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skipper wrote a new post, Withdrawal 9 years, 4 months ago
The mariner has not watched television one second since the announcement except for the weather ap. He has not listened to radio or even read the newspapers. He has not scoured the Internet for reactions – e […]
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skipper wrote a new post, Blame it on Fire 9 years, 4 months ago
The mariner visited his primary care physician yesterday. He is a delightful young man – bright, well organized, efficient and knowledgeable in his thoughts as a doctor should be. But he is more than that. In o […]
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skipper wrote a new post, FINI 9 years, 4 months ago
The silent majority has decided to participate in the government it knows nothing about. For the first time, perhaps in more than a hundred years, the silent majority decided to vote. One can’t blame them; they l […]
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I can not believe that our country has come to this. It just blows me away that we are taking this path and that they believe it is all going to be great. It is basically the beginning of the end as far as I am concerned and will only get worse, but it is what it is and we just need to be prepared emotionally, mentally and spiritually to withstand what is coming.
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The mariner shares your angst, disbelief and despair. The French Revolution passed through 17 identifiable phases before it was successful. I fear we are at the beginning of a multi-phase revolution ourselves.
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skipper wrote a new post, Most Important Thing to Do in US 9 years, 4 months ago
Ancient Mariner
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skipper wrote a new post, One Nation, One Race 9 years, 4 months ago
As the days dwindle down to a precious few the gloves are off among voters concerned about the influence of multi-racial voting. America has always been a one-race nation…. Dixie is desperately looking for ways t […]
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skipper wrote a new post, The Move from Past to Future 9 years, 4 months ago
The mariner apologizes to readers who are confused by his mixing metaphors incoherently. It was stated in the last post that as President, Hillary will become the leader of the Establishment and eventually the […]
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Given the state of the republic, the gridlock in Congress, and the huge problems that face us (as always), I think what we need now is a super administrator, whose instincts lean toward the progressive. Hillary is not Wonder Woman, but she is smart, experienced, compassionate and strong. While we wait for the millenials to organize the new left, we could use a super administrator to navigate the troubled waters of the present. How’s that for a mariner metaphor!
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Was there any doubt about the state of the Republic before Trump rose to Republican nominee? Even with right wingers like Perot, Pat Buchanan or the nationalistic furor behind Ronald Reagan, I never feared for the continuation of our republic. Now I’m concerned. When Hillary wins the electoral votes deciding the election, Trump is going to mobilize his minionz . . . Just Musing
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skipper wrote a new post, What has 2016 wrought? 9 years, 4 months ago
As the United States approaches its odd 2016 election, one cannot help but be concerned the US is not handling history very well. Most of the incompetence can be laid at the feet of the electorate. What most […]
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skipper wrote a new post, Spirit-Driven Profit 9 years, 4 months ago
The last post about a nail driven by spirit likely was an odd one to the reader. Mariner hopes it loosened the brain a bit to conjure new and unexplored ways of thinking about mundane things. Remember we are in […]
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Many people including myself laugh at and mock “The Donald”, but the similarities to “The Adolph” and even closer to our epoch and home McCarthyism, is cause for alarm. I agree; don’t vote for Trump, because just as he subverted the Republican Party, so too will he subvert our Democracy.
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skipper wrote a new post, If a Nail were driven by Spirit 9 years, 5 months ago
This is a test. Have you ever had empathy for a small stone? When Mariner was in his pubescent years, he once replaced a stone atop a pile of dirt from which it became dislodged. He admits to a weird moment. How […]
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You’re up early today (or is it late?). I am too. Your last sentence prodded something loose in my memory …
I remember reading an old lumberjack’s account of the small logging company he worked for transitioning from two-man crosscut saws to gasoline-powered chainsaws, sometime in the 1940s I believe. He said that before the change, a two-man crew with a misery whip could produce about 200 logs in a day. Afterwards, one man with a chainsaw and three gallons of gasoline could produce about 600 logs in a day.
So are three gallons of gasoline worth five man-days of labor? If so, is the converse true as well? What about the man behind the chainsaw – the production of the chainsaw – the production and refining of the oil? The ‘worth’ of the chain-sawyer scales against the crosscut team fairly well, but how does either compare to a steam donkey? A cable skidder? A half-million-dollar harvester/forwarder in cut-to-length operation?
All I can say for sure is that when I have to deal with trees, I am happy to have a chainsaw instead of a misery whip.
Complexities, complexities … anthropomorphizing tendencies aside, I have great empathy for the little rock called Earth, which seems to positively radiate with solar-powered Gaia-benevolence and profound spiritual significance. Mountains are worshipped by some cultures. How small does a rock have to be before it is just a rock?
