Your self-importance is equal to

This opinion piece has been posted all round the place. 

An Open Letter to the Legion of Lamentation*
By: E.P. Unum
July 13, 2020

I got a copy seemingly authored by this guy.

Here is my byte, which I can easily defend based on his(?) words.** But I won't bother, today.

98 per cent bullshit. No discussion with this guy, and ignorant of key points and deeper analysis of subjects that he pretends to know something about. Just another America-is-the-greatest blowhard shooting his mouth off. A shotgun blast any particle of which requires more information, more context, more thought, and more understanding.

Rip, you can Rest In Peace and crawl back into your cave. The fact that you believe anyone is interested in what you think/believe is just the least of the chains that your entitled culture (take a sip of your elitist beverage) has bound you up in and from which some of us are thankful we are still able to see for what they—the chains—are and escape to higher and better ideas and action. Set yourself free of us now that you have had your say and shut up and listen more carefully to others, or just go ahead and let others live as we let you. Your self-importance is equal, and no more, to that of mine and that of other citizens.

Respectfully yours . . .

___

* https://liberalsarenuts.com/2020/07/29/an-open-letter-to-the-legion-of-lamentation/. BYW, this site is full of stuff the above can be used to describe.

** "Being offended isn’t a mark of virtue; it’s a sign that you’re a big, blubbering baby who will throw a tantrum if you can’t get your way. Wagging fingers and shouting obscenities at me is just plain disrespectful, and might get you a punch in the nose." Now, who comes first to mind who can justifiably be described this way? If the author's answer is the same as mine, which I don't believe to be the case, then we have two of them at least.

A voyage at sea to change perspectives--DRAFT

[06.08.20 Updated. The following was composed from notes provided as background and philosophy to a business enterprise involving sea voyages infused with new challenges for participants-as-crew from which to become, or become again, full-bodied self-aware and to make resolves to act on their dreams. In a phrase, to experience inspiration (again).

These words have been provided for that enterprise's use, should they find them descriptive of what their effort currently envisions. I take no credit for what I have tried to express for others more enlightened and inspired than I.]

Embrace meaning and direction to live life to the max. Such sage advise notwithstanding, we confine ourselves sometimes in our own perspective, and as that doesn't help us survive and thrive, we become stuck and perhaps temporarily lost. To be confused about or to lack meaning prevents living life as we would, in concert with the highest and best expression of ourselves. We become immersed in a seeming fishbowl with blurred vision to where we are and what is beyond.

By contrast, floating at a unique but ever changing point on life's ocean of endless horizons in all directions and immeasurable heights above and depths below, appears attractive and reassuring. Some may be content to ride the winds and currents. But for others infinite possibilities overwhelm, and not content in a timeless, aimless float, are compelled to know where they are and where they can go, and then set off decisively on their journey.

Give me a compass. Calculations performed at twilight bring clarity of location and direction in daylight. The coordinates using one's star illuminate a sense of self and the singular environment in which one lives. It is as if one would use the heavens to navigate in a sea of possibilities using present location, one's chosen star, and the horizon ahead.

There are no ready answers for moving out of darkness or uncertainty except first to use the knowledge and awareness of now you, body and soul, are here. Informed by experience plus acquired knowledge and expertise nested in values and beliefs show the possibilities and the ways to head. As and after you articulate your own place and aimed-for possibilities, framing anew results. The fresh air of renewed perspective lets you breathe and refresh your spirit, in a phrase, to be inspired. Would that we could accelerate our purpose by feeling and smelling and breathing that fresh air and having the body-felt experience of being alive that comes from succeeding at new challenges.

Show me how to use the sextant you are suggesting. The metaphorical sextant requires your current position. You find, or re-discover that by sensing yourself where you are in the clearest terms possible. Language is a primary means for people to express who they are to themselves. Your unique identity composed of knowledge, skills, experience, attitudes and personal characteristics, including talents, has to be described for self realization and vitality. To know thyself is not automatic. All aspects need to be examined anew and brought together again. A separate time and place can aid this process, as can some guidelines for completing the task.

