The Few Real Goods: Treasures of the Ages
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Art, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Lost Geographies, Retrovision, The Destruction of History, Uncategorized
What follows arose from a morning reflection upon Ryan Holiday’s “The Stoic Journal” and “The Daily Stoic” for April 20th.
It has been difficult for me to return to the habit of writing, as my life in Korea has been rather chaotic over the last few years, but enforcing upon myself the semi-habit of writing a daily Stoic journal has, partly at least, rekindled the desire and pointed to the need, for the writer, of suitable “prompts”, which is the essential purpose of Ryan’s Journal: Pose a question to the reader, who then writes a response.
In truth, of course, some questions are difficult to answer in the moment, and sufficient perspective to frame a reasonable response may actually follow much later, in my experience, when something unexpected happens in your life and the idea suddenly crystallises into clarity in your mind. This happened to me again today.
One question which the Stoics dealt with was the real worth of things, bearing in mind that they were mortals, having a finite lifespan, living in times when death was a commonplace phenomenon, seen daily on the streets, at home and of course, for the Roman citizen, on many battlefields during the lifetime of a single individual. Therefore, given the desire of the ordinary mortal to acquire as much wealth as possible during one lifetime, the question arose as to whether increasing one’s personal fortune was an automatic guarantee of happiness, and the answer seemed to be a negative one.
This was not meant to be a remorseless statement of fact in the face of the inevitable; after all, what the Stoics were seeking was a more joyful and at the same time virtuous life. They simply observed that increasing wealth did not guarantee a life that was happier or more virtuous, and since financial wealth in those days was a material thing (precious metals, property), it was something that you could not take with you when you died (I need hardly point out that, having come close to mortality myself a couple of times in recent years, my mind often dwells on these things nowadays…). Many of them did indeed achieve (or inherit) sufficient wealth to understand that it could be a less-than-perfect experience, so they were in a good position to comment.
Noting that Ryan names wisdom, self-control, justice and courage as “virtues” (quoting from Marcus Aurelius) and that people will work hard all their lives to achieve it, and also that though desirable, “wealth” itself is not a “virtue”, one has to ask two questions:
1: If the acquisition of wealth is not a “virtue”, then what kind of “wealth” could be considered a “virtue”? What have past commentators had to say about this?
2: If wealth can be acquired by a life of hard work, what, then, is required to acquire wisdom, self-control, justice and courage? What kind of “work” or “study” is required to obtain these things?
Marcus Aurelius named these four latter as “things that are unquestionably good” – in other words, things which are undoubtedly beneficial to obtain. Financial “wealth” can be seen as being a more dubious “benefit” because it does not automatically guarantee happiness – it is, perhaps, a liability because those who do not have it always want to take it from you – including, of course, governments. However, in the civilisations that we have had, the value of money (which is more nominal or virtual than real nowadays) allows us to obtain at least the necessities that we need on a daily basis, such as food, clothing and utilities; a necessary evil, perhaps, but a useful means of value exchange.
Maybe we should take Marcus himself as an example. His times were very different from ours: he knew well that he was mortal (in his position, he probably had someone whispering “Memento mori!” in his ear several times each day) and understood better than anyone that he couldn’t take the wealth of the Roman Emperor with him when he passed on. In Marcus’s case, the inheritance that he bequeathed to posterity (in other words, ourselves) was not the gold and silver of Rome, but the philosophical wealth of his “Meditations”; the physical riches of Rome have been lost to time, but the wealth of Marcus’s (and other individuals’) thinking was preserved, and there is a lesson in this.
Realising, as I did today when I sat at my desk for the morning meditation, that the whole question related to the transitory nature of life and that material wealth (such as accumulated financial savings and other property) is therefore only a temporary pleasure at best, I was reminded of some hymns that we used to sing during morning assemblies at school in Leicester; in particular, I recalled a children’s song about natural treasures – experiential pleasures which we can only appreciate precisely because we are alive.
Therein lies the point that we are making here, which was the point that Ryan was trying to make: material wealth can only be enjoyed or appreciated while we live; hence, since we are mortal, material wealth is as fleeting and temporary as other living things, which have short lives and pass before us each year, according to the seasons.
I had some difficulty finding copies of that particular hymn, but what follows is taken from a *.jpg picture [1] and a simple PowerPoint file which you can download [2] (see “References” below). This was “Daisies Are Our Silver” by the English writer Jan Struther (Joyce Maxtone Graham, Joyce Placzek) [3], and I quote it here in full:
Daisies Are Our Silver [4]
Daisies are our silver,
Buttercups our gold:
This is all the treasure
We can have or hold.
