I Violated the Hate Speech Guidelines

Today I got a surprise shot from the blue from Blogger.com regarding a dusty old post from years ago entitled "ISIS -- Ambassadors for Islam," the title of which, by itself, may even by a violation of the Hate Speech Guidelines, for all I know. At any rate, the title tells what was considered offensive about the post. Back when it was written, years ago, the U.S. was engaged in war against ISIS--still is, but ISIS fails to command the attention it once did. Now the focus is upon Russia and China, once again. What is amusing is that the Hate Speech was tolerated when ISIS was the big bad guy of the media, but now that the bogeyman of the month club has selected a new bogeyman, the old post must be removed. I find Blogger.com largely irrelevant nowadays and was surprised to find a post flagged, in fact that has been the only time I have heard from Blogger in years. Here are my stats as of today:

Now you may ask, why is techlorebyigor a hotbed of Hate Speech on the Internet? The answer is, it is not, in fact most hits are on technical pages such as:

However, the irrelevancy of this blog cannot be overstated (understated?). There are few if any comments in the last five years and very little activity. Probably the greatest number of hits comes from bots. I have also noticed that over my last ten years of Google searches, I have not turned up any results that include any page on Blogger.com at all. In other words, the search algorithms are simply not choosing to promote Blogger for whatever reason. There is just not much traffic. As to the "Hate Speech" accusation, that does not bother me, because my feelings about this blog are rather ambivalent. If it is removed altogether, then that just tells me where we have come in this country. The Progressives these days are just as bad as the right-wing Christians back in the day and the McCarthyites, there is no fundamental difference in their believes other than they target different groups, have different bogeymen that they think need to be punished for misdemeanors and negligent acts. In the end, the Progressives will inspire the same sorts of reactions that the McCarthyites and the right-wing Christians did, and so the pendulum will swing once again, even if it takes generations to do so. The Liberals of today embrace censorship, force, compulsion and propaganda, the same dark arts that formerly were employed against the Liberals of the 1950s - 1980s, so it seems that they have learned all the wrong lessons and decided to emulate their oppressors. It is amusing, except for those caught up in the nonsense that is Left Wing brainwashing, propaganda and double-speak. I doubt any Liberals would actually fight for the U.S. in the event of any type of serious war or conflict with a powerful country such as China. They hate their own country so much, most of 'em would flee to overseas and just let things go, and in fact one can see a number of Americans becoming "Ex-Pats" to enjoy a higher standard of living overseas with better health care in particular and a lower cost of living. A good learning experience for the crypto-communists of the Progressive Left would be to relocate to China and live over there for a couple of years. Now, China enjoys a lot of advantages today, and seems to have high levels of patriotism as well, which is lacking in flag-burning places like California, that find grave sin in our country's history and believe that America is the originator of slavery and every other form of evil in the world. They can over to China and learn about life in a totalitarian country. I suppose it is all right most of the time, it is only when something out of the ordinary comes up, like the pandemic, that the bad things happen. I see that Blogger.com mislaid all the text I wrote above, as well as the pictures I uploaded, but this is because Blogger.com has degenerated over the years, as the developers decided in their infinite wisdom to dumb the service down. It takes too much of my precious time to struggle against Blogger and format the paragraphs in a proper manner, so here you are with a massive wall of text, courtesy of Blogger's inadequate text editing capabilities. As for the photos, let them be truncated, as they are. I do not really care about Blogger or this blog.

Conditions Where I'd Vote for Trump

I'd vote for Trump if the Democratic nominee came out against the Trade War and against tariffs or against Trump's immigration reforms.

Trump did a lot of housecleaning that was overdue. When he came into office, immigration policy was foolish and just basically sat back and waved people in all day long. There were a lot of ne'er-do-wells and opportunists from all kinds of countries flooding in, taking the jobs and driving wages lower. The reason wages are going higher is that that floodgate has been partially closed. There is no other reason of any importance. The mainstream media won't say so because the mainstream media has an agenda set by corporate America. Common sense dictates that an illegal from Guatemala is going to work a lot cheaper than an American born and raised here. Anyone who denies this or minimizes the importance obviously does not care about lower wage workers and prefers their elite friends and elite mindset. I really have a hard time wrapping my head around putting a bunch of Syrians, Iraqis, or whoever on a plane, and flying them all the way across half the world to the U.S., then granting them asylum based on, well, things are tough where you live. Why can't they go next door? Why is it they have to come to the U.S.? Because we are considered a rich country, that is why, and economic opportunism is the motive.

