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Jan. 3, 2006 After observing the last three weeks of rain almost every day in Humboldt County, California, I'm getting back in touch with the many writers and readers of Useless-Knowledge Magazine. Strong winds last Saturday blew down a small forest near my brother's home. Adding insult to injury, hundreds if not thousands of trees were blown down within a mile of where I live. The electricity was out and the phone was dead so I drove down there to visit my brother, and the road was closed. Together we walked and saw the devastated woodland. Way down south and back east the winds roar for only ten hours and folks call it a hurricane. Here along the North coast winds howl for ten days straight and it hardly even makes the news. Usually the destructive winds here are less than sixty miles an hour, but they just blow and blow from the south for many days. One goes to sleep to the music of roof rafters creaking. Branches snap like firecrakers and whole trees break like cannon blasts. Because the college has been shut down, and because at home there's been no electricity, I've been offline. At heart I'm a campus dude, always new to the scene, with a minimal memory for all that is transient. Upon returning to the glowing screen I note that the ongoing debates on Useless-Knowledge continue, and I imagine that the debate about religion has been going on since the beginning of recorded time. I can't prove by myself that statement, however. Neither can I prove by myself that it's been a bad-weather month in Humboldt County, California. You can verify that, however, by checking the weather magazines. A days-long power outage gets one back in touch, so that when the sun goes down, it's really dark. To flush the toilet one has to go get a bucket of water from the creek or the well. It can be a tiring two hundred feet just hauling that ol' pail. These days all of us Internet buffs are addicted to electricity. Most everyone else is, too. Folks take electricity for granted. Most big issues these days are transient issues. The news comes and goes. The timeless issues remain. Once electricity was tapped and utilized, electricity became an increasingly important and non-transient facet of human existence. What was once only the occasional spark and the brief shock between your hand and sleek dry fur recently petted or the sudden flash and rumble from the heaven-sent cumulonimbi-borne hands of Jove, is now the message-bearer of billions of essential global communications each hour. All this electronic sci-tech is based on mathematical equations. When I am at home, carrying the water bucket, I am back in touch with past human reality. Soon my muscles and bones are aching. I miss the comforts of modern life, and I wonder if the intensity of oceanic storms really is increasing. At the moment I think that is debatable, like just about everything else that is posted on the Internet. I will follow the debates on Useless-Knowledge Magazine, trusting that sooner or later the fierce neuro-power that inspires will become understood as scientifically as the fierce electronic current that heats up wires, blows fuses, and makes computers work. I predict that soon after this new scientific understanding of holy (or otherwise) inspiration is validated, the progressive nations will make use of this new neuro-science to educate young people so that they grow up to be significantly different adults from the way adults are now. For one thing, rather than wasting a lot of energy arguing over ideas, beliefs, and claims that can't be tested, even today the more intelligent people concentrate on an idea, a belief, or a claim that can be repeatedly tested. Just think of the thousands of heated arguments going on this very moment, arguments about whether or not any god exists. Neither side of the argument budges. Both hearts and minds are set. Employing sentences like chess pieces, the hearty and heady combatants seek to defeat one another in printed or spoken debate. Ah.... Debate: it's a serious game that's probably at least as old as war. At long last natural science has come along with a totally different way or paradigm. The way of natural science has actually taken centuries to arrive. Now all psych-shrink humanity has to do is follow the way of science. In fact, if there's more than physical matter, advanced science will repeatedly demonstrate this is the case. As a final remark, I'm not going to spend three days checking this article over for possible errors. I've done that dozens of times and the article ends up never being submitted to U-K. That's one down-side of nitpickery. To the nit-picker, nothing is ever quite good enough, not even science. ------------ About the author: John L. Waters is an amateur psychologist and independent researcher on self-healing, integration, and problem-solving. John has created art, music and songs, prose and poetry, and helped people solve a difficult problem. For more information, read: John's letters of recommendation: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/recommendations about John's self-healing and integration: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/index.html about John's independent research: http://www.humboldt.edu/~jlw47/index.html about John's seeking an agent or a publisher: http://www.writers.net/writers/39295 Email: blueguntwo@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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