Thursday, January 23, 2025

Open letter to the Military Media Industrial Complex

[1/23/25: I wrote this letter in May, 2023, but did not post it. It seems relevant now, after my discussion with President Trump, noted in the next post, referencing the Military Media Industrial Complex.]

Dear Military Industrial Complex,

I write you today to suggest the addition of the word "media" to your name.

To recap your history: Dwight D. Eisenhower (who during World War II served as Supreme Commander of allied forces in Europe), in his well known farewell speech on January 17, 1961 at the end of two terms as U.S. president, identified the "threat" of what he called America's "military industrial complex," which, as a result of the nation's response to the recent war, had grown so much that "...it bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime." Eisenhower continued: "We have been compelled to create a permanent arms industry of vast proportions...This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience...The total influence, economic, political, even spiritual, is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government...We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications...We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, of the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power persists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals."

Eisenhower's warning was not repeated by any subsequent U.S. president.

More to the point of this essay, you can listen to American network news for years and never hear the phrase "military industrial complex." They will not report it. Thus I add the term "media" to revise Eisenhower's formulation to "military media industrial complex," or MMIC.

Consider David Muir of ABC Nightly News, an artful speaker presenting artfully edited copy. For much of the program there may be little obvious connection between the copy and the MMIC (e.g. with natural disaster stories), but the connection is clear when viewers come to the Russia/Ukraine war because, as has been the case with all our post WW II wars against armed groups that have not attacked us (generally factions in distant civil wars), the coverage is locked-in regarding good guys and bad guys, leaving scarce depth to the narrative of who is the victim and who the aggressor.

This is not a defense of Russia. The point is that we only see one side, and seeing only one side promotes public acceptance of the billions of dollars going to the military part of the complex, from there to our "representative" government, and from there to the media.

Anyway, Dear MMIC, as I enter my golden years, spewing accumulated wisdom like a leaky fire hydrant, I want you to know that I am aware that you are going to win. Many in my generation, the last to face a draft, suspected your endurance and cunning during the Vietnam War and have not been surprised that no lessons were learned. Why did protest do nothing? Because, in MMIC thinking, the profits of the Vietnam War more than justified the political expense of losing that war. Ditto for Afghanistan. [Update, 1/23/25: Ditto for the Middle East].

It also seems clear that "hippies," or the "left," or "liberals," or the "woke," or these days (in terms of resisting U.S. involvement in the Russia/Ukraine War) "conservatives," or whatever other non-descriptive terms we come up with for people who might think humans should evolve beyond constant war, have not and do not have a clue how to fight you. Their primary actions have been to write and say (or shout) critical words in the mistaken belief that their words can hamper your progress.

I've changed my perspective and have a revised view of political parties. Before now, this blog advocated for a new party, an alternative to Republicans and Democrats, that would address the mad rush of science to re-write our brains and bodies while we're distracted by war. This new party would identify and champion impressive and fine elements of the previous human model (i.e. us) and work to ensure that we will be able to control, somewhat, the changes racing towards us.

My current view is that a new party would not do any good because you, the MMIC, have it all locked up and will call the shots. Your monitoring of human psychology, in which you assess our gene pool's murderous components- components also found in the gene pool of our closest genetic relative, chimpanzees, that cause the perpetual warfare typical of that species, including, when stimulated, mindless fury and sadistic longing for destruction of enemies- gives you the ability to tap into that genetic potential to maximize corporate profits and control your fellow humans. You are the ultimate chimpanzee.

As such, you will rewrite the current world into dystopian sci-fi. There will be mass dislocation and turmoil, blamed on countries or groups you designate as enemies, but throughout its course the turmoil will make huge profits for the industries of your complex. Your control of media will ensure that no one suspects that you wanted the chaos all along, just as no one now suspects that the lack of ability to address current challenges, like out-of-control gun use or carbon emissions or abortion, which roll on and on with no hope of resolution, is supported by your inner cynicism, whose vision holds that it's all going to collapse and be replaced anyway so why fix it? No new political party is going to be able to do anything about this.

I am thankful that I can still say such things publicly. In much of the world I would already be imprisoned or worse. That safety, however, seems unreliable. Over time, you, the MMIC, will ally with similar coalitions around the globe to control the whole show. Then whatever you want, whether a fiat that everyone eat Doritos once a day, or that the human cerebral cortex be switched off at birth to facilitate subservience to AI's- whatever you want, it will be yours. Nothing in politics will stop you. As the coming mess we call the 2024 U.S. national election makes its nature clear, the last hope for a resurgence of human pride and influence, at least as expressed through political parties, is fading fast.



