Anybody interested in doing a round-robin or exquisite corpse type thing?

For those who might not know what this is, someone posts a sentence or a paragraph of a story. Then as it makes the rounds, each new person adds more to it as it goes. I thought I might post a paragraph and nominate someone in my subscriptions to post the next part, then they would pick someone else in their subscriptions to send it to after they make their addition. Those who are interested could follow the link to the next poster. It would be interesting to see how the story mutates and also we’d get to “meet” new people. We could have each new poster cut and paste the old entry into their own site with their addition or post the additions on my site through comments on the initial entry.

What do you guys think? And if you’re interested, what kind of story would you like to do?

Has our generation become increasingly picky as to who we date or marry?

If our divorce rates are any indication, I think that people have become less choosy. Some people even seem to marry just to have a party, and a few years later, they divorce, messily.

Actually, I don’t think I can really answer this question very well because I have never been on a date or married. I have no practical experience with dating or marriage beyond my objective observations. Does that make me too picky? Well, no one’s ever really asked me out and I”m not inclined to ask others. The whole asexuality thing, you know? So I don’t really consider myself picky at all in light of the fact that I don’t have any inclination to date or marry. Conversely, if I were looking for a companion, I would be interested in someone with whom I could have a conversation. I’d be more inclined to find close friends and adopt them in a tribal kind of way than actually date or marry.

It seems to me that qualities people looked for in a mate in previous generations are not necessarily what one looks for now as the basis for a relationship. Not that we no longer look for these things, but that they’re not so important any more. So while there were lots of characteristics people looked for in a mate, first and foremost, men might look for a pretty face or someone who could cook and women might look for a provider (and also a pretty face, let’s be honest), both might decide they could deal with anything else their partners brought to the mix. Since women are now considered the equals of men, and can provide for themselves, the search for a mate is less contingent on a man’s ability to provide and a woman’s superficial qualities. Hey, it might even end up being the other way around in some cases… lol

But serious, it may be that the reason marriages don’t last as long as they used to any more is because people are still looking for mates based on the old paradigms. Men are still fixated on a pretty face and woman are still looking for someone to take care of them. But then they grow apart because they have nothing in common to keep them together. It’s not like a woman is going to stay at home any more and devote all her time to taking care of her husband and the house. And since both sexes have interests outside the house, how much time do they end up spending together? So maybe it’s not that people are more picky, it’s just that they have more time to develop interests beyond what initially drew them together and less time to actually share those interests. One day they look at each other, point fingers, and say, “You’ve changed! Who are you? I didn’t marry you!”

As our lifespans lengthen, there is more chance of people changing several times throughout their lives. I don’t think anyone can go from young adulthood to senior citizen and remain the same person. I know I’m not the same person I was at seventeen that I am now. In fact, I don’t think I was the same person four years ago that I am now. The longer we live and the more things we experience, the more we change from one year to the next. Growth is a good thing, but if a person is also married, then they have to make time to share those changes with their loved ones so that in addition to personal growth, there is growth as a couple. I think that people forget that when they join their lives to another’s, that they have to work at maintaining that unity throughout their lives if they want it to last. I don’t think married people need to share in all the interests of their mate, but ignorance and indifference to a loved one’s interests is a sure fire way to end up apart.

BTW, if you didn’t get the title, it’s from Princess Bride, one of the best movies ever made. You should watch it, and read the book, and own both, and quote from it copiously.

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

G(o)od and (d)Evil
(Part Deux)

Previously I had expounded on the existence of Evil as an extension of selfishness; Good therefore being the negation of selfish desires in so far as people are able to forego their own gratification in favor of pleasing or helping others. I tried to avoid the religious angle because I felt many people would fall into that rut. IMO, Dogma is merely a propaganda machine and a symptom of a weak mind. I always try to come to my conclusions independent of popular thought. Most of my fellow Socrates_cafe members avoided assigning the origins of good and evil to divine agencies as well, though the same cannot be said for those who answered the Featured Question.

