How the Fourth Estate became the Fifth Column

Author: Daniel P Collins, MD, Naples Florida

Framers of the Constitution recognized the need for a Free Press to report on governmental action to the citizenry. They accorded unique privileges to the news media to protect and ensure this vital activity. It is now obvious that the media does not know the difference between freedom & license or that privileges always carry concomitant responsibilities. The media has shifted from a legitimate mission of reporting the news to a mission of creating the news. In so doing, it has become the “Fifth Column”, undermining & eroding the Republic from within. The media manipulation of the election environment to insure a close election, great copy for press & TV, calls for encouragement of visceral hatred of various groups: bad for the nation, but newsworthy. They gleefully & dishonestly set to work. After all, the ends justify the means: the creation of news. Honesty, morality, ethics or National Welfare be damned. The Fifth Column has a job to be done!

Chapter III. Moral Relativism as an Obstacle to Elitism

A constant theme beaten on the drums of the secular fundamentalists is the idea that there exists some natural parity in the cultures of the world. The desire to conclude in 2000, for example (though this argument had its modern hay day in the mid-eighties), that each and every culture is deserving of equal merit is a nicety, but is bankrupt, thoughtless, intellectually untenable and ultimately very dangerous for mankind. I contend a judgment can be passed on whether any thing is inherently good, benign or bad. For instance, in all things created by man, some versions/models are relatively superior & some are relatively inferior. In the natural world we see the same distribution across the spectrum in relation to the mean (mediocre). When we apply one design to various functions, we can demonstrate that certain designs “test better” (or exceed others in the performance of distinct tasks). Averages across an array of tasks enables us to draw some clear conclusions regarding one design relative to others. Some aircraft designs are faster, some more stable, some more lethal, some are overall better suited to commercial purposes than military purposes. Some trees are suited to colder climates, some to warmer climates & some are tolerant of an extreme array of variant climates. Some provide more shade than others, some withstand fire better than others, some are better for climbing. Some creatures successfully survive transitioning to city life from rural farmland or raw nature preserves, while others are pushed over the edge of extension with little but a slight shift in the oceanic currents. Some peoples have a diet that is better served to the general well being of the physical body. Some people are less stressed as a rule. Some humans process alcohol more readily. Some have a higher average IQ. Some folks live artificially long lives due to technology & diet in formative years. Some people are genetically disadvantaged & bound to die at 45 regardless of their lifestyle choices. Some individuals are more productive than others. Some are more laid back. Some are condemned to a propensity toward criminal behavior & violence, while some have an inherent attraction to the same sex. Some are more likely to become physically addicted to nicotine. This is to say that if we give merit to how the individual performs on one count or another, it is likely we will find some individuals who, for whatever reason, perform better against the test than others. It follows that if we establish an array of criterion across a whole spectrum (re: create a bunch of items to test individuals against), we can apply an aggregate, objective relative score to the individual. Further, when we have tested more than one person against this array of individual criterion, we can demonstrate a relative score between the two. Given a group of individuals against the same exam, we can then rank the individuals in relation to the others in our pool.

In fact, we can and commonly do conduct this type of testing to create relative comparisons of individuals in the form of aptitude testing. Professional football teams do this in the form of physical aptitude testing. College admissions boards do this in their review of applications & attending ACT/SAT scores (which, though only part of most applications for admission, are themselves an aggregate score against a wide array of tests which are then weighted & ranked across the entire testing pool). That is to say that in the aggregate, one applicant is superior to the next, and one football player is more talented/developed while the next is less so. Based on this measure, one applicant is superior to the next for the stated purpose of attending to college and one football player is professional grade, while the next is not. And regardless of how we feel about mental or physical inequities, the results still tell a story: the applicants still have their own unique sets of relative strengths and weaknesses and can be set in side by side comparison.

Before we go further, I should make clear that while scores tell a story, scores are based solely on what is tested. What is tested is based on what the tester is looking for. In the case of college, it could be anything from the best & the brightest quantitatively-oriented minds (RE: MIT) or even the best and most promising musicians or artists (RE: Bard), or simply individuals that fit the profile of someone who will likely do well & complete the curriculum. In the case of the college athletic combines, they are looking for individuals that are likelier than the next to succeed in the National Football League. The form the testing takes on is normally determined by committees & the like (also made up of individuals) who agree on how the test will be administer, yes, but more importantly on how it will be graded… and more importantly what threshold constitutes qualification (what is a “passing” relative rank, and what is “failing” relative rank). Every day, in every way we are being measured & scoped out formally in some cases, but informally in most. From what we wear to what we say to how we act, human individuals are subject to and are always treated to objective (in the case of formal) and subjective (in the case of informal) ranking. Is he attractive? Is he more attractive than the guy next to him? Is she too heavy for my tastes? Are her boobs too big/small? Does he have an annoying laugh, does she walk funny, does he wear out-dated clothes, does she drive a nice car???? All day long judgment is being passed. And all tests are rooted in seeking out strengths & weaknesses & passing judgments. We are hard-wired in the humanist sense & even called upon in the spiritualist sense to pass judgment. This will seem to some to run contrary to the popular “argument” employed by those who seem to know no better that would call Christians, for example, hypocrites when they point to injustices or point out behaviors that are contrary to their Christian beliefs. But the truth remains.

