Howling Into the Night

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning from the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollowed-out and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz..."

And so begins Allen Ginsberg's epic poem Howl. I've had a few beat-like nights in my day.  It is certainly not a perfect answer to the challenges of life, but it is an answer.  Howl describes that desperate and exciting life, the horror and the ecstasy that is possible when you go down that counterculture road.  It is not hopeful; it is a poet shining the light on a type of life, a dark life, a type of life that he himself lived and described unflinchingly.  It is a life that I perhaps wisely saw as a path to ditches and homelessness, or perhaps it was a path that I never quite had the courage to commit to fully.

It is a part of America that most want to bury in a deep hole and deny that it could possibly happen.  There are some who want to celebrate that life and deny the insanity and filth that inevitably comes with it.  I will argue, however, that the Beats, Ginsberg, and his comrades are imperfect warriors for freedom.  They yearned for and even lived a life that was more free than what they saw as their choices in 1950s and 1960s America.  Many of them failed, becoming slaves to the drugs, or their insanity, or the penal system due to their choices that were made without the demands of ancient moral codes.  But they were the men and women who saw that much was possible, even if they took that knowledge down the path of destruction.

They are an example of rebellion, perhaps a failed rebellion, but a rebellion that does expand just what the fuck is possible in this world.  I do not say live the life the Beats.  That was tried more than 50 years ago with questionable success, but I do say pay attention to them, listen to them.  Learn from their mistakes.  Accept their filth and their occasional brilliance, for it is not the path of salvation, but one of many paths that us free men may take, if only for a night.

Shelter

Sometimes, even a Warrior Poet in the middle of a storm needs some shelter.  I've realized that more than ever recently.  As usual Bob Dylan may have said sung it best.  The Stones were a little more dark and demanding, but we all know they've made a deal with the devil, but they've got some mojo to share in tough times.  So rock on, endure, find some shelter when the storm's a blowin'. I'll meet you on the other side.

The Dude

"Sometimes there's a man.  I won't say a hero, 'cause what's a hero, but sometimes there's a man and I'm talkin' about the Dude here. Sometimes there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place.  He fits right in there, and that's the Dude in Los Angeles and even if he's a lazy man, and the Dude was most certainly that...  Sometimes there's a man. Sometimes there's a man..."

And so begins one of the Coen Brothers' all time great cult classics, The Big Lebowski.  I have lost count the number of times I have watched it but the movie is brilliant on so many levels.  Writing, acting, dialogue, with a nice shot of zaniness.  I want to give credit here to the ethos of the Dude and it can be done by directly quoting him.  I won't call him a hero, because, well the writers tell me not to right off the bat, but he is a man worth paying attention to, worth listening to, and maybe even worth emulating, if not all the time.

The crux of the movie hinges on a rug of his being pissed on by some two bit thugs who mistake him for another Lebowski.  They surprise him in his apartment, and stuff his head down the toilet while they ask where the fuckin' money is.  They obviously have the wrong guy.  The Dude likes to bowl and one of these said thugs picks up his bowling ball and asks what it is.  What does the Dude reply?  "Obviously, you are not a golfer."  He just throws the quip right at the dumbass, like it's nothing.  He's funny, and he's willing to throw fire, at least at some two bit thugs.  Sardonic courage.

When he tries to right the wrong of having his rug being pissed on because he was mistaken for a millionaire with his same name, what does he do?  He quotes George H.W. Bush!  "This aggression will not stand, man."  The Coen brothers make him a multidimensional dude, not the cliche hippie you would expect him to be.  He's got the other half of the live and let live philosophy he encompasses by confronting (his strategy is another matter) those who would not live and let live.  Also, the man, who's philosophy is basically to take it easy. also hates the fuckin' Eagles, man.  Again, against the cliche, with his own idiosyncratic likes and dislikes.  A person.  Weird and lazy, but a person nonetheless.