Raindrops are our diamonds
And the morning dew;
While for shining sapphires
We’ve the speedwell blue. [3]
These shall be our emeralds,
Leaves so new and green;
Roses make the reddest
Rubies ever seen.
God, who gave these treasures
To your children small,
Teach us how to love them
And grow like them all.
Make us bright as silver,
Make us good as gold;
Warm as summer roses
Let our hearts unfold.
Gay as leaves in April,
Clear as drops of dew –
God, who made the speedwell,
Keep us true to you.
Though intended for children rather than adults, this has always been one of the most powerful memento mori that I have ever known – powerful enough for me to remember throughout my whole life. I will return to the works of Struther again in the future.
This is, however, one of so many cultural reminders that the works we undertake during our lifetimes are the things by which we are remembered: and that the achievement of wisdom, self-control, justice and courage originate in our Socratic reflection upon our own lives and experiences, putting them into perspective, adding them to our existing experiential schemata and, perhaps, using that knowledge to create things that naturally outlast our own existence. This work, this study in search of the virtuous, is lifelong, and it only ends when we end.
It is not without reason that we are able to wonder at the great works of the past – pyramids, bridges, ancient Roman and Greek buildings, paintings and sculptures, and of course, Homer and Shakespeare. Our bodies are only temporary shells which we inhabit, by means of which these things are realised and become part of the public inheritance: the treasures of the ages.
References
[1] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/83879611794491343/
[2] https://www.slideserve.com/yli/daisies-are-our-silver-buttercups-our-gold-this-is-all-the-treasure-we-can-have-or-hold-powerpoint-ppt-presentation
[3] Speedwell: Or Veronica, perennial flowering plants with small blue flowers, e.g. Veronica spicata; see https://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/woodland-flowers/blue-flowers/speedwells/
[4] There is a collection of Struther’s works available to read at https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/struther/struther.html
The Disaster of November 5th
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, General, Gripes, Humour, Lost Geographies, Odds and Ends..., The Destruction of History, Uncategorized
Ah, November 5th… the day some of us recall the failure of G. Fawkes et al. to blow up the old Houses of Parliament with the King inside – discovered, according to legend, as he was literally about to light the taper on the charge.
The irony, of course, being that a couple of centuries later, they burned down almost of their own accord (having been built from wood)… the Office Keeper and Yeoman Usher of the Receipt of the Exchequer, who had held that position for some time, was one William Godwin, dissenter and anarchist. His responsibilities* included the sweeping of the chimneys at the Palace of Westminster, and this little disaster came one night during his tenure.
After the flames had died down, a contest was held for the design of the new buildings, the ones we see today. I read elsewhere (many years ago) that it happened because he was asleep on the job (as he was granted rooms on site).
Alas, poor Guy… but the bonfires and fireworks were good. 
* See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Godwin, “Later years and death”: “Literary critic Marilyn Butler concluded her review of a 1980 biography of Godwin by comparing him favourably to Guy Fawkes: Godwin was more successful in his opposition to the status quo.”
The Return to Writing
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Art, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Living in Korea, Lost Geographies, Odds and Ends..., Uncategorized
For some time, it has been apparent to me that I need to return to writing. By this, I mean not embarking on some unfinishable science fiction novel, but more the reflective type of stuff which I used to post on a weekly basis on my old blog, say ten years ago, before I went north to work in Gyyeonggi for a year (and which, like so many jobs here, led absolutely nowhere).
I would grind away at my job until the weekend, and on the Saturday or Sunday, take a bus down to Nopo (when I was living in Yangsan) and/or the subway to Haeundae, and descend upon the Wolfhound to have a meal, and then sit alone with a glass of dry cider, physically writing in my old B5 note folder. Especially when the weather was inclement or the customers already there were few and far between, it was a good time and place for contemplation, and let’s face it, ‘contemplation’ is something you start to do more and more as you get older and your life experience increases. The Wolfhound was a great place for this, for which I am grateful; it was generally quiet before the multitude descended upon it, and people mainly left me alone to think and write.
Interestingly, I could do the same at the Wolfhound in Itaewon while I was working for the KDLI in Icheon; alas, however, Itaewon has also changed, including the loss of another regular watering-hole there, the Seoul Pub. It would be nice to revisit a few places there some time; I have experienced so many ‘lost geographies’ since I first arrived in Korea.
