Note: Below and in the text that follows from here, you will find a number of messages and letters sent to me by somebody we'll call "John", a former resident of Erie, Pennsylvania, who claimed to be known in hacker circles by the nickname "Xeno". You may notice a great many ellipses in the quoted material. Don't be mislead by this. The ellipses are part of the original material. Nothing has been cut out, aside from a few self-identifying expressions.
Unless you've come across this page while I'm still revising it, all of the names in the account you see below will have been changed (or at least truncated). "John" was a truly annoying individual, but his story was a sad one, so much so that I can't feel angry at him anymore. I never really got the full picture until after his death had been reported. I'm not sure that I have it even now, but here is what I have been able to piece together.
John, as mentioned in the page below, had claimed to hear the voice of the ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, literally. He affected the attitude of a street punk, talking about his many years in prison, and responding to attempts at reasoned discussion with barely veiled threats of violence. He is reported to have committed suicide after a police chase in Florida which began when he hit a patrol car, and ended after he fled and was successfully surrounded. The police found him in his car with an allegedly self-inflicted gunshot wound in the head. According to them, they had no idea of why this young man would do this to himself.
I was skeptical at first, because John's last listed address, according to his high school's alumni book, placed him in Chicago, and the alleged suicide took place in Florida, a long trip for somebody looking for work, and a bad direction for a fugitive from the law to head for geographic reasons. (A man hunt may leave one cornered at the southern tip of the state, with nowhere to go but into the sea).
And then I got it. It was the John Nash scenario, only taking place in somebody who was nowhere near as bright as Dr.Nash, having nothing in common with the man other than a common first name, and so our John was unable to reason his way through the nightmare he found himself in, in the way Nash had. Auditory hallucinations, a dangerous life that nobody else could vouch for - the signs of a well developed case of schizophrenia. "John" had hallucinated his life on the street, and as the police approached him over an offense which might have gotten him a suspended sentence, he fell prey to his own delusions, and ended his own life to escape a trap which was never really there.
Some tried to rewrite history and canonize him, more or less, but after a little time had passed and the reality of his death had sunk in, many started acting like he had never even really been a human being, like there was nothing to regret. I had to mourn his passing, because it seemed that nobody else would. This is why I can't be angry with him any more, as I was when I first wrote about his legitimately outrageous behavior. Any desire for vengeance which I could ever have had was more than met by what fate brought his way. He was not a good man, and his choices in life were ones that pushed him further in the unhealthy, violent directions that his sickness propelled him in, but in the end those choices helped reinforce the very faith in that fantasy world which killed him. Brought down by the consequences of his own vices, he got away with nothing. Nemesis did indeed find him, one might say, Shouldn't that be far more than enough to satisfy anybody's anger?
I won't revise this story, as some of John's few remaining apologists would have me do, because every word of it was true, and none of this was really private. But please say a prayer for John after you turn your computer off. He doesn't deserve to become fodder for Ammit, as some seem to feel that he does, and he didn't deserve an end as bad as the one that came for him.
I got letters, I got letters, I got sacks and sacks of letters ... and all from this particular individual lately, as near as I can tell.
This all began when John wrote into the "Society and Ethics" board asking for advice. He mentioned a "friend" who had moved away from a girlfriend, who started dating somebody else after he moved away. She said that her relationship with this interim boyfriend wasn't anything serious, but when he snooped through her e-mail and looked at her private e-mail with a friend of hers, the mail seemed to tell a different story. Should the friend confront his girlfriend about this, he asked.
Absolutely not, I said, mentioning the breach of trust involved in such snooping. John then added some more "information", saying that the friend's deity had told him to look. I expressed some skepticism about this, leading to the following letter via the private e-mail system for the House of Netjer boards:
From: John
Received: 6/5/01 10:55 AM
I just wanted to let you know that the friend was Me and Sekhmet was
the one who told me to check the email...
If you'd like Her to drop by, Netjer is only as far away as a breath.
