Unraveling the Gordian knot

Alexander the Great faced an impossible situation, one that scholars, philosophers and soldiers had failed to solve, how to untie the Gordian knot. This intricate knot turned in and about on itself that it seemed to have no beginning and no end. Faced with the need to solve the puzzle of the knot, Alexander took out his sword and sliced through the knot. He, should you pardon the pun, cut through to the heart of the matter.

It has been proposed that the situation with the war in Afghanistan is another Gordian knot: an intractable problem that needs a bold solution that will cut to the heart of the matter. Should we continue to send men and resources and money to fight in Afghanistan or should we pull out? What is the modern equivalent to Alexander's sword and the Gordian knot?

In a recent discussion I asked if a nuclear bomb was the modern version of Alexander's sword to answer the intractable problem of Afghanistan and was immediately set upon by people claiming I was inciting hatred and being casual about the millions of lives that would be lost in a nuclear attack on Afghanistan, and all from a simple question. Are nukes the modern equivalent of Alexander's sword?

Despite claiming the only answer is peace and because I am an American I prefer war to peace, these peace loving people attempted to school me on what Europe wants. I asked a simple question. I did not mean that I seriously believe that dropping nukes on Afghanistan is the answer or that we should even be there in the first place. I asked a simple question.

I was told I needed to find out what a Gordian knot really is and read Aristotle before I responded further to one Brit. She assumed that I was uneducated and ignorant of history and philosophy. She said Europe was tired of war and wanted only to deal with the economic war on their doorstep.

One Canadian claimed I was inciting hatred by my question and that I shouldn't joke about such things. My question was not a joke. I said that I was not serious about dropping nukes on Afghanistan and from that he decided I meant the question as a joke. It was no joke.

Civilization and teaching children peace is the answer to violence in the world. That is a simplistic answer to a very thorny problem. Civilization breeds war. When everyone was fighting to survive, there were no wars. There were skirmishes between groups and some groups attacked groups where there was more food in a time of famine, or to capture members of the other tribe to be used as food, but there were no wars. That took civilization. The skirmishes over food and territory were not wars any more than squabbles between groups of primates over food, mates and territory are wars. With civilization comes war.

People living together for comfort and safety, working the land, building homes, and buying and selling is the oil-soaked tinder that ignites the need for war. Prosperity takes work and the greater the prosperity the more work there is to do. One person, or a small group of people, like a family, are not enough hands. Slaves are needed. Getting slaves means war.

Running out of salt or gold or resources? Your neighbor has all those things or will at least provide a source of slavers, so it's time to go to war. It's the have nots against the haves. People seem to miss that small distinction.

Warring armies sweep across the countryside, annexing land, taking slaves and killing anyone who gets in the way, especially peaceful people who will not fight and who believe that talking and offering a peaceful solution will cool the hot blood of a man soaked in gore and covered with scars. A soldier has no time for peace. He's used to killing to get what he wants, and a peace-loving person or group of people makes his job a lot easier.

It's like a schoolyard bully. He preys on the weak and the peaceful and avoids the ones who could easily kick his ass. People may want peace, but they must also be willing to embrace violence to obtain and maintain peace. That's something else peace-loving people don't get. It is the army and force and the willingness to do violence that buys their peace.

Everything has a price. The price of peace is violence.

There have been too many writers and philosophers who have examined this question for it not to be widely understood. Watch Serenity, The Enemy Within from Star Trek or read any number of books, beginning with Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde. Man cannot exist or survive without the potential for violence. It is on that most basic of instincts to do violence that our very ability to survive is based. To be strong requires determination and grit. Violence can be controlled by intellect and balance is maintained, but until everyone in the entire world learns balance, we must keep our senses and survival instincts sharply honed or go peacefully back to the earth. The only peace thus obtained is the peace of the grave.

