Ronin

Those of you who know me might know that I wear a chain. Most of you (and anyone who doesn't know me) will not know what is on it. I'm going to explain what it is and what it means. There are four Japanese characters on it, 四十七士, or forty seven ronin. The Story of the forty seven ronin is the most famous tale of bushido, the Japanese way of the warrior. It happened over the years 1701 and 1703 (as a comparison, more than 80 years before Australia existed as a colony of the UK). It involves a large group of samurai who are left dishonoured after their master is forced to perform Seppuku (ritual suicide) after assaulting a court official, and the way that they try and regain their honour. To do this, they hunted down the court official and killed him. The penalty for this (which they already knew) was death. The problem arose that they followed the rules of bushido by avenging their master (meaning that they had honour), but they broke the law to do it (meaning that they didn't). Court officials decided to allow them to perform seppuku and in doing so, they regained their honour. So the question now rises, why do I, a white man not in a situation anything like the one that they found themselves in, have this on a chain around my neck? There are 4 main reasons.

Before I give you these reasons, you must understand the situation that they were in. After the death of their master, they were dishonoured. This was a major thing for them. It meant that they were untrustworthy, they couldn't get a job as anything related to their experience as a samurai (they would have been able to hire as mercenaries or tradesmen otherwise they were fairly limited to being bandits) and they were all but reviled by everyone.

The first reason that I wear this is to remind myself that honour is an ideal to aspire to. In this tale, there are 47 men who decided that it was better to die for the purpose of gaining honour than to live without it. I mightn't go that far, due to my being able to regain it later through different means or in different circles. However, it is always something to aspire to have. It is probably easier understood as a good reputation, although, it is much stronger than that.

The second reason is to remind myself that patience is a virtue. These guys decided to wait almost two years for this. Those of you who have known me for a while probably know that in the past, I was aggressive with a quick temper. These guys, despite having more reason than I'll probably ever have to get angry waited long enough that their target decided that they weren't a threat and forgot about them. This is a lesson that I'm still trying to learn and probably will be for a long while yet.

The third reason is to remind myself that the needs of my companions may well be outweigh my needs. The leader of the bunch, Ōishi Kuranosuke Yoshio, had to dishonour himself further to cast off suspicion from the rest of the men. To do this, he acted completely unlike a samurai should have. He frequently got drunk and visited geisha houses, once to the extent that the next day he passed out and was completely unable do defend himself from a traveller who insulted him and kicked and spat on his face while he was unconscious. He also divorced his wife so that she wouldn't get in trouble over the affair. This shows an amazing commitment to the cause that he allowed himself to sink below anything that was really permissible in his society in order to let his compatriots to survive without suspicion

The fourth and final reason is to remind myself that there is something greater than myself. For these guys, it was two fold; their honour, and the honour of their master (which they gained by avenging him). For me, it is roughly the same; honour for my Lord and master.

Should I get up in the Morning?

I'm not asking the question. I know that the answer is a definitive No without a good reason. I write this because it was a headline that I saw as part of what can be both one of the most amusing and one of the saddest sections of the newspaper - The Horoscope section. As someone who has never taken more than a passing interest in anything related to this I was shocked to find that in a recent study, 31% of Americans asked believed in Astrology and 39% believed it to be scientific. I have to ask the question of these people Why do you think this?

Astrology is the art (not science) of looking at the ghosts of dead stars that live, in the case of Alpha Centauri, 4.37 light years away. Even if it did happen to know something about what was happening tomorrow, we would only find out in approximatly 4 years, 4 months and a week - useless when you read it in the paper for today - and this is the closest star. Others will be telling us many hundreds of years in the future. You then align this with the positions of the planets in our own solar system and you can supposedly find out what is going to happen to all of the population of the world which at the time of writing is 6.95 billion people. This is then split up into groups based on an erroneous calendar system which has changed since all this has started, thus rendering the whole thing pointless any way, and telling us that these groups are going to experience the same sorts of things no matter where they are, what situation they are in and what they were going to be doing. That's a remarkable generality, 579 million people are going to have the same things happen to them within a 24 hour period.
Then you need to realise that the night sky changes over time. Stars shift and what is known today as Orion (the Hunter) may one day be known as one half of the turtle and one half of the duck.

