Zen and the Art of....

I work at a library on weekends, mostly to entertain myself with high-speed internet and being in a one room building with 26,000 volumes. Occasionally I order a book through the InterLibrary Loan program, so I can read something not in the library. Today one of my newest orders came in and I've been sitting in the back of one of the corner stacks and reading it.
Its a good book - A bit dry, but with a lot of value to its contents.
There are many side-notes in the book, important single points from the main body of the text. They are quite "guiding", and I thought I'd share a few.

"The seer and the seen exist only in confusion. There is only the seeing."

You can act "without thought, without effort, without limitations. You must first understand those limitations."

"...concern yourself only with what is happening and how you are feeling. That will leave no room for what 'might happen' or 'just happened'."

"An idea is merely a formulation of thought as a symbol; and the effort to live up to that symbol brings about a contradtiction."

"Concentration can exist through awareness; but awareness cannot exist through concentration."

"The truth - that which is actually happening - cannot be written down or spoken about. Once it becomes spoken or written down, it is knowledge. And knowledge is not truth, because knowledge is fixed in time. And truth is ever moving and changing, without regaqrd to time. Truth is outside of all knowledge, of all thought. As soon as you pause to reflect, it is not truth."

"You can never learn to act. You can only learn as you act. Never limit yourself to what you know." (Slightly paraphrased...)

"Free yourself from the 'do this to get that' syndrome."

"The truth beyond the technique. The application beyond the analysis. The means beyond the methods. Here's where we stop thinking and start" acting.

"Pay attention! Nothing more really needs to be said. Most people aren't going to accept the truth of that because it is just too simple. They ask, What do I pay attention to? Just pay attention to what's happening. Its all right there before you. You must learn to see what you haven't been seeing. Find something that's out there and pay attention to it!"

"You see with your mind. Your mind and body work togather. When your body is tense, your mind is tense, 'sticky' also. And when your mind is tense, so is your vision."

"The only true limit is in the body's nervous system. Anything less implies interference from lack of attention."

"Any time you plan for action based on an idea, what happens? When you actually meet the idea - down to the finest detail - it is never the same as you had pictured it, and so your response will be lacking in creativity."

"Confidence is an emotion created by concious thought. By its very nature it can work for you or against you. When you step up" to act, "let the emotion of confidence yield to pure action."

"Do not become caught up or attached to the idea of knowing how to do something. The knowing is not it. There is only the doing."

"Everything in this book could be wrong...
Check it out for yourself. It's you who has to learn. You won't learn by copying an idea - you have to experience it for yourself. When you become the experience, you will have learned, possibly without understanding."

These can all be applied as guidelines for living a good, successful (emotionally and professionally speaking), life. Many of these ideas or their equivilent can be found in Eastern philosophy (particularly Taoist), but can be as easily found in Christianity or other major world religion.

The quotes above all come from the book "Practical Shooting" by Brian Enos. It is about effectively working with a handgun to affect hits. I am reading it to improve my ability to affect terminal effect with a handgun.
Art in all things.

Nice Guys Finish Last... and Real Sons'A'Bitches Get Backshot Before the Last Turn

There seems to be a debate between people of a certain "hardness" as to what consitutes a "nice guy" and whether or not it is something to be. Some, many, take the stand that a nice guy is weak, cowering, manipulative and unable to deal with sudden shock or change with resiliency or flexibility. Others take the stand that sort of man is a pussy, and real nice guys are simply good, even keeled, men who can handle stress without being dicks, but who can "flip the switch" and do what needs doing when it needs done.
I am of the latter camp.
I believe fairly strongly in leading a good life, to my definition. That includes being a good person, again to my definition.
There is a lot to be said for love and kindness - There isnt enough of either in the world. I want to be treated with respect and I try (although this is a struggle for me at times) to treat others with respect. A calm, steady, hand and kind voice will deliver fantastic results from most horses, dogs and children most of the time. It works amazingly well on adult humans too - Sometimes even in the face of their agression, a kind word is a more powerful weapon than an angry one.
All this I believe - All this I try to practice. But this is not the all to a good life, or being a good person.
If you cannot stand up to violence, aggression, and if neccessary overcome it with your own violence and aggression, you will never be able to uphold or protect the standards you wish to live by of good behavior. Cowering in fear is not "nice" or "good" - There is no moral superiority, or emotional, karmic, darmic, spiritual superiority, in allowing yourself to be pushed, herded, or brutalized. Allowing yourself to be those things, even (if not especially) in some misguided attempt to be the "bigger person", borders on vile cowardice. Allowing your family (or yourself tot he detriment of your family) to be pushed, herded or brutalized is sickening weakness, and I honestly believe some kind of evil.
Nice guys are not pussies. Nice guys are kind, friendly, helpful, decent, respectful men who will allow no harm to come to themselves, or those they love, without at least taxing it to their utmost ability.
Someone who cant do that, but says he is a "nice guy" isnt, he's a pussy.

