2008/04/08
Denial
I used to welcome newcomers with the good news, 'There is a limit to the human capacity to experience pain.' After that point, humans will either go insane, go into shock, or commit suicide. Denial is part of the insanity route.
For those who have decided to face their pain and insanity, denial is the first opponent. It will blind you. It will make thoughts and solutions, literally, inconceivable. It will change the appearance of people and events, making them falsely malevolent or benign. It lies to and sabotages you at every step. It's fast, slick, and knows just what you want to hear and see.
It's not a river in Egypt, nor is it a problem to be treated casually and dismissed with a too clever retort.
In the struggle with your own mind, you need reinforcements. You are not stronger than you. You must assemble a group of people whose judgment and honesty can be relied upon. People who will name the lies, dispel the illusions, find the traps and hidden doors. People who will tell you when you are blind, blocked, paranoid or gullible.
It's easy to hate denial as the enemy, but that's a mistake.
Remember, this is your own defense to protect you from serious, even unbearable pain. Too much, too soon, too quick will drive you again to either insanity, shock, or suicide. Recovery is a long struggle.
In your recovery, consider denial to be overprotective. It's an unprincipled and relentless opponent, but not an enemy.
For those who have decided to face their pain and insanity, denial is the first opponent. It will blind you. It will make thoughts and solutions, literally, inconceivable. It will change the appearance of people and events, making them falsely malevolent or benign. It lies to and sabotages you at every step. It's fast, slick, and knows just what you want to hear and see.
It's not a river in Egypt, nor is it a problem to be treated casually and dismissed with a too clever retort.
In the struggle with your own mind, you need reinforcements. You are not stronger than you. You must assemble a group of people whose judgment and honesty can be relied upon. People who will name the lies, dispel the illusions, find the traps and hidden doors. People who will tell you when you are blind, blocked, paranoid or gullible.
It's easy to hate denial as the enemy, but that's a mistake.
Remember, this is your own defense to protect you from serious, even unbearable pain. Too much, too soon, too quick will drive you again to either insanity, shock, or suicide. Recovery is a long struggle.
In your recovery, consider denial to be overprotective. It's an unprincipled and relentless opponent, but not an enemy.
2006/09/01
Words ...
When I was in my early 30’s, I wrestled with my character. Three other
like-minded men and I regularly got together for a “spirit fire”, and
analyzed our habits, reviewed our actions, examined our motivations,
and checked each other’s reasoning.
Amongst our common problems was that our common language obscured more
than it illuminated. Polite language lied to us, and reinforced our
lying to ourselves.
We needed words to say what we meant.
So we refined the definitions of existing words for accuracy and to
eliminate overlapping meanings. We clarified their assumed contexts and
connotations. We took special effort with the vocabulary of “recovery”
jargon. For certain other words of importance to me, I did the same on
my own.
Some of those defintions will follow in later posts. One is called for
now.
Spirit Fire has no special meaning at all. It was a wry joke. We
usually gathered in a wood and lit a fire for warmth, light, common
experience, distraction when we were silent, and eventually out of
habit.
2006/08/31
Theme
Blogs have themes.
This blog should be about wisdom, the kinds of things learned painfully. It is supposed to be written to give emphasis to experiences when others have them too. It is part of my learning to distill those lessons to carefully worded articles. Doing this is wisdom in its act as well as its presentation.
Blogs that I read are usually about analysis of current events, either personal or political, and I am drawn to emulate them. It's far easier to follow, especially in mindset. The road is well travelled and wide with the efforts of others to be unique. Such blogs can become popular, which this one can never be. They are living beings, as this one is an autopsy.
There are posts I have made to this blog which violate the theme. They will remain. I refuse to delete. I have flunked classes, but never cheated. The grade might have only been a 50, but all 50 of those points were mine.
Making pretty, like making nice, has a cost that compounds with interest. A facade protects us and isolates us. I have plenty of protection in this blog just by being boring.
Please skip the "Short and Quick Thought". Let "Found It" be invisible. No one knows how to calculate inertia, but one should always be mindful that it exists. I'll make another blog for this kind of easier and more exciting thing.
Porky Pig is happier these days. He loves bad fauxtography.
This blog should be about wisdom, the kinds of things learned painfully. It is supposed to be written to give emphasis to experiences when others have them too. It is part of my learning to distill those lessons to carefully worded articles. Doing this is wisdom in its act as well as its presentation.
Blogs that I read are usually about analysis of current events, either personal or political, and I am drawn to emulate them. It's far easier to follow, especially in mindset. The road is well travelled and wide with the efforts of others to be unique. Such blogs can become popular, which this one can never be. They are living beings, as this one is an autopsy.
There are posts I have made to this blog which violate the theme. They will remain. I refuse to delete. I have flunked classes, but never cheated. The grade might have only been a 50, but all 50 of those points were mine.