It gets even more ludicrous when you look at different star signs. An example from today. Gemini (my star sign) for the 13th of September 2009 compared with Libra (chosen at random) for the same day.
Gemini: This is a very important work cycle peak, representing new jobs, new positions, new projects, and new goals developing in the surrounding month that will last for the next two years. What you accept, you're stuck with for that time, so choose well. Impact your options, then make your power moves with renewed vigor.
Libra: Knowing what you want and moving on to procure it is the opportunity of the day, and what you fall into now may be just the chance you've been waiting for. Sharing goals and deciding to mutually go for it will be the best of all possible worlds for everybody, with a minimum of conflict resulting later.
My interpretation of both of them: Make wise decisions today
This is very generalised and is good advice for anyone at any time. And this is standard procedure. Around the end of financial year time you see horoscopes saying that you should budget, around Christmas you see horoscopes saying that it's better to give than receive and the list goes on.

Another nail in the coffin comes when you look at different astrologists interpretations of the same pictures. Taurus from the same date taken from astrology.com.au (1) and astrology.com (2).
(1) Desires deceive and getting hold of what's wanted seems to be a continuing and elusive task. Watch out for illusions and delusions being sold as the real thing, and then snatched out of reach just before consummation. If you're unsure, don't invest time or money or you'll be perpetuating the situation.
(2) You are almost certain to hear some good news today -- and you've waited long enough for it! Make sure to express the right amount of gratitude when it starts to flow your way and all will be well.
Interesting that for the same person, the opposite things will happen.

I'd like to finish with my favourite horoscope happening. In order to find out how accurate they actually were, One scientist (name with held) found 1000 volunteers to rate a horoscope which he sent them for a week. All bar 10 said that they were happy with it and would like to keep on receiving them. He sent a letter back to them saying that it would be impossible as it had been specifically written for a person who had since died due to his being on death row, 3 years previously. Which means that what was written for a man in prison three years before still applied to 99% of average Joes from all 12 star signs.
Believable? Scientific? Nope.

Music

As someone who has an interest in both music and psychology, I was interested to read an article in a recent Drum Media magazine (a free music magazine based in Sydney). You can check out a couple of write-ups for the study here or here. It appears that some research has been done into the effect that music has on monkeys. It seems that there is only one piece of music that does anything - there may be more, but they might not have checked these. They compared music written specifically based on the calls of the cotton-top tamarin with music written by a range of human composers. The list that they tried out is as follows.

Of Wolf and Man - Metallica
The Grudge - Tool
Adagio for Strings - Samuel Barber
an excerpt from The Fragile - Nine Inch Nails
Metallica reportedly calmed them down.

Apparently they are going to rethink animal husbandry guidelines based on the study. Animal husbandry might not be the issue, the issue might be with the so called common ancestor (still yet to be found since the Indonesian pygmys dubbed Hobbit or Piltdown Man). The only thing that the study has really shown is that monkeys and humans don't think in the same way. Yes the test was far from conclusive (according to what any Yr 7 Science student could tell you, you need a larger test sample) but there was a fair range of music chosen from Metallica's thrash metal style to Tool's almost progressive or heavier trance (in this song) style, all the way to string orchestra with Samuel Barber. With only 1 eliciting any response, statistically, there is almost no 'human' music that they react to and those that they do respond to, they respond to completely differently - I have yet to find anyone who has been relaxed by Metallica.

Just a thought.

Politics and Crime

I read a book recently (believe it or not). One of the things that it said was that there had never been "a proud moment in political history. Dictators have risen and fallen. Religious doctrines have ebbed and flowed. Political systems have come and gone." In many respects, I agree.

