our odds against tomorrow

odds against tomorrow grow dim/darker minute by minute given that we are indifferent to our Selves and all those surround us growing more and more and more.

Emigrants in a land we proclaim to own America exports concepts alone that darken the world’s future. Among them torture and the absence of Habeas Corpus. My previous post mentioned Mary Shelly but not in detail. What follows is copied from Wikiquote resulting from hyper links contained within her quote:

"My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine." 


Torture is any act by which severe pain, whether physical or psychological, is intentionally inflicted on a person as a means of intimidation, a deterrent, revenge, a punishment, or as a method for the extraction of information or confessions.

Sourced

"Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don’t help us, who else in the world can help us do this?"  -Albert Camus, at the Dominican Monastery of Latour-Maubourg (1948); reported in Resistance, Rebellion and Death (translation by Justin O'Brien, 1961), p. 73.

"I want to make sure that if my government ever does this horrible, terrible, extraordinary thing, that somebody takes responsibility for it and that it be out there in the open and subject to accountability. ... Though I understand the danger of legitimating something that should not be legitimated, on balance in a democracy, I prefer accountability." -Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, debating David D. Cole Pre-emption: Preventive, coercive, or both? (2007).

"I mentioned to one of the gaolers my sense of this hardship, as an obstinate guilty person might deny the truth, whilst an innocent one, less courageous, might very readily, to relieve himself from such a state of misery, make a false confession. His answer was laconic: "Lago confess" ... "They soon confess."" -Irish lawyer William Sampson, writing of his experience under torture, quoting an inquisitor on its futility as a means of obtaining information Memoirs of William Sampson, 2nd Edition (1817), Letter XVII

"Torture is senseless violence, born in fear... torture costs human lives but does not save them. We would almost be too lucky if these crimes were the work of savages: the truth is that torture makes torturers." -Jean-Paul Sartre, "A Victory" (1958)

"The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy." -Andrew Sullivan, "Imaginationland", The Daily Dish (2007-10-25).

Unsourced

"The strong will resist and the weak will say anything to end the pain." -Ulpian
"Know that there are five degrees of torture, videlicit, first, the torture of being threatened to be tortured; secondly, the torture of being conveyed to the place of torture; thirdly, the torture of being, and bound for torture; fourthly, the torture of being hoisted on the torturing rack; and fifthly, and lastly, the torture of squassation." -Julius Clarus, quoted by Philip Limborch, a preacher and annotator, in his History of the Inquisition

"[It] has never been a reliable means of extracting information. It is ultimately self-defeating as a means of control. One wonders why it is still practiced." -Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation; Episode #137 "Chain of Command, Part II" 1992. Picard has been captured and tortured for information by the Cardassians.

. . to close: 

Greed is an addiction responsible for the export of our economy and employment. Inflicting upon others subhuman income and working conditions. Should we be proud of that? Or elect someone guilty of it? By what right/rite divine or evil does he purport to in vanity lead us and where? . . . more on this in the latter future . . . 

120830 08:05 odds against tomorrow
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

!NEWS BULLETIN!

Just in receipt of news from M . . . and Mary Shelly

Coincidence? i know not so!

M is at times both: the Green Emerald eyed Sphinx and, though I’ve alluded as such, or so, also a ginormous stone mule legs spraddled refusing to go or do anything . . . save for her intention. Inconvenient, difficult, obstinate of course but that’s why I love her so since she is She & beloved of me nearly so as God.

At that. How could she otherwise have endured these going on years with me wandering and wondering the desert of my mind? Or heal me as she has.

I am a reader of quotes. One time of books; addictively so. Yet in old age, lacking time, both in the present and future tense; I sense-think-intuit-feel people of such grandeur myself rendered, not merely a dust mote but, invisible. 

