Have we learned anything at all?

Well we learned that some awful big brains have been trying to figure out what’s real and what’s represented and how do they fit?  We learned that a whole lot of hope got and gets poured into the representational system of mathematics – such that it has taken on a pseudo religious penumbra.  We learned that math breaks down, at the exact spot where we just get started:  the moment of the Self:  the Aesthetic Moment.  And we learned that when folks start confusing useful fictions for the real thing:  they get whacky.  And start making weird claims; while simultaneously kicking off a process that dissolves their connection to their existential reality and heritage. 

Where’s the hate come in?  Well, it’s a cool headline.  And, I think I can successfully argue it’s a natural out growth of the many sins of Christianity:  namely, that Christianity takes the natural necessity of ritualistic participation and enrichment and bastardizes it through hubris, ignorance and ambition.  And in the failed process, they learn to hate contemplation; they learn to hate nuance; learn to hate erudition; learn to hate the true, true, truest fact that nothing about the Christ fable is ontic:  its just a playbook for an age old ritual, that is born of age old forms (and archetypes). 

In hating the truth about the Self.  In hating the truth about all rituals that aren’t their own, in wanting to wipe all other opinions, doctrines, modes, and stories, if not off the earth, certainly out of the headlines:  they have come to bring hatred into every thing about us. 

So of course Christianity has led to nihilism.[1]  Which led to Nazism.  Which led to gun worship.  Which has led to modern American Fascism and Consumerism and all the other dumbshit every third person in America is doing right this very minute. 

[1] Don’t you dare blame your humble narrator:  Nietzsche got this right way before I was even born.  

Modern life brought with it a hollowing out, and maybe more importantly a flattening of life experience, such that today, our post-modern mode is utterly dislocated and malshaped. 

How?  Well, probably in a bazillion ways that won’t be catalogued here.  But a few obvious ways, I believe are worth consideration:

1.    Division of Labor:  the beast must be fed.  Whatever we say, whatever we know, whatever we can reckon about our ultimate source and destination, we ain’t there now.  We’re where so many geniuses remind us every chance they get:  we’re in the real world.[1]  In the real world, you gotta eat; you gotta rest; you gotta fuck and play and work.  And you have to do so competitively and competently.  Which includes efficiently.  The alternative is you get washed out of existence and then all these considerations really become academic.

Competitive pressures demand for efficiency led to a fragmentation of tasks, and thus experiences.  This ever fractioning and ever-reinforced experience of fractioning took us further and further away, in our phenomenal experience, from our Aesthetic Moment of full, complete and whole experience of Self.  Leading to a profound kind of forgetting and estrangement. 

Divisions of labor robbed us of the vantage of the whole picture; which in the end is the basis of the Self. 

2.    Disorienting Geometries:  there are a lot of lies and traps out there:  Christianity, trickle down economics, natural male enhancement, but probably the most disorienting lie we live with is:  the straight line.

At best the straight line is a useful fiction, like our concept of the atom or ladies’ faked orgasms.  We know that space is curved.  We know that we’re constantly moving in all sorts of directions at wildly high rates, but we believe in still and straight notions of placement and motion.  Ha!

I’m not prudish about useful fictions:  hell, they’re adaptive.  Yes, you may lose at this precocious game of Life, but it’s a mortal lock you will lose without a fine cabinet full of useful fictions.  It’s when these constructs degrade life that we must reassess, and for my part:  I must step in and call bullshit.  So here it is kids:  there’s no such thing as a straight line.  There is no such thing as leaping off from a point of origin without inevitably returning to that point of origin.  Straight lines suggest a beginning and a distant end point of termination.  However, we lived in a phenomenal universe made up entirely of curved space.  Anything that appears straight to you is a useful fiction.

Why does this matter?  Two reasons:  Time & Space. 

Thanks to the work of so many:  Kastrup, Hoffman and their predecessors we know Time is epiphenomenal.  So, when we discuss time here we are speaking of it, not as ontic, but as its experienced (epistemologically). 

If we speak of time as a metaphoric straight line (and we couldn’t do so if we didn’t hallucinate this geometry in the first place) we quickly head down the doomed path of historicity; which, sadly, emboldens less thoughtful types to assign ontic qualities to history, the phenomenal world and its events.  This is a terrible blunder and one that has reduced one of the most active human paradigms – Christianity – to a 1, 2 punch of ontic historicity.  Ouch!

