Philosophicalisms

Six Decades Later
When I was much younger and despite the best efforts of my parents, I figured out that humans like dogs because their social structures are similar. The hierarchical structure of wolf society and the human society are predicated on privilege, place and submission. What the human pack wants, the human pack will kill to get.
     In the process of learning this I also found that there is no divine hand administering justice, love and solace throughout the universe. I realized that there was no god of love allowing bullies to roam free. There was no god of justice that allowed for hatred and fear.
     And I learned that money was, actually, pretty much another leaf on a tree in the forest of human and wolf societies.
     So, although I was alive and stoned in the 60s, I had no hopes of changing the world for the better, especially after the assassinations and the stupidity of the Vietnam war — which was then sometimes called a "conflict."
     I didn't see a conflict. I saw mob rule, meanness and villainy and a casual disregard for everything that we might, at one time, have believed. Such a vision continues to this day, which makes life interesting for those around me.
     I expect nothing. Nothing is, after all, the only permanency in the universe. Nothing makes a difference. Nothing will change things and nothing lasts forever. Between that and the fact that Descartes and Marx were absolutely wrong, I've spent the past sixty years of breathing observing primates and waiting for the big rock from outer space. That or a germ.
     Descartes was wrong because nothing comes from the mind that doesn't come from the brain and Marx was wrong because the opium of the masses is not religion. The opium of the masses is the internal combustion engine.

Years Ago at Sea
I spent three years, six months & 26 days in the United States Navy. That was the regular navy. A few years after I'd finished my enlistment & was married with a child, I signed up for two years of the reserves. I stood with that for two years and a couple months. Then I got a real job and, since I was what's called non obligor, meaning that I didn't have to put any time in, I resigned & went my merry way.
     Up until the time that I got out of the USN in 1972 (which was the first time I "got out") my father & I had a very pesky relationship. I didn't get on well with his military-style of commanding my life. From that I was not quite in love with the military life when I joined the USN in 1968. It took me over four years to figure out that, as social systems go, the Navy's way of doing things was probably the most all-encompassing & totally rational ways of setting up a system for the preservation of social order & human life.
     No, it ain't perfect.
     It's the Navy, for cryin' out loud.
     But when I got out in '72, my father had a completely different demeanor with me. He was more a barracks pal than the authoritarian figure of leadership & propriety that he'd been in my youth.
     Dad died ten years later.
     Over the twenty-five years since my father died and the twenty-two since my mother died, I've had a lot of time as an orphan, which gave me a lot of time to remember just what it had been like to be raised in that company, by those parents. The strangest things will get me thinking about them and how my life replicates theirs in many ways and diverges from theirs in others.
     I'll be mowing the lawn and I'll remember every time that Dad came storming out of the house to measure the grass, so I'd know that it was done right, goddammit.
     I'll be fixing dinner and remember how Mom really did eat like a bird. She truly had no interest in food. It was something she'd had to do in the kitchen for her brothers and father, working on the farm. Beans came from a can. Potatoes came from a can. Meat came in plastic wrapping, or earlier maybe paper. But it was just food. Nothin' special.
     I'll find myself thinking about my sons & how my parents would have been proud of them, enjoyed their company and conversation, had my parents both lived long enough and had been at that age in decent enough health to participate in their worlds.
     All the way, along the way, from that last salute when I stepped from the USS Saratoga into civilian life until this very day at this keyboard, I've had a huge amount of time to consider who I was and when I was whoever I was back when. Every moment just the same for me as it was for my parents, because they were thinking, contemplative people, has been filled with musings and meditations on what it means to be alive, a human being, on this green planet of the clocks. I've been blessed by that.
     It's really all I'll ever get, this sense of awareness and this devotion to thought & mind and how the old body wears down and the brain tries to keep going, until at last, there's nothing more to be done and nothing more to be said and nothing left to do.

Why People Get Grumpy
It is the nature of human consciousness to record every single thing that happens in front of us. If we spend out lives living with sociopaths, we will remember how to be sociopathic when the need arises. If we happen to notice that the world is a helluvalot meaner in our age than it was in our childhood, we will have more to complain about in the nursing home. If we shut down our brains when we reach the end of high school, we will be unable to understand how the world has become a helluvalot meaner in our age than it was in our youth of blissful ignorance.
     It is for this reason that most folks, upon reaching whatever they think is the appropriate age, turn to complaining about every goddamn thing that seems to insult their intelligence or sense of fair play.
     Never mind that most folks, upon deciding when the appropriate age has arrived, generally don't have much need for intelligence or fair play. It's the goddamn way things are and the world's going to hell in a zirconium encrusted handbag so get over it.
     Now, for people like me, folks who already knew when they were kids that the future was not going to be like in the movies, the world is the same today as it was the day we took our first breath. The only thing that's changed is the mass of humanity. As in: the number of people on this planet.
     When I was born in 1946 there were just about three billion humans on this planet. Three billion squawling voices and grasping hands. Three billion assholes squirtin' out shit. Three billion of us.
     Today there are close to seven billion of us.
     In the past 60 years we have more than doubled the number of humans on the planet.
     This is a problem.
     Back in the 1870s, when there were two billion humans, the number of sociopaths was small. Those who were sociopathic tended to get noticed easy and where generally removed from the population by such conveniences as the noose, large caliber bullets and hands tightened around necks. And cast-iron skillets.
     As the population has increased, the number of sociopaths has risen accordingly. Actually, since there are more people to keep track of, more people spend more time looking out for themselves and have little time left over to look for sociopaths. But since sociopaths are good at their job, they can fool a fair number of folks into believing that they're just straight citizens and not the sociopaths that they really are. Thus, with most folks either too busy or confused by the sociopaths, sociopaths have a hey-day. Which means that the number of sociopaths increases, despite our best efforts to weed them out. In the end, there are too many people to notice how many sociopaths there are and thus the sociopaths continue to breed, which increases the number of sociopaths even further.
     In the end, the world will be in the hands of sociopaths and normal straight citizens like you and me will be terminally screwed.
     And that, that is what makes people get grumpy when they get old. This works great for them but for me it's been a way of life for over 60 years and I'm damn proud to say that I've never once been disappointed. I have been surprised but I have never been disappointed by the growth and survival of sociopathic human shits.
     Which means that the sociopaths have queered the game and will soon begin weeding out the straight citizens, which will lead to a world of humans, each and every one of whom will be terminally screwed.
     Now do you understand why people get grumpy when they get older? Well, do you? I sure do. And I've been this way for 60 years and some.

