Finding the Joy of Absurdity

May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships,
So that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done,
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

Passed around the webs as A Franciscan Benediction. Not sure about original attribution.

Existence is often like heroin addiction. Sad, but true.

We can't save the human race by bettering each other, but we can save the human race by liking each other.

Try to understand your husband. Don't just laugh and laugh.

With good pseudoscience comes good understanding.

Antisocial behavior begins with the voices in our heads.

Welcome to the glory days of lies.

Rewriting history enables you to start your own cult.

Magick is a gateway drug.

Only through the physical manifestation of confusion will you find the joy of absurdity.

When in doubt, try to be ridiculous.

Encourage the inexplicable.

Are broken hearts the butterflies of death?

A string of aphorisms from InspiroBot. I like the way they flow together.

Tess paced the piers, trying not to fret. Trying to empty her mind, in fact, on the principle that she knew the answer already and needed to give it a chance to come to the surface, unimpeded.

― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

Resonance.

Dissonance?

No, resonance.

We experience dissonance all too often,
and sometimes even in healthy ways,
but all anyone is really looking for is resonance.

Sonic resonance
for pleasant aural experiences.

Mental resonance
to confirm our perspectives,
beliefs,
and experiences.

And emotional resonance
to feel connection with others.

"Wrong," snapped the old nun, her sharp green eyes taking in every nuance of Tess's reaction. "First, I gave you two choices as a test: there are never just two choices. That is a lie to keep you from thinking too deeply."

― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

Before you judge others or claim any absolute truth, consider that . . . 

you can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum. As you read this, you are traveling at 220 kilometres per second across the galaxy. 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not "you." The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star. Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato. The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photoreceptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don't just look at a rainbow, you create it. This is pretty amazing, especially considering that all the beautiful colors you see represent less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum.

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Love your neighbor as yourself.

Love your enemy as your neighbor.

Love everyone.

Love everything.

What is love? Love is the

absence of judgment.

~ Dalai Lama ~

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If we want to understand the actions of other people, we have to understand how they interpreted their circumstances and the choices they faced--not the way we would interpret them or, rather, the way we think we would interpret them if we were in their shoes.

― Thomas Gilovich, The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit from Social Psychology's Most Powerful Insights

Yet.

One of my favorite bits of my wife's parenting is the way she is teaching the boys to say "yet." Most specifically, at the end of statements that begin with "I can't." Don't say "I can't do it," say "I can't do it YET." It's not an absolute, but a temporary point in your growth.

Best of all, it's not just for kids, but for all of us.

The fact that these statements are true doesn't mean they aren't also rationalizations that you and others use to justify questionable behavior.

This uncomfortable truth is crucial to an understanding of the link between rationalization and evil--an understanding that starts with the awareness that sane people rarely, if ever, act in a truly evil manner unless they can successfully rationalize their actions. Hollywood films notwithstanding, villains who proudly embrace evil are virtually nonexistent in real life. The problem is that people are extraordinarily adept at rationalizing. This applies not only to personal misdeeds, but also to the greater sins of omission and commission associated with genocide, slavery, apartheid, war atrocities, and the denial of basic human rights and human dignity. A further problem is that in contrast to the kind of dissonance reduction shown [in studies], the process of rationalizing evil deeds committed by whole societies is a collective effort rather than a solely individual enterprise.

Perpetrators are encouraged to rationalize their deeds by leaders and their propaganda machines, who insist that "'they' deserve what is being done to them," or that what is being done serves some noble end or necessary goal.

― Thomas Gilovich, The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit from Social Psychology's Most Powerful Insights

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Finally the darkness was total. Pathka stopped snoring, and the silence was total as well.

For a moment Tess imagined she didn't exist. It was surprisingly soothing.

― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

You May Not Be Racist, But Your Political Ideology Is

This isn’t really about you.

This is about your ideology. . . .

Irrespective of the decency and good intentions of individual conservatives, yourself included, modern American conservatism as an ideology is either inherently prone to racism, or at the very least furthers it in a number of ways. . . .

I’m aware that this isn’t how you see yourself. You would probably say, as many of your compatriots surely do, that your politics are not motivated by racism, but rather, by race-neutral matters like reducing the size of government or excessive taxation. But while I recognize that these are common concerns of folks like yourself, it is simply not the case that one can so easily separate these kinds of issues from a larger racial and even racist politic. . . .

While conservative beliefs about the size of government are not inherently racist of course, beliefs about the role of the state are largely bound up (at least in the modern American context) with racialized notions of who deserves help from that state and who doesn’t. Likewise, views about the role of the state in everything from the economy to education to the provision of various social services is intertwined with white racial resentment at the perceived excesses of that state on behalf of people of color. . . .

To deny that people of color face unequal opportunities in America?—?due either to the legacy of past racism, the persistence of racism today, or some other set of structural barriers?—?is to leave explanations for racial achievement gaps (in employment, education, housing or wealth accumulation) that are almost ineluctably racist.

If black folks really do have equal opportunity and yet still don’t achieve at levels comparable to their white counterparts, then there must be something wrong with them as black people. Either genetically or culturally they must be inferior to whites. There is no other possible explanation.

And indeed, this is what conservatives say. . . .

