Order and Chaos Meet In My Mind

Working the night shift, I’ve come to realize, is an escapism for me. When I work the day shift schedule, this places more value and importance upon my personal and social life. I don’t value that part of myself very highly. Working the night shift puts the emphasis on my career and technical skills, which is something that I do value.

I recall that when I began to work the day shift, my desire to concentrate more on my social and personal life increased to the detriment of my career and technical skills. I would stay up later and later in order to fulfill my sense of gratification. My lack of sleep made me a grumpy jerk.

What this means to me is that in spite of my claims to being self-disciplined, I still lack the discipline needed to regulate my personal and professional lives. I fear moving my career to a day shift schedule so I continue to be content with being a night shift worker.

Perhaps that will change someday.

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At some point in your life you will peer up into the sky and see the stars. When you do, it is important to note that you’re looking up into a time machine. Even looking at the reflection of the sun off the rippling water is old, time-wise. In our society of immediate gratification, I think we completely lose sight of this limitation.

We flip a switch and the light turns on, we flip a switch and the light turns off. I can remember a specific moment in my life when I giddily tried to move faster than light. I would stand at the switch by the door, flip it off and run to my bed as fast as I could before the incandescent filament dimmed to darkness. I thought I was the fastest kid in the world. That is, until I tried to race Nannette Grace and she whooped my butt, easily.

Light travels extremely fast. On earth, it would almost appear that light is instantaneous but it is not. Just like it took time for us to pack up the car and leave for a weekend up at the lake, it takes time for light to travel from its source to its destination. A light year is the distance that light travels in one year.

Set an alarm on your smart phone so that it goes off in 8 minutes. I’ll wait… From the time that you set that alarm until the time that it goes off, the light from our sun left our sun and reached the earth. The heat you feel from that yellow ball of fire takes about 8 minutes to reach your face. Hopefully you have some sunscreen and sun glasses.

In the winter, our night sky is graced with the appearance of the, ‘Dog Star’, Sirius. It is the brightest star in the sky, shining bright blue. It is twice the size of our sun and is 8.6 light years away. That means that the photons of light it ejected when I saw it 8 years ago, is just now reaching my eyes. So it goes without saying that the first time I looked at the stars, almost 30 years ago, those stars that were 30 light years away are just now reaching this planet. It’s like the past has come to greet me. Each day that passes in my 39th year of life, the photons from the stars that I saw 30 years ago, as a child, are now bouncing off my retinas.

If we could see the stars on the opposite side of our galaxy, we could say that it has taken the entire span of the existence of modern humans for that light to reach us, which I think is somewhere around 200,000 years. However, the thick cluster of stars and gas that surround the center of our galaxy occludes the stars on the other side, so we can’t see them.

Lastly, I would like to bring up the furthest object visible to the naked eye in our sky. The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest galaxy to our own at 2.5 million light years away. The genus, Homo, was just about to start walking on two feet, ready to split off from the previous stage of evolution of ape-like creatures that are our ancestors.

So here we are in this moment, now understanding that the things we see now aren’t what they were a few seconds ago. The action takes place in the distance but seeing the action takes exactly as long as it takes for the light to reach our eyes. It is not instantaneous. This is just one aspect of our universe that inspires me to learn and then comprehend my place in it.

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Christmas had, at one point in my early stages of life, prior to 13, a mystical and magical effect.  I loved going to bed on Christmas Eve only to wake up to a tree surrounded by presents.  I loved getting together with my grandma and grandpa for a huge family sized dinner with all the aunts and uncles and cousins.  When my parents separated, that magic ended and it ended abruptly.  It didn’t just end abruptly but it became immediately negative.  That’s how I remember it happening.  For 13 years everything was magical, then it all died horribly.  My parents are the cause, especially my mother.

We’re supposed to love our mothers and the part of me that demands that I do, does.  The rest of me has a lot of anger and resentment towards her.

I’ve been irritated with myself lately because when I come home from work and my cat’s food dish is empty, they get all whiny and start meowing at me.  Most of the times I think that’s cute but of late, it’s been irritating.  I start saying things like, ‘fucking pig cats, all you fucking do is eat eat eat…’ and when I say that, I hear my mom saying something like that  as she did to me and my sisters many times.