The politics of writing

Mary Ann called me Sunday. She was having a difficult weekend and was a little upset. Add to the mix the rain and writing only six pages in two days and I couldn't help but phone when I got home and saw that she called. She's a good friend and a fellow writer and we writers can be a neurotic bunch at times. Death and pressing deadlines do that to us. Well, that and the constant rejection. I called. We talked while her cell phone cut in and out (mountains + rain + lightning = lousy cell phone service).

I called again last night to see how she was doing. No rain, sunshine and three more pages in a day, pages she won't have to edit. We talked about her book and the characters and where the story is going and I got an idea for another book. Like I really need help in that area when I'm fleshing out two books, editing two more and writing another. I always have a project or two going -- in writing and reading. I jotted down the idea because it's unusual and may be interesting for a story line or I may add it as a twist to a work in progress. Such is the exchange that happens between friends who are also writers.

We also talked about politics, that subject, along with sex and religion, that one should never discuss with people one wishes to retain as friends. Mary Ann isn't like that. Yes, she's a liberal. Yes, we often disagree about political ideology. No, we're still friends because we are both old school. We believe in the freedoms set down in the Constitution and we are both appalled by the current idiocy that in politics in the two parties signified by the elephant and the ass.

Discussions of current works with writers and friends provide fertile ground, not only for discussion, but also for new ideas. The same goes for reading. Reading is essential for writers who want to write and continue to be published. Many writer friends refuse to read anything in their chosen genre when they're writing, and some go so far as to refuse to read anything in their chosen genre at any time. I read everything: fiction and nonfiction, when I'm not reading books for review, which also run the gamut from fiction to nonfiction. It's the same for political material.

I read from all sides of the political spectrum to be able to form a balanced and informed opinion, and I am very opinionated. That is not to say that I don't respond emotionally as well as intellectually. One thing I have learned is to trust my instincts even when they're telling me that the person I call friend is not really a friend. Every time I shrug off that tap on the mental shoulder and the whispered voice in my mind that says to beware I end up on the wrong end of a rope dangling over a cliff and into the abyss. That isn't to say that I am a slave to instinct, just that I have learned, often the hard way, to pay attention to red flags. When a friend isn't willing to agree to disagree or table a heating discussion or accept that there are some areas you will never see eye-to-eye, something is seriously wrong. Not so with Mary Ann. Did I mention we are often on opposite sides in politics?

One thing we rediscovered is that we are not polar opposites. She a little left and I'm a little right of center. The distance is pretty minimal. When it comes to writing, however, we are on the same page. Although I don't write a great deal of horror, Mary Ann does, but what she writes is always from a fascinating perspective that makes me think. Here's hoping she has another good writing day with lots of sunshine and plenty of clear paths through the murky spots.

Even though it's only three pages a day, it's forward movement and that's what all writers need to remember. There are no hard and fast rules to writing. Anyone who tells you so wants to sell you something. What works for one writer will not necessarily work for someone else. We're all different and we approach a problem or a story from the angle that works best.

In a recent discussion on a romance writing blog, the topic was pantsers or plotters. Pantsers write in the heat of the moment by the seat of their pants and plotters outline and plot their stories beforehand. The author of the post wanted different words for pantsers and plotters and I came up with barnstormers and aviators. Barnstormers fly by the seat of their pants and aviators fly by the book, taking no chances. They both get where they're going, but barnstormers take chances and aviators leave nothing to chance. And then there are barnstorming aviators and aviators who occasionally barnstorm.

It's all about the goal -- a finished story -- not about how you got there, so enjoy the trip and and the people you meet along the way. Even in divergent methods and ideologies there is plenty to share and to learn whether the subject is politics or writing.

At the starting gate

When I started blogging it was because of two people, another writer who had been bugging me to move with the times and my mother who got hold of my journals and said I should have them published. She said she didn't know I was so unhappy. I wasn't unhappy all the time, but between the covers of all those journals (about 40) there were times I was very unhappy. She also didn't know I thought about the kinds of things I mused over; she thought they were all about her. Religion, theology, politics, history, quantum physics and so many more subjects covered those pages, and they still do. But since it has been nearly seven years since I started this blog, I thought you'd like to see what came before.

