Tell me why.
By Friday and Saturday, my computer/net usually slows down, sometimes intolerably. There are at least two reasons for this: 1 - The internet slows down because of the weekends. 2 - My PHONE company slows down my dial-up connection, because more people are using their phones, because of the weekend. So, I guess this is why I basically cannot use my computer at the moment: It is a holidady weekend - the worst. (Add to this my 2-RAM computer is forever hitting memory bottlenecks). So, this is why. Then I have my own dysfunction: CFS. I really should be banned by the internet. Or else put in charge.
I cancelled yesterday's long trek. I called and made a F&F order, which partly compensated. Another phone-call love affair. Now, I will sit back and decide when to mow, as I feel up to it. Today, cool temps. But, always good to wait until rain is coming. Tomorrow, the fates be willing, I may go to the library to make a Chewy order and a supplements order, etc. I may continue, after that, along the tracks to Walgreens, which might also compensate a little for my cancelled long trek. I'm sorry I have nothing really spectacular to say.
I did pull up some wiki pages, etc., on CFS, and might do another serious post on the subject.
PS - I stepped out for an urgent evacuation. Upon quick completion, I exclaimed, "Woe, man!"
This reminded me of grade school. I spent 7 years in a poor Catholic elementary school, which declined in sustenance year by year. Gradually, the student population was mainly black, with a few other minorities sprinkled in, including me, (not even realising that a girl I liked hated me because I was white). Soon, the school was taken over by shipped-in missionary nuns, who spoke like fat rubber bands. All female.
But, one year, they brought in the head priest of the associated Church, to teach our 7th-or-so grade class Religion for Big Kids - thinks like inexplicable and improbable fairy tales from the Bible. This was an older priest who's hay day was when he oversaw an all-boy's school. But the Diocese was in decline, even before the whole pedophile pandemic. Here he was, sticking out like a sore thumb, pronouncing his lofty nonsense and making jokes to a sad little class of alienated mere-cats. I think the only thing I learnt over those 7 years was Tolerance. And boredom.
"And after God created Man, he took a rib from Adam and created Woman. And do you know why she was called 'woman'? Because Adam took a look, and said, "Woe, man!"
Even before he finished shouting the punch line, the small frisky black girl launched into a laughing/giggling fit. I don't know if she thought this white guy was being really ridiculous, or because she totally connected to him and knew the joke to be clearly hysterical. Or maybe she was just a little hysterical - nervous because of the priest who seemed on the brink of hysteria. Religious men do that: They SHOUT for effect, and even punctuation. It's like, let the listener sink back into wondering what the heck she believes and then SHOUT, so you pretty much make up her mind, whether she likes it or not.
OK, whatever. Now, we move on to Noah, or something. And, what was it? A week later? Two weeks? The exact same thing happened. The priest yells out his stupid joke, and the little black girl does the exact same laugh. And, I think that's the first time I ever understood the meaning of surrealism. If I had the knack I had later in life, I would have blurted out, "Are we in a loop?!"
In fact, we were always in a loop. This was just one obvious example of it. Something, maybe a bit too much, that we shouldn't have seen - or I shouldn't have seen, because, apparently, the rest of the class was oblivious to being pulled, by the ear, around in circles. And, oh, those wicked nuns with their fingernails deep into our earlobes, dragging us into the closet for punishment of some ill-defined crime. In a loop. The art of paradoxical teaching: Put the answer before the question. The punishment before the crime. With the kids in a constant state of mystification.
My remembrance was of hours and days and years of endless pointless boredom. I was too smart, the class was too handicapped, the teachers were too dogmatic. Just staring at them writing out stupid things on the blackboards I already knew. And think of how much more I could have known if I had gone to some better school. There was one time when the said I was too smart, and so maybe they should move me up a year, to the Fourth Grade - or maybe it was 5th, idk. But that was a whole other part of the school. And I was so nice, I didn't want to leave my friends. So, I had my own sort of stupidity.
Anyway, I quickly recalled all those years of boredom, and being yoked to it by childish fear, and it led me to this hypothesis:
For a society to be moral, must it first be boring? Because these religionists where demanding that I be bored - and that we be bored - in order that we should shut up and learn how to be good. All the good things. Like building arcs, or talking to angels. But, you know, the golden rule, and forgiveness, and not swearing, and all the good stuff. Because, if we were all thrown on an island devoid of priests and nuns, well, then, it would be Lord Of The Flies in two shakes of a lamb's chop.
To be good, we must first be screwed into our seats, in a loop, day after day, to no clear prurient end until, we see a flash of enlightenment, and learn to LOVE complete abstractions, which were formerly white lines of chalk. The Lord is My Shepherd. I shall not want. Completely insulated from reality, here in this moral incubator, how cannot I want to chase meanings of boring stories about not killing your brother? About fish, wine and bread all multiplying to feed thousands of people? About hanging out with prostitutes and gay people - wut - woops not that one... After all, kids love stories.
Seriously, we cannot achieve higher civilisation until we are safe and fed and fairly free, which requires a lot of boring work to achieve, and which insulates us from reality, so we can plant our kids in schools where they are forced to obsess about mythology all day. Who has ability or time or patience to consider moral questions, when one has to fight off wolves for carrion, or whatever? And what kids will learn who have the right to run around and punch each other, and shoot squirrels, and experiment with sex, and so on? No! They must be settled down! And not only this, they must be settled down for 8 - 9 - 15 - maybe 30 years. And this is how we cherish out children, by boring into them what to think, how to behave.
