If the mob could see, would it shit and go blind?

 Poetic Outlaws

“The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no certainties.”

—HL Mencken

Sloan Bashinsky

History proved over that the herd is never right. Big Brother, in various forms, is ever eager to tell people how to live and what will happen if they don't obey. I spent almost half of my life offering different solutions to people and groups. A few individuals were open to something outside the box, but the bulk, or herd, were not. I read somewhere that the status quo is a living organism that views change as a lethal threat that must be defeated by any and all means available. 

 

Clint

Sloan Bashinsky Well, Devil's Advocate says just because it is change doesn't always mean its good. The law of unintended consequence falls most swiftly and brutally on the masses.

Sloan Bashinsky

Clint Irwin Agreed, not all change is beneficial. But for change promoted by someone or someones to happen and take root, masses (herds) have to support it, don’t they? For examples, religions, ideologies, etc. 

 

For example, the change promoted by Jesus in the Gospels, he said few would accept. The Jewish leaders really didn’t care for him. His early followers were hunted down and killed by the Roman government, if they did not renounce him. That continued until a Roman emperor converted to Christianity, which became the official religion of the Roman Empire. That was when Jesus seen in the Gospels was was greatly watered down by the early church leaders, to make him more attractive to the masses, easier for them to embrace.

For example:

Matthew 3:11 “I [John the Baptist] baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 

Luke 12:49 [Jesus] “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”  

John 8:31-32

So Jesus said to the Jews who believed in him, “If you continue to obey my teaching, you are truly my followers. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus said: 

Many are called, but few are chosen; the road to life is difficult and the gate narrow and few enter; the work is great and the laborers are few; turn the other cheek; do good to and pray for your enemies; love your neighbor as yourself; do unto others as you would have done unto you; it is more blessed to give than to receive; take no thought for tomorrow, for each day has enough trouble of its own ...

Clint

Sloan Bashinsky The masses were simply not capable of seeing something Great coming from a commoner, so they needed to hear he was a God. "Hey, this guy was born in Nazareth, but he must have been born in Bethlehem because that is where the Messiah was supposed to be born, so let's work on that." 

 

Sloan Bashinsky

Clint I think if Jesus actually did perform the miracles told in the Gospels, the masses assumed he was a god, or the son of God, and they needed no help from the local Big Brother to flock to him, and they would do the same today, were he doing what he is said to have done back then. But could they hear him back then? Could they hear him today? Great masses certainly flocked to Donald Trump, whom they viewed as their savior, America's savior, God-sent even. But then, he told them what they wanted to hear, whereas Jesus told people what it would be like to be saved by him, which the early church quickly discarded, because that was not a good recruiting tool, it did not cause the masses to make large donations to churches. My reason for dragging Jesus in the Gospels into this was, he is a well known example of what happens to someone who challenges the status quo, and how the religion that claimed him later began to behave is a good example of just how little interest the status quo has in change. 

Another conversation under the same Poetic Outlaws post: 

Abrham

With all the accumulated knowledge/data ever expanding and we are the most insecure generation that has ever lived. The diabolical irony!

Frank

Abrham We are living in a spoiled generation as well..

Abrham

Frank that is no maybe ...

It's just an example of "double negative" (typical of relaxed colloquial / uneducated speech). Semantically, it makes more sense to say the ain't can be converted to is in the cited context

Frank

We are living in a spoiled generation as well..

Abrham 

Frank True true and i have experieced it first hand to my bitter disgust

Frank

Abrham even a doctor or lawyer will give any certainties other than taking your money with no guarantees

Sloan Bashinsky

Frank In old China, physicians treated patients, and if the patients got well, the doctors got paid. Several times doctors saved me, and often they helped me, and sometimes they were unable to help me. I did not begrudge them their fees, but sometimes I was unable to pay them and they cut their fees, Once, a hospital waived its fees, after helping save my life. Later, when I was flush, I paid the bill. They said they had written it off, and I said do for someone else what you did for me. Yet today, some hospital charges are so high as mind boggling. If I did not have Medicare, I probably wouldn't use hospitals. I'm 80, having my fair share of medical encounters.

I once practiced law, and can attest that lawyers very much want to be paid for representing clients, but some lawyers work on a get paid if they win basis, but they are suing for large sums of money, while some cases allow imposition of an attorney fee for the work done. The practice of law today seems far more capitalistic that when I practiced. Yet, lawyers sometimes really help people. I had clients tell me I saved their lives. I had other clients who didn't like me at all. Sometimes clients were real pains in the ass, and I wished I had not taken them as clients. Sometimes I screwed up a case, or did not get the result hoped for. I felt awful, but if I was getting paid for the job, I got paid. Otherwise, not. It's not entirely black and white, but $$$ have become a lot more important.