As for the trade war, China is getting too powerful, and that's not a negative in itself until you consider it is not a republic, not interested in peace and coexistence, but an authoritarian dictatorship and not all that much better than other authoritarian dictatorships in history. A world dominated by China will be very different and a lot closer to George Orwell's 1984 dystopian vision. Chinese leaders have no ethics, they are ruled completely by fear and greed and nothing else. For that matter, Russia is no better, and rather worse.

In the first place, Americans have been relying on cheap Chinese goods, often slave-made, for decades, and it's time to stop. Americans lost good factory jobs, and now we have the opioid criss and meth crisis. Opioids were never such a problem until Americans began having hopeless lives with low-wage jobs and no benefits, then you might as well get strung out on something because there is no hope and no future. Pop a pill, get a thrill, why not? Because there's nothing to look forward to. We need tariffs on a permanent basis, and 100% tariffs sounds like a great idea, until American companies get a clue about the cost of betraying the homeland. Companies like Apple should be taxed punitively, assets seized to compensate the homeland for all the jobs they stole from the American working class in order to reward China's dictators for slavery. All these American companies profit off slave labor in China, they try to hide it but the truth gets out.

Biden to me seems like a fool, I would definitely support Trump over Biden.

Warren, I would give a second thought to. I'd like to hear what she has to say about the trade war and immigration. If she is against all Trump's policies, then I go for Trump. I am afraid Warren, like any Democratic nominee, will be compelled to tow the line and support all the stupid and thoughtless policies that have deprived the U.S. of jobs, driven down wages, and let in just whoever, whenever. I don't see how she can buck the Democratic party and still make it as a candidate. Only someone like Trump can buck his own party. All the Democrats have to do what they are told to do by their corporate sponsors, or else the Democratic Party disposes of them, just like it disposed of Bernie Sanders back in 2016.

One thing I never liked about Obama is every foreign policy seemed to the detriment of the U.S., and it seemed like our country had to pay financially for everything. And for what? Gratitude? From whom?

Trump is right to point out to the European countries that they need to cough up more for defense. The only reason Europe has the big social safety net is that America pays for their defense. You know who ultimately pays? The American worker, that's who, the American worker that has no health insurance or crappy and confusing health insurance. It is time we withdrew all our troops from Europe and let them face Russia on their own. I bet the merest hint of that, and suddenly the European governments would be eliminating all the tariffs against American products, and subsidizing American products. They would pay 25% for their people to buy American. They would pay the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Better than Russian troops invading, eh? At any rate, there is no reason or need for the U.S. to foot the bill for Europe's security or for that matter, security anywhere else. There needs to be more focus on the homeland and on providing health care to the U.S. voter, who is going to consistently vote for the person who has his interests in mind.

All too often, the Democrats just play the race card, but there is no racial law remaining on the books. America is pretty fair to people of color, about as fair as it can possibly be. You can point to unpleasant incidents that happen every day, but they will always happen in a country of three hundred million people due to human nature. You can't legislate every remaining trace of racial preference away without coming across as oppressive and ridiculous and spawning a whole new generation of political opposition. The only thing that is real is classism, the way that the poor are treated. Life is hard for the poor. The most ethical way to achieve less poverty is provide lots of good-paying jobs with benefits such as vacation and sick leave.

Donations to NORML

I donate to NORML indirectly, or rather I influence others to donate, namely AMAZON. I received this note this morning:

This is your quarterly AmazonSmile donation notification. Your charity, The NORML Foundation, recently received a quarterly donation of $2,535.56 thanks to customers shopping at smile.amazon.com. To date, AmazonSmile has donated a total of: $43,812.06 to The NORML Foundation $134,890,393.33 to all charities Thank you for supporting The NORML Foundation by shopping at smile.amazon.com.