It would have to be said also that there is an aesthetic quality in the physical act of writing, on paper with your favourite pen, to be able to take the time required in a comfortable place, which is somehow lacking when using modern media, as I am doing now, writing this. Of course, publication would eventually be on a web site, so we are not talking about abandoning technology – after all, one of the great benefits of having a computer is that the intermediate steps of editing and revision are so much easier and faster, and besides, how else would you finally upload and finalise it? If there is WiFi available, you could do this (with difficulty, perhaps) using the likes of a tablet, but the natural spatial and temporal separation between the writing location and the editing/uploading location was helpful in itself, as the time for reflection upon what was written was thereby extended, and additional ideas could be incorporated into the whole before finishing. In any case, there was no pressure with regards to time because what I was writing was (mostly) personal.
Fast forward some ten years (as I transitioned temporarily back to the elementary school in Yangsan following a year at YBM in Seomyeon, and then off for a year in Gyyeonggi), and I had already had to transition to a private blog (on server space in Singapore, no less) because Opera, the browser company, had decided to dispose of their social media and I already had to move years of blogs and pictures between servers. I had settled on using WordPress as a publishing platform after the loss of Opera’s own, and that has also had little ‘issues’ caused by the kind of ‘improvements’ that one might expect more from the likes of the GNOME desktop… and the aesthetic and emotional need for physical writing, on paper and using a pen rather than my more customary keyboard, has reared its head again.
Predictably, this was where the problems started. Last time, I had my favourite (and factually rather cheap) three-hole B5 folder which doubled as my schedule planner for the daily lessons, something which I still do. However, it has proven surprisingly difficult to find a similar three-hole B5 folder with pleasing aesthetic qualities, and so, this afternoon (a Sunday, of course), I lashed out on a new, black one… but this time, the paper has nine holes. Again, neither difficult nor expensive to procure, but annoying, since (as far as I am aware) I will only be able to order such things online for the foreseeable future. Despite the cost, it did seem to me that the aesthetic and emotional aspects justified the expenditure; last time, I never thought about the costs involved, which were cheap, but that was because I was co-opting materials which had an existing use, which mitigated them. Plus, as suggested above, although much of this process might be possible on (say) my latest tablet, it could in fact be more difficult than simply writing it out in the first place.
Another odd consideration is the actual writing implement itself. Way back when I had to wear a two-piece uniform with a shirt and tie five days a week, and school gravy was a penny a slice, I developed a passion for ink pens, meaning, of course, fountain and cartridge pens; at one point I had a small collection of red Shaeffer No Nonsense pens, as all of these things (including refills) could be purchased locally at a reasonable price. Later, I changed over to fibre pens, which seemed to glide nicely over the paper, although in both cases I was writing so much that I wore the nibs down quite rapidly. More recently, I have changed back to ball pens, although I note that the “Rolly” type with 1mm balls no longer seem to be available; everything else now seems rather ‘scratchy’, which I think has a lot to do with the state of my finger joints these days… maybe I should go back to Shaeffer?
However, what I am really talking about here is a transition to journalling, rather than straightforward ‘blogging’. This practice is wonderful for a number of reasons, not least because it allows the writer to organise both thoughts and actions, gives him or her time to think and perhaps even get out of an otherwise claustrophobic Korean apartment and even meet people. Well, who would’a thunk? I was surprised to discover that this particular area is huge on the Internet, although the kind of dedicated materials (i.e. writing notebooks) often on sale are rather smaller (A5 or less) than I would prefer, largely because I have always found that physical writing becomes cramped on small pages, and of course, crossing-out, rearrangement and other general editing is so much easier on a bigger page, although a page size as large as A4 might be somewhat intimidating, so B5 represents a kind of ‘happy medium’ for me, personally.
The use of the term ‘journalling’ however, implies a sense of privacy rather than preparation for publication, which may not be a bad idea. Previous experience showed that the relaxation factor plus the time factor were helpful in improving both the quality and the content, although space for mind maps, schemata and concept diagrams on the physical page might also be valuable; and the very fact that I am considering these things now shows that I have acquired new and useful ideas in the course of the intervening ten years, especially ideas which came from my time as a TESOL trainer.