If parties don't have the strength to represent an alternative vision, how about a foundation, something like the one in Isaac Asimov's novel of that name, where it is known simply as "the Foundation." In Asimov's vision, the Foundation, though essentially an advisory body, has a stature and influence beyond what typical real-life dissenting voices have today. If we sought this, then the question would become: What forces might be capable of creating and instating such a foundation?



All the best, Harry the Human

Friday, January 10, 2025

President Trump and Harry the Human meet!

Yesterday I was walking through the desert behind my cozy shelter in Pearblossom when Betty the Coyote Creator Goddess greeted me from atop a medium sized boulder.

Greetings, Harry!  Betty called, Where are you headed?

Hello Betty.  I'm just wandering around, looking for inspiration to get through another day. The smoke from the L.A. fires has not helped.

Yes, the fires are adding to the pressure that's building throughout the biome.  On top of everything, it seems one of your big human wars is about to break out.  Plus ça change....

Betty, that's a cliche- tell me something I don't know.

That's a cliche too, Harry.

Here we are playing word games on the cusp of apocalypse.

Right, huh?  Listen, Harry, I have the perfect distraction from the realistic magic you humans have to deal with.

Realistic magic?

That's what I call the other side of the magical realism you long for. In the current stage of your evolution you face magical realism’s opposite, realistic magic, where the magic is so well disguised it doesn't look like magic.

Hmm...Betty, what sort of distraction did you have in mind?

Then I noticed a small red pouch held delicately in her glowing teeth (she and I communicate telepathically).

What's in your mouth, Betty?

It's ayahuasca.  Heard of it?

It's like LSD, right?

The difference is that a human chemist invented LSD in 1938, while Ayahuasca was invented by the gods of the Amazon in a time of their own making. You can imagine it has certain properties beyond the LSD experience.

So you propose I have an ayahuasca trip with you in the desert?

I have a different idea.  First, take this pouch out of my mouth and remove the contents.

I did as instructed, removing a small, pliable purplish pellet.

Eat it, commanded the Trickster Goddess.  I complied. It tasted like stale gum.

We began to stroll across the desert, Betty leading the way.  After a time the ayahuasca kicked in with the usual stuff: a sharpening of colors, a lessening of the boundaries between things, a freeing of the mind from conventional connections, conclusions, assumptions.  The morning was cool and still. 

Betty, this would be an adequate LSD trip, but I'm not sure what's particular about ayahuasca.

Harry, this substance was designed by the gods to make a certain type of communication possible, when it pleased the gods that humans engage in it.

What type of communication?

As I asked this, we rounded a dune to behold a bowl shaped depression, at the center of which was a swirling, shimmering....

It's a mini-black hole, Betty explained.

Yeah?  Did you put it there?

No, it predates me.  The ayahuasca helps you see it.

Let me guess, we're going to jump into it.

Close, you are going to jump into it.

Maybe thanks to the ayahuasca I felt no dread.  It seemed a logical and very human thing to want to jump into that hole, though I had some concerns.

If I jump, then what?  Where will I be?  Will I be stuck there?

You will meet your counterpart, your negative, the antithesis of you.  

Wait, you mean I'm going to Kurt Vonnegut's.....

Yes, to the Infandibulum, where paradoxes find true love.

And getting back....?

I'll come for you at the appropriate time. Ok Harry, jump when ready!

I couldn't think of anything else I was ready to do, so I did a little hop and just glided into the thing and popped right out, re-dressed in a clean flannel shirt and jeans, seated at a picnic table across from the new (for the second time) president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, dressed in a white polo shirt and slacks, beside his Mar-a-Lago golf course.

He studied me quietly, no sign of alarm.  I felt the need to speak first.

Mr. President, I'm sorry for this intrusion.  I don't exactly understand what's happening....

No worries, neither do I.  Bob gave me some stuff, aya...something....

Ayahuasca?

Yes! Do you know Bob? They said he'd bring a "newly coherent vision"- he's certainly done that! I'm almost ready to scrap tariffs on Brazil for this stuff!

No, I don't know anyone here.  Would you like me to leave?

No, I was expecting you.  Before I took the aya...whatever, Bob told me I would be visited by someone who would give me great new perspectives.  As I launch my historic second term, this is actually a good time for some insights, if you have any. We're more or less on top of things, but it gets intense and who knows what might help.  

