Observations on Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, Revisited Continue reading
Category Archives: Political
Fleeting Thoughts, Fleeing as Election Eve Approaches, 2014 Edition
Fleeting Thoughts, Fleeing as Election Eve Approaches, 2014 Edition
Continue reading
The Elections of 2014, … Somewhat Personified.
The Elections of 2014, … Somewhat Personified. Continue reading
Irony
Irony Continue reading
Occupy for Peace (#occupy4peace)
Occupy for Peace (#occupy4peace)
The Israeli actions in Palestine have reached a deafening crescendo of distilled evil and immorality making a mockery of the supposed attempts during and after the Second World War to attain a world were justice and equity would open a path away from the horrors of history. The Jewish People very quickly became the focal point of endeavors to create that world, or so the propaganda of the time declared. After about 70 years it turns out that the supposedly enlightened countries of that era were illusions and that their most important efforts were directed at deluding a gullible public. Now, perhaps, things have either changed very little or are becoming even worse.
Based on the history I’ve personally watched develop and then seen distorted I know that the history we’re taught cannot be relied on as accurate, only that which we’ve lived and only in so far as the massive dissimulative propaganda we’re inundated by has not distorted our perceptions. The supposed good guys, it appears, wore black hats too.
Change for the better will not come about because of state action, today’s so called “democracy” is merely chimerical legerdemain. Corporations and special interest groups rule and they have no conscience to which we can appeal.
We, the People of the World, acting in concert need to at least attempt to do something: through economic boycotts, through personal boycott and through mutual encouragement. No, we cannot abandon our political responsibilities. We need to vote, and run and serve, doing our best to maintain our integrity in the face of overwhelming pressure. But today, that is clearly not enough.
I recently heard of a movement denominated as #occupy4peace. I have no idea who they are or whether or not participating with them will help solve anything. I only know that doing nothing is not an option. So I’ll see what collaborating with them will do. Perhaps you should as well.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2014; all rights reserved
What a World
What a World
Math games frolic in my mind as I wake, all involving the number 68, one of my favorites because for me and many of those I most treasure it is so full of symbolism and emotions, happy and sad, the ambivalence of graduating from a place where we loved being but which, thereafter, would belong to others; where we would ever after be honored guests, but guests just the same.
Now, I too am 68.
68, and its components, twice 34 and four times 17. Seventeen its only prime number and also a very good age, a senior at another place I deeply loved and left that year.
Not a happy day today though. It should be but the depredations that at the time of my birth the world thought overcome are not only still with us but perhaps, worse than ever, worse because of the reversal of roles, the former victims having become the victimizers and the oppressors, making one question even the history we were taught and once thought sacrosanct.
It’s difficult when the once admired not only turn out to have feet of clay but seem soulless and heartless as well. Hypocrisy and impunity reign.
Sad that the cinematic scene representative of our age is from one of the earliest color movies, a green woman, age difficult to determine, melting from a dousing with water, reflecting, in desperate tones: “what a world, … what a world”.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, July 22, 2014; all rights reserved
On Putrescence: a Very Strange Ode for Very Strange Times
On Putrescence: a Very Strange Ode for Very Strange Times
Putrescence, a natural phenomenon, a cycle in the chain of life, it follows maturity that failed to produce and stayed around a bit more than perhaps it should. The word seems to have a visual onomatopoeic aspect, it looks like what it represents as well as sounding like what it is but perhaps that’s because the concept has melded to the word.
Or has it?
Putrescence in its metaphoric aspect represents not something in a normal state of evolution but something very wrong, something so negative only a metaphor will generate the required emotive response. Something unbearable. And that’s what its onomatopoeic component represents. A distortion of something fundamental to represent something disturbingly distorted.
This week, the third in July of 2014, for some reason brings the word to mind.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2014; all rights reserved
On James and the Other Brothers of a Possibly Historic Jesus
On James and the Other Brothers of a Possibly Historic Jesus Continue reading
Guillermo Calvo Mahé 