Christmas was the absolute worst holiday of all the year because my mom felt like she absolutely had to work 3 jobs in order to get us gifts – gifts that I didn’t need or ask for – and then made to feel guilty about it afterwards.  That was my  mom’s tool of choice, guilt.  I have so much fucking guilt inside me that I’m honestly surprised I didn’t blow my head off when I wasn’t smart enough to know better.  Nevertheless, I still feel that self-loathing that my mom programmed into me.  Christmas can suck my cock.  I hate it, it means shit.  It means guilt.  It means listening to your mom cry that she can’t get us all that we want.  It means my mom saying, as she does every fucking year that I can ever fucking remember, “This year isn’t going to be as good a christmas because I just don’t have that much money.”  Every goddam year she would say that, even to this day, I bet MONEY that she’ll say it tomorrow at some point.  The last couple years she has, I’ve jumped on her case about it and told her how much I hated hearing that.

Christmas is supposed to be about getting together with family, eating a good dinner, and enjoying each other’s company.  My mom ruined that for me.

This year, I didn’t go home for the holidays, not thanksgiving, not christmas.  I’m staying down here in Kentucky on my own.  I may get together with some co-workers tomorrow and eat dinner with them.  THAT is what the holidays are about.  I’m done buying people shit for the holidays.  I’m done feeling guilty about it.

Yes, I have a massive amount of anger towards my mother.  My father isn’t exempt from my anger but the feeling that overwhelms the anger I have for my father is disappointment and is another blog entry on its own.

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The following is a dream I had on 12/19/10

I had a skateboard. I loved and was good as skateboarding. I had painted the grip tape of my skateboard with things that had meaning to me but not to anyone else. I was skateboarding in a special area that was designated only for people that lived in the area. In order to skate in this area you had to have a special decal painted on the grip tape of your board. I did not have this special designation (like a license plate) but I lived in this area and so felt that I was allowed to be here. There was a kid, younger than me, dark brown hair, round face, who took it upon himself to question my lack of designation and in terms of emotion, hated that I was there with him (like being a snob). He confronted me, I looked at my board, knowing two things, that yes I lacked the proper designation and that I did belong there regardless. My rebellious personality, gleaming. As the guy continued his tirade at me and his threats became more potent, I lashed out and beat him down so fast that he never knew what hit him. I remember specifically taking every swing with my fist, connecting with his face until I knocked his head back into a wall, knocking him out.

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I wrote this in a Facebook comment on Saturday. I got compliments for it so I thought I would repost it here on the blog.

Let me draw you a picture. See, there’s a bubble, not too big at all, and inside it is the human civilization with all it’s good and bad. From inside of that world, anything that is outside is unknown or irrelevant to those on the inside o…f that bubble. Inside that bubble is religion, it also has no desire to go outside of that bubble as its only relevance is to those inside the bubble. Religion goes out of its way to convince you that there is nothing outside of that bubble and most people listen. Most people don’t care one bit about anything that happens outside that bubble. That small bubble of our human civilization is contained within a larger bubble, one that may not even have any boundary. That larger bubble is where science roams. Some of us, while crammed into this small world of ours with everyone else, elbowing each other for room and shouting to see who’s the loudest, some of us want to know about what is outside of our little bubble. The use of the word, ‘god’ is not sufficient to explain what is outside our tiny world. Some of us let our minds roam to the furthest reaches of our universe and to the end of time. We dig holes, we smash rocks, we burn things, we freeze things, we stare and we measure. Is the universe open, closed, or flat? Is all matter made of strings? What is dark matter? Does the higgs boson really exist? These questions are far more useful than the question of whether there is a god or not. Science can even explain religion and why it exists. It can explain the mind and how it works. It is not interested in emotion, it is only interested in explaining what it is capable of explaining using the knowledge it has. Science doesn’t create fables to explain why the sun rises and sets, instead through observation and measure, and through the sharing of data among others, it explains that the earth spins like a top and revolves around a giant burning, fusing, ball of hydrogen gas. Religion isn’t capable of doing that, doesn’t care about the work involved with seeking out real truth, real answers. Religion forces you to see the world through ‘god-colored’ glasses and convinces you to numb your mind and quell the questions.

Some people get it while some obviously do not.

*steps off the soapbox*

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How does one justify shouting for the rights to own a gun while at the same time shouting for the right to take away the rights of another person in the name of abortion?

I personally believe that all human beings should be allowed, within reason, the ability and equipment needed in order to defend themselves from hostile intruders. The second amendment was indeed put into place to protect the citizens of this country from the eventual tyranny that always evolves from all forms of government. The founding fathers knew this and understood its importance when the second amendment was penned. In the time that this amendment was scribed, there was a real fear of this happening.