As stated before, the Dude is not a golfer, but a bowler.  He's on a team with Walter (an awesome performance by John Goodman playing a scarred Vietnam vet) and Donnie, and when they're about to play in a tournament against a team with a man who calls himself The Jesus, Jesus brings some trash-talking to the Dude's team.  The Dude's comeback?  "Yeah well, you know, that's just like uhh your opinion, man."  Perhaps my favorite line of any movie ever.  It's so true.  This Jesus guy is just talking shit about the future, a future that none of us knows, and the Dude knows and accepts that.  And if it's a competetion looming, especially if it's bowling, he'll take his chances in that unknown, jump into the arena, or up the lanes as the case may be.  He's a man who accepts his contingency and bowls anyway.

Toward the end of the movie, the Dude has a discussion with the Stranger a recurring character who plays somewhat the role of the chorus if it were a Greek tragedy (which it most certainly is not).  The Stranger asks him how things have been going, and the Dude replies that he's had some gutters and strikes, ups and downs, but here he is, and he's gonna take it easy.  Through it all, the Dude abides.  He accepts the ups and downs.  He rolls with the punches, or at least staggers, falls, slowly gets up, brushes himself off, fixes a white Russian, and smokes a doob.

So what do we have here?  We have a lazy man, gettin' by, doing his best to live and let let, yet confronting aggression against himself when it comes.  A man who is sardonic to dipshits.  A man who knows the future is not set, who knows that people are gonna talk shit and usually it's a bunch a bullshit.  A man who is loyal to his friends.  A man who abides, accepting the good and the bad, enduring through it all.  Not everyone will like the movie or the ethos of the Dude, but I do, and that's enough for me.

Disclaimer: some of my family will be reading this, and ask why I have to use so many cuss words.  I'll let the Dude answer that one for me.

Black Days and Long Black Roads

All of us are going to fall on black days.  So what shall we do?  Well for one, revel in some fuckin' Chris Cornell Soundgarden grunge.  Sometimes commiseration with a rock band makes those black days a little more bearable.  Tunes for the blues.  "How would I know that this would be my fate?" Well, I didn't, but here it is.  Sure don't mind a change? I'm workin' on that one.  The grungers have accepted the blackness, the shit, some perhaps too much, but those who have made it through that blackness are here with a well deserved rock and roll swagger.  May we all be so lucky.

Now, the black days come and they go, but as Camus said, the burden always returns.  Commiseration can only last for so long and only get you so far.  And guess what?  It's not that far.  But then you have David Russell strike you with some movie-music combo magic and you realize these aren't just days, you're on a Long Black Road, a fuckin' journey, man.  It's long and it's black, but (and this is a big but) there's some rock and fuckin' roll to be had, containing "responsibilities," a "road to ruin," a chance to make "a lot of money," yet finding it out it might not "bring me happiness."  It plays in his gem American Hustle, a brilliantly written and acted movie containing con men, feds, mobsters, and the world in which they intersect.  Messy, to say the least, but life is messy, even if you ain't a mobster, g-man, or one caught in between.  We all do have a long black road, I would argue, whether we want to admit it or not, and we must endure.  In the words of Jeff Lynne:

"You gotta work like a man in a real man's life
You're gonna have to take all the trouble and strife.

You gotta get up in the morning take your heavy load
And you gotta keep goin' down that long black road."

Wise words for us all, including you ladies.

To Da

It's father's day, and I want to dedicate a post to my Da (an Irish term for dad that we have started using to celebrate our Scot-Irish roots).  I appreciate him every day for the things that he has done for both me and my family in general.  He had to figure out how to be a Da on his own, with his dad and my grandfather leaving when he was young.  Well, he figured it out, to say the least.  His honor, work ethic, and loyalty move mountains.  I hope that I can carry those virtues forward in the way that he does.  He was the man to teach me the willpower necessary to win track races, succeed in school, and tackle like a son of bitch on the soccer pitch.  He taught me the importance of knowing your limitations, even if I still haven't learned all there is to know about that one.

