hope for humanity, a running list

 

Muscle and blood and skin and bones, and brain

 

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man’s made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that’s a-weak and a back that’s strong

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said “Well, a-bless my soul”

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin’, it was drizzlin’ rain
Fightin’ and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol’ mama lion
Can’t no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

If you see me comin’, better step aside
A lotta men didn’t, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don’t a-get you, then the left one will

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

– a country song about a black coal miner written by a white country singer, derived from African slave work songs and jazz. “I was raised in the canebrake by an ol’ mama lion | Can’t no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line”

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Centennial Anniversary of Forbes Magazine, 2017

(Fascinating group interview/marketing on the spirit of the entrepreneurial who croon it doesn’t seek to harm; that counting wealth isn’t what’s important and yet it’s what kept the foothold for this media company; Steve Forbes gushing)

https://charlierose.com/videos/31071?autoplay=true

 

80th Anniversary of Forbes Magazine, 1997

https://charlierose.com/videos/13674?autoplay=true

 

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fuschia salmon gold sky

blue silver black water 

leading

Night before last, in the middle of the night, I tossed and turned a lot…once N woke and said “I was dreaming about you. You were naked, but you were walking away from me. I was fixing a bike to ride, but you couldn’t wait. I fixed the bike and came to find you so I could give you a ride. I was thinking, no way to miss her. She’ll be the only one naked.” He said he imagined me, the shape of my body, my familiar skin. 

I replied “Well, I’m definitely naked. And I might be walking around. But I’m not walking away from you.”

Wolfgang

I love that Wolfgang sleeps and eats with abandon. Stays out all night on the roof. Bites me when she’s irritated or hungry. 

Don’t think about what it would take for you to say these things

That’s not empathy. I’m not like you. It’s ok that we’re not like one another. 

I’m going to figure out how to let myself be me. As is.

I’m not this way because I was hurt. I’m simply a person. This is me letting go of all that unnecessary weight. All the stories that try to teach you how to be a female human.

“words are to the eternal what darkness is to a lamp”

And other lies to keep you comfortable with your silence. 

I’ve used Buddhism to find ways to be comfortable with dissociation. This is culturally profound for us. Many of the most caring and careful are just shutting off and shutting up.

chess is one of the most boring forms of masturbation

war is another.

“spectator sports”

intelligence is irrelevant

So-called smart people are the same people who have convinced nearly everyone that machines can be human or that they will inevitably control the world. A really smart person can see that this is a myth and prevent that from being the narrative about why humans are supposed to be slaves to their technology.

Smart people make tv shows to terrify themselves about a zombie apocalypse.

Smart people continually argue about things that don’t serve any purpose.

Please don’t use that word for me ever again. It’s one of the biggest barriers that exists in the world. That barrier is why I feel so strongly about lgbtq rights and racism and sexism. 

The idea that reality doesn’t apply to you because you can articulate. 

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I used to think the root of all evil was the myth of ownership. Because we’re all just sharing this planet and none of the bs about inherent rights is true and we all know it. And even more so because people run with it, don’t take responsibility and don’t act like citizens of planet earth.

I now think the greater root of evil is the myth of superiority.

We can get pissed as much as we have the capacity for but every time we use that anger to separate ourselves from one another makes us hypocrites. Makes a stupid person want to rule the world and let everyone else die.

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Yes, in previous posts I was using the word ‘smart’ facetiously. 

Imagine being told you’re pretty all your life and because of that you’re destined to be alone even when you’re with other people. Because someone made a box for you to live inside and you crawled in and that act made you ugly.

poli

I bristle at the idea I am too much of anything to be human. 

Ideology is practice for the mind. It’s not real, for fuck’s sake.

Ayn Rand was wrong about many things. She was trying to make a point but then she couldn’t change her mind. The damage she’s done. What a smart person does to make other people into stupid people. My goodness, I can only imagine the remorse she must have felt.

You can’t always be kind. You can’t always be self serving. They’re not mutually exclusive but it’s a lie to say you can always do both simultaneously.

The smart men in my life like to jerk off philosophically to whether the world is probabilistic or deterministic but everyone knows it’s both.

Or so I thought.

I guess everyone doesn’t know. 

In other words, you get to choose how you respond to things that happen. Some of those things are explainable by math and science and maps. Some of the things that happen are inexplicable. That’s what smart people call randomness or chaos. Some people describe it as probability.

Ok, so my main issue with the theory of probability is that it’s taking a limited concept and applying it to everything. Not just as an exercise but telling people it’s what’s true. This is why statistics can lie, partly. This is why ideology is false.

Don’t fool yourself: every roll of the dice is 50/50. The remaining 50 percent is who you are. Yes, I just broke a paradigm. It’s ok. You can do that.

There’s nothing to prove. Life is bigger and more mysterious than we can fathom. Ain’t no theory or faith gonna fix it. We’re intrinsically alone except when we choose to connect with others.

It’s possible to be a person and not have to wear all the history and detritus of past stupidity like a costume.

It’s possible to respect others and care about them even knowing they don’t want to participate in what’s real. But it’s a lot of work.

This is my version of faith.