Army of One

My night in a graveyard

Part I

If I learned anything that dark night, it was the need to seriously question cultural indoctrinations. Bad ideas are buried very deep. The daily eclectic, damaging mix we hear every day is cultural reinforcement aimed at our willingness to believe in lies, fantasies and ghosts. 

 The following made it absolutely clear.

It was 1:30 am and my eyes were sore from reading long hours. It was a warm summer night so I went for a walk for renewal and refreshing. On this particular lonely street, only the streetlights lit the way. Along the street I noticed an embankment about 30 feet down. There were only a few lamplights and plenty of trees down there but I also detected a pathway. I was curious where the pathway might lead. I could hear a creek flowing further back.

The embankment was steep, full of tall bush and weeds but I jumped over the guard rail anyways and down the embankment. I slid, working my way down through the bushes and weeds.

Finally down, I saw the path and walked towards one of the lamplights. However, before I got to the light, I saw where I was!

I was in the middle of a cemetery!

Headstones were every where. Alone in the dark, I stayed on the pathway as I moved towards the lamp light. Past the graveyard there was the black, slow winding creek, moonlight reflecting off the ripples. It was very peaceful and quiet.

When it sunk in where I really was, I kind of laughed to myself for being curious it landed me in this situation. Then I got serious. I stopped and I listened to my body, my mind and felt this nagging emotion creep up. I ignored it.

Two things were happening. I was now curious to see what was on the headstones and I also felt this stubborn kind of apprehension, a deep quiet fear.

My curiosity was much stronger than my apprehension so I walked around to read the headstones – and study them. The headstones had the usual inscriptions of deceased people remembered with everlasting remembrances and love. Some were very poetic and quite creative. Whoever these people were, they were loved by their families.

I looked to study the inscriptions family members wrote about their dead loved ones. I don’t know if that’s how they really felt while the deceased was alive, but at least the thought was there during their final moment. I mused to myself. A lot of good the thoughts will do the dead person now. He will never know it.

With more serious pondering, some of the people here really did believe in God. Some made reference to God on the inscriptions, some didn’t. Those who believed on God stated the dead person was now with angels or now in heaven. The others simply wrote loving thoughts of remembrance.

Throughout this looking around at each headstone, I kept feeling this lingering fear and it seemed embedded, a part of me. With my curiosity now satisfied and seeing that people take their method of thinking with them to the grave, I pondered the effects such epistemology might have on surviving generations, – on these people in my neighborhood, who I may even pass by tomorrow. Will my country be better off or worse off because of these people’s misguided beliefs in the supernatural? Legacies have influence. What kind of legacies do people leave? People actually carried these beliefs past death so I didn’t know how much was genuine. The stronger the belief stated, the less sincere it seemed. These final inscriptions did convey their set view of life.

Perhaps they had never thought of, or avoided fundamental issues and this is what they ended up with, a mystical view on a headstone that will outlive their real and single life.

Then it’s crucially important to get one’s epistemology right, I surmised.

As I was pondering these things, my apprehension was again noticeable. It was vague, not defined. I could tell it was subconscious. I was noticeable enough of it so I finally decided to focus on it completely. I determined to identify my apprehension and its cause! I knew that identifying this feeling would enable me to replace fear with knowing.

Part II

There was no one in this dark graveyard but myself, a street light I was under, the creek, the moonlight and absolute silence.

I sat down on a headstone to introspect.

I began by differentiating between my consciousness and what I was seeing, what was inner and what was out there? I focused on what was “out there” first.

There was obviously nothing physical to fear. The creek was a creek. The pathway was just a pathway. The grass was just dark grass. The surrounding trees were just moonlit trees. Shadows were absence of light. These objects were still there as in daylight. The headstones were just headstones. The dead were dead, buried. I could see a little better now. The moonlight was dimly lighting all the physical shapes. There was only silence apart from the ripples of the creek. I am alive. They are dead.

Regarding “out there”, I thought, “Existence exists” and is the base of all knowledge. I reasoned, and what I see is absolute or it is not.

If what I see is an absolute, the creek, pathway, and grass work in an ordered, lawful way. Each element, each different thing acts according to its nature and only according to its nature. A rock is rock like. Water behaves as water. A rock cannot get up and walk. My mind wandered, a cloud could never be white and talking. A hot air balloon rises, not falls. A baby’s rattle, rattles and is not soft like a sponge. Everything is ordered and lawful, according to its nature. The nature of elements and laws of nature are absolute and cannot change. Elements (things) are what they are and nothing else. Existence and identity are one and the same. Reality is fixed and is subject to the laws of identity. No, it is even better, existence isn’t subject to the law of identity, existence IS identity from a differentiating viewpoint, and what is, is. Period.

