Amazing how much can be accommodated in the scope of one’s intellectual reach. And what with so many disparate matters of equal import touched upon, are not each therefore deserving of commensurate attention?
But time and the fading mind dictates otherwise so I will simply, in turn, ask the following: As you watch the surrealities of events play out north of the border, here at home, across the pond, and coming soon to Taiwan, do you not sometimes - at least in some small measure - feel a little foolish for doing the right thing? Not the Spike Lee burn down the pizzeria thing, but the inarguably right, honest, moral, and ethical thing in a world increasingly void of any? In a world where impunity and a Manchurian president reign?
As of late the question - that same no doubt entertained under Khan and Nero - looms ever larger.
For years I honored oaths made on behalf of a country and society and government I no longer believe in. And having been duped for decades, can I therefore even trust myself? Where does this leave me? What options are left? Sell out my illusory principles? Do I no longer do right by my conscience, my neighbor, and the future of my loved ones? Ah, but have they a future?
No answer. And so another day done and with no greater profit than its predecessor.
And yet how positively heroic. Just the whole goddamn Syssyphean burden of filling Mr. Crumb’s shoes and truckin’ on.
And who knows?
In surviving this day, and the next, I might somehow in some way contribute to a desperately needed change just by having hung in there.
Did you find that there are two different hierarchies in the medical/surgical fields. How much is the allopathic mindset part of the surgeons' modus operandi.
In the US are allopaths called *Doctor* and the surgeons titled *Mister*.
They are here in NZ.
Maybe the surgeons, whom we actually need, are on a different wavelength to the pill pushers.
Until 1998 I had no doctor and no issues. In 1998 my Kidney stones hurt. I went ER. After 1 hour in agony I drove a mile to another. There I thought I passed the stone and no pain. In 2013 prior to marriage I used health insurance I finally have. I went to an East West Korean doctor. He brilliantly used my policy to have medically necessary work done on his hunch. I learned kidney probs remained, that I had a pancreatic tumor, and high blood pressure. :)
And diabetes. I am moving forward on kidneys I think, and I take Diabetes seriously. All these doctors and surgeons are Allopaths and graduates of special medical programs.
I treat diabetes a little less seriously, I saw a story recently saying that it was becoming even more epidemic and that 1.2 or 1.4 billion humans will have it by the 2030s. Seems a more successful (in a bad way) version of Covid. I wonder what its real causes are, I wonder what can be done to reduce it but I'm not going to take the medicines recommended by my doctors both of which if I bother to research don't exactly come up smelling of roses. I'm also not going to test my sugar levels right now for example as having been somewhat sick for the last few weeks I know that I won't be impressed. But now that I am back from traveling I will test out the "cures" (tumeric, celery, apple cider, intermittent fasting) that I had started several months ago as I do have a few things that go wrong (not that serious and I do have something that fixes it) every few months and I want that to stop.
I will ask. I did a test this morning and expected it to be sky high due to recovering from a cold. It was at a level that I find hard to get down to in NZ. So I think that I have a bit of a NZ problem, something in the air or the food I guess. I am in NZ at the moment I should add, but have only been back about 5 days.
Responding to the first part, which is the easy part: the morally uninhibited do better in the material world, they also tread boldly and talk powerfully. Doubt does not touch them. This dominant confidence can seem like strength, and, as you say is rewarded with our failed social contract.
Thus the weak who seek security are drawn to this alpha type. And they do well materially, whilst they succumb.
Steve Martin, in 4th grade my aunt in Kentucky sent me Japanese illustrated books. I think up to 6th grade. Then amusingly I read Mishima in maybe '77. Shogun on TV hit in 1980. I do not recall, but likely I read the book earlier by about one year. I have thought teaching English overseas would be interesting. I had a friend who did so in Vietnam and Czech Republic.
I was almost completely ignorant of Japan until undergrad, maybe '78 or '79. A terminally "late bloomer", my first girlfriend was a Japanese exchange student, and it was about that time I began to read Suzuki Daisetsu on zen, and translations of Kawabata Yasunari and Soseki Natsume. I had developed a rather romantic ideal of Japan, which proved to exist only in minds of other romantic idealists.
