dolls, let the kid play. If it really bothers you (and it should not, unless the child is doing vivisectionist work), then ask the kid to HELP you do things. Equally good, ask the child if you can help with what he is doing.

Thanks but, nah. I'll pass

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Social media has been beyond awesome in allowing me to connect to people I lost touch with. Rebel, Mary, Phil, Tom and James come to immediate mind. They are part of a crew who took me through one the hardest periods in my life and made sure I came out the other side.

I've also reconnected with most of my graduating class. Two major exceptions. Marcus, well, I'm not gonna reconnect to him in this reality. In the next world I certainly hope so. Marcus was killed in a car wreck in his freshman year of college.

The other major exception I shan't discuss here.

Then, social media has thrown some names up in front of me from people I left behind (and in turn was left behind) years ago. As I see these names and pictures pop up, I look and wonder if I should reach out.

Then I remember what we went through.
 
I emphasize we because it took two (or more) to tango. 

Certainly I was the cause of strife in far too many cases. At the same time the other person was the cause of strife in far to many cases.

We were both an exacerbating agent far to many times.

There's certain memories that need to remain where they are. Forgiveness is granted. Forgetting is done as long as I don't have to deal with them now.

You may very well say we've grown, up, out and older. Certainly this is the case. Maturity definitely brings a different outlook on certain matters.

Irrelevant to me where some folks are concerned. While I must truthfully thank them for helping shape me into the person I am today, I really don't need to relive what it took to get me to this point.

So, why I say thank you for the potential re-connections, Social Media, I say, nah. I'll pass.