In Ma'at Brother,
(name deleted)
Let's see, as I told somebody ... Ate, Hubris, ... can Nemesis be far behind? I responded, urging John to repent quickly and wholeheartedly, and ask his deity (Sekhmet) for forgiveness for having presumed to put his words into her mouth in this fashion, out of such unworthy motives. I pointed out that even the comparatively mellow Olympian pantheon was known to react harshly when provoked in such a fashion. Did he really wish to test Sekhmet's patience in this way?
Meanwhile, John had come across the Pre-Ptolemaic electrification "debate", if you want to term it that, and just had to share. Somebody seemed a little unclear on the concept of free and open discussion.
From: John
Received: 6/5/01 11:40 AM
Em Hotep Antistoicus!
I would like to say that, although I have enjoyed discussing with you
the various ways that people mutilate the head of Sekhmet, I am
finding the actions you are currently displaying to be quite
distasteful and out of place.
The Kemetic People, in my opinion, and their entire culture was
completely ruined by Greek intervention. I have tolerated everything
that you have said up and until now, but this can not go on.
I am letting you know that you are not the ONLY one who is
knowledgable concerning Hellenism nor are you the only one who is
knowledgable concerning the Greeks. I have studied many different
world cultures. And, while I think that the drivel that these
Afro-Centric people are peddling around is way off the mark, I don't
think that any of this Greco-Centric stuff is any good either.
We are mortals.
They are Gods.
Remember that.
(name deleted)
("The Voice of Sachmis which Reckons with Her")
sa Sekhmet/Het-hert
("The Son of Sachmis/Hathor")
Meshah ny Sekhmet Neter-t
("The Soldier of Sachmis the Goddess")
----
Remember...Kronos spit them out...
Remember...The Self Created One rose from Nun and spoke the names of
the Neteru...
Get the picture?
The picture that I got was that he was a ranting, raving lunatic, who made the Pagan coffeehouse crowd seem stable by comparison. Considering his probably schizophrenia-induced departure from this life, I suppose that was probably true, but this went beyond being a mere chemical imbalance. The rant he went on on this thread, about the fact that I used long words that he didn't understand ("polysyllabic, pseudo-intellectual (expletitive deleted) as he put it), merely seemed to confim my impression of this gentleman. I told him to go away and not write to me again, even if he did find the help he needed.
His issue with Greece and the Greeks? God only knows. "What? Did Jennifer Aniston refuse to give you an autograph? Did you get a bad plate of gyros somewhere? What is your story and why is it becoming part of my day?", I asked him in the thread we're discussing right now.
His explanation was that the Greeks had destroyed Egypt by giving different names to the places and gods in Egypt, than the Egyptians did. Um, John, I believe that this is known as "having a different language", and Greece was hardly the first country Egypt had come into contact with, to do so. So, I asked him (on the evening before this thread was deleted), how did Egypt endure the horrors of translation for all of those intervening centuries?
Could he be more out there? But, of course, as he would soon show me in his next few letters, much as he was doing on the boards at the same time.
From: John
Received: 6/6/01 02:55 PM
Em Hotep!
I find it quite interesting that you would be able to judge the
relationship between my Parent, who has already been recognized as my
parent by the Nisut (AUS), as well as attempt to explain to me how my
Mother deals with me when I have already discussed this with Imakhu
and Kai-Imakhu concerning my Mother.
Of course My Mother is nothing close to being "mellow". My Mother is
the Avenging Eye of her Father Ra, who is the Lady of Plague, the Lady
of the Red Garment, The Swallower of Blood, who is known for
PROTECTING THE INNOCENT and PUNISHING THE DAMNED. She is the Lady of
APPROPRIATE ACTION. And Sir, the reason I responded to your posts was
simply because I find your actions (1) to be appauling.
If you personally wish to attack me, you may. However, I do remind you
that Ma'at doesn't take sides (and neither does Sekhmet, unless you
harm one of her Children). If you do wrong to someone, then you will
ultimately pay the price for your wrongdoing.
B.T.W. The title "The Voice of Sekhmet" does not denote that I am the
ONLY voice of Sekhmet. it means that I am one of her Children and, as
one of her Children, I speak remembering that my Mother is listening.
Every Child of Sekhmet speaks for Their Mother.