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Eloquent, Ben. No doubt the spirit is with you at 8,000 feet!
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So many ways I can reply to this interesting musing, First, I do not anthropomorphize. Second, I have elevated empathy to a new apathy. Example: I’m descending the stairs to the subway station and a woman is walking with her two-year old abreast across the entire stairwell and I hear the subway coming and I’m getting frustrated and press myself against the wall to work myself around the little girl–was I being apathetic or pragmatic?
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Good to hear from you again, Jeff.
Can there be any more threat to one’s survival than trying to catch a New York subway? Certainly not the time to ponder or solve humanity’s indiscretions. What a powerful conflict to feel adrenalin respond to defense, flight and attack all at once. Living in a compressed living space with eight million other humans mandates a pragmatic philosophy. Forget apathy; apathy is complete lack of motivation – something one doesn’t have racing down a subway stairway.
To compensate and for sheer entertainment, try anthropomorphizing once in a while. Looking at your remote, imagine what it would say; what its general attitude would be; what it would ask of you as its employer to make its tasks easier. To practice empathy – the more important projection – how do you improve your relationship with your remote? There are easier objects than a remote; do you have a pet or plant? In a recent post, I referenced an URL about empathy between humans and dogs. Over 10,000 years of breeding, dogs are hyper empathetic. We have not done as good a job with ourselves.
It is easier to anthropomorphize when you are surrounded by a terrain where it is obvious that several objects (trees, rocks, bugs, animals and sky) all seem to be cohabiting as if there were an organized conversation. Join the conversation to learn more about how the environment works.
Exercises in projection are not popular today. That’s a shame. Projection keeps the self flexible, relaxed and improves the relationship between soul and reality.
The actual objective is to improve one’s empathy. There are some who believe empathy is where reality exists. Anything other than empathy is a self centered façade. Things just feel easier when you feel you are part of reality. Mariner offers you literature:
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. Kahlil Gibran.
Giving of self requires empathy.See “What is Empathy” July 21.
Ancient Mariner
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skipper wrote a new post, Follow the Money 9 years, 5 months ago
This famous quote from the film Deep Throat about the Nixon Watergate Scandal holds truer today than ever. The danger is that we have become accustomed to it. We no longer take umbrage at the misuse of money – i […]
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Sad but true. I Hope we will see Citizens United struck down in the next administration. I really liked the word “centrist” used in this blog. We are far too polarized. There seems to be a lack of reasonableness across all facets of our society. The fanatics on both ends of the spectrum cause the problems. Maybe if we move to a central position things will improve.
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skipper wrote a new post, The Art of the (Double) Deal 9 years, 5 months ago
Thanks to Donald for having written an appropriate book title to parody.
Thanks to a thirty year political career by the Clintons which is a crystal clear example of double dealing.
This post is in the form […]
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skipper wrote a new post, Hades 9 years, 5 months ago
The mariner is reminded of the harsh apocalyptic and horrific movies popular today. Similar is his life wandering among fire pits and unexpected explosions caused by politics; ghoulish realities of extinct […]
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There must be a ray of hope somewhere. Or perhaps we must be the ray of hope, like Mother Teresa who worked tirelessly for the poor and suffering even though her faith was gone.
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skipper wrote a new post, Analysis after the Debate 9 years, 5 months ago
We are tracking which candidate is gaining on the other (Donald or Hillary) by scoring different elements of the election process rather than trying to guess amid the cacophony generated by media. The elements are […]
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Interesting how Mariner can be encouraging and discouraging in the same post! Western civilization may be saved, but saved for what?
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skipper wrote a new post, On Your Mark . . . 9 years, 6 months ago
The Presidential debate is a day or two away (Monday Sept 26). The mariner offers a last look at the vector analysis he and readers have been using to determine which candidate is ahead instead of the ruckus media […]
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skipper wrote a new post, Still Talking About It 9 years, 6 months ago
The mariner was motivated to opine the effect of telecommunication on our cultural environment. The assumption is that the telegraph and its telephonic advances permit us to have personal interaction among many […]
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skipper wrote a new post, Let’s Talk About It 9 years, 6 months ago
God must have wanted the mariner to write about this post’s subject: the influence of communication. Within eight hours, the mariner had the following experiences:
He spoke with a friend at a street fair who r […]
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skipper wrote a new post, Early Voting 9 years, 6 months ago
Another analytical weight that is important to our vector analysis of the campaign is absentee or early voting. Unfortunately, the effect of early voting can’t be verified until Election Day. What analysts do i […]
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Seems to me that the Kim regime (and pretty much North Korea in general) exists entirely at the pleasure of the People’s Republic of China. Who are also unlikely to react well to Western military action on the peninsula …
Why they have allowed NK to go on for so long I can only guess. Maybe the apparatchiks of their oppressive, not-terribly-socialist state want to keep looking good by comparison? Maybe Chinese ambitions in the Asia-Pacific region are advanced by the existence of a hostile, unstable neighbor state (which, despite nuclear saber-rattling and a massive standing army, is nonetheless completely incapable of meaningful mobilization beyond its borders in any modern conflict, and will probably collapse the moment actual warfare breaches its cultural isolation)?
