Letters from the Editor

Well, I started thinking about some things (which long term readers will recognize as a warning sign, it’s very dangerous for me to be thinking.) and I came to a conclusion.

I’m a snob.

No, really, I am.

I think that beliefs that one clings to should have some basis in REASON, not just “because everyone believes it…” I believe that someone who is advocating a position should be able to intelligently defend that position, without resorting to rhetoric or obfuscation. I think that while an emotional position is fine for such arguments, that one should be able to articulate those feelings.

I think that everyone should sit down and read a dictionary.

I think that there is something wrong with those who don’t enjoy reading (books and stories, I can understand not reading technical manuals).

I think that instead of speaking and teaching to the least intelligent person who may be present, I should speak and talk to the MOST intelligent person present, that way everyone else is lifted up to their level, and the world’s intelligence increases instead of decreases.

I passionately believe that intellectual laziness is wrong because it leads to laziness in other areas.

I believe that one should be able to think WELL and logically in order to succeed in this world.

I think that if you are going to do something, you may as well do it correctly the first time so that you don’t have to go back and correct it later.

I think that HTML code should be as lean as possible while still being able to be read by the widest possible audience. Therefore most of the neato code fragments that do dancing letters and flashing banners should be dispensed with. That’s one reason you won’t find that on my site. Heck, I had one lady who wrote me who said she had no problem accessing my site during her move on her cell phone.

I think it is the responsibility of management to see and recognize the good and bad jobs their employees are doing, not my job as the employee to tell everyone what a good job I’m doing.

I think that political correctness is neither correct nor (in the strictest sense) political. It is a way for those who feel guilt to martyr themselves on an altar of their own building.

I think that people who do not try to do and to succeed in their lives should suffer the consequences of that decision and left to reap those rewards. I also believe that I should not be held accountable for anyone else’s success/failure and I should not be forced to support them.

I believe that it is possible to be Pro Choice and still despise abortion.

I believe that each person rises or falls according to their own merits.

I believe that there should be some mechanism in the Universe for helping out those who deserve help due to their actions without making them dependant on it. Some kind of Cosmic Instant Karma Plan.

I believe that it is a crime to take away a child’s belief in Santa Claus.

I think that life can be fair, but people don’t allow it to be.

I think that the current trend to entitlement should be stopped and those who espouse such an idea the loudest should be shot.

I think that people should NEVER be persecuted for sex or making love, but should instead be prosecuted and persecuted for violation of promises and oaths related to those acts. Clinton should never have been impeached for an affair, only for lying under oath to cover it up. I think that Bush needs to be jailed for lying to the World and for murder of better than 2000 Soldiers and countless Iraqis. Their names should be read off to him every day, all day on a continuous loop and he should be given a manilla folder of their lives to read and take a test on each and every day. Part of that test should be a sincere apology note to their families.

I think that asking for an unbiased media is asking the impossible. Bias is in every aspect of life. Everyone has an agenda. But asking for the least bias possible is not only possible but also the way it should be. But if bias is not avoidable, then contrasting sources should be used to hit a median.

I have a lot of personal beliefs that are very radical, from breeding licenses to common sense education in the public schools, to the closing of every private school there is and that money being funneled into the public schools.

I believe that those who keep repeatedly calling for separation of the races should be invited into enclaves of their choice, to be imprisoned there. At least then we would have all the crazies in one place where we could watch them.

I believe that rape should be a castrating offense, as well as upon conviction the victim being granted the status of a divorced spouse, subject to receiving half of the perpetrator’s worldly goods and future earnings. It won’t give her back the dignity she had before, but it would make potential rapists think twice before doing this for a few moments of passion.

Just a few random thoughts.

This time I’m going to rant about Honor.

Why is it that people seem to think that just because they don’t want to, they are not obligated to keep promises made? Why do they think that Honor is something that can be spat on with impunity? Why is honor used as a punchline?

Honor is your personal integrity. It is the ONLY measure of a man or a woman. It is the yardstick used to ensure that society functions. It is what keeps us from devolving into anarchy and “only the strong” kind of mentality. Culture is not what keeps us from barbarism, only Honor is.

Let me float a few scenarios to you. You find a bag of money and notice that it fell out of a woman’s purse while she was getting a pen out. You give it back. What does that make you? Trustworthy? A Good Samaritan? Honest? Each of those can be replaced by Honor and it still be correct.

If you kept that money, what would that make you? Mean? Dishonest? A bad person? What if you deposited it into your account while you watched her frantically looking through her purse for that money? Once again, each of those can be replaced by Honor.

