Music for the Mind

It is Sunday morning and I am taking just a few quick minutes to make some notes here.

I have been ridiculously busy.

I went three days and nights non-stop in taking care of matters which must be taken care of before I leave town and finally got some much needed sleep last night.

I didn't expect to get to do any blogging for awhile, but am sneaking in this one real quick.

I wanted to say a few words about HONOR.

And why it is that I continually harp on it.

As one grows and gets older and has the benefit of seeing one or two other generations grown up and growing up one who thinks a lot will begin to wonder, for the fifty millionth time, just what is this all about, anyway?

And, in the final analysis what really matters?

I have spent the past ten years assisting many different relatives in preparing for and meeting their deaths.

Most were elderly, several were young and tragic, and several still hang in the balance.

The last survivors from my parent's generation are within months of going the way of this world.

That means I am next in line.

And, of course, anyone who knows me will know that I have never been real thrilled about that.

I began wondering who I am and what life is all about and why I am here from as far back as I can remember, and that is all the way into early childhood.

I always believed that life has meaning and that there is a purpose to all things.

It was like I was just born knowing that.

I have always marveled at conversations regading such matters and just how ridiculous they become with people so wedded to absurd ideas and beliefs that one simply does not even know just where to begin to unravel all of the logical fallacies which are ever present in every single sentence and statement which they make.

With the ancient humans warfare was the norm.

One day hundreds of thousands of us will suddenly form into one huge unholy mass which is hellbent on destruction and little else.

Two of these groups crash into one another and within a day or two it is decided who is going to rule some particular geographical area.

The original civilizations, so far as we are able to ascertain, consisted first of villages, then of city states.

Each individual city was like what a country is today.

Each city would have a group of warriors who protected their people and their city.

One needs to go back just a little bit further in order to understand just what it is that you are looking at when you look at the ancient city state, from which every other form of government has ulitamately derived since that time.

So, what exactly lies at the heart of this group of persons who constitute themselves as "the government"?

It all goes back to the caves or something similar to them.

When people first grouped together in forms which have left physical traces they began as a family unit, which then became an extended family unit.

In the family one or both parents are going to either dominate, or attempt to dominate all other members.

In the wolf pack this will be the famous alpha male, with his alpha female right alongside him at most all times.

In other animal groups similar relationships will easily be seen.

When you throw a certain amount of chickens into a coop together they will reach a saturation point at which they will begin to peck one another to death until somebody is out of the way to make room for the others.

Nature is particularly brutal when it comes to such matters.

So the humans quickly learned how to extend from beyond the family unit and the extended family until into the village.

Many primitive villages exist on the earth at this very moment, which for all intents and purposes closely resemble those which are thought to have existed during the Neolithic age.

It is from the village unit that the city state has grown.

So, just how is this village unit organized?

There will typically be an elder, with his ever-attendant religion consultant (typically shamanic) and surrounded by a council of elders who give advice based upon life experience and tribal customs as they understand them and the young bucks (the studs), being the warrior elite.

And there it is in all of it's embryonic beauty, ready to spring forth into all of it's worldly glory as the modern nation state.

So, let's stop for just a moment and take a closer look at this arrangement.

The leaders, the brains, the religion leader, and the warriors.

Look around you and you will see them on every side in some modern form manifestation of this very same thing.

We could say it, formulaically as -

chief/kahuna w/retainers and sycophants
shaman w/retainers and sycophants
warriors w/retainers and sycophants

and there you have it.

The same pattern occurring over and over and over again ad nauseum throughout any and every history book you will ever read.

So, what has this to do with honor?

EVERYTHING!

The concept of HONOR as I use the word comes from a military ethos.

It derives, in a practical way, from the fact that I, as a young person, am asked to go off to war to die, today.

There will be hundreds of thousands of persons clashing arms and hundreds of thousands will be dead within hours.

The odds are fairly certain that I will be one of them.

I live my life every day this way, just because it is the most fundamental nature of the brutish world in which I live.

So, if I am going to be asked to give up my very life, right now, I am going to most certainly be asking myself, WHY?

People are going to give me all kinds of reasons:

it is for the children
it is for the future
it is for God and country
it is to protect your sisters from rape and pillage
it is to protect the memory of all of those who have given their lives before us,

and on and on it goes.

As men, for centuries, continued to cope with this problem, they came up with different concepts which would, hopefully, make the sting of death a little less stinging.

If I know that I am about to die for some pointless nonsense, resulting from the fights between two idiotic brothers, or several even more idiotic cousins (see World War I as a great example of this as Queen Victoria's three grandchildren trashed the entire planet and murdered millions of you men, women, and children - can anyone tell me for what, beside vainglory?  And look what it hath spawned and bequeathed unto us.

Korea.
Cold War
Nuclear arms race
showdowns betwen super powers

World War II

Hitler

the communists

the fascists,

and this list is actually just beginning.

What a horrible mess has been created while we are all taught to idolotrously wrap ourselves in flags and sing the praises of the monsters which have unleashed these countless hellish horrors upon all the rest of mankind.

Sorry folks, but I do not see anything to celebrate.

So, what happens to a young man who has been born and bred to die for some supposed higher cause, which in fact simply does not, and never will exist on this planet?

o.k., can you see it coming right at you?

YESSSSSSSS!

HONOR!

I am not dying for some moron who holds my life in utter contempt, no, rather I am dying for some higher calling.

I am not dying for vainglory.

No, rather I am dying for some great principle.

I am not part of some silly little group of murderers on the rampage, nay, I am part of a huge scheme of things in which my actions of mass murder and rape and pillage take on great significance and worth.

So, I have to admit that the concept, as it more than likely actually originated, comes from very poor parentage.

That is to say, as a fraud to induce people into killing themselves for some greedy, foolish war lord who only cares about himself (if even that) and little more.

Take away all of the martial music, and flag waving, and man made hoopla, and this is what you've got left.

A lie.

A self-delusion.

But, here is where it begins to get interesting.

Because, it did not remain so.

Rather, this method of psychical self-preservation, was picked up by men who actually did believe in the ideals which have come to be exemplified by the ideal of the Greek Hero.

While the masses needed an excuse to self-justify the ridiculous suicidal things which they are doing to themselves, the true warrior, who was always out at the front of every battle, and yet managed to live to fight another day, over and over and over again, and who truly was protecting his fellow citizens and women and children and elders, etc., from the bottom of his or her heart, gave a whole never meaning and multi-demensionality to this concept of heroic self-sacrifice which the word HONOR, when used by me, has come to mean.

Sadly, I must go.

These are intended as introductory remarks regarding the subject of HONOR.

As I sure you can well imagine, I have much more to see regarding this matter.

But, just as a teaser, it is all about CHIVALRY.

That's right, the stuff you hear about, but rarely see., unless you work in certain quarters where this is the norm, but rarer and rarer by the hour.

It is 10:35 a.m.

3-18-12
Ventura, California, USA