My looking and listening was involved also. This was the only way I could confirm my thoughts and thinking. “If seeing is not believing, thinking was useless as well.” I could see the shadowed trees. I could see the dim light. I could see the pathway and headstones. I could hear the creek. I could perceive all these things as my base for knowing. I could feel and tear the grass with my hands. This was affirmation of my neural integrations, my perceptions – as all humans have.

I reaffirmed this since I had not thought about it in awhile. With existence as an absolute, I had turned to my conscious ideas. I thought more on this distinction between my mind and what I was seeing.

I continued. A dead person can never raise out of the grave, not even a Jesus Christ, if there ever was one. I thought about how ridiculous it was.

All the holy scriptures of any religion are untrue if they assert stories pretending the dead do rise, or spirits exist. Religion is untrue if it pretends otherwise. This was how I was thinking. I went to the ultimate, broadest, irreducible primary, – the base of all thought and concepts, “existence exists.” I said to myself, “This exists” as I looked around and these things simply act according to their nature and that’s all.  

That was my irrefutable and ever present base of all. The entire universe anchored ultimately on those two words, “existence exists.” Not ghosts exist. No spirits exist, but existence exists – these trees, these headstones, this streetlight and grass. This irrefutable axiom could not be challenged. In order for us to know anything, there must be something to know. Objective reality is unchallengeable. Existence is the base of all knowledge, all proofs. Oh yes, that was how I was thinking, not hoping it was true, but knowing it could not be otherwise. My consciousness I have is to merely affirm reality, to identify it, not create one or imagine what doesn’t exist. I could trust my perceptions.  

To try to deny existence is impossible – “Even here”, I thought, “In a graveyard.”  

I even reversed it to check its validity. I said to myself, “Existence doesn’t exist”.

What doesn’t exist? Ha!

From that irrefutable base, I looked since perceiving was and is the only way, I repeated, the only way to know reality. Facts have to be seen, physically felt or heard. I thought more about my neural connections. They did not evolve to interpret reality, but to allow awareness in their several forms; eyes to see, nose to smell, ears to hear, etc.

A child puts things in its mouth to learn of its composition, character, or hardness. Only through our perceptions can humans know anything. Concepts follow the nature of things. Knowledge is at a higher, conceptual level, but perception is the only method of anchoring knowledge to reality.

From this irrefutable axiom, existence, I had moved up to things must exist – as something. Everything that exists has identity. Everything that exists has an identity that is different from other things. I knew this was really simple but I thought. “How many implicitly understand this, yet still believe in God? Or believe that things don’t have identity by believing that miracles can happen, or that horrors can happen such as ghosts suddenly appearing to haunt them? How many believe “holy” scriptures that deny the absolute of existence? The real. From my perceptions, I deduced all things work according to their identity. A rock cannot get up and go shopping. Pigs do not fly and my senses exist simply to perceive.  

The universe is a lawful, ordered universe that acts according to and only according to its nature. Water will forever be watery. Rocks will always be rock-like – hard as it is with characteristics that crumble only under immense stress. A shooting star is a pebble sized rock or sand grain being pulled by gravity through the earth’s atmosphere, flaring with heat and light as it descends. There is nothing magical about it. What I was doing was re-affirming axioms; existence, identity and consciousness. With these re-affirmed, I then looked elsewhere to identify my private fear.

I had by now, isolated my fear as part of my consciousness and not anything, “out there” in reality. Reality acts only according to its identity. There is no super nature, just nature. In all my life, I had never seen a rock get up and dance. This was an obvious idea, even ridiculously simple, but confirmed.

The source of fear then was deeper in me. It was in my mental processes I had. So I then focused more on my thinking. I identified my fear as a “possible action – possible danger” rooted in the form of the following, “What will happen? What might happen? If nothing out of the ordinary can possibly come from “out there” then what action did I fear?

With the major difference between reality and my mind established, I could identify it was my memories that brought the images and thoughts of ghosts, gods, and spooks coming out of the graves or appearing suddenly before me from the darkness. Knowing reality is an absolute, I did the natural thing. Instead of running away from the situation as I had done when a little kid, I focused even more on my surroundings.

I would not run, but the thought of “getting away from here was in my mind.” I decided to focus on this lingering, deeper fear and face it head on and identify its source.

I purposely listened harder and more intently. Each noise I heard, – a rustle of leaves, or unidentified noise, I purposefully turned toward it to clearly identify it. By turning away, evading or getting “away” I would have not faced my fear. Any shadowy shape that resembled a human form, I walked towards – to identify. (I purposefully headed toward anything that might make me fear). By this extroverted method, the fears diminished. Every instance revealed only more nature – a tree, shadows opened up to shapes of leaves and bushes, etc.