Frank

Sloan Bashinsky I as well now pushing 81 and I’m with you about Medicare and I also carry a supplement policy.. I was in the hospital lately for 7 days and walked out only having to pay a few bucks out of pocket.. like you say from a law practice each case is different and all lawyers practice in different ways.. All doctors and lawyers aren’t competent plus clients and patients can be a pain in the behind.. keep on keeping .. Pro Bono sounds good.. take care

Sloan Bashinsky

Frank Many lawyers do some pro bono work, as volunteers. All lawyers do some pro bono work, because either a client can't pay, or the client stiffs the lawyer. 

My law license is active, but I don't have any clients. I don't have a legal secretary, or paralegal it's called today. I have been so long out of the practice that anything I attempted might be malpractice. Nor do I have the office machinery - copier, scanner, FAX machine, printer- to get out paper documents. 

For some years, I advised people about approaching legal conflict as a metaphor for something unresolved elsewhere in their lives. I wrote a couple of books about that, which are no longer in print. I tried charging money, or asking for donations, but it didn't feel right, so I went to doing it for free. I thought back then that I had found my life's work. Little did I know what lay ahead. Little did I know.

Frank

Sloan Bashinsky you appear to be a good man .. after majoring in football and partying I opened a private club and found out I’m not a businessman what I didn’t give away the rest was stolen from the business but it lasted about 5 years. Thanks for sharing ! It feels good not to get jumped on !

Sloan Bashinsky

Frank I've done plenty of jumping on during various phases of my so-called adult life. Laying low often is more appropriate. I seem to be blocked from making money off my own efforts. In the past, I gave away a lot of money, which I had inherited, thinking it somehow would all work out, and then I slept on the ground, in vehicles, in other people's homes and in shelters for several years. While that was eye-opening, I hope it didn't happen for you.

Frank 

Sloan Bashinsky personal demons almost got me for real in 1991 I attempted suicide and being in medical health as a patient was interesting being apart of so many different spirits.. some was playing crazy to get a crazy check..I believe most of the caregivers was crazy including the doctors in that field.. I didn’t do well in groups there was a lot of craps in those barrels and didn’t do well in church because I didn’t drink the cool-aid. Other than that life Is good for now , we never know what’s coming next.. I try not to do the math at 80…

Sloan Bashinsky

Frank I visited some Hotel Californias myself and came away with much the same sentiments. I was fortunate not to become chemically dependent on booze or street drugs, nor tobacco. I endured a black night of the soul for 16 months, which was far worse than a 4-year-dark night some years prior. Every day of the black night, for 4 hours after waking, I plotted my escape from this life, which would happen the next day. That allowed me to relax until the next day. The escape plan was the same every day. Finally, some things happened, I made a life change, and the black night began to lift, but it was months before all the chemicals left my system. They said the chemicals were not addictive, but they had not taken the chemicals and then tried to get off them. I concluded they all should take a full course of chemicals they prescribed, then see how the side effects are and what the withdrawal is like. I'm a mystic. It was a God thing, the dark night and the black night. But that didn't make it any easier. Glad you seem to be doing much better.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Novelists' worst nightmare? They are the main character and plot.

When I realized the last novel Ernest Hemingway completed, THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, was his suicide note, I knew there is much more to novels than novelists imagine.

Poetic Outlaws

The older we get, the more ghosts crowd and claim us. Death does not deter the dead from living on within us and around us. We are under their spell. The world becomes irrevocably haunted. 

— Nick Tosches 

 

---

It creeps into us, this desperation, without our being quite aware of its nature, when we enter our fifth decade of life. 

If we are fortunate enough to enter our seventh decade, its nature is clear to us. But society, thoughts of moral judgment, a sense of shame, even fear of public damnation and prison restrain us, and the growing compulsion devours most of us unslaked as we wend our way from life in silence and secrecy to our common end. Most of us. But I would not be one of them…

If I could not bear the truth, I could at least close my eyes in the comfort of a lie…

Most men believe their lives to be somehow distinguished from the rest. But their lives hold as little interest as they do meaning, and are worthy only of being extinguished. 

As a writer I have encountered more of these men than I care to remember, indeed than I can remember. Though they do not read, except perhaps to graze on the mulch of an ill-written tabloid or the drivel on a handheld device or computer screen, they feel that writers might somehow be drawn to their drab and dreary tales of sameness. 

It is hard to escape them. They know nothing, least of all themselves. They go from cradle to grave seeking something. What they seek means as little to me as they do. They are a source of tedium and acid reflux, nothing more…

Do not think that I am setting writers apart from this majority. Most of them, in fact, belong to it. But they are not writers to be read, or countenanced…

I myself did not read much anymore. And I wrote even less. In fact, I had not written a book in years. Nothing seemed to matter. I felt that there was nothing left to write. I was a poet without pen or drum. Approaching a blank page, or even thinking of doing so, I felt disoriented and abstracted and my nerves went raw. 

