Independence Day

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Though all things foul would wear the blogs of grace, yet grace must still look so.

Hello and good morning.

Yes, yes, I know—I got your hopes all up yesterday by letting you think that I might not be writing a blog post today, and yet, here I am writing a blog post.  And I’m doing it today.

I’m sorry.  It seems my compulsive behavior patterns are stronger than my depression, at least in this regard.  I suppose that could be considered a strength in some cases, though as someone said somewhere, obsessions and compulsions are good servants but bad masters.  I take that to mean that it’s good to use them to get things done that you want or need to get done, but if they take control, they can become an apparent end in themselves and get in the way of things that would be more beneficial.

You probably know this.  Maybe you’ve not thought of it consciously, deliberately, but it’s probably pretty clear and obvious once you think about it.  I’m not really good at delivering deep and life-changing secrets; if I knew such things, surely my life would be in far better shape.

Anyway, I don’t really have a subject about which to write today—though there is much in the world that is worthy of commentary, let there be no doubt about that—so I’ll just meander a bit.

I’m in a slightly better mood than I was in yesterday.  I suspect that’s partly because I made it a point not to curtail or suppress my caffeine intake.  It’s not that I had abstained from caffeine the day before; Batman forbid.  But I kind of pushed it yesterday, and didn’t stop even in the afternoon.

Weirdly enough, that tends to improve if not the duration of my sleep, then the quality of it.  Perhaps it has to do with enhancing the muscle tone in my nasopharynx and oropharynx, making them less prone to flop about and cause possible apneic episodes.  It’s well known that caffeine increases cyclic AMP inside cells, and in particular muscle cells, and that improves their activity and tone.

This is part of why, for instance, a quick and dirty, temporizing measure in the case of someone having an asthma attack without their usual medicine available, can be a strong cup of coffee (not too hot, because it’s good to get it in quickly).  It’s not ideal, and cannot replace albuterol and other similar bronchodilators, but it can buy some time.

All that aside—and it is an aside—I wouldn’t say that I’m feeling upbeat today, but I am at least a bit energetic.  Caffeine is the most popular drug in the world (by far) for strong reasons, after all.  Even most strict religions that ban alcohol and other euphoriants rarely ban caffeine (though I’m led to understand that Mormonism is an exception).

Even many anti-drug fanatics tend to take in caffeine in one form or another; some of them should probably cut back, actually.  But the joke is certainly on them a bit, especially if they are among the benighted masses who see drug use (and abuse) in pseudo-moralizing terms, for they are often quite dependent on their drug of choice, as are so many of the rest of us.

Oh, well.  Most people are clueless most of the time, which is why it can be so heartbreakingly easy for con artists to fool so many into stupid things like avoiding vaccines or thinking that someone who has only ever engaged in self-service and self-aggrandizement is going to look out for them once such a person gains real political power.

This is all strictly hypothetical, of course.

On to other matters.  Today is Independence Eve, if you will, and tomorrow is Independence Day (in the United States of America).  Some people here don’t want even to celebrate the occasion because they are so frustrated with the situation in America, and I can understand their sentiments, but I think they are mistaken.

I think, more than ever, it’s important to review and renew the ideas and ideals on which the USA was founded, to go back to the startup and the operating system—to try to reboot, perhaps, with some bugs patched if possible, and with some malware removed.  The notions are straightforward in many cases, such as that governments are instituted, in principle, to protect and preserve the rights of the people of the country.  They are not the source of such rights; they are merely charged with their protection.  It is a duty, not a privilege, and they are certainly not an “authority”.

The Declaration of Independence is not a long document.  It’s only about 1400 words long, including signatures.  I’ve written blog posts longer than that.  And even the Constitution, with amendments, is only about 7000 words long.  That’s shorter than every short story I’ve ever written—even Solitaire is twice that long—and it’s not particularly difficult language.  The ideas aren’t all that difficult, either, though they are probably deeper than many people realize at first glance.

So, for tomorrow’s pre-programmed post, I have prepared to share the text of the Declaration of Independence.  Of course, one can go and read it at the government archives site, but I don’t feel as confident that it will remain available there indefinitely as I felt in the past.  So, I’m putting it up here, on the 4th of July, Independence Day.  I encourage you to copy and download it, and if you want, to share it.  Let’s make sure it’s out there in the world as much as possible.