In Ma'at,
(name deleted)
sa Sekhmet/Het-hert
Meshah Ny Sekhmet Netert
P.S. As for my station in life, what difference does that make? Your
opinion of my personal station has nothing to do with how I am viewed
within the eyes of God.
I'm reminded of a fundamentalist preacher, who would scream about the torments of the damned every time that somebody wouldn't give him what he wanted. "Gee, Reverend, I was under the impression that God had better things to do with His time than make sure that you got the last croissant, but perhaps I was mistaken. Now, take your ritalin, and go sit down".
The personal station that I urged him to accept was that of not being a god, or even a prophet. I think that this is a little bit more than an opinion, especially given how self-serving his 'prophecies' tend to be. Kheru, however, wasn't done yet.
From: John
Received: 6/6/01 03:13 PM
Em Hotep
I would just like you to know that your opinion of me is very much
valued.
I will make sure that I inform the Nisut (AUS) of how you feel.
Senebty!
(name deleted)
"I'm going to tell the nisut on you! Nyeah!"
... aaaaand? I'm not a Shemsu. I'm the moderator of the slowly rebuilding Shrine of the Sleeping Gods, a Hellenic group quite independent of the House of Netjer. Naturally, at the time, I would have prefered to be on friendly terms with the Nisut and the House, but I was not and am not her subordinate.
Much to John's surprise, no doubt, the Nisut seemed to have better things to do with her time, than send me a letter scolding me for not wanting to play with John any more. John announced his departure on the boards, and sent me what I can only take to be an attempt at a threatening letter, soon to be followed by another which clearly was.
From: John
Received: 6/7/01 02:03 PM
I thought that, since I was leaving the HetNetjer, I would fill you in
on a bit of information...
You might want to ask someone in the House about where I was before I
was here and why I was there. If you would like further information,
contact the United States Secret Service in New York.
You asked me what can I do?
You call the feds and YOU find out...
(name deleted)
a.k.a. (name deleted)
As I'm sure you have guessed, John 'changed his mind' and decided to stay in the probationer's group for the House. Why the House let him stay is a small mystery. Others have seen the same anger management problems in him or worse. Is it really a good idea to keep somebody this volatile, and this delusional around and let him get to know one's membership better than he already has? Especially when he writes thing like this:
From: John
Received: 6/13/01 06:59 PM
Very funny.
Um...NO.
I'm sure that you are well aware that the United States Secret Service
handles much more than protection of the President and Federal
Officials. They are involved in Computer Crimes, Credit Card Fraud,
Counterfeiting, and anything dealing with Interstate nad Foreign
Commerce on a large scale.
As I said, you can say what you wish but I would ask someone on here
who might know about me (say, oh, The Nisut Herself or Nonk).
As for you being a guest...yes, you are a GUEST (2).
At any rate, I am a member of the Probationer's Group and have been
speaking with The Nisut (AUS) for several months and she's well aware
of any stabilities or instabilities that I may have.
As for yourself, everyone is QUITE AWARE of your behavior and let me
tell you, no one is smiling and saying what a nice guy you are...
You're beginning to be a PEST instead of a GUEST. My suggestion is to
stop before someone who ISN'T A NICE PERSON decides to DO something
about YOU.
...
(name deleted)
Re: You.
From: John
Received: 6/14/01 03:10 PM
ROFL.
Call my bluff and call the Secret Service.
...
oh Shut Up...
I gave that warning all of the consideration that it merited. Not that this meant that I completely dropped my guard around him. As I will mention elsewhere, John later asked if he could meet me in person enroute to a gathering at Tawy House - the gathering that would bring his association with the House to a final end, because he showed up armed. Had I been foolish enough to set up a meeting, I don't doubt that he would have been willing to use those weapons. But what of it? Not being so foolish as to aid in one's own stalking is a simple thing, and as for worrying that he would track me down, here in the middle of a city of 3,000,000 - there's such a thing as running from one's own shadow. The odds of him succeeding would have been remote - about as remote as his chances of escaping the police during that final episode of his life, and there are some people one just can't empower, in good conscience. But others, including the management at the House of Netjer, did just that for a while.