Unless, you believe people are inherently good. Which, that's not the Catholic idea. The Catholic idea is that we are inherently very bad, until the likes of god are kicked into us. What did I say about paradoxical teaching? The problem with me was I was a good person. And, if God was good, and everywhere, I figured I could find God in other people, in trees and plants, even in myself. I think I have pretty much proved this, (at least to myself), by now, against the great and constant winds of control, hate and denial from society. As we know it. Any, boredom may be a useful thing to some degree. But too much, for the kids that don't need it? That's how you germinate heretics. Critics. Innovators. Leaders. And, also, a very lot of criminals.
You know those Pink Floyd albums, where there's some Scottish man yelling at the kids? This motif is found in several of their albums. In one, the kids shout back, "We don't need no education!" Well, not only was I living that in Catholic grade school - and somewhat in Catholic high school - I had parents with Scottish morals and accents, lording over me and my siblings as well - along with a bastard older brother.
So, I've been there. And, the paradoxical thing, is that this upbringing has helped me learn many of my current morals, be they opposite or accordant to the ones meant to take hold. I had different definitions of what were weeds and what were crops. What were seed and what were stone. But, now, today, I have a very high tolerance for boredom and, if it weren't for CFS, would be cranking out novels by now. On the other hand, I have been a dabbler in decadence. All one big experiment, it has been.
The flowering of American, Western, culture and values has greatly depended on the development of the time-span we call childhood. It can last two decades, or more, or less. The belief in Santa Clause, (a lie); in toys; in play; in free and seemingly eternal time; in curiosity and creativity; in safety and trust - these did not come easy to mankind, over millions of years. Only lately can we afford them, and afford to value them. But, learning to trust other people, and to cooperate with them, has been indispensable to our civilisation. How to create - invent - build - explore - see alternatives? These capacities grew from childhood. Leaving children alone to be children - protecting their innocence - and teaching them how to protect their innocence: this is one of the greatest achievements of humanity.
In prehistoric times, children worked, and hunted, had sex, and fought, not as children, but as little adults. And, because of this, we remained prehistoric for millions of years. The same is true for feudal times, in Europe, or Afghanistan, or elsewhere: As soon as children could work, they worked. Their only education was towards this end. Religion may have been taught to have them accept this lot, since it was the only lot available. And, in some ways, because they were never free as children, their minds were imprisoned as juvenile, in some sense - like believing myths, and never reaching independence as free-weillnig individuals. Grown ups.
There is a sad stupidity that lingers in people who have been deprived of the safety and happiness of childhood. In our society, we have elevated childhood to a transcendent value. And that is not to say that Western childhood is an unnatural thing. In as much as our ability to make cars and buildings is unnatural. Rather, it is to say that transcendence is the objective of our species. Not meaning striving towards heaven - although such imagery may act as a guide of sorts - but in seeing beyond constraints. Overcoming obstacles. And working for, maybe, not only more humanity in children - but in neighbours, foreigners, animals and plants. To build childhood is to build compassion, and to build progress.
So, Wisdom is the retention of innocence through adversity.
It's not just cultural, though. It is a strong inclination which we have evolved. Children who have been abused for years still have the capacity to grow into healthy, dynamic, loving human beings. It is both nature and nurture. And, I will say, there is a little of this inclination in all of nature, just waiting to be seen. That's why we do have the responsibility of being stewards. (How one defines stewardship is another topic).
I remember, back to school days, probably back to that same class... A nun was teaching. And one of the girls said something unacceptable, or whatever. The nun reprimanded her. And then that same small black girl blurted out, laughing, "She got an egg between her legs!"
Gotta love that girl for her friskiness. But, the nun blew up in sudden rage, shouting at her. After all, there were good little boys in the audience. I mean, you have no idea was an aberration - what a sin - this little incident was. Crazy. But, the thing is, the nun was just trying to keep that illusion of perpetual childhood alive, I suppose, protecting the innocents. And I suppose that was one of the morals they were hoping to teach. Maybe it rubbed off on me a little.
But I don't think so. I found my innocence by escape this prison. Maybe they thought they had to force some kids into obedience and boredom, just to settle them down enough so they would hear what they were being taught - in the same way that I have to settle my Akita down so he could recognise my commands. But I honestly didn't need that. And I didn't need it from my parents, either. But hard people come from broken times. My parents were a mix of conflicting ideologies. Those nuns were a product of messed up social dynamics. And broken people are hard to teach.
But not me.
Still unbroken and still learning.
Most of my past was a big mistake.
Anyway. There are problems with the idea of protecting and instilling a long childhood. One is that boredom and force may be used, in the process, and this can have damaging and contradictive effects. Another is that extending childhood can encourage fantastic or magical thinking, narcissism and lies. The latter is a real, big problem, and not one I have the steam to discuss at the moment. Gotta rest now. Computer/net still impossible, but it's still possible for me to make a post. Pages won't load.
Well, I have to say, later, that the more civilised we get, the more we invest ourselves in lies. Maybe good, maybe bad. Ta ta.