Why Pessimism Is So Very Ugly

The other day I came across an interview on the Internet that I had the good fortune not to have chosen to watch. It was on the comical question of why the genre of science fiction has become so singularly "grungy." Think the incongruity of marvelously advanced technology coupled with a culture that is quite barbaric. (Sound familiar?) What is the message?

"Back in the day" (oh how I hate that phrase) of cold war the object of the "intelligentsia" was to prevent at all costs the rising tide of scientific optimism in the post war population. (Iron curtain "meme" and all that, you see.) So, what better way to proceed than by the newly re-minted method of doublespeak. So the CIA/MI6 project (perhaps better denominated as an excretion) called the Congress of Cultural Freedom was hatched. Freedom, you see, was the freedom of the irrational will. (Nietzsche had been given a bum rap by that "ruffian" Hitler. His philosophy needs must be rehabilitated.) Thus was modern "art" and all its ugly and pessimistic sequelae in so-called popular culture, including "science fiction" oh so "democratically" complotted against the very purpose of the experiment of the founding of the United States.

Thus we have had nearly a century's worth of a surfeit of pestilential ugliness, when what is needed is a "surcease of sorrow." I believe it is well past time to get back to the future of truthful optimism, and stand with the spirit of Beethoven's "Nicht Diese Töne," dear reader. Don't you?

The Riddle of the Inexplicable Lunacy of Religious Warfare

Now, were we (in the royal sense of "we," you understand)  to abjure as insane the practitioner of some assorted and senseless mayhem upon humanity,  then we were to be applauded as quite reasonable. Howsoever, if we were to opine that a hoary, long standing, time honored and venerable religion were guilty of the same then we were quite out of season.

How comes this, you ask?

Unfortunately, that question is out of order. It is simply tradition and may not be questioned. To do so is indicative of a rather nasty bit of bad manners in the questioner, don't you know. It were tantamount to the pulling of one's pants down and defecating in public, for instance. (Sorry for the frank language. But it needs must be said.)

So, thus, we glibly ignore the hecatombs of human immiseration and death continuously piling up ever and anon at the altars of religious fervor. And what is the object of worship of  this immemorial legacy of such inhumane insanity?

Must you ask? It is, of course, the love and worship of Money! The which, is merely a charade, a chimerical invention-- like the zero. Yet, we are enslaved and in mental fetters, as it were, and still, to this day, ready to kill or be killed at the drop of a hat, if anyone, in authority,  were to pronounce that money no longer had any value.

Alas, this is the sorry and sad state of affairs in which humanity, even at this late stage of its existence, continues to find itself. Will we ever outgrow this delusion?

That is the question.

Mind Control Research is Prima Facie Evil

"New brain research refutes results of earlier studies that cast doubts on free will August 7, 2012 by Bob Yirka in Neuroscience (Medical Xpress) -- When people find themselves having to make a decision, the assumption is that the thoughts, or voice that is the conscious mind at work, deliberate, come to a decision, and then act. This is because for most people, that’s how the whole process feels. But back in the early 1980’s, an experiment conducted by Benjamin Libet, a neuroscientist with the University of California, cast doubt on this idea."

I think the appropriate question about this entire line of "research" is what would motivate anyone in attempting to prove that humanity is without free will? I cannot imagine anything other than a rather dark and sinister explanation for such a compulsion.

The Science of Interpreting Dreams

Do angels truly visit us in that sleeping state of semi-consciousness when we awaken to vivid recollection of what we were sure just moments before was as real as daylight? If we dare to imagine that there is but one unresolved waking nightmare facing humanity then interpretation of these dreams is all of a piece. This is the essence of how monotheism as far back as the Temple of Amon staked its claim as a universal lawgiver through its most famous pupil Moses.

Then, as today, it was necessary that the escape from slavery led mankind away from that most foul of beliefs. The abject belief that mere irrationality in the affairs of men shall forever immutably hold sway. So it was that our lawgiver Abraham Lincoln intoned the sentiment of the ages that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Today, the slavery that confronts us is palpable. It is that miserable, moldering tale that there are those families who are born to inherit the rule over the fate of nations. These are today's equivalent of the pagan would be gods. We must appease them, of course, because the unthinkable collapse of their monetary system sends a shiver of irrational fear up our spineless zombielike state of fecklessness. Or so we are told. This is supposed to be our collective conscience (the which makes cowards of us all) given to us as if from a heavenly choir. We must worship at its altar. The Queen is after all so charming in her way! (Even the rock stars-- those fairest children of stage-- have been knighted!) Ah--tradition!

Thus we have our innermost psyche transfixed as if by the Gorgon herself. So are our dreams being manipulated by the basest fear to submit to the attendant ills of austerity and unending wars over dwindling fixed resources. All for naught. It does not have to be this way. For we have better selves that can resolve these ills. Look to that better self dear reader... It is lurking there, even in your most fanciful of dreams.