not dark yet

you can’t *be* wise and famous.

anyway, not for long:
they kill you for it.
look at the god-damn record.
look at jesus. look at socrates.
look at john fucking lennon.
look at malcolm, look at gandhi,
look at martin fucking luther king.

it’s everywhere and everybody knows it.
speak truth to power all you want but power
talks back with violence not just words
and everybody’ll get behind the boss
without hesitation and swear it was
entirely your own god-damn fault…
what the hell did you expect?

good thing you’ll be dead by then.
the consolations of philosophy.

and now please let me say here as clearly
as i know how that *’i'm* not claiming
to have acquired any kind of wisdom…
that would be the height of foolishness.

i’m just sayin.

Send Not To Know What Form Of Government Is Best

john martin posted
a video yesterday of the
honorable d. kucinich speaking
on The Fear during GWB. good stuff too.
(freethinkers playground… but where
does the apostrophe go?)
there was a guy at uuce last sunday
that mentioned the idea of a department
of peace and it looked like a pretty
vacuous gesture… they *call* it peace
[when there *is* no peace] anyhow:
the “defense” department was after
all once known much more straightforwardly
as the “war” department. anyhow, the intro
here in the video makes it clear that at least
one version of the proposal is that such
a department work toward the abolition
of war. trouble is of course like so many
other similar ideas the first thing the
founding committee would do
if they had any principles at all
would be to disband.
war is the health of the state;
render onto caesar what belongs to caesar;
all that.
i hope for more from the church…
where i haven’t been in years…
than NPR-style hopeless-idealist-
-wing-of-democrat-party
slogan honing.
and i expect to find it. i suppose i’ll
probably have to fight tooth and nail
to *get* it… but i suppose too that
this too is standard operating procedure.
or a weariness of the flesh.
or something.

UUs for a Just Economic Community (UUJEC)

gottagottagottagotta, gottagottagottagotta, gottagottagotta givemhope

so here’s the holy trinity of the matrix:
church, state, and “free trade”…
the new world order. in their usual way,
the *enemy* of freedom (in their satanic majesty)
have usurped its very name.

(the money sez “liberty”
when it’s really for *control*;
etcetera et-everbleeding-cetera;
sometimes lies end up a pretty
reliable hint at the truth…)

but. arbeit macht frei doesn’t get it
for this proud american: humanity
as just another sort of data is already
a line drawn much too late but finally
“the center for workforce development”
the words, not the building itself
(i am indeed thinking of a particular
building… which has its good and bad
points like any other actual thing;
so back to the abstraction). no.
not my job man. i’m in the academy.

i mean i’ll gladly *work* there;
proved it last spring (for well past
the hundredth season) and
am raring to go as always
come new year. (i.e., now: fall.)

that studying mathematics
expands a “skillset”…
a *marketable* set of skills
(as i take this word to mean)…
is as inspiring of hope in me
as pretty much anything
in intellectual life can be.
so don’t get me wrong.

i’ve got no issues at all with
helping students learn things
they *want* to know for economic reasons.
i myself am there for economic reasons
and my reluctance ever to speak of money
(or… but this is changing rapidly…
even to think about it) doesn’t mean
it shouldn’t factor in as an essential
feature of our every interaction
if we’re *serious* about studying,
say, “mathematics education”.

but insofar as studying mathematics
(rightly so called), for me it has
long been very close to the essence
of the whole project that politics
(i’ll here include all financial life)
don’t enter into the discussion.
so in some sense i’m not even
*supposed* to know what motivates
a given student.

certainly not if i’m developing workforce:
a studied indifference to suchlike issues
would seem to be pretty close to what
“being a pro” really amounts to in practice.

but they feel the same way
in every discipline:
professional indoctrination
will have consisted of a set
of things-not-recognized-as-politics:
the working assumptions of
pros in the given discipline:
we don’t care what you actually *think*
provided you can discuss *these few things*
using our special vocabulary and assumptions.

or something in that general direction.
i think. because all i know is that
math really *is* a cross-cultural
extrapolitical field of discourse
like no other.

now, the NWO would have us believe
that, for example, medicine
is “above it all” in a similar way
(while at the same time keeping us
terrified about how to pay
for the failures of our fragile bodies).

but nationwide just put its *name*
on children’s friggin hospital
and appears to be doubling its size;
is anybody gonna straightface tell me
that datacrunching insurance entities
beyond mortal understanding aren’t
telling the very MD’s up in there
what good and bad procedure is
and that crazy ivorytower booklearnin
“science” stuff has *nothing* to say…
“let’s be realistic”?

