Thursday, August 20, 2009

defense of my dispute with a resident over Crystal

After I posted about my dispute with a Bryn Mawr Care resident over Crystal, which see, I had a discussion of it with a good friend who objected to my handling of it because of what he said was my use of violence instead of my "grey matter". I asked this friend for pemission to post to my blog a certain part of my correspondence with him as it seemed to be a good defense of my position. He gave me that permission. Here is the exerpt:

Life in the city, if you're really serious about it, eventually gets you into fights. You can't stake your claim by polite competition, not indefinitely. Crystal does not say I am her boyfriend. I am making progress on that, as you note. One aspect of the pursuit is the consensus in the community about who is pursuing whom. If someone feels comfortable making statements about Crystal that can be interpreted as vying for her despite my making it known I am pursuing her, then the consensus needs some correction. I did that. Mr. Lisk didn't take me seriously as a condition in his role here with respect to Crystal. He was not listening to me when I simply told him she isn't his girlfriend. He would not have listened to me if I simply repeated it, or rephrased it or elaborated. He was content to make such statements without fear of reprisal. I did not accept that this was a necessary situation. There was only one way to change it and I used it. Mr. Lisk felt the fury of my action and was visibly shaken by it. Then I continued in it until I was satisfied he changed his tune. It took every ounce of my grey matter that you cited to me so aptly in a way, to structure my response to get that result--the staging of the battles, the selection of objectives, and the phrasing of statements--as a permanent change in the consensus of the community at the nursing home. Now they all know what I will do if someone rivals me for the hand of Crystal, and it's not unsupported by the degree to which she has allowed herself to be pursued by me. She was present at the final argument that saw Mr. Lisk back down and so she is aware to some extent now of how I am pursuing her in the larger context beyond the two of us alone. It is intelligent. It, if you will pardon my license, is honorable. It certainly is not taking the easier path.

On Religion

I am a complete atheist. I have no doubt that all of my own extraordinary experiences, including hearing extracorporeal voices, materializing in other person's bodies, seeing lights that looked like humans, and witnessing on a building the same fire that Moses saw on a bush, are reducible to the laws of physics.


I consider religion an early system of incorporating extreme experiences into civilization, formed by those who have such experiences in an attempt to harvest them for mankind rather than have them discounted as irrelevant to day to day existence. This is a valid motive. It produced a strong civilization out of what were unorganized bands of humans.


However, this strong civilization has continued to evolve and now we have a population largely equipped with a scientifically valid cosmological perspective, principally that the Earth is not the center of the universe. The stability generated by such a perspective seems to be greater than the stability that was generated by religion. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly acceptable to discredit religion and rely on the cosmological perspective alone for one's orientation to the world. This is not an ideal situation. Discrediting religion is destructive to many people who are not yet to the point where the cosmological perspective has thoroughly saturated their worlds. Religion arose out of an inchoate abyss and that abyss has not vanished, even with the expansion of the cosmological perspective. Most likely it will never be entirely supplanted. In this abyss there will always be a role in many people's lives for religion. If history were more transparent it would be easier for scientists to grant to the masses their obsession with religion. I certainly do not wish to make history more obscure by promoting unorthodox concepts, but neither do I wish to allow the existing obscurity to cause mankind to founder.


It is this view on my part that makes me quite forgiving of radical Islam for making America its spiritual enemy. America has done nothing for Islam. It is consumed with its role as champion of freedom and is unable to enlarge its agenda. It was hoped that freedom would take the world to its next stage of development, but that has not happened. World events have advanced in parallel with America's championing of freedom, not really with any sort of resonance, as far as the rest of the world is concerned. It is America's larger nature that keeps us among the world's leaders, not our self-image.


You, by way of the Italian Mafia, have made me your First Citizen. I have taken this honor and responsibility to heart and made every effort to develop it in intellectual terms, as I consider that its greatest worth, rather than an opportunity to enforce my persuasions upon the people, though I certainly have embraced a cause or two.


The results of this intellectual sojourn have been in a sort of exploration of the limiting values of my own ability to set out on a new course as a possible first generation of a different civilization than America, the Western World, or Homo sapiens. I do not have unlimited ability in this respect. However my limits are somewhat determined by my own decisions and efforts. I was not made First of anything in particular. I was just made First. I took that fact to imply that it was up to me just how far my being First extended.


I have a major protection here. I do my work in my own language, whose characters I created, and I do not share this language with anyone but my mate apparent and when we have children with them. I can do this because I am proving able to establish an income independently without taking employment. In the past those who have been driven by exigence to create a new character set have been unable to survive without enlisting the cooperation of the people, and so have had to share their characters with their nonblood contemporaries.


This leaves me in a favorable position. I can satisfy the Italian Mafia that I am providing leadership by blogging in English. I can generate income with English transformation art. Everyone goes home happy.


By the way, I endorse the objectives of the United States government to bring democratic rule in Iraq and Afghanistan. I offer radical Islam the pen. I will deny them their swords.