He became an entrepreneur, starting a computer business in 1983.  1983!  And it still exists.  Imagine the changes that have occurred in computing in those 32 years.  He had the guts and drive and know how to make it through all of those technological revolutions.  He is here to tell the tale.  He calls himself a computer plumber, but he is visionary.  No, he's not a billionaire, but he is probably too good of a man to be the one to become a billionaire, and that's just fine by me.  He is my Da, and he is an honorable man, a man I am proud to call my father on father's day.

He told me a story about when he was finishing up high school and he told his mom that he was not sure if he loved his dad or not.  She recommended he go see him and figure that out.  He did that and more.  On his way to college he met up with his dad, and they began to build bonds that lasted until my Pa's (what I called my grandpa) death to multiple myeloma when I was just beginning high school.  On that trip to see his dad, my Da introduced Pa to Napolean Hill's book Think and Grow Rich, and Pa introduced Da to Ayn Rand.  They were kindred spirits in the can-do attitude, that our choices mattered, and that success mattered only if it could be done honorably.  Neither ever became ridiculously wealthy, and they have both fought with their demons as all of us do, but their love for each other grew rich over the decades.  They shared their lives and ideas with each other, and the wisdom gained from such interactions continue to be passed down the generations.  That my dad learned to forgive and love his father who had left him is yet another virtue that I hope I can attain in my own life.

By the time of his passing, I was just old enough to have a couple conversations with Pa before he left us that convinced me he had some wisdom in him, and he shared what he could before it was too late.  He had a new wife by then, and the off-kilter family that these two sides encompassed still keep in touch to this day.  One of those cousins just got married and has recently become a father himself, and we were (almost) all there to see it and celebrate as family.  Whether siblings, half-siblings, step siblings, cousins by blood or by tribe, we all love each other and it was the souls of Pa and Da who played a central role in the creation of those bonds.

When Pa passed, he gave the honor of willing his library of books to me.  It is an honor and burden that I continue to carry.  He chose me to be the passer of knowledge down the generations.  I don't take that lightly.  With his books, my Da's books, and my own, we have collected quite a collection.  It is a dream of mine to create a library one day where these books will reside for which all can learn.  With the information and digital revolutions, physical books are becoming more and more obsolete, so I will have to get creative in defining just what a library will be for humanity when everything can be goggled in seconds.  Pa had the confidence that I could do it.  I will make him proud, come hell or high water.

After Pa died, Da and I drove to Albuquerque where he'd lived to pick up his books and bring them back to Tucson where we both lived.  On the drive back we hit the most powerful lightning storm I have ever seen.  I wrote a poem about it, and on father's day, I dedicate this poem to Da, and all the Da's who got us here:

Two Charged Particle Staring At Their Own Mortality

Pa left his used-up body smiling in a recliner chair,
in his cigarette living room.  I have wondered since
if voices calling him to leave had given him a secret.

Dad and I drove through the dry southwest desert
to collect Pa's books he left for me, where I thought
the secret might be hiding on a faded page, like an afterthought.

The rubber wheels of our faded silver minivan rolled
down the freeway like Bob Dylan caught in a moment
of word association.  The rain asked to witness a sunny day.

We talked of girls and genes and peak experiences,
the timing of events and the effect it had on physics.
We marveled at the rolling clouds waking to our dreams.

We smiled at the absurdity of rule-making bureaucrats,
and hoped that some good pot might loosen them up a bit.
Death seemed to smile at the inherent relevancy of the subject.

The Stones convinced us that sympathy existed
even for the devil, and that the hard workin' people
deserved a toast.  I announced that their fervent blues

were tempting the approaching storm to show us
its true power.  Dad smiled, and told me Pa might have agreed
in a different time.  The secret was certainly laughing now.

On the homestretch, the clouds were swallowed whole
by the lingering light.  Jazz and rock and roll were electric
in the air, Dad and I collided like two charged particles

staring at their own mortality, smiling.  I guess
it was only inevitable that the lightning storm came next.
The bolts struck close, with frightening repetition.  Beautiful.