I especially liked tx_christian’s post on the subject. We both consider the concepts of good and evil to be subjective. They are based on societal norms. Like many others however, she went on to equate good and evil with God and the Devil. The inclusion of God and the Devil as examples of good and evil is problematic. It assumes that God is good only, and the Devil is evil. I’m sure you’ve heard the question, “Can God create a boulder which even He cannot lift?” It’s supposed to get people to think about the nature of God and whether It is infinite or finite. If It is infinite, then It must contain and be everything. There is no boulder that can defy the power of God. If It is finite, then somewhere out there is a boulder just waiting for God to fail. If God is infinite, then It must contain good and evil in equal measure. Even saying that “God is beyond good and evil” assumes that It encompasses those concepts on our mundane level even though we cannot comprehend anything beyond them. If God is finite, then we must assume that It expunged Its “evil” tendencies by deferring them to the Devil. By assuming that God is incapable of evil, we assume that It is finite, and therefore limited. If God is god of all things, then must It not contain evil as well as good?

The question is like a Zen koan. It is unanswerable. It can only make one think. But either God is both good and evil, or It is only good and therefore limited. For my own part, I have always felt that God, whatever unknowable entity which first created everything, does not exist. I am not speaking of the Christian deity now, which I feel is merely one god among many, but of that singular Being which created everything, the gods, the Earth, humanity, and spirits, and in doing so, ceased to be. While some theologians presuppose that God created all that is and withdrew, I am a pantheist. I believe that God expanded to form all that is, within Itself. Thus there is no place that we can go that God is not. But in forming everything and giving It varying levels of sentience, It lost its own cohesion. The quintessential Being which created everything is no longer sentient. It just is. We are the extension of Its thoughts, and we exist with the sole purpose of experiencing and growing until we one day reunify into the one Being again. At that point, there will be only God and nothing else. This being will be the sum of all experiences and will encompass and surpass the concepts of good and evil. This process of division and reunification will repeat forever.

That is my take on the religious aspect of good and evil. There are gods who encourage one or the other, but there is no God over all to which we can appeal or assign either concept. Gods are like people; though they are not typically entrenched in the morass of materialism, they are still as divided as we are when it comes to motivation. Good and evil are still concepts which are defined by societal norms of acceptance. Good and evil actions are still motivated by the desire for gratification, and by how much one’s personal brand of selfishness detracts from gratification of other people’s desires.

FL_boi asked can there be good without evil, or vice versa.

I do not believe that either can exist without the other. I do not think existence is exactly polarized between these two concepts however. Just as Einstein said that for all actions there must be an equal and opposite reaction, I feel that everything that exists must have balance and so for every entropic force, there is a creative one. Dark and light meet in gray. Good and evil meet in neutrality. Ignorance and knowledge meet in mediocrity. No concept exists but that it has an opposite somewhere, and in that way, existence is not stretched into an austere line. Instead, it forms a perfect sphere in which all things can and do meet in the middle at some point.

Zeal4living also had a good post on the subject of good and evil. In his comment on my first good and evil post, he asked, I always thought selfishness is an essential part of that which helps us to survive. Would you say selfishness is all evil? If it is all evil why do you think we keep holding onto our selfishness.

Selfishness does enable our survival, especially when we are children. By demanding more resources, we are able to use them to grow. As we grow however, we require less. Those who grow into adults without suppressing their selfishness become blinded by materialism. They want things, so they must have money. The money buys things, but never enough. They must have more. They become distracted by their own selfishness. They can’t see the forest for the trees, or in this case, they can’t see the World for the strip mines, factory farms, and corporate skyscrapers.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. I firmly believe that we will not truly become spiritual adults until we can become selfless. Until we are able to turn our backs on our personal desires, we will continue to exist as individuals. At this point in our evolution, we are slowly pulling ourselves out of our selfish childhoods and becoming adults. There are more and more empaths and telepaths being born all the time. I see this as indicative of our spiritual evolution. Empaths are here to help their fellow beings ascend. We are here to teach and give guidance to those who are still struggling with maturity. The empath is the new bodhisattva, motivated by selfless action rather than the dominance of self. We are all part of the same being and our disposition at the time of its completion will define its new consciousness.

