Truthnauts

Well, truthnauts, you're on your own! Good luck! 

Transgender & OCD

Hypothesis (just a hypothesis!): being transgender is a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder.

This must be distinguished from a form of OCD in which the sufferer is caught up in repetitive suspicions that he or she is actually transgender. 

Under this hypothesis, the people who seek amputations "to feel whole" and transsexuals could both be explained.

This might also explain the obsessive characteristics of transsexualism. 

Posted so I can remember the link:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13857379_Four-year_remission_of_transsexualism_after_comorbid_obsessive-compulsive_disorder_improved_with_self-exposure_therapy_-_Case_report

Worth Restating

I'm writing this instead of posting the totally unrelated tearjerker Travelin' Soldier video on YouTube that shows clips from the movie Pearl Harbor with Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale. 

The smartest thing I ever read on clothes and religion--that is, lots of clothes as a symbol of "sexual purity" or not-much-clothes or no-clothes-at-all as a symbol of "liberation"--was on a pagan blog. 

It was this: That both of those are the opposite sides of the same coin. The escape from one isn't the adoption of the other and vice versa. The way out is to stop being so obsessed with your clothes.

Just wear them to stay warm, to protect your skin from the elements, to protect yourself from other people(!), or to look nice. Be sociable, practical, and sensible. 

At this point, that much is obvious, but it's worth restating. 

Now I'll go back to my very insensible alienation from the twenty-first century. 

Marcus Aurelius's Mom

[Things I learned] from my mother: piety, generosity, the avoidance of wrongdoing and even the thought of it; also, simplicity of living, well clear of the habits of the rich.

 That's a good mom. 

Old Beijing

My friend from England and I ate at a vegan restaurant for lunch, and as it was warm and the sky was a clear blue, walked around old Beijing. 

Old Beijing is the central area of the city where there is a lot of traditional architecture, many traditional restaurants, etc. 

My friend from England tells the most hilarious stories. 

Long Time Gone

And me, I been a long time gone. 

100 Wishes Mountain

I went hiking today in the northwest of Beijing with a lovely new acquaintance. He speaks Chinese, and he told me the place we hiked is known as 100 Wishes Mountain. Looking east from one of the small peaks, you could see across to Olympic Forest Park, all the way south towards Beijing West Station, and looking northwest, a range of mountains that rise up dramatically from the intervening flat plain. Here's what it looked like. The wind was furious at the top, as in literally hurricane-force. 

I don't know the story behind the name--100 Wishes Mountain--or if it means that you are entitled to make 100 wishes if you go there. 

Fight Club

I've been wanting to quit online commenting. For reasons unknown to me, the gods have cursed me with a way of putting words together that attracts people's attention. Not always, but much of the time. However, a verbal gladiator is not how I imagine myself to be. I imagine myself as a devotee, a devotee steeped in the knowledge, lore, rituals, and theology of my particular deity, and in that sense, purehearted; maybe someday a priestess. 

There are issues and people for which there are few good advocates. Would-be advocates that I've seen online often fall short in their ability to articulate an argument. Or, alternatively, they are intimidated by the moral climate created by their adversaries. I don't think I generally have these problems. 

Some nationally-known writers were gracious enough to take notice of my writing. I guess they also cursed me and mocked me among each other as well when I argued hard. Yet, they still took notice of what I said. Nonetheless, this isn't necessarily good. To be noticed is, in a very small way, to take your place in this world. Someone whose opinion matters! And what could be more obstructive to a spiritual life than that?

Abstinence & the Zika Virus

The CDC is advising abstinence and safe sex to avoid the spread of the Zika virus, which can be sexually transmitted. 

China

It is the Chinese New Year. We have some time off from work. I went with a friend yesterday to a 'Temple Fair'. There was loads of people, all kinds of food, pavilions, a large lake, and many things to see. Afterwards, we went to Sanlitun, the foreigners' district. We talked and talked and talked. It was so much fun.

I'm getting more used to China. Slowly, I'm learning how to do things and how to say things. 

Happy lunar new year! 

Black Cherry Incense

Tomorrow I'm off to the other side of the world. It looks like they're putting me in the heart of downtown. I do like downtowns so much. Still, I'm not sure I'm worth all that; there's a feeling of trepidation. 

Tonight, I sat outside by the picnic table and offered black cherry incense to Fors Fortuna, for good luck on my trip, and for my parents, for good luck while I'm away. Cygnus the Swan was overhead, silently abiding; as 30 years ago; as ever. 

My parents are getting old. I wonder if I'll ever see them again. 

I also wonder if I'll ever learn to live according to nature. There's a goddess named Concordia, who is the origin and original source of all things harmonious. To argue or bicker with another is a sin against this goddess. 

Just a small-town girl, livin' in a lonely world. 

Sinning Against Concordia

There's a passage in Meditations about not sinning against the goddess Truth, the origin and original cause of all things truthful. 

I sin against Concordia in my dealings with anti-gay Christians.