234 years later, many people take this for granted because we have evolved a society where we’re safe from the wilderness, and safe from the government since our most useful weapon against tyranny there is the voting booth. However, we have the option to go out and purchase a gun for our own purposes and the government has no say in the matter. This is how it should be. While I don’t own a gun, I love that I have the option to buy one, take it to the range and shoot it any time I want to. I would never want it to change.

The same people that fight so emotionally and so passionately for this option, want to take away a similar option for a person, specifically a woman. I’m talking about the right to have an abortion. Anti-abortion activists are not above murdering people in order to push their belief that abortion is the same as murdering another person. These activists push the straw-man argument that if woman have the right to have abortions, then there will be abortions happening all the time and our society will become one that kills life without thought or compassion. That’s the straw-man that is put out there to convince people that they’re right in what they do. This is wrong. Abortion rights give options to a woman just like all Americans have the option to own a gun.

Just because I can own a gun doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and buy one and if I did buy a gun that doesn’t mean I’m going to kill someone with it. The same goes for abortion rights, just because the option is there doesn’t mean that every woman is going to just go out and have sex just to have an abortion, nor does it mean that all woman are going to choose to have an abortion. They have the option, nobody has the right to force them to do one thing or another. They are sovereign over their body.

So to me, just using gun rights and abortion as an example, there is a serious lack of consistency in, ‘party politics’ The republicans push for the rights of gun owners but want to steal the rights away from a woman to have an abortion. There is no consistency in that ideology. That’s what turns me off about republicans and the tea party v2 movement.

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“This is not what the founding fathers had in mind.” says every idiot that is bitching about the HCR bill that just passed.

Such a statement screams of their ignorance of several concepts. First is the concept of what the founding fathers had intended and the other is what the HCR bill means. By the time I am done explaining here, there should not be a question about why the HCR bill is exactly what the founding fathers intended.

First I present to you the essay that was the catalyst for the revolution. In spite of all the speeches and other essays written by the many enlightened politicians in the years surrounding the founding of this country only one of them was able to provide an essay that would spark the citizens to rebel. Many of you may remember, Common Sense by Thomas Paine but I suspect that most of you have completely forgotten its contents and its meaning.

Here I will provide you with a link to the full document and I sincerely urge you to read at least the first 10 paragraphs or so as it is the basis of my argument here. I will, however, provide you with his conclusion for those too lazy to read that dazzling document.

Conclusion:
“Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, ’tis right.”

Several times during this essay Paine illustrates why government is a bad thing but at the same time the right thing.

For decades we have allowed the insurance industry to operate within the guides of ‘moral virtue’ but it is not capable of doing so, like society. So it has become necessary to assemble guidelines for this industry to follow in order that it may not only do what it was meant to do but do so unprejudiced and without greed as a factor guiding its hand.

If you sincerely don’t believe that the insurance industry has blood on its hands then just stop reading now because you’re way too deluded to even comprehend the rest.

Those that spout about ‘government control’ so quickly have forgotten why it is necessary. Without this control we’d still be living in a segregated, Jim Crow society. We’d be far more morally corrupted than we are today. You people acting like children are just mad because you’re favorite toy was just taken away from you because you bashed your little brother in the head with it too many times.

Freedom is a wonderful thing but when it is not tempered with responsibility, accountability and other consequences then it is purely chaos and not serving any good whatsoever. That is what the insurance industry was in regards to its own customers, lawless chaos able to get away with murdering its own customers without consequence. It cannot do that anymore and I am relieved.

It is unfortunate that it had to come down to a heavy hand but that’s the way it has to be. To think that the government seeks to control your life because of this is unfounded paranoid stupidity.

Here are 10 things that are changing immediately due to the HCR bill (link to data):

1. No excluding children based on a pre-existing condition
2. All Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition are now insured — by a stopgap high-risk pool
3. No dropping people from coverage when they get sick
4. Seniors now have a higher limit on prescription coverage by Medicare
5. Small businesses get tax credits to purchase coverage
6. Plans can no longer have a lifetime limit or a “restrictive” annual limit
7. All plans must cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26
8. All new plans must cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing
9. An easier appeals process for rejected claims is now in the works
10. Insurers have to publish their overhead costs and will have to pay premium rebates if costs are too high

That the conservatives have made this into a two-sided issue is proof enough to me that not a single one of them has an ounce of good-will within themselves. This isn’t a traditional two-sided issue, it is a matter of what is right verses what is very wrong. It’s a matter of life verses murder. There is only one side to be on and to think from. The only argument should have been how to achieve the results but that isn’t what happened within our government. There was only the fight against anything that a progressive may come up with, no matter what it was. We hear the screams now from even the moderate conservatives that they intend to reject all ideas from the progressive side. THAT is childish and immoral.

