A Time-Honored Political Institution

February 27, 2008 at 11:24 pm · Filed under Marriage, Politics, Religion ·Tagged , , , ,

In recent weks I’ve seen alot of posts about the “Deline of marriage”, and the “breakop of marriages” and the drive to legalize gay and lesbian marriages, and a whole host of things about how bad it is in this country for marriages, and I have a few things to say about marriage that I think really ought to be considered before taking any side in these various debates.

First of all, we live in a country that sees itself as a bastion of freedom.  Now, I think that fact is critically important when regarding the subject of marriage.  Historically, marriage has been a purely political institution, all but unnecessary for the common people, and had been frequently been used as a form of low-impact slavery even up to the present day.  Throughout the third world, there still are girls basically sold off by their parents into arranged marriages, and the draconian laws on many books make it nearly impossible to escape from a life that has been imposed on young people–both men and women in some cases–for fear of being ostracized, persecuted, or worse.

In our own country, people often fare as bad, as, up until the 1960s and ’70s, teenagers who had sex outside of marriage were persecuted, and in some cases prosecuted for it.  Now we stand at a threshold where sex between consenting adults is acceptible, and a portion of our teenagers are sexually active in high and grade school, and we decry the failure of marriage and the breakdown of morals in our schools.  Why is this a problem?

Rest assured, there are alot fewer problems in the jungles of South America, where the native tribes don’t deal with political infrastructure or organized religion.  These are what really turn marriages into prisons to begin with.  As a political institution, marriage involves a unification of personal property, a legally binding contract, and in most cases, a religious recognition and vow.  It is a process of bringing together two lives under contract, and in no cases has any built-in guarantee (or, often any association at all) of love.

Love, you see, is the point of this pathetic story.  Marriage, as an institution, is no guarantee of love, and the fact is, marriage is not necessary in any way for love.  So, in effect, if two people truely want to be happy together, you can get rid of the “Institution” of marriage altogether, and this country will be perfectly fine.  We would eliminate the spectre of messy divorce, we could stop wasting millions on marriage counseling, and we could probably put those pretty white dresses to even more creative and fun purposes.

The point is that we don’t need marriage at all!  We don’t need to worry about teenage sex.  We need to worry about keeping people who are happy together safe from religious and political institutions who want to control them for political ends!  This is PRECISELY what happened during the 14-16th centuries when the church imposed harsh penalties (Burnings, beheaddings, hanging, torture) for extramarital sex, and forced couples to marry “Forever”–i.e., no divorce.  Back in those days, the peasants had it easy in that area–more wealthy families arranged marriages for political gain.  Anyone remember the marriage of Charles and Di?  Plenty of politics there.

In short, the political ramifications of marriage poison the concept of marriage, and that’s not something that the divorce rate or gay marriage have anything to do with.  If marriage is in trouble in this country, it is not because someone is having sex outside of marriage, or because someone wants to marry a gay lover.  It’s because we live in a free country, and we don’t have to live with your political poison anymore.

Long live the people!  Down with “political institutions!”

SASS has Spoken.

 – the SASS Man

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Holy Cats!

January 12, 2008 at 12:29 pm · Filed under Pets, Religion, blogging ·Tagged , , , ,

Yep–that’s the right title.  I just posted a response to a discussion on Comcast’s message forums.  It seems that a woman has discovered that her house has a ghost – of a CAT!  Well, that makes alot of sense to me, and here’s what I said about it:

All creatures have spirits.  In fact, most religions believe that all things–animate or otherwise–have spirits.  There are spirits in the rocks, the trees, rivers and streams, and even our automobiles take on human characteristics.

And, of course, the spirits themselves take on different characteristics.  After my cat Greystone died, I guess he moved up to a higher level, because we’ve maintained a dialogue that has gone on for almost five years since he passed away.

Now, I should explain a few things here, since Greystone was rather a special cat to begin with.  In the first place, Greystone understood human speech pretty well, and I had no problem making myself understood to him.  But Greystone wanted more, and between 1987 and 1993 or so, he actually taught me to SPEAK CAT.  That’s right–I learned to perfectly mimic nearly all of the feline vocalizations, and even learned what they mean…TO A CAT.  Cats, you see, are not just hungry purring furballs meant for giving love to humans.  In fact, their evolution has not even revolved around humans except for the last 3,000 years or so (out of some 1.6 million years of evolution). 