It's time to stop, or, if too humanly difficult, then just for today, or just for the week; at least one day or one week of harmony. 

Truth

Haven't you ever had an aching desire to tell the truth, all else (except compassion) be damned? Not to buy into other people's self-serving narratives; not to charm or bedazzle yourself or other people with self-serving expedient fictions? Religious, political, personal, or otherwise? To see through the many illusions that obscure life as it really is; to present yourself to the world as you really are, not the composite fiction your ego believes in? And through truth--this place where only the rarest and most dauntless people venture to go--to be nothing less than a space explorer or astronaut in life, right here on earth?

Not True

There is an article up on the American Conservative that contains this sentence: "The standard story that the Roman Republic ended with Caesar Augustus becoming emperor is therefore simply wrong..."

The article is a book review, and the sentence is part of a thread of an argument in the book that Byzantine theocracy was considerably like a republic; to be more specific, the third phase of the Roman Republic. 

I like Stoicism, a lot, but the Stoics did not free the slaves; Christians did. 

Likewise, some people may like Orthodox culture and the Byzantine Empire, but that does not entitle one to make false assertions about history.

In the authors' defense, I suppose we're being asked to think more abstractly and to assign less weight to concrete historical events. This view has some merit. That being said, there's more explanatory power and greater likelihood in the idea that civic culture simply carried over from age to age than to say that, based on the presence of similar values, one form of government was actually a different form of government; a dictatorship was really a republic. 

The Garden of Proserpine

This poem; it's just perfect. Sweet dreams. :)

Empty Mind

Feel tired of liking things, tired disliking things; tired of positive emotions and negative emotions; tired of debates, of right, of wrong, of crudely-put points, of nuanced points, of attraction, repulsion, of neutral feelings, of mundane analyses and of imaginative analyses; tired of integrity and shamelessness, tired of effort and laziness, of hunger and of surfeit and satiation; tired of exhortations & argumentation. 

I will try to empty my mind through meditation. I might try to hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail tomorrow. Maybe I can just be on the trail with an empty mind and a compassionate smile. 

Coldly Logical

The last post was a bit too coldly logical. To restate, my point was that people shouldn't get caught up in self-righteous histrionics, given the totality of humanity's current relationship with animals.

I had been following PETA on both Facebook and Twitter. PETA actually advocated hanging Walter Palmer. That's so over the top, I don't really know what to say. Later Ingrid Newkirk tried to walk it back. Maybe they can develop better sense and more compassion in the future, but they do not seem to have it right now. 

Tonight I'll say a prayer for Walter Palmer. I've got my hands full as it is, but I can spare a prayer for someone who's being subjected to mob hysteria. 

Cecil the Lion

I believe, with regard to the dentist and the lion:

Humaneness and kind treatment of animals arise in part from our recognition of their capacity to suffer and their capacity of conscious awareness--in other words, their human-like qualities. Killing and eating a person is more morally blameworthy than merely* killing a person, therefore, where survival does not require it, killing and eating an animal is more morally blameworthy than just killing it. 

Imagine millions of people were being killed and eaten for food in Country A. Imagine that millions of people were being killed and eaten for food in Country B. Now imagine that a man travels from Country A to Country B and murders a famous actor to acquire a trophy. Imagine further that after doing so, the populations of Country A and Country B, the overwhelming majority of whom participate in the holocaust-food genocide just described, were in an uproar over the "egregious nature of the murder" and wanted to destroy the man's business in retribution. 

That would be utterly irrational, wouldn't it?

Less self-righteousness, please. 

*The word merely is inserted as an argument building block to distinguish two levels of bad, not to diminish the wrongness of murder. 

Good vs. Evil

1. Where there are no inflexible principles, people treat one another badly because there's nothing to stop them (e.g., slavery).

2. Where there are inflexible principles, people treat one another better because they are held to standards (e.g., laws disallowing inhumane treatment of others).

2. Where there are inflexible principles, people treat one another badly, because of the inflexible principles (e.g., the European Wars of Religion).

3. Where there are inflexible principles, people treat one another badly, because the invention of good is impliedly the invention of evil. 

The moral balance sheet of monotheistic-dualistic religions is impossible to tally. 

If cosmic good and cosmic evil were real, multiple perspectives would not exist with regard to the moral dimension of events in human history, just as there are no ordinary, valid differences of perspective on physical laws, such as gravity. But perspective does exist: The same events can be regarded by different parties as immensely good, immensely bad, neither good nor bad, on a continuum between good and bad, and so forth. 

Instead of cosmic good and evil, the universe has aspects, features, qualities: Anger, Kindness, Desk, Cat, Star, Boredom, etc. This is borne out by everyday experience and science (unless you subscribe to the untalked about implicit assumption of many popular science writers that a composite thing has less metaphysical realness than its constituent elements). 

The Gods We Worship

People worship War, Conflict, Death, Misunderstanding, Passion, Demagoguery.

People don't like Concordia, Minerva, Mens, Pax.

We have no adults, neither left nor right.