Again and again I swore that I would stop drinking and resume writing. Again and again I drank. And when I did not, I sat and drank coffee and smoked and withdrew into myself. Yet I still called myself a writer when asked what I did for a living. 

Maybe I still thought like a writer. Or maybe, as George Orwell said, all writers are vain, selfish, and lazy…

In the folly and self-torture of trying to say what cannot be said lies nothing but ruin. This is why the greatest of writers have in the end always forsaken words for silence. As George Steiner said: “The true masters are those who relinquish their vocation.”

It was Rimbaud who saw the light earliest, quitting the racket six days before his twenty-first birthday, to run guns and coffee in Africa. But it was Pound who put it best, after fifty-seven years’ work on his Cantos: “I have tried to write Paradise / Do not move / Let the wind speak / that is paradise.”

Exceptional men do not hold their experiences to be out of the ordinary or of interest to anyone else. Unlike the trodden fungus-men, they are not so ignorantly and presumptuously self-absorbed. 

They are nobody and they know it. They shun notice. They are exceedingly rare.

Sloan Bashinsky

"Again and again I swore that I would stop drinking and resume writing. Again and again I drank. And when I did not, I sat and drank coffee and smoked and withdrew into myself. Yet I still called myself a writer when asked what I did for a living."

Perhaps there is a message in that for Tosches?

"Exceptional men do not hold their experiences to be out of the ordinary or of interest to anyone else. Unlike the trodden fungus-men, they are not so ignorantly and presumptuously self-absorbed.

They are nobody and they know it. They shun notice. They are exceedingly rare." 

So, is Tosches a trodden fungus-man?

I'm 80 and some months. In 1992, this hopped out of me, when my writings were changing from non-fiction to stranger than fiction:

I happened upon a mockingbird

singing his fool head off.

I asked him how and why he sang?

But all he did was look ahead,

all he did was sing.

He never turned to see if I was watching,

Or listened for money jingling in my pockets,

Or asked if I liked his music,

Or expected a recording contract.

He was too busy singing

to pay any attention to me.

Thus did I learn

the greatest sin of all

is to kill a mockingbird.

AuthorPoetic Outlaws

Sloan Bashinsky It's from a novel, my man. Tosches was a fierce writer and a lot of his writings are self-loathing. Just try to enjoy the prose instead of analyzing every word. He's fire.

Sloan Bashinsky

Thanks. I saw it was from a novel. 

A little while after I wrote my first novel in 1992, this fell out of me:

"Although he sometimes tries to write fiction, when the tale is told, every character is is a character in himself, every plot a plot in himself. There are no surprises, only his to discover the parts of himself he has lost, forgotten, thrown away, or didn't even know were there."

My experiences since early 1987 were so increasingly out of the ordinary, that most people thought I was nuts, or a liar, when I spoke or wrote of those experiences.😋 That has not changed.😋

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

some thoughts on getting old ...

There is growing up and getting old, and there is growing up. 

Poetic Outlaws

“Good God, how old I have become! Everything bores me, I don’t feel anything, even about myself… I am prepared, within the limits of my powers, to bear this sad burden of existence.”

— Leo Tolstoy

 

 

Sloan Bashinsky  

Now 80 and some months, and a writer, poet, blogger and more recently a podcaster, and not counting a few bright anomalies, totally unimpressed with the state of human and the declining state of my body, sense of humor and irreverence, I perhaps can resonate with the gritty old Russian in some ways, although there still is enough spicy stuff going on in the world around me that I cannot say my life is entirely boring. Although I didn't come any where close to achieving Tolstoy's literary works and fame, I have a modest audience since the podcast went into the Torrent system and some of the writings went into internet archives/libraries, thanks to a tech wizard friend of mine, who got the libraries to hold the writings and podcast episodes after he uploads them. 

Meanwhile, I'm at the point where I think maybe the Lord taking me and thus cheating doctors, hospitals, elder care facilities, hospices and lawyers out of their perceived ju$t due$ is a far more useful disposition of me and my remains. Were I a beloved pet, my owner already would be talking with a veterinarian about when to put me down. Were I a member of an ancient nomad tribe, I would be preparing to wander off on my own to save the tribe having to look after and feed me, as I become food for Mother Nature's animals, bugs and worms. Instead, I get up each day in a city apartment, wondering why I'm still here? Then, I get on with living another day the best I can, cherishing bright moments, groaning most of the rest of the time, wondering why I'm still here?

As I marinated in that, this showed up in my Facebook timeline, and I was glad it did.

Poet's Corner / Esquina Poetica 

"I sat on the park bench feeding the birds today

and a little girl with a yellow ribbon came

up and stood in front of me

and said

"Hey mister, buy me ice-cream."

Go away, I’m busy I said.