Perhaps it is ironic that I do not now use marijuana and tend to associate with those that do not use it either. Indeed, I have grown to like and respect several narcotics officers on the local police force. But in my view, and this is an important distinction to make, the narcotics officer is just doing his job. He is told what to do by the boss, that is, our elected representatives. It is not as though he has a choice--he does not. If he does not enforce the law, there will be somebody else who will. And the truth is, there may be some good that derives from Prohibition, even of marijuana, if it takes hardened criminals or hopeless addicts off the street, if it manages somehow to also bite into crime, although that is all debatable I suppose. There are many fools that drive around while smoking weed--they need to be put in prison. Driving while stoned is rather more common than I ever expected. Those who do so, need to go to jail before they kill someone.

Yet, if our elected officials were to legalize marijuana, then I feel that would make the narcotics officer's job easier in many ways, by narrowing the scope of what they do, and removing much of the general public from suspicion. You see, marijuana is and always will be popular, whereas the other, harder drugs--people will cooperate and collaborate to see such things as meth and heroin eradicated. Marijuana gains the sympathy of the reasonable person, but addictive hard drugs, in general, do not.

In my view, marijuana should never have been made illegal in the first place, by virtue of the fact it is less harmful than alcohol by any measure one might care to apply. NORML seeks to amend that historical injustice, and I will always support NORML for doing so. People should have a right to grow their own, smoke their own in the privacy of their own homes, and generally live their lives the way they want to. They should not be fired or lose custody of their children by mere association with marijuana.

I am not at all fond of the surging commercial interests in marijuana. I think it is loathsome and base, all of these merchants rushing late to the scene to profiteer by inflating the price of an easily grown weed. Sadly, our elected officials that have chosen to legalize marijuana were motivated less by the civil justice aspect and more by the prospect for profit and taxation, because human beings are ruled by fear and greed, and have precious little in the way of virtue in them.

Now we see the ugly aspects of commercialization of marijuana, the over-pricing, the crime, the taxation, the regulation, the competition pushing smaller business owners out, and so on. It is because people always want things easy. They do not want to grow their own, but instead buy a finished product in a nice shiny wrapper. Everything is a shiny product these days. That, to me, makes marijuana less appealing, not more. I liked pot when it had outlaw status. Now that is it becoming an item found in a store--bleh.

Recovery

Humans tend to be quite poor influences upon each other, actually. They lead one another, not to wisdom, but to materialism and its brothers, anger and greed. That is the main problem with socializing. Recovery time is needed after exposure to some humans, who are toxic. Even the mere sight or sound of some of them can be toxic. Drinkers, addicts, full of arrogance, anger, contempt, greed, lust, and cool indifference to anything except triggers for greed or anger. One creates buffer zones, shelters away from others. Facebook, et al are not very interesting because they inflict people upon one another, when people are already getting more than enough of each other. Who really wants or needs instant updates of every Joe, Dick, and Harry, or chat mode for that matter? What is lost to people of this era is communication with that which is eternal, and it is best expressed in silence.

Drinkers

As I complete my first full year of abstinence, I have been struck by the prevalence and tenacity of drinkers. Everyone I know drinks, friends, acquaintances, family, co-workers--and they are quite aggressive about drinking, as though it is a tribal rite, a custom enshrined in religion, and indeed it is in the Holy Eucharist.

I perceive among them the psychic force that enslaved me for so many decades of my life, to my detriment. It is black magic, demonic in nature, although few accept this, because the world views alcohol in a benign light, as it does many forms of evil. Evil approacheth with a fair face and speaketh with a silver tongue, laying an arm around thy back as if in friendship, while clutching a poisoned dagger.

As the months have passed, and many friends have offered me free drinks that used to be my favorites, I wondered whether I would fold. Not even. I am not even tempted. I smile.

No one knows my secret. Almost a year ago, I performed an I.O.B., half-thinking "what am I even doing?", but it worked just as certainly as the earth keeps me on her surface. Of course the groundwork was already laid down. There had been a welling of resistance to alcohol building up in me for many years. Read this blog and there are numerous posts against alcohol.