AWESTRUCK! 
. . . no longer fearful

Both women in their own way and time have healed me of dependence and expectation of anything I could anticipate. Becoming sovereign unto themselves a value higher than all previous desires or lusts. Best, both, have placed my endless grief upon the shelf of history. Not suffered but valued; both my grief and the women beloved of me.

I made a conscious dedication in view of my son’s becoming a cesspool of toxicity and expected to be blind and sterile had he lived. That I would, given the same difficulties, chose not to become such; since life for me is an issue of quality not quantity. And no one, not even God, can take my sovereign right to decide for myself to live or die or why. No Forgiveness required.

In her difficulty her choice is as mine. Should our dawn become exclusively mine, I will meet her again at another SunSon rise elsewhere in eternity. Should she predecease me I will be free of her obstinate refusal of my detailed praise or portraiture . . . until then; find your own confident friend.

120830 06:55 concord
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

truth i give you -- mine

Joy is experience of the Presence at all times in all places. The world and heavens conjoined whole & holy. This wealth is ours. All life’s and cannot be taken by extortion or death. Do no murder. Simply for that which we kill kills us; not in whole but by degrees and slowly.

When pleasure rules it controls the recipient; pleasure ends or dies while joy never ends or dies. Too much of anything: sex, pleasure, rock n’ roll or death is boring. Quality versus Quantity and gambling or gaming is simply another form of divination. Or playing solitaire and cheating. 

My words are poor, faint directions to what you can experience within by experience or faith not belief. 

If you do not assert your right to live life exclusive to your choice. Then you, as I was, are a slave to having anything other than your Self. 

Faith = experience. Belief = ideation/ideas feeding nothing but fear. 

My thoughts and conclusions are meaningless to you but my intentions are meaningful in that I ask you to love yourself. That’s the joker in the deck, isn’t it? What is Love?

Love cannot be defined in the abstract. Love must be lived -- lived with and for: I/Thou never I/It since if God is an It than also am I. 

I intensely dislike and am now bored by theology; a bit less than by politics, power or pleasure. I am neither cynical or skeptical but know the cost of pleasure too well. And the wealth of joy immeasurable is growing minute by minute. If I accept or submit to your faux “god like” pleasure in killing me of my ‘death’ then I place the burden of justice upon your soul. And my soul can never damn you for I know the Judge.

Choice has consequence; or what some call Karma; so near in sound to dharma or epiphany.  

Be careful of how you read me since I am devious in that I have introduced the words of our now “enemy” since by definition submit is the derivation of Islam. Acceptance is, for me at least, and only now in this life, how I define why I can and may write these words. My childhood prayers being answered as asked; please be real and known to me . . . what is the meaning and purpose of power or any and all things. 

What I now know in part I will soon know whole face-to-face with the origin of all things. In that prospective event I find peace now and forward. I have regrets which I cannot avoid or deny; thorns in my naked feet accompanying me in every step. While I’ve become accustomed to the pain the suffering, is at times, unbearable. My slander and actual crimes against children peers who attacked me or simply were different from me. I could rationalize the cause and effect but refuse to do so since in that choice I cannot find forgiveness or mercy or love. And impermissible to me is that I did wrong for right reasons or right for the wrong reasons. Such conclusions I must accept from the Judge.

For you and for myself I’ve opened a Pandora’s box filled with, not one but a trillion, hydras. To me that is merely the process of creation and healing. Unafraid I know my fears more effort than the confrontation & accountancy.

In the deaths of others I’ve seen peace in them. Their bodies left behind. Souls gone on. In faith I know this will be true of me. At least, I pray so. Let it be in me. Let it be in you. That is what and why I write. We are emigrants in life returning home in death. Blaspheme is not slander of what is holy accept when against yourself. Idols are things, as are cults, ideals that have no life save in mutual intoxication.

. . . i ask your prayers, or good will, for M -- she is in difficulties -- in healing me I am unable to heal her in this my truth helpless without your and/or God’s will for her

Amen.

120830 04:08 joy
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved