Strange night, I dreamt I was blind (must’ve had my eyes closed) and on the streets of a city in Italy, maybe Portofino, I don’t know, I couldn’t see it.  Birds fought for scraps in the street, children begged parents for a treat,  old boats bobbed and slapped in the waves, the wind whistled lightly past discount sale signs, and banners and awnings, flowers smelled fragrant and spaghetti carbonara wafted in the wind  as coffee was poured and cups tingled with spoon applied, and a man on a phone, because no one talks like that in person, complains in Italian, at least I think it’s complaining, I hear the word stupido. I am grief stricken, at thought I cannot see, but then I start to see with my ears  and with scent and I fill in the blanks the boats look colorful, the birds are white with orange beaks, the paint with pastel colors is peeling, and the man on the phone must have an apron to match the sounds of flapping, and the coffee smells oh so good…  oh well, I woke up and can see just fine… and I’m happy for this small miracle.

Logic and War

Much lately is made about the desire and plans to pull troops out of Afghanistan, and although any troop reduction is objectively good for the troops that go home and their families.  It is objectively more dangerous for those that remain.  It seems that it would be sensible to re-examine why we are there and if we have accomplished our mission.  Eighteen years ago, this month, we were viciously attacked and 2,996 people were killed, over 6000 wounded, and some 1200 or more are dealing with cancer as a result of exposure to toxins released in the attacks.  Additionally, another 3500 US and Coalition Forces have been killed and many times this number of injured due to actions in Afghanistan.  Tragically,  31,000 or more civilians were also killed in Afghanistan.

Nearly 40,000 people died, because of a war started by Al-Qaeda, which attacked potent symbols of American and Western civilization, including the financial center of New York, vis-a-vis the people that worked in the World Trade Center; the military power symbol and the people in the Pentagon, and the democratic freedoms, represented by the Capitol or the White House (the target of United Flight 93).  The passenger heroes of Flight 93 were the first to fight back.   The targets clearly represented the Western world financial strength, military strength and political freedoms.   The Taliban, gave Al-Qaeda the space and support to launch these attacks, and operated in violent support of their philosophies, and actions.  They cheered the ability of Al-Qaeda to extend attacks to the West and America in this dramatic way.  This day of 11 September 2001, America and indeed the West’s civilization, freedoms and strength were attacked by a 14^th Century philosophy and mindset.

We went to war against the perpetrators of this horror, not as a police action to punish criminals, but ostensibly to disable their ability to bring their war and terrorist actions to our shores.   We took away their ability to operate, train, and finance, and pushed them into a defensive existence.  More than 120,000 of them have died, and yet they fight on, under a flag of Taliban, or ISIS or remnants of Al-Qaeda, but they fight on.

War is the result of failed diplomacy.  It is an extension of power.  It is a necessary capability of nations that choose to live in freedom and to protect their national interests.  It is horrible but a necessary and logical extension of capability to ensure the existence of our country, our beliefs, and hard-earned freedoms.

I propose that this war was a justified and logical response to the 9-11 attacks.  The subsequent sacrifices of American’s, and those of our coalition partners have been tragic, but necessary and logical.  Ending our engagement in Afghanistan should happen only when we are certain that the philosophies that survived, and the remnants of terrorist cells have no further room, or fight in them to raise up and attack us again.  However attacks continue and even have intensified by the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Afghanistan, in the last few weeks:

• Civilians were attacked – a bomber at a wedding kills 63 in Kabul two weeks ago
• City of Kunduz was attacked for third time yesterday,  with 30 government soldiers killed
• 3 US service members were killed in August

Logically we should be there as long as there is a credible threat. Presuming it is impossible to eradicate the threat, our mission should then be to contain this threat in the most efficient means possible.  We are negotiating, which is good. But are we successfully ensuring our safety?  Seems to me that attacks are ongoing, and there is no intent by our enemy to restrain themselves.   Logic suggests to me, as we pull our troops out, we are not ending the war.  We are instead giving a victory to the side that continues on the attack.  And do you really believe they’ll be content to rule and ruin their own piece of Afghanistan?

The Climb

A friend just starting training
To climb Denali next summer
That’s twenty thousand feet plus
So much work to get there
He says, he can sleep when he’s dead
I’m thinking,
This is when you stop drinking
And eating chocolate…
But thriving to find one’s mountain top is who we are
Adventure, experience, challenging ourselves
And still making time for a couple of good scotches
I say we should have all that we can
Do all that we can
Be all that we can
Find for ourselves the mountains we want to climb
No matter how low mine might be
But stop to enjoy the meadows of summer flowers along the way
Enjoy the mysteries of the imagination
Of art, of prose, science and history along the way
As we apply our energies toward enjoying God’s gift of life
And along the way, give some help to others on their own climb
In life!

