Human beings are given protection under the Constitution because we are weak, and the State is strong. If freedom is the heart, balance of powers is the bone of our Constitution. We cannot, as individuals, simultaneously attend a board meeting in Ireland, run a dragline in Ontario, build a pipeline in Alaska, run a string of animal testing labs and appear before a Congressional committee to explain our actions. Corporations can do all these things, and more, simultaneously. They control individuals by the thousands and exert powerful influence on the State. Corporations do not need, and should not have, Constitutional protection designed to redress the balance of powers. Period.

The Second Amendment is also an instance of the balance of powers principle. It was meant to give people the power to confront an armed, tyrannical State and overthrow it, as the Founding Fathers themselves did. The argument is made by some that the right to bear “arms”  really means “armament equal in firepower to that possessed by the State” – balance of powers. I agree with this view. Since felons are not allowed to own guns, I believe parity of powers would best be achieved by the total disarmament of any government that has ever committed felonious acts, such as causing harm or wrongful death of its citizens.

In other news, Warren Buffet, my candidate for Sanest Man in The World, has called out the dishonesty of the right-wing business block by stating the obvious, “Risk and uncertainty have always been with us.” So quit whining and sniveling, Chamber of Commerce! If you can’t stand the heat, that is, come up with a solid enough business plan to withstand a 2% change in headwind, get the hell out of the kitchen and let some Americans show you how things are done! Our farmers and manufacturers have weathered 30% changes through American history while building a strong nation, shame on you.

Finally, or should I say, “At Last!”, “Pessimists Live Longer, Study Shows.” Take that, Pollyannas! Hey, I heard it on NPR.

“Schadenfreudian Slip” – Inadvertent irony entering into statements of condolence or sympathy meant to be sincere, but corrupted by an unconscious wish to see another come to harm, and the pleasure occasioned thereby.

An imperfect, but famous example of this occurred during the battle for the nomination to the candidacy for the presidency between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Ms. Clinton, under pressure to withdraw from the race she seemed clearly to be losing, said, “Robert Kennedy didn’t get assassinated until June,” clearly implying an unconscious wish for some harm to befall Mr. Obama. The example is imperfect because her pleasure is anticipatory, rather than after the fact, as would be the case in a classic Schadenfreudian Slip.

Enjoy your godlessness! Practice new-found freedoms, find out for yourself just how meaningless life really is, learn to love the absence of obligation to think deep thoughts, not that you ever did, though adding God to the stew did seem to add some dimension, some heft to the flat, banal, daily grind… it didn’t of course, but it felt like it, because we believed  it. Now that belief is gone, enjoy the almost unbearable freedom of being without strings, without meaning, without illusions! It is the mind’s appetite for meaning, after all, that makes us such suckers for illusion. And if you just sit and savor the emptiness, the absence of meaning for a while, you may find it intensely meaningful. Yup, we’re living in a parabox. And I am really starting to like it. I for one enjoy tripping through my days, disappointments, annoyances, chores, flights of fancy, total immersion, sudden epiphany, quiet mindfulness – what was I thinking? NO IDEA. none. Life is just packed with sensation, every throbbing moment.

I think Buddhists get too hung up on impermanence. Nothing’s real, they say, if it isn’t eternal. Tough crowd! That’s their standard?  Permanence? That roller coaster ride may not last forever, thank God! (it’s English, I’m gonna use it), but when you’re cleaning the puke out of your ears (don’t ask), you may be hard to persuade that it wasn’t real. And sometimes, impermanence can be a comfort. “This, too, shall pass” is an acknowledgement of how real your pain is, not how nonexistent. Nobody exclaims, “This can’t be happening!” unless it very much is, happening. So, nothing’s real, but as long as it’s happening, it doesn’t matter. With deep shit like that, who needs God?

There are of course pragmatic aspects to reality, like linguistics, if you put the “is” back in there. Language is us, it’s the default mapping app of our operating system. Bake a cake, build a house, we can verbally map it so virtually anyone else can go there. But the map has to match the territory, and unfortunately, the brain does not distinguish between ideas and objects, that’s what banana peels are for, or as Lord Buckley used to say, “who do you think was driving while you were away?” Too obscure? Language is dangerous – it gives delusions wings, and an afterburner. For example, “Dave will never be happy with Ginger, he’s Gemini, she’s Libra” is a map without a territory. Take “I made a resolution to lose weight.” Weight relates to territory, but what is a resolution? God only knows, but she’s not talking until after we die? Send me flowers while I’m livin’ is my attitude. Seriously, the territory we need to map is the body/mind operating system, and it’s rapidly becoming “terra cognita” thanks to neurology and related disciplines. Where was I? Oh, yeah, resolution; so, where are the levers to this system? Weight is not a lever, it’s a consequence of uncontrolled impulses. We know almost nothing about impulse control, “lever”, “impulse”, “control”, “resolution” are metaphors that have meaning to us, but the mind is smarter than we in some ways; it seems to “know” that “meaning” is just another label for “illusion”. To simply “resolve” something is not enough; in order to be successful, resolutions must be deconstructed into commands the operating system can recognize, smells, touch, hunger and habit. That’s where we need to put the “is” – where it presently isn’t. We need a stack of new metaphors on which to build roads into the undiscovered country of our true selves. Godless and free of illusion (I know, I know!!! reality is a fluid construct, neither wave nor particle, work with me willya?), we can map out a territory of evolutionary truth and neurologic fact, tempered with the humility of inadequacy and the empathy and love of a fundamental humanism that is the best working response to the yawning chasm that opens beneath us whenever awareness floods in to fill the void we call sleep, the constant companion of consciousness, nameless terror. Nothingness, the Old Same Place, I read somewhere. My hope is that we can manage ourselves, minister to ourselves better, starting today. The best thing LRH (L. Ron Hubbard) ever said was, “If it’s not true for you, it’s not true.” Consider this hypothetical exchange,