Pa oversaw the lightning show with glee and a trickster attitude
that went back to his youth, which he never could quite silence.
He was never one for secrets or the conservation of energy.

Nozick's Experience Machine

Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" has been rightly hailed as one of the best philosophical arguments for a libertarianish minimal state.  His overall argument is that a state-like entity will arise naturally from a state of nature (people interacting, trying to survive and thrive, defending themselves, family and friends, etc.), making a (minimal) state inevitable in order to protect the rights and freedoms of human beings.  This strikes me me as highly compelling.  His further argument that advancement from a minimal state to a larger all encompassing state will inevitably infringe on the rights and freedoms of the people I also find highly compelling.  Both anarchists and modern state supporters both have to grapple with his arguments.

Interestingly, he has a thought experiment in the book as he builds his "State-of-Nature Theory" that speaks less about politics and more about the reality we find ourselves in and the choices that we would and should make.  It also has much in common with The Matrix, one of the most famous and brilliant sci fi films out there (the first one, the trilogy not so much). Nozick describes his Experience Machine as such:

"Suppose there was an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired.  Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book.  All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain.  Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life experiences?...Would you plug in?  What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?"

Sounds like the Matrix, right?  Let me be more clear here that this choice is not the choice of most of the people who are plugged into The Matrix and don't know it.  It is the choice of those who have gone down the rabbit hole and have the knowledge.  Nozick argues we should not plug in because there are things that matter to us in addition to our experiences.  What are those things?

"First, we want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them.  In the case of certain experiences, it is only because first we want to do the actions that we want the experiences of doing them or thinking we've done them.  A second reason for not plugging in is that we want to be a certain way, to be a certain type of person.  Someone floating in a tank in an indeterminate blob.  There is no answer to the question of what a person is like who has long been in the tank.  Is he courageous, kind, intelligent, witty, loving?  It's not merely that it's difficult to tell; there's no way he is.  Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide...  Thirdly, plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality, to a world no deeper or more important than that which people can construct.  There is no actual contact with any deeper reality, though the experience of it can be simulated.  Many persons desire to leave themselves open to such contact and to a plumbing of deeper significance.  This clarifies the intensity of the conflict over psychoactive drugs, which some view as mere local experience machines, and others view as avenues to a deeper reality; what some view as equivalent to surrender to the experience machine, others view as following one of the reasons not to surrender!"

Heady stuff, this.  While I think his arguments here can be debated and perhaps even refuted in some cases, there is no doubt he is bringing up fundamental questions and answers about reality and our place in it.  Maybe not all of you have a visceral aversion to plugging in, but I certainly do, and I think a lot of you might too.  Going back to The Matrix, the seduction of the Experience Machine is exactly what Cypher succumbs to, and we hate him for it.  He has failed!  Even if he wouldn't have had to betray his friends to do it, he has betrayed himself!

So why do we feel this way (or at least why do I feel this way)?  Nozick says that "what is most disturbing about them is their living of our lives for us...Perhaps what we desire is to live (an active verb) ourselves, in contact with reality."  He is hinting at something very big here about our place in reality, about our free will and what it might mean about our place in this here world.  There are very interesting responses to the Experience Machine and the Matrix that I will blog about later (David Chalmers' The Matrix as Metaphysics is one such brilliant piece of philosophy), but I want to make sure I give credit to Nozick where credit is due.  His thought experiment forces us to delve into what really matters, and a fundamental part of that is that we desire to live ourselves, in contact with reality.

This takes courage, and interestingly, may have a relationship to existential authenticity.  As I have previously described, authenticity involves accepting our contingency and our freedom, and not surrendering to those burdens, to accepting them bravely.  Perhaps this is similar to why we don't want ourselves or others to succumb to the seduction of the experience machine.  It is giving up!  It is Sisyphus unhappy in his burdens.  It is us denying our freedom, to the fact that our life is really in our hands.  That we would give that up to a machine, rightly, strikes us (or again, at least me) as horrific.  We will always have our burdens, our freedom, our choices, and no machine can take that away except if we live in bad faith.