Perhaps a brief retrace:

1.     There’s metaphysical nature:  the foundation of existence[2]; which is inconceivable to us and solely mentation (to the extent we deign to imagine it);

2.     There’s a “moment” where this nature dissociates sufficiently to come in contact with its own presence in a supra-instinctual form:  birthing the Self;

3.     Concomitant to this dissociation is the birthing of the phenomenal world; freighted with all manner of epiphenomenal characteristics, including Time & Space, as well as archetypal modes of behavior such as the laws of thermodynamics[3] 

4.     Cascading down the line from the metaphysical foundation of existence, into Selfhood, then into the material world, challenges us to account for all our inherited substances and forms:  our varying mental (to include rational and irrational types) faculties; physical characteristics and capabilities; and the experiential combinations that arise when these come into contact with the principles and players of this realm:  demand of us to cohere a world view that keeps us in touch with meaningfulness; which simply put:  braids together all this stuff so we maintain a non-eccentric wholeness.

Got it?

A popular etymology of the word “religious,” is to bind fast. That is to say to secure in consciousness the content generated in the mundane realm with the intuition foisted at the Aesthetic Moment, and by inference the original mentation and source of Self.[4]

So, since to greater and lesser extents we spend an awful lot of time dedicating awareness and accumulating experiences from the mundane world, it is incumbent upon us to bind fast to our building blocks, the giver and keeper of our aesthetic.  And since the rational mind is narrow, weak and unreliable:  we should be putting all our paradigmatic eggs in that basket.  Because we reliably become confused, distracted, forgetful and mistaken.  Thus, we need to pump as much reinforced concrete into our unconscious through right and repetitive thought, and right and repetitive action.  What does that sound like?

Correct-a-mundo:  ritual.

And what does ritual do?  It goes round and round.

It goes round and round a point:  established as the axis mundi.  Eliade deals with the axis mundi at length.  And I do not wish to get bogged down with its explication here.  The main point (pardon any indication of a pun) of the axis mundi is that its facticity immediately and throughout its existence provides the center reference from which nothing but meaningfulness may spontaneously emerge.  As such, and as an axis it is both a center, establishing that all surveyed from this vantage will occur within the 360° of a circle – and not an endless, anxiety producing, meaningless, unceasing straight line.  And a pillar:  which extends vertically down into the depths of the realms and up to the majestic heights of the realms.

Thus, the axis mundi emulates us and we it.   We are self-reflecting metaphors.  Sound familiar?  The human body, in natural poise and pose is a vertical pole – physically; which may rotate, and if in a moment of self possession, will see out into the world and witness the world coming into her from some combination of radius and circumference.  Similarly, all the causality of the human body:  from its form as shaped by gravity, scarcity, sex, aggression, consumption, play, toil, et al. reaches down into the depths of the farthest reaching roots[5] and to the furthest escaping heights of ethical, metaphysical, and all other effecting principles.

Thus goes the physical/spatial[6]

As for time, you need look no further than to lean into music and dance.  Just as rhythm creates time, so does all broader ritual create its own (epistemological) time.  Our rituals are uncountable.  We have them for and around birth, death, melding, maturing, warring, celebrating, lamenting, ennobling:  whichever mood needs suiting or occasion needs clarifying and amplifying. 

These rituals are foremost:  participatory.  They have context.  Sure, they are vulnerable to analysis, but they cannot be correctly called intellectual or propositional.  The mother lode of nutritiousness comes from their participatory nature, and as such: they favor and elevate certain human dimensions and they gloss passed others.  Again, depending on which element is being stressed in any given ritual[7].  And as creatures of participation and principle (sound familiar?) they set up dyads:  between the participants and the audience, between the before and after, between the archetype and the actor, etc. 

This last dyad is in fact key.  Leave aside its conspicuous echo of the Self; wherein the archetype would be played by subjectivity, and actor would be played by object-ness.  The most important thing to take away from the time created inside a ritual is that, like all other things within its ring:  it is not substantially ontic.  It is essentially epistemological.  Rituals are a way of knowing.  And all the characters (whose names were undoubtedly changed to protect the easily confused) are some level of personification:  not persons, per se. 

So then, knowing all this:  what are you not allowed to do?

