Early to bed, Early to rise, Time isn't on your side

"8:58, first time I’ve ever been early for work. Except for all those daylight savings days. Lousy farmers." -Homer Simpson

Sure, I'm late to write a post about Daylight Savings Time (huh huh huh! See what I did there???) but, Benjamin Franklin's bullshit aphorism aside, the fetishiszation of getting up or being early has its roots in historical propaganda designed to make people into obedient workers.

The two greatest conspiracies Protestant conspiracies are Daylight Savings Time and Hops in Beer.

Hops weren't always a standard ingredient of beer.  You see after the Duke of Bavaria issued the Reinheitsgebot, the famous German Beer Purity law, in 1516 it was right in time for Martin Luther's break with the 95 Theses in 1517 and the nascent Protestant communities found a drink to put their followers quickly to bed at night; No Funny Business!  You see good Protestants were expected to get up early, work all day, read the Bible, then drink "a couple beers" and go to bed and do it all over again the next day, except Sunday when they were expected to go to church all day.

Getting back to Daylight Savings Time, having done night shift work for years I know how flipping your sleep schedule, working in the dark, or driving to and from work in the dark is physically and mentally exhausting.  And I applaud when everyone sees the one hour time changes in Spring and Fall have similar effects.  I don't know if Daylight Savings Time or Standard Time is the better option but, it's time to stop this silly flipping but, it's time to also stop working ourselves to death anyway.

Waking up early became a sign of a good worker and what American business has always wanted is workers willing to over exert themselves without being paid for their labor.  It became de rigueur to basically work without pay...  Because Real hard-workin' Muricans love to get to office before the boss to show their go-getter spirit and middle management potential.  There has never been a more insidious turn-of-phrase than; Early is on time, Ontime is late, and Late is Unacceptable.'

Work won't love you back.  And getting up early has taken more for man than it give us;  According to Bertrand Russell monumental tome The History of Western Philosophy (1945),

Queen Christina of Sweden, a passionate and learned lady who thought that, as a sovereign, she had a right to waste the time of great men. It turned out that she wanted daily lessons from him, but could not spare the time except at five in the morning. This unaccustomed early rising, in the cold of a Scandinavian winter, was not the best thing for a delicate man. Moreover, Chanut became dangerously ill, and Descartes looked after him. The ambassador recovered, but Descartes fell ill and died in February, 1650.

Rene Descartes was the first person to invent a new systematic process of philosophy since Aristotle.  Descartes monumental Cogito is a philosophical question which all modern thinkers must address.

Ayn Rand Objectively Wrong

There are certain books which supposedly need to be read early on in life in order to appreciate them. Mostly this is due to the mind of the reader being immature enough to be warped by the unhelpful, improper or evil message of the book or thought process.

"Give me a child for his first seven years and I will give you the man" ~ Jesuit Maxim.

Of course, when the Jesuits were allowed to brainwash and indoctrinate the boy early on he'd retain their warped teachings all his life.

So I never got around to Ayn Rand's two works until my mid-twenties. And having trudged through the long hard slog of Atlas Shrugged the most pertinent fact about the book, to me, was which character I most readily identified with.

I know I am not a Ragnar Danneskjöld super engineer able of crafting a Super Stealth Ship, or have the chess mastery of Francisco d'Anconia to undercut and play a 20 year deep Global Game of Intrigue, or possess the Hank Reardon intellect to invent an entirely new alloy, or the comic book super powers of John Galt himself so I identified with Dagny Taggart's loyal assistant, Eddie Willers.

Eddie represents the common man in Rand's book and philosophical worldview. And it clearly shows that Rand views the mass of humanity as dogs, hard-working enduring and loyal creatures but not possessing many other positive traits and with the ability to be turned to good or evil by how they are treated. Dagny Taggart was obviously Ayn Rand herself.

And how does Dagny (Rand) treat her loyal assistant, the common man, as the "evil" society crumbles? She leaves him to fucking die on the train tracks! Because that is what Objectivism holds the mass of humanity is nothing and the few brilliant beautiful people are everything. And even amongst the select few there exist a pecking order. Amongst the elect there are some even more Objectively Superior and those people need to be allowed special privileges.

A majority of the reason Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged was because of her desire to justify her sexual mores. I don't care, fuck whomever you want to fuck, but for Rand to rationally indulge in her sexual proclivities she had to wrap it in the aura of her Philosophical Magisterium as part and parcel of the Whole Objectivist Truth. In the novel, Hank Reardon and Dagny become lovers because they seek refuge from the "evil" society in each other's arms; having not fled to Galt's Gulch. Well, when Dagny's plane crashes, Reardon flys around trying to spot the wreckage. But after The Strike and upon being reunited with Dagny the two happily parts ways as if nothing ever happened between them because Dagnay has moved on to ride Galt's mega-phallus???