Authenticity

In my readings on existentialism, the idea of authenticity, of living authentically, has always resonated with me.  I certainly am not an expert on existentialism, refusing to jump into the more long-winded technical aspects in Sartre's Being and Nothingness, but his essay "Existentialism is a Humanism" (which he ironically later came to denounce on some levels) has much wisdom to behold.

As I said, I am merely an amateur so I will quote from Thomas Flynn's "Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction" on what it means to be an authentic individual:

"Frequently dramatized in the imaginative form that the topic invites, the existentialist view of the human being is that he or she is permeated with contingency, as Roquentin experienced in Nausea.  Like the Heideggerian in the face of personal mortality or the Nietzchean 'free spirit' who courageously welcomes the infinite repetition of the past, the authentic individual, on Sartre's account, is the one who embraces the contingency and lives it fully."

It is about accepting our contingency and not running from it, not denying, but accepting it with courage.  Sartre says, "There is not determinism - man is free, man is freedom.  If, however, God does not exist, we will encounter no values or orders that can legitimize our conduct.  Thus, we have neither behind us, nor before us, in the luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse.  We are left alone and without excuse.  That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free: condemned, because he did not create himself, yet nonetheless free, because once cast into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

Some say this is a very pessimistic view to take.  Not so, says Sartre.  "What we mean to say," he says, "is that man is nothing but a series of enterprises, and that he is the sum, organization, and aggregate of the relations that constitute such enterprises.  In light of all this, what people reproach us for is not essentially our pessimism, but the sternness of our optimism...  When an existentialist describes a coward, he says that the coward is responsible for his cowardice...he is like that because he made himself a coward through his actions...What the existentialist says is that the coward makes himself cowardly and the hero makes himself heroic; there is always the possibility that one day the coward may no longer be cowardly and the hero may cease to be a hero."  And so existentialism cannot "be called a pessimistic description of man, for no doctrine is more optimistic, since it declares that man's destiny lies within himself." Boom.

While there may be exceptions to Sartre's radical definition of freedom, to me he gets the core argument right.  We are what we make ourselves to be through our actions.  We define ourselves.  By taking this responsibility, we are authentic.

This does not mean, we fall for the luster of nihilism.  For in accepting our freedom, we accept the freedom of all men and women, and thus there is a universal character to the existentialist ethic.  Flynn states Simone de Beauvoir "argues that the real requirement of an individual's freedom is that it pursues what she calls 'an open future' by seeking to extend itself by means of the freedom of others.  In other words, my freedom is enhanced, not diminished, when I work to expand the freedom of others."  So in accepting our responsibility and our freedom, we accept the responsibility and freedom of everyone else.  We're in this freedom thing together, each of us alone to choose the path for each other to be free.

Fate and Freedom

The first rated R movie I ever saw in theaters was Terminator 2, in my humble opinion still one of the best sci fi action flicks around.  It was Arnold at his peak.  It was awesome metal man CGI before CGI festered into a cancer.  It was bad ass Sarah Connor.  And it had a quote that has resonated with me through the years: "There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."  It is very existentialist for a Hollywood movie.  And yet, is it true?  There are certainly forces greater than us that affect our choices, whether they are physical (gravity, etc.), geopolitical, or biological (genes, brain disorders, etc.).  Can we still make a fate for ourselves?

You always have choices with whatever fate you face, and that is your freedom.  As my dad has always told me, life ain't fair, but that leaves the question to all of us: "Well, what are you going to do about it?"  Albert Camus struggled with these issues of fate and freedom in his famous philosophical work The Myth of Sisyphus.  Sisyphus was a mythological character fated by the gods to eternally role a large boulder up a hill, only to see it roll down again.  Given that fate, what does Sisyphus do?  Camus used this example to delve into the absurd and our freedom in such circumstances.  Here is Camus's conclusion:

"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain.  One always finds one's burden again.  But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks.  He too concludes that all is well.  This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.  Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world.  The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

In tough times, I take comfort in those words, letting the struggle itself fill my heart.  It is not a philosophy for the feint of heart, but it might be enough to grab fate by the reins and make it our own.