The sextant requires a point in the heavens to light the way. This is the second element--what you are about, meaning or purpose, your star. You know in your heart what that is--the light in your eyes that others say they see, the flame that burns eternally inside and you feel the burn almost physically. It is that which haunts and starves your soul if ignored or delayed. It is something you are driven to do something about, to get on with, without which you cannot feel fulfilled. If you are not clear what that is, you are perhaps staring at what is so close it is hard to focus. Sometimes we need different mirrors that other eyes provide to help us realize what was there all along, perhaps from fellow travelers and catalysts, who have different perspectives on what we think we are about.

To complete the triangulation with an imaginary sextant requires a horizon or navigation point in the distance. Although always advancing as you move toward it, at any given time you can fix that point, which sets direction, maps your journey, and readies the sails for your journey. As the sages have also said, the trip takes you rather than the other way round. And in surrendering to the charts of your voyage bequeaths power and  motivation to embark and persist. The optimism that results reconnects you to the goodness of being, and being who you are. Although you may not need it, it is reassuring to have the support of fellow travelers and those who have gone before, call them catalysts, as you conquer new challenges to strengthen the resources you have within.

Oh, to escape from my fears of facing me, much less venturing forth through new experiences.  How to re-kindle the confidence that lets one explore endless possibilities with curiosity and benefit from new and refreshing experiences? You can do it alone, and essentially we all do. But with the support of compassionate and in their own right expert fellow crew members in a safe and supportive environment for rejuvenating you, uncertain seas become less threatening, calm, and sure; and prevailing gentle breezes of accomplishment will power you and whatever your enterprise on your way.

There may be occasional miscalculations. You can always re-calibrate and correct your course. Whatever seems to impede an important and necessary trip is temporary and perhaps illusory. Having or recalling when you felt inspiration to reach for your star keeps you oriented and on course.

Voyage at sea. The literal sea calls to some as a particularly apt venue through which to acquire new or renewed meaning and a clearer focus on living life as you would. It is a time and place away to focus on what it is you want and need in life. Some will not find the sea as their chosen way out of the doldrums or fishbowl. But for those who find this way of adventure to understanding and purposeful action, and given the invitation to join others on such a journey, a decision to board ship is but a nanosecond's consideration. Promised rewards earned through dedication and work toward what will fulfill await.

Know that taking readings with your sextant often requires a bit of coaxing and practice. Experiencing something new, yet others have safely traveled through before, changes perspectives and will tax you, but the taxes are minimal. Others have gone before and can attest to the tried and trusted ways out of so-called fishbowl perspectives, which are by definition limiting.

The distance between my perspective today and the perspective of who I think I should be is the intensity of inspiration. The moment I developed a new prospective with the least toll on myself and my environment is the feeling of inspiration.*

Although others have taken a sea voyage before and found themselves by surrendering in pursuit of their outer limits of what is comfortable and familiar, and their experiences have necessarily been different because they were different people and not you, anticipate that your voyage will certainly be unique. Encountering different perspectives on the journey and having entirely unique experiences along your way enrich one's ability to accept and adapt with the least resistance and the least threat to the essence of you. Going beyond one's patterned perspective will introduce you to new and different ones that will assuredly enrich what it is you aspire to do with the time we have to live life to the max.

_____
* Direct quote from the founder.

Tautological twist--DRAFT 4 with Addendum

[Updated: 06.07.20]

All speech is political. Or, what any expression asks of us.

If we understand speech as "engaging in the creation and advocacy of realities through the invention, elaboration, or imposition of discourse,"* the term political does not constrain us in understanding that all speech is just that, political.

Why discourse and not all expression? Yes, why not, for an in-your-face expression in any form functions the same way. It is as if what one attends to, even if just to notice and move on, shouts: "Look at me, hear me, smell me, taste me, touch me, feel me . . . understand me, don't dismiss me, remember me, act as if you cared. . . ."