What is the high point of political history? Do we call it Democracy which is now being foisted onto nations who neither understand it nor need it, and has in fact made their life harder due to almost legitimate insurrections (like Afghanistan or Iraq)? Do I need to remind you of Germany where a man known as Adolf Hitler was appointed high chancellor after winning the vote? or the perversion of the democratic system in the 2000 US elections, where many people where disallowed the vote because they were either ex-convicts or in some cases, shared their name with their father, an ex-convict? or the countless countries that claim to be democratic only to prove that they aren't by either only allowing their citizens to vote one way, or declaring the whole vote void and exiling the leaders of the opposition party who had won (I refer here in particular to the recent Zimbabwean elections)?
Democracy has been called bludgeoning of the people, for the people and by the people, and in many cases it is. Karl Vonnegut once said that "There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president." and this is the other problem.

What about a benign dictatorship like Pakistan which was, between 1999 and 2008, controlled by the military who seized leadership from the government and then ruled better and fairer than the country had experienced before? A dictatorship, no matter how benign can become malignant at the drop of a hat because of the absolute control experienced by the top of the pile. If you disagree, you lose. Interestingly, many westerners will say that a dictatorship is wrong no matter the circumstances. however, in September 2007, BBC featured a Rwandan who was living in Cameroon who asked the question "Is peace and poverty under dictatorship better than bad democracy?" He said that for him, the answer was yes. Not having experienced life in a dictatorship, benign or otherwise, I can't comment on that but it makes sense, at least in my head.

What about a monarchy? A monarchy is essentially a self-perpetuating dictatorship and so the arguments above also refer to this.

What about socialism/communism? In theory, this would be the best system out of the lot - everyone is equal, the people are the actual government, and those who are in the larger demographic are in power, it has real potential for a true people's government. The downfall of this system is the baggage that it carries - all things belong to the state and are shared equally (albeit according to need). This carries with it problems in actuality. Man is inherently greedy and the ones in control, through manipulation of the masses gain power and control. Over time, when you compare them with other forms of government in a capitalist sphere you end up with a situation like the end of animal farm. The pigs started walking on their hind legs and over time, you could look "from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." Theory and Reality are not siblings, but school friends at the end of their education; unless they work hard, they drift apart until they forget they ever knew each other.

The final major governmental system I would say is a Theocracy (state controlled by the church). This is fine when the god in charge of the system is immutably benign and universally unquestioned in it's power, but when you get a true theocracy this is rarely the case. The god in charge, through his/her clergy decides that it would be a good idea for him/her to gain absolute control of everything through his/her priesthood. This once again gets us back to a dictatorship, this time ruled by an unseen master through the hands of his flawed and often self appointed human agents, who don't always agree. Or, there rises a discontent revolution of people who think that they could do better. One Civil War later, no one is in control and everyone is worse off.

I have deliberately left out anarchy as this is by definition a lack of any government.
I would like to finish with words that apply to all forms of government everywhere. This is taken from the movie V for Vendetta.

People should not be afraid of their governments.
Governments should be afraid of their people.

2 B R 0 2 B

Disclaimer: this post gets morbid
For those of you who are new or don't remember, a few weeks ago, I discussed a short story by Kurt Vonnegut called 2BR02B. I said that I would point out the flaws in this otherwise brilliant narrative. Looking at this short story again, I realised that the only major flaw in it was the premise (which I discussed previously) and so I decided to discuss another part of it - the conclusion that two of the focal characters come to. If you haven't read it, or would like to refresh yourself, here is a link directly to it.

I want to discuss the painter and the father. Both have an interesting response to the idea proposed. First the father. He is the unhappy father of triplets due to the situation I described previously. He says that he would like to keep all of his kids but without finding anyone to die in their place - a natural response. The doctors (although whether they can be called that due to a complete abandonment of the Hippocratic Oath - a creed that doctors are supposed to follow. If you really want to check it out you can do it either here or a modern version here) are sympathetic but stick to the rules brutally while trying to sound nice about it. Here is where the father's response gets interesting. He pulls a revolver out and shoots the two doctors and himself in order that his children may survive. You can approach this response from two angles - either he was being imminently irresponsible and cruel, leaving his children to grow up with no father and with the knowledge that he killed himself and two others so that they could live, or it was an act of both incredible love and anger, love for his children that he didn't want any of them to die and was therefore willing to die in their stead and anger at the system that not only allows such actions, but requires them. My personal way of thinking about his actions is to say that it was an incredible self sacrifice that was ill conceived, but probably not wrong (despite not being right). The problem with it is that there is such a grey area when you start messing with these sorts of things, in the end you have to ask the question 'Are you justified in taking life to save life?' and the answer to that has to be your answer to his situation.