Be as nice as you can, every chance you get. Reserve the options for cruelty and brutality at any moment. Both are neccessary at different times.
Always use kindness with dogs, horses, children and most women.
Be ready to use either with men, and some women.

Extremist Violence

Here is a news Item I'd like to share with whoever reads this blog.

Scores Killed, Hundreds Injured As Para-Military Extremists Riot

Boston, April 20 -- National guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons were ambushed on April 19th by elements of a para-military extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.

Speaking after the clash, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to the radical-right tax protest movement. Gage blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices.

The governor, who described the group's organizers as "criminals," issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the government's efforts to secure law and order.

The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed widespread refusal by the local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed assault weapons. Gage had issued a ban on ammunition earlier in the week. This decision followed a meeting in early April between government and military leaders at which the governor authorized the forcible confiscation of illegal arms. One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out that "none of these people would have been killed had the extremists obeyed the law and turned over their weapons voluntarily."

Government troops initially succeeded in confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition. However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington met with resistance from haevily-armed extremists who had been tipped off regarding the government's plans.

During a tense standoff in Lexington town park, Colonel Francis Smith, commander of the government operation, ordered the armed group to surrender and return to their homes. The impasse was broken by a single shot.

Ironically, the local citizenry blamed government forces rather than the extremists for civilian casualties.

Governor Gage has called upon citizens to support the state/national joint task force in its effort to restore law and order. The governor has also demanded the surrender of those responsible for planning and leading the attack. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere and John Hancock, who have been identified as "ringleaders" of the mob, remain at large.

Read the whole thing and give it some thought.
If you get it, then I dont care who you are, where you came from, or what your current beliefs about violence are, if you are an American (or even a resident, legal or otherwise, benefitting from what the nation has to offer), I want you to ask yourself what would be different without some "extremists" and some "violence".
Then maybe consider the labels applied to some people by the major media, and the "beloved" and "trustworthy" federal government.

Dem Holocaust Blues

Gonna blow on over like a nuclear wind
Leavin' us dead and burnin' in the end
The world be gone, and momma's in the street
Dead dogs gonna eat our bones for the lack of meat
Huddlin' in the rubble and the smoke an' ash
Clouds o' human dust gonna clash
Down in the street an' down in the road
Stories that everybody done been told
School children under their desk
Payin' their respects not darin' to ask
"Dem Holocaust Blues", Unfinished Composition