It should not bother me that other people are trapped in the clutches of this old ugly demon, but they are, and it is a cold satisfaction knowing I enjoy the better way. I would prefer they be better, too, and be stronger and brighter. I will be dead before too long, and the people I observe are the ones who must carry on. England's whole problem is drink, nothing but drink, and they drink because they lost their spirituality, as all people do. Those who reject Spirit embrace spirits to fill the void inside them. In doing so, they open up a gateway into their lives for demons to talk through them and to use them for purposes of malice. Is this so very hard to see?

Of courses, atheists aren't alone in tipping the bottle, although they are the lion's share. Have never known any atheist to remain sober for any great length of time, certainly not more than a month. As to Christians and Jews who drink, I have to wonder what kind of relationship they have with religion, what kind of understanding. Diminishing the Will and inviting any and all comers to enter does not seem like a very wise move for one who professes to believe in the Unseen. The Muslims have it right on this issue, I regret to say. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Darkness. It's a Good Thing.

I'm back for one simple reason. Blogspot allows my Firefox plug-in to render the background black, as I prefer. Wordpress, on the other hand, forces, compels the user to accept a bright, blinding white background. No one in their right mind should stare into the bright lamps of a modern monitor for longer than 2 seconds. I can only conclude that the Wordpress developers are complete buffoons. At any rate, I'm no longer a Wordpress cheerleader. Their editor is excessively complicated and their software is just not easy to use, not well-designed at all. Maybe for 2008, not for 2018.

Adieu

I like some of the posts in this blog, but they are fairly well-hidden by a deluge of not-so-great posts. In the past, I used to curate the blog, deleting posts that I felt did not reflect my higher self, those posts that seem inspired by lower impulses, base fear, greed or anger. Anger seems in plentiful supply now-a-days, served up by the media, and the flames fanned by public figures, who should know better, but they are just there trying to make a living off of the process. It seems to me that communication is a double-edged sword. There is much good that comes, much positive potential, but also there is a negative potential.

At any rate, I am rather bored by this blog and can't imagine anyone really finds anything of merit in it, beyond the occasional google search of a technical conundrum in, perhaps, some old version of Linux, which probably could have been fixed, had they merely upgraded to a newer version or better hardware.

I have ideas for new beginnings and want to leave this one behind, but I will not delete it. Instead, let it remain as a memorial to a period in a life, reflections on various political and social currents of the day.

One thing to bear in mind at all times is Heinlein's law: the two more plentiful substances in the Universe are Hydrogen and Stupidity.

Am I stupid sometimes? Without a doubt. My immune system does not annihilate all microorganisms of Stupidity. I am sure there are colonies thriving within me, and rogue cells, and the like. I regard myself as one example of a large population of an early model, an early breed preceding that which will come after us. Perhaps in the future, if H. Sapiens does not manage to mess everything up, which we do tend to do, perhaps in the future, there will be a better race, but I hope it will also be better from the moral perspective, most of all, and not merely more intelligent, stronger and fitter. The saddest outcome would be a race of supermen that had no scruples, bloodthirsty, cruel geniuses always at each others' throats. It remains to be seen. Hopefully, the process will be taken quite out of the hands of H. Sapiens and guided instead by a higher intelligence of some kind, artificial or else spiritual and natural. That is the prediction I leave with.

Share? Nah.

In the beginning, everyone found sharing and baring on the Internet to be fun. Share information, that others might see fit to offer information in return. Bare one's soul, to receive praise and consolation from an admiring audience.

Now, there are always the dark thoughts, who is making money off my content? When will this site be hacked, and all my personal information stolen? Who is mining this content of mine for nefarious or unfriendly purposes? Who is stealing it and pushing it off as their own?

Of course, on this blog, I have a sophisticated security system that defies anyone to steal my content. The security system is known as Low Quality. I post crap on here, because I know several things, which I will share with the Internets:

1. The first law is that no one cares. This law, people tend to forget, but one should keep reminding oneself that ultimately, no one cares. We are animals seeking to fulfill innate drives, and all the ideas and art are interesting but a bit of something in the background.

