“If you’re over 50 and you wake up in the morning with no aches or pains, that’s how you know your dead.” — Old joke

“If I woke up and didn’t have angst one morning, I wouldn’t recognize myself.” — I said that.

“You can be in my dream, if I can be in yours.” — a patient and shrink, both dreaming they’re the only person left alive after WW III, in Bob Dylan’s 115th dream.

Rutchik Rides Again

Added brief intro — Our brain is not a hard drive  on section on sanity.

[Note] This is the first time I’ve used the blog to post thoughts. An experiment.

We are at an odd point in history where knowledge from the past is actively being forgotten. I find this when I think of author’s I’ve read that many intelligent people have never heard of, but whose ideas are unique, not incorporated into our normal day-to-day thinking.

Erich Fromm for one. I asked college students to read his books but they couldn’t. They didn’t. It wasn’t like they read a little and couldn’t continue. They got nowhere at all.

Karl Marx is another. Seeing Jerry Levy do Marx in Soho I see that he is a man on a mission and that there is nothing like him in the world. Perhaps there is, but I truly can’t imagine that there could be yet another person walking the planet who so embodies Karl Marx. My closet of an office at Marlboro College was next to his and I always had to check myself before I called him “Karl,” when I said hello to him in the afternoon.

Last of a dying breed, we are, though I’m sure the next couple generations have just as much spunk in them. But they have a different flavor and something very different is going on. The Occupy concept is still very much alive even though it as a tactic, per se, seems to have been counteracted by greater force. Anything to do with correlations of forces is scary shit. But Arab Spring was both essentially Occupy taken a step further: to the point of inciting open fear in those who held power, fear strong enough to let loose of their power and run for the hills.

This has always been the power struggle in demonstrations: there may be a point where ordinary controls fail. But we know, or should know, our own limitations and we must know that there are those who would rather murder than give up power.

We have forgotten or are trying to forget the 1960’s. We do not want to conceive of a post-nuclear war world — something that felt close then, but remains just as close if not closer today. Who can blame us for this piece of repression? But there are other things we learned that we have forgotten. Like seeing “making it,” nearly however defined, as irrelevant. That’s just one thing. There a lot of things a lot of people figured out that shouldn’t be forgotten.

Does every generation think this? Does every generation have to figure it all out for themselves all over again? Apparently. As a kid, I used to sneer at geezers who thought they knew better than their young’uns. Guess the joke’s on me.

We’re a strange race, we homo sapiens.    We always think we know more than our ancestors.  Perhaps we do.  But we sure do leave a lot of good ideas along the wayside .

A little thought on “zen” added today…

I’m adding some recent stuff today:
The student’s performance is not the teacher’s “work”

After the Tropic Storm devastated the village I live in (specifically South Newfane, but calling ourselves a “village” is a bit of a stretch.  The small area of three villages — South Newfane, Williamsville, and Brookside — were really clobbered by the storm.  The rivers filled to overflowing to the point that trickling brooks became roaring torrents with tens to hundreds of full-grown pines, firs, spruces, and maples came roaring down them.  One house was washed from one side of the road to the other, completely destroying it.  In another place, not only the house but the land under it was taken by the river, leaving nothing but rocks and sand.  A man two houses downriver from me lost a couple acres of wooded land as the river veered right where it used to go straight.  Two bridges were completely destroyed and a third had one end six feet lower than it was before the floods.

Other towns got hit even worse, I’m told.  Some towns were underwater and others were completely isolated from the rest of the world as the only access roads and bridges were destroyed.

The process of responding to all this was an intense community effort.  I’ve just added the online version of the an article I wrote  for the Commons, a weekly free newspaper published in Brattleboro. You’ll find it under the title “A Vermont community struggles to recover from Tropical Storm Irene” in the Community section of the blook.

Today’s the day – I’ve added my essays on the cult/community (Dreaming of Community), God or Not (Stuck in Reverse), on being lost (Lost in Orleans), and, more importantly, sent emails to my friends telling that the site exists and where to find it.

(If you’re new to my site, this blog is currently solely for where I post info on additions and updates, rather than an ongoing gutter of consciousness.)

Added essay that focuses on the importance of conscious experience and personal choice in determining who we are psychologically.

Added article on the uselessness of most feelings of guilt.

Added article that goes more deeply into why “medication” for psychological problems is not a “solution.”

Two articles added today. To some extent, they might seem contradictory in that one says there’s “No reason to be afraid” and the other (“Razor’s Edge”) says that fear is, to some extent, inevitable. Also added short article on hope and despair.