Planning the Next Great Migration

All men, all women, all children have their illusions, and those illusions both sustain and destroy them.

The counterpoint to illusion is not truth, not in the way in which truth is now and apparently always has been defined by human beings, although many would claim such. Truth is, as popularly accepted, just another form of illusion, if a well-meaning illusion, because, over time, it has been corrupted from its original meaning, which was conformity to reality. As culture and language developed, men applied the term to words, or more properly, nouns, then next to principles, and finally to beliefs. Yet none of those conform directly to reality.

Nouns are single-word terms that attempt to name or describe either something real or something unreal, but no word encompasses the completeness of whatever is being so named. Every noun is at best a name of the principal attribute of what it purports to represent.

When one applies the term “true” or “truth” to belief in a deity, how can a belief in the existence of any deity be true, or even false, when there is no demonstrable physical proof of the existence of that deity?

In the end, truth as it is, and not as so many have described it to serve their own ends, can only be the open acceptance of what is. Not what we remember, not what we hope for, not what we fear, not what we love … but what is. Nothing more and nothing less.

For the truths that men claim, in their vaunted principles, and in the governments that they have built based on those principles, and will build long after I am gone, are all part of the grand illusion that words can describe all of what exists.

AVERRA The City of Truth Johan Eschbach 377 TE Modesitt, Jr., L. E.. Contrarian: A Novel in the Grand Illusion (p. 611). (Function). Kindle Edition.

For some reason I woke up at 05:00 this morning and knew that going back to sleep wasn't an option. Kinda wish I knew why, but nothing comes to mind.

I have been huddling down of late. I am retreating into the areas of my life where more certainty is possible. That does not include anything other than a brief scan of news headlines to see if the direction has changed any at all. It does appear that the trend toward nastiness and name-calling continues apace with no real change in intensity. The conditions in the proxy wars we have so come to love are proceeding smartly along their path to failure. The economy of the rich is doing fine, the economy of everyone else is beginning to show signs of going off the rails.

Growing up in a family of fairly recent immigrants (My grandma was the first person to actually speak fluent English, Great-grandfather came to America as a draft dodger who decided that being drafted to the Austro-Hungarian Empire's army in 1913 was a losing proposition). But Italian was the milk tongue of the family until the 1950's and I caught the tail end of that. But there was a phrase that stuck: Tempo Freddo (cold times).

When used in the house, it didn't refer to weather outside. That was other phrases involving dogs and when outside vulgarity. Nope, tempo freddo was for when the craziness was closing in. I remember it being used a lot in the late sixties when I stayed at the farm for the summers (I was farm labor before it was cool).

I am tempted to start using it again. But I won't. That reference is from a time and culture that was dying fifty years ago. But the craziness is closing in. We are in the process of choosing sides to lay blame. But the actions happening here and now can't really be "blamed" on one side of the other. We would have arrived at this exact same place regardless of what political faction "won" the last election and exerts nominal control. The only difference is in which group of assholes is currently being repressed.

First things first, sorry to besmirch the Dead with the completely unauthorized reference to one of their great songs/albums.

Had an excellent read today over at Aurelian. Folks should drop in over there and have a read. While the entire piece is well worth a read, two things stood out to me. The first is the almost universal rejection of the idea that things in the future that things are dicey and incomplete at the time of any pontification by writers here in the free for all of what passes for public discourse. I usually try (but often I don't succeed) to attach some rough approximation of odds of actual occurrence for the wild ass guess on what is happening/will happen. But this deliberate choice of lack of prescience (along with the choice of venues) relegates me to one of the screeching voices here in the wilderness. Unless I get some certainty to peddle, that is where I will stay, and I don't see that happening.

The second thing is that the folks who are certain that folks who get paid are somehow more accurate. Truth be told, I have no idea where this weirdness comes from, but I certainly can't see the logic in why people think that. The folks who write for a living are playing to an audience and like all actors, they are playing a part.

Overall a great read, and it did remind me of how good the Dead's album "Terrapin Station" is.