i’ve a habit of drawing parallels between various sources. this one occurred to me tonight:

“Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things . . . ” She held up four big-knuckled fingers. “. . . the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing . . . ” She closed her fingers into a fist. “. . . without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!”

-Reverend Mother Helen Gaius Mohiam

“In order to write our personal mission statement, we must begin at the very center of our Circle of influence, that center comprised of our most basic paradigms, the lens through which we see the world.

It is here that we deal with our vision and our values. It is here that we use our endowment of self-awareness to examin our maps and, if we value correct principles, to make certain that our maps accurately describe the territory, that our paradigms are based on principles and reality. …

Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security [justice of the great], guidance [prayers of the righteous], wisdom [learning of the wise], and power [valor of the brave].”

-Stephen Covey

Former CIA agent Michael Sheuer announces on Glenn Beck that the only hope for America is for Osama bin Laden to successfully execute a mass casualty terrorist attack in the States:

“It’s an old, old trick of autocratic rule,” Idaho said. “Alia knows it well. Good subjects must feel guilty. The guilt begins as a feeling of failure. The good autocrat provides many opportunities for failure in the populace.”

-Duncan Idaho

Injustice breeds activisim by seeding shards of discontent, which people seek naturally to resolve, given the homeostatic, self-healing, nature of living systems. Tyrannical societies are ultimately defined by immune disorders (of which cancer is the best known) because unjust power is expanded within cultures by suppressing immune responses (in the same way that cancerous cells undergo explosive growth by breaking free of the mutual chemical signals that orient tissues within a body). Thus the Health Care Crisis is rooted in the unavoidable consequences of expanding tyranny. Likewise, the Health Care Solution is not primarily about cultivating wellness but managing discontent.

it’s Lyndon LaRouche… at least according to Lyndon LaRouche.

more on this tomorrow…

we’ve a show tuesday night:

written in reponse to this opinion piece in defense of torture, from last week’s local paper. an excerpt:

This current denunciation of supposed torture and torturers proceeds from believing that political capital and moral authority can be earned at a safe distance by berating people who put themselves in harm’s way on our behalf. To regard such actions as criminal requires asymmetrical morality, undefiled by any perception of danger to ourselves or others. Placating those who covet such a luxurious, dilemma-free morality forces us to ignore military and intelligence professionals who face shrewd, ruthless enemies in a conflict fraught with frightening uncertainties.

Terrorists never display the civility required by the Geneva Conventions. Terrorists are not insurgents or freedom fighters, and when they are captured, they certainly are not prisoners of war. These killers are not members of an organized resistance movement carrying arms openly, and they have no distinctive identifier. The Geneva Conventions describe terrorists as beyond the pale.

The framers of the Geneva Conventions were parents and grandparents of the Greatest Generation, and held powerful positions throughout the darkest times of our world. Their words synthesize brutal, durable morality, properly understood, from actions within the ultimate bloody deluges of the 20th century. The people writing the conventions intended to isolate terrorist forces, provide them minimal protections, and allow their destruction with any overwhelming furies needed to crush their abominations.

aside from the striking choices of language, note how the author first justifies torture as if it were a tactical choice made by “military and intelligence professionals,” whose actual opinion the author subsequently disregards in favor of his own sense of moral disconnect:

Rep. Peter DeFazio quoted to me 20 former Army interrogators saying that abuse and torture of prisoners and detainees should be avoided at all costs. I find that disturbing, because on Sept. 11, 2001, we were prepared to shoot down any civilian airliner that did not land immediately, regardless of its crew’s assertions.

There’s an incredible moral disconnect here: We were prepared to kill our own citizens on Sept. 11, but we were forbidden to subject terrorists to severe discomfort that might prevent extravagant murder and destruction. At what point in the application of chemical, biological and atomic weapons to our society must we protect the American people “at all costs”?

so, anyway, my reply:

Nolan Nelson’s justification of torture makes a powerful if unintentional case against the mentality that regards torture as a necessary response to terrifying unknowns. His relentlessly extreme language, bald assertions and poor logic all suggest a mind imbalanced by fear. However genuine this terror might be, decisions made from such a debilitated state are notoriously unjust and ineffective [i might have added, all episodes of 24 aside]. The challenges of the new century that Mr. Nelson fearfully evokes will not be solved by the primitive mindset his letter exhibits.

That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price on its goods.

