Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

A Part of the Whole

BY: Mark

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” 

The above is a quote from Albert Einstein, and the Internet tells me that it is sourced from a private letter that Einstein wrote to a distraught father in Feburary of 1950. The quote came across my desk today as this morning’s daily affirmation of zen, and it struck me as being relevant to the post from yesterday where I mentioned the impact the Universe has on our beings.

The Universe is my shorthand for the Ineffable, the Unknownable, GOD, whatever name you wish to call that thing that is greater than our individual being. Einstein encapsulates the definition nicely in his first sentence: “A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe’ . . .”

I suffer from a lack of being able to breathe, in a metaphorical sense. I’m pretty good about the physical act of breathing. It is the more spiritual and conscious act that escapes me, all too often. Today was one of those days where I neglected to pause, take a deep breath, and remember that I am part of a whole. If I were a cog, I would have locked and frozen much of the machinery that was dependent upon me.

Later, I had to drop the car off for service and I went wandering up the block. At the corner past the car dealership there is a Buddhist temple. The building was decrepit and looked as if the Buddhists may no longer be using the site, though I am sure the spirit of Buddhism still resides in those walls. If it had been open, I may have gone in and sat for a little while, quieting my spirit.

When you get frozen, it can be difficult to un-stick yourself. To reintegrate yourself with the whole, as it were. One must re-establish connection with what Jung referred to as the lumen naturae.

The Universe Giveth

BY: Mark

The last six months have been filled with, in a few words, many “opportunities for change,” and I can’t say that all of them have been warmly welcome. But I have–eventually–come to see them all as manifestations of the Universe offering me a variety of tests and trials as a means of re-focusing myself on what is truly of value: namely, my own self and the luminous lives of those who are near and dear to me.

The magickal part of it has been the realization that all of existence is but our individual perception, and whatever we are faced with can be dealt with in a multiplicity of ways, but ultimately, the choice is ours to face these things positively. To grow is to live; to hide or flee or otherwise pretend we are not changed by what the Universe gives to us is to die. Maybe only a little bit, but we do die nonetheless.

Life is worth every single excruciatingly raw second of it. Because it makes you realize what is important, what is a distraction, and what truly offers you peace and love and illumination.

So, I look forward to 2012 as a year of self-actualization, of realization of my own potential, as the singular opportunity that it is.

I hope you embrace it similarly.

Alan Moore on SF in America

BY: Mark

From Alan Moore’s essay about Science Fiction in America in Dodgem Logic #4.

Most nations when required to stave up national identity, perhaps in times of difficulty, will call on reserves of national history or mythology. In Britian, for example, leaders will routinely summon up the spirit of the Blitz, of Winston Churchill or King Arthur when attempting to persuade the country to accept something that it isn’t going to like, like public spending cutbacks or a costly foreign conflict. In effect, what most nations are trying to communicate is ‘Look at what we were.’ America, conversely, is only a little over two hundred years old and its brief history is largely one of genocide and slavery, things that most usually a require a veil drawn over them rather than celebration. Lacking myth or folklore and without a reservation of history to plunder, is America instead employing its projected science fiction futures to say ‘Look at what we will be?’

After all, it is a nation founded more upon projections, dreams and hopes of a quite literal ‘New World’ than most, begun by refugees fleeing the English Civil War like the Northampton families of both Benjamin Franklin and George Washington; by puritans inspired by Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress to seek out a New Jerusalem where their most fervent prayers would all be realised. Future-fixated from the outset, the new country’s visions of a Promised Land in store for everyone were initially religious and had God as a root cause for all their marvels. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, it was starting to become apparent that America’s best chance of moving forward lay in science and industry rather than divine intervention. In the nation’s fantasies God was to some degree replaced as the sole source of miracles and wonder by the atom-smasher, and conversely there would come to be something of the religious and millenarian in science fiction’s attitude toward science. This tension between a god-struck puritan past and longings for a Hugo Gernsback technological utopia would seem to be apparent in America today, where the most scientifically precocious nation on the planet has Creationism on the school syllabus in Kansas.

The whole article, entitled “Frankenstein’s Cadillac” is a rousing read, and well worth tracking down. Dodgem Logic is Alan Moore’s return to ‘zine making, a bi-monthly magazine that is filled with all manner of wonderful ephemera, insight, and crazy-making.

You can find it on the web at dodgemlogic.com.