Folks who are tracking on current events and forecasting their future, or trying to, based on what happens now are aware that things are changing, rapidly and aggressively. I simply call it a "shift", others have called it "the quickening", still others call it "the apocalypse" or even "end times".
I, personally, disagree - I do not believe things can or will simply end, at the whim of the universe. I do not believe human beings, hate them or love them, can or will simply be wiped from the face of the earth like snot off a glass coffee table. I, will not be wiped from the face of the earth like snot off a glass coffee table, I like it here and feel I still have a lot to learn here.
And there-in, I think, is the nature of the coming unpleasantness - Human will, very human forces, all at play all working for something, reaching breaking points. After so long, ignorance, greed, imperialism (ooohhh, I said it - although unlike the fuckknuckles who usually say it now, I dont mean the U.S. in Iraq. The Olive Tree Wars are the result of several centuries of colonialism and imperialism from mainly Europe), and the general disintegration of society in the mass of conflicting cultures, even conflicting "worlds" (the first world versus the so called "developing" world, those third and fourth world countries we have, in reality, forgotten except for the occasional $0.75 a day "adoption" of little Ndugu by some well meaning middle American whitebread church lady), are coming to a head. One force cannot hold back the others, but one cannot allow the necessary freedom to the others either - Everyone is trying to fit through the door at once, toes are getting stepped on, elbows are finding eye sockets, blood will be spilled.
And that is what is coming - Not an end, not in the conventional sense of "full stop, end", but an end as a beginning. I think it is what the world needs.
It has happened at least once before - probably more than that (The ancient cultures, the Sumerian and the Anasazi, didnt just fall off the face of the Earth.... yet for all intents and purposes their people did) - and after the dark ages there came a period of enlightenment, a renaissance of art, technology and eventually science. New religions supplant old, old take on new faces, new tools replace no tools, and people learn and grow - Society makes a surge forward.
It is a cycle.
The forest has to burn to grow properly. Everything has to burn. We're approaching our time.

It is my hope, that in the end, what will have been burned off at least for awhile will be the detritus, the fractured, disconnected, hateful elements that are driving us to the fire now. There always have to be some of those things, Balance in all things - but the balance is off, their weight is toppling the scale at the moment.
In a few generations, maybe it will be different. I doubt I will see it in my life - I am, honestly, simply looking forward to the cataclysm. After all, Chaos is one of my required nutrients, just how I'm made. I am looking forward to putting the first part of that famous Thomas Jefferson quote to work, with the absolute belief that my son will be a farmer, and his son will be an artist.

Warriors: The Shit on the Boots of the Progressive and Intellectual Elite

Victoria Cross Winner Branded War Criminal

A ruse that helped to win a soldier the Victoria Cross during the Second World War was a "war crime" and New Zealand should apologise to the families of the snipers he killed, it was claimed yesterday.

Alfred Clive Hulme, the father of Denny Hulme, the late world motor racing champion, was awarded the VC for bravery in killing 33 German snipers over eight days during the Battle of Crete in 1941. He returned home a hero to the town of Nelson.

But a new book by two military historians says that, in winning his VC, Sgt Hulme committed "acts of perfidy" under international law.

Lt Col Glyn Harper, a professor at the New Zealand army's Military Studies Institute, who co-authored the book, In the Face of the Enemy, said that on one occasion Sgt Hulme donned a German paratrooper's smock, climbed up behind a nest of enemy snipers, and pretended to be part of their group.

"He shot the leader first, and as the other four snipers looked around to see where the shot had come from, Hulme also turned his head as if searching for the shooter," the book says.

"Then he shot and killed two more." He shot the other two as they tried to leave.

"Hulme deserved the VC for his outstanding bravery, but he shouldn't have done what he did in disguising himself."

Other academics have supported the book's claims. Peter Wills, the deputy director of the Centre for Peace Studies at Auckland University, said Sgt Hulme's actions were "unsanctioned murder".

He told the Sunday Star-Times that the New Zealand government should apologise to the families of the Germans he killed. Bill Hodge, associate professor of law at Auckland University, said killing enemy soldiers while wearing their uniform was "prima facie a war crime".

Sgt Hulme died in 1982. His daughter, Anita, said accusing him of war crimes was "a terrible thing to bring up".

His VC is on display in the army's national museum at its headquarters in Waiouru.

War is a nasty business - It is a dirty, ugly, pursuit in which dirty, ugly, horrible things are done. But war is a constant of human kind. We have always, and will always, make war. No amount of wishing otherwise will make it so.
It is easy for people ten, twenty, sixty years on to look back at our ancestors and pretend that we, as a species, have advanced so much in that time, have achieved a "higher mind" about violence and such nastiness. But the truth is? We havent. The people who seek to classify individuals such as Hulme as "war criminals" or similarly horrible adjectives are simply trying to reject a fundamental part of human nature, out of their desperate need to prove otherwise.