July 19, 2002 Life and Death

Maybe by putting this online I will be able to think clearer. I usually think better when I'm writing, but have had a major case of writer's block for a while. Lots of ideas circling like hawks waiting for prey to emerge from the undergrowth. I did, however, manage a piece on abortion that has been caught in my head for a long time.

Have you ever had an idea that sounded so good when it rattled around in your head or when you tried it out in the shower, but when it came time to put it on paper or on the screen you lost all the wonderful words strung together like glowing black pearls and everything came out garbled and crippled? Me, too.

A very good friend suggested this and called it "mentally barfing" on the page. Sounds like the criticisms of George Sand so maybe barfing on the page isn't such a bad thing and could even be lucrative.

I have also been thinking a lot about mortality and death and the dignity of death. Never has that been clearer than now.

Several years ago I stood at the foot of my grandmother's bed while my mother leaned over her, clasping her hand and weeping and begging her mother not to leave her alone. My grandmother had suffered several strokes and was little more than a unfocused-eyed child whose face was wreathed in empty reflexive smiles. Seldom was she lucid enough to know who spoke to her, but I knew somewhere in that vegetating mind she clung to life to give her daughter, my mother, what she asked. Grandma spent most of her life giving my mother whatever she wanted, spoiling her and teaching her that all should bend to her wishes.

Even at that late stage of her life when she no longer had control of her body or her mind, when she had no quality of life, when she was force fed through a tube in her stomach and her body curled in on itself getting ready to enter the womb of death, even then my mother wouldn't let her own mother go. I was furious with her and we had a horrible argument. I told her she was selfish and cruel and she had no right to prolong what was no longer my grandmother's life. I told her Grandma wouldn't wish to live like that, entombed in a body kept alive by machines and tubes and her daughter's pleadings, clinging to some small spark of existence because she couldn't deny her daughter anything, not even the pain of lying for hours in urine- and feces-soaked diapers, in skin that tore like tissue paper at even a loving touch, in a body curling into a petrified fetal position. Not even that. But she would have her way and my grandmother lingered out of love for her.

My mother told me the other day she had a few mini strokes. She knew her mind was failing, as she grasped for names and places and memories familiar as her face in the mirror, things she had always known and were no longer where she put them. "I don't want to die in a nursing home," she said.

There is some small part of me, a cruel streak in my nature, that wants her to suffer as she made Grandma suffer, but it is a fleeting thought. No one should suffer that way. Fear moves her to prayer. She pleads with God to 'take her home' and set her free from the bondage of failing mind and body.

I understand now. It's about fear.

Fear of being alone.
Fear of mortality.
Fear of change.

We cry at the funerals of loved ones, not so much because of them but because of us. The world is changing and what we believed was constant and immutable is gone. Nothing is the same. Yes, we will miss our friends and family, but mostly we grieve for ourselves.

I remember thinking my parents were immortal. They would always be there. Intellectually I knew they would eventually die, but it was like being thirty years old -- too far in the future to matter. But time slips away and our parents get older, feebler, closer to death, and then they're gone. Immortality is a lie, a fantasy. And if they can die, those strong pillars supporting our the framework of our lives, then so can we, so will we.

The older we get the more we see the constants in our lives disappear. Aunts and uncles, grandparents and friends, all succumb to the reaper's scythe. How long will it be before we follow them and are lost in the dust of time? Who will remember us? Who will care we lived?

No matter what we believe, what religion we espouse, we begin to believe death is the end and there's nothing on the other side. Suddenly, life is so much sweeter and we don't want to give it up. The pain and anguish and confusion no longer seem so bad because at least we're still alive, still breathing, still here. Anything is better than the nothingness that faces us when death comes. If we can just keep our parents alive, by whatever means, we can stay death's hand and live one more month, one more week, one more day, one more hour, one more...