We might ask whether there will be any change in topic areas, and my answer might be ‘no, but there will be greater depth of consideration’, especially with regard to historical and computing-related topics, and also new ideas which I have been considering for the future, which would involve other technologies which I expect to interface well with those where I already have experience. Clearly, it is a major error to rush a piece of writing through without sufficient consideration and research; also, we should perhaps consider that things which (in the past) might result in a Saturday night rant are really things which either deserve no emotional or physical reaction, or if they do, perhaps a sideways glance, a wry smile and some verbal rolling of the eyes. Not everything in life deserves a response. Seriously.
With regard to the computing side of things, I note that we are actually coming up to version 9 of Mageia Linux very soon, which I transitioned to (again) literally ten years ago, when Mandriva dismissed a whole load of their devs, who, in a huff, got together and created Mageia 1 by forking Mandriva, and the transition was completely trouble-free. Linux has turned out to be much more productive, not to mention less hassle, than the Windows environment, and has a host of free apps which have proven great for my workflow.
Another odd development was that over the last few years, but especially during the more recent times of Covid idiocy, I made inroads into screenshot videos, both on Mageia and even on Win 10 (although I had to spend money to do the latter). Most of these were intended for my students when I was working for Times Media, but I did make a few others which can be seen in various places. I now have equipment for virtually every possible kind of media, so there may be a lot to learn there, too, as I ended up with some cheap voice recording equipment.
All of which means that I will be out for an exercise walk later tonight (after doing a bit more cleaning) and pay for the purchases at the local ATM (as phone-based payments are temporarily in need of being transferred to my new phone); the new materials should then be here later in the week. Thereafter, I will be looking for suitable places for scribbling on a Saturday or Sunday (because somehow, the Starbucks across the main drag there seems too easy a target), which will undoubtedly be a good thing, as this particular area could hardly be described as ‘interesting’.
Who knows, with a little contemplation and focus, maybe my weekends will be more productive in the future?
The Big Bang Never Made Sense
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, General, Lost Geographies, Odds and Ends..., Uncategorized
I liked it so much, I posted it on my own pages!
Exactly the kind of invective that I appreciate!
More Wisdom from the Late Mr. McKenna
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Lost Geographies, The Destruction of History, Uncategorized
Always interesting to hear from the late Mr. M. … shame he’s not with us any more!Brought to you by YouTube via our dear friend, Mr. D. Icke (for it was he).
Latest Check-up: November 4th 2019
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Cancer Diary, General, Gripes, Living in Korea, Lost Geographies, Odds and Ends..., Uncategorized
Just this Saturday, the hospital’s automated messaging system texted me to let me know that it was time to see Prof. Kim again, and perhaps also render blood samples!
It’s hard to believe that it is now twenty-two months since part of my colon was excised and the two ends stitched together again; hard to believe that in that time I have actually had three jobs (although two of them are the same one) and gone from here to Jinju and back. As it happens, when asked by manager Jamie recently whether I wanted to stay, I gave her a “maybe” answer – until I remembered that too many students really want to teach kids, and this is something that no longer interests me. So later, the answer was “no”… probably because yes, it has been stressful. No kidding!
Another thing that hit me kinda hard – ouch! – was when I wondered if I could find my old domicile, back in the north of Miryang, on Google Street View (yes, unfortunately I still have uses for Google). That was back in March 2009 – ten years ago! – when I finally left Changwon, where I had been for my first six years in Korea, to take on my first public school job, and looking back, I now think that was a major error, especially considering that after I left the KDLI in 2014, I ended up working at the same place in Changwon again, although not for long, as Mr. Lee’s customer base was already shrinking.
Lo! and Behold! – it was still there, and although there had clearly been some more building in the area since I was living there; remarkably the unoccupied plot in front of the entrance was still rough ground with someone’s veggies growing on it. Some things never change!
Anyway, it’s been a long time, and I have been working in so many places around the country, but I still think that Changwon was the best place for actually living, largely I suspect because it has a more “human” scale than bigger places like Busan and Daegu, and actually walking to where you want to go physically rather than taking public transport, for example, is often not unrealistic, not to mention healthier. Miryang was also not actually bad – in fact, getting out of bed early and walking from my place across the island to the school, and walking back again afterwards, was by no means a drawback. Likewise, Changwon is a place where routine exercise (in the sense of getting plenty of walking in) is both easy and pleasurable.
Other changes to my Lost Geography have taken place within the last ten years – relatives, including, alas, my own mother – have passed on in that time and even returning to my own country appears extremely unpalatable; it’s unclear at the moment what the best option might be.