Even the section that relates the grievances that led to the declaration are pertinent, though they can seem tedious, because some of them are being recapitulated (and worsened) by the present government.  And it doesn’t make things any better that our own government is the one acting in ways prone to “reduce them under absolute Despotism”; it makes it even more important to remember the point of founding the US in the first place.

No, we have never quite lived up to the ideals expressed in the Declaration—never fully, never as deeply or as rigorously as we ought to have done—but that is a failure in our attempts, not in the ideals themselves.  So, please, do read the post tomorrow, share it, make it go viral if you can (the Declaration, not my blog, though I guess I wouldn’t complain about the blog doing so).

Later on, I can start sharing the US Constitution, perhaps, and the Bill of Rights and other Amendments.  It’s important that we pay renewed attention to such things, for so many seem to have forgotten them (or more likely never to have learned them).

I hope those of you in the US have a good holiday tomorrow and a good holiday weekend.  Enjoy time with your families if you can.  But do try to remember what you’re celebrating, and why.

TTFN

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I must have liberty withal, as large a charter as the wind, to blog on whom I please

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and so it’s time for another of my weekly blog posts.

It’s also the 4th of July, which in the USA is Independence Day, the day on which we celebrate the official founding of the country, the date on which the Declaration of Independence was signed and “published”.

I’m often led to wonder how many—or should I say, how few—people in the US have actually read the Declaration of Independence even once.  It’s really not a very long document.  It’s not.  There are, so I’m told, 1320 words in the document proper, which goes up to 1458 words if you count the title and all the signatures*.  I’ve written many blog posts longer than that!  And yet, I wonder how many of the most vociferous “patriots” have actually read it.  There are even YouTube videos of someone else reading it to you, if that’s easier than reading it yourself.

Most of the loud and proud advocates of one or another political affiliation aren’t really people who have first evaluated and then adopted a particular set of ideals.  They are sports fans, rooting for their arbitrarily chosen team, angry when a coach or player they don’t like is seeing prominence, happy when their team is winning for the moment, imagining that they have some effect on the game—and perhaps they do have some effect—deluding themselves that they really understand or intuit their sport well.

Ironically, of course, many actual sports fans really do have deep knowledge of their sport.  They know a bit about its history, they study actual statistics, they recognize hidden complexities, all in fields where there is almost literally nothing important at stake—beyond the salaries and careers of athletes, coaches, and commentators, and the joy of fans.

But in areas where it can potentially, truly matter to them, most people accept random streams of noise from various websites and social media platforms and pundits and—Cat help them—Fox News as more than enough data for them to use to choose political candidates.  Except, they don’t really, actually even  use any of that information, at least not any pertinent information, to pick and choose candidates.  That would require effort.

Cat forbid any of them read the Constitution.  That’s a little longer than the Declaration of Independence**, but unlike the Declaration, it is an actual, legal document—the operating system of the United States of America, if you will.  To read the whole thing, once a year—or even once in a lifetime—doesn’t seem too high a bar even for the average person to clear.  Again, I believe there are YouTube videos that basically consist of someone reading the document aloud.

And Schoolhouse Rock did such a lovely and catchy song version of the preamble to the Constitution when I was young that I don’t think I’ll ever forget it while I am alive.  Indeed, it may be that, if I ever haunt some location after death, unlucky visitors to that place after midnight on moonless nights will hear a hollow, chilling voice singing, “We the people…in order to form a more perfect union…”

Given that people read all sorts of stupidities and absurdities on social media, one might think that familiarizing themselves with the documents that underlie the society in which they live might be not just useful but doable.  It might even be useful to study something of the political and moral philosophy behind these documents, and the jurisprudence that has grown up around them since the country began.

I’m tilting at windmills, I guess.  Still, if you live in the US and haven’t read the Declaration of Independence in a while, I encourage you to do so.  Even atheists often sing carols on Christmas; if they can do that, how hard can the other thing be?

Remaining in nation-level politics:  today is also the day of a General Election in the UK.  It’s apparently expected that the Labor Party will win the majority of seats in parliament and that the Tories will be ousted from power after quite a long time “in charge”***.  I suspect it will just be another instance of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”, but we shall see.  While no one actually runs or controls anything, there are actions and laws that can have effects on patterns and outcomes in the short and long-term.