2. The second law is that all original content will be stolen, but this becomes more likely the better the content is. If you harbor a desire to feed thieves, sure, post your best work. Your reward will be to see another take credit for all your work.

3. The third law is all sites get hacked, because no one cares about security, people only care about making money. Review law #1 for clarity.

4. The fourth law is that occasionally, crazy nutcases get involved, and will find some way to hurt or harm anyone that they notice, and getting out there on the Internet gets one noticed.

With all these brilliant rewards awaiting you, aren't you just thrilled to post all your best art and ideas on the Internet for everyone? Don't you just get a warm fuzzy feeling about that?

The Difference Between Democrat and Republican

The biggest difference distinguishing the Democrats is they believe in democracy. One person, one vote. The Republicans believe in kleptocracy, stealing elections any which way you can, and then stealing from the public trust, once they are in office. Idealized by the Republican Party are Russia, North Korea, and China, "heaven on earth" as far as they are concerned, because the elections there are done the so-called "right" way, the Republican way.

Words

With the prevalence of gadgetry that focuses upon videos and images, words have declined a great deal. Most people are most unwilling to read or, if they do, to read carefully or closely. I have noticed that many replies I receive on Reddit consist of a single sentence, or two or three, at most, and reference the pop culture, such as Game of Thrones. Often, people make no remark at all upon the gist of my message, but seize upon some tiny detail and exaggerate it. There is no search for meaning and no desire for meaning. People use stock phrases, jingos and acronyms, lingo and just so much nonsense, one really gets the feeling that the living have nothing to offer. And this is the truth, they have nothing to offer.

I prefer the dead--authors, that is. Their words do have meaning and power. The living seem chained to the machine, receiving all their thoughts and impulses from the pop culture--YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, memes and so forth. The dead actually learned, struggled, worked and thought about things before putting pen to paper, and when they wrote, they chose their words carefully. So, give me a good book, and I am happy.

I conducted a little experiment on a Reddit forum, known as a subreddit. I crafted an original meme, an image, in a humorous vein. As expected, it proved popular, with over 300 likes. Yet when I then followed it up with replies in text, the likes were few and far between. My sense is that words just are not wanted. People lack the patience to digest words. They have grown accustomed to images and video. They are visual, not verbal. They cannot visualize things in their mind, they must have things graphically displayed before them. That is quite a handicap, when it comes to the subtle arts that rely upon visualization.

Sex

I read today that people are having less sex, at least in the civilized world. I think that sex was overemphasized, beginning in the 1960s or thereabouts, and the Western world, at least, is resuming the historical norm, in which sex was relegated to an occasional necessity for most people, although in truth, there is no necessity, the human population being what it is. Perhaps, in time, reproduction rates will drop off, and a gradual decline take hold, which would be preferable. The human population probably needs to drop about 50% in order to realistically cope with climate change. Governments need do nothing. Nature will take everything for else. Probably double-digit losses in the global population will occur every twenty years or so, brought on by droughts, fires and other natural disasters, but also in the inevitable world wars that will break out, and of which we see glimmerings already.

As to causes for the decline in popularity of sex, one need only consider the many pitfalls and liabilities to sex in today's modern society. There is little to gain, but much to lose, by getting naked with another human being. Disease ranks the highest, but after that pregnancy, then too, financial hardship brought on by blackmail, divorce, or crime. Emotions and drama seem to get involved wherever sex is concerned. Mainly though, today there are simply many more alternatives to sex, other ways to occupy one's time that are safer, cleaner, and arguably more fun. In the end, then, sex is just too much damn trouble for a lot of young people, and who can blame them?

Yep, Alcohol's Bad

In what should come as a surprise to no one, scientists are discovering new ways alcohol wrecks the body and mind. Every day I scan the headlines, and almost every day a new horror is uncovered with alcohol as the author. Either new research, new disease, or some new crime from an inebriated loser.

Yes, those who get inebriated are losers, because they are losing this world and lowering themselves to a lesser spiritual plane than this one, and this one is not all that great, to begin with.