While teaching here has had some interesting, even transcendent, moments ... the reality is bleaker than when I first came some 40 years ago. Now, even the "Ivy-League" schools are farming out Freshman English classes to Outsourcing Companies with the only raison d'etre as profit, thus hiring native speakers by virtue of 'looking foreign' and being fresh-enough-to-Japan, to be easily micro-managed and then disposed of.
Finding or making a community of Japanese who are fellow idealists, or at least driven my empathy, can be done ... but it is not a very good business model, and I barely survive by virtue of such friends.
Institutions seem to be fractals of the coming techno-feudalism, and being a marginalized, dependent, disposable foreigner is no longer a sustainable career path, particularly for those who want to maintain a minimum of moral autonomy.
Serving the whims of those higher in the institutional hierarchy, no matter how immoral or destructive, is now mandatory ... and those who are held hostage by having a family dependent on their income, are in a particularly bad spot. I have met a couple of substack writers over beer here in Tokyo, and they have to use psuedonyms to post with good reason.
You are inspiring a lot of memories and ideas, though not all the sunshine and roses implied by the video. But a starting place, a ground from which we can imagine a field forever green.
Dean my fading mind clings to my educated interest. I know nothing truly about much, the residue, this is important, and what I scavenge. The past forming me is ongoing like a river delta and there is considerable silt. I have been blessed with more or less continuity. All misfortune is my choices and refusals. I like Fuller considerably because he thought and his thoughts became alive. Elon Musk is not Buckminster Fuller. A fascinating SF novel might explore these two men.
Amazing how much can be accommodated in the scope of one’s intellectual reach. And what with so many disparate matters of equal import touched upon, are not each therefore deserving of commensurate attention?
But time and the fading mind dictates otherwise so I will simply, in turn, ask the following: As you watch the surrealities of events play out north of the border, here at home, across the pond, and coming soon to Taiwan, do you not sometimes - at least in some small measure - feel a little foolish for doing the right thing? Not the Spike Lee burn down the pizzeria thing, but the inarguably right, honest, moral, and ethical thing in a world increasingly void of any? In a world where impunity and a Manchurian president reign?
As of late the question - that same no doubt entertained under Khan and Nero - looms ever larger.
For years I honored oaths made on behalf of a country and society and government I no longer believe in. And having been duped for decades, can I therefore even trust myself? Where does this leave me? What options are left? Sell out my illusory principles? Do I no longer do right by my conscience, my neighbor, and the future of my loved ones? Ah, but have they a future?
No answer. And so another day done and with no greater profit than its predecessor.
And yet how positively heroic. Just the whole goddamn Syssyphean burden of filling Mr. Crumb’s shoes and truckin’ on.
And who knows?
In surviving this day, and the next, I might somehow in some way contribute to a desperately needed change just by having hung in there.
Just like Mr. Fuller. Just like Mr. Stegiel.
Subscribe to my Substack
https://doesnotplaywellwithothers.substack.com
Did you find that there are two different hierarchies in the medical/surgical fields. How much is the allopathic mindset part of the surgeons' modus operandi.
In the US are allopaths called *Doctor* and the surgeons titled *Mister*.
They are here in NZ.
Maybe the surgeons, whom we actually need, are on a different wavelength to the pill pushers.
Until 1998 I had no doctor and no issues. In 1998 my Kidney stones hurt. I went ER. After 1 hour in agony I drove a mile to another. There I thought I passed the stone and no pain. In 2013 prior to marriage I used health insurance I finally have. I went to an East West Korean doctor. He brilliantly used my policy to have medically necessary work done on his hunch. I learned kidney probs remained, that I had a pancreatic tumor, and high blood pressure. :)
And diabetes. I am moving forward on kidneys I think, and I take Diabetes seriously. All these doctors and surgeons are Allopaths and graduates of special medical programs.
I treat diabetes a little less seriously, I saw a story recently saying that it was becoming even more epidemic and that 1.2 or 1.4 billion humans will have it by the 2030s. Seems a more successful (in a bad way) version of Covid. I wonder what its real causes are, I wonder what can be done to reduce it but I'm not going to take the medicines recommended by my doctors both of which if I bother to research don't exactly come up smelling of roses. I'm also not going to test my sugar levels right now for example as having been somewhat sick for the last few weeks I know that I won't be impressed. But now that I am back from traveling I will test out the "cures" (tumeric, celery, apple cider, intermittent fasting) that I had started several months ago as I do have a few things that go wrong (not that serious and I do have something that fixes it) every few months and I want that to stop.
