Emphasis on no. 4

     “By now, it should be obvious that chiefdoms introduced the dilemma fundamental to all centrally governed, non-egalitarian societies. At best, they do good by providing expensive services impossible to contract on an individual basis. At worst, they function unabashedly as kleptocracies, transferring net wealth from the commoners to upper classes. These noble and selfish functions are inextricably linked, although some governments emphasize much more of one function than the other. The difference between a kleptocrat and a wise statesman, between robber baron and a public benefactor, is merely one of degree; a matter of just how large a percentage of the tribute extracted from producers is retained by the elite, and how much the commoners like the public uses to which the redistribution tribute is put. We consider President Mobutu of Zaire a kleptocrat because he keeps too much tribute (the equivalent of millions of dollars) and redistributes too little tribute (no functioning phone system in Zaire.) We consider George Washington a statesman because he spent tax money on widely admired programs and did not enrich himself as president. Nevertheless, George Washington was born into wealth, which is much more unequally distributed in the United States than in New Guinea villages.
     For any ranked society, whether a chiefdom or state, one thus has to ask: why do commoners transfer the fruits of their hard labors to kleptocrats? This question, raised by political theorists from Plato to Marx, is raised anew by voters in every modern election. Kleptocracies with little public support run the risk of being overthrown, either by downtrodden commoners or by upstart would-be replacement kleptocrats seeking public support by promising a higher ratio of services rendered to fruits stolen. For example, Hawaiian history was repeatedly punctuated by revolts against repressive chiefs, usually led by the younger brothers promising less oppression. This may sound funny to us in the context of old Hawaii, until we reflect on all the misery still being caused by such struggles in the modern world.
     What should the elite do to gain popular support while still maintaining a more comfortable lifestyle than the commoners? Kleptocrats throughout the ages have resorted to a mixture of four solutions:
     1. Disarm the populace and arm the elite. That’s much easier in these days of high-tech weaponry, produced only in industrial plants and easily monopolized by the elite, than in ancient times of spears and clubs easily made at home.
     2. Make the masses happy by redistributing much of the tribute received, in popular ways. Thus principle was as valid for Hawaiian chiefs as it is for American politicians today.
     3. Use the monopoly of force to promote happiness, by maintaining public order and curbing violence. This is potentially a big and underappreciated advantage of centralized societies over noncentralized ones. Anthropologists formerly idealized band and tribal societies as gentle and nonviolent, because visiting anthropologists observed no murder in a band of 25 people in the course of a three-year study. Of course they didn’t; it’s easy to calculate that a band of a dozen adults and a dozen children, subject to the inevitable deaths occurring anyway for the usual reasons other than murder, could perpetuate itself if in addition one of its dozen adults murdered another adult every three years. Much more extensive long-term information about band and tribal societies reveal that murder is the leading cause of death….
     4. The remaining way for kleptocrats to gain public support is to construct an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy. Bands and tribes already had supernatural beliefs, just as do modern established religions. But the supernatural beliefs of bands and tribes did not serve to justify central authority, justify transfer of wealth, or maintain peace between unrelated individuals. When supernatural beliefs gained those functions and became institutionalized, they were thereby transformed into what we term a religion. Hawaiian chiefs were typical of chiefs elsewhere, in asserting divinity, divine descent, or at least a hotline to the gods. The chief claimed to serve the people by interceding for them with the gods and reciting the ritual formulas required to obtain rain, good harvests, and success in fishing.
     Chiefdoms characteristically have an ideology, precursor to an institutionalized religion, that buttresses the chief’s authority. The chief may either combine the offices of political leader and priest into a single person or may support a separate group of kleptocrats (that is, priests) whose function is to provide ideological justification for the chiefs. That is why chiefdoms devote so much collected tribute to constructing temples and other public works, which serve as centers of the official religion and visible signs of the chief’s power.
     Beside justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized religion brings two other important benefits to centralized societies. First, shared ideology or religion helps solve the problem of how unrelated individuals are to live together without killing each other – by providing them with a bond not based on kinship. Second, it gives people a motive, other than generic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others. At the cost of a few society members who die in battle as soldiers, the whole society becomes more effective at conquering other societies or resisting attacks.”

From Guns, Germs, and Steel  by Jared Diamond

I do remember the grand old days when I was even more foolish that I am now, which frightens me alone, I actually believed in God solely to have the largest possible target to blame for the times had like in December. I never was pick on going Infernal.. I leaned more to a Job-ian approach. I was narcisstic in my neurosis to believe that the Powers that Be had handpicked me to make my life difficult for whatever esoteric reasons. There was something comforting of lifting a fist to the sky and shaking it threateningly. You're in excrutiating pain as muscle spasm wrack your whole body, waiting under a bus shelter, to be out of the icy winter rains, for a bus you've missed by no more than a minute, at six in the morning, and nobody is answering their phone. Meanwhile, unknown to you, one of your beloved pet rats has passed on. All this caused by a spill taken on a bus one slushy morning a month earlier. It's easy to believe in the existence of a malicious divinity, over a malevolent one at such moments.