Secondly the painter. He is an old man aged about 200 but looking only 35. He has been commissioned to redecorate the maternity waiting room as a memorial to a man who volunteered to die. He also has a very cynical view on life but doesn't particularly want to die. His personal view is that the splattered dropsheet that he is using is a more accurate picture of the world than the garden that he is painting. His reaction is, in my opinion, more interesting. He despises the whole system and is quite happy to say so. He figures that someday soon he will end it, but he'll do it in his way and in his time. He watches the whole scenario and doesn't say a word. After thinking about it for a while and the only answer to life that he can think of is war, plague and starvation (as an aside, three of the four horse riders of the apocalypse, the fourth being death). He also decides to kill himself there and then using the pistol that has just recently ended the lives of the other people in the room. But he lacks the nerve and ends up calling to make an appointment that day at the 'Sheepdip'. This is really the only logical response to the situation in a strictly humanistic sense. If the only purpose of life is to setup for the next generation, then what is the real purpose of life? Answer in this situation, to have kids and then die.

I think I will have to leave it there before this gets more grim and morbid than it already is. I'll leave you with the final words of the short story. Ask yourself if this is the right response to death.

"Your city thanks you; your country thanks you; your planet thanks you. But the deepest thanks of all is from future generations."

THE END

Waiting on the world.

Not being someone who listens to the radio often, when I do hear it, I usually listen so I know whats happening with music (something in which I have a particular interest). Also being someone who completely missed the John Mayer boat, hearing one of his songs on the radio is a fairly rare occurrence for me. I heard one last night called Waiting on the World to Change. It was the most passive 'Anti-War' song I have ever heard. Even the title, waiting on the world to change, is more passive than anything that I've heard in the recent past. From there, it didn't get any better either. Yes it did point the finger at those John Mayer felt were most to blame, but then he goes on to say "It's hard to beat the system, when you're standing at a distance, so we keep waiting, waiting on the world to change" Yes, it is hard to beat the system when you're standing at a distance. This is because you're not actually in the fight; it's like trying to win a boxing match when you're not in the ring - impossible.

He also says that "one day our generation, is gonna rule the population". Every generation has said that, and every generation has let the same people back into power. We're currently seeing the so-called hippie generation coming into power, the people who grew up during the 60's and were all for peace, love and freedom - nothing has changed. One of the problems is that the people who run for power are often the people who want power in and of itself and the people who do want to change things usually don't want either the power or the rest of the responsibility that comes with power.

Gandhi said this about the same issue "We need to be the change we wish to see in the world". No successful change has come about by people saying "we need to see if the change we wish to see in the world will happen" because it doesn't invite change. Instead, it invites apathy and stupidity; I don't know which is worse.

Looking around I found a few comments about the song - most of them loved it. One however said essentially what I've said. He was immediately called an 'uneducated naysayer' and told he should stop 'simply hating America'. Critics don't seem to be that worried about being told that though with one calling it 'the most spineless social-justice song ever written', an impressive award when compared with other songs (like 'I still haven't found what I'm looking for' the social-justice song that doesn't promote social justice. It only really says that we haven't found it yet)

I will acknowledge that he has changed the words for a live concert that he did - Live Earth. He changed to words to "we're not waiting on the world to change", a nice touch but one that is useless without actually doing something about it.

This is just a quick post. I was watching a video last night by a guy called Angry Aussie on youtube. Basically he posts about things that irritate him whether it be idiots, religion, stupid people doing stupid things and while he doesn't hold back on them he manages to remain at least moderatly well informed about things - he generally doesn't post solely on opinion, he will also use fact or general consensus to insult and point out flaws.

He said something which interested me greatly in the middle of one of his posts. He argued that atheists were theists also. How does he do this considering that an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in a god, hence a-theist (no theos (god). He says that in his opinion defining yourself in terms of a God even though you're arguing that there is no God makes you a theist. People then say to him that he is Agnostic (someone who doesn't know whether there is a God, or in the case of Dr Karl, definitely doesn't know), something which he isn't sure about. As far as I can tell he is one a rare breed of people. In his mind, he does know that there is no God and yet he doesn't care.

