THE MEANING OF LIFE 2017

George Mao was a philosophy professor at the University of Maine, and he was miserable.   His wife had left him for a pizza delivery boy, his son wouldn’t talk to him, and students avoided his classes.   He considered his life meaningless and saw sickness and death his future in his old age.

From an academic philosophy magazine, he read of guru in India that was wonderfully wise, with a great many noted people willing to make a difficult pilgrimage just to receive his council. 

George took academic leave and flew to India.  The guru was on the top of an escarpment and the only access was a steep and dangerous trail that led to the top.  

After hours of walking and climbing George found the guru sitting outside of his cave.   George said, ‘Teacher, I am a philosophy professor, I have lived half of my lifetime and I am miserable.   Please tell me why we are here.   What is the meaning of life?’  

The guru answered, ‘The meaning of life is a tea pot.’

George was furious.  He said, ‘I have flown across the ocean, traveled across India and climbed this damn mountain and all you can tell me is the reason we are all here is a tea pot?

The guru thought for a minute, then said, ‘Well, maybe it’s not a tea pot.

George could have saved himself the trip and asked me – I would have told him, it’s the hokey pokey.

the Ol’Buzzard

PHILOSOPHY OF POT

When I retired from the Navy I was in my early forties and my wife was in her late twenties.   We bought an old farmhouse one mile into the woods that had no electricity, sewerage or running water; and the following fall entered the University of Maine as Freshmen.   This lifestyle change was necessary for us to both be able to afford college at the same time.

We were different from the younger Freshmen as we actually took our classes seriously and studied.   We would return home, light the wood stove, carry water from the stream behind the house, make supper and then study our subject materials and notes, do homework and finally turn out the oil lamps and go to bed listening to Maine Public Broadcasting on the battery radio.

  

But, this is not about us.  For our second semester we signed up for Logic as one of our five classes.   The instructor was Dr. Reed.   He had worked as a janitor at the college before being hired to teach Logic.   Dr. Reed was a true eccentric, he was heavy set, his clothes always rumpled and looking like he had slept in them, he truly looked more like a janitor than a Doctor of Philosophy; but he was brilliant.

 

His class ended up being the most demanding of any class we took during our four years.  He assigned copious readings and extensive homework, he tested weekly and he graded stiffly.

  

We spent more hours at home having to studying logic that second semester than we spent on the other four classes combined.        It was the hardest class we experienced in college and the one that challenged us most.

Dr. Reed was later released by the college because he failed too many students and would not agree to curve his grades.

We still see Dr. Reed occasionally, mainly at Republican rallies where he is usually dressed in bib overalls and playing the banjo.

 

But this brings me to the subject of this post.

  

There are petitions floating around Maine for a referendum to vote on the legalization of marijuana during the fall election.

Most Republicans, including our illustrious governor, are opposing the referendum stating the ‘most people hooked on heroine started with pot (therefore, pot leads heroine addiction.)’

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

Roosters crow when the sun rises, therefore roosters cause the sun to rise.

 

Thank you Dr. Reed

the Ol’Buzzard

NIGHT RAMBLINGS

The mind of man is a capricious concoction of voltaic cells that controls our lives. 

Harnessing that energy is the process of education and critical thinking – giving man the capability of astounding creations from science to art to agriculture to engineering.

   

In our smugness we tend to think that our brain, its size and functioning, somehow separates us and places us above the rest of the animal kingdom.

But how are we to know that the raven is not spending its days contemplating theoretical physics; or that the great whales are not the great philosophers of all living creatures? 

One of the problems with the human mind is that we can’t turn it off, ipso-facto I find myself lying in bed during the wee hours while my mind runs the gamut from logic to insanity, and all points in between.

So, I am wondering: Why 24 hours in a day?  Why sixty minutes in an hour and sixty seconds in a minute?   It makes no sense.

A ten hour day; divided into one hundred minutes; divided into one hundred seconds is so much more logical.   You could express any time with a whole number and decimal places: 09.37.15 for the ninth hour, thirty seventh minute, fifteenth second – very precise.  

I almost missed a commercial flight because the agent said it would leave at 12:05 on a Wednesday; and I was thinking five minutes after noon – when it was zero dark o-five that morning.

So there I was in bed: three-hundred-sixty-five days in a year – twelve months – fifty-two weeks of seven days, and leap year… what the fuck?

I try to turn it all off by focusing, concentrating, meditation on nothing; which is actually not turning it off but refocusing; but the damn id keeps interfering. 

    

I count my breaths: one, two, three, four… why not count my pulse?  Hell my fingers and toes are base ten… now if I could just roll my wife over and jump her bones then I’d be able to sleep; but that’s not going to happen.

One, two, three, four…

the Ol’Buzzard

IF A TREE FALLS AND NO ONE HEARS IT - DID IT FALL?

If a tree falls and no one hears it – did it fall? This is psychobabble from a discipline that really believes that humans matter.


If you lay out a time line of the earth on a football field (100 yards,) human in some form have existed for only the last five inches and Homo sapiens for only a little over an inch.

Even the concept of a time line is a human construct. The universe doesn’t concern itself with time. The universe just is – perhaps. We have invented time to explain our human existence in some lineal context. And, we invent gods in our own image to convince ourselves that we matter and that we are eternal.

The truth is that if we could back up evolution to the very beginning there is no reason to believe that it would evolve in the same manner with the same results. There are too many variables and happenstances that led to our present results; the odds of it happening exactly the same way again would be infinitesimal.

Our petty paltry lives have no meaning. We are here today and gone tomorrow. Old cemeteries are full of the bones of unknowns – people who have no legacy other than linage that will some day be bones with no legacy other than linage – perhaps – and then perhaps not… All our accomplishments are gauged on a human scale – and we are by definition an accident of chaos.

My great-great grandfather lived in western Kentucky among Southern sympathizers. He broke tradition and joined the Union Army dying in Shiloh, leaving one son and a young wife.



One hundred and fifty years later I am the linage of his existence – big deal – and I soon shall soon be gone.

If the human race had improved and had moved to some utopian plane we might divine some purposeful meaning for the dead gone by – or at least an excuse for our existence in a reference to human good. But, we are the same violent, belligerent, destructive, consumer life form, only now with advanced technology and more powerful weapons.

Look at the world: there is no humanity in our race. Religions, political factions, racial prejudice, geographic identity and personal greed drive our human community to constant odds and contention.

In reality it is all for naught. We can not as a life form survive. As much as we deny it, our existence is temporary – brief in time that doesn’t exist.

Are we remarkable in our technology and our art? Yes – at least by our own values. But does it matter? No.

We are here by chance. Yesterday doesn’t exist – or tomorrow. The now – this moment – is all we have. There is no guarantee of a next…

I spent a lifetime in the military and another lifetime since then. I have had a number of near-death experiences. There is no country and no politics and no religion and no philosophy worth dying for. Death is the end. What a waste it would have been.

Do not carry the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or woes and troubles of the moment on your back. They don’t matter in the long run; for tomorrow there will be new dramas and new outrages. You only have this one brief existence, don’t squander it with unfulfilled desires for an existence that does not and can never exist

Take advantage of the accident of life. Look at the colors around you; smell the smells; be aware of the temperature and wind and weather; marvel in the life forms in your ecosystem. Enjoy sex and food and drink and life. Do no harm.



The meaning of life is
There is no meaning of life

The life or Brian



How marvelous,
How wonderful,
I chop wood,
I carry water.

Zen poem



To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour

William Blake



Have a good day

the Ol’Buzzard