Making pretty, like making nice, has a cost that compounds with interest. A facade protects us and isolates us. I have plenty of protection in this blog just by being boring.
Please skip the "Short and Quick Thought". Let "Found It" be invisible. No one knows how to calculate inertia, but one should always be mindful that it exists. I'll make another blog for this kind of easier and more exciting thing.
Porky Pig is happier these days. He loves bad fauxtography.
2006/03/14
Forgiving feminists
October 30, 2005, Maureen Dowd was in the news doing what she does. Other columnists commented, among them one of my favorites, Kathleen Parker. I dropped her a note.
Re-reading it, I believe I am both right and wrong. Men will overlook and ignore distracting traits in the women they pursue. We are ever optimistic. Still, when confronted with the characteristics of the catch, I believe more than a few good men's opinions will mirror mine regarding ...
Forgiving Feminists -
Dear Kathleen Parker,
There is a quality of good men that I think you have overlooked: the romantic idea of justice.
We men, who have lived with Dowd's ilk and seen them from the beginning, will not forgive them.
Those paranoid brats have raised predator sons and slut daughters. Juvenile-in-Chief Bill Clinton is their progeny's hero, parsing the language to rebel against stodgy rules. No economic strata is safer than any other. Into this new world, I must send my most precious, so armored that I don't know how they will find love.
The sometimes wild, sometimes cold determination that we have focused on becoming available or single fathers is coming to bear upon our adversaries, now that the children are in college, or at least out of the house.
To have compassion for feminists is to betray our mothers, our daughters, and our children's children. Other Dowd's will wail that they didn't know. Have mercy on the victims of feminism's fraud!
No.
Re-reading it, I believe I am both right and wrong. Men will overlook and ignore distracting traits in the women they pursue. We are ever optimistic. Still, when confronted with the characteristics of the catch, I believe more than a few good men's opinions will mirror mine regarding ...
Forgiving Feminists -
Dear Kathleen Parker,
There is a quality of good men that I think you have overlooked: the romantic idea of justice.
We men, who have lived with Dowd's ilk and seen them from the beginning, will not forgive them.
Those paranoid brats have raised predator sons and slut daughters. Juvenile-in-Chief Bill Clinton is their progeny's hero, parsing the language to rebel against stodgy rules. No economic strata is safer than any other. Into this new world, I must send my most precious, so armored that I don't know how they will find love.
The sometimes wild, sometimes cold determination that we have focused on becoming available or single fathers is coming to bear upon our adversaries, now that the children are in college, or at least out of the house.
To have compassion for feminists is to betray our mothers, our daughters, and our children's children. Other Dowd's will wail that they didn't know. Have mercy on the victims of feminism's fraud!
No.
2005/11/29
a short and quick thought
I'd like to get my flag staked on an idea of mine.
There is all kinds of wailing and howling about torture creating terrorists. This is ridiculous.
Torture creates SOLDIERS.
Propaganda creates terrorists.
Torture could be a powerful motivator to seek retribution, but Jane Doe and her young children aren't the ones who are doing the torturing. Army guys are doing that. I expect that victims of torture to seek vengence, but not against the innocent. They thought themselves as innocent. Torture would cripple the efforts of terrorist trainers, by focusing the attention of the trainee in the wrong direction.
To make a terrorist, you've got to cloud a guy's mind, convince him of a paranoid malice, cut off any means of legitimate attack, create a horrid past, a worthless present, and a hopeless future. You have to lie to him. A lot.
There is all kinds of wailing and howling about torture creating terrorists. This is ridiculous.
Torture creates SOLDIERS.
Propaganda creates terrorists.
Torture could be a powerful motivator to seek retribution, but Jane Doe and her young children aren't the ones who are doing the torturing. Army guys are doing that. I expect that victims of torture to seek vengence, but not against the innocent. They thought themselves as innocent. Torture would cripple the efforts of terrorist trainers, by focusing the attention of the trainee in the wrong direction.
To make a terrorist, you've got to cloud a guy's mind, convince him of a paranoid malice, cut off any means of legitimate attack, create a horrid past, a worthless present, and a hopeless future. You have to lie to him. A lot.
2005/11/28
Found it!
Actually had to google my own handle to find this blog again. How embarrassing.
I changed jobs and cities, twice. Had a file system crash. It was a mess.
Life is what happens while you're making plans.
I changed jobs and cities, twice. Had a file system crash. It was a mess.
Life is what happens while you're making plans.
2005/02/08
How do you calculate inertia?
Yes, I am new to blogging and I'm still trying to figure out the mechanics.
Re: Dan Rather, Eason Jordan, Connie Chung, Peter Jennings, etc.:
Who knew that the MSM had this much inertia?
I don't mean their manner of conducting business. That sort of thing can turn on a dime - a fortuitous idiom, eh?