Yet in spite of my identifying the darkness of reality, there remained this lingering apprehension. This apprehension was fully mental. I determined to identify it completely. I was still groping for the root.

Part III

I soon identified, in me, the root of the fear. It was culturally induced memories I had not questioned! Those memories were not the only guilty culprit. My imagination was guilty too of projecting the memories into future possibilities in the form of, “What if this happened, like on TV? What if that happens – as I’ve heard? I know reality is an absolute, yet what if a ghost does appear?  What will I do? What if something does appear to me? Facing this, “what if” directly, I said, I’d face what ever it was and identify it. With each doubt, I turned towards it inside and out, purposefully to identify it fully.

Then I thought, what was the cause of this line of thinking that enabled fear at mere physical darkness in a graveyard? I sat still and focused on what memories brought on the foreboding feelings.

I then got technical with myself. I knew that all feelings seemed instant. You see or hear something, then react. Right, that’s how most people think emotions emerge. In this case it was my apprehension.

However, there is more to it than that. Feelings are actually caused by more than the two steps of look and react. There are four steps.

One perceives, then identifies, then judges, then finally reacts or feels. It is a four step process. Identification and judging can become automated so one doesn’t notice it. “You’ve seen one cup, you’ve seen them all.” Or what’s a cup for? Your answer will depend on your values and where you are going. Ok, some people don’t even think about their values or where they are going, but I don’t want to get off topic.

One could not react if one did not understand what a thing meant. Analyzing becomes subconscious, – a part of our past experiences and memory enables us to immediately identify and assess. We relate along concluded or embedded memories. 

So far I have started pinpointing my memories as the source of apprehension. It was my memories and prior evaluations that caused my feelings. This made me feel fearful in this perfectly empty and peaceful place. There was also another physical apprehension I felt and that was of physical danger of a gang or rat seeing me and deciding to rob me in the dark but that was not what I was trying to decipher. I had not seen anyone go by in over an hour. That would be easily identifiable as real.

I was by now delving deeper into my past memories and experiences. I remembered back to passages from Holy Scriptures telling of the raising of the dead or Holy Scriptures telling of angels, spirits or devils. I remembered back to when I strongly believed in God and the Holy scriptures.

That was it! As a child I was indoctrinated to believe these things as true, – the dead as living, the living as dead and spirits as real or evil spirits able to torment living humans. These teachings were a form of brainwashing that had stuck with me. I had never seriously questioned their trueness of falsity.

Even though I now profess not to believe in God, gods, or ghosts, these old, old unquestioned stories still haunted me in that dark place. They haunted me not because they are true, but because as I gave up the beliefs of the mystics, I had never mentally and directly confronted the fallacies and untruthfulness of them. I held them as false superficially, but never fully, deep down identified how they were wrong and to discard them at their root. “Only existence exists.” This night I was directly refuting the old mystics – with reality and its corollary, the law of identity. I affirmed reality the only way possible to me as a human, by relying on my senses and then adjusting my conscious awareness to reality, and rejecting fabricated memories of an old corrupt, indoctrinated past. The bible and any other old religious creed were wrong by virtue of reality, by my perceptions and adherence to reality.

Part IV

My most surprising identification was yet to come. As I was looking at my surroundings, and in spite of my denial of religious indoctrination, I still had this foreboding, “…in spite of all your logic, in spite of all you think, what if…” What if someone, a ghost did come up from beside me and looked at me. What if a ghost suddenly rushed me? What if…

What if something did exist that I was not aware of? I still felt the creepy, lingering feeling remain, even though I gained much certainty that nothing physical could surprise me.

I determined to face this deepest fear once and for all. I just sat there like the thinker until I identified the source of “what if in spite of it all…”

What I discovered was this! That phrase was an action possibility. The identification of this source was so simple it surprised me with its simplicity.

By now, I had identified reality properly. Reality would never change. What is, is and cannot act according to what it is not.

I also examined the idea that if something existed I was not aware, I would be wrong. However I felt a little foolish leaving this possibility open. I had to do better than vague generalities or causeless doubt. My senses were telling me all I needed to know. I honestly felt a little foolish “expecting” something to occur, since I had re-affirmed my conviction about the axiom “existence” and its corollary.

My foolishness and guilt was attempting to pretend that something “might” occur in the face of a lawful existence. My guilt was my own attempt to “create” something (unknown) contrary to the evidence here. Objective reality is provable.

