Saturday, November 11, 2006
Thai Notes
Since Berlin, I have been to Lisbon, southern Spain, London, and now Thailand.
I've been meaning to write here to report on some of these travels, but it seems I haven't found the time.
Here are some sparse and disjointed thoughts for now:
Today I found what seem like the only 3 containers of cottage cheese in Thailand. There's no chance they actually are the last 3, it just seems that way.
While riding with 7 young Thai girls in a taxi truck today, and breathing exhaust fumes which are most likely the cause of the headache I have 8 hours later, I had an idea for a patentable invention to make air travel more comfortable and fun. I wrote it up... and sent it to my father. He and I share business and invention ideas like other families tell jokes. Actually, they are jokes, because they come to us both often, and we are busy enough with existing projects that we don't have the time to do anything with most of them, other than sharing the ideas and having a laugh about them. This one is filed away with another aerospace invention idea that I've left undeveloped for 20 years now. Maybe someday... but probably not.
The change in party control in the US Senate and House of Representatives is interesting to see. In recent years I have become much more attuned to a large catalog of serious issues, deserving of vigorous debate and scrutiny, on which the two parties do not differ at all. Nevertheless, some significant differences do exist, and I look forward to seeing what happens next. I see a cyclical movement toward totalitarianism in global politics, but I think now we're in for a step back before the next two steps forward. As these little "steps" can take 5 or 10 years apiece, that does create some breathing room for many new developments.
Yesterday I watched the commendable Robert Greenwald documentary, "Iraq for Sale." Naturally I found the tales of war profiteering, waste, and corruption to be pathetic and sad. But what I didn't see in this attempt at hard-hitting documentary was much in terms of real historical context... It's as if this waste and corruption sprang from this one war, this one administration, in this incredible way that nobody imagined could ever happen. In fact, if you sift back through the entire history of the United States, you find that these phenomena are neither new nor exceptional, but are in fact the hard-and-fast rule of warfare in our nation's history. Then, if you like your learning in the form of being hit over the head with repetitive drills, you might try expanding the search back through the last 2000 years of western civilization, to see if the pattern doesn't hold pretty firm throughout.
To coin an unwieldy new phrase on top of an old one: "Those who come to understand that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it are seemingly condemned to repeat this now-tired-and-trite aphorism amongst themselves, while the rest of the ever-growing masses of population remain content (if not hell-bent) merely to explore the awesome degrees to which the old patterns can be repeated at ever-larger scales of size, numbers, and explosively destructive outcomes."
Is Iraq the new Vietnam? Sure, obviously, yes! But keep going. Vietnam was the new Korea. Korea was the new WWII. WWII was the new WWI. WWI was the new Phillipines... etc. etc. All of these conflicts have spawned sufficient corruption and war profiteering to really beg the question of whether in truth the obscene profiteering opportunities were a primary cause -- or the primary cause -- for most of these wars to be invented to begin with, despite whatever propaganda may be offered to the contrary before, during, and after these mobilizations take place. And of course the abovementioned events are kind of a Greatest Hits list... when one looks at the list of all American military engagements, a picture emerges of a society almost continually embroiled in warfare for well over two centuries.
To me, American empire seems locked onto a destructive course, and an act of God would be needed to divert this hauntingly Roman country from its hauntingly Roman destiny at this point-- and that means trouble for a lot of people and places, not just the USA. But perhaps there will be an act of God. Maybe it will take -- maybe it is taking -- the form of simple consciousness, a spiritual awakening on the part of a critical-mass fraction of the world's population. Ghandi worked that way, and so did Martin Luther King. They certainly had impact. I wish I could see what would've happened if a few key people -- like King or Malcolm X or Robert Kennedy or even John Kennedy -- had been allowed to live on a few more years. Unfortunately, when such personalities cross the line and threaten the plans of the military-industrial complex and the forces of elite control, suddenly they are at dramatically elevated risk for being assassinated by a "lone nut" or the like. (I hope you can pardon my sarcasm.) But the ideas and ripples live on.
I had an astologer tell me that he saw a hint of a sort of kamikaze spirituality in my star chart. He likened it to a Timothy Leary-type persona, preaching some flavor of radical alternative philosophy at an entrenched establishment that was destined not to hear, but would instead do the only thing it knew to do in response, something it was practiced at, which was to assemble a kangaroo court to marginalize and neutralize the radical voice.