I understand now, but I'm not afraid. I don't need to trade my mother's dignity to keep death at bay. I don't need to punish her for putting my grandmother through such torture. I can let go because when my time comes I leave knowing I enjoyed every painful, ecstatic, joyful, and confusing moment of my life. Hopefully, my children will understand and not mortgage my life for their fears.

How to boil a frog

In getting to know a young man from Mumbai, I was surprised that he wanted to come to America, to live here and be an American. His main reason for wanting to be here is philosophical. It's not about making money or religious and social freedom, but about the very things our forefathers believed possible when they wrote the Constitution and gave birth to this nation in blood and fire. It's about freedom and a government like no other on this planet. It's about our democratic way of life.

There are other democratic countries with constitutional monarchies and parliamentary democracies, but there is only one America. That is why no matter what the current President does or say to undermine this country and its people, no matter what he gives away or how he denigrates the people and the men and woman who fought and continue to fight for us all, the United States of America will remain like a shining beacon in the encroaching darkness.

America is not just a country, but an ideal, a way of life and belief that is unlike anything that has come before or since. Our government was an idea, an experiment born out of the failures of democracies throughout history, and experiment that works and still works. While illegal immigrants may come for the money they make and send home, people like that young man from Mumbai come because they believe in what America stands for: freedom and justice. You can't certainly can't tie an idea to a building or a statue and what you cannot destroy you cannot kill.

Lynn and I were talking, as we do every Sunday morning, about Star Trek and freedom. The one thing that makes this country unique is its tolerance for other ethnicities, beliefs and religions. It is our strength and the reason why people come to our shores and become citizens. It's also our weakness. We will fight to protect the freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution and those very freedoms can be used to undermine our government and destroy those freedoms we hold dear.

When people of other faiths and religions come to our shores they know they can practice their beliefs in peace and safety -- for the most part. There will always be idiots prejudiced against any beliefs but their own. As we open our arms to welcome and embrace these people, we should also be aware that not all of them want to live free and protect those around them. They want to destroy our way of life so that their beliefs are the only ones accepted. Anything that undermines or goes against the laws and truths laid down in the Constitution should be removed the way a surgeon removes a cancerous tumor. If even so much as one cell remains, it will grow another tumor in time. We must remain vigilant and recognize that a poisonous snake, however tame it seems, will always be a poisonous snake and its nature is undeniable. Given the opportunity, when it is no longer cold and near death, as it warms to life it will strike with deadly purpose. So when we welcome other people to our shores, we must keep in mind that although they are free to practice the religion of their choice, they are not free to bring with them their laws; those laws stand contrary to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Every township, city and state that makes room for and allows Shari'a practices to become the rule of law is in violation of the principles on which this country is founded and is an affront to every man, woman, and child in this country. When government officials say they believe Shari'a Law and the Constitution can be practiced side by side evidently has never read the Constitution. We have no room for another government or rule of law. We have our own, no matter how some lawyers seek to twist and bend the words and the intent of the law. Any elected or appointed government official who gives credence and validity to Shari'a is a traitor to this country and to the people s/he serves.

We are frogs sitting in a pan of water under which the heat is slowly rising and if we do not jump out of the pan now it will be too late when the water is boiling. Do not be fooled by smiles and empty rhetoric. Don't turn a blind eye to the truth. Do not take the country or your freedoms for granted or you will soon find yourself without any freedom at all while Shari'a Law determines your fate and, as in Britain, the Democratic Rule of Law, the law of the land, longer applies.

The pot is simmering.

Thoughts of Karma

I have always been fascinated by the idea of karma, especially when called down on the heads of one's enemies. Case in point:

One malicious miscreant I know, Brent, has called the wrath of karma down on many people's heads, people who have crossed and thwarted his plans and fallen out of grace with him. Time after time he has sworn that he was in the right and karma would get those who flamenco-ed on his toes and he waited for news like a hungry shark waiting for minnow school to let out.