Bob Dylan, Badass of Badasses

Throughout all the years of fame, Bob Dylan has, in my humble opinion, remained an authentic artist, man, and human being.  Those are amazing feats.  The times are always changin', and he has rolled with the punches better than anyone else left remaining from his generation (except maybe Mick and Keith who have obviously made a deal with the devil to still be alive).  He has remained relevant throughout it all.  He has confronted powerful war machines, yet respectfully shaken hands with power while refusing to play games with sycophants to said power even when the cool kids were doing it (this interview is quintessential Dylan, I highly recommend it).  He stands where he stands.  He has provided solace to me on many occasions.  There are no easy answers in life, perhaps the answers may merely be blowin' in the wind, and he accepts that.  Yet he still sings for the chimes of freedom.  For all of that he is a poetic and courageous man.  Respect, Bob, respect.

Hey Big Brother

I recently watched the film "Silver Linings Playbook," one of many David Russell masterpieces.  I will not get into a movie analysis here, but one of the songs in the film is "Hey Big Brother" by Rare Earth and it has gotten me thinking.  The song says Big Brother needs to get the people on his side, and George Orwell's dystopia 1984 shows the horror of how a totalitarian surveillance state can utterly manipulate and destroy the psyche of people until they are on Big Brother's side.  While here in America, we may not be under totalitarianism just yet, the surveillance state is here and it is watching.  What does this do to the psyche of the people?  Can we remain free in such circumstances?

Common refrains from many these days is that "privacy is dead" and "I've got nothing to hide so who cares?"  But what if we had so many laws that the average person commits three felonies a day and doesn't even know it?  Would you still be confident that you have nothing to hide?  You are probably guilty; it's just a matter of whether or not you will be prosecuted.

Charting our own path, going our own way, inherently involves the ability to be left alone.  The surveillance state, the Gordian knot of bureaucratic laws, and the psychological effects these have on humanity takes this ability away, and it makes the world a more sterile place.  If you know, or even believe, that you are being watched in most moments of every day (imagine all of the technological devices with cameras and audio recorders in them, including your smart phone, computer, tablet, TV, and now even apparently ovens), and you know you're probably guilty of something, do you act differently than if you were not?  I'll let you answer that yourself.  Certainly, control over those cameras is part of this story, and one hopes that privacy remains a virtue in at least some of entrepreneurs designing new devices, however, evidence of compliance by tech companies to governmental access to their devices does not encourage me.

So can free men and women coexist with Big Brother, with the surveillance state and its army of laws, three letter law enforcement agencies, and prosecutors who can prosecute anyone?  Only with courage, and at least some defiance. Do not let your fire go out due to the surveillance storm.  Be free, and fight against the fate of Winston Smith before it is too late.

Pioneers! O pioneers!

The unknown future is ever present to all who walk the earth, and it is up to each of us to make our way with that truth staring us in the face, every second of every day.  While we may not all think of it that way, we are all pioneers of our own life.  Even though the geographical frontiers on earth have basically disappeared, there will always be a frontier that each of us forges.  The land frontier is gone, but what bout the depths of the sea?  The ancient city of Heracleion was just discovered in the last decade.  There is more down there, pioneers, I can assure you.  And then there is space, the final frontier, where us humans have still just reached our toes into the abyss.  There is the scientific endeavor, uncovering unknowns with each passing day, year, and decade.  And for all of us, there is Plato's Allegory of the Cave, where we are trapped in illusion and there is something more, just beyond our grasp and comprehension.  That our choices may give us some power to unshackle ourselves, to bring us into the light, makes us all pioneers.  Once again, Whitman may have said it best, so I will leave you with his words from his poem "Pioneers! O pioneers!"

