Nothing and Beingness

Yeow! Quite the election. To say nothing of the distraction. Having given it some thought I must aver, as a free-thinking independent citizen, I can't begin to say how liberated I feel. I've not an iota of loyalty to Barak Obama and my freedom of action is uninhibited. I certainly felt this way toward the President, and remain so. I think he's done a superlative job in the face of contstant kvetching. One thing I don't want to do is to lapse into infirming patterned thinking. I once had a pastor say to me, upon my sputtering about the misadventures of another POTUS, that nothing should impede our walk with Jesus Christ. It's all irrelevant insofar as all one can manage is oneself and what's immediately at hand. So it is.

And distracted too, lately, refreshing of Marxism, and then Sartre. I cannot exactly recall reading Being and Nothingness, but know I've glanced at it. Good thing an extract and synopsis is available online, for all I needed to remember was the notion of "authenticity." In one reduction made, a fellow made the illustration of how we assign ourselves an identity according to what we do or associate ourselves with. I do nothing, but do associate myself with phenomena outside myself, and I'm afraid to say I'm not substantially authentic in that regard. Often enough, my patterned, wishful thoughts are concocted in a desire to do something I really can't do a thing about. I'm not "Navy," but wish I could have helped John McCain. I can't, of course, and one of the reasons is that I didn't go to the Naval Academy (where youthful contemplation and imagination was projected), and one of the other reasons (if it were at all feasible) was the impact of Marxist thought when that choice had to be made during the height of the hostilities in South-east Asia in the late 1960's. It is the proverbial long story, but conditional as well of a Christian perspective (perhaps pacifist) that I could not kill for a living - and that's not, I feel, a cynically convenient demurral posing moral superiority against that which is selectively disdained, but a difficult circumstance stripped to its essentials.

I later saw how on the one hand I had romanced imagining myself in such a career (or to have decided it reprehensible in the thrall of another romantic parameter), but on the other, realistically, a Christian can necessarily kill without qualm. Sometimes I do regret not having sorted this out as a youth. Right now, I'm at peace. Too old to entertain that line of thought, I'd say of turning the cheek: it may well lead to one's demise; assured of eternal peace, how can that matter? Protecting others who've not that assurance is of moment here, I reckon.

Full circle in the consideration of a Marxist presidential candidate! I was reading yesterday Jose Saramago's Journey to Portugal, a pedantically materialist sort of travelogue. Appraising the urbanity of Lisbon before and after the earthquake of 1759 he lectured, "There is no point in arguing with earthquakes, or trying to discover the colour of the cow whose milk was spilt..." Ah, yes, exactly! What color is Obama's cow? This calls for a tune.



Splendid. Thanks - I needed that. The best of all possible worlds!

Yet I need to get to church.
Where's my socks?