He was moderately successful in his field and chalked up a few points because he was diligent in promoting himself and his agenda. He married a really nice girl who had no idea of his checkered past, except what he told her, and she felt sorry for his trials and tribulations. And then she got a taste of his obsession with an ex-best friend, Max, who he believed had sold him down the river.

Max was unaware of the ongoing drama created or that Brent (also know to friends and foes alike as Bent) stalked him online and in real life. Max just went about his life as if nothing had changed, and for Max nothing had. He had his work, small close circle of friends and family and his hobbies. he and Brent traveled in the same circles but didn't meet: Brent because he got more mileage out of playing the wronged party and Max because he paid attention to his life and didn't get involved in dramatic scenes; he had enough on his plate without borrowing trouble.

Although Max had some difficulties, the way we all have problems from time to time, Brent's initial success began to fade, sputter and look like it was going to die. When his kids complained that he spent too much time cursing Max and that they remembered him as a great guy who treated them like equals and listened to them without talking down to them, Brent blew up. His kids couldn't wait to get out of the house and go away to college, which all three of his kids did without delay. When Brent's wife Penelope told him he was obsessed and that she didn't see anything wrong with Max, Brent accused Penny of having an affair with him.

Each of Max's successes fueled Brent's obsession and his anger and things began to deteriorate. His marriage was in trouble. His work was suffering. He was coasting on his laurels and taking on too much new work that either didn't pay well or faded out of existence because he stretched himself too thin. Brent blamed Max for everything and Max was oblivious.

When things began to near rock bottom, Brent took a look at the past five years and made a startling discovery. Karma wasn't eating Max's lunch, but was having a field day with his blessed and happy life. Could it be that karma was crashing his party because of what he had done to Max?

It is a hard pill to swallow when a person realizes that maybe he was wrong and that all the stories he told were prejudiced in his favor, that he didn't want to admit that the truth was considerably different and that he had been at fault. Karma is touchy and plays no favorites. Even though we all tend to slant things to make ourselves look good or like the victim, the truth is often more than a hair off true. Calling karmic retribution down on our enemies opens us up to being struck by karma's sizzling lightning bolts and having the world crumble beneath our feet. Sometimes it takes a while because karma is usually busy taking someone else down, but karma usually gets around to the real culprit, turning their happy world into a quagmire quickly sinking beneath us and sucking us down.

Want to know the truth of a situation? Watch people's lives. Discount the usual irritations and scattered problems and look for cracks in the idol's feet that no amount of patching repairs. Sometimes the disintegration is slow, but often it is shockingly rapid once it starts.

Brent should have taken a few steps back, cooled off and looked at his friendship with Max with the cold, clear gaze of truth, setting aside his hurt feelings and his tendency to exaggerate the facts. Considering how many people Brent has raped, pillaged and bad mouthed over the years and how many people he has hurt, his realization that karma hitting him wasn't a fluke or a mistake and that he had earned his punishment came too late.

Brent has some good qualities, but they are over shadowed by his insecurities and his need to control everything and everyone around him. He can be marvelously kind and often charming, but they are icing on a manure cake.

Max is slowly gaining respect and success in his field and he has earned it the hard way. He is still an opinionated cuss and has his moments of doubt and laziness, but he is a good and honorable man and that is far more important than being liked by the whole world, as Obamessiah is now finding out to his detriment. Max doesn't talk much, but he walks the talk every step of the way. His opinions and views are often unpopular, but he doesn't care. He has integrity and that counts for a lot.

Karma has a long memory and chases liars, cheats, thieves and politicians down when it gives chase, and karma won't bargain. Pay in this life or for the next 20 lives, but karma will have what is owed -- with interest if it is a long chase. Count on it.