One of my life's regrets is that I ever got habituated to the drinking of alcohol. Unfortunately, I found myself at a vulnerable age unprepared to cope with the stresses and pressures of school and sought solace in the bottle and to a lesser extent marijuana, which was always hard to come by and extremely risky to indulge in, because the entire nation was hysterical over "The War on Drugs," not the least my parents, who waged constant war over the use of marijuana. I think the wars and conflicts only exasperated the problem, by making it all seem like an issue of freedom versus totalitarianism. The irony, of course, is that now I do voluntarily, and with great zeal and enthusiasm, prosecute the strictures of complete and total abstinence from all inebriating substances, whereas before, when every punishment was levied and endless battles, physical and psychological and spiritual, were waged against me, I prevailed to continue in what I perceived as my own prerogative. Forever, people suppose they can control others, and perhaps they are able to control slaves, those without a strong spirit. But not everyone responds to the cycle of endless punishments.

The question arises, why did not anyone care to give me guidance or instruction, as to alternatives to drinking? Well, that is a complicated question. Of course alternatives were given from many directions, but an adolescent mind filters out almost everything quite effectively except for the ignorance prevailing among peers. It is probably not such a good idea to herd people of the same age group together all the time, because there is a lack of wisdom and a prevalence of ignorance.

At any rate, the result is not one I can fully understand. I do not know how exactly my life would have turned out any differently, had I never drank. Probably, I would have been more successful, if even slightly so. Maybe I would have merely performed better from time to time at various tasks and in various roles. Maybe the difference would have been slight. I did not drink to great excess, but I have found that even a bit is bad, definitely bad. The main problem is that the lower thoughts are allowed to surface, rather than remaining checked as they would be under normal sobriety.

Certainly, drinking is not the worst vice. I find Trump remarkable by his abstinence from alcohol, because he acts like a man that downs a quart of whiskey a day. Some people just are attuned to the lower impulses by nature. Just imagine Trump if he did drink.

Normal people find it difficult or impossible to give up what they view as light, moderate or occasional drinking. They only have a few glasses of wine at a party, what's the harm? Well, if that is the case, continue on, I say, and don't worry about me. If however, you do perceive to be lessened by your consumption of alcohol, and wonder how it is possible to give it up, then my secret is well-known. As a matter of fact, it is revealed by Alcoholics Anonymous. I am not a member, because I do not gain anything by joining groups of any kind. The secret is merely to have something in the way of spirituality, to replace one irrational practice with another. I find that this is not difficult, and why? Because I feel joy in the spirit. Great, blissful, mind-expanding and soul-expanding joy. Now, those who have not tried it or who have tried it and not felt anything like this will wonder what I am talking about. One just has to find the right practice that suits one's spiritual needs. The human race has laid out a rich and varied buffet with many aromatic dishes consisting of religions, philosophies, and various types of belief systems. So, examine what is offered by our forefathers, and choose one that suits. Be slow to choose and careful to evaluate.

I rank religions in terms of their appeal to me. Some are at zero, no appeal at all. Others are close to a "10". There are many in the middle. Very likely, the first choice is in the middle somewhere. Later, you may grow disenchanted and drift to something else. That happens sometimes, and it is okay. Not every faith is for everybody. I think that many ways are intended to suit many different personalities. The trouble with religions has always been when they try to control other people, including people that are not even a part of their religion. That brings trouble. But otherwise, if coexistence is possible, then everybody can be happy, or as happy as human beings ever can be.

Some religions, particularly those described as "conservative" or "strict", require life-long adherence, and when I say require, I mean that sanctions are imposed against apostates. Indeed, the Muslims in many countries are known for killing, harming or otherwise censuring those among their faith that stray to other belief systems such as atheism. I regard that as a spiritual crime and oppose compulsion in spiritual matters. Using force to control others points to spiritual emptiness, because if there was anything of spirit in a practice, no compulsion would be necessary at all. In many Muslim countries, people are killed or tortured for insignificant and irrelevant infractions against the majority religion. This is due to barbarism and ignorance, and I point it out because so many writers avoid doing so. If evil is not pointed out, then it becomes assumed to be good, and human beings can easily get things wrong. A religion becomes debased and wrong when it is used to justify acts of evil, this is what ultimately discredits a religion--not the apostates nor the atheists, but the ones harming the apostates and the atheists, because by harming, they make a lie of all that is in their religion.