Correct-a-mundo:  you’re not allowed to mistake the characters or the actors in your ritual for ontological beings.  You know, and you must always remember:  they are stand ins for ideas, feelings, concepts, instincts absent, fleeting and ephemeral:  you’re not allowed to confuse them for the actual super-natural thing you’re trying to touch.

[1] If this claim doesn’t offend you, put your device down and never read another word I write. 

[2] You may imagine it as above this realm, like Heaven, to name a culprit; or you may imagine it as the bedrock; supporting this realm from under your feet.  It’s no matter as spatial relationships (and temporal ones for that matter), are all non-sense in the pre-phenomenal “world.”  As the steward of your imagination:  do what works and doesn’t fuck you up. 

[3] Which absolutely will not be treated here, nor anywhere by the likes of me, because I have a very weak force connection to them.  The foundation for my belief in this vein comes from the work and words of Mssrs. Kastrup & Jung. 

[4] Kastrup likes to refer to the original mentation as “mind at large,” of MAL.  Which I’m totally fine with. 

[5] Some might suggest, into the collective unconscious.

[6] To the extent there is sense in separating space from time and time from space in this and the next instance. 

[7] For that matter, as with any creative endeavor.

PART 2 of 4

Thus, a claim that naturally emerges and proceeds at and from the Self:  the bridge between realms.  It is the encounter through the original, the first, the foundational exercise of subject and object wedding.  As such, it is the bridge from the extra-perceptual realm of the metaphysic and the bounded world of the manifest.

It is the link, it is the joint, it is the passage, it is the journey between the cradle and residence of existential principles (the ineffable), and the what’s, the where’s, the how’s, the when’s of physical churn. 

“There are no small roles, only small actors.”[1]  Thus the Self can be majestic, it can, and often is, also; shattered, venal, toxic and trembling. 

It would seem, and it has been said (and can almost be imagined) that the metaphysical realm is perfect, is powerful, is inconceivably super.  And we well know the shit storm of this realm.  I don’t need to be the one to tell you the stress of bridging these realms is awesome.  But it can be done.  It has to be done.  The questions are:  how well can it be done?  How well can you do it?

What would the enactment playbook look like, then?  It would only and always look like the architectures that crystalize at the moment when the metaphysical meets the manifest.  A moment I have long called, the Aesthetic Moment.

The Aesthetic Moment is a freighted and durable blink, legacy, substructure, constituent…  I call it a moment because it’s the first time.  Of course Time only emerges and is meaningful on this side of the chasm, in this realm.  It’s a nonsense notion “at” the metaphysical realm.  In this way, the Aesthetic Moment is (also) the Ignition Moment.  And as long as the fire stays lit, all that follows are its children. 

The first thing it is is perfect.  The encounter, at that proximity – not separate, but separate – is the definition of intimacy.  It is primal knowing.  The first knowing.  All knowledge that follows is a washed out version of the first experience (and its perfect, persistent product), the first knowledge. 

Thus, what we know of perfection, we learned from the Aesthetic Moment.  And we learned it with our (metaphorical) existential legs akimbo:  one on the metaphysical side of the tracks (the Subject) and one on the manifest side of the tracks (the Object).  Thus, the Self is a mixed marriage, and carries with it all the expected and unexpected burdens of such. 

Ah but if we were only all mind.   Of course then we would be God.  Of course then there would be no here, no there, no now, no then; which of course there are; and because of these:  we have our moment, and thus we have our duty.

So, we (more than know) feel the perfection of the encounter that births and bequeaths the Self.  This is why the Aesthetic Moment is first and always emotional.  And by definition, the intellectual faculties and tools are subordinate to how we feel:  how we think is always secondary to how we feel.  And we can chart our feelings between the polarity of the beautiful and the abhorrent.[2]

It is self evident that emotions hit first, hit hardest, motivate, freeze, confound and confuse with magnitudes more force than thoughts and ideas.  Now you know why:  emotions are the first cousins of the Self, and will always be very dear. 

Now, as citizens of the manifest realm we must behave.  We must operate.  The dimensions are laid out before us.[3]  The question is “how do we behave, how do we operate in order to remain in touch with, if not aligned with the Aesthetic Moment, with the Self?”

There are two answers to this question and the fault line in this regard is consciously and unconsciously[4].  Acting consciously is the more difficult and inefficient of the two.  But, it is the one left to us in our stupid and broken age.  So, let’s start here. 