Nothing Lasts Forever
One of the joys of human existence is change. The Hindus figured this out millennia ago and came up with the rubric that the only constant in the universe was the tendency of even the most constant things to change. Gold is money, sure, but it ain't the money today that it was when Grandpa got that watch for his 83rd birthday. Sure, the tides in the oceans seem secure. Too bad all the hydrogen on the planet is being whisked away into space by the solar wind as it crosses the poles. This means that a day will come when the sun's outer surface will be within a few miles of the earth's scorched, baren & waterless surface. Soon enough the sun itself will collapse upon itself & explode outward in rebound. At that moment, nothing that has ever happened or that has ever been done by us or any other form of life on this planet will mean anything.
     The bones of dinosaurs will be turned to powder. The columns of the Acropolis and the idols in the temple at Madurai will be just dust in the wind of a solar cataclysm. The novels, the poems, the paintings, the words and conversations, the conversions and sermons, the school desks of my childhood and the sweat of my grandfather's brow will cease, totally, to have any purpose.
     It will be the end of the solar system, or what might be left of it by then. None of us will ever be able to appreciate the power or the solemnity of that moment, for we will be reduced to a powder ourselves, atoms and molecules cast out into the eternal void in much the same way that a pigeon poops on a street or a rain drop falls on a flood. No Jesus will return. No Mahdi will return. No Krishna, no Buddha, nobody and nothing will show up special for the event. In the end everything will be nothing more than what it is: stuff in the middle of nowhere for no purpose and no reason. Nothing will stop. Nothing will continue. It will just be a space, a nothing, and it's nonexistence will be its existence. Nothing will last forever.

In the End
It is the nature of human consciousness to assign significance and meaning to stuff. That's why we have language and it is by language that we design & propagate culture. From that we build a world of relationships between significant objects and our internal reality. With all of that we think we can do anything.
     Like our gods we think we are singularly important and powerful.
     Then we die.
     Those left behind make up stories about the dead having "gone to a better place" or having "gone to be with the Lord" or "gone to a place without pain."
     Those left behind imagine that we have passed from this world into another, that our personhood has left this physical world and gone into another world. They say that our "spirit," some homunculus that has been the power of our presence during our lives has moved to a metaphysical world, where those left behind imagine we will meet again and live eternal lives of reward. Or some strange punishment, usually for things that are so petty that the idea of a divine hand punishing me for a lie or a moment of indiscretion with a belly dancer is plainly idiotic.
     What really happens is something else.
     When we die our heart stops and our bodily functions reduce to zero. No air enters our lungs and, with no blood flowing, the brain turns into a pile of organic jelly. Every activity of the brain ceases. We cease to be. We are dead. No thought permeates the void of death, no spirit departs the body. We are reduced to pile of organic molecules which begin to decompose and realign themselves chemically. Quick enough we are stiff and soon enough after that we begin to smell bad. Left to our own devices — if being dead still imbues any sense of a person — we soon enough turn into skeletal remains, which over time will eventually turn into dust or fossilized sediments.
     That's it.
     That's what makes life interesting. We have such a marvelous opportunity to explore and feel and communicate. Over time we discover just how great that opportunity is, but by then most of us have no time left or have no energy left to undo all the stupid things we do early in life and turn them into good things for what's left of our lives. Between that and the sure knowledge that there ain't nothin' but nothin' lasting forever, some folks become bitter and cynical.
     Me? I've been pretty bitter and cynical all my life. In some ways it's a perfect gambit: I'm never disappointed and sometimes I'm surprised. I don't look forward to death but I figure that it's an inevitable terminus. I agree with Dr. Stephen J. Gould that "life is a terminal illness." And I agree with Dr. Oliver Sachs' opinion that "nothing comes from the mind that doesn't come from the brain."
     We are organic entities. We will all die, just as this planet will cease to be somewhere in the next 500 million years, if not sooner. That's the way it is.
     Nothing lasts forever. It's the only thing that can.