Maud Gonne I Skipped

I had read long into the book on the G.D., but skipped the final epilogue concerning Maud Gonne, a historical figure I do not admire. She spurned the poetic genius, Yeats, for another man, who proved to be an alcoholic that brutalized her and raped her sister and young daughter. Just atrocious judgement, and in addition to that she advocated violence for political ends. I suppose this yearning for blood turned on itself and entered her own life in a frightening way. Such is often the case with those that want to marry the dark forces of nature.

Aristocracy

Aristocracy survives and thrives today, although titles have evolved from "Baron" and "Duke" to Vice-President and CEO. Humans repeat the same basic structures. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Little Innovations

Tiny innovations that may seem insignificant make all the difference in spicing up activities that have become routine, chore-like. One of the wonderful aspects of Donald Michael Kraig's book is that he opened the door to precisely that. He invited the reader to innovate, to experiment. This is the way to avoid the boredom and mindlessness that is spiritual death. The mind has to remain engaged, because it is so accustomed to being so. It must be given something to do. If not, daydreaming or otherwise wandering of attention ensues. The practice loses significance, meaning. One might as well not practice at all in that instance. Creativity must be employed, given the green light. There is no one right way.

Reading about the foibles and little failures of the originators of G.D. practice was at first disillusioning and disheartening, but then upon reflection, liberating, because it means there is no one formula, but there are formulae, and the human beings of a hundred years ago were just that, human beings, not that much better on balance than any of us, and certainly less, now that they are dust. I think there is more room for innovation than many suspect, and that hidebound adherence to tradition has pitfalls. A framework helps, but upon the framework, many different colors can work.

Celebrities' Cluelessness

I read that Myley Cyrus's house burned down in the fires sweeping California. I also read that these fires are periodic in nature, a natural feature of the landscape, and that they have been happening for hundreds of years. Perhaps the thought is not charitable, but I wonder why the hell these fancy big-time celebs did not know what time of day it was before they went investing millions of dollars on a palace destined to be incinerated? Why do human beings fail to perform due diligence? I will tell you why. Due diligence is something that highly sensitive individuals perform. Careful, cautious, detail-oriented, or quite the opposite of many of the world's celebs and needless to say, our President, Donald J. Trump, who is about as sensitive and detail-oriented as a lump of clay.

No one is glad for any disaster nor delights in the suffering of others, but I wish humans would get real. Study the earth, do not build in zones prone to earthquake, hurricane, fire, or similar natural disasters, and do not build in zones likely to be attacked by other countries. This is all self-evident, not rocket science in any way, shape, or form, and bi-partisan. I was against rebuilding New Orleans, because I believe New Orleans has a destiny that lies below the sea level, as do many of our coastal cities. We need to make peace with the fact that global warming will continue, even accelerate, unabated, and that the coastal cities will become underwater monuments to a civilization that once was. In reality, no federal or state funding should be allocated to coastal regions subject to flooding. If the locals want to waste their money, that is their own prerogative, but the money of others should not be wasted.

The Desk and Florence Farr

I dreamt I was working on a desk, trying to sort out a problem with its configuration, much as I had been out at work just yesterday. In my dream, a lady with long blondish hair tried to help, but she kept getting stuck inside the desk. It was a big desk with a complicated mechanism for adding and removing components and crawlspaces in which people were supposed to maneuver. I don't really remember much more than that, just struggling to work on sorting out a desk with a helpful lady, not too dissimilar, I might add, from the ladies I have been reading about in "Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses: Maud Gonne, Moina Bergson Mathers, Annie Horniman, Florence Farr" by Mary K. Greer.

Mary K. Greer is quite the scholar, no two ways about it, and here I had been formerly impressed by Donald Tyson. Well, Tyson's adulation of Mathers is now called into question by all sorts of revelations. Mathers does not seem like such a great character really in this book.