What I’ve learned is, Cats have a rather sophisticated society of their own.  Greystone was a king–he ruled an area covering about 4 1/2 city blocks, and had his choice of females, prey, and food.  And, cats are political.  I’ve seen feline politics in action in many occasions, and was even called upon once to help resolve a dispute between two other cats!   (Unfortunately, I came back with the scratches to prove it–their form of justice is delivered by fang and claw, as you can immagine.)  But, the two toms got along marvelously after that. 

And then, Greystone’s wife moved in with us for a while.  Tht was the first time I ever saw a cat go steady–she had two litters of kittens before I took Greystone to the vet.  I couldn’t bear to have him altered in a way that would affect his personality, his authority, his politics, so I paid a little extra for a vasectomy.  It probably shortened his life, but I think it was worth it.  Greystone gave me 14 wonderful years of his life before he died, and a great deal of wisdom along the way.

And then he took on a new life altogether.  It was no pitter-patter of feet, and a strange depression on the pillow I felt.  Greystone spoke to me in the recesses of my mind in clear English words, in a deep, resonate, baritone voice worthy of any true king.  He now calls himself “John Tiberious Greystone,” and he’s adopted a tagline, invented by me, btw:  “The Legend of Greystone.”

Well, that legend continues.  Not content as a haunting, Greystone now accompanies me like a guardian angel, always present and able to converse with me.  He’s there at my mental fingertips along with God, my personal angel guardian (Whom I’ve known since I was a child) and the “spirit” of my car, who often jokes about my driving.

Maybe I’m mildly delusional, one would say.  But I’ve always been able to tell the difference between that which is real, and that wich is imaginary.  And while none of these voices are material, I can sense that they are real–fabrications of outside intelligences, and not the product of my own vivid imagination.  For, when I imagine something, as I must do to invent stories or play a Role-playing Game, the voices in my head, whatever timbre, gender, or language, are ME.  When John Tiberious Greystone speaks, it is my cat.  And only my cat.  And when God speaks…well, you get the idea.

There are non-physical entities all round us, and there always have been, and there always will.  And if one or more of those entities is, or once was the soul of a person or a favored pet, this is nothing unusual.  The Christian bible states somewhere that God knew each of us before we were a twinkling in our mothers’ eyes.  If that’s true, then there’s no reason He can’t know us–and we know each other–after our physical point of presence in this world has been shed and is no longer necessary for us.

A cat ghost?  Of course!  For all creatures, and indeed all things of this Earth have spirits.  They live with us, and they live forever.  So shall we all.

Amen.

SASS has Spoken.

– the SASS Man

And it’s all true.  Animals are sentient, and some have enough of it to do remarkable things.  Even act as our advisors after death.

SASS has spoken.

Seeya!

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Wow, I Hit the Big Time!

December 13, 2007 at 5:17 pm · Filed under You-Tube, blogging, words

I just hit the top page of GOOGLE!  I did it with a search for “Eva Cassidy Fact Fable“–which, incidently, was my way of trying to find a video that my employer, Fact & Fable Productions, made as a tribute to Eva Cassidy, using their autumn footage and Eva’s song “Autumn Leaves.”  I put the song up on YouTube, and it has since begun to circumnavigate the virtual globe.

I embedded that YouTube video of “Autumn Leaves” in one of my posts, and Google picked it up.  Now, here’s the interresting part: there are multiple places where a person could find “Autumn Leaves”.  (Our version … done by Fact & Fable Productions, I mean).  Fact & Fable Productions is one of them, in fact … we put up a post on the Fact & Fable News Blog with the same information.  However, it was this very blog that Google caught, and presented to you at the top of the search engine listing.

Now … I doubt I’m considered a popular blog.  In fact, Fact & Fable Productions has a page rank of 2, and my measly little blog doesn’t even rate on Google’s bandwidth yet.  And still it was my copy, my embedded version of Autumn Leaves that Google presented to the world when I searched for it.  Not the F&F News Blog … not even the video on YouTube itself!  Me.

I feel so honored!  Thank you, Google!

