Journal

Here’s my own “Creation Myth”

Creation Myth In the beginning out of the Void and Chaos there was only one Being, who called himself God. He was a lonely guy because although he had the means to slow, stop, or to speed up time, to travel from one dimension to another, to create galaxies and parallel universes as easily as you and I could say “Pie” he had no one to appreciate his powers and his ken. He hadn’t even contemplated the idea of a Dog yet, which was merely the spelling of his name backwards. But one day, as he was traveling through deep space, through a “worm hole” created by a massive dying star, which was creating a black hole, he noticed that he was getting warmer and warmer as his infinite being was being sucked into the black hole. An incredible insight came to him from this darkness. He contemplated a department store called Sears, Roebuck, and Company; he further contemplated all the things that he could create for this variety store. He thought of washers and dryers, television sets, computers, shoes, hats, winter mittens, and even chain saws. He thought even of home improvement k here was no complex organism such as Himself that could appreciate what he was capable of. His loneliness only deepened until he thought of an entity called “Man.” [The reader is advised to read the word “man” as a generic term for man, woman, boy, or girl] So, he invented dough, the kind that you make cake and donuts out of and not the slang for money. He fashioned the dough into little figures of men, women, and children. He put them into the oven which he had previously invented. But since he hadn’t invented a timer and a thermometer yet, he had to estimate how much time to cook each batch of tiny dough figurines of the people he had fashioned. So, he put the first batch into the oven, but he took them out too soon. They came out as the “white” people. So, he told himself that the second batch has to stay a little longer in the oven. But he waited a little too long, and so the second batch came out too well done and so they were the “black” people. And so to remedy the situation, He put in the third batch and took it out timing it carefully. And so they came out just right. He called these the Asian people [a bit of reverse racism here]. And so He created people. Even though the people became highly knowledgeable and civilized after a few million years or so, they kind of forgotten about Him, and so He invented immaculate conception and created a Son of his own. He called it Godson. Some people wanted him to call his Son by the names of Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, or whatever, but since God is God and there is no way of telling him what to do, Godson became part of the vocabulary and reality. So, this was the Original Story. Then the people created Hollywood. After that, nobody knows the truth anymore. people created Hollywood. After that, nobody knows the truth anymore.

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February 13, 2010

I have not been posting the responses to the weekly discussions in this journal and I have to do so now. I haven’t been writing in response to the View Points and I have to do so now. From this point on, I have to follow instructions more carefully.

This is the beginning of the 5th week for me, and I have to write about the Master’s program and what it is to me. It means developing a certain kind of confidence through expertise in what I study and do. It also means catapulting me to a position where I can be an independent scholar for the rest of my life.

For someone who is 61 already, I realize that I must consolidate what I have learned in life so far and put all the experiences to good use. I need to integrate them so that there is a certain identity or “brand” to it.
My Master’s degree will be on psychoanalytic literature. I want to study not only what writers write, but also why they write what they do. This means then that I must study a whole spectrum of social, political, and philosophical issues of the epochs that the writers write. Some write for pure personal pleasures and not meant to share with others. I wonder about the poems of Emily Dickinson and wonder if she expected them to be published.

Others write to change the world. Some are very controversial: such a writer is Solomon Rushdie.

Now let me think about my background for such an undertaking.

I am already a published, award-winning poet. And so what is there to do, after we have climbed the mountain, asks Donald Justice? We can look down at the valley and regret that we are here with the snow and miss the warmth of the valley?

Climbing literary mountains isn’t exactly what I am out to do. I have always written for therapy.


Viewpoints from Your Mythic Journey

P 10. Make a list of 10 words or phrases that describe you best. I am _____________.

They might be functions, feelings, activities, affiliations (ticket taker, frightened, Rotary Club president, student, competent, clown).

I am a writer who is also a philosophy student. I am anxious to become a better scholar and to exercise more care in my thinking and writing. I am hard working. But I suffer also a serious mental illness. I sometimes deny my mental illness. I am a businessman who has a lot of good ideas but not enough capital. I cannot do many things such as driving a car because I am on medication. I am a good friends.

In what ways are you unique?

I am unique in the sense that I have survived a 3 decade mental illness and still retain enough wits about me to work for the good and to challenge myself into doing more and more. I don’t rest on my laurels either. What I have done is phenomenal all things considered. But I am not going to capitalize on it. I want to keep going and be of help to others.

