Parasitic Arachnids.

Autumn Crocus (Winter Daffodil)

  The Tuesday of this week already looks bleak, as in hot. Without meaning to further gore the ox, I'll suggest it's a time of year when a simple mind as it patiently waits for the happy chance of a final curtain sees an opportunity to reflect favorably upon the bleak of a killing frost that might briefly retard the exuberance of arthropod populations, particularly the parasitic arachnids generally referred to as Ticks.

  In the simplicity of those olden days of right wing stone tablets, the book of Exodus set rules for when an ox injures or kills a person. It was a complicated and detailed list from the lips of a vengeful God. 

  The Innocent Ox scenario went this way : If your ox subjected an Israelite to a goring that resulted in the death of an Israelite, the ox was stoned to death and you were not allowed to eat the meat.

  The Dangerous Ox scenario went this way : If you knew your ox was prone to bad tempers and poor behavior and it gored someone to death, both you and your Ox were stoned to death. 

  My own view is this : If by chance you find death by stoning a particularly brutal and unnecessary sentence for any of God's creatures then, unlike The Lord, you've not been subjected to a season of tick bites.

 Don't be silly of course God approved of stoning as long as it was done outside the city or the camp and as long as one of the two witnesses to the offence threw the first stone. He once told Moses to stone a man to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath, that's how serious narcissistic megalomaniacs can get when no one listens.

Wisdom hath builded her house with a Kalashnikov wearing Flip Flops.

White Snakeroot

  Where I live, Central Authority looks like a bunch of old white men with collars, ties and gray or grey suits - the weirder of them wear brown shoes - they all have a hard on for the culture of, if not the technology of the 18th Century and they are terrified of disobedient women, non-christians and socialism. 

  If you want to know why disobedient women, non-christians and socialism frighten them, you'll find the answer in loss of control, reduced power within the structures of a society that currently enable the wealthy property owner to keep a seat on the committee of the ruling class. Go ahead tremble!

  Stranger still, fifty years ago Central Authority looked and sounded the same, so please don't ask me to even think about assimilating. Back then of course it was also true that you can't buy courage or competence with money. 

  The title of TE Laurence's book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom comes from Proverbs : Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars. An observation Laurence made from his studies and passions for history of the Arabian Peninsular was an understanding of the kind of disciplines and developed wisdom required of a nomadic tribe surviving in the least forgiving parts of Arabia.

 It's a discipline and a wisdom, Laurence argued, that regularly takes Damascus and Baghdad but never keeps them.  The Fremen of Herbert's Dune ended when it rained. Arabia died when they drowned in oil. 

    

 

Creed

White Snakeroot and Eastern Cedar

   In my view monotheism in all its iterations is in the process of chiming it's own death knell. 

  Why do you say this?

  Because the new war lords in western society are called Billionaires and without a functioning creed there will be no Magna Carta.

  What is a creed?

  US Meanings from Miriam Webster : Creed - a formal statement, summary, or system of core beliefs and guiding principles.

  What do you mean by monotheism?

  A belief in a central authority.

Arendt's understanding of Freedom

Blue Mistflower (Wild Ageratum)

  Yes indeed, being "uprooted from meaning" results in populations becoming subject to meaning makers. Arendt's argument for the public square was to promote a meaning making that promoted pluralism in a society rather than versions of atomized Individualism, which Arendt saw as a breeding ground for tyranny, insisting instead that genuine freedom requires a shared, public world sustained by active citizenship.

 To go further into a sense of belonging, the purpose of belonging is security, feeling safe, being supported, and other multiples of wokeness, a symbol within the meanings of awake that entered the language of whitey from a population on the receiving end of attitudes that still see black people as runaway and dangerous slaves. Stay awake! 

  Invariably when life has a price in dollars and cents, the dream is found in the security of property, an exterior castle with iron gates and a moat, a picket fence, an ice machine and a swimming pool the neighbors can envy. An understanding of freedom that chains a mind to the security of the sort of bread and circus power structures that bury alive a couple of Vestal Virgins every time Hannibal crosses the Alps.