okay. let’s.
*helping each other out*
would appear to be the way to go here.
and we’ll have to stay out of sight.
*any good thing* that happens,
some control junkie will try
to get a piece of the action.
they’ll slowplay you in principle
and claim they can’t possibly
afford to do it any other way;
next year will be worse because
“grow or die”… in *every available way*…
is built into their DNA.
meanwhile, that’s *your* meat
in the grinder. when do you jump?

the liberal arts are the art of *peace*;
for me this is first of all.
and “the gospel i preach”—a phrase
i’m fond of dropping into about
one lecture per quarter (but don’t
meter carefully)— is *literacy*
first of all.

sitting quietly in a room alone
becomes the adventure of a lifetime
for some of us; we are the lucky ones.
i don’t know if i’ve ever closed a sale
with this pitch… college students
generally either know it already
or never will.

but of course we are always in a state of war.
as keeping the peace here at home
becomes more and more obviously impossible–
incarcerations are always boom business
for example–well, there’s no telling
what’ll come next. it’ll be brutal bad;
it always is. (welcome to the material world,
little lifeform: pain hurts and everybody dies;
have as good a time as you can in between.
oh, ps: there is a war between the ones
who say there is a war and the ones
who say there isn’t.)

anybody claiming to know
anything else for sure
about the future
is trying to sell you something.
tread warily.

(i *wrote* “feign interest
until you can get away” but
it occurs to me that i’ve claimed
that i’m not going to flinch
away from thinking about money
as readily as what i’ve been doing…
okay… i *might* want
actually to *buy* something…)

banks and insurance
are shylocks and bookies;
government is the muscle obviously
and religion is what’s left
of the arts of peace
after the patriarchy
gets its piece of the pie.

so i guess i’m inclined that way.
and should maybe plant a flag.
or anyway wear some colors.
(the geographical metaphor
loses much of its force
in the “dig up all roots”
timeless no-past-no-future NWO:
just keep moving…
nothing to see here…
who moved my republic?)

i’m thinking unitarianism.
“at most one god”.

heck, i’ll ID as “humanist”
right now if it’ll get me
a shinynew membership card
or something.

now, there is a “free world”
(another geographic metaphor!).
i’m even *in* it and have been
for most of my life.

between the lines.
on the streets.
in a stranger’s eyes.

(cue a loudly strummed six-string…)

We Don’t Need No Stinking Badgers

stand up for yourself
or find somebody to stand up for you
or be beaten and raped and left alone
with your pain until the next guy
in line comes to beat you and rape you
again. that kind of thing.
the rules of the tank and not only
of the tank: the rules of the oldest
profession. at least some of the time.
*some* of those “girls” out on the street
every night and day are presumably beaten up
pretty regularly just to keep the money flowing
for some “pimp”—a word so loaded
that, for me, it can *have* no “literal” meaning
(hence the squarequotes; a marginal note
as it were to myself marking a bit that
requires more explication; a kiss and
a promise). anyhow, the pimp considered
as an economic actor would then be, what,
a member of the second-oldest profession?
because this looks like “slaves and bosses
shall be the order of the day” from here
and a good enough model of *all* economic life
to account for the constant currency
of the very *saying* about
“the oldest profession”.

anyhow if you can’t beat him you join him
so you’re reunited with the cosmic principle
whereas acceptance is the answer to all
your problems and you get out there
and turn your tricks like a good girl
or anyhow come back with the money
one way or another because, well,
because you’ve got to *turn it over*.
and so you just accept it and call it
stockholm syndrome or call it the gospel
but it actually works because christ
it’s better than fucking jail.
where there’s even less carrot
and even more stick. the rules.

and how do they frighten the hardened cons?
pascal’s quiet room alone.
which i’m actually pretty good at.
please don’t misunderstand:
solitary *confinement* would
break my spirit down too and
probably faster than most;
i’m not claiming any moral toughness here
(quite the opposite in fact…
more “scarequotes”…).

but, and i think i’m getting pretty close
to an actual *point* here, something
“lee” said recently. reading makes people
less inclined to violence.

so you learn the arts of literacy
because if bygod all you’ve gotta do
to get out of the next assbeating
is, i don’t know, memorize some
_bible_ verses (as an ex of mine
was made to do as a kid for this
very reason; i expect this is
*very* common in at least some
communities)…
and it works.

and if you get so good at this “reading” thing?
that you can instruct others? oh goody.
you can be a “schoolteacher”. your job?
teach people to do as they’re told
(or negotiate a way to fake it).
for advanced credit, give the appearance
that you’re doing something worthwhile
and loving it; this is called
“making us look good” (or “the bait”).
but don’t forget: advanced credit
can work against you. nobody likes a smartass.

the governor listeth

Fermat’s Room reviewed by Maths Teacher.
Bob Samuels interviewed at HtUW.
AA: Cult or Cure? (Chaz Bufe) plugged.