If racial disparities are not to be explained by unequal opportunity?—?past, present or a combination of the two?—?then the only remaining rationales for them would be those that, by definition, blame the persons at the bottom for their condition. Either their genes, their values or their cultures are somehow defective compared to the genes, values or cultures of the dominant group. . . .

That is racism, by definition. And it is literally embedded in modern American conservative thought.

Being poor now just leads to being more poor later. Can't pay to clean your teeth? Next year, pay for a root canal. Can't pay for a new mattress? Next year, pay for back surgery. Can't pay to get that lump checked out? Next year, pay for stage 3 cancer. Poverty charges interest.

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The foreign policy principles of the current administration are simple. They are the same as the domestic ones: whatever will offer the greatest benefit to the family business. That is the only, single concern. Anything else is empty bravado and showmanship.

Remember, always follow your passion. And if your passion doesn't fit into global capitalism, well, then you are a failure at life.

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Meanwhile, in China . . .

China blacklists millions of people from booking flights as 'social credit' system introduced

Millions of Chinese nationals have been blocked from booking flights or trains as Beijing seeks to implement its controversial “social credit” system, which allows the government to closely monitor and judge each of its 1.3 billion citizens based on their behaviour and activity.

The system, to be rolled out by 2020, aims to make it “difficult to move” for those deemed “untrustworthy”, according to a detailed plan published by the government this week. . . .

The aim, according to Hou Yunchun, former deputy director of the development research centre of the State Council, is to make “discredited people become bankrupt”, he said earlier this year. . . .

Punishments are not clearly detailed in the government plan, but beyond making travel difficult, are also believed to include slowing internet speeds, reducing access to good schools for individuals or their children, banning people from certain jobs, preventing booking at certain hotels and losing the right to own pets. . . .

See also: Nosedive

"Tell me something, though: is walking the only virtue in your philosophical system? What if someone decided to stay in one place and not walk on--on purpose? Would that be bad?"

Tess considered. "I have been walking, literally walking, for two months, and I feel . . . right when I do. My mind is clear; the world makes sense. Walking is a good in itself."

"Of course it is," said Philomela brusquely, "but it's not the only good. Since we're being literal now, have you felt clear and sensible at other times during your travels?"

The question startled Tess into thinking. "While turning hay. Swimming in the river, crawling through caves . . . once I was lying under a cattle guard, eating bread, and the sky was blue and there was a bee--" She cut off, embarrassed. It was hard to explain about the bee.

"Right," said Mother Philomela firmly. "Working, swimming, eating. Walking."

Tess blinked, unsure what she was getting at.

"You feel whole when you're doing things, Jacomo. When you're in your body," said the nun slowly, as if Tess were stupid. "The mind may hare off in all directions, but truth is centered in the body, ultimately."

― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

And, to continue a recent theme of the interconnectedness of all life . . .

The Insect Apocalypse Is Here 

What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?

Scientists have begun to speak of functional extinction (as opposed to the more familiar kind, numerical extinction). Functionally extinct animals and plants are still present but no longer prevalent enough to affect how an ecosystem works. Some phrase this as the extinction not of a species but of all its former interactions with its environment — an extinction of seed dispersal and predation and pollination and all the other ecological functions an animal once had, which can be devastating even if some individuals still persist. The more interactions are lost, the more disordered the ecosystem becomes. . . .

Insects — about as far as you can get from charismatic megafauna — are not what we’re usually imagining when we talk about biodiversity. Yet they are, in Wilson’s words, “the little things that run the natural world.” He means it literally. Insects are a case study in the invisible importance of the common. . . .

When asked to imagine what would happen if insects were to disappear completely, scientists find words like chaos, collapse, Armageddon. Wagner, the University of Connecticut entomologist, describes a flowerless world with silent forests, a world of dung and old leaves and rotting carcasses accumulating in cities and roadsides, a world of “collapse or decay and erosion and loss that would spread through ecosystems” — spiraling from predators to plants. E.O. Wilson has written of an insect-free world, a place where most plants and land animals become extinct; where fungi explodes, for a while, thriving on death and rot; and where “the human species survives, able to fall back on wind-pollinated grains and marine fishing” despite mass starvation and resource wars. “Clinging to survival in a devastated world, and trapped in an ecological dark age,” he adds, “the survivors would offer prayers for the return of weeds and bugs.” . . .

Like other species, insects are responding to what Chris Thomas, an insect ecologist at the University of York, has called “the transformation of the world”: not just a changing climate but also the widespread conversion, via urbanization, agricultural intensification and so on, of natural spaces into human ones, with fewer and fewer resources “left over” for nonhuman creatures to live on. What resources remain are often contaminated. Hans de Kroon characterizes the life of many modern insects as trying to survive from one dwindling oasis to the next but with “a desert in between, and at worst it’s a poisonous desert.” Of particular concern are neonicotinoids, neurotoxins that were thought to affect only treated crops but turned out to accumulate in the landscape and to be consumed by all kinds of nontargeted bugs. People talk about the “loss” of bees to colony collapse disorder, and that appears to be the right word: Affected hives aren’t full of dead bees, but simply mysteriously empty. A leading theory is that exposure to neurotoxins leaves bees unable to find their way home. Even hives exposed to low levels of neonicotinoids have been shown to collect less pollen and produce fewer eggs and far fewer queens. Some recent studies found bees doing better in cities than in the supposed countryside. . . .

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Encourage the Inexplicable

Love Everything