I have to confess I miss my theological purgative, with my tuchis sore from two shots with long needles done over two days, and an inability to extend my neck properly. Even the peace of a little sleep before I have to limp through a soggy night to work....

So maybe I should arbitrarily dump my woes on some unseen force, whose presence currently haunts me unwanted at every turn. Fuck you, Santa.

I've told the story of my violent and excruciating reaction to the stronger antibiotic I was put on to put down the obstinant leg infection so many times now, I've no stomach to expand on it here. Just may it be marked that yesterday was possibly number one in suckiest days of 2005 for me. I gain a small comfort from the impending end of the Christmas season. The end of the year marks a shift in the strange attractor that is this House too. Then again, at the end of every recent year, I've said that December bodes heavily on the new year. It's some classic drama on my part. Anyway, Happy Holidays to my immense body of readers, all dozen or so of you.

In Memoriam Rodentus - Sigmund Rex

Sig was a weird hairless methusaleh rodenr, the only male among the bevy of females. He was funky and fun in his own way, even after he got beat up by the younger girls and given his own cage. He was a gift from the Woman, and a marvel to watch. If my parents knew how much money I spent keeping up his health, they would still plotz. He was a true scrapper, surviving even pneumonia and the death of his mate, Polythemia. He was never the most social of rats, but still, he added life to my room, and takes life away in his passing.

Crap. I have little to really say. The leg is getting better, and the Earth abides.

Day two of infection watch. Lovely to spend your day, staring down your gammy leg at the television, and hoping that the mighty mighty antibiotics are waging valorous warfare on the unseen bacteria in my shin. Against my vow of no (or least no overt) bitchery in this blog, I will openly profess how much this surely sucks. There, I said it. And I don't regret it. Staying off the leg isn't that easy either, being a quiet Saturday at the House, with only the Woman and I here. And she is sleeping because she doesn't feel on her game today, and that means none of the usual housefriends will fall into regular orbits around her until she is awake later. And I really miss D.

Yeah, fine.. you think of something worthy to write about, right now, then. And I doubt you want to hear me wax harmonious on the nature of my morning's flatulence.

"A philosopher went into a closet for ten years to contemplate the question, What is life? When he came out, he went into the street and met an old colleague, who asked him where in heaven's name he had been all those years.
"In a closet," he repied. "I wanted to know what life really is."
"And have you found an answer?"
"Yes," he replied. "I think it can best be expressed by saying that life is like a bridge."
"That's all well and good," replied the colleage, "but can you be a little more explicit? Can you tell me how life is like a bridge?"
"Oh," replied the philosopher after some thought, "maybe you're right; perhaps life is not like a bridge."

- Raymod Smullyan

Well, I asked for some time to reflection... last night's introspection over hotel patrol was all about regaining center. I have plenty of time for that now. The prior mentioned patrol was done in considerable pain, which would become excrutiating by shift's end. I decided getting off my left leg, continued troublesome since I took the tumble in the bus a couple weeks back, for the next day was a good idea, and also seeing my doctor was a better idea. The doctor diagnosed an infection in the internal wound, and there went the rest of my work week, and my week in general. With leg up and antibiotics, I am bedridden until Monday.

All I wanted to do was write something nice about the battle of cracked Western ideologies inspired by a badly photocopied packet found in an empty real estate magazine dispenser. Maybe later, I guess.

Been an odd workday, really. The 2200 festive Microserfs weren't that bad, and I was far away from the madness of their sheer numbers. My delve into the insanity was from the forethought. The middle of the workday was actually pretty interesting, but it was the caps... I started with someone angry at me and ended with someone angry at me, both times seemingly as an easy target for what I've guessed were started much further back than me, and just came together focused on me.

