Chaos

As I struggle to emerge from the post-election depression that has been my companion since November 3, one project seems to have promise. So, I have embarked on this, a journey of exploration. I have set upon this path pursuing a question that was always on our minds through the spring, summer and fall, but never quite was posed in a way that compelled an answer: given that our politics has given way to a choice between vanilla with chocolate swirl and vanilla with fudge swirl; what are the real, the important issues that deserve a real choice, a contrast, not just a naunced shading?

Many cultures have creation myths that are likely connected to that ur-story in our distant prehistory of how we came to be. In the common threads of these stories we can hazily make out the pattern of that first story that came from our first story-teller or if you have faith perhaps from someone who knew what actually happened. Many of these stories start with the world/universe/reality in chaos, without discernable pattern or purpose. The story usually tells us that something acted on this chaos to bring order or pattern into the world and it connects us to that emerging pattern. My own faith teaches that our physical being began as matter unorganized, chaotic was organized into preconceived patterns.

If indeed creation is marked by emerging patterns, then our world, our nations, our cultures, our families are best served by a conscious attempt to find and act in harmony with those patterns. That is the task I set for myself: finding the patterns that should form the indices for our conduct, our society and our policy. It is to build a rational, spiritual, reality-based daily politics. If you happen to read this, look at the patterns in the dust, hunker down, make a suggestion.

Axiomatic principles

Some things just have to be assumed to be the way they are, as honestly mediated reality. Without assuming that which we experience is related to our actual environment, we are left to try to puzzle out an always hidden reality behind the hullicinations that we live in.
So ...

A. We can see, hear, feel, touch and smell at least part of the real world. No shadows on the wall nonsense.

B. We exist. We are real.
If we are somebody else's dream, then we are somebody else. We'll get down to the real being eventually. I'm dealing with reality here.

C. We have always existed and will always exist.
Whether through eternal spiritual life or DNA imprint, there is a self that pre-exists and persists beyond our present physical form. My beliefs are that an intelligence has existed from before the patterns of the universe were manifested. We became aware of the patterns rather than the patterns possessing a means of self-awareness.

D. We have the inate ability and capacity to choose among alternatives.
If this were not true we would be passive spectators in a grand theater, without ability to influence or choose in any meaningful way. Life would be fultile and this blog would be pointless navel gazing (It may be anyway, but not for this reason)

From the above axioms we can start forming principles.
1. We have value.
2. We are not solely anything's or anyone's creation to do with as they choose. At a most fundamental level we are our own.
3. We can learn and understand our circumstances as they actually are. Effort is required.
4. We are capable and trustworthy to make our own choices
5. Choices based on reality are best. The more of reality that we can incorporate in the basis for our choices, the better they will be.
6. Our history shows that complex cultures are more robust. We learn by interaction.
7. If we each have inate value, then there is no stable system that gives one of us a greater value than another.