SASS has Spoken.

p.s., Incidently, I’ve revisited this post, and my page still turns up at the second entry for the search.  However, now the YouTube page for it is at number one.  That makes alittle more sense now.  I still feel honored to be among such company.

 SASS has Spoken.  Again.

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The Great “Star Wars vs. Star Trek” Debate

December 13, 2007 at 5:02 pm · Filed under Star Trek, Star Wars, You-Tube

I saw a video on YouTube today, showing an immagined confrontation between a Star Wars battle fleet, and the Starship Enterprise.  It’s called, simply, “Star Trek vs. Star Wars”, and I’ve embedded it here:

 

This seems like a pretty realistic comparison of the relative power levels between Star Wars technology and Star Trek.  Although a Super Star Destroyer is hundreds of times larger than the Enterprise, Star Wars is a Fusion-reactor level technology, whereas Star Trek is Matter-Antimatter.

Also, except for Hyperspace (where, incidentally, Star Wars ships fly essentially blind) and The Force, everything in Star Wars is limited to the speed of light, including that Megalaser.  However, Star trek’s sensors and comm operate at Subspace speeds, and the Enterprise can easily detect, evade, and/or outrun any laser- or particle-based weapon.

Still, with the ammount of power generated by that moon-sized fusion reactor, it was wise for the Enterprise to get outta dodge–even Star Trek shields couldn’t have taken that massive charge!

So … believable or not–and I think both series rely quite alot on our ability to suspend our disbelief–I think this little battle between good and evil makes sense.

Which brings me to another old Star Wars memory of mine, from back in the days when I played the Star Wars Role-playing game.  That was the original D-6 version originally published by West End Games.  I had a young Jedi-wannabe by the name of Marlin Lazon.  Back in the day, Biggs, Luke, and I were the Begger’s Canyon Trio.  We used to compete to see who was the hottest, fastest, CRAZIEST pilot on Tatoine!–at least, until Biggs left for the academy.   You know that reunion with Biggs and Luke in the movie?   That happend about half an hour before I got there and we celebrated old times with a little tete-a-tete.

Well, things change fast in the Star Wars Extended Universe.  While Luke’s family was purchasing a pair of used droids, me and the guys who would become my adventuring group came across information that the Empire was about to waylay Admiral Antillies and his diplomatic mission to Alderaan.  (We had no idea about any Death Star … that was Luke’s part of history.)  However, we quickly set out for Mos Eisley to smuggle the information to a place called Yavin, which our freighter contact told us could best make use of the information.

Walking into the Mos Eisley Cantina, the aforementioned freighter captain came face-to-blaster-barrel with a small-time bounty hunter named Gredo.  “Going somewhere, captain?” our gamemaster intoned, in a PERFECT imitation of the Star Wars character’s tone and inflection.  Complaining that he didn’t have the money, our captain suggested that he was only a small-time smuggler, and suggested Gredo might go after “one of the big guys?  Like Solo?”  Just then, into the bar walked Han Solo himself.  Gredo smiled, pulling the blaster out of the freighter captain’s face.  “Excuse me,” he said–also in the Star Wars “Gredo-talk”–and marched to his place in the cannon of Star Wars history.

Now, we all know the “story” of the confrontation between Gredo and Han (Yes, HAN FIRED FIRST!  In an era of charged-energy weapons, he would have been STUPID to let that bounty hunter live long enough to squeze the trigger first!)  And I’ll never forget the reunion of the Beggers’ Canyon Three–the last time I saw my friend Biggs alive.  Too bad I couldn’t have flown in Luke’s squadron; I’ll always wonder if Biggs would have survived.  But then, I was a Y-wing pilot, and flying in a different squadron–one of the squadrons George Lucas added for the Special Edition version.  In fact, you can actually hear my character in one of the Death Star scenes!  I swear, I spoke some of those exact phrases in the battle, years before the Special Edition film was made!  It was simply uncanny!  But what really holds this memory firmly in my mind, and what my fellow gamer will live with for the rest of the Extended Universe, is that it was his character that ultimately got poor Gredo killed.