As one of the shemsu observed, John was very young and immature for his age. This was the kind of person the House was looking for? They were welcome to him, as far as I was concerned.
"Oh, well", I thought at the time. The House had been warned, and it was not like I was going to invite this man to anything. I did have one last bit of fun tweaking his tail, though. "Picking on the mentally ill, Antistoicus?" Perhaps, but his illness did not completely explain or excuse his behavior, or really come close to doing either. As I said once, there's a difference between dealing with an illness and wallowing in it. What John seemed to be trying to pull seemed obvious enough. My guess was that he found a name in a news story, and then tried to convince everybody on the boards that he was that person. Like I told John in my last private message to him, this is the oldest barroom stunt in existence. So, I challenged him to make something happen here, unless he wanted me to tell everybody just exactly what it was, that he was full of.
"Send me an e-mail, in a few months, and I can just about guarantee you that I won't have been rent asunder by the bloody red jaws of Sekhmet, that the secret service won't have taken me out", I told people, and as I'm revising this in 2004, obviously I wasn't. People have told me that they were afraid of this sad individual. They shouldn't have been, and back then it was time that they knew this. Which, I suppose, may explain some of the postmortem vindictiveness - embarassment after the fact about that realization.
Let us lay to rest any notion that these were nice, if not especially bright people that I had somehow brutalized with my unkind admissions of exasperation. These weren't just lunatics, they were obnoxious, belligerent lunatics. In fact, if we had taken John's word for it, one of them would have been an obnoxious, belligerent lunatic with a criminal record, which the House knew about before signing him up for their webboard, and probationer's class.
From: John
Received: 6/15/01 11:37 AM
ROFLMAO
You're funny.
No, actually, none of this is an act. The Reverend Siuda (AUS) wrote
me while I was in prison and she's well aware of why I was there (as
is the United States Secret Service). You could also go to various
siteson the internet (defcon.org, l0pht.com, etc.) and I'm certain
that you will find information on me.
At any rate, no: this is no bluff. And as far as doing anything within
this realm, I do not work with that type of equipment. Currently I am
employed by one of the major credit processing agencies (your guess,
Experian or Equifax)...and I'm there simply because I know what I'm
doing.
As for you sophmoric humor: you're going to have to do better than
that. I lived in New York City for a long time and I've heard a lot
better said to me by persons who, unlike you, have one iota of
intelligence within their cerebral cortex.
And since I deal in Customer Service and have to listen to wonderful
individuals scream at me concerning why they can not obtain a credit
card with a $250 limit (using colorful adjectives and phrases),
nothing you say upsets me. I find it humorous.
(name deleted) (John)
formerly "(name deleted)"
I'm SURE you know who (name deleted) was...
(the mathematician, not the hacker (that would be yours truly))
I wondered what would have been more pitiful: John making this up or John telling the truth and being this proud of it. Hackers, for the record, do not tend to be especially bright. What they tend to be is especially persistent as they waste endless hours trying to win their pointless "victories". Garbage like this, is why I will not return to those boards or any other non-professional web forum, again.
I came to learn, not to join. But, given the lack of anything resembling peer review in the historical forums on the Netjer board, anything that I would see there would be of questionable credibility. Bad information does not get challenged; in fact, the very effort to challenge it is not tolerated. Online, this seems to be the norm, so why bother?
Yes, amazingly, the goddess Sekhmet did not materialize in my apartment and tear me apart for having denied that the ancient Egyptians had vcrs or that Ra had told John to pick up a six pack of Heineken on the way to work, or whatever else I was supposed to swallow that week. As Robin Williams would have said, "reality, what a concept!".
After a few months, John stopped posting. Most of his kookish friends, like "Djed", seemed to have dropped out of the database altogether. I took this to be a good sign. This was premature, and not just because some of them had merely changed their login names on being "divined" by Ms.Siuda.
Within a day of my posting a comment to the fact that I was glad to see him gone (on my entry page), John had returned under a new name The implication is that he had been sitting there monitoring that page since June. Good lord! Can you say "potential stalker"? He soon returned to one of his favorite themes.
