My Ozark Hillbilly friends told me we are at that awkward time when it
is too late for them to fix things, but still too early to drag the
bastards out to be shot. As may be. But I first heard that a few years
ago. How long can the awkward time go on?

i dont pretend to know how much money can be stolen by the power elite
from the middle class before it results in mass bankruptcy,
foreclosure, and a total meltdown of the economy. I agree the middle
class was not spending the money wisely, and there was some hope the
power elite would invest it in creating new jobs. which they did. In
Asia.

I see proposals to stop the forclosure process to give people time to
figure out what to do, but dont see a clue from any leader on what can
really be done. Wallace, in his anthro classic, "Culture and
Personality" saw how when a system is on the skids and people's coping
skills dont work so well anymore, they engage in "magical thinking".
Thus the rise in fundamentalism that Obama referred to. Doesnt he know
you never speak the truth if you want to get elected?

On Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:12:40 -0700 (PDT), Day Brown hughes.net> wrote:

On Apr 15, 4:12 am, Sir Frederick fuzzysys.com> wrote:

Polite discourse appreciated. Nearly 69, I dont make long range plans
any more since taking my last breath is prolly not that long before my
awkward time is over. Its an academic exercise what kind of world I
will leave behind. I feel like a shrink poised on the brink of
senility and retirement who wonders what will become of the neurotics,
aware that even the other case managers are nuts.

Anyone who's read Joseph Campbell can see that all the religions are
cobbled together from snippets of earlier myth and texts. Were it
going on today, Zoroaster could sue Jesus for plagiarism. Which has a
lot to do with why those who should be setting the standard of
morality are so often totally lacking in it. i can see how so many of
their followers await the "Rapture" or some such messianic age,
sensing, but not consciously willing to admit, how corrupt what passes
for religion is.

On Apr 15, 10:21 am, Day Brown hughes.net> wrote:

I dont have angst; I'm fairly comfortable. the future is an academic
question or exercise. One of the things to do with a brain that is
endowed with the biochemistry to tolerate ambiguity without anxiety.

Oriental cosmologies were more into acceptance of what is, rather than
hope for what mite be better. There is an argument that heaven would
not, in fact, be better. In the Illiad, we see the hero enter hades to
speak with a famous warrior. They are all down there, standing around,
talking about what they did. But like the posters on the Internet,
that's all they can do. They cant actually *do* anything else.

Standing around forever with a harp and a halo singing songs about
what a great guy Jesus was sounds like the after life comes with a
prefrontal lobotamy. I'd rather be dead. I spoze my grandpa will be
there. Plato's escatology is like you and god and grandfather sitting
on a couch looking at the video of your life. Its judged not on the
basis of 'good and evil' so much as its artistic merit. Was it a good
story?