We would go on to influence things in the background.  I and my collegues defeated a team of would-be sith, and destroyed an early version of the Sun-Crusher.  I found I could almost pass for a dark-sider, with my black-hulled astromech, simply by sitting in a scene and saying nothing … until I spoke softly and emotionlessly, “Shall I prepare your shuttle .. master?”  Even the “Sith-dudes” got chills!  Plus, I eventually started a collection of battle droids.  I discovered that R4 had enough internal memory to control about a dozen of those otherwise mindless blasters-with-feet, and could provide a good cover screen for a group of advancing Jedi and their supporters.

And, unlike Darth Maul or Anakin Skywalker, I didn’t fight with multiple ’saber blades.  I found an oversized energy crystal, and I built a massive two-handed saber with a blade that could extend from two meters to over three meters long!  The blade was ten centimeters across!  This was before the Wizards of the Coast D-20 version of the game that offered rules for that kind of thing!

Ah, the memories.  Sadly, that gaming group disbanded, and when I again joined a group that played Star Wars, it was the D-20 game, with a greatly reduced Force Powers system, and set nearly 20 years after the original trilogy.  I’m playing Marlin Lazon, Jr., the son of my original concept, and Gaath Dauk, a man who wants to rebuild the ancient Sith tradition, but without being rivals to the Jedi.  (Actually, Gaath’s signature phrase is, “Be GRATEFUL I am on your side!” to his two Jedi collegues.  “The only problem with the Jedi council is, they don’y even have a SITH!”)

It’s too bad, too.  We were already on our way to Bespin following a lead on information that the empire might be building another Death Star.  Had the original gaming group survived, you might have seen my character stalking through the Ewok Forest with Luke and Han in the Special Edition remake!  HONEST!  I really believe George Lucas had a spy monitoring our gaming group for ideas for his Star Wars remakes–after all, he DID put me in the battle of Yavin IV!

SASS has Spoken.

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Moral Objectivism – A Realistic Nightmare

November 15, 2007 at 11:07 am · Filed under Philosophy, Religion

I came across a piece of information today that struck my philosophical side. It’s a Wikipedia entry on “Moral Objectivism.” And it started me thinking.

I follow a religion that is filled with absolutes. I consider myself a Christian–at least, that is the way I was raised. In the Christian Bible, there are ten simple rules which are ABSOLUTE. These, of course, are the “Ten Commandments.” Now, it’s interesting to point out that these laws were given to the Jews as Absolute Commandments … rules which were to be obeyed at all times and in every way throughout a human being’s lifetime. If any one of these rules is broken–EVER–from the time a person’s born until that person dies, his or her eternal spirit is condemned to spend eternity suffering in a place of horrible torment. These laws are absolutely given, absolutely enforced … and absolutely impossible to obey every day for the entirety of a human life! In other words, for the believer in Jesus Christ, “Moral Objectivism” literally means “If you’re born, you are damned to eternity in hellfire” and there’s just no way out of it–at least, not unless you become a Christian and get “Saved” from the flames, etc…. This was my original exposure to “Moral Objectivism.”

Which is part of the reason so many people choose to REJECT Moral Objectivism entirely. The bottom line seems to be, that if, in fact, there are truly any absolutes in Moral reasoning, then the practitioners of some one religion is going to go to some form of Paradise, and everyone else is going to burn. Now, this could be Christianity; or it could be Hinduism, or Paganism, or Buddhism, or Zen, or Mormonism, of the Moonies, or Opus Dei, or even the “First Preslyterian Church of Elvis the Divine” for all we know! And, in fact, this line of reasoning has lead to quite a few wars; even today, there are nut cases who strap on bombs and grenades in order to break my aforementioned Commandments in subservience to a twisted form of somebody else’s Moral Absolutism.

BULLSHIT! There CANNOT be more than one “ABSOLUTE” Right-and-Wrong. If, in fact, there are any absolutes at all, say the Moral Relativists, then there can only be ONE set of “Right-and-Wrong” for EVERYBODY–EVERYWHERE. And there obviously isn’t. (They say.)

What a pickle.

On one hand, we seem to know “just by instinct” that some things are Wrong. And yet, the next thing we know, there’s some [insert your own demeaning slang here] person doing Exactly what we instinctively Know is wrong. How can They know right from wrong, when they don’t even know that [insert your own taboo here] is wrong! (Add lots of exclamations for emphasis….)