Assume A Can Opener If You Have It Not

earlier this week, i made some remark
to the effect that the Program is a sort
of christless christianity; then yesterday’s
morning ramble included
islam with christianity as a god-the-father
“monotheism”. the point here is that for my
purposes right now, the church and the mosque
and “these rooms” (where Program doctrine
is promulgated) are doing essentially the
*same* work: teaching submission to authority.

… acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because i find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.

“acceptance” is about as central here
as “submission” is in mecca… and there’s
a great deal to be learned here,
and not just for drunks and submissives
either probably. but god damn it.
why to they always have to say things
like “all my problems” and
“no serenity“? it’s the old
this-is-the-one-true-way
all-other-versions-of-this-lie-are-evil
you-wouldn’t-like-me-when-i’m-mad
*absolutism* that poisons the whole deal
for almost anybody *not* active in a church
or synagogue or what have you.

now, i’d like to believe that there’s
actually some redemptive power
in the god damn gospel; hell,
i *do* believe it. i’ve *seen* it.

but “find a sponsor, read scripture,
go to meetings” looks to me to be
a *way* better description of
“how it works” than any of this
faith-and-faith-alone hooey.

anyhow. sponsorship is on my mind.
like needing a car and driver
to sponsor me back into the driving world
or, for that matter, my guide-of-the-moment
in “rules of the tank” post
of a couple hours ago. you can’t get
much of anywhere all by yourself;
i’m going to need a lot of help.

but madeline wasn’t kidding when she told me…
quite plainly cutting off a certain line
of discussion as is not at all her usual way…
“you’ll *never* find any authority you can respect”.

so it’s a problem.
the spirit of mathematics
as channelled by me through my
memories of my own teachers
and readings and sessions
with students and whatnot?
doesn’t seem to be doing it
for me anymore.

school is still school.
there’s a gospel in there (literacy itself)
but you’ll need to be mighty lucky
not to get caught worshipping some
false idol like workforce development.
there sure doesn’t seem to be anything
for *me* to sponsor *others* into there.

now what?

got answers? don’t ask.

so there’s this whole *religion*
called “submission”… or, rather,
since i intend here to call things
by *my* names for them (while still
keeping weather eye on *clarity*),
there’s a *branch* of the religion
of *monotheism* called “submission”.

i refer of course to so-called
“islam”, which does us a favor by
bifurcating in what i suppose we
call the usual way (into “sunni”
and “shi’ite”) just to remind us
that there is no one true version
even of the one true faith (if any).

anyhow though, that “god-the-father”
son-of-a-bitch is plain to see
front and center in *all three*
“people of the book” branches
of what i’ve here called “monotheism”
(only because i haven’t settled on
a way to refer to, well, let’s say
*western-slash-mideastern* monotheism;
the point is that the appalling way
so-called christians and alleged muslims
have used [windowdressing] differences
in their approach to the universe to
keep their flocks in their proper pastures
shouldn’t be reinforced in discussions
making any effort at religious neutrality;
“western” civilisation—monotheism with islam
marked as its demonised other—is, though
one hates to differ with one of the few
eminent wise men our age has produced,
*not* a good idea). where was i?
no. better question. who cares?

Blues Of The Hour

Where do you think you’re goin
My conscience said to me
And I said well I don’t know about that
But I know where I’d like to be
And how are you gonna get there
I said I’m gonna have to wait and see
Cause I’ve got no expectations
But whatever’s right in front of me
And what do you plan to do about that
I said look for right things to do
And there’s nothin I can think of right about now
Except to put it in a song for you
(…guitar break till everyone leaves…)

Program Stuff I Guess

If you don’t consider yourself a member you don’t have to keep it anonymous; you get the idea. Anyhow it’s pretty much just thinly disguised Christianity anyhow though with the saving grace of Christlessness. This “forgiveness” thing looks like one heck of a winner though so I’m gonna just go ahead and renounce whatever vows I might ever have made to resent anybody forever and stuff. Just too tiring trying to stay hateful I suppose and there’s no use trying to figure out why any given soul at large in this crazy universe would need to take hundreds of meetings and study a small library full of scriptures to understand this either. Some people are just sort of slow on the uptake. Go in peace, whoever you are. Live long, prosper, may the force be with you. All that.