I wanted to cut her little pigtails off and feed them to the

pigeons.

But she wouldn’t let up

"You look melancholy,"

she said

and twirled around in a circle.

I stopped from feeding the birds and stared at her spinning little head.

Do you even know what that word means? I said.

"Yup."

Well?

“it’s what old people are when they don’t want to admit that they’re sad,” she said

and began to twirl again.

I couldn’t stop staring at the ribbon in her hair.

“You should buy me ice-cream” she said, “the truck is riiiiiight over there.”

Humph I said, it will rot your teeth.

She held out her hand and smiled

And I stuck a quarter in it.

“Listen mister, it costs $1.25.”

Holy shit, when I was your age you could get two ice-cream sandwi---whatever.

I gave her the damn money and she took off like a freight train.

I watched the ribbon in her hair disappear over the small hill in the park and

I felt my limbs go soft.

The little son-of-a-bitch was right

melancholy

it had set in years ago

Taken me over like a world war

like an old score

I was settled in to it

comfortable in it

The loss

The lecherous

The left handedness of time had come and gone and left me a veteran

of the battle within me.

The rage had left

And I had replaced it with regret.

“Hey mister, I got you one, too. I was wrong, they were two for $1.25.”

Go away I’m busy, I said, and wiped my eyes with my sleeve

I wanted to pull her pigtails off and stick them in her ice-cream cones.

“You should have one, it will make you not so sad,” she said and stuck one in my face.

The smell of cheap chocolate and half melted ice milk hasn’t changed in forty years

and

goddamn it if that kid wasn’t right

the second that cone hit my stomach

the sugar

the cocoa

the cream did its work

and I sat smiling as she skipped around the bench

scaring the birds

tugging the ribbon from her hair and looping it in the air

pulling it over my shoulder

evening the score

calling off the war

settling

the loss

the lecherous

the left handedness of time

and the battle inside me

the rage

woke up

and began stirring

the fight

the fire

replacing regret

and I laughed as she left

saying outloud

“best bucktwentyfive ever spent.” 

It's been a while since I spent time around small children, of whom Jesus in the Gospels said the Kingdom of God is made? Yet, elsewhere in the Gospels, he was crystal clear that adults faced a serious trial, if they followed him into that Kingdom.

For example, this post at a Reddit spirituality group, where everyone uses fake names. I'm Puzzleheaded.

 

spirituality (Reddit), 

u/true

can a spiritual awakening cause depression?

If so, Why?

 

Puzzleheaded

You can pretty much count on it, but to label it depression probably is not accurate in either the spiritual or the clinical psychology sense.

You might wish to read the Sufi poet Rumi's classic poem, The Chickpea, which is about his own spiritual trial by fire at the hands of his teacher, or at the hands of God, depending on how you read that poem. Rumi's teacher was named Shams, who was irascible, irreverent, yet he certainly got Rumi's attention, when Rumi thought he was already pretty far along the spiritual path.

You might also wish to read in the Gospels what Jesus told his disciples about what was in for them, if they stuck with him and did as he advised them to do, while he did it himself. For example, he told them, Many are called, but few are chosen; the road to life is difficult and the gate narrow, and few enter; the work is great and the workers are few; and:

Matthew 3:11 “I [John the Baptist] baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Luke 12:49 [Jesus] “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

John 8:31-32 So Jesus said to the Jews who believed in him, “If you continue to obey my teaching, you are truly my followers. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

I do not mean to promote Christianity, which seems not to understand Jesus in the Gospels very well. However, reading about some of the later saints in Christendom might inform what trials they endured, say, San Juan de la Cruz (St. John of the Cross) and St. Francis of Assisi, both of whom experienced the dark night of the soul, about which Juan is considered the expert in Christendom.

Waking up is painful, because of what it causes us. Looking at other people more realistically. Looking at ourselves more realistically. If we do not get our perceptions dashed, then are we really waking up? If we do not feel lonely and distressed, alienated, are we really leaving the herd, which history has proven over and over is never right?

The spiritual path is not easy, How can it be, when there is so much to change and shed in us? So that, hopefully, we emerge eventually someone else entirely, yet we are still in it. For once it starts, it doesn't end, unless we do something that causes it to end, like boozing, drugging or killing ourselves.

I'm not speaking theoretically here, but from decades of being on that road. Fortunately, I was and still am assisted, steered, corrected, even spanked, and carried by angels known in the Bible. But I do not belong to that religion, through which the angels took me back into and through it into something else entirely.

Each person is unique, and so each person's spiritual path. However, there are certain benchmarks that generally apply, which I have tried to explain here.

Another is stated in the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament: Once the cleansing of the Lord begins, do not turn away. Hang in there, endure it, because an attempt is being made to change us from drinking milk, to eating meat; from being children, to being teachers.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com