How can you be in two places at once...

(...when you're not anywhere at all)

Hmmm. I can't believe 25 years have gone by since John Lennon was killed in NYC. I was in grade 12 in Vancouver, and I wore a black armband for a few days (I think until I was told to remove it). I was 16 going on 17 and Lennon was one of my biggest heroes. He still is a hero, and I sometimes wonder whether his death was just one of the signs of how bad things were getting.

At the same time, it's a rare winter election here in Canada, and the convergence of the anniversary, the election and the absurdity of it all put me in mind of the Firesign Theatre. It's been a while since I gave them a serious listen, and even longer since I heard anyone mention their name in public. Another sign of how un-creative, yet more reactionary our social order has become. When I try to take a God's eye view and wonder what history will make of this era, I find myself almost lost. We really have entered the realm of the surreal, the Age of Absurdity.

And who is our Lennon today? Who is leading popular culture to re-examine itself, to ask tough questions, to follow wherever the trail leads? Much as I respect Bono, he demonstrates more how the corporate elite have managed to co-opt even their biggest detractors, more than what can be done to make the world a better place. He helped Paul Martin launch his leadership of the Liberal Party, but he hasn't succeeded in having him honour any promises. He is, apparently, crushed, but what's to be done? The genie is out of the bottle. Bono has played his cards and they didn't turn up Aces. His own song, God Part 2 pretty much admits his compromised position:

Don't believe in excess
Success is to give
Don't believe in riches
But you should see where I live.
I, I believe in love.

This was a good 18 years ago. And to bring things full circle, the whole song is a tribute of sorts to J.L. and his own song God. But even a cursory listen to Plastic Ono Band demonstrates the sheer power and poetry that Lennon had at his command. I miss his voice.

End of the 'Power" meme

This is a quickie pointing to another thread I want to spend some time exploring: the counter argument to the "power" meme. What I mean here is the sort of Nietzche-ian notion that power is a good thing and end in itself, or more properly the distortion of that to the "power is everything" argument.

As an idea of where I'm going, I despise the "philosophy" of the American Neo-Cons, all aspects of it, from the elitist Straussian belief in privileged understanding to the need for primacy of American power. Still, despising it doesn't make it necessarily false, incoherent or illogical. But, it seems to me, there is an argument against the notion of a singular exercise of power.

I want to argue that power for it's own sake is ultimately self-defeating, inasmuch as the power emanates from the totality of a system, and therefore the system's own survival and success is essential to having the power. The abuse of power, much as say an addiction to a narcotic, compromises the system's ability to continue to survive. In other words, addictions tend to end badly, and so too will the exercise of autocratic power in a democratic society. It may take time, but eventually the social and political system will rebel against anything which takes their support and uses it for irrelevant or harrmful purposes.

This isn't fully fleshed out or coherent, but it's 3:15 a.m. so I'm begging off for now. I hope it's enough to get some interest piqued, and I promise I'll be writing a lot more about this, with related research.

Infinite Diversity, Unique Balance

My latest take on why life sucks (and why it doesn't), or rather, what it's all about. All the great and wise philosophies (at least according to me) seem to include this notion, which includes not only a diversity of modes of being, but also the notion that some are in conflict with one another all the time. I suppose the clearest expression of this (again, according to me--if I can't be the ultimate arbiter on my own blog, I'll go back to lurking somewhere else) is in Taoism, where the balance of the Yin and Yang represents a multitude of forces in conflict. Which means, reading between the lines, that this idea is not exactlly new. Nevertheless... David Suzuki has a book out called The Sacred Balance, which is a book of short essays and photo-essays arguing for the importance of the global eco-system and environment. I prefer "unique" because I think it captures some of the same idea (it is a singular, "special" balance of diverse forces and actors) without the religious overtones. It's late... More on this soon.

Genesis

Fiat verbum!

So, while I have been meaning to post my insignificant utterances somewhere for about 4 years or more, this whole thing came to pass because my son said the Word, and the Word was "How do you make your own blog?" or something to that effect.

Well, it looks like we made it.

So "paradoxical intentions" reflects my take on the zeitgeist. I'm a liberal, but I prefer to deal simply with ideas and not political positions or parties. My sense of things in early 21st century North America is that we are pretty screwed; and we're getting screwed by all of the policies which are supposedly saving us. Some of it is due to deceit, pure and simple, but a large part of it is a failure of imagination. And what was not imagined in many cases were the unintended (but absolutely predictable) consequences of the choices we are making. I won't limit my critique to politicians, because while they may be the worst of a bad lot, we are all in this together, and all to blame. We may not like to face that fact, but if our culture has become dysfunctional, refusing to accept any personal responsibility for it won't get us too far.

How do you think it became dysfunctional, after all?

But this is not intended to be the sharp, incisive, hilarious, heartfelt and revealing sort of post, but merely a welcome aboard if you happened to stumble by (how else could you have got here?) and a VERY BROAD statement of... er... something or other, but not exactly principle.

I welcome all comments, and all commentators. But I don't care a great deal for abuse, and I don't let myself engage in abusive behaviour, so... be forewarned!

Howdy neighbour!