Then he comes out with an incredibly profound statement about the nature of hell. As far as his catholic education went (being an ex-alter boy) hell was where God wasn't. he then goes on to quotes the parable of the rich and poor man to say that despite this separation, you can still see heaven and this is the greatest torture of hell. In his words (slightly paraphrased) you may be being burned alive and being tortured by demons, but the greatest torture of hell is that you can see paradise.

Just found it interesting that someone who doesn't agree with Christianity can see parts of it's theology clearer than many Christians often can.

Two and a half men

True, this title may not fit with what you've seen so far up here, but let me explain. The sitcom (for those who don't know) centres around a man, his brother and nephew and his various exploits with girls. This isn't what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was a 'half man', or someone who is a man in all but actions, ie, someone who looks like a man, talks like a man etc but doesn't act like a man. He may be a 'kid', he may be a chauvinist or a misogynist, he may be a slob but what ever he is, he isn't a Man. Read here what you will about my views on certain things; I hope to explain.

A man (according to the dictionary) is any human male, but we tag extras on this definition, requiring a man to be 'manly' - or courageous, strong and masculine (note here not effeminate, a trap that I think that the modern man has fallen into) - to become what is referred to as a 'real man'. This doesn't mean that a man is, to quote Mark Driscoll, someone who can belch the loudest or fart the stinkiest (despite these being qualities that we associate with the male of the species), but someone, I would argue, who is a) willing to stand up for himself, his family and friends (especially those who need help in these things) and what he believes in and is willing to stick his neck out for these things and b) able to pull his own weight in life, business (if that's what he's in). There are other criteria that may feature, but these are the main ones.

Does this mean that a female can be a man? No; a woman may be manlike or mannish, but we tend to look at this as something that isn't normal. But what about what Sandra Bartky says about "We are born male or female, but not masculine or feminine" Not really; if you stick the average 3 year old boy in a room and give him the choice to play babies or cops and robbers he will in 9 out of 10 cases pick cops and robbers and the reverse is true of the average 3 year old girl - these things are wired into our brains at birth. Should we allow children to make up their own minds about whether they are really a boy or a girl? Why not, most of the time they will stick with what they know.

Now I hope that the crux of this is a call for males to be MEN: people who will look after himself and his 'peeps'. This is something that we all should do, but especially men who have been (depending on which view you subscribe to) seemingly designed or evolved for this purpose - something that we have lost in this day and age.

2 B R 0 2 B - a critical review - A body is a body

I just re-read Kurt Vonnegut's short story '2 B R 0 2 B' (it can be read here if you want although a word of warning, it isn't a nice story). It's a piece that I think would be universally regarded as "not right" and yet, logically and, if we keep it outside of anything else and in a strictly humanistic sense, its premise is quite brilliant and should probably be implemented as soon as we can. It is focused around the happenings in a maternity ward waiting area, but it isn't as happy as we would expect due to the fact that since the population needs to remain stable, ie, for every birth, there needs to be a death - and there are triplets. The father only has one person willing to die for his kids (their great grand father), and so he will have to choose two of the three to die - I said it wasn't nice. For those who want more information on it I recommend reading, I haven't given much of a spoiler at all and so the story won't be ruined. For a little while (due to the fact that otherwise I'm going to have a very long post) I'm going to show how this view that he puts forward (but I don't think affirms or is a proponent of) is wrong.

As I say, humanisticaly and indeed evolutionarily, it is not just true, it is also a brilliant idea - the old, sick and those unable to care for themselves should die so that the young can live, they are only holding back the evolution and survival of the species. However, only one person that I know of (name withheld due to my inability to remember his name) that would support this (and surprisingly, he takes it to the conclusion that if ever he becomes useless for the survival of the species he should also die). This means that it will be hard to do without calling on some other power other (and definitely greater) than humanity so to do it I will take parts of it out that make up the premise of the story and hopefully refute them.