Well, I’ll try to explain it all. The truth just got a whole lot more complicated. Point of fact, none of us truly know right from wrong to begin with. And if we did, we’d probably find out to our horror that every damn one of us is WRONG!!! If you happen to follow the Christian doctrine, like I do, you’ll quickly find out that no matter what you think, you’ve already done it wrong, and it’s a serious enough mistake that no other consideration matters. Absolute truth means absolute damnation, and it makes no difference whether I try to be morally wright or turn to the foulest of evil. Damned is damned, end of argument.

Christanity is not alone in this “Bang! You’re damned” approach to winning converts, either. I think most other religions have some similar set of “Absolute” truths that can only be relieved by serving the tenants of the faith obediently until salvation, release, or some sort of “Nirvana” is achieved.

So as human beings, we find ourselves left in a world in which there are indeed “Absolute” right and moral actions; we just can’t achieve them. That forces those who wish to embrace the ideals of all people to reject absolute truths by the very principle of it. Because unless group “A” believes in the same standards of right and wrong as group “B”, we cannot entertain Moral Objectivism without condemning the other group. I disagree. I say you CAN embrace the other group if you are willing to accept that it is your own beliefs that fall outside the “absolute right.” As a Christian, I am well aware how hard it is not to do or say anything that my God told me not to do or say. I CAN’T. But, I CAN try to love my fellow person. I can do that. And I won’t try to reject the idea that some things are just “Right” whether I think they should ought to be or not. We are still responsible for the consequences of our actions, objective, relative or otherwise.

I not only throw out the baby with the bathwater in this case, I throw out the entire concept of this acid wash reasoning. “Morals” can, are, and must be the domain of individual and personal responsibility. Because we are a race of “Sinners” as it were, we have no foundation to hold others accountable for what we ourselves deem to be “Moral”. Collectively, and individually, we are immoral beings, that’s just all there is to it. “For ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God” reads a passage in the Christan Bible. Each and every one has sinned, will sin, and our perceptions and morals are twisted by sin for as long as we continue to be human. “Morals” must never be used as a criteria to judge a Human being. The Christian God has already done that … and every last one of us born of human fathers has failed that test forever.

The conflict is absolute. Morals cannot be objectively judged by human beings. What’s more, the idea of morals must never be fully rejected by a human being! We NEED our morals to help guide us to do what is (mostly) right to one another! But for objective, multi-cultural and cross-class relationships, we must use other means to judge the goodness or badness of individual actions. Absolute wrong is absolutely useless. My morals can never be yours or anyone else’s to judge.

And with that, I wash my hands of “Moral Objectivism” versus “Moral Relativism.” These ethics cannot function in a polytheistic or multinational environment. We have reached a threshold in which we must choose an alternative means for building the standards of our society. Moral anything will no longer cut it.

SASS has spoken.

Good night.

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Sunday, and a Terrible Premonition

November 2, 2007 at 9:45 am · Filed under Rock & Roll, You-Tube ·Tagged , , , , , ,

I was listening to music today.  One of my favorite songs happens to be U2’s “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”, and it played.  But I’ve never really gotten into the story behind the song–how it came to be.  So I checked it out on Wikipedia.  Here is the Wikipedia article I read … it originally refers to two incidents in Northern Ireland, one in 1972, and another in 1920, both called “Bloody Sunday,” in which people were killed in clashes with British authorities over the status of Irish Autonomy.  The song tries link the sacrifices of these people to the death and resurrection of Jesus, which also took place on a Sunday.

But it was a specific version of the song that really caught my attention … and that Wikipedia article sealed the deal:  their song, written in the early 1980s, was bizarrely apocalyptic, a pseudo-prophetic riff that would explode right under the hands of Bono on a Sunday very much like those others … on November 8, 1987.  U2 was scheduled to play at Red Rocks in Denver, Colorado.  Back in Ireland, it was “Remembrance Day.”  In both places, it is a day Rock & Roll will never forget.

