“Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.” (Carl Sagan); “Nothing ever dies on the Internet.” (anon.); “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” (Madison Ave. [m]adman). My posts amalgamate these three philosophical elements into one novel experience; they champion critical thinking, human dignity / equality, levelheaded / even-handed / liberty-based governance and solid environmental stewardship. C’mon in!
Preface: Prior to 2021, I had taken for granted that, in spite of the irreconcilable, ideological feud, no U.S. citizen would ever be spiteful enough to harm America. Then came January 6th, when Donald J. Trump, the (in title only) President of the United States of America, rallied, weaponized and repurposed his followers; enraged them enough to attack the United States of America; all on his behalf; all based upon his delusions that voter fraud had cost him reelection. Seeing how, to date, too damned many of his co-conspirators do double duty as sitting federal level Senators, Representatives and Judges; that no arrest warrants for DJT have been forthcoming; how, as such, he remains unpunished / at large, his followup attack still looms. Hence, the impossible to dismiss missive, below…
`
To whom this MUST concern:
As of this day, 2021/06/02, this open missive gets www posted; on behalf of ALL oppressed masses, world-over. Seeing how it’s been said, “Nothing ever dies on the Internet”, even were your hands dripping with all 4.7 liters / 10 pints of our lifeblood, our truths WILL outlive tin gods, such as you; indeed, long after you’ve become unbecoming footnotes inked onto the moldering papyrus of our History books.
Purpose:
To address and edify each and every brownshirt who dares to goosestep in ugly, gargantuan sized jackboots.
To flesh that out:
• We are pointing our collective finger of blame (both hoisted middle fingers, too) and thumbing our unified nose at each and every reprehensible, reptilian authoritarian, who dares to author and/or enforce draconian decrees.
• Ditto those digital gestures re the above-mentioned addressees’ bankrollers and bootlickers.
• Ditto those digital gestures re all would-be power hungry Fascists / Nazis.
Our red flag magnitude reminder, too:
No matter how hard you may try, there is not a place on Earth (not even within the vast mulitverse’s most far-flung sectors), where you can completely hide from the truth, namely:
Your words can never “pretty up” your odious ideologies and the consequent heavy handed, human rights violating / gutting laws, which you lord over the masses. You and everything you stand for are akin to lumps of fetid, fecal matter. Oh, you can try to gift-wrap and affix shiny bows to your wretched régimes, but, your lumps of ideological dung have always been, still are, and shall forever be, lumps of dung. As such, incensed, critical thinking commoners shall NEVER, EVER, become noseblind to YOUR insufferable stench.
Signed,
CommonSenseTom and All LikeMinded Souls WorldOver
`
P.S. (addressed to the oppressed): Granted, the drunk on power will likely never read the above words. And even were they to happen onto them, comprehension would be way above the paygrade of such mindless, heartless and soulless, stick-figure tyrants. Nonetheless, it did feel good to get such sentiments off our collective chest, did it not? Transcending their doom and gloom is the glimmer of hope that, if not now, our exercise in free expression could even…
Well, seeing how my originally planned parting remark has been expressed far more eloquently, before, check out the following sentiment; one which, naturally, is fully applicable to missives, too:
“Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.”
Originally, Carl Sagan’s stellar oratory had summed up his eloquent reaction to the Valentine’s Day 1990, Voyager 1, Pale Blue Dot snapshot (taken from our solar system’s outer edge). However, on this day, the 17th anniversary of 9/11, the wise, heartfelt, timeless sentiments of this American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator take on extra special meaning.
Indeed… his words do live on… but… will we?
Such a spot-on, soul searching speech exemplifies the common bond we humans share with each other… translates out well… spans the ages, acreage and cultures of Earth. No better proof of this fact is the above video featuring Azhar Meghani’s English to Hindi translation / voice-over and editor Lokesh Kumar’s skillfully juxtapositioned, cross-culturally appropriate imagery.
Terrorism and warfare would soon vanish off the face of the Earth were the entire human race to fully embrace Dr. Sagan’s worldview. Consider this his urgent appeal for peaceful co-existance amongst all Earthlings everywhere!
So fleeting a video’s existence can be… so vital is Sagan’s message… I’m including this text version, too.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Is there life after death? Considering how one has to actually die to find out… we, the living, can only conjecture. As for my own theories? There are at least nine different forms of living on… in varying degrees… some of them earthbound… others otherworldly… some are somewhat short-lived… others could endure through eternity. The specifics…
Heaven Awaits Scenario ~ When the physical body expires, everything that ever made us uniquely different from everybody else… all of our memories, hopes and dreams endure. Everyone who has preceded us in death and has ever meant something special to us is present to welcome and usher us into everlasting life.
On one hand, Near Death Experience survivors corroborate. On the other hand, the skeptics contradict… claim these episodes are merely due to an end of life brain chemistry… one which causes the mind, normally accustomed to keeping us alive, to freak out when it cannot do so. Little doubt, oxygen starved brain cells and, perhaps, even some physician-administered pharmaceuticals are all in play. Factor in a lifetime’s worth of spiritual indoctrination and you’ve got the perfect recipe for hallelujah inspiring hallucinations.