Thesis: Once one attends to that which has been expressed and before s/he fully re-cognizes the content or message, the invitation to discourse interaction completes the validity of the claim that all speech, that is expression, is political, having to do with power over an other.

Expression, in the broadest sense, imposes its presence to an attending percipient and at the same time attempts to colonize present awareness with itself and its import, if not more. Making this demand evidences inherent authority and power, even if the effect is the import's dismissal, or is it export's?

Now take the above paragraphs. In asserting what they do, they ask you to consider if not buy the explication. In form (words strung together) and content (meaning), we have a kind of co-incidence. As the meaning of the expression says all speech is political, the utterance by the nature of utterances (expression) at the same time says the same thing, or more accurately, enacts it.

Funny that that seems/is so, is it not? Reading, listening, viewing, etc., self proclaim--Pay Attention (at least).

One could say more about "all speech is political", for example what famous person first uttered this idea, what philosophical development it has had over the centuries, who were its historical or civic champions for belief in its truth or validity, why it should only obtain when matters of politics and government are concerned, and so forth; however, mere existence, ready-at-hand to be attended to, suffices to prove the simple self-evidency of what speech/expression is at the most fundamental, phenomenological level, of or having to do with the exertion of power and persuasion to achieve some effect on the percipient, or audience.

Now all this is a rabbit hole, or performative jumble. If what I assert in form is at the same time an example of what I assert in meaning (content), and such an explanation or description may be universally applied, then this perhaps is some kind of hermeneutic spiral to infinity, or  hall of mirrors with no end to seeing the same image reflected again and again up to and, by extension, beyond the horizon, or fruitless Sisyphusian conundrum. In sum, my thesis is a trivial pursuit most feel unnecessary to say or realize.

On the other hand, having gone to this depth of the reflexivity of expression, I would call this insight(?), an inescapable tautological twist, and as valid and "true" as any other defense of the opening assertion that better and brighter stars have argued.

So be it for now till a lighter, clearer day dawns, if I may speak with authority and do gently impose upon thee.
_____
* Brown, Richard Harvey, _Society as Text: Essays on Rhetoric, Reason, and Reality_, University of Chicago Press, 1987

ADDENDUM (29.07.20)

If you are reading this sentence and trying to take in what it says, you are being manipulated to do something the words intend for you to do.

Words, or any expression put out and available for readers and others to receive or perceive, have a minimum of two reasons for existence. 

+ One, to convey something--an idea, feeling, information, etc.

+ Two (as you are fulfilling the first reason for the words being there before you) the words themselves demand: "Look at me, hear me, smell me, taste me, touch me, feel me . . . understand me, don't dismiss me, remember me, act as if you cared. . . ."

Words (or other expressions (e.g., art installation) calling your attention) are a way "power is achieved and used", power being the core idea in the notion of politics or political.

A word to the wise--DRAFT

Re: free speech/expression

1. Isegoria--saying what's on your mind with a view to engage in discussion with others for a better union.

If you frame what you say in terms of this and thoroughly researched information, not opinion (one-sided "interpretation"), you are safer than otherwise.

2. Parrhesia--"the right" to shoot your mouth off anytime, anywhere, to anyone.

"John Stuart Mill argued that the chief threat to free speech in democracies was not the state, but the 'social tyranny' [or worse] of one's fellow citizens."*

What's a person to do? If you must commit parrhesia, note the above caution and guidelines and:

• Limit yourself to the best medium for expression and influence for a specific audience.
• View opposing views as worthy of hearing and understanding, if not acting upon.
• Act upon the agreed upon after listening, paraphrasing, asking questions, highlighting common ground, and, not leastly, having your brief statements heard, etc.
• View most of any other noise as theater and find there entertainment.

Shut your eyes, ears, and mouth otherwise. Someone or something will fill any void. Hold on tight if this happens and you are still passive but "invested".

