I think the question for us now is, "What in the hell do we do?" It is all fine and good talking about ancient traditions and how they exist because they worked but we are watching them crumble before our very eyes and be replaced by fire breathing, hate-mongering fundamentalist. I do realize that fundamentalism is mainly a reaction to the libertine attitudes we are seeing today but frankly neither of these extremes appeals to me nor do I think that they will work in the long run. I do not want to be a fundamentalist nor do I want to be part of the other radical extreme. Maybe this is the way that cultures find balance but it seems to me there has got be be a better way. A thoughtful, reasoned, caring, compassionate way to find balance in a Mondo Cane world. Perhaps the only solution is to let the battle, the armageddon as it were, proceed and let the hate-mongers out-monger the whore-mongers or visa versa. Neither world is very appealing to me. Non servium**, as Steven in Yeat's Portrait of a Artist as a Young Man said. I will not serve.


**This is also what Satan said when he left Heaven. Satan's evil was that he wanted to rule mankind with totalitarian extremes thus eliminating choice. The irony here is obvious. Choice is our salvation and our destroyer, but we have always known that.

Is the catholic church on the way out? Are they capable of making the changes necessary to move out of the 4th century and join the rest of the world (most of whom are living in the 10th century)? What would they need to change? I do like the outfits and would hate to see the loss of all the ritual and pomp but lets face it do flowing gold lame gowns on the priesthood really work now? In the past I am sure they denoted power and wealth, but today? I don't know. It is more like something you would see in a transvestite bar. Forgive me here, that was harsh, but sometimes the obvious truth needs to be written. Is lightening going to strike me now?

There is a lot of hubbub over the Da Vinci code but really that is all so minor in the face of all the charges of pedophiliac priests and the ensuing grand medieval coverups. Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce, one of those seers, made a prophesy about the end of the papacy. Apparently, according to one of them. This is the last pope. Seer's aside I think the catholic church is in trouble and the Da Vinci Code just points that out in glaring detail. It really doesn't matter if it is 'true' or not that is not the point. The point is is that the world wearies over blatant abuses of power in the hands of our holy men. It is one thing to cause wars and lead crusades and bloody inquisitions as church did in the past it is quite another to abuse the weakest among their flock and suffer no consequences. They are as protected as our sports "heros". That for another time.

"Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality." Bill Bryson. (Subatomic fate and temperament conundrum
)
Other cool metaphors that help me to understand science courtesy Bryson are:

1. If an atom where the size of a cathedral than the nucleus would be only the size of a fly but the fly would be a thousand times heavier.

2. The Big Bang represents a kind of transition phase, where the universe went from a form we can't understand to one we almost can. (It is what caused the transition that is the question that looms)

3. A singularity is when you take everything in creation squeezed into a spot so infinitesimally compact that it has no dimension at all. (Then apparently it pops like a pimple in the sun and you have the big bang.)

4. DNA's job is to make DNA upon which all life depends but DNA is not alive. You have about 6ft squeezed in to almost every cell. Each length of DNA is composed of some 3.2 billion letters of coding. That is why you are you and not an Owl or your next door neighbor.

5. Zinc oxidizes alcohol. (Hangover cure??) Cobalt is necessary for the creation of vitamin B12. (Also for the creation of beautiful skies in painting.)

6.

Hermann Hesse said that Fate and temperament were one and the same thing. When I read this 30 years or so while traveling on a train somewhere in Europe,I agreed with it. I felt it in my bones. I knew I was following my fate. Now, my wiser older self questions it (along with a lot more things). We may be the person our moods make us but we still have the keys to change, don't we? Are we doomed to being a high school jerk our entire lives? This idea goes along with the guy who said, "We are what we think about all day". What does that make me? A quark? I think about them all day. I think about how when I see something that seems solid that it is not, that it is tiny little quarks moving madly around. Frankly, I am amazed that we can see things as solids at all. I also think about this: if I took my body apart atom by atom I would have a pile of stuff that was never living but if you put it together it becomes a living thing, me!! In other words we are the sum of our non living parts that are not solid at all but whirling around in their own little universe. Do they care about us? Are these tiny subatomic particle/waves God?

Then there is string theory which finally begins to make sense of all of it (except for the math part)

All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have.

-Albert Einstein

Is science the most precious thing we have? What about faith, art, government?? Now the question looms, am a woman of science or a woman of faith? Are those the only two possibilities? I like to think I am of both. I personally don't have a problem trusting in both. In fact, I find solace in both which is probably more to the point and more important. What do you trust? Hard science that can be tested and tested ad infinitum or that feeling deep in your gut that says no matter what they test there is still something else out there. Something they will never find and never be able to test. And that thing guides you and gets you through stuff you never thought you could get through. Is this temporal lobe delusion?

What I like about science.
l. I like it that the biggest thing we know, the cosmos is made up of the smallest thing we know, quarks.
2. I like that we are all made up of the same stuff and what made the stars made us. We are one with the cosmos.

What I don't like about science.
1. Once they got into quantum physics it ceased being elegant. I think we should have one fundamental particle from which everything is made and it should have an elegant name. And what is this about Up, Down, Charmed, Strange quarks? What were they smoking??

What I like about faith.
1. I like that it is such a subjective, personal thing that can get you through things that you had no idea you could get through.
2. I like thinking about God/The Cosmos/particle physics and seeing how they fit.

What I don't like about faith.
1. I don't particularly like religion. They seem to be faith based but they are really oligarchies that rule by guilt and fear. They are secret male societies. When faith seeks secular power it goes bad fast.

P.S. I forgot how to spell check on this so would someone please edit this?

I am baaaack. I will begin again to share my thought with the cybor people. It is an interesting concept to put your thoughts down and not ever know who reads them if anyone. I have to get to work now but I will leave you with this thought about work and art by W.B. Yeats."....but for the creation of art work is both indispensable and insufficient."