I have one of those time-bending waits for the bus I transfer from the crosstown, to get to Bellevue, being the beginning/end of the its route. The chilly weather means it's hard to read or do something beyond stand there and be cold, right now. This last evening, I was waiting, when the apartment building's fire alarm goes off, being likely a false alarm. The tenants file slowly and unhappily out of their tiny, but warm apartments (studios and mini-studios) onto the sidewalks. A large fellow, with mate and baby in tow, comes out, himself carrying a Pit Bull mix puppy of some sorts. A very handsome hound, I thought, and spent a little zone-out time admiring the pup. Which the man takes as staring at him, and my earmuffs dull the sound of his unhappy query on that believed fact. To put it civilly. He makes some less than honorable gestures, and I yell about the alarms and street noise that I am watching his dog. At which he takes further umbrage, awaiting (and I believing hoping) I will say something defamatory. The bus pulled up, and that was that. But I easily imagine there could have been a less peaceable end to that thing.
The end of my shift brought my relief, an officer I had never met before, some five minutes past the hour of that end, to leave me a scant eight or so minutes to get to central command, perform my sign-out duties, and still make it to the bus stop. I failed to do some small duty with labelling some keys out, which he wanted me to do right then and now, and even though when asked, I knew exactly who had them. I told him I had to make this bus. This is the only morning I have this constriction, usually I have more time than I know what to do with. I had already felt this was a man who came in angry at something, and would take little mind of what I said, and not be very willing to acknowledge that this would be a non-issue if he was at post on time, or earlier, and I was right. Next thing I know he is shouting furiously at me, as I leave. If anything the whole last job fiasco taught me, what I think makes sense, and what another worker thinks makes sense, and what is actually sensible, are like three drunk swordsmen in a pitch-black room. I'm sure I won't hear the last of this, even though whatever anger he had was probably born long before this, in the treatment by other workers, and other unknown life conditions. I just happened to be the trigger. Whatever my fault in the escalation, the escalation wasn't mine to start, nor probably to finish.

This kind of awareness of causality is driving me pretty nuts. But this is it, I guess.. What the now is about, what truth I need to learn about now, before I toss that truth aside and find the next one necessary to keep moving. D told me the other night how I am the kind of guy who looks for the meaning of meanings, who deals in universals... and yeah, It's true. But more I look, the more I wonder if I'm myself focusing too much on some solid state of meaning that can never exist by itself, as every effect is simply another cause and vice versa, and focus on how it works together over why it works together. Something for me to think about. Or look at.

Okay. Bed.

This promises to be a quick post as the cold weather is playing havoc with my sinuses, and I'm waiting for the Nyquil to kick in, so I can do something resembling sleep. It usually takes a fortnight to a full month to know what you've gotten yourself into at a new post, and learned I have. Least learned that until after the New Year, life will be more interesting and arduous work-wise. The Holiday Party season has opened at the hotel I watch, and the other on site as well. Last night, they hosted five parties of varying size, and we spent the rest of the night dealing with people of varying intoxication. Tonight, the Mighty Mighty Microsoft is hosting the holiday party for one local division, meaning that 2000 overworked Microserfs will be let loose with access to open bars. "Bob" help us all. You should expect some philosophical reflections on alcohol on this blog shortly. Well, least things will be out of the ordinary for awhile.

Alcohol is necessary for a man so that he can have a good opinion of himself, undisturbed be the facts.
Finley Peter Dunne

Don't get this wrong. This is not a reflection on the smell of the House toilet, but on the idea of the smell of the House toilet. Go back to the beginning of the day and I'm sure this will all make sense. Or you'll understand why I don't have a poetic bone in my literate body.

Rubee the cat woke me at 4:30 p.m. with the desperate squalling to be released from my room, where he snuck in, got caught by my door closed for bed, and hours later got tired of being trapped. I had a yippy puppy's exclamations from the basement to serenade my first cigarette. The parade of housefriends began not long after that. The Freak Across the Street, whom we will now call FAS from now on, came over and wandered into my room to sit down and watch TV with me for awhile. T came home from work, and I completed the welcoming ceremony with a peck on her forehead. I listened to the Pagan rattle in the kitchen for a bit. Overall, the makings of a good day off.

What brought it all together was the mild odiferous can. Thankfully (for my readers,) I won't go into much detail. I stepped into the bathroom, and up wafted the before mentioned stench, light enough to earn no more than a classic, "Aw Geez." After the (ah) necessary activity, it dawned on me that surely, I had experienced many a stinky bathroom before I moved to the House, but near always it was my smell left, nasty as it is. This smell was like a physical marker that I'm not living alone anymore. Even the crappiest (no pun intended) things that happen in this house, are somehow better that near all the things happening in my past apartments. Honestly, I can't imagine living alone like that again. It was the aching loneliness that pushed me into the decision to move here. I wish I couldn't remember how hugely empty and devoid of life that small studio in San Francisco felt, and explains neatly why I'm so attached to my cat. I've said some less than spectacular things about the House not long after I moved here, and all the more foolish for me.

I'm sure something much more flowery and poetical than a smelly toilet could be had for this moment of understanding, but there it is. I rarely choose my neural triggers.

Time for bed.

