Politics

Preserving the Legacy

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The world is in chaos. Politics is reality show. As I write this forest fires are burning up parts of LA while a deep freeze grips the US south. Climate change is changing pretty rapidly. I fully expect humanity to survive, and in centuries, prosper again. It’s just going to be rough and cruel.

One thing I’m doing is preserving philosophical and religious books to people that I know will be interested in them, that will preserve them, and give them away to reliable folks if needed. In the disasters that are here and ones that may come, these things that guided me may guide others. It’s a chance to leave something to help those in the future, and in a personal way.

I sit here and know the world isn’t ending but parts of it are, and many ways of life will. I ask what matters to me, what taught me, and what will help others. I ask who I can trust and who will care. I ask a lot of questions right now about a world I will one day not be in.

It’s a humbling experience. I am looking at books asking what helped me become who I am, wanting to pass it to people who aren’t me and knowing I won’t be there. I feel myself stretched forward in time, asking what’s next. I have to think about what will help someone unknown grow, what preserves what is good today.

It’s an enlightening experience. I have a large library but have to ask what truly mattered to me and will matter to others. I can see a pattern, a timeline of what books helped me grow, and it helps me understand myself. I can ask what will help others.

It’s also an experience I want to share. I recommend you do this if you have some specific holy books – or any books – to preserve. It makes you think, appreciate what you have, who you are, and who you can trust. It’s a way to think of the future.

So here, as we face a lot of challenges, take a moment to save what matters to you spiritually. Leave something for those to come. Maybe it’ll help shape the future into a better way just like it shaped you.

-Xenofact

The Tao Isn’t The Market

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In my Taoist readings, “the Tao” is always a subject of discussion. This is ironic because as the beloved Tao Te Ching notes, when you speak of the Tao you’re not speaking of the real Tao. A great deal of Taoist writing is talking about how ineffable the Tao is then writing a huge amount about it. There’s a reason I compare writers like Chuang-Tzu to people like Dave Barry – you need that mix of humor and sarcasm to handle such irony.

Of course that’s kind of the point. You have a word for the ineffable (Tao) that’s behind all things, and that word represents everything and how you can’t really define it. The Tao is everywhere, it’s why everything is, it’s the smallest and the largest, the near and the far. Taoism takes a word that lets you refer to the great connected isness of absolutely everything that words can’t otherwise encompass.

It’s kind of a linguistic hack.

That, I find, is also the power of good Taoist writing. Using a single word and poetic writing, it reminds you that the universe is great and connected. Leading you around by words and sentences, you start intuitively getting to understanding the power behind everything. In turn, that lets you live in the world, living in harmony with things, knowing it’s all vast and everywhere and connected – Tao.

If you get it you get it. If you don’t, you don’t. If you want to fake it, you probably can for awhile. But a lot of Taoism is words leading you to the wordless, that there’s a force behind everything.

What’s funny is I realized lately that the Tao reminds me of how Capitalists think of the Almighty Market.

What is is. The Market speaks. The great and powerful force that reconciles everything is perfect and everywhere and if you don’t get rich then The Market has decided. The market is unquestionable and good and perfect and the foundation of all things. The market is like the Tao in that it’s ineffable, AND like a personal god in that it makes decisions about things, granting everything a moral quality. The Market cannot be questioned, it’s that awesome! Yet also it makes decisions.

What’s funny is the market being a human construct, being about profit and gain and exploitation, is something Taoists warned about for aeons. As a construct that warps human feelings, it’s to be regarded with suspicion. As something about gain, it risks the traps of greed and acquisitiveness, which corrupt society. As something surrounded by flummery and endless long-winded justifications, it’s as suspicious as pretentious intellectuals and politicians and would-be sages.

The way people treat The Market as some divine force darkly echoes the words of the Taoists with a touch of theology, and realizing that I understand Market Fanatics passion much better. It’s beyond greed, into religion and even a kind of perverse mysticism.

And thanks to the Taoists, who would have laughed at the Market Fanatics and their pretentious, helped me understand that better. And laugh, of course.

I appreciate the irony. Which Chuang-Tzu and Dave Barry would probably both appreciate.

– Xenofact

They Have A Fetish

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I’m rather genteel here, but I don’t feel like being genteel about the issue of idiots banning abortion. Abortion is necessary to let people who get pregnant to control their bodies. As far as I’m concerned a lot of the people who want to ban it or limit it extremely are acting out a sexual fetish by creating and enforcing these laws.

Harsh? Cruel? Well if you read this we probably think alike, so you may agree, but look, I’m on a roll here.

So first of all, let’s note that most of the “for the children” claims come from people who don’t give a damn about actual kids. There’s no concern about immigrant children (quite the opposite). No one’s talking about expanding medical care or heavens forbid universal health care. Schooling is treated as just a chance for indoctrination by the forced-birth crowd. Also if kids are LGBTQIA+ then, well, this crew of womb-controllers seem to be happy to let them die.

Since all the reasons for banning abortion as “protecting kids” are obviously not what the control-freaks say, we can focus on the anti-choice crowd’s obsession with controlling people’s bodies. Yes, it’s an obsession, because it’s everywhere in the usual right-wing control-o-sphere. If you’re familiar at all with these right-wing mindspaces, the overwhelming, constant anti-choice repetition is unmistakable. It is embraced, it is, in short, a fetish.

Now the anti-choice swarm ignores people’s right to control their bodies, ignores their choice of medical treatment, and ignores abortion is a lifesaver in many ways. The need of the pregnant people is tuned out. Again, the utter obsession is beyond anything, into the realm of sexual obsession – of a fetish.

Sounds harsh? Not really. You’ll also notice as much as womb-controllers say they’re “for the kids” they are also obsessed with suffering. Most of the anti-choice people also seem to want to “save the children” from assorted imagined Satanists, evil cabals, etc. They’ll talk endlessly about human suffering, and it’s clear they take pleasure recounting how kids are tortured in their imagination. Again, these people have a weird sexual fetish about control and suffering.

And they go on, and on, and on . . .

But all of these people who want to tell people who can get pregnant what to do with their bodies want to do it with force. With the law, with the police, with threats, and in a few too many cases when you really listen with execution. There’s a sick, bloody, need for control and to punish.

So, yes, the anti-choice crowd as far as I’m concerned are sexual fetishists who want to nonconsensually draw others into their obsession. They’re ready to use the state to act out their twisted desires.

Sure, there’s also issues of control and politics, but this stuff goes all the way into weird, sexual fetishism. These people are obsessed, unhealthily so, and to the detriment of everyone.

And, yeah, this isn’t my usual deep discussion. Or maybe it is in a more angry way. But having a bunch of people who can’t confront their own fetishes and who want the police and government to rope us into them? We should be angry.

– Xenofact