Putting my money where my mouth is

An exchange of email letters with a friend: George Held

Thanks George, for your kind understanding and moral support.




Koon











-----Original Message-----

From: Geoheld7

To: aimbeanshooter20

Sent: Tue, Aug 17, 2010 4:45 am

Subject: Re: Hi, how are things?





Dear Koon,

I recognize your (Kantian) idealism because it is largely my own, and I'm very interested in what you say about modal philosophy and logic, particularly because our world operates with so little logic from either leaders or followers. I am for rational thinking and for avoiding the slippery slope myself, and I admire your resistance and independence. I too have always felt a stranger in this country and can only imagine what you must feel as an alien, even naturalized (strange word). Camus has been one of my touchstones since I read most of his novels, plays, and stories and THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS in my twenties.



While I am also on FaceBook and post work there, I am not as sanguine about it as a way to find readers as you are. Very few fb "friends" ever comment on any of my posted writing, so I have the feeling that they are not interested in the sort of stuff I write. Still, I admire your willingness to give your poems away; like you, what I want most is READERS.



Please forgive me for suggesting you allow Kaya to publish your new book, and sign me up to buy a copy when it is available.



Best, George



In a message dated 8/17/2010 7:26:49 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, aimbeanshooter20@aim.com writes:

Hi George,



I don't get that much money from Kaya anyway, and so I will self-publish on the Internet and give it free to websites so that the poems will get out there just the same. These days one out of fourteen people in the world are on Facebook and many more on the Internet that are not on Facebook. I have given the entire petry manuscript out to one high school student I met on Facebook. The prose I have not given out yet. People can also download the poems and print them out and give them to friends to read. After all, it is not my compensation that matters to me, but the fact that the poems might do some good somehow. And like you, if I were to "teach" the art of writing poems, my efforts hopefully might motivate others to write and to do a better job at it.



You probably are familiar with the concept of "slippery slope" in philosophy and elsewhere, that if one were to take a step down a slippery slope, one inevitably ends up at the bottom. That's what I am trying to prevent. I am a firm believer in Immaneul Kant's categorical imperatives. Ethics are categorical.



Anyway, I am now reading George Edward Hughes, the Modal Logician, whom I found out was also a student of my philosophy teacher John Wisdom. G. E. Hughes was a philosopher and logician who specialized in modal philosophy and logic and gave the first treatment of modal logic in his seminal work with his student Cresswell in their book, An Introduction to Modal Logic. They were both at Queens' University at Wellington, New Zealand.



This sounds like paranoid thinking, but I am having a lot of difficulties with getting back into school, due to bureaucratic bungling and arcane rules that seem to apply only in my case. It reminds me of Kafka's "Letter to the Academy" in which an ape was thanking the academy for his education.



It looks like a nuclear confrontation with China (which I had assessed to be 50%) just 2 or 3 days ago has been avoided, due to Australia's possible alliance with China (China is now Australia #1 trading partner and the top country of Australias' foreign investments). Even though sea power is no longer invincible due to anti-ship missiles such as the DF-21D missiles China has but peaceful use of sea lanes is still crucial for economic behavior in the development and survival of nations. To this end, China has now become the world's largest ship builder. And their recent port visit of a military boat to Greece was probably no coincidence (since previously Greece was the number one ship builder except for military ships which the US was dominant).



So, the question is, how am I going to survive and do the things that I want to do? If they are "necessary" in the modal sense of the word, then there will be ways to do them. But if they are merely "possible" again in the modal sense of the word, then they might not get done because of the limitations posed by the "actual." This is where your saying that the world is infected with complicity of institutions with various "interest groups" and power elites is accurate. If I were to prosper within the system, that would be the way to go -- to take the crumbs offered. I am not asking for the moon, on the contrary, I am asking for nothing in compensation for roughly 15 years of work in these poems, but merely some honesty in an organization which purports to be honest and truly reflects the Asian Diaspora. I cannot lend my endorsement to that, however great the monetary or other intangible rewards. As you say, I am a "survivor," and now I am beginning to understand what a survivor of the Holocaust must really feel. For the first time in my life, I respect the philosophy of Albert Camus as it applies to the victim, namely, the Arab shot by the protagonist in his book THE STRANGER. I am still a stranger to this country in its view of me and my view of it.