-Thomas Paine

[As usual, the title of this post is only obliquely appropriate. This is another graduate from the comments - promoted as it builds on this blog's long-standing threads.]

Sylar does, we should note, submit to a form of constancy, as a watchmaker. but as it’s not an authentic role for him, he can’t actually blossom in it. or can he? there’s a key piece here that i’m forgettinig: has Sylar already killed someone prior to his being spied on by the Company? does Elle (is that her name?) provide him his first victim? i can’t recall how the story goes.

anyway, Sylar was willing to submit to that love, and thereby to integrate into society as watchmaker. except he’s betrayed (again) by those around him. he really is the show’s greatest victim. first there’s the damaging betrayal of his childhood. the child of an animal, in effect. then the betrayal of a mother who could not possibly understand him, but instead could only dream of using him to fulfill her own dreams of significance (a form of the hunger, there). then … oh, wait, i remember now: the next step in his evolution is his meeing Dr. Syringe (not really his name) with his science of specialness (hmmm… is he a stand-in for an indian guru, coming to America with tales of the Atman and corrupting the young?); then comes his murder of that guy the doc hooks him up with inadvertently. Is that right?

Anyway, he is betrayed, as well, by Elle, who might have (so he believed, anyway) eased all of his pains (returned him that is to a state of innocence, of salam) by virtue of her beauty.

submission into society, so the idea goes anyway, allows one to root one’s ‘god essence’ into the meta structure (the State, City, Civilization, however conceived). self-realization by submission [in the Islamic conception: submission (islam), understanding or belief (iman), and then realization or excellence (ishan)]. this is the ’shared myth’ on which society is founded. the State fails when the people no longer believe they can be realized through it. hence the purpose of propaganda is always to present society as a vehicle of individual realization. of manifesting individual and collective Providence. thus the great thought crime is to deny that the State in reality fulfills this function.

did you ever listen to this Joseph Campbell audio about the great Bronze Age Myth of civilization’s function? it contains a number of important ideas:

 

 Costumes of the Cosmos: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

one being that the function of society is to properly orient a person to eternity.

consequently, two, the individual could manifest super powers (the power of eternity, which is to defy natural law) so long as their submission was complete. hence in the story the agent of super power - the ability that is to transcend the flow of nature, to make the river run backwards - is a temple prostitute, as her submission to duty is perfect. similarly, Enkidu is decieved into civilization by a prostitute; and Mary Magdalene, wife of Jesus and Apostle to the Apostles, was a prostitue. And so too is Elle (if that’s her name) a sort of prostitue, who destroys Sylar’s innocence while innitiating him (if unwillingly… she, too, is a victim) into the role he is to play in the larger Design.

the slide from mysticism to tyranny is a short one. what i mean to say is that that basic idea of the divine function of a person being to submit to the Grand Design (to realize their true potency or power by submission) is the foundation on which the sacred state is justified.

that, as another aside, is the proper perspective for understanding the masonic character of America. the new secular state is ritually conceived as a sort of magical aparatus by means of which each person (through submission to it) might integrate their divine potential (the all seeing eye manifest from the material pyramid).

oh, shoot. i’ve diverged again. this will be sorted, eventually.

[this fragment of a recent comment gets at somewhere i've been meaning to head]

some years ago i was apprenticing with a particular counselor, whose name and nature i’ll withold. i had a deep ambivalance as regards the man, which was to some extent a function of my own lack of self-acceptance. from another perspective, though, that ambivalence was entirely well-founded. something was not right in the state of Denmark… which is to say, in his marriage of rhetoric and reality. so what’s to be done?

i ended up parting company. a reasonable choice. the problem was that i abandoned my calling in abandoning my flawed mentor. on the other hand, that abandonment has allowed me to develop in ways i otherwise wouldn’t have. there seems something necessary in it. now, the coming alive question comes down to this: reconciling the calling and the turning away from calling.

that’s what makes me come alive: those experiences in which an error reveals a gift. felix culpa. the moments of understanding the necessity of identity.

in Islam, this understanding is referred to as Iman; which is the second in the three part process: Islam (submission), Iman (faith) and ishan (excellence). i’ve always had a problem with that first part, submission. obviously, identity is fundamentally an act of submission to some form of constancy. this, incidentally, is what Sylar lacks, why he has the hunger, and why he is ‘cured’ by transmutation into Nathen Petrelli.