Briefly, on consciousness:  no one is more sage, no one has delivered to us richer, deeper, truer lessons on consciousness than the eminent Carl Gustav Jung.[5]  Nothing said here, or anywhere else, will provide more erudition or enlightenment.  So, if you’re hankering for wisdom in this regard:  seek out Jung, seek out his disciples and interpreters; of which, by the way:  I am neither.  

Consciousness, for our purpose will be meta-consciousness.  So when we consider consciousness we are not referring to the superset of all mentation.  Rather we are referring to the pretty, fragile member of the consciousness family that can command and hold the spotlight, if only for short (rather intense) bursts and only to the exclusion of the titanic oceans of subconscious and unconscious content and processing.  Consciousness is that which is reportably experienced[6].   Consciousness is available to memory, imagery, language, communication, interpretation, use and reuse.

In this way, Consciousness is the bright, cat-eyed beam of attention we fleetingly focus on to the exclusion of all other mentation.  It isn’t exclusively the domain of the hunched and scurrying denizens of thoughts, ideas, concepts, logic etc.  We do encounter our intuitions, premonitions, passions, etc. there.  But they are stealthier, cloaked, high collared, drifting strangers; as opposed to the all too familiar worn out relations with whom we’ve too often trudged, and to no apparent advantage, the tired, nostalgic cul-de-sac of talk and self-talk. 

Thus, in Consciousness, we are left to the brittle and unreliable research, argument, proof and propaganda.  These don’t not move the needle.  They just don’t do so faithfully, convincingly or permanently.  It is therefore left to the unconscious and subconscious to get in and stay in touch with the Aesthetic Moment. 

Leaving aside, for the moment, extra mundane modalities like meditation and induced hallucinations; the way to reach back from our phenomenal existence to our primordial infrastructure we (wisely) choose ritual.

Because rituals obviously manifest in this realm, in this space, in this time…or do they?  In fact, we’ve seen, and it has been well documented by Mircea Eliade and others that rituals have the uncanny ability to create “their own” space and time.[7]

This, faithful reader, is what we call in the business:  a ginormous can o’worms.  Eliade deals with this topic in a scholarly and well-developed way.  And, in the end, it all (doesn’t everything?) has to do with epistemology, meaning, and access to meaning.  At the broadest (and dare I say vaguest; and leaning into tautological) level, this line of inquiry deals with the transmutation of the profane (that which lacks life elevating form) to the sacred (that through which we touch life exalting form). 

But let’s do what we came here to do and leave the heavier lift for another day.  Everyone knows, and so it need not be argued, that rituals differ from other forms in their consistency, internal uniformity, repetition, reliability, symbolic architecture, multi-media inclusion, pan-sensual inclusion, and so on.  Thereby, ritual, distracts, relieves and out flanks the diatribic mind and replaces it with often frenetic and yet reliably relaxing form and content that, through these modalities, brings us back in contact with the Aesthetic Moment is a fashion unattainable in day to day life. 

With these modal polarities sketched:  predominantly consciously going about our business (mundanely) or predominantly unconsciously going through life (ritualistically) [8], we can start to anticipate which modality is more likely to deliver a greater quantity of engagements with the Self; and qualitatively resonant with the Self.  Clearly it is the ritualistic mode. 

[1] Konstantin Stanislavski

[2] I believe Kant spoke voluminously to and around this domain; and I will not now. 

[3] Or we co-create them with the Giver of all things.  For more on this, see quantum physics in general, and the work of Bernardo Kastrup and Donald Hoffman (more specifically) for clues as to how we co-materialize the manifest world. 

[4] For my purposes here, “subconscious” will be treated as roughly synonymous with “unconscious.”

[5] Much has also been said by or attributed to Siddhartha Gautama.  Jung is given primacy in this writing because I am a westerner, Jung wrote from the west and to the west, and so by definition (and also according to Jung himself) Jung’s content is more well aligned to his indigenous audience. 

[6] I lifted this definition wholly and directly from Bernardo Kastrup, who may or may not have lifted it from Plato, Schopenhauer and or Jung.  In any case, any flaw in its application or definition is mine alone, and in any case is not an original idea. 

[7]  For more on this see The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (trans. Willard R. Trask), Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1961; The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History (trans. Willard R. Trask), Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1971 or Eliade’s broader oeuvre; wherein Eliade documents how symbols and rituals transmute profane time and space into sacred time and space substantially, geometrically, existentially. 

