Bill,
All right. Let’s get down to business. In “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, “life” is redundant. One might as well say, “air, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. If there is no life, then there is no capacity to pursue liberty and happiness. Having said that, I concede that we cannot just ignore the concept of living. What is our right, however, is to defend ourselves. And we cannot simply delegate that to government because frequently government is the problem. So I offer a new triumvirate of rights: The right to defend ourselves, expect justice, and to pursue and maintain property. I am sorry about the adjustments, but these basic principles apparently do not come down from mountains on stones, and it is possible for those living today to improve on the works of our forefathers.
Thanks for the death song, but like the weather, my focus changes daily. Death does not seem central this day. It is related. Death concentrates effort. But my effort appears concentrated on determining the basic purpose of life. We cannot ask anyone for that answer, but we can surmise. We can look about and see what seems most prevalent. I like the analogy of an acorn. The acorn seems to need to form a tree. We seem to need to have a purpose. We conceptualize and try to reach goals. While that might get corrupted and we can grasp for noxious goals, it appears that people, like acorns, are destined to become what they can become. We create, largely ourselves.
All right. Let’s get down to business. In “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, “life” is redundant. One might as well say, “air, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. If there is no life, then there is no capacity to pursue liberty and happiness. Having said that, I concede that we cannot just ignore the concept of living. What is our right, however, is to defend ourselves. And we cannot simply delegate that to government because frequently government is the problem. So I offer a new triumvirate of rights: The right to defend ourselves, expect justice, and to pursue and maintain property. I am sorry about the adjustments, but these basic principles apparently do not come down from mountains on stones, and it is possible for those living today to improve on the works of our forefathers.
Thanks for the death song, but like the weather, my focus changes daily. Death does not seem central this day. It is related. Death concentrates effort. But my effort appears concentrated on determining the basic purpose of life. We cannot ask anyone for that answer, but we can surmise. We can look about and see what seems most prevalent. I like the analogy of an acorn. The acorn seems to need to form a tree. We seem to need to have a purpose. We conceptualize and try to reach goals. While that might get corrupted and we can grasp for noxious goals, it appears that people, like acorns, are destined to become what they can become. We create, largely ourselves.
Let’s sharpen this a bit. Acorns become; they become trees. We create; fences and computers, but also our identities. We are acorns with purpose. Our liberty is to become what we can become, although that is not a passive process like the acorn, but an active one, like perhaps a higher power. We are "artists" and our purpose is to create art (broadly speaking), but in the process we also produce ourselves--individual people with names, dispositions, and if successful, with style. Contrary to politically correct, art is not arbitrary like contemporary education where all are winners and all shall have prizes. Art gains its leverage by sharing a connection with providence. Delusions and self-centered fantasies are not art. They are delusions and self-centered fantasies—narcissistic scribbling. Art finds its beauty in its symmetry with providence, with its connection to the materials provided by whomever or whatever created the universe. That higher power defines art, not us. Thank God, Spirituality, or Providence for that!
So my focus today is on what might be my purpose. As best I see it, it appears to be a responsibility to elucidate my personal truth on what we are, how we got here, and where can we go. And while I understand that few are likely to care about this project, that fact does not abrogate my responsibility. To the degree that people go in dangerous directions simply because they do not understand the terrain, it becomes someone's responsibility to chart the landscape. We do not err simply because of ignorance, but ignorance is the easiest mistake to correct. The problem is, however, that while you can lead people to solutions (assuming you are correct), you cannot make them drink.
I am not a Door’s fan. There seems to be nothing I can do about that. I listened to The End and only wished it would. I saw it on Youtube and James appeared to be stoned. He started riots, embraced aggression, and ended up killing himself at the magic age of twenty-seven. I find nothing to admire there and do not feel that even angelic talent would redeem these shortcomings. And I do not resonate with his talent. Gloria seems like a meeting that never quite comes about. Probably just as well for Gloria.
Morrison strikes me as more of a problem than a solution. He seems to be just another messiah who feels he intuits superiority and intends to force everybody to his position. Nothing new there. One could look through all of his videos and find little if any humility.
Taking a general view of lives, mine included, I sometimes wonder about my parents. Constitutionally I appear to be an agreeable person. I have always cared about animals, the underdog, and until recent years simply stood aside for anyone who cared to pass. That is nice, I guess, although it has its problems. A little Morrison might have been good for me. Is my dispositon to be unabtrusive genetic? Am I like either of my parents in this way or does it come from being a "castaway"? I will never know. Not that it appears to matter much, but the questions never go away. Over the years you could color me light gray, and that is probably okay.
But here comes the paradox. While I now have misgivings about swatting flies, I aspire to be effecient with my guns should they become necessary. I do more than aspire. I train weekly and while I am slow, and the target is stationary, it never gets away. (Wyatt Earp said, “Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.”) If the bad guy presents himself to me pinned on a clothesline at 21 feet, he is gone. I have gotten quite into this right to defend life, liberty, and property stuff, along with its corollary of not counting on the state to help. My capacity to function here, any constitutional congeniality aside, appears to correlate with the degree to which I understand the world. If the bad guys (state sponsoreed or otherwise) act, and I can see where the next six moves go, then it becomes impossible to wait through the next 3-4 moves while the situation collapses and response becomes impossible. Forewarned is forearmed. That might become my motto. I should engrave it on my next 9 mm, which might arrive tomorrow.
There is quite a contrast to the song I am linking here and Morrison's, The End. The people in the video are my kind of people. I like everyone of them. They all see themselves as limited, and what is cool, they make attempts to improve. There is no narcissism there. I w
ould like to live in such a community. But one thing is likely missing, which by addressing could form a significant purpose. What might be missing is their lack of ability to stop bad guys from plundering the town. They probably need to coordinate their defense (against government and gangs) and practice it regularly, as well as understand history, economy and government. ("Those who expect to be ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.--Thomas Jefferson) Individually they would fall to the Clantons or the Obamas shooting up the town. But together they stand. Here is the video. It is pretty different from The Doors, but such is nature of value.
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