I think the lady in my dream may have been a thought-form of Florence Farr, who impressed me the most. She died of breast cancer in Ceylon in 1917. Mathers on the other hand died of the Flu epidemic of 1918. It would certainly seem that the practice of magic has no power against physical maladies such as cancer and other diseases. I think the evidence is overwhelming that if you want to be healed, medical science is the first stop and the last stop.

I read about Florence's troubles and travails in the above book. It seems to me she had a rather hard life, short on money much of the time, and although a successful actress, once she got into her fifties, no theatre was interested in her anymore, which is the usual case in acting. The young are what people want to go to see, the young and the beautiful, for their intensity and energy. Of course, the same is true in every profession.

I would have liked to have known Florence Farr. She had an affair with William Butler Yeats as well as Bernard Shaw, led the G.D. in London, and fought with Mathers and held her own ground. She was interesting and powerful in her own right, but also seems to me to have been gentle and kind.

Look Beyond the Human Factor

The most distressing thing about religions and other spiritual systems are what I call the human factor. Get humans involved, stuff gets messy. I just get nauseated thinking about some of the shenanigans I read about from time to time, done by erstwhile "spiritual" leaders supposedly in touch with their "Higher Selves" and/or divinity. Just a big "Hmph!" comes to mind. Self-delusion, more like, than divinity. But I imagine that Republicans must get nauseated too, if they ever examine their Republican idols up close. Trump, for instance. If I were a Republican, Trump would give me great unease.

I've suffered heartache learning all the backstory to the Golden Dawn in its various incarnations and revolutions throughout the last century and up to the present day. I wish I could read about calm, wise, mature leaders, but instead I read about petty, vindictive, selfish drama queens just striving for power and control over others. But you know, humans will be humans, and in point of fact, the early organization was composed of actual drama queens, that is, people involved in theatre. Of course they would opt for drama in every facet of their lives. That is their bread and butter, their chosen mode of living. So, those that followed appear to have been cast in the same mold, no?

I think I have to separate the system from the people espousing it. The people are often bickering, fighting among themselves, because let's face it, that's what we humans do. Maybe that's what we humans do best, is to fight among ourselves. The idea of cooperating is really strange and foreign, isn't it? Some liberal, hippy nonsense brought on by marijuana, right? So let's compete, why don't we, argue, fight and be at each other's throats all the time, because we don't really want to get along, do we?

For my own part, I think spirituality is best kept private, even secret to an extent, because it is at risk of great disillusionment and disenchantment when other people get involved. Always and forever, people strive to make a damn living out of spirituality, and that's where all the problems come in--with the money!

Racism Turns on Its Own Race

WW2 killed off more white people than the Crusades. White racism just never made any sense at all. White racism is just about hating other white people that don't believe the exact same thing.

If You Gave These Guys a Million Dollars

It is demoralizing to read about these pointless mass shootings in what is otherwise a wealthy, strong and wonderful country. Our people do not deserve to be exposed to such horror. If these amok angry white male shooters were given a million dollars and left on a deserted island with all the supplies and equipment they might ever want, they could never in all their lifetime put together anything approaching the killing power of a modern handgun. They are cavemen, stupid and desolate evil-doers that always gravitate to the tools of destruction and chaos, demonic spirits predestined to cause pain and suffering wherever they go. The best solution really would be to round them up and place a bullet through their head before they do the same to others. The trick lies in identifying them, like a needle in a haystack. For that reason, once a shooter goes amok, their parents should be seized and DNA forcibly extracted from their blood to determine genetic markers that might identify worthless murdering scum in the future. Also, it would be as well to sterilize their natural parents, and possibly extended family as well to the fifth generation, to prevent further calamities down through the generations. The human race has a problem of hygiene, in that anyone with functioning genitals procreates and then lets society nurture their offspring. Society did nurture the worthless shooters everywhere and paid the price. What needs to be done is get wise about human procreation and stop the shooters before they are even conceived. Stop them being born. Quality control. Just as we want quality control in manufacturing, so too is there desperate need for quality control in human procreation. Worthless scum cause 99% of the problems in the world.