The foundation for the Remembrance Day Bombing lay in part of the factionalization of the IRA and other Irish revolutionary forces.    One such faction, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, a left-wing faction of the IRA, had intended the bombing as an apparent protest against the British government using Irish nationals as cannon fodder during war.  The bombing not only backfired, but it so marginalized the IRA even in the eyes of the Irish, that the “revolution” fizzled over the next few years to virtually nothing, and the rish have mostly enjoyed a lasting peace for many years.

But in November, 1987, all Bono knew was, the song that he’d been singing for half a decade was now front page news.  “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” was today, and he had a concert appearance that night.  Opening up before a massive crowd at Denver, Colorado’s “Red Rocks” ampitheatre, Bono introduced his and the Edge’s famous piece:

“Well here we are, the Irish in America
The Irish have been coming to america for years
Going back to the great famaine,
When the Irish were on the run from starvation
And a British government that couldn’t care less

Right up to today you know,
There are more Irish inmmigrants here in America today than ever
Some illegal, some legel
A lot of them are just running from, high unemployment

Some run from the troubles in Northern Ireland
From the hatred of the h-blocks, and torture
Others from wild acts of terrorism
Like we had today in a town called Inniskillin
Where 11 people lie dead many more injured
On a sunday bloody sunday…”

And then he went into the most powerful rendition of Sunday, Bloody Sunday ever recorded, a song that made it onto the Rattle And Hum album and CD, and has become a mainstay of classic rock on the airwaves ever since.  Who can forget Bono’s powerful, pleading, almost agonized scream of “Fuck the revolution!” or the cheer that arose from the crowd that gathered to hear that very song.  Fuck the revolution indeed.  These events were so powerful, and the performance so stunning, that Bono couldn’t bear to play the song again, and it would be another ten years before it began to reappeasr in their live performances.

Until I read that article in Wikipedia, I knew none of this.  I knew I had the lyrics from the Denver performance – I’d tucked these away in the Lyrics3 tag of my copy of the song, complete with the opening passage, which does not appear on the Rattle And Hum audio CD.  But I never knew how that the song had become so dramatically real, so spectacularly NOW for these people–until today.  Today, I listened to the song again, from a new perspective … and I wept.

And then I went looking for the video.  It’s not too hard to find–from Google I made my way to a link to the file using BitTorrent, and I started to download the DVD of Rattle And Hum–all 4.3 GB of it–but that wasn’t what I wanted.  I just wanted that 1987 performance of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.”  But after a bit of searching, I found it on YouTube; and I embedded it here: 

 

In fact, after  little tweaking and digging throu my cache, I snatched it from YouTube, and tucked it away forever with the rest of my ill-begotten pirate gains.  (I won’t tell you how I did that, though, because, first of all, I support YouTube, and second, it’s illegal, wrong, and a pretty dirty thing to do when I can just embed the YouTube player right here, neh?  But if you know how to poke around in your browser’s temporary file storage, you probably don’t need me to help you steal streamed video content anyway.)

And now, I’ve watched and listened to “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” more than a dozen times.  I’ve cried out with Bono when he screams “Fuck the revolution”; I’ve nodded in agreement when he says “Where’s the glory in” killing and injuring innocent people who’s only crime was to commemerate their participation in two world wars, and the sacrifices of their people.  And I have reaffirmed my own stance that there are good, valid reasons to fight–and there are plenty of reasons to fight and kill that are neither good nor valid.

When British oppression leads to harship and suffering, as it did in Ireland in the 1920s, anbd again in 1972, and also as it did on our own shores in the events leading up to July 4, 1776, fighting is probably good if it ends the oppression and the suffering.  But when violence begets only more suffering and death, whether from terrorism, poor coordination and planning, or just a false sense of what’s right and valid, then that violence is invalid and wrong.

In short, I’m talking here about the opression of the Palestinians by Israel, the war in Iraq, and the violence in Northern Ireland.  Next to nothing has come from the violence, and in each case, great strides have been achieved through negotiation and good faith cooperation.  As Bono sang, “No more – No more – Wipe your tears away.”  This violence has got to end.  Sunday, Bloody Sunday should ALWAYS be a memory–not some horrific pseudo-premonition, as this song ultimately became, under the tutelage of Edge, Bono, and the men of U2.  “Wipe your bloodshot eyes”–it’s time to end this.

SASS has Spoken.

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