Now we return to today, and my latest conflab with Professor Kim. Since I last saw him, one interesting change has taken place: recently, I came off the generic Lopmin (Imodium) capsules that were prescribed for me as an antidiarrhoeal because I was finding that they were perhaps somewhat too effective (i.e. a bit too powerful for my own sensitive and residual gut); it was at times difficult to pass stools because they were so dry and stiff, so I experimented several times until I felt that I could be confident not to shit my pants at an inopportune moment, such as, for example, when shopping or in the middle of a lesson.
At first it was a bit dodgy, but I think it may have been helped by a couple of things: firstly, the fact that I tend not to drink a lot of water on work days, and secondly that when I do drink on work days, it tends to be quite strong coffee, especially for “breakfast”, which otherwise I normally leave out. On one hand, therefore, there is reduced water intake coupled with a strong diuretic (high-strength, “shoot-me-to-the-Moon” coffee), and on the other, there is the prevention of the gastrocolic reaction by, er, not eating. I think that this combination is assisting my truncated gut to perform its natural dehydration function more normally, as less digested food is passing through it, and secondly my body is running lean on water anyway. The result is mainly stools with normal colour and consistency, although exactly when they demand to be released still tends to be rather random like, say, two or three a.m. Generally, however, it is no longer so bad; I think the main thing is avoiding a large meal to prevent the gastrocolic reaction taking place at an unhelpful moment… I need hardly repeat Professor Kim’s admonition to lose weight.
He and I discussed this and the main problem is getting enough sunlight exposure for my skin to manufacture sufficient Vitamin D naturally. I take a number of supplements for this regularly but obviously, natural is better and my little “issue” here is that normally I have little exposure to sunlight due to the desk-bound work that I often perform (and also spending much of a working day indoors in any case), so getting enough daylight input is rather difficult.
Clearly, this means that the job itself (and the associated work) is therefore something of an “issue”. Another is the preponderance of mainly female prospective students who want to teach kids, something I lost interest in a long time ago. So the adverts are out and I am looking for something new (which I also mentioned to Professor Kim, as this would make routine checks more difficult). Some might complain that perhaps I protest too much and should just suck it up, but the fact remains that after all this time in Korea, some disillusionment has long since set in and the general teaching environment is demotivating for someone like myself. I need something more relevant and appropriate to find my mojo again. I used to teach kids for the purpose of survival, and not because I enjoyed it.
Shortly after my contract ends, I will have to go to the Gu Hospital again to have my colon inspected with a large and fearsome tool, and as I have elected not to re-sign before that time, I don’t know quite where I will be at that exact moment, but as always, I remain optimistic. Time and again a job has come along (sometimes almost too late) and I have been here for another year. I had hoped to have transitioned to something else a long time ago, but unfortunately circumstances have prevented this. Perhaps that is where I should be focusing for the remainder of my time in Korea.
Bang on the Button
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, General, Lost Geographies, The Destruction of History
Came across this on FB randomly this evening, and I agree with him all the way… so I’m sharing it here, too:
Max is saying precisely what I am trying to adumbrate in these pages.
The Field of Beans and the Limits of Perception
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Breakfast in the Ruins, Lost Geographies, The Destruction of History
Aaarrgghhh… who forgot to turn off the cell phone alarm for weekdays? On holiday this week, and no need to get out of bed at 6:00 a.m. on Korean Children’s Day… when will I learn???
Slouching into the big room in my new apartment – the one with the computer and the books and other shit all over the floor because I need to buy some new furniture (to replace all the mouldy stuff I left behind in Daegu) – as I checked the mails and messages from the previous night, up popped a link at the “Lunar Barbecue” group page (thank you to Pedro Ribeiro for that) to the following YT vid about Terence McKenna called “Aliens and Archetypes” (from the “Thinking Allowed” TV series, dated 1990)… but what follows is really only tangential to his topic and a brief statement of a thought or two, being the result merely of my reaction to one of his remarks therein.
It has to be admitted that Mr. McKenna always had something very interesting to say about so many things, and whilst I was watching this I caught his brief remarks about communication within and with nature, which made me think: how is it that we ceased being able to do so? Could it be that what we have laughingly called “education” for so long is actually the inculcation of prejudices which make such communication (or even the sensibility thereof) impossible, simply by denying the possibility of such things, and therefore dulling our possible perception of them?
