"The Philosopher must bow down to the Microscope" John Walking Stewart

Foots etc..

The "Five Pecks of Wheat" was more likely five Pecks of Rice. It was the entry fee for an early Daoist community. It was enough to satisfy the Celestial Masters, the professionals who ran the departments of heaven like well ordered drill sergeants. Not everyone was guaranteed a reward, only about 18000 people would have the correct balance of life force to survive the apocalypse. Being good was a competitive sport. Back then, like today, there was of course no shortage of advice on how to polish the QI. In excess of two thousand years after the first Five Pecks Grand Master, a philosopher and esoteric known in English as PD Ouspensky's exploration of the fourth dimension and an extended visit to Nepal produced a sought after 1912 book called Tertiary Organum. It was a made in a lifetime Lamarkian evolutionary journey. The gist of his account was some people achieve enlightenment through an extraordinary physics and are heaven bound, others don't and aren't. Grand Master Zhang Daoling ran a small empire. Ouspensky developed a bit of cult, he died in Surrey, England, in 1947.

Disappointing endings

Tools of a Trade

It might be a bit of a stretch but there are similarities between my Friend Baxter and Hannah Arendt's exemplar of a virtuous public servant, Cato the Elder.  A somewhat random and possibly a confusing offering that may require an explanation of Scipio's role in the Second Punic War. Worth remembering this was the Roman Republic, not that bowl, indeed bowel of gruel and vice Rome became after it had allowed Julius Caesar following his victories in Gaul and Britannia to effectively engage in a date rape at home. Two hundred or so years prior to that depressing event, Scipio was a new wave sort of chap, exactly the sort of Roman who gave Cato the creeps.  Hannibal Barca, son of Hamilcar Barca of Carthage, Rome's opponent in the Second Punic War may have been more like Cato. You don't take your Elephants across the Alps, along with your breakfast table, storytellers, a parrot, and your mistresses, unless you're fundamentally a conservative sort of chap, which may well have been why Cato who was pretty much terrified of Carthage had convinced himself that Rome's chosen champion, Publius Cornelius Scipio, was far too weak minded and cretinous to stand a chance against The Carthaginians. In the end it might have done the Roman Republic a massive favor if Hannibal had wiped the floor with Scipio, cutout the hero worship of Emperors, this tragic, weak-kneed search for populist saviors. The Punic Wars maybe a niche subject, and granted a very few of us have been subjected to the warped punishment of having to study History of the Roman Republic while in detention, but amongst those of us who've had that rare privilege, a very few of us had risked further punishment by vocally supporting Hannibal in the detention room, and while most of us could have happily garroted Cato the Elder a very few of us, the more imaginative ones perhaps, were devastated when we heard that Scipio had defeated Hannibal. 

The Sikhs.

 

Cottontail in Clover

Sikhism comes from the word disciple or learner. The followers of Sikhism fell between the Hindu understandings and the Muslim understandings. Their heartland was the Punjab, in North Western India. They were believers in One God. In the early days of their faith they were led by a series of Gurus, beginning with Guru Nanak. In the 16th Century they adopted a scripture. In the early days of their discipline, because religion is myth and politics, they frequently found themselves at odds with the Indian Subcontinent's Ruling Classes, a combination of Princes and billionaires. In order to protect the autonomy of their own version of Oneness, they had to learn how to wage war. Which they did.

Berkeley

Clasping Bellflower

"To be is to be Perceived." George Berkeley. An Irish Bishop, who died in 1753, influenced Immanuel Kant, had a California University named after him, has been called an Episcopalian Saint, invested money in Caribbean sugar plantation that owned slaves. So there we go, a great mind, who, following the horrors of the second World War, rose again, so to speak. He became a source of inspiration for many. His point, and here he was far to Christian to put it like this, we were basically a digestive tract attached to a brain, everything we knew or thought we knew was in our mind. Outside our mind there was no such thing as a table, or a chair.  The isms given to his many thoughts are numerous, they include Immaterialism, Subjective Idealism. The number of E's in his name has always confused me, the realism of the making things up as we go along aspect of his thinking has always appealed to me.