This is no reflection on your beliefs, George, and I shall try to fulfill all my promises and obligations as before. I am an eternal optimist in the sense that if God wants it done, it shall be done.



Your friend,

Koon





-----Original Message-----

From: Geoheld7

To: aimbeanshooter20

Sent: Tue, Aug 17, 2010 3:43 am

Subject: Re: Hi, how are things?









In a message dated 8/16/2010 5:26:50 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, aimbeanshooter20@aim.com writes:

As a consequence, I withdrew my ms. from Kaya because of South Korea's complicity in the naval exercises

Dear Koon,

I understand that your withdrawal is motivated by idealism, but if you're head is cooler, you might want to reconsider. Based on your poems I've read and your previous Kaya book, you really should take this chance to publish a new book with Kaya. Almost all of our institutions are infected with one sort of complicity or another, but the world goes on--not as we'd like but as reality dictates.

Best,

George

The Need to Demonize China

China.jpg (121.87 KB)

2011-1-20 08:49

By THOMAS P.M. BARNETT

President Barack Obama came into office promising a new sort of bilateral relationship with China. It was not meant to be. Washington hasn't changed any of its long list of demands regarding China, and Beijing, true to historical form, has gone out of its way to flex its muscles as a rising power. With the recent series of revelations concerning Chinese military developments, the inside-the-Beltway hyping of the Chinese threat has reached fever pitch, matching the average American's growing fears of China's economic strength.


Of course, the world's established No. 1 power always greets the challenge from a rising No. 2 with fear and trepidation. But in the case of the U.S. and China, there are other reasons why so much of Washington is eager to demonize Beijing. Here's my top 10 list:


1. Unable to curb our spendthrift ways, we demand China do it for us. America has an insatiable appetite for illegal drugs, but instead of rationally dealing with the problem of domestic demand, we push it off onto poorer nations to our south via military aid that does nothing but turn their countries into war zones. Our fight with China over its currency's value is similarly framed: Americans cannot stop spending beyond their means, so we demand China raise its currency to reduce our trade imbalance with the entire world. China has 700 million interior rural poor still awaiting economic uplift, but they're no match for our 535 legislators unable to police themselves.

How can Washington sell this nonsense to the American people? Easy. When polled recently, almost half of Americans wrongly identified China as the world's greatest economic power.


2. China would love to balance trade with America, but America prefers maintaining China in its role as a convenient enemy. I spent December in Beijing speaking with Chinese policy experts, all of whom opined that China would gladly balance its trade with the United States -- if only Washington would allow it. Our government restricts sales of high technology to China, so China buys it in bulk from the European Union. Our government won't sell arms to China. As a result, Russia cleans up. Our government also blocks Chinese investment into "sensitive" industries, so Beijing invests elsewhere. Washington hamstrings our bilateral trade to such a degree because it remains convinced that China is our most-likely opponent in any future great-power war. So today's trade is perceived as aid to tomorrow's enemy.

But have no fear: America sells loads of weapons to all of China's neighbors, so we earn back some of those lost sales.


3. Nixon went to China four decades ago, and the Chinese are still Chinese! After being set on a peaceful path of rapid development under Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s, the gun-shy Chinese people have most decidedly focused on expanding their economic liberties versus their political rights, continuing to submit to one-party rule. Will this social compact last forever? History says no, but it also says that most such explosively growing countries, especially in Asia, remain de facto single-party states for roughly half a century before a truly competitive multiparty dynamic emerges. That suggests we should expect Chinese democracy to arrive sometime in the 2030s, not tomorrow.

But that's not fast enough for Washington, which puts up with authoritarian allies when it cares to -- and demonizes them when it must.


4. We told Beijing there was only "one China" in 1972, and have sold arms to Taiwan ever since. Think back to the U.S. Civil War. Imagine if Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy's dead-enders had slipped away to Cuba in 1865 to set up their alternative, nose-thumbing version of America on that island. Then fast-forward to, say, 1908, and imagine how much the United States would have tolerated some distant imperial power like England telling us what we could or could not do vis-à-vis this "loser" sitting just off our shore. Imagine where Teddy "San Juan Hill" Roosevelt would have told the Brits they could shove their "Cuban Relations Act of 1879." Well, that's basically what U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was told last week in Beijing when he proposed expanded military-to-military ties with the PLA.