I understand, Mr.....shall I call you Mr. President?

Call me Don.  Who are you?

Harry, aka Harry the Human.  I'm a mind reader.  In my youth, in the hippy 60's, I did performances in the Haight.

A hippy! I've always wanted to talk to a hippy!  What is it with you guys?

Hmm?

I mean, you don't give a shit that you live in a fantasy?  That all your ideas about things are from another planet?  The "peace and love" planet?  The "We are one" planet? Guess what, Harry- we don't live on that planet!

Well put, Don.  That's a good description of the situation.  But which is worse, finding that your ideas about life are fantasy based, or accepting reality, day in, day out, with no escape?

Touché, Harry.  Honestly, sometimes I don't know why the hell I'm doing this.  It was exciting at first, just to be able to show people I'm not a dummy, that I'm actually smarter than they are, and now they know it...very exciting, but the shit here doesn't stop.

Don, I have to confess I've written things about you that you might not like.

Such as?

Well, I wrote that you fulfilled a prophecy in the biblical story of the Tower of Babel [see The Babel of Trump Tower below].

Yeah?  That's when God got angry and made it so everyone speaks different languages?

Yes, like now, when it seems like people can't communicate.

And that's supposed to be my fault? 

He looked at me quietly, and I realized I was speaking directly with his subconscious (as we presumptuously call it). The gods put into ayahuasca the ability for mind to mind, soul to soul contact.  It seemed safe enough. The parties do their business, then each withdraws, back through the black hole, back to normalcy.

I tried to soothe him.

Don, I understand your frustrations about life, even when you're victorious. We get worked up about defeating things that make our lives hard. We may defeat those things, but it's still the same fucking life.

Damn right, Harry!  It's the same fucking life!

People will kick you when you're up as well as down!

Right again, Harry the Human!  I can tell you've been around the block a few times.

Don, I've got to ask, and feel free to decline, but this seems like a safe place....

Go ahead, Harry.  I find this therapeutic.

Well, I've written about the military industrial complex, which was President Eisenhower's concept.  Remember him?

Yes, we were little boys....

We mused quietly for a bit.  Don continued:

Of course I've heard of the military industrial complex.  It's a lefty idea.

Well, sometimes it's a right wing idea too.

Yeah?

The military industrial complex is all the private interests that make money off war and preparation for war, and the government defense agencies that make policy.  

Yeah, sure, what about them?  Wonderful people, by the way.  

I'm sure many are, but Eisenhower saw a potential for collusion between profits and policy.  I should note, I've added the media to Eisenhower's phrase, since it has become an extension of war policy.

The media!  I showed those cocksuckers!  

They did not see you coming.  Do you read the New Yorker?

Sometimes my people show me stuff.

Boy do they hate you.  

Yeah, because I'm not a Kennedy, all polished and patrician, or Obama! Did you see at Jimmy Carter's funeral when Obama sat next to me and I made him smile, made him do nicey-nice with me? OMG, once you're on top it's so easy to embarrass these guys!  

Don, how the hell do you know the word "patrician"?

Don laughed.  If you couldn't tell, the ayahuasca was loosening us up.  I felt the need to get back to serious discussion points.

Anyway, Don, back to the military media industrial complex, how do you get along with those guys? Do they accept you on their turf? After all, you're a real estate guy.

Harry, I just follow the news like everybody else, and I see when a story gets weak.  It gets weak when things take too long to happen, like in a bad story that puts people to sleep. We learned about this in 9th grade! Remember high school English?

Don, I taught high school English!

No shit! You don't seem like that.

Like what?

Like a high school English teacher.

Those were my formative years, before I became what I am today.

Which is?

I told you, Don, I'm a retired mind reader.

Oh yeah...anyway, as you know, a story is supposed to have a beginning, then comes rising action, like a terrorist attack or a big argument about abortion or oil or something. Harry, I guess I don't have to tell you the last part.

You do not, Don- it's the resolution, which is supposed to resolve (from Latin, "to solve") the stresses of the story. I think I know what you're saying: All we have is the first two parts: intro and rising action- we never have resolution. Nothing ever ends or is resolved. But as for putting everyone to sleep...sometimes I like going to sleep.