We are measured & held to account every day & in every way, both institutionally & socially, in our acts & in our refrain, in what we profess & what we fail to profess. While a dictator may be above the law, he can still be judged to be in violation of it. Similar to excommunication of self from a given church, the judgment passed can be, and in most cases is, carried out in absentia and outside of any court. By your thoughts, words and actions you are known to those around you. But even if you speed through a stop sign unobserved, you are still breaking the law. And in breaking it, you break the covenant of trust & the contract you have written with those who enforce it. Whether or not you are brought to justice on the individual transgression matters not.

On Elitism

One thing I would like to mention here is that I am an elitist in the truest sense of the word. I do believe that the crème generally rises, and should rise, to the top. I believe that the elitist approach in its truest sense serves the general welfare far better than a system based on favoritism and/or quotas. Anything that takes competition out of the equation… anytime one person is given a position based on anything other than relative ability, experience and willingness to fulfill a stated purpose, is in my opinion, a crime against all of mankind. Any measure which clouds an accurate measurement of one individual’s value versus another’s to fulfill the stated purpose is a criminal act against the whole.

There is, to be sure, a place for everyone. But every place is not for everyone. When the founders said that all men were created equal, they meant equal in the eyes of God &, therefore, in the eyes of the law. What they were not saying is that everyone was born with the same gifts, or even endowed with an equal measure of gifts, by the Creator. Indeed, no matter how much I practice nor how much I will it to be so, I will never match the basketball abilities of Michael Jordan, nor the musical prowess of Bach, nor the conceptual abilities of Mills, nor the engineering abilities of my-brother-in-law, nor the painting abilities of Van Gough, nor the architectural abilities of Frank Lloyd Wright.

The idea that we will all shine like diamonds or even excel to a modest extent in all of the activities we pursue is ridiculous and dangerous. I believe it results in a lot of wasted resources being attributed to chasing shadows down dark alleyways. A perfect case in point is the phenomena of televised “talent-based” contests that serve to embarrass the flocks of self-diluted “performers” in front of millions of television viewers. It also has resulted in a whole bunch of expensive drum lessons for kids who do not posses the raw ability to drum at any competitive level. Add to that the amount of time & energy wasted on photos for young women who are very pretty, but are not pretty enough to warrant a cover on Cosmopolitan magazine and you have a lot of people spending enormous amounts of resources on fantasies, as distinct from dreams. This does not mean I do not feel that we all have something profound to contribute to the bottom line, as it were. I do, in fact, believe we are all here for a reason & a unique purpose. But, having said that, knowing how far one’s abilities extend & knowing one’s own limitations is the first step in “figuring it all out” and spending your resources wisely. I tell my reports all the time that half of the battle is in knowing where your talents lie and the other half is in knowing your blind spots. This reinforces the wisdom we hear bantied about before every football game by every sportscaster; one should play to their strengths and away from their weaknesses. It is the best use of one’s resources & the best way to contribute & fulfill your obligations. To those who have been given much in the way of gifts, much is expected… but no one is off the hook. And for progress to be made expeditiously, every individual is called to pursue his own objective(s). Determining what one’s objectives are starts with one’s own self-inventory of one’s own talent & skill-set. That is, in the aggregate, tested against all of the options presented to you, determining how & where to spend your own personal capital to have the biggest impact.

In short, the connotations that spring to mind when Americans are presented with the word “elitism” are sadly misplaced. Elitism is in its truest form in accordance with the plan of God or, if you prefer, the Master Plan of the Creator. Or, if one prefers yet another expression, elitism is the surest way to ensure that one fulfills his obligation to the goal of advancing humanity & the Greater Good.

Elitism & Absolutism

I have made the argument that given a set of independent criterion to perform against, one can objectively make a judgment about the individual in the aggregate. That is to say, if an individual is scored on his abilities against of set of various criterion, we may demonstrate how he ranks (or stands in absolute relativity) against another by applying a weighted average to the individually scored criterion to determine one aggregate score.