[8] The semantics here are telling – let’s leave it at that.  Further, there is nothing in this realm that is pure:  even at the polar extremities, so don’t start mincing around with stupid ideas. 

Famously, Kurt Gödel never explained that there are far more assholes populating the Earth’s face than non-assholes.  To which Alan Turing infamously didn’t append, “so it’s much more likely than not that you’re an asshole AND you don’t know or admit it. 

Of course I’m referring to the Set Theory paradox of Self Hatred; which, in 1901 wasn’t ultimately formulated by Bertrand Russell as:  Let R={x:∼ϕ(x)}R={x:∼ϕ(x)}, then R is the set whose members are exactly those objects that are not members of themselves.

Unlike Christians (more on these later), these men were concerned about Truth (ontology) and its representation (epistemology, semantics, arithmetic, super slow motion video replay).

They knew they had stumbled upon, and mostly mastered, a topflight representational formulaic, i.e.:  math. 

I don’t know this to be absolutely true, because I never got around to asking them, but there are hints in their actions, separately and in sets; that lead me to infer; they felt, in math, they had found, if not a 1:1 correlate to the phenomenal universe, then in the least:  a peer.

In your mind’s eye, if you sit quietly and receive the echoes from their cloistered, paneled and candle lit rooms, you can connect to their pregnant, musty, alchemist’s desire and delight -- they were not more than mere moments from the giant cash prize.

…that eluded them. 

“It’s incomplete.”  They murmured, to themselves, under their breaths, as their quills or fountain’s dripped the ink’s sad news.  “It’s incomplete!”  They shouted as they kicked this over and that[1].  As they smashed the tray out of their caretakers’ plump, gentle arms.  As they calmed then ranted then spat out again:  “it’ incomplete, it’s incomplete…it’s incomplete[2].”

Math, the geniuses learned, and the geniuses said, and the geniuses proved: is incomplete.  Algorithms, formulas, computations will never and will never again be expected to:  know it all.

They’d laid it all out.  Laid it bare.  They stretched it and circled it.  They ran it over and over and over but they could not prove it encompassing, they could not make it contain.  There was a leak in math.  There is a leak in math.  It’s incontrovertible as the smartest of the smarty-pants knew and know.  And they know why and whose fault too.  And you do too.  It’s the Self.  That fucking fucker:  the Self.  The Self broke it.  The Self broke math.

“I hate the Self.”  Some said.  Or thought.  Or ruminated over and over without ever bothering to meet and get to know the Self.  More’s the pity.

Many have heard its voice.  But not through their ears.  Many more report meeting the Self in a mirror.  Or through interactions with others (that’s weird).  But more likely than not if you’re one of the aforementioned assholes (and even if you don’t admit it) the majority of your self time and effort, if there be any; revolves around the engagement in self-abuse.

In any case, the Self isn’t what they say it is or you think it is.  For one thing, the Self isn’t a thing.  It’s a process.  Distancing it even further from nounhood:  its substance is the furthest it could be from solid and still be extant.  The Self, is much more magical and mysterious than the most ardent self-abusers imagine. 

The Self, if it were material (its not), would be more like blown dry lamb’s wool or hot off the presses fiberglass insulation.  It would be micro-strandy, and poofy; Because it is, and it reminds, and it embodies being emergent.  The Self, and this comes straight from Kant,[3] with a little misinterpretation and wishful thinking sprinkled in:  the Self is the emergent substance generated by the relationship of subject appearing as object and back again in infinite vibration and interplay resulting from the (perpetual) encounter. 

Thus:  The first ingredient for Self is:  the experiencer.  The second ingredient is that which is experienced.  When those things are one and the same, and yet split, and yet unified: the radiation is blistering. 

Now we could yada-yada-yada our way through how this happens.  We could get all balled up in the Hard Problem of Consciousness.[4]  Or, more intelligently we could avail ourselves of the wisdom of Plato, Schopenhauer, Jung, and Kastrup, et al. and realize experience (in the form of consciousness) is the most elemental foundation of this here universe.  Which is what we’re gonna do.  Cause we’re smart. 

Thus rendered, thus known:  it may help to imagine the Self as a field.  Or a cloud.  The product (or exhaust) of entwined being and being seen being by being ad infinitum.

TaDa!