It disgusts me that a supposed warrior, the Light Colonel, would display such a tasteless, un-soldierly, attitude towards a man who went before, fought before and killed before. The desperate need of the intellectuals to prove the assertion that we have progressed past such base natures as killing and violence has left us, as a species, with the ranks of our true warriors muddied with warriors in name only.
To some, this is the ideal solution - The image, the look, of a warrior with the attitude of a non-violent protestor.
And they wont learn. There will still be enough true warriors in the world to hold the line between the enemy and the elite, and when the threat is driven back under its rock the nattering, nannying, morons will simply continue to blather about how awful violence is.

Bless the warriors - They are the sane.

A Dire, But Not Entirely Wrong, Prediction

Folks, I want you to take a bit of time and go over to the website of sci-fi author Dan Simmons, and read something - I'll even be so kind as to provide you a direct (for the time being) link to what I want you to read: http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message.htm

I would, as is my usual fashion, post the text here but it is both long and I want you to actually leave this page, go to another and be in the spirit of doing that because this is not a casual piece of reading I'm asking of you - I'd ask you to do as the Traveler in Mr. Simmons message suggests and Google some of the words and names mentioned as you read.

Do I agree entirely with the predictions of Mr. Simmons? No. I do not. But, I agree with many of them or at least see the potential for them happening. It is a worthwhile read simply as a warning that if not this then something like it.

There are millions of, if not a billion or so, people in this world who would like these days to be the last days of light. The last days of science, education, free thought, freedom itself. They are not a silent faction either, they have taken up arms and we are fighting them now.
There are others who have no dog in the ideological aspects of that fight, but can only see a lot of money to be made off it.
Unfortunately, we are not fighting the enemies of light very well. We are looking to profiteers to lead us, and they are too busy trying to protect the feelings of the sensitive lest they upset the cash flow to actually wage a war.
War is a ruthless business and we have lost our ruthlessness for a feigned moral superiority. It is, in fact, only the ethics and morals of the leaders that are ruthless - their strategy and their tactics are not and their mindset, for all its ruthlessness, is purely self-serving.
It's total war, or a very long war. No foundation unshaken, no field left un-burned, no shrine un-desecrated. We must make the region ours, isolate the enemy on his own ground at every turn, and we must make the people subject to us or we will never be able to give them stability, and without stability they will never have democracy.
We have not given stability to Iraq - We are letting them run far too much of the show before they are ready, before the bad seeds are weeded out and the corruption burned out, before the squabbling factions are driven together into the dust and beaten together so that when they stand up the dust and blood have rubbed out the lines between Sunni and Shia - And because of that the in-fighting, the insurgency, is stronger than ever and the entire region is less stable than it ever was when Sodamn Insane was in power. And unless we change that, while we still can, it will be our doing that we're embroiled in that bullshit for many many years to come.
I'm not saying we destroy their country, or kill all the people, please do not misunderstand - Women, children, who are non-combatants, should have every measure possible taken to spare and protect them. Nonetheless, no quarter should be given to any and all combatants, and their resources and supply chains should be destroyed. Their stomachs should be empty, their wells dry, their streets unsafe for them, the beds of their wives death traps - Starve them, thirst them, isolate them and when they are weak, hungry, and out of places to run we run them down and kill them.
Then, and only then, should we start rebuilding, start trying to build and train their police, their army, holding elections. Anything we do before then is a farce, a cruel joke on the people of the region and a blessing to our enemy. We are only making them stronger.
Total war - At this point there is no other answer.

We are rapidly approaching a shift - The shift cannot be avoided, they happen throughout human history and even before it, but we can determine who has the role of actor, and who is forced to react, we can take and hold positions of strength. We can choose to bring the light with us through the period of darkness - Or we can choose to loose it and have to learn what it is again, someday, generations down the line.
We need leaders who are committed to preserving the light, enlightenment of science, medicine, education, freedom - Not leaders committed to the almighty dollar and corporate power. We need strategy and tactics, we need warriors, that are committed to this and are capable of doing what is necessary to drive the forward progression of ignorance and destruction. Unless we can find that, we're fucked. And we certainly aren’t going to find it blindly marching down the path we're on after the fools currently leading us.