Sure, Harry, but don't you like to wake up too?  And when you wake up, don't you want things to happen? The military, etc. complex was spinning the same stories over and over, about communists...terrorists...North Korean nukes- on and on, and nothing ever happened.  Generations passed, and nothing happened.  No resolution- no story. People get tired of that, of endless anxiety about how stories will resolve, or if they will.

I had an epiphany, like a bolt of lightning.  

Don, I know why Betty did this....

Did what?  Who's Betty?

Sorry, The Coyote Creator Goddess.  She's at my end.  She hooked us up because we have something in common, which is that we both want something to happen.  We want different things to happen, though.

What do you want?

I want the predatory circus we call life to develop a sort of overall consciousness, to escape what the Hindus call the circle of life.

Escape the circle of life?  You mean kill yourself?

No.  The circle of life is not a good thing. You need to get out of it, actually, to live.

What's wrong with the circle of life?

What's wrong is that it's a circle.  It goes around and around- birth, life, death- doing the same things over and over, with no point, no...achievement.

No achievement?

If you sign a peace treaty, it's just the prelude to the next war.  Endless war...endless....

Harry, is this what a hippy is, someone who doesn't like war?

Well, that's part of it.  There's also a large dose of hedonism.

Pleasure loving!  

Yes, that's why hippies don't like war, because it hurts.

I guess they're right about that.  And I'm with you on pleasure.  Who are these people who oppose my pleasure?  Do they hate pleasure?

You can hate anything, Don.  If I may return to the military media industrial complex: It seems like they didn't see you coming.

No, but a few have been surprised by my abilities, and we are meshing nicely.

There will be losers.

Of course, there are always losers.

Have you ever been a loser, Don?

Yes.  It hurts.

It does.  What if there were a way to "win," but not like the zero-sum model, where you only win if someone else loses.  Listen, Don, hedonism, in my view, entails empathy.  In other words, the pleasure is greater if it's being shared and you are loved.  That's the ultimate hedonism.  Do you follow me?

I'm not dumb, Harry!  Of course I follow you!

Sorry.

No problem.  If I make a million dollars on a deal, someone else does not make that million, only I do.  If I become president, someone else doesn't.

Yes, Don, of course.  That's the process in the real world.  But Betty the Coyote Goddess told me we are governed by realistic magic, so more things are possible than meet the eye.  Look at the two things we have in common: we both want something to happen, and we're both hedonists.  Surely these two things could merge somehow into a wiser and more farsighted type of government policy.  That's the magic I'm talking about!

That would be some magic!  

I can't believe we're agreeing on something!  This is the most far-out trip ever!

At that moment Betty the Coyote Creator Goddess appeared in a roiling cloud, calling to us it seemed from the mini-black hole.

That's enough fun for now, boys.  Harry, hop in!

I did as told and a moment later was standing alone in the desert, my house in the distance, a gila monster peering sadly at me, the sun going down and a hangover you would not believe.

Saturday, December 14, 2024

Statement of disavowal, by Harry the Human

Sorry, readers, when I turned my back on Robert's (that's Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster- keep reading) and D.L.'s trip to Bhutan (https://laskenlog.blogspot.com/) I should not have handed over my blog so completely to Robert, as I did in the next post ("Big Brains"), where he concludes that humans are complicated, not smart, and speculates that we will end up as a head on a desk with spindly arms and fingers for a keyboard. He is a gila monster, after all, and it is rude of him to pronounce on the future evolution of humans, which he maintains will not be as glorious as gilas'. In fact he apparently believes they will be quite sad and miserly in comparison. How would he know? We humans are the ones who created our problem, and we're the ones with the brains to figure it out!

I hope. That's the purpose anyway of this lonely blog, to call out to my fellow evolving humans that the time is now to set the future. It is not in a science-fiction story or paper about times to come. It is happening at this moment. Robert knows this but doesn't feel it. His species is evolving at their normal pace: they've been in roughly the same form for 20 million years. We're about to change form completely within 20 years. No wonder Robert is pessimistic about us- although we have lots of understanding, we have no plan, no overall blueprint. And our evolutionary jam is nowhere to be found in our political discussion. It will be a combination of free-for-all and covert action. Yuck!

Robert, if I may address you and yours for a moment, although you have your challenges, the universe has never squeezed down on you as it does on us. You've been able to stand on your own four feet, look around and spit in approval. How can you challenge beings you do not understand? You can still be my friend (if that's what you are) but you will need to start your own blog- you're done with mine. Let's see what the market is for telepathic gila monsters.