My Own Experience… in an Actual Death Experience, my mother’s spoken with awe in her eyes, last words were, “They all came!” Since just prior to that we’d been engaged in a totally lucid conversation… since we were the only ones present in her nursing home room at the time… who, pray tell, were “They”?
Double HelixScenario ~ Folks who are “fruitful and multiply” preserve their DNA… their human traits remain within the gene pool for generations to come. As for anyone who has opted out of parenthood, we’re now talking about pruned and felled family trees… bloodlines banished to oblivion.
Of course, procreation does have its limitations… can only immortalize 23 of each person’s 46 chromosomes per conception. Genetic duplicates having never been Ma Nature’s game plan, there’s virtually zero chance that anyone would ever wind up totally replicating themselves… right down to the freckles and fingerprints. Furthermore, even if such an identical copy were to exist, that person would not grow up with the same life experiences.
Send In the Clones Scenario ~ While the technology to create genetic duplicates exists, human cloning is still considered a huge no-no by principled politicians (if there are any such animals), bioethicists and theologians.
If this ‘tude were to change, someday, clones would only be physically identical since, as I’ve already mentioned above, they’d not share the unique life experiences of the original being.
Donor Gametes Scenario ~ A man and woman can procreate without having actually met… in fact… neither of them even need be alive. Harvested female and male germ cells, once thawed out from the cryogenic deepfreeze, combine in the in vitro fertilization petri dish and the surrogate mother does the rest.
Donor Organs Scenario ~ Harvested human hearts and the other major bodily organs can prolong recipients’ lives for decades. In a sense, donors can live on for many decades, maybe even longer when recipients utilize their new lease on life to become new parents. IF both parents and offspring then go onward to make something of their lives… oh… say… contribute something of great value to society… THEN (albeit indirectly) so would the organ donors.
In a horror film sense, people with “yuge” ego problems (think Donald Trump here) could, someday, even resort to some ghastly surgery… could “donate” their own heads… have them bolted onto new, recipient bodies. Fortunately… so far… and to the best of my knowledge… there are no real life equivalents of fictitious Dr. Frankenstein’s monster out there… way, Way, WAY out there.
Surviving Elements Scenario ~ The basic chemicals, which make up our bodies will eventually get recycled, at first, here on Earth (e.g. during cremation) and, eventually, back into the vast, inky dark, cold cosmos… the very place from where humanity had originally borrowed these elements.
The late astrophysicist, astronomer, philosopher, educator, author and TV host, Carl Sagan, the master of simplifying complex science, once wrote…
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
Naturally, disembodied elements, (even if human brains were their original source), will not possess any intelligence… will never really be us. While it’s a virtual certainty that we’ll “survive” in this sense… we’ll never know it.
Intellectual Property Scenario ~ We live on in the memories of others. To remain a household name throughout perpetuity, one would need to be some sort of superstar scientist, physician, psychiatrist, philosopher, theologian, educator, engineer, architect, inventor, sculptor, painter, lithographer, publisher, poet, playwright, author, actor, entertainer, comedian, singer, musician or world leader (or some combination of the above). Even people who history would judge to be our worst-nightmares-come-true can be remembered… as examples of who NOT to emulate.
For the vast majority of us… who don’t make the history books… who would not even be an obscure footnote in such a publication… we’ll be forgotten as soon as all who ever knew us are dead. Even if our pictures were to appear in some handed down from generation to generation photo album, would an ancestor, three generations down the road, truly know us beyond the lifeless, two dimensional depiction? Once there’s no one to give a damn anymore, family photos will eventually wind up getting trashed. Only if today’s landfills were to become tomorrow’s archaeological dig sites would anyone ever try to remember us.
Good Mentor Scenario ~ Throughout our lifetimes, we’ve all been teachers (no formal classroom required). This face-to-face intergenerational imparting of everyday knowledge and skills is how we leave our small mark on the world. It even counts, e.g., when we demonstrate the fine art of tying shoelaces to a youngster. While this mundane stuff easily goes towards the betterment of our society, to be remembered, by name, for making such contributions is highly unlikely.
Internet Scenario ~ This involves anyone who, anywhere and at anytime, ever did anything great or small on the WWW.
Over the course of the past decade, I’ve made my own presence known here in cyberspace… at MySpace, Xanga, Blogger and WordPress. I’ve got to believe that some of what I’ve said made some small difference in the life of someone… somewhere… sometime. Maybe that person shared my thoughts with someone else… and that person did the same… and so on… and so on… and so on…
True, I’ve blogged many a time and netted not more than one “like star” click… but does that mean all is lost? Carl Sagan didn’t think so. To quote him once more, he observed…
“Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.”
I suspect if the good Doctor S. were alive today, he’d have no problem making the words, “books” and “blogs”, interchangeable.
Beyond that, it has oft been said that once posted, nothing ever really dies on the Internet, and so, if that, indeed, is really true… well… I know that, someday, as I’m taking my last gasp of oxygen, I shall live on…
Hmmm… to leave my mark upon the world via the World Wide Web? Not bad. To maybe even witness this actually occurring, while my loved ones and I reside in our Heavenly Home throughout eternity?
CommonSenseTom 