You are in a fight, and you knock your opponent down. They are helpless before you. Do you kick them again? No? Why? It’s not fair? It’s not right? You simply don’t do that? Once again, that’s honor.

We live in a society that puts a lot of credit into the forms of honor, but which despises honor and personal responsibility itself. A lot of laws are enacted to enforce morality and honorable behavior, but when you talk about having personal honor and living up to that, you are laughed at. When you say it’s dishonorable to take advantage of a coworker, you are looked at like you have grown a new head on your shoulders. When you do not run around and tell everyone how great you are (refusing to brag and being humble), you are asked “why not”? When you try to explain why, most times you can’t without using words like Honor.

Honor permeates society. Not just ours, but EVERYONE’s. Honor is the glue that holds that society together. It is why everyone doesn’t go around and steal cars or take money from old ladies at the ATM, it’s why you pay the check before you leave and after a meal. It’s why you leave the tip on the table instead of pocketing it as you walk out. It is why you demand right behavior from others and it is why we act in the way we do.

Words have grown up and now get in the way of speaking. Words like “integrity”, “responsibility”, “chivalrous”, “polite”, “kind”, “generous” and many others have come to be to give shades of meaning to “Honor”, but the use of honor has fallen out of favor for the words which give that shading. So Honor as a word has become an anachronistic expression referring to the SCA or to knights in England.

Warf on Star Trek, The Next Generation was a beloved character, but everyone thought he was odd because he was so concerned with his Honor. He behaved according to a set of moral codes and ideals and rarely violated them, and he felt horribly guilty when he did violate them. But everyone (the viewers) and many of the cast of the show made some (backhanded) fun of him. He was thought of as “odd” because of that code. He lived it and I saw how he was treated at Star Trek Conventions, he was thought to be strange.

I could wish EVERYONE in the world had such a code and rigidly adhered to it. The world would be a MUCH better place.

The Samurai were seen as “sticks in the mud” or “tight-assed” because of their code of Bushido, which is the Code of the Warrior, their code of Honor. The Military is looked at as fanatics because they adhere to a code of honor. Many other groups out there, like the police, are hated because of their honorable behavior. But it is a necessary element in life.

What kind of a world would it be if we all just did whatever we wanted? No restrictions, no governors, nothing to keep us from feeling bad when we took that lollipop from that 2 year old. What would life be?

This would mean that I could shoot anyone in the head I wanted to. I could walk up to anyone who had something I wanted and simply take it. If they couldn’t take it back, then it was mine. People would die, I would be hurt, others would be maimed. What about the sociopath who was on the loose? He would be able to get away with anything he wanted simply because there would be no laws and no one to say “this is wrong”. Children could be raped in school simply because the teacher was horny. (Yes, graphic, but it’s what could happen.) Talk about slavery, anyone who wanted something from someone else and could keep them oppressed, could very easily.

But Honor prevents that. The laws of the Government are only really words in a book. They can’t make you do anything. They can’t force you to behave certain ways. All they can do is list out the punishments and consequences that are possible for betraying that rule. “Don’t do drugs” is nice, but when there is a laundry list of penalties to go along with it, you STILL have to make a personal decision not to do drugs. And there are those who choose to do drugs anyhow and when they are caught they pay the penalty. But the choice is dictated by your personal honor and integrity.

It’s Honor that keeps us behaving in a human manner.

So obeying the dictates of honor is a good thing. Don’t be so quick to dismiss that simply because you think it’s archaic.

And start behaving in an honorable fashion. The world will be a MUCH better place. Really.

When Johnathan “The Impaler”; Sharkey announced his candacy for Governor of Minnesota, I was somwhat miffed. He did so the day after my birthday, thereby taking the spotlight off of me. So I was more than a little put out.

However, I haven’t commented on this yet because I have had to work out how I feel in regards to this action.

On one hand, it’s Minnesota. How much damage can he do there? I mean, they elected Jessie “The Body” Ventura to be their Governor in the past, so what’s a Vampire now? And I’ve been considering what my stance on this is. To be honest, I’m torn.

I think I a Pagan in a high office is a good thing. It would be wonderful and it would certainly raise awareness and the profile of most Pagans. But there are MULTIPLE problems with this.

First off, he’s a wierdo fringe Pagan. He’s no where near the moderate that many Pagans are at, nor is he trying to be. He’s outrageous and wants that. He wants the publicity and the attention. In that he’s like a 5 year old screaming and kicking his heels because a treat was denied him. So I think that in this case he would do more harm than good.

Statements like “I hate and despise the Christian God the Father, he is my enemy” will not win him any friends in the electorate who he needs to court to be elected.