I don’t for a second believe that the government is trying to take over my life and control it. I don’t wake up in the morning with big brother standing at the side of my bed making sure I operate my life the way I’m supposed to. I don’t have cameras watching my every move or a satellite monitoring my every location. I have freedom. I have the right to own a gun and that right cannot be infringed upon. Woman have the right to have an abortion if they see fit to do so and you and I have no say in the matter (pro-life is absolutely not a conservative view at all), I have the right to say what I wish with the idea that there may be consequences for it but consequences that I am prepared to accept.

You cannot look at the list above, comprehend the items in that list, and then reject them while at the same time call yourself a compassionate and loving human being. You delude yourself.

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Public Education is under attack and it doesn’t make any sense that it should be.

The religions of this country have the complete freedom to form their own educational system. Many schools are private and offer this option to many around the nation. So it baffles my mind that the religious zealots have infiltrated the public education foundation and are trying to steer this wholly secular department of our wholly secular government to become a religious one.

These people are the first ones to tell you that if you don’t like it then go elsewhere. Well what the fuck? You’ve not left the public with any other option because you’ve poisoned the only one that was available. Instead, why don’t THEY go somewhere else, like any of the thousands of religious schools in this country. Leave the American public alone.

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In order to properly disseminate an objective opinion about any topic, one must sever themselves from all preconceived notions they may have about the topic.

That statement above is dedicated to my friend at work, Rick.  When I first met him and managed to sit down and talk to him, it came out that I was an atheist.  His response, to this day, amuses me, “Well, I’ve never met anyone like you.  We’ll work on it and get you back on the right path.”  My first response was laughter, followed by something like, “Yeah right, not gonna happen.”

So since that time, Rick and I have talked about all manner of topics only barely glancing upon religion a couple times but not really addressing it head-on.  That changed this last week.

As I’ve slowly begun to extend myself in friendship to some of my co-workers, it has come to a serious head that I really am surrounded by quite a few very deeply religious people.  What I have learned, and should have expected, was their complete ignorance of what atheism is.  I pity these people because they really have, despite what they say, lived inside a very small box and only been allowed to see just a single small aspect of life.  For some people, that’s the only thing they’ll ever see and they’ll never know anything else, and while the number of those people is overwhelming, I accept that there’s nothing I can do about it, just like I can do nothing about death-rates due to cancer, heart-disease, starvation, war, etc.  I just can’t let myself get pulled down emotionally with that much pity.  Instead, I’ll focus on the people that are starting to peek outside of their box.

In my conversations with Rick, we’ve both sat at his laptop reading scripture, he throws out his understanding, I throw out mine.  I’ve been relentless in my attacks of both old and new testament writings to the point where we both know there is nothing more to say about it.  My last conversation with Rick about this topic was based on yet another complete misconception.  He said, “When you see it in that light, Jim, life is meaningless.  You have to just ask, ‘why even live.’”  To which I spoke most clearly, “No Rick, that is completely wrong.  There is absolutely nothing more important than living, nothing.  It is the most important thing we, as living human beings, have.”  He hasn’t spoken to me at all about the topic since then.  We’ve talked, just not about that.

So back to my first statement about faulty presuppositions, I provided a couple of examples in these previous sentences, now I want to conclude with one more.

Andy and I had a brief ‘sharing of opinions’ over an article I posted a week or so ago and his own example exemplifies what I’m talking about here.  He used the history of the Civil War and how in the south it’s taught as northern aggression and in the north it’s taught as states rights and slave ownership.  While both aspects are true, it’s not the whole story and for a northern-man and a southern-man to understand the truth, they have to forget about what they were taught and relearn it from the different perspective.  That’s when the true beauty of the human mind’s ability to puzzle together knowledge into reality comes to light.  It takes discipline to do, something that many of the talking heads on the news have absolutely no clue about.

What I’m talking about here is something that all journalists USED to know but they’ve managed to forget about such a troublesome concept such as fact-checking and being objective.  I’ll pick on Beck, O’Reilly, and Hannity just because they’re some of the well known and worse at it.

I’ve also encountered recently, people who want to argue against a particular aspect of a topic but have absolutely no knowledge of what they’re arguing against.  They don’t do anyone, especially themselves, any favors and instead make themselves look completely foolish.  I don’t want people to look foolish or act ignorantly.  It’s one of the  things that I really want to see changed in this world.

So I’ll end this topic here with the caveat that I am not any better but what I will defend myself with is that I at least try to learn and see things objectively.  Too many people do not.

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