There have been, over the last few years, and especially recently, a flurry of items about how plants communicate via both the air and the soil coming through from various sources; this seems to be an active area of research. It makes me wonder what people will end up eating in the future, as it slowly dawns on everyone that plants are demonstrably sentient, like animals. Some say that eating meat is murder (although some of us just call it “food”), so what does that make eating fruits (often the reproductive organs of plants) and vegetables (their flowers or other storage organs)?
Of course, we would then go on to put on our biologist’s hat (well, I would, at any rate) and ask: “Well, if raising meat in broiler houses and the like is considered bad because it turns animals into products in an unnatural environment and is inhumane, then what are we to make of (say) a broad field of wheat, or a rice padi?” – if battery farms are unethical, then what can we say about a field of beans?
For a long time, I have been thinking that each grain of wheat or rice, each bean in the pod, is a life which has the potential to grow; its nutritional value lies precisely in the fact that it is one of the plant’s reproductive structures, in which energy and nutrients have been invested for the future survival of the species, just the same as (for example) a hen’s egg. The difference, however, is that parthenogenesis in a hen’s egg is a relatively rare event (although it does happen sometimes) and hence is rarely encountered in an egg cup or frying pan because, of course, there is no requirement to fertilise the egg before it becomes useful; its nutrient value for the human consumer would be wasted if the egg started to develop into a chick before delivery [1]. In the case of plant seeds, these would not exist without fertilisation, so we have a situation in which – unlike tubers, roots or even hens’ eggs – it is actually necessary to engender new life in order to reap the nutritional benefits of the plants’ labours, a fact to which we turn an eternally and conveniently blind eye.
Perhaps the tragedy of human existence – in the correct and original meaning and intention of the Greek term tragoidea (“goat song”, of a great person brought low by fate) is that humanity has become thoroughly enmeshed in a lifestyle where it exists purely as a result of squandering both itself and the world which supports it; yet being conscious of the full truth of its existence would cause impossible levels of angst at the thought of eating anything, and so its senses have to be dulled in order to make that existence bearable. Thus, it slowly destroys everything, including itself. It is doubly tragic that this exists alongside a patently untruthful inculcation about the past of humanity, which is used to keep us in a psychotic state and which allows us to be controlled more easily.
However, there are times when we need to be reminded of these things, even if only in passing, as here with the much-missed Mr. McKenna, as well as, perhaps, a nod to Aristotle in being able to express our psychological maturity by considering topics which we might otherwise find unpalatable [2], and perhaps, also, to reflect upon what level of difficulty we might have in actually communicating with aliens when our minds have already been so prejudiced against it on our own world. We have at least been fortunate to have occasional bright lights like Terence McKenna to illuminate our darkness with flashes of insight.
Notes:
[1] Unless you like to eat a balut, of course: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(food)
[2] “It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.”: see https://i.pinimg.com/originals/48/f1/5f/48f15ff7949996f4e65454b4b129fa29.jpg
Breakfast in the Ruins II
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Breakfast in the Ruins, Environment, Lost Geographies
Absolutely. I have nothing to add to this.
More From the FBI…
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, General, Gripes, Lost Geographies, The Destruction of History
This was shared to my Wall this morning. And the most interesting comment seems to be part of that about the late Philip Klass:
“Always striving to stay on the cutting edge, Klass published an “Exclusive Report on Counter Measures” in the November 18th and 25th, 1957, editions of Aviation Week. This report was referred to the FBI for the “unauthorized disclosure of information classified ‘Secret’”. An investigation into the disclosure was dropped when the US Air Force told the FBI that the disclosed information could not be declassified for purposes of prosecution.”
http://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/fbi-files-the-paranormal-collection/
This covers a range of characters who by now are well-known to the UFO research community.
As I have stated on a number of occasions (and indeed blogged about fairly recently), I am not personally of the opinion that all unidentified lights or objects in the sky are by definition guided or piloted by beings from other worlds; it seems to me that many of them must be of purely ‘natural’ origin and the great crime of science is that it has persistently failed not only to seek an explanation for them, but also to offer any reasonable explanation of why it has not done so. It seems to me that they provide some kind of convenient ‘smokescreen’ for ‘something’ that ‘someone’ wants to keep in an obscured condition.
We might add (just for a lark) the comments of the late Apollo astronaut and first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, which seem curiously relevant in this context:
“There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of the truth’s protective layers. There are many places to go beyond belief.”
… and one thing you absolutely cannot say about Neil is that he was not someone who knew something.
