Musings

I don’t recall how I came upon it, but I have spent far too much time mulling the various messages offered by the essay You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss. In an effort to move on and get something productive done today, I hereby announce my intention to fob off at least a few of them on to you readers.

I have a friend who is into guns in a big way. He has been since before he was old enough to buy one without his mother's permission. He loves to shoot. He also is a computerphobe. He son gave him a computer. He refuses to use it. We were talking the other day and he noted to me that among his shooting friends, almost none of them use the computer. To me, this is mind-boggling. It is like choosing not to read or some such thing. But so it is with this group of people.

Lord Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Kevin Barrett wrote a very interesting article on "ponerology." Last night my mind piped up and asked me if I'd even considered that perhaps sociopathy is a function of one's position in the pecking order rather than the apparently current belief that it is something an individual is either blessed with (sarcasm intended) or not. My experience on this planet leads me to believe that this question may be worthy of consideration.

Within the past month or so, I’ve encountered an astonishing assertion in several places. Not only is the assertion astonishing to me, it’s surprising that individuals whom I know to be intelligent and critical thinkers have offered it. This idea is—to perhaps oversimplify it a bit—that “brains are brains”. That is, absent congenital defect or physical trauma that obliterates part of one’s brain, all normal human brains are roughly equivalent in functionality. I’m going to try to refute this idea in two different ways, because each seems important. They may not appear to be so different to others, however.

Okay, so lemme see if I can get this blog thingie off the ground... Grunt grunt groan push ...

You remember when you would replace all of that great alcohol that you stole from your parents' liquor bottles with water, carefully marking the side of the bottle first, so as to remember how much it took you to get wasted? Well, I don't either because I never could stand alcohol until I turned about 40 or so, and my parents didn't smoke pot, so I had to... well, I'm getting off track here.

I know I’m far from the sharpest reptile slithering around, but even after a supposed clarification, I am still at a loss to grok Francois Tremblay’s recent post, Why Hierarchies Are Immoral.... Perhaps someone here can help enlighten me.

And the punch line—so to speak—is that no one is ever finished when his life ends.

Yes, it is once again time for my annual IntrospectFest, tucked behind the velvet curtain so that no one need see it who isn’t interested.

Especially if one expands the simile to include making new friends ...

I am finding the ongoing changes in and challenges to my thinking interesting, and sometimes even amusing. To be clear (and repetitive, I know), I have been a science-oriented person as far back as I can remember—wondering about how things work and how to test ideas and wanting proof for everything. I still consider myself a scientist, even though I have not worked in that realm for years ... yet the way some individuals apply scientific theories is problematic for me.

I'm not sure just where to start... but this has been increasingly bothering me for quite a while and, if nothing else, trying to put it into words here - and any comments from you folks - may help better than thrashing around in my own mind.

I am a lifelong Christian. I've studied much of religion, both Christian and other, and have given much thought to it all. I've gone through a number of churches, having been a Catholic for nearly 25 years until recently, and so made a good faith effort to be part of that community in a number of ways.

Isn’t amazing how a person can dance all around a common theme without seeing it? It seems to me I’ve been doing that in my recent posts—both implicitly attack the authority inherent in many current systems. Yet I was clueless as to that until just now.

I don’t recall where I saw the link to the Harper’s article, The revolution will not be pasteurized: Inside the raw-milk underground, but I’m glad it came to my attention. The article is quite long, but very interesting, and mostly excellent. Oddly enough, it isn’t the subject of raw milk that leads me to write about the article.

A deceptively simple question, perhaps ... but something I’ve been pondering for quite some time now, actually. It burbled into this question on my recent cross-country drive.

Ignore practical considerations of cost, “relevance”, duplication, etc. What would you focus on in the museum you would love to create?

I’ll provide my answer in the comments, after giving you fine individuals a chance to answer.

Well, I survived the trip. Actually, it was much better than that bare statement would suggest, in most respects.

I’ve been thinking a fair bit about Pint of Stout’s upcoming thought–party, An Inquiry into the Soul. Although I’m not sure how to accomplish it just yet, I hope to contribute. Then, The Shadow’s Thoughts on Ataraxia veered my rambling ideas into a related (but only tangentially) direction: what is a successful life?