Under his new login, he started a thread entitled "When Parents Speak". Let us remember, this is the man who had claimed that he had a conversation with the ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet in which she told him to read his girlfriend's e-mail. This is not the proverbial "still quiet voice that moves the heart" which we perceive the influence of, through prayer or meditation. This man has literally claimed to hear voices. That is not at all the same thing.
The thread soon took off. I placed a comment ("please remember who you're talking to"), reminding the participants on the thread of what I just told you, concluding "If he is serious, the word 'schizophrenia' somehow comes to mind. If not, he's trolling. Either way, please don't encourage him".
This could only be termed "common sense". One might hope that the board would have room for a little common sense, as it was founded by and for a group of people who left the "Reader Circuit" Pagan community because, as their leader put it, they had found that nobody there was prepared to welcome a voice of moderation. (An observation that I can vouch for). If so, one would be sadly disappointed, and I was. My post was soon censored, probably by Stephanie Cass (as she was in charge of that board), while Kheru's babblings remained uncensored and now, unchallenged.
Appeasing the psychotic by silencing their critics? Where had I seen that tried, before? Oh, yes. The very community that the House had left behind. I've never ceased to be amazed that so many were willing to believe that giving control of the floor of discussion to those least able to control their tempers would somehow bring peace. Forums have a way of mirroring the personalities of those in control of them.
This practice turned the Chicago area Neopagan community into a warzone. The Nisut herself was there to see it happen, and Rev. Schaefer was there with her. These are witnesses that I'm sure the House knows to rely on. That former community is now all but dead. The crazies, finding themselves in control, drove everybody else off. How strange, then, now that History has spoken, that the House would choose to adopt the very practices that served their enemies so poorly.
If you'll excuse me, I've already played this scenario out, and I already know where it's going. Go there without me. I won't be posting to this board, again.
An old story ... Marcus Aurelius is looking down on the shards of his favorite vase. Appreciate that this is not like losing a flower pot from K-Mart. These were individually handcrafted works of art. This would be like coming home to find that one of one's paintings had been slashed. He finds the slave that destroyed this masterpiece and is about to administer some corporal punishment. "But master", says the slave, "is it not said in your philosophy that I was destined to smash your vase", to which Marcus Aurelius says, "Yes, as I was destined to whip you".
The point of the story, aside from a suggestion that if you ever find yourself transported back to Late Antiquity, you might want to stay away from the emperor's breakables, is that questions of free will are largely irrelevant in morality, especially in regard to questions of personal responsibility, because the argument that one should be dealt with leniently because of that alleged lack of free will is a "pick and mix". The one making the appeal denies the presence of free will when he assesses responsibility for the act to be punished, but then acts as if the very free will he denied is in existence, when he makes his appeal for mercy. And so, the argument concludes, the best answer to the question of free will is not to think about it, at all.
But the conscience rebels against such a conclusion, and even more so against some of its implications, and the cause that leads it to rebel is not always of such a supernatural nature as the alleged influence of the Fates. Consider the old "free will vs. environment" argument. Some will say "such-and-such grew up in a bad home, he's the product of a bad environment, and so we can't hold him accountable for his actions" - displaying what some of us on the right would call "the bleeding heart syndrome". As a practical matter, one simply can't adopt this attitude as a basis for policy. One would be handing control of the streets and eventually, of society, to the thugs in our midst, creating a world which would be no place in which to live. If one can not confront people over their wrongful actions, and occasionally dish out a little punishment, one can not deter them from the further commission of those actions. One would, in each case, be reduced to trying to appeal to the conscience of somebody who barely has one, and getting stonewalled in the process, over and over, as the thugs fell over each other, rolling in laughter at the stupidity that they would be witnessing. As Hobbes would say, one would be reducing society to a state of nature in which life is "nasty, brutish and short". That's too high a price for the rest of us to pay.