I contend that all things may be measured, no matter how crudely, in this fashion and that only in religiously devoting ourselves to this measure can be fulfill our individual obligations to the “greater good” or destiny of self. In addition, in conducting relative strengths & weaknesses, we can establish on a defined continuum where one item stands in absolute and relative terms against the whole.

Further, I contend that Moral Relativism is the chief antagonist to Elitism & serves to cloud the individual from discerning his place in the world & fulfilling his obligations and thus condemning him to toiling in vain.

Chapter II: An Instant in the Garden of Paradise

On a moonlit night somewhere back in the collective memory of our shared past, a woman awoke in a terrible fright. She was lost… or at least she felt what we would describe as lost. She sat bolt upright a gazed in disquieted fear around a hearth crowded with lumps of shadows and near suffocated by the weighty smell of ash & sweat. She moved & this startled her to a near panicked state. Yet, she made no sound. “Where the f*** am I?” was likely her first thought… followed close behind by “What the hell is this place?, Why does it offend my…. ummmm…. senses…. so?”. These were likely the first thoughts any one of us had ever had. The first tangible thoughts of the self to self. Imagine that: the first thoughts ever thought by any one of us… the first thought of all time… being ones of disorientation. The irony, in case it be lost (so to speak) must be spoken. After thousands of years, we still are asking the same questions to self and to one-another each and every day.

In a World Religion class I had in undergraduate school, this idea was professed by one of the worst professors I, or any of my contemporaries, had ever had the displeasure of studying under. His classes were insufferable, not for lack of material, but rather for his inability to communicate his thoughts clearly. He might have been the only man on Earth that could raze the study of world religions to a landscape of wasted sand without a dune or oasis in sight. But that is not to say that the class or his lectures were worthless. To the contrary, the fact that I have ported this idea with me for over a decade & a half, while I have forgotten his name (though not the ‘F’ I eventually received in his class), demonstrates that he had succeeded in something monumental. He had introduced the idea to me & my melon has been chomping on it ever since. That the need to orient oneself is on par with the drive for sex, food & shelter was a breakthrough to the young and impressionable me. It resonated to the depths of my being. It felt right. He described it to the class of 12 half-asleep undergrads in a dark room buried under the cafeteria in the commons (a closet really). And the point was not lost to me that I was probably not the only one thinking “what the hell am I doing here” while thinking of the lunch menu and day-dreaming about my girlfriend in all of her naked glory rather than the shitty Iowa weather. That is to say, while he went on about the origin & probable significance of monoliths erected by Celtic dwarfs and the hypotheses surrounding what propelled long-gone mystical clans of people to erect “alters”, architectural calendars and other runes, he made a decent case. All of us, from time en memoriam have wondered not just what’s for lunch and who we plan to screw next, but at least equally why we are here and when class will end. The way he described the theory that some promulgate that these all represent various peoples’ attempts to orient themselves to the spinning heavens and to the surrounding landscape really spoke to me. And that got me to thinking about even more than when class would end. I continued to think about my girlfriend naked.

Specifically, it got me to thinking about why folks throughout the conscious ages have felt such a strong a need to orient themselves while other bipeds, and presumably, our genealogical forefathers/cousins presumably did not.

The answer I guessed was that something had changed. And, from what little I understand, the best theories at our disposal seem to indicate that something did change & it changed profoundly. Now, there are few among us who would argue with the proposition that software alone makes the machine. Often is the case that the newest version cannot even be loaded onto an older CPU, for want of processing speed, memory, &c.. What is clear about the historic record is that over time, somehow, we did indeed receive a series of hardware upgrades. The mechanism of how it happened or what the old hardware looked like, whether we are a new machine altogether or whether we are a newer version of versions that preceded us is interesting, but not discernable to me. What is of fundamental interest to me is the software we are running on & how we got the software upgrade. That is to say, was there a point in time where one of us homosapien folks received an install on demand download from a creator? Was there one moment in the experience of one of our distant ancestors when the lights went on, so to speak? When a flicker of consciousness beyond that of feeding, breeding & keeping warm entered the fray? When we became… well…. More spiritually like us? I think there was. When & how precisely I don’t know. What I do know is that the story sounds mighty familiar.