But it was only a hint.
I've been meaning to write here to report on some of these travels, but it seems I haven't found the time.
Here are some sparse and disjointed thoughts for now:
Today I found what seem like the only 3 containers of cottage cheese in Thailand. There's no chance they actually are the last 3, it just seems that way.
While riding with 7 young Thai girls in a taxi truck today, and breathing exhaust fumes which are most likely the cause of the headache I have 8 hours later, I had an idea for a patentable invention to make air travel more comfortable and fun. I wrote it up... and sent it to my father. He and I share business and invention ideas like other families tell jokes. Actually, they are jokes, because they come to us both often, and we are busy enough with existing projects that we don't have the time to do anything with most of them, other than sharing the ideas and having a laugh about them. This one is filed away with another aerospace invention idea that I've left undeveloped for 20 years now. Maybe someday... but probably not.
The change in party control in the US Senate and House of Representatives is interesting to see. In recent years I have become much more attuned to a large catalog of serious issues, deserving of vigorous debate and scrutiny, on which the two parties do not differ at all. Nevertheless, some significant differences do exist, and I look forward to seeing what happens next. I see a cyclical movement toward totalitarianism in global politics, but I think now we're in for a step back before the next two steps forward. As these little "steps" can take 5 or 10 years apiece, that does create some breathing room for many new developments.
Yesterday I watched the commendable Robert Greenwald documentary, "Iraq for Sale." Naturally I found the tales of war profiteering, waste, and corruption to be pathetic and sad. But what I didn't see in this attempt at hard-hitting documentary was much in terms of real historical context... It's as if this waste and corruption sprang from this one war, this one administration, in this incredible way that nobody imagined could ever happen. In fact, if you sift back through the entire history of the United States, you find that these phenomena are neither new nor exceptional, but are in fact the hard-and-fast rule of warfare in our nation's history. Then, if you like your learning in the form of being hit over the head with repetitive drills, you might try expanding the search back through the last 2000 years of western civilization, to see if the pattern doesn't hold pretty firm throughout.
To coin an unwieldy new phrase on top of an old one: "Those who come to understand that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it are seemingly condemned to repeat this now-tired-and-trite aphorism amongst themselves, while the rest of the ever-growing masses of population remain content (if not hell-bent) merely to explore the awesome degrees to which the old patterns can be repeated at ever-larger scales of size, numbers, and explosively destructive outcomes."
Is Iraq the new Vietnam? Sure, obviously, yes! But keep going. Vietnam was the new Korea. Korea was the new WWII. WWII was the new WWI. WWI was the new Phillipines... etc. etc. All of these conflicts have spawned sufficient corruption and war profiteering to really beg the question of whether in truth the obscene profiteering opportunities were a primary cause -- or the primary cause -- for most of these wars to be invented to begin with, despite whatever propaganda may be offered to the contrary before, during, and after these mobilizations take place. And of course the abovementioned events are kind of a Greatest Hits list... when one looks at the list of all American military engagements, a picture emerges of a society almost continually embroiled in warfare for well over two centuries.
To me, American empire seems locked onto a destructive course, and an act of God would be needed to divert this hauntingly Roman country from its hauntingly Roman destiny at this point-- and that means trouble for a lot of people and places, not just the USA. But perhaps there will be an act of God. Maybe it will take -- maybe it is taking -- the form of simple consciousness, a spiritual awakening on the part of a critical-mass fraction of the world's population. Ghandi worked that way, and so did Martin Luther King. They certainly had impact. I wish I could see what would've happened if a few key people -- like King or Malcolm X or Robert Kennedy or even John Kennedy -- had been allowed to live on a few more years. Unfortunately, when such personalities cross the line and threaten the plans of the military-industrial complex and the forces of elite control, suddenly they are at dramatically elevated risk for being assassinated by a "lone nut" or the like. (I hope you can pardon my sarcasm.) But the ideas and ripples live on.
I had an astologer tell me that he saw a hint of a sort of kamikaze spirituality in my star chart. He likened it to a Timothy Leary-type persona, preaching some flavor of radical alternative philosophy at an entrenched establishment that was destined not to hear, but would instead do the only thing it knew to do in response, something it was practiced at, which was to assemble a kangaroo court to marginalize and neutralize the radical voice.
But it was only a hint.