It’s not as straightforward to achieve any given end as politicians and pundits would like to believe, or would like you to believe, but it does happen.  This is one reason I think we should treat all new laws and regulations literally as experiments, with pre-chosen measures of outcomes upon which to evaluate the successes and/or failures, as well as side-effects, of any given act of legislature.

It’s simply not enough to have good intentions.  It never has been, and it never will be.  Good intentions are merely the beginning of actually doing good, and they are barely even that.  They are more akin to the very first, mild early pangs of hunger that eventually must be turned into actions such as hunting and gathering and starting fires and cooking food and then chewing and eating it, or the modern equivalents thereof.

In other news, I wrote only 3,752 net new words on Extra Body this week, since I had last Saturday off.  It’s now 107 pages long (in current format), and yes, it really, honestly, is nearly done—at least the first draft is nearly done.

I’m not sure why it’s taking me so long to finish.  Maybe it’s because it’s not in any sense a horror story, so I can’t bring my darker self to bear upon it; darkness is, after all, my dominant aspect.  I don’t think that’s really the cause, though.  I think it’s really just because I am nearly out of gas, with no thoughts or hopes for any future worth having for myself.

I’ve had very bad pain this week, and my insomnia continues, and my tinnitus and disequilibria continue, and the noise and not-infrequent idiocy is no more bearable than before.  And I have very little in my life to counterbalance the negatives, to make up for the minor tortures of daily life, not least among which is the willful human stupidity to which I alluded above.

I probably ought to expunge myself from the world before I decide to try to expunge the world itself.  It’s always a temptation.  I frequently brainstorm ideas for relatively modest interventions that could destabilize the world, both politically and physically, just to try to put it out of its misery and mine.

Speaking of misery:  does anyone actually like the new Aptos font that Microsoft has made its current default?  I find it repulsive, and it makes me lean toward preferring Google’s alternatives to the Microsoft word processing and spreadsheet programs.  To whomever designed this font, I say:  I’m sorry, I’m sure you put significant effort into it, and that you did your best given the circumstances and your innate abilities and all the various vectors impinging on your state at the time…but you fucked up.

Oh, well.  That’s enough for now.  I hope you all have a good day and a good week.  In the UK, I hope you have a good General Election, with outcomes that are overall beneficial or at least not detrimental.  Keir Starmer may be a bit lackluster, but it’s not as though Sunak and his eighty-three or so immediate predecessors over the last several years have been all that impressive.

In the US, I hope you all have a nice holiday, and I encourage you to take a moment to read at the least the beginning and ending of the Declaration of Independence—you can skip the list of grievances if you must.  If nothing else, you’ll encounter compound complex sentences that would be daunting even for me to write.

TTFN

happy independence day

*I haven’t counted them myself, so I make no guarantee, but those numbers certainly seem about right, so I don’t really doubt them.

**Excluding the Amendments, it is apparently 4,543 words long—or 334 words fewer than the net new words I wrote on Extra Body before last week’s blog.  That’s far from an insurmountable task to read.  With the Amendments included, it’s still only 7,591 words.  That’s only twice as long as my shortest short story, Solitaire, and it’s far less dark and horrifying.

***No one is ever really in charge of anything, not on any significant scale.  Also, queen ants don’t actually organize ant hills, and queen bees don’t run their hives, and queen termites don’t design and manage the construction of termite mounds.  Get over it.

You blogs, you stones, you worse than senseless things
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You blogs, you stones, you worse than senseless things

declaration

 

“And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?  Poor man!  I know he would not be a wolf but that he sees the Romans are but sheep.  He were no lion were not Romans hinds.  Those that with haste will make a mighty fire begin it with weak straws.”

Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene III

 

Hello, good morning, happy Thursday, and for those in the United States, Happy Independence Day!

This is an important holiday which has lost some of its meaning over time.  In saying this, I might sound a little like those who bemoan the commercialization of Christmas, but I mean it quite seriously.  The date—the 4th of July, of course—is the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the more-or-less “official” birth of the United States of America…though I think it might more appropriately be called the conception of the USA.  The Constitution’s ratification thirteen years later was the true birth of the United States of America.

