^H

Up way too late getting through most of a TV season’s episodes with my wife last night.

It was a nice Saturday, certainly. It’s taken until July, but this is feeling like a “normal” weekend, at least.

Another day of somewhat relaxation, then four days of work. I’m just going to take all day Friday in an attempt to actually take some vacation this pay period. I’ve nearly worked all of the extra hours I’d need to make up for last Friday.

I still need to figure out how to take nearly two more weeks before the end of the year. Pffffft.

Maybe I can spend a few days trying to write. I’m trying to deal with this right now.

What you want to do is present the author’s arguments in the strongest way possible, then refute each of those strengthened arguments one-by-one.

That said, picking through my fuzzy memories, when I was a kid, the employees at this place weren’t making careers out of low-end food service. I can remember one of my high school substitute teachers, the one who looked like Ned Flanders. He delivered pizzas to supplement his paltry substitute teacher’s pay.

No, that’s not a career. It’s not supposed to be.

On to the prompt before I step over to get coffee…

Do you think it is important to read the classics? 

With my horrible eyesight, reading is very difficult.

Aside, if you wanted proof of it….

That’s the scans of one of my optic nerves. The old scan from last year is on top, and the newer one is on the bottom. The big divot in the images on the right are MS lesions. The messages travel up the outsides of the nerves, and if the insulation surrounding is damaged, the signals fall out. Yes, my wires are frayed.

So most of my information again is aural. Reading a paper book is nearly impossible at this point. I have enough trouble reading a sign on the wall.

I did read many things when I was younger, healthy, and the things contained in those things still do influence my thinking. Some of the podcasts I consume make references that I have only the vaguest familiarity with.

I’ve been working through the Bible In A Year podcast, but I’m not able to actually do the associated reading. I was going to say that I feel bad about not being able to do the reading, but that’s not entirely accurate. I do what I can, and reading isn’t part of that right now.

The audiobooks are a different kind of problem. I was kind of enjoying the rainforest-owned service, but I was running out of hours in the day. I cancelled it when I was really getting them out of my life after what they did to some pages hosted with them.

And I’m getting sidetracked with the particulars.

First up on my actual reading list, however, is The Anarchist Handbook.

And there I go again, getting sidetracked. Classics

The two authors at the top of my list right now: Thomas Aquinas, and Niccolo Machiavelli. The idea of going to Hillsdale in DC has come to mind more than once.

Time to stop for the morning.

The abrupt departure last night was a combination of both exhaustion, and perhaps a bit too much alcohol.

But what I was getting to is that I do, generally agree with the oft-told sentiment:

“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.” — Anne Frank

What happened to Anne Frank was due to a few sick, sick people using the power of the state to inflict their evil on others.

Politicians are people, and generally good at heart. Stop using the thugs to accomplish things.

As I was thinking about this sort of thing this morning, I was trying to reduce everything down to a B-tree.

Whatever that was is finished; we’re done.

Now on to the analysis.

[Did it || did it not] accomplish what I wanted

If yes, repeat it. If no, don’t do it again.

With that, though, I’m thinking about all of the things people have done with the government to fight COVID-19.

Do an After-Action Review on everything that’s been done. What were your measurable targets? Did it accomplish what you thought it would?

But, for politicians, there’s very little of this sort of review. Ever. Just keep perpetuating the perfect thing you assembled. Whether or not it accomplished what you wanted it it is ultimately unimportant; you will obey.

No. No I won’t.

We’re finished. Do the analysis, move on to the next thing.

I’m very much at the we’re finished point with just about every law and regulation.

The whistle has blown. The play is over. Huddle up, and wait for the next play to come in from the sideline.

On to what I had lined up for today….

Have you ever had a strong belief completely disproven by facts and evidence? 

This kind of plays into what I’ve been slogging through in the past couple of days.

Maybe it’s appropriate that I’m listening to this in the background.

The Germans ruthlessly attached a civilian passenger ship which led us to join the Allies in the first World War.

Please pay no attention to those ammunition rounds sitting on the floor of the Atlantic. Please pay no attention to this warning.

