scaaary stuff

.
An Iranian cleric has suggested that immodestly dressed women are the cause for the earthquakes in his quake-prone country and perhaps beyond.

Sharon Osbourne wife of celebrity Ozzie Osbourne, says that, at 57, she will have her breast implants removed and give them to her husband ... they would look better as paper weights on his desk than they do on her chest, she said.

It's all good gossip, but in my mind there is something nightmarish about the thought of living in a world where people all around you are willing to credit what seems to be dangerously mistaken or downright ludicrous. Nightmarish ....

And yet sometimes the nightmares are all that is left -- the only refuge available. If the world around you is somehow insane, then isn't it time to stop questioning the insanity or ignorance of others and look in the mirror? What is the nature of sanity and insanity ... isn't it, in the end, just you?

It really can scare the shit out of me -- large crowds in substantial agreement ... cheering, asserting, rooting out the heretics ... it makes me feel that the world is flat and I'd better get with the program. Scaaaarey!

But then it occurs to me in order to be scared or certain depends on my own fitness and correctness and opinion and logic and understanding. And after a while, being right about the round world or the relationship between women and earthquakes or the world in which breast implants are part of a larger mind-set is no longer all that interesting. Being right is just too tiring, not to mention a mug's game.

It's a mug's game in the sense that either right or wrong does not honestly say much about the world around me, a world which seems pretty indifferent to my being right or wrong. Right or wrong, spring leaves appear; right or wrong, there is foolishness available and always has been. Right and wrong have to do with me and, where I am no longer all that convincing or fascinating or important, the question can be asked, if it's not right and not wrong, what is it? What's the principle operating here?

I'm not suggesting anyone lie down in abject subservience to the world of idiocy. But I do wonder if there is much difference between that approach and lying down in abject subservience to wisdoms and their counsel. It just seems to me that at some point, the nightmares become as compelling as the wet dreams...same stuff, different day. What principle is this? And is there some reason to lift the weights of fear or delight? Doesn't the nightmare carry the same message as the wet dream?

It's all just noodling, of course, but I think it's worth considering. Madmen and saviors abound ... which is which? I mean, when you look in the mirror, which is which?

It reminds me of the old graffito I once saw and continue to love: "Man without God is like a fish without a bicycle." Irresponsibility is not enough.
.