Scorched Earth

There are some programs I enjoy watching again and again, finding something new among the old. Babylon 5 is one of those shows.

While watchingAnd the Sky Full of Stars this morning, the show seemed suddenly so timely despite having been off the air for years. Commander Sinclair is captured, drugged, hooked up to a cybernet and forced to remember what happened during the 24 hours he was missing at the Battle of the Line, the last battle between Earth and the Minbari during a war that would ultimately end with the genocide of the entire human race. Suddenly, with the destruction of Earth and the entire human race within their grasp, the Minbari surrendered. The war was over. Why did a superior force on the eve of victory surrender to a beaten enemy?

During the cyber-torture, the torturer tells Sinclair that many influential people back on Earth believe that Sinclair and others were recruited for a fifth column to destroy Earth and humanity from within, that Sinclair agreed to collaborate with the enemy to bring his own race down. The torturer points to aliens buying up land, investing in businesses and immigrating in ever larger numbers, pushing out humanity and taking over. Sound familiar? Like I said, old shows touched on the hot issues during their initial run and are seemingly prophetic. Or are they?

Do shows like Babylon 5 predict the future or do we just not learn the first time around and continue to repeat history? There is another possibility, that some shows act like barometers to point to the first hint of trouble, shining a light on a problem that, if unchecked, will continue to grow and get worse.

Near the end of the Shadow War when the Earth President (the VP who killed the President in order to take over) is trapped and Earth is being bombarded by the rebel forces gathered by the crew of Babylon 5, the President is in his office and he pushes a button that begins the process of what he calls Scorched Earth, turning the Shadow technology on Earth and its people. He knows he's trapped. He has weakened the planet and its people from within, but since he can no longer rule he is going to destroy the planet rather than face justice. Scorched Earth.

The men who vowed to protect Earth against all enemies, foreign and domestic, had been corrupted, not by the Minbari, but by the dark forces of the Shadow, wooed by power and control and dark technology that counted human life as a commodity and the truth as malleable and elastic. They were co-opted by greed and the need to be seen as saviors, messiahs of truth and justice and everything that humanity held dear. It was a small concession at first to protect themselves against the covert invasion by the Minbari who helped to fund and build Babylon 5 and the four Babylon stations that were sabotaged, destroyed and went missing before the final Babylon 5 project successfully came on line to give form to the idea that alien races could all live and work together for the common good. While the powers that be were focused on the Minbari, they made a devil's pact with the Shadows and sealed their doom, sealed the doom of Earth and of all peoples living on the planet.

Beware those that work in the shadows and wear pleasant faces calling for peace and spouting peaceful platitudes and bromides, laying the blame on their opponents. That way lies danger and scorched earth.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. Surely so
revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

— WB Yeats's "Second Coming"as first printed in 1920

Before there was Green

I read a lot more than books to review. I read everything I can squeeze in between downloads and uploads of work, when I'm waiting for meals to cook, when I have a free minute or two and don't feel like reading another review book and every chance I get when I have to stand in line. I'm the one at the post office with a book in my hands moving forward whenever I feel air where there was body heat and perfume, sweat and fabric softener scents. I read at meals, even though I know I should focus on the food -- and I do focus on the food -- but reading relaxes me and smooths out the bumps and potholes in my day. Reading keeps me connected to the rest of the world in a way that wandering down a strange street or sitting in the park writing in a journal and watching the world go by does not. Even in a reading trance I am acutely aware of everything around me, catching sounds and sights from the edges of vision and filing them for later use. Everything is fodder for the writing that comes with the reading.

While researching what it takes to get a grant to focus solely on writing, and reading the latest offerings in writing newsletters, as I do every Saturday, I realized there is a wealth of material for me to use. An article about the rise of female protagonists in previously male-dominated science fiction (some of which I have read and reviewed) and scoping out the markets for Delta airlines in-flight magazine focusing on being green gave me an idea of how to work the two together and maybe even put together a project that will be suitable for a grant. Most of the research is done, since I've been reading the author for decades, and there's something about pointing up a legacy that gives me a certain sense of pride. Maybe it was Sir Arthur C. Clarke's death and the recent death of so many literary lights that put the thought in my mind, but it's there now and I'm willing to throw the dice and see whether they come up snake eyes or seven.