Do you ever go through your footprints and see twenty-thirty hits for Spain, Argentina, Germany…?

Wow, I’m way more popular in foreign countries than in my own. lol I hope that I am being translated properly.

I haven’t had too much time lately to get on and write, and tonight will be a short entry. Maybe I’ll post something longer tomorrow when I’m not physically and emotionally burnt out.

Maybe it’s just the time of year and being stressed from work… then again, my mood is cyclic and depends very much on the moods of people around me. So seasonal stresses aside, home life leaves a lot to be desired. Every few months I have the urge to move out. I even look through the newspaper classifieds upon occasion, though not seriously. I don’t really have the money to move out.

Whoever said men don’t have a monthly cycle never met my mother’s boyfriend. He gets into these moods where he’s paranoid and argumentative, and honestly the ignorance he spouts about race or religion or his cockamamie ideas about aliens turns my stomach. Ignorance is my pet peeve. It’s like a high pitched whine when I have a migraine or a ragged fingernail catching on fabric. It makes every nerve in my body tense up. And then he accuses me of having PMS because I don’t want to argue with him. He’s lucky I don’t get PMS like my sister!

I try to be as unobtrusive as possible, but he just digs away at me until I snap and then my mom whines at me for arguing when I didn’t DO anything. Tonight I had to leave the dinner table because he wouldn’t shut up and when he finally did stop talking, he felt a need to let out this much-abused moan before starting to eat. So I went and ate in my room. I don’t feel that I should have to babysit his ego every time he opens his mouth.

He uses every “debate” as a way to dominate, and if I don’t agree with the nonsense he’s spouting, he gets all sulky and makes sexist or generally ignorant remarks. I’m sorry, but just because I don’t agree with him, doesn’t mean I have PMS. It means I have a brain and can think for myself. All he ever wants to do is bludgeon me with his ignorance. My mom goes along with anything without argument so as to not rock the boat, but he’s not my boyfriend and I shouldn’t have to agree with his stupidity just to appease him. Yes, I live under “his roof,” but I pay rent and my part of the roof leaks. How’s about he play the good landlord and fix it without telling me a meteor is going to destroy the earth in 2012 so global warming and idiot politicians are irrelevant.

Gerrrrrahahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By his own argument, maybe I should stop paying rent. After all, I’ve only got about four years left to live, right? I was all worked up as a teenager thinking Nostradamus had called it, but we’re still here. I am not going to fall for the same paranoia twice. I’m ready if I survive the world getting slammed by a meteor in 4+ years (thanks to Nostradamus), and I’m ready if it doesn’t. Just because it might happen, doesn’t mean that it will, so for the sake of future generations as yet unborn, I am going to continue to worry about global warming and corrupt politicians until something is done about them… maybe taping up the mouths of the politicians and my mother’s boyfriend would stop the release of hot air….

Sigh…

So… that’s my rant. Thanks for reading. I promise I’ll try to post more content tomorrow or Friday.

I have always had a fascination for the non-classical stories of the constellations and stars. Look through any book of astronomy (or astrology) and you’re likely to get the scoop on the Greco-Roman and Persian origins of the constellations and stars, but Norse, Egyptian, Native American? Not so much. It’s difficult to find even one book that takes the alternative route, not surprisingly since many of the names and stories have been forgotten through the oppression of cultural history. While the Christians did have a favorable relationship with Greek and Roman mythology up into the 18th century, in so far as the “Classics” were still taught in schools, we’re lucky to know as much as we do about the mythology and traditions of other Pagan cultures.

In ancient times, the winter constellation Orion was called “Freya’s Gown” by the Norse and Teutons, and the sword belt in Orion was called “Freya’s Girdle” or Friggjarrokkr, Frejerock, or Fröjas rock, Frigga’s Distaff. In her role as the heavenly Spinner, Frigg is linked to fate and the Norns. The spindle is a powerful symbol representing female wisdom, virtue, and industry. Venus was also known as Friggjarstjarna, “Frigg’s star.” Another name for the star Sirius was Lokabrenna, “Loki’s brand” or “Loki’s torch.”