I had intended to end here, but Robert as usual is monitoring my thoughts and has begged me to let him add a short addendum. I have obliged if only to demonstrate the inherent generosity of my species.

Yours Truly, Harry the Human

Addendum by Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster

Greetings readers, sorry about my buddy Harry's foul mood this morning. I will of course oblige him by not pre-empting any more lengthy cross-species reveries on his blog, but let me just note that my pessimism about the human species is not unfounded and is shared by many if not most of your kind.

Harry, no doubt you'd like me to admit that there are hopes of intelligent re-emergence in Homo sapiens, however fleeting. Sure, I'll admit it, as soon as I see it. I suppose you think you're part of the fleeting hope? Ha! I'd smirk and sneer except gila monsters can't do that. Have a nice evolution, Harry!

Yours, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster

Addendum from Harry the Human


Wow, that was mean, Robert! It will be a cold day in Darwinism before you're back on my blog! Come on folks, help me prove this desert lizard wrong about us!

All the best, Harry the Human

Big brains, by Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster

Harry asked me to continue to guest-author his blog. Since my trip with D.L. to Bhutan, Harry has not felt like writing. He says, "Things write themselves." Even though I don't know what he means, I disagree. I feel, for instance, that if I don't post my new theory about why the human brain is big, it will be lost in the desert void, a not uncommon outcome for this banished reptile.

My theory was sparked by an interesting article in NewScientist magazine (which I read telepathically from Harry's online edition) titled, "Why did humans evolve big brains? A new idea bodes ill for our future" (12/14/24, by Colin Barras), which starts by reviewing the common assumption that human brains are big because they're smart. The assumption becomes questionable as Barras considers various contradicting facts, e.g., the Neanderthal brain was bigger than a modern human's; Einstein's brain was just average size, etc. Then of course there's the fact that even though the human brain averages 1,350 cubic centimeters, while the typical gila monster's cranial cavity manages a mere 65 cm of the good stuff, I'm literally a literate lizard (in the good sense).

Barras goes through the latest fossil evidence on the fluctuating size of hominid brains through the millennia. It turns out that about 10,000 years ago, just about the time large civilizations were forming, human brain size dipped from 1,500 cm to about 1,350. One theory about the shrinkage is that it occurred not in spite of your getting smarter, but because of it, so that writing, for instance, "allowed people to store some of their accrued knowledge externally instead of committing it to memory, and thus the need for brain cells decreased." Barras conjectures that something similar may happen to humanity because of AI. Worst case scenario (or best, depending how you look at it): Humans evolve into a stationary head with spindly arms and ten fingers to tap a keyboard. This is my bet.

After going through current theories about human brain size, Barras concludes that there is no firm evidence either that bigger size is a survival advantage, or that it denotes more intelligence. He describes one theory speculating that the increase in size was an "accident" caused by the rise of meat eating, which gave humans so much more energy than vegetarianism that the energy "had to go somewhere," and ended up in brain size for want of a better idea for its use.

Perhaps it's because of my perspective from outside your species that I'm considering another possible reason your brains are big. I've noticed that, starting after early childhood, humans become increasingly convoluted in their relations with each other, so that finally an almost totally artificial construct mediates all conversation, whether you're talking to someone you care about or love, or a total stranger, or someone you dislike. You are able to project your "real feelings," but they have to go through a maze of translation, caused, I think, by the layers of personality glued together in your brains by a cruel evolution, in which never ending life-and-death change has made clear to you again and again that you have the wrong personality and mentality, that you need to turn into someone else, someone maybe who kills animals and eats them, or who ends 300,000 years of inter-tribal hate and war to forget your tribes and gather in cities.

The obsolete brain patterns are not deleted or rewritten after installation of a new mindset, but are "repressed," "sublimated," shoved into your "subconscious," like new computer code replacing old code that gets stored away. Why didn't you just delete your old mentalities? Maybe you didn't have time. Or maybe you're evolving into a species where the repressed mindsets, like the conquered demons obliged to support Buddha, send you their thoughts and perceptions, forming your behavior, indirectly governing you. That would make the governing part of your brain the subconscious, not the conscious, because your conscious mind is not aware of the other mentalities from your previous existences; you have no memory of who you were. It's the subconscious that is aware.

The human brain, then, is big, not because it's smart, but because it's complicated. The question becomes, "Is it good to be complicated?"

Yours ever, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Bye Bhutan!