I’ve read parts of his platform and while they sound good, many a campaign promise sounded good at the beginning like this. I can see pepole voting for this man for the “amusment factor” or the “novelty” of having a vampire/Satanist in the Governor’s Mansion, but that’s all. I certainly wouldn’t vote for this person for President nor would I accept him in any position in the federal Government for the same reason.

It’s not that I hate Satanists. It is because his views and ideas are too radical and they would chip away at many of the laws that are in place. This is my personal view.

I encourage you to go read his website. It’s frightening and somewhat sad. To think this poor man has to identify himself as a vampire in order to have the life he wants….

Well, it’s been a bit. Things are interesting on this side of life.

First off, I’m sick. Coming down with something, not sure what.

Second, the Bible readings. I find that while I’m reading this I’m getting a very different sense of what is in the Bible rather than what I was told was in the Bible. See, I took Seminary with the Mormon Church the last time I read the Old Testament. It tended to be very much “This is what happened and this is how we interpert it…” and them telling you what to believe rather than letting you discover it for yourself.

This time, reading this text with a bunch of other people who are not trying to tell you what to believe and think, I’m getting a very different sense of the G-d of the Jews.

He’s coming off as a VERY tribal deity. Favorites to one group of people, all others can die and be lost. And it’s interesting to watch this because that deity is coming across as more and more like the deities that we worship as Wiccans and Pagans.

Right now we are at the point of Abraham sacrificing Isaac on the mountain. Through the discussion amongst ourselves, it becomes plain that that whole scene proving how bloodthirsty that deity is isn’t like that at all. Isaac is a sacrifice, to be sure, but it is very much more along the lines of an initiation rather than a death. Reading the text, I believe that he was initiated into the cult of YHVH at that point.

One other person suggests that he was not only initiated, but that instead of being 7 or 8 years old that Isaac was actually about 37 or so. And reading the text I have to agree. He was circumcised at 15, and time passed, so he would have to be older than 20 when this happened. Which makes this whole scene a SELF sacrifice, or an initiation. Puts a new spin on everything.

So that’s that.

Next: Pray for me. Or light candles or whatever you do to help out. My roof is leaking and the owner/landlord has made it plain that they intend to do NO more repairs to the house. So we have some severe problems.

Going to do my best to get one of these two articles I’m working on finished and up sometime soon, but with the rest of what is going on….

I was posting on another board and I realized why I hate the term “I’m a religious person”. To me it implies that the person who is saying it is more concerned with the forms of their faith than with the actual faith itself.

I’m going to use a few terms here, and before I get started I wanted to define them somewhat.

Faith: The internal connection to whatever. It is the acknowledgment that there is a spirit and that many different and various things can and do happen to that spirit after death. In this case, I am using spirit interchangably with “intellect”.

Spirituality: The internal and personal relationship with whatever deities or spirits there are in the world around you. It is possible to be spiritual and not have any worship of invisible beings.

Religion: The forms of that honoring and worship.

The religion is the institutional and ritualized form of spirituality.

This is getting scattered. I find it possible to be intensely spiritual and not be religious at all. One can have a day to day interaction with the unseen world and never do a ritual honoring that world.

I don’t understand why this concept is hard for people to understand. One can have a connection to the divine, a knowledge of what will come after death, a belief that the soul is immortal and that what I am will be eternal. One can speak to the Gods (or God) or spirits and one can recieve instruction from Them. One can revel in the knowledge that there is more than just what we can see, smell, taste, touch and hear, and one can understand that individually a person is a small cog, but en masse, there is little that can stop us.

One does not have to be religious. One doesn’t have to go to the little red church down the street, pray on bended knee at the chancel or speak the prayers out of the book. One does not need to know the symbolism of the purpah or know what it does. One doesn’t have to understand the mythology of a deity to be able to relate to them.

This is the kind of dichotomy that is responsible for a lot of grief over the years. Practitioners of a religion are constantly attacking those with a true spiritual connection and understanding. Those with a spirituality flit from one religion to another, never really committing to a religion since they can’t define what they are looking for. So the two come into conflict constantly and there is hatred on all sides.

I also want to acknowledge that there are those who have a very deep spiritual connection without there being any deity or spirit in the makeup of their spirituality. The Agnostics and Athiests have, in their own way, a very deep and rich spiritual existance while rejecting many mystical things. But they can do it even though there is no religious framework to hang their faith off of to display it. Just a point.

So, in thinking about your spirituality, don’t let your religion get in the way of someone else’s spirituality or tramble over it. It is never a good thing to impose your rules on another.