Underwater Gorilla

A talking gorilla in an underwater school
With boy and girl guppies!
I forgot how incongruent cartoons could be
As I say “underwater gorillas don’t work for me”
The reply from little man is
“Like me sleeping in a nest”
Means its ok to imagine, and pretend
The deck is a ship and the grass is the water
There are positive messages in the toons
Talking buses, sleuthing cats
But not many Wiley E. Coyotes
To teach us teamwork is dreamwork
And transformer dogs with tools save the day
Without a boulder landing on poor Wiley
So, steer the boat safely if you can
Directing from captain’s chair
As the crew fights off invading pirates and watch for underwater gorillas!

I read an article that describes how mankind has evolved to instinctively recognize from mannerisms as simple as a wave, the gait of a person’s walk that they are from another “tribe”.  That is nation or ethnic group, which may cause a natural anxiety.  Our ability to overcome anxiety with reason allows for us to come together as nations, of many tribes, many dialects, and many characteristic markers.  However that instinct is ever present.

Instinct

Instantly we know, he’s not one of us, but we ignore
Because it’s not sensible, logical
to assume something bad may be in store
Hair follicles tell us there’s something different here
Nothing we can discern in prefrontal cortex
but something much more primitive, fear
Inherited by the survival of ancestors now long-dead
Nothing we can explain, nor really want to
but we give over to wary reason instead

by George Bernard Shaw

Youth have so much energy, stress, future opportunity, and accomplishment.

Youth is wasted on the young… they know not how wonderful and great this life is and how wonderful they are.

Only with tired wisdom can we marvel at youth, and wish for them to be someday tired and wise.

Imperfect Knowledge

If we had perfect knowledge of what everyone around us felt
Would it change who we are?
If you could know how someone would react
Would it change what you say?
If you could test different scenarios as in simulation
Would you pick the one that best advantages you?
Or instead would you
Seek to bring harmony and advance peace in the world?
Would you use conflict
To protect your love ones or advance the cause of peace?
Or would we be hide-bound
By our experience with such knowledge?
The greatest challenge for us
May be to reach beyond ourselves and make a difference
even with imperfect knowledge.

I finished the book… Why Does the World Exist, by Jim Holt… without an answer!  Like a spam advertisement that tempt you to look, even though you know there’s really nothing on the other side.  Maybe that’s unfair, because there is the journey in thought to appreciate.

The quote at the end, I like: “Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.  – Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary”

Well some roads are paved and some are a pretty dirt path decorated with flowers. But then some are rocky with intermittent trolls threatening the path.

The journey can be interesting, and requires no equipment.  Just our mind wandering a path illuminated by one’s thought, history, and the storied words of other thinkers.  Faith plays a role, if you like, with supporting thought or not.

A game of thrones of the mind of competing ideas and theories, could it be quantum coincidence we exist, multi-verse, God and the big bang, and much more.

And yet my mind aligns with a belief.  A belief that there is a God, that creates a world that allows the development of consciousness.  Consciousness is the knowledge of self… self-awareness.

I believe that the trillions to one odds that fortune not just our physical birth, but our conscious awakening, and that sense of self that develops as a result of evolved exposure of parenting, grandparenting, neighbors, siblings and chance occurrences, as well as the genetic dispositions randomly acquired from generations of breeding makes us an individual.

A sense of “I” that develops because of the physical constraints of our body and mind, and the name we or others give us… but over time we may start to realize that we are not I, rather we are “we”.

That we are part of a social fabric, and if we have the capacity to bring our minds to new heights, to really glimpse what we are a part of, then we have the perspective needed to consciously and with free will affect that fabric.  And our “we” lives on long beyond our “I” in the form of those strands that we’ve woven and the others we’ve influenced.

The brilliance of our “God” is the creation of not just a universe, but also the allowance for conscience to develop.  Allowing an opportunity for a piece of immortality for as long as we are weavers we are leaving a mark on others that carry that mark, that weave forward.

So why the world exists, instead of nothing, the answer that occupies the throne as I postulate is:  because it was willed into existence in a way that may be mysterious to us, but it’s echo is there for us to see in the residue of the big-bang, and furthermore the residue of God’s second greatest creation is the existence of consciousness, the awareness of self, the awareness and joy of sharing that self in the form of “we” and “us” such that we are better for all positive weaves and threads in our world.  A true miracle of life, love, and legacy.