“Hey, Frank, what’s been goin’ on?”                                                                                                             “You mean, other than the usual crap?”                                                                                                         “Yeah, sure, skip the preamble.”                                                                                                                     “Well, I think I may have succeeded in leaving a marker on the parasympathetic side of my appetite loop.”                                                                                                                                                       “No way! That could be the answer to your weight problem, right? How did you access that? Meditation?”                                                                                                                                                         “No, and mind you, this is all highly tenuous and metaphoric, but there’s been a real change. What I did was, I left a posthypnotic suggestion to go into a lucid state when dreaming about food, and I saw – no, I felt – my appetite and put like a tab on it so it would snag my attention and give me a chance to make a decision rather than just reacting. Ever since I did that, whenever I think of having a snack, I imagine the thing, like a donut or whatever, but now the satisfaction comes from making a decision about it, not from indulging the impulse. Does that make sense?”                                                                                                                                                  ”Sure as shit does! I’ll try that pathway and see if I can get it to work for me.”

And that, friends, is Tactical Linguistics. Baby steps, but perseverance furthers, as the I Ching advises us ad nauseam. So far, my successes have been largely accidental, but significant. I no longer suffer from sleep apnea, simply because I posed the question, “If I can lie in bed and breathe normally, why do I choke when I sleep?” Then, in lucid dreams, I would say to myself, “Hey dumbass, you’re not gargling here, so open up your throat and breathe right!” And after a few times, it took! And if I can do it…..

Parabox, n: a container lacking an interior.* to put things into it is to miss it entirely. In other words, if you’re in a parabox, try as you might, you can’t get in.

*if we accept “container” metaphorically, the mind.

There’s no Mystery today.

Go, hang out the sign,

Won’t You?

Relief for New Jersey’s storm victims has been slow in coming. Why? Republicans are just dying  to spend on giveaways for the rich, and of course on defense. What do they have against poor Governor Christie? I put my ear to the ground and the dog whistles say, “Paaaaay-baaack!” Payback? For what?                                                                                                ”For hugging Barack Obama and losing Mitt Romney the electionnnnnn!”

My hearing has been uncanny since I got that ear infection. I can hear the Republican dog whistle messages. And this makes sense. All those hundreds of millions of dollars spent to elect Mitt – they gotta be paid back. The House Republicans are enacting a revenge sequester on federal funds to get a two-way payback. Revenge and money! What could be sweeter?

Amy Goodman is on the radio, “…young woman succumbed to wounds she suffered during the hours-long attack.” God Damn! It’s been two weeks! Will a day ever pass that some reference to this atrocity won’t rip my heart out yet again? Yesterday it was her last words, “I’m sorry, mommy.” I sat in the car some few minutes, putting myself back together so I could go to my appointment. Today I’m standing at the grinder, sobbing, I can’t see to do my work, – for Chrissakes, must it be like this? MUST IT? Is there no other way? Hours long?

There are no words. Brutality? No, brutes are better than this. The word, it must be said, is “humanity.” Oil isn’t the problem. Drugs aren’t the problem. Politics aren’t the problem. People, are, the, problem. Humanity is the problem. We can be better than this, but we have to go deep to make this change. Really deep, as deep as habit, as deep as banality, morals, righteousness and innocence, yes that and pleasure too. For do we not derive a righteous pleasure at seeing wicked people led away in handcuffs? But, what do we trade for that satisfaction? The tacit acceptance of cruelty, violence and murder, time and time again. How can we imagine this has no effect on us? Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives” finally makes sense to me. Filing her nails while they’re dragging the lake. What banalities have we engaged in as the shit went down on TV? And this is our escape? Is life really that awful?

Bhutan has a Department of Happiness. Dennis Kucinich promised us a Department of Peace when he ran for President. We didn’t jump at the chance. WE are the problem. Compassion, love, empathy, imagination, mindfulness and justice should be taught at school, and why not? Because we haven’t asked for it! Politicians are cowards, they’ll do anything we ask, but we have to convince them we’re serious. We are all going to die. We share that with every living thing on earth. Every living thing on earth is destined to lose everything it ever held dear. Those we love will lose, and those we hate, will also lose, everything. Why on earth should we be anything but kind to each other?  (Thank you, Sam Harris)