In her writings Rand often berates altruism and several philosophers (most noticeably Immanuel Kant) as evil and teaching an anti-human thought system. Because it undercuts and destroys the Individual, who is everything. Well, it is Rand's Objectivism which is truly anti-human. Objectivism goes: Reason is the highest, the individual is everything, reality exists A is A, yet Rand doesn't respect and in fact hates most common individuals. No Individual, even Randian Super Heroes, exists or succeeds ex nihlo.

I believe myself to be fairly intelligent and not given to evil but not having the spark of Randian superiority so to Rand I'm common. And that's when Rand's Objectivism shows it's true anti-human streak. The commons are nothing but potential parasites and therefore unreasonable, not grounded in reality, irredeemable and not worth saving. The Common Man is nobody special to Rand.

I'm Nobody. Nobody Special. Not like you.
Everybody is Special. Everybody. Everybody is a Hero, a Lover, a Fool, a Villain. Everybody. ~ Evey and V, V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

If You Come Upon the Buddha in the Roadway...

A standard avenue of attack on an atheist is the "What are you going to do when you die and find yourself face to face with god". It's a nonsensical question which holds no sway and causes no consternation in the atheist's mind.

But, as a gamer and avid thinker I have an active and fertile mind, as a result of evolution and my own cultivation. So here's a response (adapted from The Shawshank Redemption).

A door of perception opens and I find myself face to face, as it were, with the Holy Trinity.

Grunge it says here you have served a 109 years of a life sentence are you ready to face judgement and God?

God? Well, now let me see. You know, I have no idea what that word means.

Well it means Me. The Creator of Heaven and Earth. The Alpha and Omega...

I know what you think it means sonny. God is just a made up word. A politicians word. So little weak men can wear funny costumes and have a job stealing from and controlling people. What you really want to know is if I'm sorry I didn't believe in you while I was alive.

Well are you?

There's not a day goes by that I did not try and use my reason. And I'm not sorry the use of my mind and the evidence of the world led me to know you don't exist.

God? God is just a bullshit word. So go ahead and stamp your form and quit wasting my fucking time. Cause I don't give a damn.

I've said, when the spirit moves me, that god knows the reasons I have for why he does not exist.

This life is the real life this world is the only world and it is one's paramount duty to live life to the fullest, to cherish one's friends and loves, to soak in the glories of the world and in other words; To Be.

Addendum:
Suddenly, a bright light shines from above; with my eyes heavy and mouth dry I manage a sandpaper like croak, What is happening?

It's okay Mr. Grunge. The effects will wear off shortly. Your stem cell regeneration procedure was a complete success.

I'm hazy. I'm not sure I understand.

Of course allow me to explain. Since the mid 21st century due to medical and scientific advances mankind is capable of regenerating all the cells and organs of your physical self while the true self your mind remains and advances throughout the ages. Thus providing all of humanity a real Immortality instead of the fable once bandied about by insane brain washing fanatics and psychotic witch-doctors.

I had this dream I was brought before the holy trinity.

That's a common enough occurrence. While resting the mind moves throughout the REM cycle and further and vivid dreams and hallucinations are known to occur. People often dream about meeting imaginary beings.

Thus when the fog lifted I recalled what I knew. All the gods are imaginary. They are stuff of delusions, dreams and hallucinations.

The Joy of Finding Things Out

" 'Like this cup,' the master said, 'you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?' " ~ Bruce Lee relates a lesson to Joe Hyams in, Zen in the Martial Arts

So, the highway system around the Chicago-land area is very outdated for the amount of traffic it handles. The roadways are constantly undergoing construction, "humorously" highlighted by the canard there are only two seasons in Chicago; Winter and Construction.

I fortunately rarely experience the full on into city/out of city gridlock because, my travel directions are reverse of the normal flow. However, a week ago I meet my friends for dinner before a gaming session and enjoyed the process.

I told Ran about my observations. And as a background my friend Ran is MathMan if someone needs to know the sum of two integers ***boom*** they go to him. So he told me about the discipline of Fluid Dynamics, no doubt something he learned about 25 years before Grung the Blockhead, and how physicists create traffic flow models using the equations associated with Fluid Dynamics. Fucking cool!

Although I do lament my intellectual laziness earlier in life, it's always cool to learn new things. I think this truth holds much of the problems currently associated with the partisan political divide we have in America today. Everyone is so convinced they have it all figured out they immediately treat opposing information skeptically or aggressively denounce it. If only the naked ape was willing to empty his cup...