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."

Marcel Proust

Tis the season to have a persecution complex. The holy rollers are gathering up a head of steam over another no-issue. Seasonal sensitivity in a more religiously diverse country (along with the bowel-shaking fear of lawsuits,) have driven some again this year to be more vague, and call things "holiday" instead of "Christmas" again. Jerry Falwell and the League of Most Sacred Ignoramus are shouting from the church steeples how the secularists are trying to steal Christmas. You can't fucking sneeze in this country this time of year, and hit something blaring Christmas, and Baby Jesus, and of course, the godless are ruling over us all. I guess the good thing of growing up Jewish is you really learn the use of a good persecution complex, with oppression, real or not, put to use to justify digging deeper into the power structure. Hey, it won the conservatives the White House, didn't it? And nobody fucks with the Jews. Even I'm scared of the ADL. I guess what gets me so pissed here is that you watch the media and all that, and somehow they have managed to "forget" that we are one of the most religious first world states. Europe thinks we're totally fucking nuts because this country is actually having a culture war over Evolution, which is a given over there. It's odd that my personal animal, the platypus is being used to argue that there is a Intelligent Designer (shh.. okay, its the JudeoChristian God, but nobody say it.) I've often had to argue that this whole social backslide is a good thing, since history has shown me that reactionary fervor usually is the clearest sign of undeniable cultural change. Americans seem to believe in the Sledgehammer and Crowbar model of paradigm change, par excellence.

The social event I will regret missing the most, is the First Thursday dinner with the Secular Humanists of Seattle. I could really use some time among the happily godless, even if we have our own problems with a solid persecution complex. I still wonder what will get me put against the wall first when the revolution comes: Being a faggot, or being an atheist. My luck, it will be a Leftist coup, and I'll get lead-poisoning for not being plebian enough. Damn me for my intellectual with bourgeoisie roots. I shall never know the sweet taste of overturning Management.

"There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.

The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.

This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies."

- Rabbi Sherwin Wine

I'm a bit ticked. Apparently, I lost yesterday's blog entry. I dislike that. Now I can barely recall what I wrote about on the majority of it. Such is life, I guess. It might be for the better, since I'm finding it hard to tap the inward narrative to get authentic here. Some, I know, I will regain with patience, but most I fear is this dulled edges of my awareness, as I hit resistance that resides as a morass on the periphery of my consciousness, built up to defend and sustain from the percieved near-failure of the Great Experiment. It might be the GE itself, whose third year mark passed without my notice until now, a week after. I can deflect success into blindspots, and three years of the continued GE, with its overall positive proof of the theorem of independence, is a success that I should feel more elated about. In the end, I think I'm simply off-center, and that is creating a harder time with perspective.

I so need to relax. I pray that I am right that my new boss is too damn cheap to pay for the drug test, and I can pass through the safe period in about a week. I miss my in-brain vacations. Although I will recontinue lost small experiments in silence and other perceptual enhancement, that can all be done without chemical assistance, I could use the help, simply by idling my system for a few hours. My several month dry spell has led to some interesting conclusions, mostly that it is after-consumption where my perceptual awareness is improved. The Nowness of a good high might be the cause of that. Hopefully I will out soon. I have sent out feelers with a housefriend about the acquistion of some mushrooms. I've placed much thought into the possible gains of a weak dosage that will result in, as he put it more succinctly, "a head change." But it's late in the season, and this may end up being moot. We'll see.

Overall, least I am putting thought again into returning to the productive experimentation. But I am extremely cautious. Although I wouldn't regret the last epiphany for all the bagels in New York City, I have to own that I over compensated, and fell into the spiral that lead to my fault in the job loss. Have to stay Middle Way without falling to false compromise and hubris again. I'd be happy to just regain the sense of motion again, there is alot to be done just to repair my vessel.

One thing I should finally stop avoiding here, as it does have a powerful effect on my life, is that I've fallen madly in love. Its totally irrational, and impossible. He's in Illinois, and I've never even seen what he looks like. It's cyber. I'd thought I'd learned after my relationship with Flea. But, I am in love, for all the rationalizations I've gone through. I could as easily not be in love with him as I could become a Log Cabin Republican. He's simply a swell guy, who returns love with a compassion that washes over me and cleanses me. I know I'm mad for getting into this, moreso because I hate being in love because it is so irrational and unanswerable to personal control. But then, what else have I been looking for, but to feel something irrational and out of my personal control. I have no idea what will come of this, but all I know is that for it, the heavens will shake, the earth will abide not, and the aardvark will lay down with the ocelot. Universe bless it.

I love you, D.

To bed with the crazy person.

"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart."
-Marcus Aurellius