Hey folks! Here I am, the only gila monster in Bangkok International Airport, concealed in the carry-on of my human buddy, Doug (https://laskenlog.blogspot.com/), using his one-hour free wi fi to give my final report on this journey. What a journey it was!

My original purpose was to convey greetings from the god of Funeral Peak in Death Valley, InsertHere, to his cousin, Tab B, in the Bhutanese Himalayas (keep reading for more on the unusual names), but it turned out they didn't have much to say to each other. I did, however, make a new Bhutanese friend, a distant relative of us gila monsters: a tokay gecko. I met him in the mountains near the famed Tiger's Nest monastery. I'll try to spell his name in English letters: Ke-ke-ack-a-grrrrp. He explained to me that "tokay" is an onomatopoetic representation of their mating call. We had a congenial discussion about the contrast between us, as my kind doesn't have a mating call; we go by smell. I secrete a pheromone that suggests to female gilas that a needy male is near, while, if I'm lucky, I'll detect a pheromone suggesting that a female finds my message interesting. This is the wonder of travel: Meeting other cultures and discovering how for all our differences, we aren't so different after all!

The one-hour free wi fi is closing.

All the best, your world traveling reptile, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster.

Sunday, December 8, 2024

MIndfulness City...mindfulness world

Doug and I rarely co-author, but we were in such alignment on Mindfulness City that we collaborated on this piece. Best, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster

The proposed Mindfulness City in the south of Bhutan, endorsed by the king of Bhutan and attracting worldwide financial interest, achieves credibility from its connection to Bhutan. The promotional material describes a city incorporating Bhutan's historic and continuing "green," ecologically sound design and philosophy touted, though missing from the increasingly chaotic and dysfunctional major cities of the world. There is buy-in from international quarters, but if Mindfulness City were proposed for any other location, its emphasis on IT and vast sums of investment could inspire much skepticism and sarcastic characterization as a billionaire's paradise. We might have joined in such skepticism, but as we near the end of a ten-day tour of Bhutan, we find it hard not to feel that Mindfulness City deserves a chance. Bhutan is unlike any other country in the world. Nestled in the Himalayas between India and China, and subject to potential political pressure and conflict on a par with the tectonic forces that squeeze the Himalayas towards the heavens, the culture and, dare we say, the spirits of the land have evolved to deal with often uncaring forces of the cosmos.

One feels as well a surprising unity here between working people and all levels of management, up to the king. There is also a unity of religion, through the mystical thought of Buddhism. Within that one religion are a variety of perspectives. Yesterday we meditated on a statue of "Wealth Buddha," seated in deep meditation, a cluster of currency in his hand. Making money is not "bad" in this morality, necessarily.

There's the catch. Mindfulness City will be at the creative edge of the AI and biotech mediated re-creation of the human being, who is about to be "improved." Some of the improvement will be long sought and wonderful, for instance the end of diseases that have tormented humanity. Perhaps "old age" will be improved, developing from its current reality as a state of isolation and slow death, to something worth staying alive for.

But what will the human mind and human nature become? It looks like the species will be able to decide those too. If your brave new world will be like Aldous Huxley's 1931 classic, Brave New World, where the corporate/state's goal is to churn out "test-tube babies," genetically uniform, to serve as uncomplaining workers, while confining remnants of old style humanity to concentration camps (the most obscene word in the language is "mother"), that's one thing. But people could also re-create themselves into wise, unwarlike, loving and positive beings. Making a profit on that would not be essentially bad. Wealth Buddha expresses one of our natures. But there are other Buddhas, other natures.

Thursday, November 28, 2024

Robert embarks for Bhutan, with daily updates

As I've made clear, I'm happy to spend the next two weeks on my front porch rocker staring at the San Gabriel Mountains, leaving this quixotic journey to my altered-ego D.L. (who will post about it on https://laskenlog.blogspot.com/) and his unexpected travelling companion, my later-in-life buddy Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster. I have no desire to accompany Robert, who finagled a free ride with D.L. and his skeptical wife, based on his insistence that he has been assigned a mission by the deity residing on Funeral Peak in our own Funeral Mountains near Death Valley (named Tab B - see below for more on the name) to commune with the mountain god (named InsertHere - see below) of Bhutan's highest peak, Gangkhar Puensum, hundreds of miles north of D.L.'s National Geographic tour. How he will get through airport security, or deal with Bhutan's prohibition against mountain climbing (which is believed to disturb montain deities) is not my concern. I hereby turn over my blog to Robert, as his life has become more interesting than mine. Don't worry about me. I'll be continuing my regime of dreamy contemplation and frequent naps.