So, if you're wondering whether all the trouble cropping up in your life is the luck of the draw or karmic balance swinging around and you have what you need to take care of your problems without making worse problems, then it's just the statistical probability that shit happens. If not, then check your rear view mirror. Karma is often closer than it appears.

That is all. Disperse.

Waking thoughts

There are times when a book or characters or something I'm writing wakes me in the middle of the night and refuses to let me get back to sleep again. This morning was one of those times, only this time it was a philosophical question that troubled my sleep and set my brain in edge.

Do we choose to be miserable?

I think we do. That doesn't mean I think we should all be Pollyannas and forget that sometimes life is hard, but that we chose to be miserable when there are other options.

Yes, pain hurts and it colors everything in black and bloody red until the only thoughts that get through the morass of pain is getting hold of drugs to make it better. There are other options. You can choose biofeedback or focusing on something else to get through the pain or just pop a few pills. But it is a choice whether or not to let the pain rule your life.

Yes, the world is full of starving and oppressed and tyrannized people, and some of them live in the same town and state and country. Why is it people are more willing to help someone in another country than in their own back yard? Seeing the suffering is more difficult than reading it in a paper and knowing it is happening somewhere else in the world, but in the end, what can we do about it? Governments choose to throw money at it and open the doors to immigrants so they can come here and suffer without thinking how the money could have been used to educate people so they can help themselves. But we choose to allow whatever they do and those people choose to continue suffering. They could rise up and stop the people causing the suffering. They could choose to beg, borrow or steal food and seed and grow their own food. They could choose to leave. They choose.

It seems a harsh way of looking at things, but how is it any different than the way things were done when we didn't have immediate access to videos and films and pictures of the conditions in other countries? How is it any different than walking past a homeless mother and children on the street and choosing not to see them? Why does the idea of a foreigner suffering makes us feel more guilty or more compassionate than the people who share our city streets, highways and byways?

It's a choice. Everything is about choice.

I choose to help those in my path, but I am not going to work hard to spend it all on people in another country or even people in my own town and give everything I've worked for away. I earned it. I've had my trials and tribulations, but I always found a way to survive and to get what I needed. I'm willing to give anyone a hand up, but I'm not willing to give a hand out. If I work for what I have and then give everything away, what have I done but perpetuate the cycle? I haven't helped anyone, least of all myself. I haven't done anyone a service and I have beggared myself in the process. Only an idiot would give away everything they worked for to someone who can work and earn their own way.

I used to carry business cards for a day labor service. Every time someone came up to me and asked for money for coffee or food I gave them a card and told them they could earn enough for food and a place to stay. Most people tore up the cards and cursed me. Some of them waited until I drove or walked away to do so.

Everyone has options, some good and some bad, but there is no degradation unless a person chooses to feel degraded. There is no degradation in working for a temp or day labor service, and there is the satisfaction of knowing, at least when working for day labor, that you will be paid at the end of the day. It's not as lucrative as begging on the streets and expecting the world to take care of you, but it is honest. It is a choice.

A long time ago, someone told me that I chose to be unhappy or sad or angry. I told him he didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't choose to hurt myself or treat myself like dirt. But I did. Anyone can hurt me -- if I let them. Anyone can treat me like dirt -- but that doesn't make me dirt. Anyone can steal from me, but that doesn't make me poor. Anyone can lie to me, but I don't have to believe them. I have a choice. I choose to make the best of my situation and be happy that I can go on one more minute, one more hour, one more day, one more week, one more breath.

I choose.

West vs East

Whenever I see a movie that has been remade from a foreign movie, I like to check out the foreign version to compare how the story is different. Premonition is one of the recent movies I've seen that came from a Japanese movie: Yogen or The Newspaper of Death. The only thing the two movies have in common is knowing about a death before it happens.

In the American version, a woman is told her husband was killed in a car accident the day before and she remembers seeing him off to work that morning, except she is out of time, living her life out of sequence. Throughout the movie she jumps back and forth in time, living different endings and different events as she searches for a way to change the outcome.