When I think about the woman who awoke out of her dreamy haze, huddling closely to her mate in a shelter slightly illuminated by the dwindling embers of the previous night’s fire, I think I can recognize her & empathize with her. She is to me the first one of us. That moment, in my mind, signifies the instant at which we became us. I picture her gazing through the entrance to the clans’ cave, out over the beach & staring, completely captivated, out over the horizon at the First Dawn. That moment marked the first sunrise witnessed by a truly sentient self-aware human. That is to say, morning after morning the sun had appeared to an audience that could not appreciate its eons-old dance across the sky. That is to say, all who preceded this Eve had failed to really process the Sun’s significance, much less their own. Their hardware had been capable, but the software that dictated its machinations had been in grave need of an upgrade. I contend the development of the hardware and piecing together of the model we represent came first. Some Q&A testing went on (supplying eons of intrigue for mankind to unravel) & when all was functioning to project specifications (and enough fodder had been provided to satiate lifetimes & generations of curious creatures), Eve was endowed with vX.0 software package & underwent a system reboot. From a system deployment standpoint, it makes sense to make sure the hardware is capable before one loads it up with software. Ah, but any good tech will tell you to always plan for scalability. If the calculations about the average percentage use of our brain capacity are at all accurate, there is plenty of room for future versions.
The analogy of human psyche/soma as computer software/hardware is surely a crude one which breaks down, as I am reminded by Timothy Witmer, rather quickly. Yet this metaphor holds for sake of discussing the moment described above; the marriage of mind & body, as distinct from the mechanical concert of brain & body that preceded it. We have the benefit, many years later, of more diverse metaphors than previous generations. What seems crude to us would have in the days of old seemed more fantastic and incomprehensible by far than the idea that the Creator “breathed life into Adam” or “made Eve from the rib of Adam”. I confess that to compare the corpus to hardware or the soul to software does not properly convey to the true nature of the body & mind, but the model holds for this discussion.

Chapter I: On Evolution & Awareness of the Self

Or “Theistic Evolution”

Theistic Evolution says that God creates through evolution. Theistic Evolutionists vary in beliefs about how much God intervenes in the process. It accepts most or all of modern science, but it invokes God for some things outside the realm of science, such as the creation of the human soul. This position is promoted by the Pope and taught at mainline Protestant seminaries.

· Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man (HarperCollin, San Francisco, 1959, 1980)

Fundamentalists and literalists claim that Creation (not evolution) most accurately describes mankind’s genesis & that of the universe. Humanists, on the other hand, work tirelessly pointing to irrefutable evidence to support the argument that Natural Selection, rather than the touch of a creator, best explains how we came to be.

What kills me each time I speak to someone who professes the one (whether “creationism” or natural selection) at the exclusion of the other is the lack of imagination & sheer intellectual laziness demonstrated by framing the discourse as a zero sum equation. To me, this is one of the cases where both prevailing opinions are very, very wrong. To assume that creation & evolution are mutually exclusive is evidence that man only sees what he wants to see… only believes what he wants to believe…

There are a few of us who actually believe the two are likely married. That is to say, there are those of us who have no problem whatsoever nodding to the evidence that indicates that evolution is likely a function of creation, rather than its chief antagonist.

That the anthropological evidence supports Darwin’s Natural Selection is not a matter of faith, but rather one of acknowledging fact & truth. The archeological record is written in stone & preserved in resin. It is, in short, undeniable. That the universe is inexplicably & seemingly boundless is also inexplicable. That the system of the world & universe are governed by hard fast & immutable laws and that the heavens, for all the chaos they seem to portend, are predictable in observance of those laws is also irrefutable. For those that believe that to accept Natural Selection is to turn your back on the Creator, as well as for those who have turned their back on creation as a plausible scenario for all things in the universe, the proposition that the two are inextricably con-fused should feel intellectually honest & easy to accept.

Imagine a world where there was nothing to learn, nowhere to explore, no understanding to be revealed. Imagine a finite universe. Imagine the world painted in a palette of grays. Imagine, just for a minute, that there was as much to understand in this lifetime as is contained in your average racquetball court. Most folks would see this as a horribly dull alternate universe. In fact, it is likely that most of us would likely die of boredom given a year or two of suffering it. Sales of Pink Floyd records would spike along with the price per share of the major razor blade manufacturers. But this begs some monumental questions: Who would give a crap whether we were bored or not? Who would bother to assemble bones in the dirt for us to dis-cover? Who would create such an elaborate universe and why? How come we cannot venture any deeper into the sub-molecular level? Why are our efforts thwarted for the first time, not for wont of technology, but rather by our inability to observe sub-atomic behavior beyond a given point due to the “nature” of the building blocks we strive to observe themselves? Is there any credence to the saying, “the more we know, the more we realize how little we know?” What is this perpetual learning curve humanity seems to be on? Is it finite? Will there be a time where the mysteries of the universe are truly known? How much is there to learn?

I leave these questions to those who have the Real Gift. I leave them to the philosophers & the great thinkers of present, past & future. In the interest of furthering this line of thought, I impart a story that I have carried around with me for a long time. Maybe this is why I hung on to this experience for so many years. I pass it on to make what you will of it.