That was the cause of this final doubt of reality – and thus lingering fear.  Part of it was the religious creeds I had learned as a young adult, sure, but the actual root of my fear was contemporary. It was so simple, I laughed!

It was the multitude (I mean thousands!) of movies, shows, TV presentations, fake documentaries, and stories told me since I’ve been old enough to understand words. Life is full of supernatural stories, heavenly, funny or evil!

Ever since I was young, everybody, including my parents beat into me (by peer pressure or bluff) the belief of a holy God, of angels, of devils, of ghosts, of strange things happening that could never be explained.   

The same cultural re-enforcement is all over TV, movies, people stories, and in the holy books of every religion – in every variation you could imagine! Endlessly and endlessly. Everywhere you look, you’ll see it. It’s a massive sales job, including in art – where our minds are the most delicate.

The underlying theme of all these stories, movies and books is: A is not A. The underlying theme is that reality is not what it is. Reality is not reality. The job of mystics is designed with the simplest mode of mental destruction; black is white. Rocks can cry out. The dead can live. God is real. A is not A.

What you see is not real. This corruption is everywhere from simple proclamations to sophisticated treatises proclaiming the futility of the mind. However, there is only one reality, “existence exists” that’s an irrefutable axiom whether a billion people deny it or no humans exist to see it. This world, planet, stars and universe are real and are what exist. This universe is reality, base and proof of it all. Reference to existence means reality is the base of all proof. Evidence means reference to reality.  

At this point I sat still sitting ever so quietly focusing on exactly where I got such fears, to challenge the fear even more to the light of reason. When I discovered and identified the source of my fear in that situation as cultural re-enforcement, the fears suddenly became a life time of mere religious and cultural indoctrination. My fear was something quite real alright. It was a fear and apprehension stemming from doubting my mind, not from anything supernatural. Giving up one’s mind is the real source of guilt anyone can ever practice.

Part V

There was only me, my surroundings, the night sky and great peacefulness. I had set myself free and I laughed. It wasn’t that nothing would happen, but nothing could happen out of the ordinary, out of the natural. There wasn’t and is no super nature. No supernatural. Any fear and guilt people feel is from throwing away their minds and “believing.” Faith is the source of all corruptions whether it is faith in other people or faith in God, gods or ghosts.

I wasn’t wishing nothing would happen. I knew nothing could happen. My fears vanished as I identified its source as fantasy memories, bad mental conditioning, cultural re-enforcement, corrupt and empty words and creeds and contemporary stories that didn’t comply with reality. Some were just stories and movies, but I suspect some are purposeful indoctrinations, religions or societies lies! There’s so many.

I heard these stories that were told ever since I was a young boy. What devastation! How many other young, innocent children have this mental devastation forced on them? Parents know these children do not yet have the developed mental ability to know and understand reality for themselves? I thought those parents are worse than dictators. They crush innocent minds by filling it with terrors. Most of the population of the earth!

So that’s that, I thought to myself. What an effort one has to go through to keep normal, to keep sanity. I left the scene satisfied with what I learned. It was almost 3:00 am by now, so I headed back to my place to write these notes.

300  

300 is one of my favorite movies.

The story is of the great King Leonidas of ancient Greece and what he decides to do in the face of a massive Persian invasion of his small city state, Sparta. In proper scope, it’s a dramatized true story of what King Leonidas did in the face of a threat so great to mankind that if he failed, we might not be civilized today.

Persia, held by the man-god Xerxes, dominated the known Mediterranean world by brutal force and with conquered heads of Kings, threatens to annihilate Sparta along its path.

An advance patrol of messengers rides on horseback into Sparta to tell king Leonidas to submit with a simple offering of some earth and water. Fight and Sparta’s men will be annihilated, their women will be taken, the children sold into slavery!

Leonidas seeks word from the “oracle”, an ancient ceremony involving corrupt mystics seeking direction from a dancing young girl. He is disgusted with their advice to do nothing as he is unhappy with the politicians and council to refrain from war to stop the Persians advance.

Leonidas is standing naked in his bedroom, looking at the full moon. He is trying to decide his next move.

He goes to the bed of his Queen to wake her by gently running his fingers up her exposed back.

She wakes and say’s, “Your lips going to finish what your fingers have started?”

He just looks at her and she knows something is troubling him.

Queen: Has the oracle robbed you of your desire as well?

King Leonidas. It would take more than the words of a drunken adolescent girl to rob me the desire of you.

Queen: Then why so distant?

Leonidas: Because it seems, no slave and captives of lecherous old men, the oracles words can set fire to the one’s I love.

Queen: So that is why my King loses sleep and is forced from the warmth of his bed? There is only one woman’s words that should affect the mood of my husband. Those are mine. She gently places her hands on his neck and cheek.