So, many will say that regardless of what one's upbringing might have been, one's actions are one's own responsibility. Period. But then, something troubling occurs - we see one person leading another person astray, encouraging him to do things that he ought not do. We will object to this, only to find somebody smiling slyly and saying "did you not say that a man's actions were his own responsibility". "Well, yes", somebody will begin, only to be quickly cut off ... "And did you not agree that he was free to make his own choices, regardless of what happened around him, down through the years?" And some would have to concede that this was so. "And so regardless of what others may have said or done, it was always his choice whether or not to act on their suggestions, and so in having no impact on what happened to this man in the end, the actions of those who gave him bad advice can bring no guilt to those who gave it. No harm, no foul, wouldn't you have to agree?
But we'd better not. Would one really want to argue that, for example, a parent who encourages delinquency in his children does no wrong, because later in life they'll be free to reject him as an influence? If you accept the above argument, then you'll be stuck with the one that follows, as a matter of direct logical implication. Imagine a society in which the concept of parental responsility has been wiped away. One need not work too hard, because one need only encounter the children of the projects, at one end of the socio-political scale, and some of the spoiled and neglected children of the very rich at the other, to see where such a change would lead - to the creation of a generation of sociopaths. Society could not endure the adoption of such a belief as part of the basis for its normative definition of morality.
"So you are saying that parents must take responsibility for the actions of their children". We would not agree with that, but rashly, some will say "yes". "So then, the parents of the parents must be responsible for the parents' actions, and so, again, one can not rightly fault parents for raising their children badly, and we can dispense with that special case you raised" will come the response. We would seem to be boxed into a corner - either parents are responsible for the actions of their children, or they are not. If they are not, then we have no grounds for criticising them for misguiding their children. If they are, then they escape responsibility for their own bad parenting by being able to pass the buck onto the grandparents of their own badly raised children, again leaving us with no basis for criticising them, rendering this second possibility self-contradictory. We would still seem to be haunted by the ghost of Marcus Aurelius, only with social conditioning now taking the place of the Fates, with no greater level of free will be attributed to Fate's helpless victims.
Surely, this must be a fallacy, but where is the error in the argument?
The most obvious flaw in the analysis is that our sophist has engaged in a pick and mix of his own by applying a Kantian-style, categorical imperative based critique to a rule utilitarian argument, shifting axiomatic systems in mid-argument. The need to make society a livable place can not compel us to support a policy that would lead to society's destruction; yet this is exactly what we are called on to do by this argument, in the name of consistency! At most, the argument reminds us of what the problem is with adopting a categorical imperative based approach to morality: what does one do when the rights of the innocent come into conflict with each other?
In real life, sometimes the best that one can do is to choose the least of the evils available to one, and building a system of ethics around a set of imperatives instead of around a set of priorities leaves us with no conceptual basis for doing so. Some will protest, saying that the rule utilitarian approach leaves one with no objective means for weighing those competing goods it speaks of, off against each other, aside from an appeal to tradition, which may itself be flawed. Our response to that would be "get over it". Real life is not obligated to make certain analysis a possibility, or indulge any of our other fantasies, either - such as that of the universal applicability of a simpleminded, two-valued logic.
"Either parents are responsible for the actions of their children or they are not" becomes the latest expression of the old undergraduate refrain "a statement either is true, or it is not". But reality is more nuanced, messier and harder to come to reliable, final conclusions about than undergrads are conditioned to want it to be, after four years of a high school experience in which all questions are answered before the bell rings. Such an assertion is nothing more than the attempt to make their own wishful thinking seem more profound than it is, through a show of bravado - an attempt that some never outgrow. Just because a question is expressed in a "yes" or "no" format is no basis for assuming that it can legitimately be considered a "yes or no" question. In that observation, we find the heart of the fallacy.
What does it mean to say that one is responsible for an unfortunate event, ie. that one is at fault? If something other than tyranny is involved in that judgment, we would have to say that it means that one has done something to cause the event, that one could realistically have been expected to forsee would have that consequence, or could otherwise have been reasonably been expect to know to be something that one ought not do. But we get into difficulties when we apply this standard to human behavior, because humans are free-willed, and so the connection between cause and effect is never a direct one, in the sense that one can say, "if we see this cause, then with certainty, we will see this effect". At best, even if one proceeds with perfect knowledge, one can say "if these actions are taken by these people, then the probability that some particular person will take this given action is at this level". "Are the parents responsible for the actions of their children can not be a "yes or no" question, because conditional probabilities aren't as simple as the argument wants them to be. One's actions can have a definite impact on the probability of a final outcome without turning the occurence of that outcome into a certainty or an impossibility - a truth that we've all affirmed our belief in, every time we've engaged in conversation.