When I was a teenager of about 15, I came home from school to find “Wally” doing laundry. Wally’s given name was actually Walterine Hill. She was hired as help around the time I was born. She had become a member of our family by the time I was 1. She covered a lot of shifts for my mom while she was in hospital & really was like a second mother to me. In any event, Wally would ask me daily what I had learned in school. One particular day I was more interested than usual to share what I had learned in school because I had, in fact, learned something that had truly fascinated me & gotten me to thinking. So, I told Wally that I had learned that the moon shines on account of being illuminated by the Sun’s light, rather than moon-light produced by the moon herself. She found this of interest, but reacted in a way that surprised me. I had explained the phenomenon analytically, but she saw it as something more. Wally saw it as even more evidence that God knew what he was doing when he crafted the universe. “Child,” she said, “you know I never knew that. But it doesn’t surprise me in the least. God works in mysterious ways”.

Now, for some of the more elitist flies on the wall, this would appear an intellectual cop-out of sorts. I mean, it is generally accepted among pop cult-ure devotees that demonstrating how the mechanics of the moving parts operate de facto removes the mystery out of the equation. Essentially, the culture that gives you “let me stick my hand in his side to repair my disbelief” often sees scientific explanations as victories that take god out of contention as the authoring force behind inexplicable mysteries of olde. For Wally, on the other hand, that moonshine functioned this way, rather than that, just reinforced her intuitive understanding of the true nature of the universe. This example sang to her soul & served as yet another instance of God and His majesty at play. “How can that be?”, the Saab-driving, Macintosh using, dual income, no kids metrosexual asks himself & his latte sipping peers. It can be only if you recognize that this universe & everything in it were authored by an incomprehensible chain of events purposefully choreographed & set to a grand waltz of definitively set rhythms, patterns & laws. These pulleys that we see around us… these ropes and weights & bearings… they were created. And they are governed by an equally fascinating set of invisible forces, such as torque, gravity, tension, &c.. Am I telling you that all of these fantastic things, be they planets, satellites, comets, humans, penguins, light, gravity, plants, dinosaurs, fish, birds, black holes, wormholes, were created? Yes. Why would you have me believe such a thing? Because it is infinitely more probable that this monumental apparatus is the work of one Creator, than the fantastic improbability that all we observe is accidental.

Omniscience - the Web of the Infinite Now

I am currently reading "the Fabric of the Universe", by Brian Greene (b-day gift from brother Dan). His (Greene's) description of the behavior of photons and particles indicates that the environment we observe and experience with our senses is significantly different from actuality than one could possibly imagine. That is, Quantum Physics is revealing a Cosmos so radically contrary to our observed experience as to be exponentially more mysterious than could ever be dreamt.

[insert your own segue here]

Operations Management and God: I have often wondered how it would be possible for the Author of the Cosmos to really, truly be omniscient. I mean to say, that He is omniscient I have no doubt and can take on faith. But the "how" of it, you see, is as interesting to me as the "why" of it. How can He possibly know all that is, was, or "ever shall be"? Specifically, from an operations standpoint, how is this accomplished? What systems/mechanisms has He in place to manage this feat? Forgive me if I am thinking "not as God... but as man". I can't really help it. I will concede from the outset that it is likely He needs no system logistics control whatsoever... but if he did... erm... how might it work?

Omniscience and Free Will: One difficulty many have with the idea of omniscience is the strong impulse to accept the heresy of Predestination. And it is a somewhat natural conclusion to come to if one prefers the idea of an omniscient creator who already knows the choices you will make (now, then, and into the future) over the weird idea that He knows without really knowing what choices you will make... or that he knows the choices you will make before you know them... which kind of makes living a lifetime of choices appear a sadistic experiment of some sort (if the outcome is already known).

In any event, how can we allow for His omniscience AND Free Will. I suggest Quantum Physics has something to tell us in this regard.

The Space-Time Web: I am a total amateur with this stuff, so 1) don't take my weak explanations as "gospel", 2) forgive me my clunkiness.

OK, without going through the experiments as they were described in the book, which were great, I will try my hand at trying to describe the gist of a portion of the behavior of Photons as described by Greene which actually have something to do with the larger point I am trying to make.

(insert deep breathe)

You go to the local car dealer. You bring along a friend of yours because you plan on keeping your old car and need someone to drive it home while you drive your new car home.

You purchase a new car, hand the keys to your old car to your buddy, when he says, "Hey, sorry man, I wasn't really paying attention on the way here. How do I get to your place." You sigh, because this is typical of your friend. But he's the best you could get on short notice. And it is Saturday, so he's doing you a pretty decent favor.