I carb count, pay attention to what I eat, use insulin sugar highs and sugar lows sometimes. Today my meter is broken so I go to Kaiser for a new one.
I will not use the other tools of Pharma. Ray Horvath I believe has a Diabetes treatment idea.
I will ask. I did a test this morning and expected it to be sky high due to recovering from a cold. It was at a level that I find hard to get down to in NZ. So I think that I have a bit of a NZ problem, something in the air or the food I guess. I am in NZ at the moment I should add, but have only been back about 5 days.
As soon as the clotshots mandates came in my skin cancer surgeon went on long term leave.
Replacement is a Canadian. Judge his character by his citizenship?
If he's recently arrived maybe he's had enough of Canada but does not have the local wherewithal to resist the local fascists.
Do you think that Canada is worse than here.
No.
But he didn't necessarily know that.
A lot of breadth covered.
Responding to the first part, which is the easy part: the morally uninhibited do better in the material world, they also tread boldly and talk powerfully. Doubt does not touch them. This dominant confidence can seem like strength, and, as you say is rewarded with our failed social contract.
Thus the weak who seek security are drawn to this alpha type. And they do well materially, whilst they succumb.
Hi Steigel (and Dean),
No comments here worthy to do justice to this post.
Just a short video link as a respite from life as usual in Japan, and ideal which will probably have to remain only the hearts and minds of a few.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiW9V9PQrVg
Cheers from a corner of the gilded cage in Japan,
steve
Steve Martin, in 4th grade my aunt in Kentucky sent me Japanese illustrated books. I think up to 6th grade. Then amusingly I read Mishima in maybe '77. Shogun on TV hit in 1980. I do not recall, but likely I read the book earlier by about one year. I have thought teaching English overseas would be interesting. I had a friend who did so in Vietnam and Czech Republic.
Hi Stegiel.
I was almost completely ignorant of Japan until undergrad, maybe '78 or '79. A terminally "late bloomer", my first girlfriend was a Japanese exchange student, and it was about that time I began to read Suzuki Daisetsu on zen, and translations of Kawabata Yasunari and Soseki Natsume. I had developed a rather romantic ideal of Japan, which proved to exist only in minds of other romantic idealists.
While teaching here has had some interesting, even transcendent, moments ... the reality is bleaker than when I first came some 40 years ago. Now, even the "Ivy-League" schools are farming out Freshman English classes to Outsourcing Companies with the only raison d'etre as profit, thus hiring native speakers by virtue of 'looking foreign' and being fresh-enough-to-Japan, to be easily micro-managed and then disposed of.
Finding or making a community of Japanese who are fellow idealists, or at least driven my empathy, can be done ... but it is not a very good business model, and I barely survive by virtue of such friends.
Institutions seem to be fractals of the coming techno-feudalism, and being a marginalized, dependent, disposable foreigner is no longer a sustainable career path, particularly for those who want to maintain a minimum of moral autonomy.
Serving the whims of those higher in the institutional hierarchy, no matter how immoral or destructive, is now mandatory ... and those who are held hostage by having a family dependent on their income, are in a particularly bad spot. I have met a couple of substack writers over beer here in Tokyo, and they have to use psuedonyms to post with good reason.
For more thoughts on this ... here is a note I sent Dean, earlier today ... https://doesnotplaywellwithothers.substack.com/p/getting-schooled/comment/17757090
You are inspiring a lot of memories and ideas, though not all the sunshine and roses implied by the video. But a starting place, a ground from which we can imagine a field forever green.
Keep up the good fight.
steve
Dean my fading mind clings to my educated interest. I know nothing truly about much, the residue, this is important, and what I scavenge. The past forming me is ongoing like a river delta and there is considerable silt. I have been blessed with more or less continuity. All misfortune is my choices and refusals. I like Fuller considerably because he thought and his thoughts became alive. Elon Musk is not Buckminster Fuller. A fascinating SF novel might explore these two men.