Burning with a flame bright beyond common understanding

I am a day late, so forgive me, but 71 years ago was the landing on the beaches of Normandy.  I don't know how many of those courageous soldiers considered themselves warriors (perhaps many) or poets (probably few), but to all of them I am thankful.  I just read this account of the first wave of soldiers approaching Omaha Beach, and it is humbling. It is a bit long, but I hope you will read it too.  It is both horrific and inspiring.  All of us living today can thank our lucky stars that on that day there were men who, in the words of the author of the article S.L.A. Marshall, "burned with a flame bright beyond common understanding."

Some revisionists make the argument, some better than others, that World War 2, particularly the fight against the Nazis since they had not directly attacked us, was not America's fight.  I myself have grappled with that argument in the past, and I have come to the conclusion that in the end free men could not live in a world where Nazism triumphed.  We cannot coexist with the tyrannical.  For that reason, we may always be on the wall, protecting freedom and the innocent from those who would enslave us.  May we continue to find the courage necessary to remain free.

John Galt, Warrior Poet

Say what you will about Ayn Rand and her philosophy. She certainly had her flat spots, but she did create a Warrior Poet in John Galt.  You may not agree with him, but his CONVICTION, his willingness to fight, and to know why he was fighting are crystal clear:

John Galt Speech (raw footage)

The most bad ass of bad asses

According to the google dictionary, a warrior is "(especially in former times) a brave or experienced soldier or fighter."  Modern times needs more warriors, especially the bravery part of the equation.  We may not need more soldiers (though that is debatable), but we need more fighters.  I don't mean people who will go beat the shit out of someone (though those are certainly needed to confront those who would beat the shit out of us free men), but people who will stand for the right, stand for freedom, in the face of adversity.

According to the dictionary, a poet is is "a person who writes poems." Thanks, google dictionary, that was really illuminating.  Their second entry is a little more descriptive, defining a poet as "a person possessing special powers of imagination or expression."  That gets to the heart of it, I think.  It is someone who can look beyond what is and see something more, something that could or should be, or even shouldn't be, and someone who can tell the rest of us that those things are possible.  They are inspiring.

So putting these two definitions together, a Warrior Poet would be a brave fighter who possesses special powers of imagination and expression.  He (or she) can fight and think, can stand on the wall and truly express WHY he is standing on that wall.  He is able to imagine a world where he might not have to stand on the wall, but only after all those barbarian hordes or kings who believe they actually have subjects have been vanquished.  Urban dictionary says that these Warrior Poets are "the most bad ass of the bad asses.  The most highly skilled fighters, competitors, warriors, swordsmen, spartans.  No one can trump a warrior poet.  Nobody trains like them.  They do not know defeat and never will.  Their heart, intelligence, and determination are unmatched.  Their will to triumph, persevere, and overcome are the thing of legend."  I aspire to be one of those most bad ass of bad asses.  Maybe you should too.

Rage, Rage Against The Dying Of The Light

Today I will take inspiration from another Warrior Poet, Dylan Thomas.  In the face of fate, what will you do?

Dylan Thomas reads "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

Into the breach

And so begins the Warrior Poet blog. I don't know where exactly this will go but I have stepped into the breach. I will start with one of my favorite quotes, the first of which inspired the name of this blog and comes from one of the best movies for any lover of freedom, especially those with Scottish roots, Braveheart:

"In the year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland, starving and outnumbered, charged the fields of Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And won their freedom."

Part of this blog will be about fighting for freedom, even if the odds seem long. I draw comfort from those starving Scotsmen on the fields of Bannockburn 700 years ago. We all have the choice to choose to fight and struggle for freedom for ourselves and others no matter the odds. As a self-described Renaissance man, however, I cannot confine myself to only the freedom fight. There is so much amazing stuff out there, and so if you follow this blog you might come across musings on history, philosophy, science, fiction, poetry, or the meanings of life. With so many opinions, I probably am going to contradict myself every once in awhile, so I will end my first post with another of my favorite quotes, this from the Renaissance man American poet, Walt Whitman:

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

So let the multitudes fly.