All the best, Harry the Human

Here begins Robert's journal of his trip to Bhutan

Day 1

Hi everybody! My usual gloom is gone, as I leave the daily grind of the desert for an environment of rapid change and uncertainty.

I'm curled up in D.L.'s carry-on, chilling in the LAX terminal after using my exceptional mental powers to make myself invisible in the security stations. I fight claustrophobia by exchanging updates with the Bhutanese mountain god, InsertHere (keep reading for more on the name) a visit to whom is the purpose of this journey, at least for me. D.L. has no escape from his "reality." While he frets over the geo-political environment contemporaneous with our trip, I am able to absorb the bigger, "divine" picture, where our immediate world is a mere flash to the gods. D.L., as a human, does not understand that we mortals are indirect reflections of godhood, of its expressions through nanosecond-long infinities. I don't know how else you could tolerate an airport terminal.

That's it for now. I'll get back to you later tonight with observatons about streaking across the sky in a human contraption.

Your Reptilian Servant, Robert

Day 2

I can add to D.L.'s musings about the people in the Taipei airport: No one is thinking about China. They are thinking about how tired they are, how nice it would be to have a private jet catered with haute cuisine (not bizarre "french toast" wrapped in foil) and exit procedures that don't involve crowds of humans attempting to file through the eye of a needle.

I would think, "Wait 'til I tell my fellow gila monsters what human life is like!", but I don't have an audience in my fellow gilas. They regard me as mad for associating with another species, especially this one. Nevertheless, I have chosen a path and must continue.

Another observation: We gilas are sensitive to what humans vaguely refer to as "spirits" or "gods," and I was curious how the spirits of the air have faired with human aircraft invading their realms. As we roared across the Pacific at 35,000 feet, I let my telepathic senses creep beyond the fuselage into the stratosphere, where I sensed, well, nothing. Whatever spirits had roamed up there are gone. Whether they are dead or displaced I could not tell. More on this if I attain further awareness. Meanwhile, after D.L. and Susan finish their ablutions at the Bangkok hotel, I look forward to joining them- incognito of course- in inspecting the bars and massage parlours which, I gather, are a major draw in this tropical land. Your Faithful Reptilian Reporter, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster.

Day 3

It turned out D.L. and his wife did not share my interest in bars, et al, so D.L.'s post for our 48 hours in Bangkok is perhaps more educational than mine. I did not delve into cultural stuff but remained secluded in the hotel room, as I am not concerned much with distinctions between humans, just as you may not want to hear lengthy explanations of local differences between gila monster cultures (yes, there are differences). I continue focussed on today's flight to Bhutan, where my quest to contact local deities will commence. I'll get back to readers soon! Best, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster

Day 4

Here we are in Bhutan! I just read D.L.'s meditations on the Buddhist conception of demons and of the relationship between good and evil. It's relevant to me because technically I'm a "beast," a candidate for demon and thus potentially evil. All I can say is that the concepts of good and evil are not found in the "animal world," to which I belong. We just exist. If we want to eat something, we eat it. It's a question of surviving, not of being good or evil.

Meanwhile I'm not getting much sympathy for my quest to visit a mountain god hundreds of miles north of D.L's tour. It doesn't matter. I've been communing with dozens of gods here. They are very aware of changes coming their way. When D.L. took me yesterday to the world's biggest statue of Buddah (129 feet tall) in Thimphu, I encountered dozens of gods swirling around the temple beneath the statue, in which are 125,000 tiny statues of Buddha, representing Buddha natures that exist down to the atomic level. It was thrilling, but from a gila monster's point of view, the gods are not always omnipotent or omniscient; we need to feel that they are to assuage our terror at the seeming chaos of all we see. I'm just saying.

D.L. found a book in the lobby shop at Thimphu's Museum of Textiles about phallus worship in Bhutan. One page showed nude men dancing around a bamboo phallus, chanting about their "thunderbolts of wisdom." D.L. is choosing not to write about this, timid soul that he is. I put it out there not because I derive any particular meaning from such narcissistic meditations, but because I wonder what females might call the vagina. How about, "Receptacle of the Thunderbold of Wisdom?" No? Sorry, I am a gila monster after all. I think D.L. is sorry he took me on this trip. Too late now.
Older Posts Home