No, I mean the energy of over half a century of credulity on the part of the american public. I'm not old enough to remember Murrow, but I do remember Huntley and Brinkley. I have half a memory of Viet Nam and therefore some of Cronkite. If you didn't trust these guys, who could you trust?
That's not an idle question. Who was there I could have tuned in to? It's not like Goldwater had a network. Even amidst the anti-establishment, there was no call for critical thought. Don't trust anyone over thirty? The unspoken corollary allowed for trusting the news - if it agreed with the under-thirty mindset, but thought wasn't a part of that either.
I have digressed, but not far.
The habitual examination of our facts isn't and hasn't been. It's ironic that the temptation that is slowly eroding the Main Stream Media ( MSM ) is what fuels the blogs.
OK, I know for a fact that no one is reading this right now. If there's a time to do the boring foundation work, it's when no one is watching. If any one from the future reads this, they'll already be predisposed to forgive a little, stylistically.
The Free Press:
It is in a constant balancing act between two conflicting truths:
People are paying to find out the facts. People are easily bored, and facts are dismally boring.
You want the TRUTH from your newspaper? Turn to the classifieds. If it isn't the truth, you'll discover it with a phone call or two. You can get right to the source! Not terribly entertaining, is it? Well, *I* enjoyed the Beanie baby boom, but that's another story.
After that, what we get is varying levels and layers of testimony.
I have got to tell you a personal story. I must.
When my son, was young - fifth, sixth grade - we were in a grocery check out line with the Weekly World News. There was the great hunter on the cover, with his elephant gun on his hip and the head of a ten foot long bumblebee under his foot.
"Son, do you believe that?"
Well, of course he didn't. Not that he was confident in his wisdom, but in the way I asked the question. I'm pretty transparent.
So we go outside to and get a copy of the local paper. There, on the cover was the great School Board doing something forgettable.
"Son, do you believe that?"
So now he says "Yeah!" with a confidence not wholly justified by my demeanor. The stench of ... educationalists ... was about him.
"Why?"
The premise of journalistic professionalism is that they give accurate and reliable testimony.
That's a fun digression. The premise of medical professionalism is that they will try to help one heal. The premise of engineering professionalism is that they will throughly calculate every contingency. The premise of accounting professionalism is that they will apply the current standards of fiscal evaluation without bias or for evasion.
If a doctor, or an engineer, or an accountant consistantly injects their personal/political bias into their work and screws up like Eason Jordan, by God, they are out of the business, making restitution, and might be going to jail.
A moment of reflection for lawyers. We don't need that long for a "journalist". Teachers belong to unions, and are, by self-declaration, "laborers."
In fact, "journalists" by plying their trade in and amongst the First Amendment can't be brought to account, save by the economic pressure of the customer, who doesn't wish to be bored.
So, I'll be obvious.
MSM journalists "sex up" the story to sell the papers, but bloggers "sex up" their prose by telling the facts better. I know that the point is obvious, but isn't the symmetry just Shakespearian?
It's like watching a train wreck that takes thirty years to happen. I mean, ever since Gulf War I the MSM has been piloting their huge mass against unacceptable truths betting that their irresistable force will succeed before their structure comes apart.
Remember all the entertaining but false stories that were told getting Clinton elected, and keeping him in office. Consider all the things that had to go down the now ubiquitous "memory hole." During Clinton's impeachment - I can't say "trial" because that's misleading - proceedings the National Enquirer was a peer to the MSM. Think back to all those silly stories, horrific stories they told in this President's election campaign and first term.
Who knew that they would still have enough left to almost elect a duplicitous stiff like Kerry?
Later: what's that smell?
Re: Dan Rather, Eason Jordan, Connie Chung, Peter Jennings, etc.:
Who knew that the MSM had this much inertia?
I don't mean their manner of conducting business. That sort of thing can turn on a dime - a fortuitous idiom, eh?
No, I mean the energy of over half a century of credulity on the part of the american public. I'm not old enough to remember Murrow, but I do remember Huntley and Brinkley. I have half a memory of Viet Nam and therefore some of Cronkite. If you didn't trust these guys, who could you trust?
That's not an idle question. Who was there I could have tuned in to? It's not like Goldwater had a network. Even amidst the anti-establishment, there was no call for critical thought. Don't trust anyone over thirty? The unspoken corollary allowed for trusting the news - if it agreed with the under-thirty mindset, but thought wasn't a part of that either.
I have digressed, but not far.
The habitual examination of our facts isn't and hasn't been. It's ironic that the temptation that is slowly eroding the Main Stream Media ( MSM ) is what fuels the blogs.
OK, I know for a fact that no one is reading this right now. If there's a time to do the boring foundation work, it's when no one is watching. If any one from the future reads this, they'll already be predisposed to forgive a little, stylistically.