_____
* https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-concepts-of-freedom-of-speech/546791/

Popcorn for politicos

[The following is in response to a letter I received detailing a bunch of stuff seemingly Republican, right-leaning, Trump pardoning, chaos-embracing, conspiracy-spinning, generalized other bashing . . . you get the idea. Pardon for the repetition of part of an earlier post about guns, but it seemed appropriate to insert for purposes of diverting attention from an argument no one will come to a consensus about in present-day USA.]

I already have my popcorn and I'm enjoying the chaos, er fun. Thanks for your lines nicely delivered in this human drama. (Wait, gotta pop more popcorn.) Very entertaining, if in some places different from my lines and character when I have to deliver on stage. But I'm not going to do that here, or am I?

Okay. You got me. I'm a leftie, have been all my life. You righties have tried to do us in or teach us otherwise, but I still prefer my way of looking at and doing things my sinister way.

Do you know we on my side die earlier than you guys do? because the world is controlled by you bastards! We are at least 12 percent of the population, and yet never acknowledged by the majority--you guys. All lives matter. Of course they do, goes without saying. But so do Black lives, leftists matter, Asian-Americans matter, even though in my case I have never been recognized or accepted for that label which is who I am genetically What about MY identity and rights? In this me-culture, everyone forgot about me!

Hell, All Lives AND Black Lives and My life matter, in spite of white fear of losing the majority (think "superior") view.* I ain't part of no Democratic conspiracy, just one of the humans in a race where whites want now desperately to win ("dominate") and others just want to compete in a fair contest.

Now to be equitable, I do try to understand the right side of the spectrum. I brush my teeth sometimes with my right hand, and I sometimes zip my fly with my right hand; but hey, I draw the line at shaving right-handed. I may be a leftie but not stupid like the white sheep majority.+

Now about those guns. If we give everyone from 5 years of age and up a real gun, what would happen? First, chaos. I agree. Let the show continue.

Well, the never-to-die dream of being a cowboy or cowgirl toting a gun on main street for show or action has never died . . . nor has blowing away instead of achieving consensus with the bad--those other--guys. As I said, I have my popcorn. Citizenship paid for just as have righties, over and over. (Or do they on the right pay taxes? I hear a lot don't.)

Other than the first killings of people who look funny or look different or just look and we can pop 'em off just for fun, what else would happen if we really embraced our inner gun and wild west heritage?

+ A small, mostly passive proportion of the populace would object vocally and then retreat to mumbling and solitary protests in private and out of sight.

+ A large proportion of the populace would embrace the freedom and call it a right not a privilege.

+ A large proportion of these would acquire, or be gifted, guns.

+ The guns and munitions industries would institute a holiday where everyone was encouraged to shoot their guns off to the air above in unison at noon and gather later for a barbecue and gun games. Among these there would be 21-gun salutes, wild random shooting with cries of yippee, and some tears at wounds and casualties perpetrated by the careless and untrained.

+ Annually we would witness more mass shootings but eventually accept them as the cost of freedom. No more tears need be shed. Shit happens.

+ A small proportion of crazies would do crazy things like hold people hostage, snipe at passersby, kill someone because of a verbal disagreement or unjust job termination, etc.

+ A very small proportion of experienced gun owners would see religion and give up their arms and campaign for the repeal of the freedom, without success.

+ Criminals would continue to use guns to get what they wanted, but increase their arsenals to newer technologies to accomplish the same end. To stay competitive, you know.

+ Non-gun owners would be marginalized and deemed impoliticly correct or worse. They would become a new discriminated-against group with appropriate epithets to describe them.

+ Foreign visitors to the country would decrease.

+ TV shows and documentaries and info-docu re-enactments would increase showing us more and more violent scenes to savor before bedtime.

+ Since 5 year olds would be entitled to a gun, they would find new products to badger their parents about--pink or blue pint-sized rifles and pistols made of plastic that shoot real bullets, one at a time, just for safety.

+ Laws would be enacted to prevent carrying firearms into designated places such as the men's room at the local movie theater, the garage of a friend, the desert . . . places where the likelihood of accident or perpetration would be less or more . . .