"Well, there are two ways to get to my place from here," you say. You bust out a pad of paper and a pen and map the two possible routes. You leave some minutes after he does and when you get home, you're nonplussed because your old car is parked right next to ... your old car... how can this be? You walk up between both cars completely perplexed. You look in the one car... yep, this is your car. How strange. You look in the other car and you freak out a little because it is also your old car. Each is exactly the same in every way. You go around the the bumper in the back to look for the telltale crack left from the last time you left the bar. You find it on the one car and then, sure as sh**, you also find the exact same crack in the "other" car. What the f*ck?

Your buddy comes out of your house and sits on the porch, cracking open a beer from your fridge. Glad he's made himself at home. You are confident you've completely cracked, so you say to him, "Hey, ummmm, notice anything weird?" Your buddy looks up. "No. What's up." You point to the driveway. "Wow, I'm seeing double! Cool. Where'd you get it? And how'd it get here?"

"That's what I was going to ask you," you reply.

"Huh?"

"Where'd the other car come from?" you inquire. Your buddy shrugs his shoulders. "How the hell should I know?" he says.

You're starting to get pissed off now. "Dude, stop messin' with me."

"What the hell are you talking about?" says your friend, a little miffed now. "I just left the dealership and came straight here."

"Well, which way did you go?" you ask. Your friend just shrugs his shoulders.

"I dunno, it's strangely hazy. I honestly don't recall."

"Well, it's real easy, moron. Did you take Main past the old cemetery? Or, did you take Apache past the Public Library?"

"Yes," says your friend.

"Dude! It's not a 'yes' or 'no' question."

"What?" says you pal.

"Did you take Main past the old cemetery to get here?" you ask again.

"Yes."

"Okay. That's better. You made it sound like you took Apache past the library too."

"But I did go past the library."

"Dammit: did you go past the library on Apache?"

"Yes. I did."

"And you're saying you also took Main past the cemetery."

"Right. Exactly."

You look back out at the driveway. The two identical cars are both there, as is the new car you just bought. You pinch yourself to make sure you're not dreaming and then start looking around for cameras. This must be some type of hoax.

"I am going to settle this once and for all. You stay here."

"Fine. And get me another beer when you come back."

"Screw you! Get it your damn self," you say. "Go ahead and make your self at home while you're at it."

You go to your backyard, open up the shed, and pull the cover off of your time machine. It's been awhile since you've lit this puppy up. But a quick check reveals all systems go. So you set the chronometer to the precise time your buddy left the lot. Nothing weird there. Just as you recalled it.

You fast forward to when you arrived home. Lo and behold, there are two identical cars in your driveway.

So, you go back in time and surveil the route on Main. You are confident your buddy didn't take this route because otherwise you would have seen him pass by. So, you return to the shed and when you come around the corner, you only see one old beater of a car. All seems well with the world and you tell your buddy so.

But this bothers you. So, curiosity gets the better of you and you go back in time to the dealership, see him leave in your old car and then you fast-forward back to the shed. You come around the corner and there are 2 old cars in the driveway. What the hell?

A glutton for punishment, you go back in time again, camp out on Apache street and sure enough you see your buddy drive by. So, now you've confirmed he took Apache. You return to the future, come around the corner to find only one old car.

You start to think that something here has to do with your knowledge of the route that your buddy took. When you didn't see him pass on Main, you knew he must've taken Apache. When you camped out on Apache, you witnessed him pass by. In both cases, you came to find only one car in the driveway. Otherwise, there were 2 old cars in the driveway.

So, you decide to return to Main and you freak because you witness your buddy drive by this time. You go back to the future and confirm there is only one car in the driveway.

This is completely freaky. It appears that your friend remembers it properly: you have witnessed him take both routes... not simultaneously... cause your time machine isn't bilocality-enabled... but it is going back in time to the same exact moment. Whether you camp out at Main or on Apache.

What you conclude is that your buddy travels both paths simultaneously when you do not observe/surveil Main or Apache. But once you witness him passing by or conclude that he went the other route, something changes and he shows up at your house with one car.

What is points to is that absent observing the actual route, your buddy has in fact taken both routes/paths to end up in your driveway... simultaneously driving 2 identical cars.

It is in the act of determining his route that the Cosmos seems to retroactively "decide" only one path can be taken... therefore avoiding a paradox.

The Point, Please: I think God, if indeed he needed a mechanism to enable omniscience, would use something similar, if not precisely the same, as the behavior photons exhibit. He has the ability to know all possibilities, all things that may or could possibly be, all the choices we could possibly make as individuals, all possible outcomes based on all the inter-relatedness of all possible choices throughout time... He has the ability to reconcile one individual choice made in India in the present day with a choice made 5000 years ago in what would become Mexico City, with a decision some future denizen of Earth (or Moon) might make some time in the future, at the moment and retroactively choosing the path from one decision to another.

This is the only way I can think of that properly describes how we can explain Free Volition AND the Omniscient nature of the One.