What would it mean, were we to say that, given any particular proposed state of mind, that the utterance of our words have no impact of the probability that the other person's would enter that state - be it a change of opinion, should we persuade him or a change of mood, should we entertain him? To assert such a thing would be to say that we would not be listened to at all, that we would be talking to ourselves. And yet, is it not true that this conversation took more than a second? Presumably so. So if one were to assert the contary to this belief that we insist that all affirm their belief in through their actions, then we would be forced to conclude that the contrarian stating this knew that he achieved the certainty of failure or success in entertaining and/or persuading his companion in the first instants of conversation, and then wasted the companions time with talk that had no impact on him for the rest? Who would do this, and why? One's actions speak for themselves. However others might posture, the point is not in sincere controversy, and so may rightly be taken as an assumption from which the discussion proceeds, even in lieu of an open acknowledgement of assent.
(Such is the irony of the situation - in arguing against the hypothesis, one effectively asserts one's belief in its validity).
Why does this matter? Because once one takes due note that we are speaking of influence and not control when we speak of persuasion or of child rearing, we see that the impact each has on the probability of that events will turn out well or poorly in the growth of the individual is not an all or nothing affair. If we're not achieving any certainties of failure of success in personal development at each point in the person's growth, then a long series of people can each make a difference, including the person who is being acted upon, himself. There is nothing inconsistent, then, in being angry both with those who do wrong and those who helped him become the kind of person who would do wrong. Each has made his own contribution to the mess we are left with, and deserves to be credited with it.
Some might object that we have been speaking of children when the actions that concern us are those of grown men, but again they are lost in the illusions of a culture that thinks that all questions can be answered "yes" or "no". Has one entered adulthood? Some will say that either one has or one has not - and usually based on a calendar date on which this complete transformation is set to mysteriously occur. But the truth is that maturation is an ongoing process that never ends. Perhaps this is why we need the gods - they are as parents for us when our own parents have grown to old to give us the guidance we need. But it is certainly why we need the reality of a genuine, living community to be part of, and an essential part of what makes a community a community is the willingness of each to provide trustworthy and sincere guidance to one's neighbor, as needed - the spirit of a real community, as it takes on a life of its own, becoming as a parent to all.
Some while after the events described above, John would allegedly show up to a House of Netjer gathering armed, leading to his finally becoming persona non grata at their events. And some seemed surprised by this. John seemed to feel betrayed by this. In a way, I don't blame him. His actions, however bizarre, were little more than an expression of an illness that a number of the members of the House had helped feed for over a year.
The members were, reportedly, feeling a little anxious about Mr.Hagin's armed state. Judging by the reaction of the House's administration, this is an experience that Siuda et al. would have liked to have the members to avoid. Generally speaking, one would then say "and understandably so", but this raises an awkward theological point. Many of us, myself included, have gone off stumbling into bad experiences, but very few of us claim to have a direct pipeline to God, or any particular aspect of God. We've seen Siuda make just that claim - yet watch her get blindsided by events she, herself, put into motion, refusing to hear the warnings she received.
As one can see just by checking the archives, I had recognized John's psychosis long before that infamous day and, as Siuda herself has acknowledged on Usenet, urged that the House ask him to leave. Events have clearly showed that I was right, and saw something that Tammy Siuda did not. If this was just a matter of my seeing something that a fellow human being did not, this would be no great cause for comment. But, in effect, we're being asked to believe that the god Horus (Heru) himself did not see that. I can certainly outthink my fellow human beings reasonably often, but one of the gods? Impossible. It just couldn't happen. It would be like one of my goldfish outsmarting me. The notion is ludicrous.