Or maybe NK is an embarrassment to them with no apparent solution, sort of the way we have always ignored Mexico’s government corruption, economic woes, and recent systemic near-collapses of civil order …
As satisfying as it might be to show Kim Jong-un what a REAL nuclear explosion in North Korea looks like, I doubt there is a whole lot the U.S. (or anyone else) can do about NK without Chinese support. I can’t speak to our anti-ballistic-missile defenses, but for now I am still counting on North Korea’s missiles to protect me from North Korea’s nukes.
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All points well taken. The only idea mariner can add is a Chinese perspective: NK is a convenient port for stuff China would not like everyone to know about; China can always throw NK into the breach of a war without national harm. Where did NK get the scientists and materials to build a nuclear bomb anyway? The mariner has read that NK is pretty much living on China’s dime.
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skipper wrote a new post, Friday Update 9 years, 6 months ago
Let’s check in on our vector analysis of the Presidential Campaign:
538.com (Nate Silver) – Nate provides three projections:
Polls only (more than 350!) present odds of Hillary winning 69.1 to 30. […]
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skipper wrote a new post, It’s Time Again 9 years, 6 months ago
Okay, readers. It’s time for another haiku poetry challenge. We of the iowa-mariner.com blog periodically craft a haiku poem. For the youngsters who have forgotten the rules and for those new to the blog, here a […]
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It is so very
Hard to make thoughts of nature
Fit into this form!
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skipper wrote a new post, Beyond Voting for People 9 years, 6 months ago
Reader Ben submitted a website that provides another perspective into the will of the people rather than the will of legislators. It is the referendum or public initiative. A referendum is a petition signed by […]
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An honor to have a passing comment become a Skipper post!
The level of direct democracy allowed varies quite a bit between the states. Plebiscite as policy instrument is definitely more prominent in Western states – reflecting widespread dissatisfaction with the governance of the established United States in the mid-19th Century when those territories were achieving statehood. The major concern was the poor accountability of elected officials to the electorate: party politics preventing effective legislation (without hindering deference to large banks and elite families in the least, of course), set against a backdrop of decades-long government-supported monetary deflation (the “Cross of Gold”) that burdened miners, farmers, and laborers throughout the American interior while the benefits accrued mainly to large banks and wealthy investors on both coasts.
A majority of Colorado’s electorate felt strongly enough about limiting taxes or allowing marijuana to vote in favor of such amendments to our state Constitution. (Many others too, but not as recent nor as notorious.) In neither of those two cases had our state legislature passed, or even proposed, remotely similar legislation. In both cases there was vocal bipartisan opposition from governor and lawmakers. I’m sure they all felt their stance was “mandated” by the electorate – the very same electorate that had to take matters into our own hands to demonstrate just how much our representatives WEREN’T representing us.
I don’t think you can lay all the blame at the feet of direct democracy! I’m not saying a country should be run entirely by plebiscite, but it DOES keep the burghermeisters honest. And gives one a feeling of real participation in the Republic that cannot be replicated by picking this jerk over that jerk on a ballot.
However, to the credit of our system – whether they liked it or not, our state government apparatus has always respected and incorporated the outcome of these ballot measures. Imagine if the People squawked as much when the lawmakers pushed new laws on them, as the lawmakers do when the tables are turned!
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… however, please note that I do not speak for California. Their politics are baffling. The place is ungovernable.
I’m also not a huge fan of Colorado’s TABOR amendment, for what it’s worth. However, it does seem to have resulted in a much more efficient, somewhat less corrupt state government than was the case in other states I have lived in. And in a nation that supposedly governs by consent of the governed, what’s wrong with the local authorities having to ask for the money they claim to spend on their citizens’ behalf? Sometimes they even get it …
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The Blog of the Ancient Mariner
The view from dockside
A thoughtful, measured response to a devastating situation. No name calling or tirade against the electorate–just the terrible reality of what a Trump presidency will look like and the terrible damage it can do. If only Trump were capable of a thoughtful, measured response to anything…
I could not agree with you more. I am still numb after Tuesday night. Will try to keep calm and carry on, but I don’t think it will be easy. I haven’t watched any TV news or listened to anything but classical music on the radio for three days.