Thing is, as I famously observed in 1990[5], values fall out of this production just as surely as does the cosmic substance itself.  Values that proceed from the intimacy, the immediacy, the dependence, the dignity and the indispensability of the Self-relationship -- for Self is not a person; Self is not a someone; Self is a relationship[6] – and thus, the values that proceed from the emergence of the Self are those that emerge from the first (and most sacred) relationship.

Why and how does this matter?  It’s simple really. 

Consciousness is a metaphysical foundation.  The phenomenal universe (world) proceeds from Consciousness.  Thus:  space and time proceed from a priori consciousness.[7]   As such, it is incumbent upon subordinate entities (phenomenal entities) to “live out” and “live through” the values that are faithful to the providence (origin/source) of their existence. 

Pay attention.  The implications of this reality are sticky, irrefutable, and essential.  They demand that morality is not an optional nice to have.  They establish a center of gravity in the a priori “world.”  We don’t necessarily, or maybe can’t know the price of operating in the phenomenal realm in contra-valence to our existential architecture.  But, it’s a good bet mighty suffering will proceed. 

As described above we can see clearly that Plato’s Ideal:  the metaphysical form of Self bestows the phenomenological imperative to act in the physical world in accordance with one’s metaphysical form, lest: pain. 

The first fucking thing you don’t do under these conditions is deny this is who you are, this is how you’re built and thus these are forms incumbent upon you to make manifest down here in the physical realm. 

End of Part 1 of 4. Part 2 will be published presently — panbozz.

[1] They may not have done any of this.  In fact is more likely they did not. 

[2] Ibid

[3] Kant, Immanuel. 2003. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Marcus Weigelt. Penguin Classics. London, England: Penguin Classics.

[4] Chalmers, David (1995). "Facing up to the problem of consciousness". Journal of Consciousness Studies. 

[5] Panbozz (1990). "Cynicism in Light of Kant’s Aesthetics". 

[6] And thus a form

[7] This is per just about anything you’ll see expressed by the giants previously cited:  Kastrup, Schopenhauer, Plato, Jung, et al. 

The effects…well they might not matter. The corporeal effects, anyhow. Let’s face it they’re yucky. Sure they keep a certain class of folk employed and busy with mops and microscopes: the forensic sorts, the cleaner uppers, the exacting story tellers who work their magic abstracting the former folks with their messy biographies, and most likely fucked up relationships with parents, kids and lovers and turn them into pounds and litres: she lost two gallons of blood your honor; his pancreas was pulverized, so, yeah, now they’re dead. Both of them.

No. One doesn’t imagine the quick draws out there even get the opportunity to bask in the afterglow of their rip-roaring work: what with the get-away imperative, and the real goopy grossness of it all.

No, the effect, I think their looking for is more high minded, cleaner: of a greater purpose. Sussing out that greater purpose. Now then, there’s the rub.

The Freudian Wake seduces us into the psychological quagmire of individual motivation. Bad mommy. Head knock. Unemployment run dry. These are sticky. And let’s face it: seductive. We see ourselves, and in this Narcissistic of All Possible Ages: since we love (and hate) ourselves so: we tend to over-linger in atomic (somebody’s) self analysis. But I think this is a mistake.

Moreover, the moral panic, I gotta say, may be misplaced. Are we really getting worse? Hell, Americans have been murdering en masse and sportingly individually since, well since forever. We may be the greatest homicidal organization in history. We’re pretty great at heterocide too — let’s not short the change. As a proportion of our own population, as a proportion of the world population: if you ask me (and this is anecdotal) we’re not killing nearly enough to keep our reputation where it rightly belongs.

In any case, my own predilection is to zoom out at the BIG PICTURE, leaving the lint gazing to over educated. I think, Americans are sneakily, smartly, even wisely simultaneously keeping our razors sharp while broadly dulling any negative reaction to our complimentary raison d'etre: namely fucking shit up and throwing it away.

Like the oeuvre of our recently lost and soon to be missed Mr. Burt Bacharach: its all about the feeling (folks). So lest we get bogged down by the dark side of hastily removing, venting, or misplacing formally sealed up and functioning vital body parts, maybe its time to remind and rejoice that this is who we are. And the selfless, innumerable and well armed out there; picking off one life after another, in our name are doing it to make it easier for us to enjoy the imminent big score hiding out there just over our mutual horizon. And moreover are actuating that best of the American ethos of mindlessly and voraciously breaking shit and the benefit of feeling great about the process. So to all, and especially you, my tender reader, I say thank you sir, may I have another.

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