In short, live and let live, that is unless someone you don't want around shows up . . . and eats his chicken fried steak with his left hand. "Shit! See that? Yikes!" Especially if s/he doesn't use a fork and knife "like we all do hereabouts".

Stay safe _in_ the funny farm and keep those entertaining messages coming.

Oh, and thanks for the movie recommendations. So far can't find 'em on YouTube, 'cause in the good ole US of A, you gotta pay for what you get--no free lunch.

_____

+ For a look at Truth and the heights of American culture, see https://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow/videos/jordan-klepper-vs-trump-supporters/210669160181460/

* The reference for the fear of whites and Asian aspirations, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-battle-cry-of-the-white-man/2014/08/05/961858f4-1cd4-11e4-ab7b-696c295ddfd1_story.html

Dustbin treasure?

Cleaning out the dustbin, I found this from 2007; however, the date must be earlier, around 2000, for that is when I was associated with Learnability. I put it here as a reference for myself to check to see if what I thought/did in the past still has relevance in light of today's re-newed need for "distance learning."

Let's see.

Conversion Services

[space reserved for results of assessment]

Why I am not a writer

The answer is complicated of course. In short, I'm a coward. Or perhaps more sensitively stated: I'm a co-operator, a conflict avoider, shy or reticent (either will do), chicken shit (marketing averse), people-pleaser, diaphanous jelly fish without poison to offend or defend, lacking in ego/testosterone and over flavorous edible fodder for alpha-types and competition freaks. Or maybe, just maybe, as one who loves to write and has lots of ideas on the burners or descriptive voyages under sail, too busy to pursue all of what it means to be a writer today, especially disagreement with what or how I have said/written something, which in the end is fluff . . . I don't have time or care.

So much self promotion, at least from my view as an expatriate living abroad, one who observes the pursuit of greed and gold and glory by those who write . . . mostly crap for a populist audience with little attention span beyond 140 characters, or some such byte for like and mis-quotation. Do I sound like a sore loser, or miscreant? I beg, rather claim decidedly not.

Writing first, if you must from some inner devil that won't let you have a complete and fully-satisfying day if no words have been recorded somewhere in or on a notebook, is a thankless pursuit. No one other than you must read you or what you have to say, which is the same thing. Paul Auster got it right--more than once--when he said no one is obligated to pick up and read your stuff. Therefore I write for no audience.

•  What is it like to write for no audience, not even apparently for me? Paradox again--this piece is for some reader, I suspect, although it appears here as one entry in a storage place for almost finished pieces of my puzzle(-ment).
• Writing for no audience is writing what is in consciousness now. Look neither forward nor back. It is a process, a self description--with all the voices, all possible topics--no inhibitions, no intent other than itself, a kind of being through what looks like a doing.
• It could be stream of consciousness, a label. But labels are applied to something after having looked at it, a kind of analytical post scriptum, or description of what we have come to see or know as it is on its own. But writing for no audience is not intended or a purposeful art. It is more like art for art's sake, sans even that label. It may be what is done. But who knows or cares if process-now writing has no audience?
• Writing for an audience is to have something to say to share. Writing for no audience is therapy? recreation? re-creation? an outlet for what un-articulated things may be brewing in the great stew of the soul's manifesting? a way to let me become? the playground of conflicting selves where we can work through and then stop and move beyond. So with nothing but all of that license, there is no audience, no aim I want you--you, you, and you-me--to get.
• Does this writing matter? Silly question. Only to do it when the up-welling needs to have a place to go--and then that purpose may be too Western, too serious, too task driven, obligatory.
• When does it take place? Anytime, anywhere. But empty Chinese restaurants in towns I visit--where I am unknown--are my favored places. (You-other will have to sort out your where.) I like it when the family is eating and talking at their own table before other guests arrive.
• What is it like? It is pleasure. It is affirmingly being, my being alive and here. It is flexing and discovering. It is asking questions and writing to learn the answers. It is filling a notebook, a record of the good times and bad, where I have been and when. For asking and trying to answer why questions.
• Will I read all that stuff? Maybe. When I am old and wear purple and sit in front of the fire, scanning then burning--so no one will have evidence of my having been here--except their memories should they have at some time met me of spent a little time "trying to get to know".
• Writing for no audience with only what flows out as the something-to-say is like touching my self to make sure--to pinch myself and respond. It is for no other--not him or her or them, not for me sometime-when. But for now. Moments to hold before they're all gone. Moments to treasure and count up the riches now. Moments to let go of--after their clear acknowledgment. Moments to hope for should life surprise me with being as I would have it. We are such stuff as dreams are made of--you know the rest.
• And when I put my pen down, I close my notebook and relish that home cooked meal in silence, wondering if the Chinese food is so beloved because of nature or nurture. If my writing for no audience were to speak aloud, s/he would say the answer is like all things--apparently, probably, sometimes, mostly--it is a little of all. And that as answer will have to suffice until the next time I think about and want to sort through the dustbin of my living.
• My writing is about what it says it is about, that as ambiguous as that is and then some. I suspect the sum is a whole, of a piece, and nothing. It is about a life trying to affirm itself as it tries to erase the trace of self which is of little account in the world of measured things. It is every time with every word the flicker of that flame before it goes out, or is given another moment to shine its light for someone, somewhere, somehow . . . if even that. Silence.