Leonidas opens what so deeply troubles him: Then what must a King do to save his world when every law he has sworn to do, force him to do nothing!

She is looking at him, still holding him.

Queen: It is not a question of what a citizen should do, a husband or King. Instead ask yourself, dearest love, what should a free man do?

He looks at her and understands. He has his answer. They embrace.

I look and understand.

If reason is a prime, then she exercised it in great virtue when it was most needed. She had it. So did Greece. This enactment had to true to a large extent since the dramatized story is history. Greece did have such great people and Greece did make giant moves.

The Greeks did ward off a massive Persian invasion, beginning with King Leonidas at a northern pass. He saved not just his city state and his country; he saved the future from genuine darkness and barbarism. He fought the enemy and what they stood for, religion (irrationalism darkness) and nurtured for mankind, an age of reason and freedom.

Greece at that time must have been an anomaly, – different from all preceding kingdoms. Greece was reasoning, more secular than ever seen, practical, active, and non-worshipping. The Greeks had several “gods” but they were more like fantastic, imaginary stories and fables taught to children. The rest of the world actually believed and obeyed the tyrannical mystics of their lands.

The king could not be great by himself. His secular and proud stature was shared by the citizens of the country. The people were thinkers too. So, especially, was his beautiful Queen. She revealed her beauty by offering the best, at a most crucial moment, and it was pivotal in saving Greece and mankind. Leonidas went on to fight the Persian army.

The Queen didn’t offer short sightedness, but answered the core of Leonidas question with principle. That simple expression “what should a free man do?” makes her, in my mind, one of the most virtuous and beautiful of women.

=============================

 Part II

Many women are intelligent and even witty, but what excites me and really gets me going is seeing that intelligence used honestly. Only reason can enable this.

The most attractive part of a woman is the way she chooses to turn out because of and in spite of academic education. The attractiveness is reason in action. Before I give my example, I’ll go back a little to my first part.

My previous post was a factual ideal. (Romantic realism) King Leonidas’ wife, Gorgo,  was as close to a perfect wife any man could want; independent, strong, just, willful, eloquent, knowledgeable and courageous. At a most critical moment in Greece’s history, she did not waver and yield, but stood independent alongside her husband. She upheld reason in its darkest time. 1.

She fought independently and followed through with what was most needed by Greece at the time of their military and political crises. As a result of that secularism, Greece stopped the massive and mystical onslaught of the Man-god, Xerxes of Persia and ushered in the first major spread of reason to mankind. It was this kind of wisdom and courage to stand and fight for the beginning of the Grecian enlightenment that we are all able to have and enjoy a modern life.  

Man for the first time, stood as human. It took men and women to go against everything they had been taught to uphold human principles.  

Where are these women today? Where are the strong women who have their own minds and think? Where is that continuing western constitution with its passionate goals, desire for freedom and above all, active virtue and values?

Well, there are women in the world today who think and utilize reasoning, not just intelligence.

Let me choose Dambisa Moyo, an economist, who is urging the world’s governments to stop giving aid to Africa. She has several degrees, including a PHd from Oxford and Masters from Harvard. Dambisa Moyo is not betraying the westerrn tradition of enlightenment.

Her arguments are most importantly, reasoned, simple and eloquent. The icing on the cake is she is beautiful, a pleasure to listen to. However, she has done her work and her ideas radiate with virtue.

She argues, the billions in aid to Africa has done nothing but damage, not good. Aid has made the African leadership corrupt and lazy, fighting over United Nations scraps. She is rather in favour of direct capital investment and states this eloquently and clearly. Billions in private capital development and long-lasting employment will do more than the mere millions in Aid from western handouts.

Educated in Harvard and Oxford, she is using her education properly, – not to further tribalism, or connive for more demoralizing handouts, not to finance wars, not to build any kind of tribal clan nor nationalism.

Dambisa Moyo is out to change Africa by reasoned, secular means. Since the secular (reason-based) is the moral, it is therefore practical and life promoting. It is excellent and exciting!

Dambisi Moyo is listed in Times as one of the 100 most influential people in the world today and with good reason. She is running counter to the mindless altruisim (mindless giveaways) of the West. She has researched the decades of United Nations give-a-ways and has concluded their worthlessness. As ordinary people, we knew that, but to bring that research to the academics is most difficult. Dambisa Moyo has even turned against her own teachers, which I think is brilliant – a kind of Aristotle turning against Plato,… justice.

In Africa’s dark time, she is a voice of reason.  

1. “Gorgo is noted as one of the few female historical figures actually named by Herodotus, and for her political acumen and wisdom.” (Wikepedia)