"A body's a body". In one sense, yes this is true. A dead body is nothing more than a dead body no matter what you say or do about it. The difference is with a live body, more commonly known as a person. A person is not simply the sum total of their experiences, nor is a body merely a vessel for a brain. When a person dies, that person is dead and they become a body, but (and here comes my personal views which means a Christian view) the soul lives on. What happens after that is irrelevant for the purposes of this post, but that means that at some stage the body and soul were connected and therefore, the death of a person for the purposes of making easier the life of another person or even for what is laughingly referred to in many circles as the greater good is wrong. Christians, Jews, Most Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Animists, those who have ancestor worship and others all agree with me on this point (even satanists agree with this in principle - the Satanic Bible puts it plainly that you shouldn't harm a child as children are innocents, and this idea of not harming innocents is carried through the entire book). We can play at disagreeing, but even the staunchest Darwinist, the one that would say that death always improves the species due to death being part of some defect (and there are none of these that I know of) would say that the death of a person so that someone can take their wallet or other personal belongings (note that I have used a different example to the book, but I think that it is an appropriate example) and thus afford to eat, therefore carrying on the species while weeding out a weakness (alertness, strength, speed etc) is wrong and should be punished. This is because every person feels the gravity and enormity of Death and most try to avoid it. Even in the story, this is acknowledged. read this short excerpt
"I want those kids," said Wehling quietly. "I want all three of them."
"Of course you do," said Dr. Hitz. "That's only human."
"I don't want my grandfather to die, either," said Wehling.
"Nobody's really happy about taking a close relative to the Catbox, [the place that people are taken to die, a glorified gas chamber otherwise known as 'Ethical Suicide Studios']" said Dr. Hitz gently, sympathetically.

And yet, this other view that is put forward is the logical conclusion that you must come to. As humans we pride ourselves on being Homo Sapien - Human, The Wise. We should be able to accept this without any qualms and yet, we feel sad when people that we know die. Interesting isn't it. Either we aren't as wise as we think we are or there is something important about life that should be held on to. Dylan Moran puts it this way; we should be as alive as we can until we're totally dead.

Watch this space for another couple of arguments in this vein.

Looking for an original sin!!?

"I'm looking for an original sin, one with a twist and a bit of a spin. I’ve done all of the old ones 'till they’ve all been done in. Now I’m just looking - For an original sin."
These were the words of Meatloaf in 1995 and it seems to be the way that many of us act - we want something new to do, and if it's bad, then all the better. Not trying to 'preachify' but why do we do this, even with our daily lives and seemingly without thinking about it. It seems to be either such a thrill (because we never do things like this), or a chore (to be avoided at all costs) to do something 'nice' like giving a few dollars to a charity, or dropping some spare change for a homeless guy or a busker - we'd rather walk away and pretend that nothing happened.

We watch movies that promote things that we would never dream of doing, and this is something that I am guilty of as much as anyone else. We, especially in Australia, hold up criminals as heroes - I mean, Ned Kelly for heavens sake is a national hero. And then, beyond all logic, we say that we're all basically good people, or that there's no really bad people around (except for Osama Bin Laden, or Kim Jong Il). I mean, what is the go with this.

After that, we philosophise on the nature of evil and what we should do about it. In the words of John Newton, 'I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it, and with this I begin and end."

Sorry about the semi-morbid nature of this, just I was thinking about today and wanted to get out.

Also note that all of these examples I have taken from myself and casual observations on general society, I'm well aware that there are people that aren't like this, but I'm also well aware that such people are a minority.

Greetings all

Welcome to my page of rants, raves, general comments, and thoughts. I don't exactly know what will be happening here from day to day, but I suppose it will be as described - rants, raves, comments, and thoughts about the twisted knot that we call life.

A note for the wary, this may at times, due to certain things that happen to me and in my head, become.. shall we say, interesting, to those who have an interest in psycology. These will be just a passing phase, one of my bad days.

I hope that those who decide to take this plunge into the morass with me will feel free to comment on, disagree with or contact me.

I hope both you and I enjoy.

A final word from one of the great thinkers,
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance. -- Socrates