Home
Doubt
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1746
Sometimes I have my doubts.
Not about the serious things, like God and the universe and such, I have long ago worked those out. And if I hadn't there are countless others who have and will let you have the answers at a discount, although I think my reasoning is a little more economical (and, not that it matters, consistent and sane...). In any event the big issues aren't the ones that trouble me.
But there's other issues, loads of them, for which there aren't any clear answers.
Like 9-11. Sure, it's possible it was a carefully plotted terrorist attack. Why not, the terrorists, the Arabs, they all have good reason to loathe the United States. But to believe that is in a way to accept all the lies that followed, the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq, to ignore the many "expert" opinions that contradict the "Official" findings. To disbelieve the official story puts you in the camp of wing nuts who believe the government planted explosives and brought down the towers themselves.
Probably the truth is somewhere in between. The government knew but allowed the plot to go ahead so it could rally support and go to war. Even that, however, presupposes a level of intelligence that I find it hard to credit the Bush administration.
There are other things, too.
Like Flying Saucers. I have no doubt that there is intelligent life elsewhere in our Galaxy. I have no doubt that if we survive, and given enough time, one day we'll make contact. But I'm not so sure that they (the extraterrestrials) have visited Earth, and I'm damned sure they haven't abducted Whitley Streiber. Ever. Not even once.
The grey area is in the visit to earth. There are undoubtedly UFO's, by definition anything that is unidentified is a UFO. But are they beings from another planet? Or is there another explanation?
I don't have the answers. So I turn to the internet, in this case a dubious source, but the best available (short of being taken on a trip by them myself). On the internet there are any number of experts, people who've held positions at high levels of government who say that the aliens are here. And at first hearing it's easy to dismiss one or two of them as being plausible crackpots, deluded, off the deep end...but the more testimonials you come across, the more doubt is sown in your mind. They can't all be crazy, can they?
"Yes, there have been ET visitations. There have been crashed craft. There have been material and bodies recovered. There has been a certain amount of reverse engineering that has allowed some of these craft, or some components, to be duplicated. And there is some group of people that may or may not be associated with government at this point that have this knowledge. They have been attempting to conceal this knowledge. People in high level government have very little, if any, valid information about this. It has been the subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and create confusion so the truth doesn’t come out."
Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and sixth man on the moon
"I know other astronauts share my feelings... And we know the government is sitting on hard evidence of UFOs."
NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper, 1997
Those are just a couple of the more credible "witnesses". There are many more, anonymous names until you verify the positions they held and realize that, if anyone knew, they would know, that none were in a better position than themselves to know. And then there's Roswell, as preposterous as it seems that a flying saucer crashed in the desert, so much more ridiculous was the governments delayed reaction, the announcement that they'd captured a flying saucer, then the retraction....
It doesn't add up.
But the weight of intelligent opinions, of people of substance who claim to have seen or experienced something beyond the norm, is overwhelming. And even if half of them are hallucinating, lying, victims of false memories, mirages, ghosts on the radar, that still leaves a large number of cases without any easy answers or interpretations.
There are other things as well, the reputed Amero, the New World Order , Cabals of secret societies such as bankers who orchestrate the economy and our lives. I have no answers. It seems unlikely that bankers could so organize themselves to rule the world, especially in wake of the economic collapse, but even following the collapse they bore no repercussions. The rumours of internment camps throughout Montana , ChemTrails in the sky, some of it's nonsense, surely, and the facts misinterpreted, but a bit of research does confirm that the government has indeed considered and even experimented with many of these methodologies....
And while they undoubtedly wouldn't test these things on their own people - oops - ...
The big questions, the meaning of life, the universe and everything, I've got those figured out. The small questions, they plague me.
George Orwell - Keep the Aspidistra Flying
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1697
An uncomfortable recognition of the resemblences between young Gordon Comstock and myself; unfortunately I haven't gone searching for poverty (but it's done a fine job of finding me....). As always, Orwell has a fine eye for the minutae and details of the hypocrisies and manners of English society. And the bit about advertising is as relevent now as always...but still, that damnable resemblance....