This is a really difficult thing for me to explain... I am still trying to formulate the finer points of this theo-ry... and I'm sure I've butchered something or another. But, I found it interesting... so I thought I'd float it by the BloodyScotts.

Jennifer

I was at first amazed by her beauty. I was dumbstruck. And she was the thing I had to have. Come hell or high-water, I would have her for my own. She was perfect in every way to me. She would make me do and say things I had no intention to do or say. I was entranced and overcome by her very presence.

This young lady became my wife. And I came to discover the infinite depth of her beauty. How could I have been so blessed? A lowly slug such as myself. And for years I had her for my very own. I could never know all things about this simply complex person. But I would try. She was surely hiding something from me. I could sense it. There was even more there that I could perceive, but could not explore.

Then my Wife became pregnant with our first. And she changed. She morphed right before my very eyes and I knew she was going somewhere strange and odd. A place she would never return from. It was exciting to witness her gracefulness as her belly swelled and she took on that glow. And she changed. She changed. Subtly at first. But profoundly. Then this woman emerged to me. I felt unworthy. I felt in awe.

Our first baby was born at Desert Samaritan, in Mesa, Arizona. I was rocked by my wife's fortitude. When the contractions came, she entered in to a zone. She did not flail. She did not writhe. She did not complain. Not once. Who was this superhuman? And how could it have escaped me all these years? The obscured place I had sensed in her was not a place that existed in the then of her. No. I had been sensing the potentiality. I has been sensing what she would become.

Watching my wife with our children, I know I am bested in all things by this woman. We have four children now. Each one loved, fed at the breast, beneficiaries of pure love and tenderness. Each one sprinkled with the cool relief of a mother's gentle touch and understanding.

When you see a mother, you see the pinnacle of human potential. Who can count the legions of men who have died crying out for their mothers? There is a reason why.

The Judas Ratio

For several years I have been toying with the concept of a "Judas Ratio." The Judas Ratio can be thought to be the 8% (1/12) of any demographic segment (whether professional or otherwise) that can be expected to be complete scoundrels.

The concept originated with my father, Dan Sr., who postulated the thought to explain the "radical priests" during the pedophilia outing that occurred some years back. He said something along these lines: "If the Master Himself had one among his group who would sell Him and his own soul for a bag of cash, isn't it likely the rest of us will have to suffer the same?" That goes for the Church, our schools, our bureaucrats, our politicians, our businesses (managers and employees alike), our neighbors, our family members, et cetera.

I think there is something to this Judas Ratio business. It may be that some of the 8% are never found out, while others are eventually dis-covered. But, nonetheless, I think it holds.

Recently, I found out that 2 of my co-workers, both married with children, were having an long-term affair with one another. I was, to say the least, disappointed and rather sick to my stomach when I learned that these two people who I had judged to be good, solid people (with whom I took to have a great deal in common with), were, in fact, in complete breach of their most fundamental commitments... that of their respective marriages. I was floored because I believed I knew their hearts. I judged I knew them and their characters. I judged I would trust their judgment and had faith in each of them, perceiving them to be children of light. But I was flat wrong.

Judas lives. Judas lives. Betrayal of one's-self and of one's time and place... and of the possible futures is perhaps to be expected, given the 8% miasm we find through the ranks of our species. It makes it hard to have faith that we can achieve enlightenment as a species when there are those among us who live... sweat... grope... and remain... dragging their corpses through the historical refuse of a shadow world of lies and deceit.

Speed of Light and the Afterlife

I was pondering the integral relationship of speed and time described in "the Fabric of Time" as pioneered by Einstein. The relationship reveals that speed and time are entwined in a negative relationship of... erm... epic proportion: the faster one travels, the slower time passes. Ultimately, scientific tests seem to foretell, if one could travel at the speed of light (that is, really fast), time would stop altogether.

Then I started to think of Eternity, or as in an earlier post, the Eternal Now. So, if when I die, I am converted to pure light, wouldn't I be in a permanent state of the eternal now? This led me to the eternal oneness and then my brain glazed.

Anyway, it is curious that "light" seems to be the common denominator of all scientific, philosophic, and theological theories and laws. Why? I don't know.

But today, I have committed to becoming pure light when I croak off. Time will cease and I will barrel through the infinite and eternal now without a scratch, where I will mingle with "other light beings" from eons past who have not sensed, nor even considered, that they have missed a damn thing in terms of human history.

Gayness and Redundancy

My brother once challenged me to think about why, from a genetic standpoint, gayness might be appealing for the preservation of the race, and therefore survive as a orientation in the greater gene pool.