In the Japanese movie, Hiroshi Mikami picks up a newspaper from the floor of a phone booth and reads about his daughter's death in a car accident before the paper disappears. His daughter dies moments later and he cannot convince anyone that he read about her death before it happened. Five years later, he and his wife are separated and his now ex-wife has dedicated her life to finding out about the newspaper that keeps appearing to predict future events. Her husband, unable to deal with his daughter's death, begins to have premonitions of other deaths and finds himself unable to stop them before they happen. The wife finds her ex-husband and together they search for answers only to discover Hiroshi's only future is not bright. He will either go mad or, if he changes the future, will disappear slowly and painfully, taking on the burden of the deaths that were meant to be.

The basic premise is changed between the two movies, but that's just on the surface. Beneath that is a fundamental difference in ideology and perceptions. In the American version, there is an underlying sense of hope and the belief that the future is not set in stone, that the Fates do not rule us, we rule our own fate. The Japanese version offers little in the way of hope unless a high price is paid, one life for another, in order to keep the Fates balanced. The I is sacrificed for another and Fate cannot be countered without madness or painful death. Fate rules.

Another difference lies in the treatment of extraordinary happenings. In the Western mind, magic is nothing more than science misunderstood and everything boils down to science. In the sophisticated and westernized East, magic and science can be mixed, but there is a deeply rooted sense of magic that underlies everything. It is as if magic is a part of their genetic makeup while westerners tend to hold magic at a distance, separating it from reality and seeking to quantify it in saner terms, in terms of science.

In every foreign movie I've seen, Fate is the final arbiter and magic is inextricably bound to the way they see and experience the world. In the Western world, science underpins everything and the only magic we accept without question is Hope, the hope that we create our own future, that we can win against Fate and predestination if we believe hard enough and fight hard enough.

That is all. Disperse.

We are the Organians

A couple years ago a good friend gave me Conversations With God. I decided to read it and found I agreed with a lot of the philosophy. I decided to borrow Nel's copy of the second book in the series and I read a little bit of it at a time since I have a lot of other books I have to read. I'm finding some of the information and philosophy interesting.

Hitler went to heaven, according to the book. It's not as strange as it sounds, but it does turn what most people term right and wrong inside out.

We are taught to believe, and indeed most religions teach, that there is right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark, etc. Everything has an opposite. Rules are laid down and if we deviate from those rules then we are wrong and should be punished. Indeed, most religions teach we will be punished--in one way or another: hell, karma, the law of return, etc. What if the rules laid down don't apply and there is no punishment except what we decide for ourselves?

The question reminds me of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and the Nicaean Council when they decided not to put in any mention of reincarnation because they believed you couldn't control people who believed that they would be born again into this life (and yet they talk about being born again . . . in a spiritual sense--another topic for another time). The eldest brother, Mitya, believes that there is no right or wrong and to certain men the laws do not apply. There is no devil and no hell and no punishment, just the exercise of choice (in a nutshell). When he finds himself face to face with the reality of his philosophy he has to face the "evil that men do" and the evil that sprang from his thoughts.

If there is no punishment for defying the dictates of societal law, can you control the people? Should you? Are laws and heavenly retribution and hell and karma and all the other names for punishment what keep us in line and make us unwilling to commit what we consider heinous acts? Does it really matter?

According to Walsch's dialogue, we are not here to learn or right wrongs or live out karma, but simply to experience. We are extensions of the Eternal--in the words of some religions, the Universe figuring itself out--the physical manifestations of a greater Presence created to create and internalize experience--all experience. Thinking that way puts a different face on everything we think we know and understand. If someone causes me pain or hurts me in any way, who is at fault? Does it really depend on right and wrong or just perception? Does it even matter?