Well, well enough said. That, most of the above, was true in 2000. Except the coward part. That has its first articulation here. I'm not sure the rest is as true today. Consider this imperfect draft of things as they are or appear to be, which is the same thing.

The act of writing--your pen moving on paper, fingers performing  QWERTY sonatas--AND all the other stuff, not limited to querying publishers, paying agents, membering in associations, pitching, forcing excretion of hype copy, contracting for cover designs . . . I land on the first side of the equation, all the stuff you do to get to there, I have said it without any interruptions or distractions, most importantly the distractions of getting others to read your stuff. That is not where it is at, for me doing the essential task--producing words in sequence to produce unified and coherent wholes to fix 'em still so's I can contemplate true or not, or to just let them out 'cause the world as participation in physical realities is just too tragic and malevolent to spend much time there, except in a Chinese restaurant with crunchy fortune cookies, at least two, with uplifting bytes you know will never come true but bring smiles or a nod of assent and you say, "Yeah, that one's got it pretty much right."

Now back to work.

Addendum (15.08.20)

Dated 09/01/2014

Honesty in writing.

I write safely. That is, I do not reveal in journals or other places what I truly feel, have thought or done. I steer clear of things that "accidental" readers might judge me for, things like indiscretions, how I really feel about so-called sins or things not in accord with major views, etc. So, what you get, if there is a you, is something akin to how I would like to be seen. There are secrets of the heart and past deeds I would rather people not know about. This might change . . . the nature of a subject might dictate otherwise at some point, or "the truth" might be hidden in fiction's coverlets.

Addendum (15.08.20)

From 28 January 2014

Before this day is done, I note that writing so-called fiction absorbs me--now that I have started from a singular image and then let 'er rip. The other way was to fully visualize the story and scenes and characters, etc., whatever etc. happened to be. This time the story unfolds on its own. I don't know where it is going. The fully conceptualized and visualized was exciting for just these two processes, but then writing it out took away the fun, the involvement. I knew where it all was supposed to go and how. This latter approach has me in the story as if I am reading and discovering the plot, conflicts, characters, and so forth. I seem to have more energy and interest in proceeding, because I don't know what is going to happen or where it will end up. Fascinating. I hope the evolutionary will be revolutionary, to take me to another level and restore my confidence in what is inside and what I can uncover and/or create.

Addendum (15.08.20)

From 03 February 2014

so i will do what i can to put myself in a place where no one can hurt me...into my writing, it is happy and safe there, a different world to live in...that is why i like it, a place to forget the pain