Long before Marvin Gaye pushed Motown records owner Barry Gordy to record Mercy, Mercy Me Andre Norton was writing about the environment. She wrote stories about technologically advanced civilizations that fell through a crack in time and space and were faced with the destruction of the environment and how it affected everything around them, and how nature fought back. Short stories, novels and novellas chronicled worlds in rebellion and those healing from the devastation humans wreaked. She dreamed of the populations of the seas catapulted into evolutionary overdrive and able to make treaties with the rag tag ends of mankind and worlds were cities raked empty skies with rusting claws, harboring four-footed and insectile intelligences while humans huddled on the brink of extinction as nomads. She wrote of children caught up and transported to fairyland only to come back to a world that smelled of industry with air that tasted of burn fuels and how a handful of seeds sown into the depleted soil sprang up into lush growth overnight and reached outward to claim more and more of the mechanical world, bringing with its riotous growth a resurgence of animals, birds and insects that had fled or died out.

J. R. R. Tolkien was touted in one article as an environmentalist who showed the ravages of the industrial age and how it was reclaimed when Saruman's tower was overthrown and the land cleansed by the Isen river. But he wasn't the first, and he certainly isn't the last. Andre Norton was there first with strong female protagonists and an almost prophetic knowledge of what will come if we don't change our relationship with this earth we inhabit. Man against nature and man in harmony with nature, making peace and learning to live side by side were all part of Andre Norton's stock in trade before the hole in the ozone, before Green Peace, before Tolkien and before the world began to wake up and see what they were doing. I wonder if her stories, dismissed as tales for young adults, worked their way into the consciousness that sprang up in the 1960s and 1970s and subtly goaded a generation toward the green path. There are other topics and I'm sure I'll find more than I bargained for, but for better or worse I'm casting the dice.

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.

Silliness in the news

It looks like video games are becoming reality with the new Halo body armor. I don't think the morphine feature of the suit is a good idea and I'm still not quite sure whether the cod piece is for protection or just to show who really is has a bigger dick. However, in a world where the Pentagon is willing to shell out $35,000 for a screwdriver, I think $2000 for the armor is a bargain.

For those people who have a lot of disposable income and no sense of what to do with it, having R2D2 project your DVDs onto your very own home theater is the only way to go and the remote control is the Millennium Falcon. I have to say they looked a lot bigger on the screen in the theater when I saw Star Wars but size is definitely relative here.

Then there's a way to freshen the air outside, especially in smog-laden cities where you can barely see through the murk, with scented tires. Lavender is the first available scent for $119-138 per tire. Orange and jasmine are the next scents to roll off the rubber. As someone who works with essential oils I can tell you that too much jasmine smells like feces. I wonder if the inventors figured that into their equation or of they are saying something else with their new product. Hmmmm.

Over here in the unscented mountain air of Colorado, the sun is making an attempt to warm things up and striking gold from the withered leaves still desperately clinging to a few trees. The sky is a wan Colorado blue but it is empty of clouds of any kind. It won't last long since there is more snow on the way on Saturday. The weather was full of snow and rain and hail when I lived northwest of here at the cabin, more snow and rain and hail than the area had seen in years--six to be exact. The ski slopes were busy and the snow machines were quiet while the avalanches roared occasionally down onto the twisting roads leading into and out of the valley and through the pass. The three chiefs rested beneath a deep cover of packed snow and nearly daily powder.

Every time I came down the mountain to Colorado Springs it was as if this side of the Continental Divide was at least a season behind. No snow lay on the ground and the aspens were still golden and well leafed. After I moved here I danced for a whole three minutes in a sprinkling of rain that barely wet the ground while last July and August rain fell most days and the temperatures were far from the dog days I had come to expect. This winter is just as wet and cold and snowy. The landlady says it's El Nino, but I wonder what the real reason for this sudden change in weather habits is all about. One thing I do know is that I am enjoying the cold and the snow and watching skiers glide down the street and past the window where I spend most of my days.

That is all. Disperse.