If Walsch's supposition is right, then it doesn't matter and there is no right or wrong, only the experience. It's a difficult concept to grasp. Nothing we do here matters in and of itself and is only grist for the experience mill, a manifestation of reality that does not exist except as it contributes to the greater whole of knowledge.

When the colonists in the New World rebelled against their sovereign king the colonists believed they were in the right to fight for their freedom because they felt they were being oppressed. The king, and indeed his subjects in Britain, believed the colonists were terrorists and criminals who should be punished because they refused to pay their taxes and their sovereign his due. Who was right?

Take the Civil War/Norther War of Aggression, indeed any war. Each side believes they are in the right and God's backing. Do they? There is a line from Cold Mountain when Inman says he's certain God is tired of being called down on both sides of the fight.

Take any situation, even the situation in a family. A parent sets rules and expects the children to obey. One child does not obey because he felt he was being oppressed and it is right to rebel against an oppressor. The parent enforces the punishment laid down for disobedience because the parent has the power, but is it right? Does it really depend on perspective? Do the circumstances change how the outside world views the situation? For instance, if the child who is being beaten has been told not to leave the house and they leave the house to get away from the beatings, who is right: the parent or the child? What if both are right and there is no wrong?

Does it all come down to who has the power and who sets the rules?

We agree to follow certain guidelines. When we find out someone else broke the rules, didn't follow the guidelines, is it moral outrage against wrongdoing that moves us to anger or censure or is it just that someone got away with something we didn't have the nerve to do? We certainly feel pain when someone close to us is hurt, when someone we know has been wronged, but it doesn't sting quite so much when we have no stake in the outcome or relationship with the one who has been "hurt". Does our lack of involvement lessen the rightness or wrongness of the situation? Is there really right and wrong? If we follow this reasoning, does it mean chaos will reign? Do we really need guidelines to tell us what we do and do not want to experience? Do we need someone telling us what to do and how to do it?

Putting this whole idea in another light for me it comes down to how I view the actions of others interacting with me. I see things one way and they see them another. Are we both right or both wrong? If one is right and the other wrong, who decides? Certainly, we cannot pass judgment since our views are fixed. He is wrong and I am right. We cannot trust the judgment of those nearest us, people who know and like us, because their judgment is tainted by association and by not knowing both sides of the situation. They know only what they have been told and cannot weigh both points of view. People side with their friends; it is a matter of loyalty. I begin to see the wisdom in a judge and jury and why friends and relations are not allowed to be part of the jury. Can't be impartial when you have a stake in the outcome. If here is no right and wrong, only experience, then it doesn't matter. We have served our purpose. We have experienced being hurt and doing the hurting and no one is really to blame. It's simply cause and effect dictated by the guidelines we ourselves set.

There is no right and wrong, only experience. Just as power is neutral, so, too, is life. We are given life in this plane of existence so we can experience whatever we choose to know, to feel, to be, to create. Even when we think we have hurt someone or someone has been killed or died, they really haven't. Who they are, what experiences they accumulated, are still part of the Universal Consciousness. Energy (experience) can never be destroyed, only its form changes. Takes a little--or a lot--to understand.

I am reminded of the Organians on Star Trek. No one was hurt or killed because you cannot destroy energy. The energy may take the form of a person or an object or a living beast or plant, but it is at its root still energy, just as we are energy given form. No matter what I think has happened to me, no matter who I have believed hurt me, none of it really exists except as an analog of experience, the experience of disappointment, betrayal and emotional pain, and therefore there is no one to blame or punish or dislike. They in themselves do not matter because they were the tools necessary to create a specific experience. They served their purpose. Kind of puts things in a different perspective . . . one I'm still working on understanding. I still do not see how knowing this--if it is true--will pay the bills or keep me from having to pay a fine for disobeying society's laws. I'm getting closer but I'm not there yet. Still, pondering this makes it easier to forget all the hurt other people, in my perception, have done to me, and that's worth something.

That is all. Disperse.