The Free Press:
It is in a constant balancing act between two conflicting truths:
People are paying to find out the facts. People are easily bored, and facts are dismally boring.
You want the TRUTH from your newspaper? Turn to the classifieds. If it isn't the truth, you'll discover it with a phone call or two. You can get right to the source! Not terribly entertaining, is it? Well, *I* enjoyed the Beanie baby boom, but that's another story.
After that, what we get is varying levels and layers of testimony.
I have got to tell you a personal story. I must.
When my son, was young - fifth, sixth grade - we were in a grocery check out line with the Weekly World News. There was the great hunter on the cover, with his elephant gun on his hip and the head of a ten foot long bumblebee under his foot.
"Son, do you believe that?"
Well, of course he didn't. Not that he was confident in his wisdom, but in the way I asked the question. I'm pretty transparent.
So we go outside to and get a copy of the local paper. There, on the cover was the great School Board doing something forgettable.
"Son, do you believe that?"
So now he says "Yeah!" with a confidence not wholly justified by my demeanor. The stench of ... educationalists ... was about him.
"Why?"
The premise of journalistic professionalism is that they give accurate and reliable testimony.
That's a fun digression. The premise of medical professionalism is that they will try to help one heal. The premise of engineering professionalism is that they will throughly calculate every contingency. The premise of accounting professionalism is that they will apply the current standards of fiscal evaluation without bias or for evasion.
If a doctor, or an engineer, or an accountant consistantly injects their personal/political bias into their work and screws up like Eason Jordan, by God, they are out of the business, making restitution, and might be going to jail.
A moment of reflection for lawyers. We don't need that long for a "journalist". Teachers belong to unions, and are, by self-declaration, "laborers."
In fact, "journalists" by plying their trade in and amongst the First Amendment can't be brought to account, save by the economic pressure of the customer, who doesn't wish to be bored.
So, I'll be obvious.
MSM journalists "sex up" the story to sell the papers, but bloggers "sex up" their prose by telling the facts better. I know that the point is obvious, but isn't the symmetry just Shakespearian?
It's like watching a train wreck that takes thirty years to happen. I mean, ever since Gulf War I the MSM has been piloting their huge mass against unacceptable truths betting that their irresistable force will succeed before their structure comes apart.
Remember all the entertaining but false stories that were told getting Clinton elected, and keeping him in office. Consider all the things that had to go down the now ubiquitous "memory hole." During Clinton's impeachment - I can't say "trial" because that's misleading - proceedings the National Enquirer was a peer to the MSM. Think back to all those silly stories, horrific stories they told in this President's election campaign and first term.
Who knew that they would still have enough left to almost elect a duplicitous stiff like Kerry?
Later: what's that smell?
2005/02/06
Introduction - The Return of Porky Pig
There are moments of stark clarity when the smallest protrusion indicates the iceberg.
Watch the cartoon with me: Porky is warm in his house and the cats are scheming outside. Co-opting the radio, they announce NEWS! Aliens have landed! Run for your lives!
Porky turns off the radio and in one ( 1 ) sentence unmasks CNN, foretells the blogs, and damns public school graduates to decades of darkness.
"Oh, that's silly", says he.
This should be a mundane moment. It was for him, decades ago. For us in the 21 century, it's a terrible new lesson.
In the by and by, I hope to get to CNN, myself, and blogs, the public schools, the stock market, gun control, imminent domain, engineers, accountants, doctors, lawyers, judges, and probably back to Porky again.
I'm crossing my fingers that I'm as brilliant here, as I am in the shower.
Just now, however, I have to set up Apache for virtual hosting, and insert A records in DNS. Maybe that will work. It's a Mac Vs. Windows thing. I may be a Guru, but I'm not a Jedi, yet. The point is: this blog's is going to be fun. I promise.
What you will read here will be, as far as I know, unique, and I testify that it's amusing to me.
Watch the cartoon with me: Porky is warm in his house and the cats are scheming outside. Co-opting the radio, they announce NEWS! Aliens have landed! Run for your lives!
Porky turns off the radio and in one ( 1 ) sentence unmasks CNN, foretells the blogs, and damns public school graduates to decades of darkness.
"Oh, that's silly", says he.
This should be a mundane moment. It was for him, decades ago. For us in the 21 century, it's a terrible new lesson.
In the by and by, I hope to get to CNN, myself, and blogs, the public schools, the stock market, gun control, imminent domain, engineers, accountants, doctors, lawyers, judges, and probably back to Porky again.
I'm crossing my fingers that I'm as brilliant here, as I am in the shower.
Just now, however, I have to set up Apache for virtual hosting, and insert A records in DNS. Maybe that will work. It's a Mac Vs. Windows thing. I may be a Guru, but I'm not a Jedi, yet. The point is: this blog's is going to be fun. I promise.
What you will read here will be, as far as I know, unique, and I testify that it's amusing to me.