The Neighbors, the cat and the realtor
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2156
The past few days have been fraught with minor annoyances. The house is being sold, I can stay here until it's sold and then have to negotiate a new deal with the new landlord. The realtor has been about, showing the house, he calls and gives 3 or 4 hours notice to announce he's got a showing, then calls back later in the afternoon to announce another. "Enough is Enough" I say, I want to be helpful, I have the best landlord in the world, but I'll be damned if I'm going to arrange to be out of the house for 18 hours a day while he leads through tour groups....I explain it to him, he's apologetic, I suspect he's new to this and so try to be a bit understanding but really now....
And then there's the neighbors. They showed up on Monday, the whole posse, friends, relatives, I was alerted by the startled cat who ran into the house to hide. They're moving out. They tried the city, didn't like it, they're going to move back to the reserve. Judging by the hickies on his neck there's been some sort of reconciliation. It took them 4 hours but then they were done and gone.
I give them the utilities bill, roughly calculate the gas, they promise to pay, send me a cheque by the weekend, it's almost a thousand dollars and so I hope, but I know my priorities aren't their priorities...
They want the cat. I offer to buy it off of them, "No, we can't sell our cat", no mention of the fact that they were happy starving it, leaving it for 3 weeks without food or water locked in the cellar hall, they want their cat. It wouldn't be a family without the cat.
The cat is of a different mind. It's cautious as they're moving, won't go outside, hiding in the living room. Finally when they've finished packing they come for it, I offer to but it one more time but they wouldn't consider it, it's their cat, and he calls and beckons it while it hides in my room, reluctantly I pick it up and hand it to him. It's not so excited.
Carrying it to the truck the cat claws him and escapes. They look for it for about half an hour, wherever it's hiding it's not coming out, finally he approaches me and says that apparently the cat wants to stay with me.....and they leave.
I find the cat in the alley, my new roomate, have to find a name for her but I think I have one already, "Cat" I'll call it.
George Orwell - 1984
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1723
Somehow I picked it up and began rereading it. I had read it once, long ago, some 20 years past when I read everything by Orwell, or almost everything, and so I picked up believing that I would just skim it, refresh my memory, revisit the central themes and characters.
It wasn't as I remembered it. I remembered it, true, most of it, but the details, the nuances, raw brutality, the intimacies of violence were all forgotten.
Possibly I read it during high school, some dumbed-down bowlderized version, which would account for it.
It's a great book. Prescient, insightful, and bleak as all out.
He got it wrong in the details, of course, or some of the details. That the population would by and large be poor and live in squalor, subjegated by a lack of education, a failure to percieve options, wrong, they would be instead fattened like pigs on soda pop and fast food, they would be dumbed by the news and doublespeak, true, but there is no once telescreen channel with a monopoly rather there are thousands of channels, each with its own view, the dumbing down would come about as a result of the constant assault of conflicting or complimentary points of view. But we have undoubtedly been dumbed down, not from lack of choice (there are abundant choices), but from laziness on our own part, our readiness to accept the situation, any situation, without revolt so long as we are kept plump and lightly distracted....
The telescreens nowadays don't watch us, they don't have to. We have the internet, credit cards, banks, traffic and street cameras, we bare all willingly before the corporations, our validition a function of our credit rating and institutional approval. Some bare more intimate, personal details, but these are not (yet) what the corporations want, they are the perverse misunderstandings who have taken this absence of privacy to the next level.....
The news has become entertainment. AN inane parody without self recognition of all things that might somehow be important. 15 or 30 minute breaks amuse us and feed the smug feelings that we are well informed.
The tortures he describes, that are visited upon Winston, the insistence upon conformity, they are still happening, slowly in the works, there are none (here, in Canada) so dire as he describes (and how accurately he portrays it!), rather people are hung in the vacuum of shopping malls and lifestyles, a torture of the spirit as opposed to the flesh. Far less painful, but no less damaging.
It's a great book. Revisit it if you have the chance...
Page 826 of 877