Ms.Siuda is, once again, revealed to be a false prophet by this event. Very much not a cause for surprise was the fact that John quickly seemed to become an "un-person" on the House of Netjer webboards, with any discussion of him quickly stifled in the usual manner - one of the shemsu would go on a ranting jag about a thoroughly inoffensive post, and the management would use a professed sensitivity toward her concerns as an excuse to engage in censorship. You've already seen this over on the "Netjer and Geometry" thread. When John finally killed himself, as simple a subject as explaining why there was nothing hypocritical about praying for a fallen personal enemy (a memorial was being planned for John) was considered too "offensive" for the boards. Even in death, John was not to be remembered.
But should the House be allowed to forget? John was not a good man in life. Even if his delusions were made to be reality, measured against the insane world that would thus result, his actions would come up unjustified and wanting, and so his insanity did not wipe away his guilt. "And so his sufferings were his own doing and his own fault, and even if the House's membership encouraged him in his sickness, he chose to wallow in it himself, and so the blame for his end lies with himself, and none other; why be angry with those other people?", some might argue, following a line of argument much like the one refuted in the passage above. Others would say, "how can you blame this sick man for his sickness, when others did so much to feed it; how could you ever be angry at him?". To those who would put their faith in such a dichotomy, that this must either be Kheru's fault or the fault of others, but not one could have cause to be angry with both, let me pose a small riddle:
A man who has been lost in a desert (and is near death) comes upon a town, rich in food and drink. But at every door he comes to, those who dwell within capriciously refuse to share or even sell so much as a drop of water or a morsel of food. On finding a pond, he finds that the young men in the neighborhood forcibly restrain him from drinking from it. He goes from door to door seeking fruitlessly until his strength leaves him, and he dies. On whose hands should one look for the man's blood?
The answer is: upon the hands of each of the strangers he passed on that last day. Any single one of them could, with a small gesture, have averted the tragedy, and thus every single one of them bears the full responsibility. Responsibility is not a commodity like grain, to be given out in shares until it is all given away; each may have his fill of that bitter feast, without his neighbor being denied his own abudant portion.
John could have made choices in life which would have taken him to a better place than the one he ended up in; but equally true, the so-called friends he met along the way could have been a better influence, and had they been so, John might have been persuaded, in spite of himself, to move in a better direction. Instead, they chose to embrace the vicarious thrills of playing at being the friends of a dangerous man, and encourage him to go down that ultimately self-destructive path. Many, John himself included, had a chance to make a difference for the better, and wouldn't be bothered, either because they wanted somebody's money or maybe a cheap thrill. John's blood is on John's hands - and on the hands of the circle of false friends who surrounded him. For what this course of events ultimately did to John, and to the many people who his deteriorating mental and ethical status touched along the way down his path to death, one need not choose between being angry with the criminal or those who nurtured his criminal tendencies - one may rightly be angry at both.
What a shame that so few will be. Another broken life is swept under the carpet, to where it may easily be forgotten. Maybe that's why some of us write pages like this - because we know that nothing will ever change, until people start realizing that it's their duty to remember, and see to it that responsibility can't be eluded forever. Click here to return to the discussion of "pre-Ptolemaic electrification", or here to go somewhere else.
(1) My "actions" consisted of offering a counterargument to the absurd n that John and his friends were trying to advance, in this thread: the plausibility of pre-Ptolemaic harnessing of electricity.
(2) John, of course, was a guest as well, at the time of this article's initial writing (second week of June, 2001; it was revised in May of 2004). (A probationer is merely an outsider who is studying to become a member. But, what of it, either way?
What bearing would it have on this discussion? Where did John get the idea that a guest was obliged to be deferential to his host? This is an inversion of the most basic ideas of hospitality, to say nothing of the spirit of scholarship.
In case you've forgotten, this is supposed to be a forum for the discussion of history. John's complaint, aside from his near-psychotic rage over the fact that I don't believe that the goddess Sekhmet really told him to look through his girlfriend's e-mail, is that I contradicted some arguments that he and his friends advanced in this forum.
This is how scholarship is done. Those who can't deal with that reality need to find a new game to play.