Oddly enough, when you sell arms to somebody's "breakaway" region, they take it personally.


5. Our nuclear nuttiness knows no bounds. Nuclear weapons have a perfect record of preventing great-power war for 65 years and counting. But now Obama wants them all gone. The rest of the world wonders, Who would benefit most from this? The obvious answer is, The world's sole conventional military superpower with a lengthy record of toppling regimes that it does not like. So guess what? Nukes are here to stay. China subscribes to such realism, and therefore does not follow America's orders on Iran and North Korea.

Naturally, Washington sees only suspicious obstructionism in this stance.


6. The U.S. Navy and Air Force need China to survive. Prior to Sept. 11, military "transformers" inside the Pentagon had their sights set firmly on "rising" China. Then the Long War against violent extremists came along and ruined the high-tech party, pointedly favoring the manpower-intensive Army and Marines. Now, as America tires of nation-building and counterinsurgency, the Revolution in Military Affairs aficionados are back at it, freaking out over every Chinese military development with a triumphant, "I told you so!" The Pentagon's new AirSea Battle Concept -- otherwise known as the Navy-Air Force Full Employment Act -- seeks to right the bureaucratic wrongs triggered by all those ground casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan by putting the platform-heavy "big war" crowd back on top inside the E-Ring. Five-star Army Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, coiner of the phrase "military-industrial complex," must be rolling in his grave.


7. The neocon fantasy of primacy is alive and well and living in Washington. Per last week's column, it's not enough for America to outspend the world on defense. We've also got to dominate China militarily -- right on its doorstep. Gates last week said that spending anything less than his $553 billion proposed 2012 defense budget would be "potentially calamitous." This week, he vowed to match any Chinese military developments. So what's an alternative? The Long War-strapped U.S. military could use some help in its many overseas responsibilities from the free-riding Chinese. And taking up such an expanded global security role would allow the Chinese to address growing vulnerabilities that result from their dependence on foreign sources of energy, minerals and food. But why should either country's military-industrial complex address real-world challenges together when they can spend so much more money mindlessly scheming against one another?


8. The Pentagon's Big War crowd still dreams of nuclear-free great-power war. Check out the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment's publication, "AirSea Battle: A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept," because it's a real departure from reality. A guiding assumption of the CSBA's war-scenario analysis is that, despite the high likelihood that a Sino-U.S. conventional conflict over Taiwan "would devolve into a prolonged war" in which China would suffer humiliating defeat across the board, mutual nuclear deterrence would be preserved throughout the conflict. And what if China took the desperate step of a nuclear launch? According to the CSBA, "the character of the conflict would change so drastically as to render discussion of major conventional warfare irrelevant."


As strategic miscalculations go, that's a doozy.


In direct response, China's military is allegedly reconsidering its longstanding pledge not to pre-emptively strike with nuclear weapons, although China officially denied those reports. For its part, the U.S. Air Force is already developing plans to fire conventional intercontinental ballistic missiles around the world in a program dubbed Prompt Global Strike, with weapons in space soon to follow. And you thought MAD was bad.


9. We live in an age of fear-based politics. You know the drill: Every Chinese military development, no matter how far off in the future its induction, is now routinely touted in the mainstream media as "imminently deployed." If the Chinese military test-flies its new stealth fighter on the eve of Gate's recent visit, then it's proof positive that the PLA now calls all the shots in Beijing. Faith-based politics now begets fantasy-based intelligence analysis. Who cares what's actually operational? Let's just watch an animator's rendering of what's conceivable and run with that.

We should know better. After all, that's what Ronald Reagan's Star Wars snow job with the Russkies amounted to!


10. We prefer the myth of a monolithic, inscrutable China to actual reality. David Shambaugh's Washington Quarterly article describing the plethora of foreign-policy schools now battling each other inside Beijing is on the money: I met representatives from all of those factions last month, and they are one contradictory lot. They run the gamut from advocates of Chinese primacy, as boneheaded as their American counterparts, to some of the nicest Kantian airheads you'd ever care to meet. And trust me, this internal struggle is far from over. The sad thing is that Washington has already made its choice.


We have seen the enemy, and he is us. That's what happens when you use a mirror to look at the world.