As the first truly secular Constitution in the world—it only mentions religion to state that no religious test shall ever be required for government office, and that there shall be no establishment of religion nor prohibition of its free exercise (the former in Article VI, clause 3, and the latter in the 1st Amendment)—it was groundbreaking.  At the time, this secularity was somewhat scandalous, but the founders of the United States were well aware—through personal experience and through the lessons of history—of the corruption, persecution, and violence that tend to arise when religion and government are entangled.  This is an important point, and it is not clearly understood by many modern Americans.**

In a broader sense, I think it’s worthwhile to remind modern Americans how revolutionary it was to institute a Constitutional Republic whose government’s power, as stated explicitly and implicitly in both the Declaration and the Constitution, derived solely from the consent of the governed, not from any other authority.  The idea was—and should still be—that our representatives, our senators, our presidents, etc., are our employees, our servants.  They are certainly not our “leaders”.  They, like our military and our police forces, exist in principle to serve our greater good, to the best of their ability and to the best of our ability to hold them true to their duties.  We would do well to emphasize this notion to ourselves on a regular basis, because it’s all too easy for humans to fall prey to authoritarianism, and for would-be authoritarians to take advantage of that tendency.

It’s worth remembering the historical (and literary) lesson of Julius Caesar, for it is all too easy for a popular strongman to turn a Republic into a totalitarian regime that can endure as such for centuries…even after the initial strongman is ousted or assassinated.

It’s said that the price of freedom is constant vigilance, and I agree, but I would go even further:  The price of survival is constant vigilance.  Quite apart from the need to sustain yourself physically in a rather heartless universe, if you give up your freedom then your very survival itself is no longer in your hands.  You live and die—and you thrive or suffer—at the whim of those you have allowed to have power over you.  And no one else can be ultimately responsible for your personal survival and freedom if you are not.

It’s for these among other reasons that I bemoan the fetishization of the American flag (on which topic I’ve written previously, here), and its glorification in our national anthem.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m a fan of the flag.  And I understand that children find bright patterns in primary colors engaging.  But remember, the design of the flag was and is arbitrary.  It has no real, deep meaning.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, on the other hand, are neither arbitrary nor shallow.  They are expressions of great and important ideas and ideals.  They are the soul of the United States.  The flag is, if anything, just our hairstyle or our eye color (if you will)…and fireworks are, perhaps, just glints in that eye.***

It’s true that the founders of the USA fell well short of the noble ideals they expressed so well…and it’s pretty clear that they knew that.  That’s part of why they made the Constitution amendable and included the Bill of Rights as the first ten of those amendments.  We have far exceeded the founders in realizing some of the notions expressed in the Declaration of Independence, including a greater implementation of the notion that “all [people] are created equal.”  But we have fallen far behind them in other respects, and such backsliding is dangerous.

We’ve become more parochial and more provincial, ironically; we are undereducated in certain crucial areas (including the very recognition of how absolutely essential education is for the survival of a republic such as ours); we’ve fallen too far into the glorification of “leaders” and the worship of symbols rather than the exploration and elevation of ideas and ideals, which must be constantly submitted to testing, criticism, and exploration if they are to endure and improve.  And we must strive constantly to improve them—rigorously and meticulously, not haphazardly—in the spirit of the acquisition of scientific knowledge, with distrust of arguments from authority and with constant vigilance, especially against our own biases and failings.  For if things do not improve, then it’s more likely that they will deteriorate than that they will simply remain static.  After all, there’s only one zero point on the number line, but there’s an endless expanse of negatives.

So, that’s me on the soapbox for today.  By all means, of course, do enjoy the holiday for the fireworks, and for the cookouts, and for the time spent with friends and family.  But please, do also remember what it’s about, and how important it is always to be on guard—at least as much with respect to your own biases and errors as anything else—against the accidental or deliberate betrayal of the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

As part of doing this myself, I refer to the holiday only as Independence Day, not just as “the fourth of July.”  It’s a little thing, but it might be worth doing.

TTFN

*The former in Article VI, clause 3, and the latter in the 1st Amendment.

**I highly recommend the recent book The Founding Myth by Andrew Seidel as an exploration of this topic.

***Apologies for the strained metaphor.