The Big Dipper, also known as the Great Bear or Ursa Major, was the Great Wagon or Wain in Norse mythology. The seven stars were thought of as a four-wheeled wagon, its pole formed of the three stars that hang downwards. This wagon was also called Óðins vagn, “Óðinn’s Wagon.” In Old Swedish chronicles, the Great Wagon karlwagen is connected with the god Thor, “who stepping into his chariot holds the seven stars in his hand.” It is true that Thor was sometimes refered to as Karl or Karla-Þórr, “Old Man Thor.” The smaller ursa minor or little bear is called the Small Chariot, Freyja’s Wain, or the Throne of Thor. The constellation is roughly chair shaped. Though chairs were unusual in the early middle ages, they were symbolic of authority. Common folk sat on benches or stools, but the “chairman” was the only person important enough to be seated in comfort. The only obvious god figure of Thor that survives is seated on an elaborate decorated chair or throne, and larger god figures may have had similar thrones.

It is not known today which star the Vikings identified as Aurvandill’s Toe. The Old English name is Éarendel, and it was used to refer to the morning star (Venus). Others believe Rigel (Beta Orionis) is Aurvandill’s toe. This is a bright blue star which makes up the right foot of the constellation Orion. According to one story, Thórr went home to Thrúdvangar with a hone (whetstone) stuck in his head. The wise woman Gróa, wife of Aurvandill the Valiant, sang spells over Thor until the hone was loosened. Believing he might soon be free of the hone, Thor thought to reward Gróa and make her happy. He told her that he had waded from the north over the river Élivága (Icy Stream), carrying her husband, Aurvandill, in a basket on his back out of Jôtunheim. During the journey, one of Aurvandill’s toes had stuck out of the basket and became frozen. Thor broke it off and cast it up into the heavens, where it became the star called Aurvandill’s Toe. Thor then reassured Gróa that Aurvandill would soon be home. She was so glad however that she forgot her incantations, and the hone remains in Thor’s head to this day.

Polaris, the pole star in the Little Dipper, was called the Ship Star among the Anglo-Saxons. The Scandinavians knew this star as the “God’s Nail.” This recalls again the story of the hone stuck in Thor’s head and also represents his control of fire. Nails were often hammered into housepillars located at the center of the house. This was dedicated to Thor, so the link between the god’s nail and the axis of the heavens is very tempting. Furthermore in northern Scandinavia, Polaris is nearly directly overhead, adding to the link between the nail and the world pillar.

It is not certain which stars were identified as the Eyes of Thjazi, but most scholars assume the two brightest stars, Castor and Pollux (Alpha Gemini and Beta Gemini), in the constellation Gemini are the eyes of Thjazi. the constellation appears above and to the left of Orion. The tale of how the eyes of the giant Thiazi became a constellation is recounted in the story of Skaði and Njôrð. By the machinations of Loki, the goddess Iðunn had been captured by the giant Thjazi. Without the youth-giving golden apples of Iðunn, the gods began to wither and grow old. Deducing that Loki had been involved, he was sent to get the goddess back under a threat of death. Loki succeeded in rescuing Iðunn, but in the escape Thjazi was killed, and the gods were forced to pay ablood debt to the giant’s surviving daughter, Skaði. They offered her the right to choose a husband from among their number, but under the condition that she could only choose by viewing their feet. Skaði selected the most beautiful feet, believing that she had chosen the summer god Baldr. Instead, she discovered she would marry Njôrð of Nóatún, a god of the sea-coasts. She was also compensated by Óðin who took Thjazi’s eyes and threw them up into the sky where they became two stars.

Myths about the Sky

Aboriginal Star Knowledge

Native American Folklore and Mythology

History of Constellations and Star Names (Egypt)

Astronomy in Ancient Egypt