How many iterations of Superman have I watched? I have to start with the Superman of black and white television, then the one in the late seventies, and more than a couple since then. I watched the latest version and it was loud and, I must be losing my taste for superhero movies, kind of boring. The only reason I watched it was that it was next in the cue after the Spider Noir series. All these old white men cosplaying as superheroes. Don’t get me wrong, I like Nicolas Cage’s acting. That is the reason I watched the series. The new thing…the Black guys lived. One Black guy played a good guy and another played a reluctant bad guy and both lived! If one has watched any of the 1940s and 1950s detective series, there was nothing new. The life weary private detective, the femme fatale, the somewhat comedic sidekick, the sassy secretary, Mr. Bad…same old formula.
Societies described as warmongering are often characterized by glorification of military prowess, frequent wars, and social or political structures that prioritize war and plunder.
When one thinks about it, the United States has never not been at war. Always internally and frequently externally. Think, the wars to exterminate the Native Americans and the wars to subjugate the Black Americans. These wars were fought with guns/violence, but also with economic and social cudgels. And these wars have continued from before the United States’ formal beginning to the present. A people constantly at war have no stomach for or inclination toward “civilization”. The United States has always been a warmongering conglomeration of people, the antithesis of “civilization”.
Mind doodle–if Christianity…the Jesus Christianity, not the Pauline interpretation that hijacked it, had been followed, it would have been the end of the patriarchy. Think about it, love, gender equality, lack of hierarchy, peace… And the Romans couldn’t have that with their society dependent upon serfs and slaves and hierarchy and greed. So Paul, who some believe to have been a Roman agent, remakes what Jesus taught into a copy of the old religions–priests, arcane language, pomp, circumstance, greed–the patriarchy dressed in this religion called “Christianity”. Paul made what could have been the beginning of a new world order into a patriarchal tool. And it is that tool that exists today. End mind doodle.
I probably should have read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. At the time, I skimmed the first book, it didn’t interest me. I still have the set somewhere. If I find it, I might give it another try. Anyway, that’s to say that Wells’s take on Rome’s decline and fall and the role of Christianity in that decline and fall got me to thinking about about what I had previously read about Saul who renamed himself “Paul”, i.e., that he was a Roman agent. Paul’s conversion story was told to awe the believer and to deter the fear response that an outsider who was known to be an enemy would trigger. What better way to become an insider than to tell the believers that Jesus had spoken to him and that Jesus’s words had changed him, and now he was one of them. That story correlated with their own stories, so would have been very believable. Kind of reminds me of the movie Sinners. There’s always one who will open the door, either purposely or inadvertently, to one’s downfall. For Paul, there was first door opener, Ananias, who baptized him and, then, Barnabas who introduced him to the Disciples and also travelled with him.
I’ve been noticing for some years that I haven’t seen as many frogs as I did when I was growing up. Back then, in the evening, there would be frogs hopping through the bedewed grass. There would be the gray/brown frogs and the bright green frogs. Mostly the gray/brown frogs. Their croaks would be part of the evening symphony, along with the crickets and the bird songs. I have an open container for rainwater. I had seen the larvae in the water before and I dosed the tub with a product that was supposed to kill mosquito larvae. However, I don’t suppose the product has any affect on tadpoles. I know there are frogs in the swamp that abuts my yard, but how do the frogs find that open container so fast? It rained two days ago and today the container is filled with tadpoles. I read an article about frogs native to the Southeast and it appears that the frogs have a stressor that is killing them. So, I didn’t dump the container. Maybe the frogs will mature before the next rain causes the container to overflow.
I can’t believe I used to actively hunt for the gelatinous sacs of frog eggs (I think I’m remembering correctly!) in the ditches along the road and put them into jars filled with the muddy ditch water…just to watch the tadpoles appear. Now, looking at the picture I took, elicits the yuck factor.
So, humans have a difficult, if not impossible task, in overcoming our primal social and physiological wiring created in our small group past. Merriam-Webster’s definition of stupid: slow of mind; given to unintelligent decisions or acts; acting in an unintelligent or careless manner; lacking intelligence or reason; marked by or resulting from unreasoned thinking or acting. I see so many videos stating that these humans acting on their primal instincts aren’t stupid. Yet, their actions fit every definition of stupid that I found in Merriam-Webster. These humans cannot access the higher reasoning capacity of their frontal lobe. And, it appears that fewer and fewer humans have the will to access that higher reasoning function. I wonder if this is a case if you don’t use it, you lose it. Just because one doesn’t realize one is stupid doesn’t mean that one isn’t stupid. And not to realize that primal instincts are not your best guide when the evidence of your life shows you that primal instincts are not your best guides when dealing with large groups is stupid.
At some point, humans realized that manners were important, e.g., giving in to the primal instinct to kill a stranger was not in our best interests, so humans created a work around which I shall call manners (person to person interaction protocols) to calm that instinct. So, in the past, humans have been able to access their higher brain functioning, but not today? Maybe, the great majority of humans cannot readily access their higher brain functions…their stupidity, let’s say, is congenital. If that’s the case, we’re in trouble. But if accessing one’s higher brain functions can be taught, we’re in less trouble, but still in trouble because I don’t think the teaching will be an overnight phenomenon.
And to continue, reaching for that emotional gratification…(I understand that is what motivates many humans of today to act against their best interests)…that’s like constantly ingesting more and more of one’s drug of choice in hopes of experiencing that rush/feeling/high of one’s first encounter with the drug. It will never happen and not to realize that is stupid. And that is the reason drug users overdose and check themselves out of this earthly life.
I have a volunteer tomato plant in the compost pile and some other plants that I think are vegetables, but it’s too early to tell. What I thought were pepper plants turned out to be weeds!
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Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Martin Luther King Jr.
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