It would be a hell of a lot easier to never look at things again, and adjust your conclusions.

Do you think you can ever trust a politician’s word? 

At the risk of being labelled terminally-whitepilled, I don’t think most politicians are deliberately lying.

At the same time, I really don’t think that most politicians, or people who preach government force as a solution to problems, really consider the underlying basis of their thoughts.

You do something because it’s just, you know, the way that things are done.

You want people to stop doing something? Great. I don’t think that it’s a good idea to do that thing, either.

So you’re okay with men with guns locking people in cages for doing something you don’t like? How about breaking into residences in the middle of the night?

Oh. Um. That’s how we’ve always done that.

Here’s an idea — don’t hurt people, and don’t take their stuff.

And I’m having trouble concentrating on this, unfortunately, so I’m stopping.

I’d planned to start writing this the other day, and I forgot. It’s evidence, maybe, that my therapy is working. I have OCD, and the writing streaks might be an example of a compulsion. I’m supposed to avoid them. Oh well.

Writing makes me focus my thoughts. Nice segue into the topic for today —

What’s your take on religion? 

For a long time, from about age sixteen, until my mid-twenties, I considered myself a pretty committed atheist. Note that I said atheist, not agnostic. Even before I recommitted to theism, I was hostile towards the idea basic ideas underlying fundamental agnostic thought. (Yes, they’re fundamentalists….)

You’ll never have enough evidence to know; it’s impossible to know.

Okay, that’s fine.

But, you, as an individual, can make a decision based on the evidence you have. I can’t ever know whether gravity is an absolute certainty, either.

But I have enough evidence to wholeheartedly support the theory.

When it comes to God, the afterlife, etc., there might not be enough evidence for you to make a pronouncement.

You do have enough evidence to make a judgment on just about anything; Han shot first. You are allowed to change your mind when you get new evidence.

I actually got into a conversation the other day after listening to an interview with Bryan “Hotep Jesus” Sharpe. He’s written a book about the origins of some of the American wars.

There’s things I thought about the First World War that have really been shaken over the past few years.

The Triple Alliance’s story about what happened seems to be, well, less than true.

I had the same feeling as things were coming out about the Covington Catholic kids while I was at Shmoocon. Okay, so the kid is in a MAGA hat, and he’s smirking as this guy is beating a drum next to his face.

Twitter, CNN, etc., are saying that the kid had a punch-able face, and that these affluenza kids were harassing a brave native American veteran. Reason did a good job covering all of this. But if you stopped taking in new evidence about it after hearing your chosen outlet’s initial reporting, you’d never know.

If you took in information from multiple sources, you might get the wrong story.

Chuck Todd would say that it’s dangerous.

There are people close to me who refuse to investigate further.

To me, however, very little is permanently-settled

TRUST THE SCIENCE!

You know, the sort of science that said that COVID came from the thing in the wet market that Randy Marsh nailed, right?

One of the other things that Bryan is hitting on is the idea of self-perfection.

I get it, but it makes me doubly-jealous. First, there’s lots of things I think I’d like to do that my body just won’t cooperate with. Second, my will power is weak more often than I’d like.

Following a religion’s self-control teachings, however, is something that does help with the self-perfection.

You learn a lot about being a responsible adult from participating in something that taxes you both mentally and physically.

For some, that’s religion. For others, it’s serious sports training. For others, still, it’s things like joining the military. Whatever. You structure your thinking towards a certain cause, and it helps you.

Some people like this guy have embraced things like Orthodox Christianity. But, really, does it matter what it is? There’s a basic human need to do that sort of thing, whether it’s one of the Abrahamic religions, one of the Eastern religions, Scientology, whatever. I’m pretty well convinced that this is something that humans need.

That doesn’t fit well with either Atheism. It also doesn’t really fit in with Evangelical Agnosticism.

If you ever wish for something you’re, in a way, participating in some sort of mystical experience. Ever hold your breath watching the completion of a competition?

How does that ever affect anything?

So why do you do it?