I have been convinced from a very young age that, much like the color of one's eyes, or a person's height, or a person's general disposition, gayness is genetically-based. That is to say, that it appears to me that homosexuality is a predisposition of a given percentage of humans. Without commenting on homosexuality as a lifestyle, I would like to expound on some thoughts that have occurred to me as why this might be so.

The first and most obvious reason why gayness might be not only tolerated from a evolutionary standpoint, but rather a purposeful outcome of X% of births, is that of redundancy. What does that mean?

In any stable system, one expects to see redundancy. For instance, a copier goes down at work, and there is another copier available (albeit accross the building). In this scenario, there is an interruption to the natural flow of the workplace, but the workplace and the flow of production are not interrupted. Or, let's say, a household has two cars. One breaks down and is taken to the shop. Now, for a couple days or so, the family has to share one car. It's a pain in the arse, but having two cars (or two copiers) means that while the normal flow of life is impeded, it is not interrupted. The system benefits from the essential insurance policy of redundancy.

Now, imagine a system in which all available men are paired up with all available women. In nature, the percentage of female births is roughly 51%-52% female to 48%-49% male. Given that X% of women perish in childbirth, this makes sense from a sustainability standpoint. In any event, as systems always tend toward equilibrium, we can say, all things being equal, in a given tribal community, isolated from the greater world, let's assume all available men are paired with all available women. There are no gay men or women. Let's say one of the women or one of the men vanish, prsumed to have drowned. The system (that is the community) is in a world of hurt: they have lost either a hunter or a gatherer, and yet the offspring still need to be fed, the preparation of food must still be met, the participation in communal life and responsibilities of the man and woman need to be satisfied for everybodies' sake. Without redundancy, how will this occur?

On the other hand, let's imagine a world, as I figure it must have been, where there happens to be a shaman. He was so appointed, in that coupling with a woman doesn't quite do it for him. So, he turns himself to something a bit more attractive in his mind's eye: that of being the spiritual leader of the community. In this manner, he may or may not sublimate his sexual orientation... but he does take his "strange disposition" (relative to the other men, anyway) which drives him from what all other men seem to want (a female partner) and turns it into a decided strength.

In this village, a similar mishap occurs, and the community is left without one of its members. Enter the stability provided by the shaman.

I am purposefully avoiding making any moral judgment on homosexuality. I am simply stating that there is at least one very plausable and purposeful reason for why gayness seems to be built into the system.

I could go on to speak of the sense among many that, in particular, many gay men, for example, seem to be a 3rd gender altogether. Neither entirely "male", nor entirely "female" in behavior. And, from a fundamental, strictly evolutionary sense, this makes complete sense to me.

The Eternal Now

We observe the "Arrow of Time" moving from past to present to future. In the egg that breaks, but does not unbreak. In the man who grows old, but does not "ungrow" young. In the degredation of the observable, we witness a one-way street. It is a reality of the unit we observe. And this, it seems, is what we base our "linear" conception of time. From Past to Present to Future.

St. Augustine remarks that the future only exists in the now, when it is experienced (observed), and for that fleeting micro-moment it is the now, and the "second" it is witnessed it is the past. But the future, to Augustine, does not exist. There is no "unfurling" of time. And the past only exists in the mind in which it was observed. One cannot retrieve but a sliver of "it" as stored in the observer's memory. Nonetheless, it cannot be actually retrieved. What he propounded is an eternity of now... or the Eternal Now.

My brother Dan sent me an interesting book for my birthday. "The Fabric of the Cosmos." And in its early pages, our author speaks to the "arrow of time". I do not know what lay within the coming pages, but the early pages speak to the traditional concept of time. The linear Past, Present, and Future. It occurs to me that the egg that breaks, the man who grows old, the degredation of the observable unit, when removed from its context seems to speak to this one-way street modality. But one wonders the following: if we were able to observe all that is in its collective whole, would we find that the degredation to the exact degree of on unit or in fact portion of the unit is not balanced, as a leger must be, by the equal generation of some other unit to the same degree? That is to say: if we observe a lawn from our porch, we see a static, green layout. In fact, we know that it is in a perpetual state of degradation and generation concurrently. The blade grows, exists, then ceases to exist. but we do not observe the blade. We rather observe the entire lawn.

If it is observation which creates past, present, and future... that is from a unique and singular and necessarily singular perspective of the observer, this is hardly a foundation on which to estimate the existence of time in three dimensions.

I don't know what will come in the remaining pages of the book. But I sense that what I see "degrade" in the observed units (myself included), is countered in generation somewhere else in the Cosmos. This speaks not to a one-way street at all. It speaks to two curves: degredation and generation. They create an X in the aggregated macro of degredation an generation. And if one draws a horizontal line through the intersection of these two curves, I suspect we might call it rightly "The Eternal Now".