Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Peace Essays

Welcome to Weirdton

(A “virtual” conversation with Father John and Karen)

What is marvelous about the internet is that a conversation can happen over a forum where two or three points of view happen at the same time. It is a lesson in tolerance, understanding, acceptance of differences, fellowship and just having fun with a world that seems to have gone mad today. The forum is part of the communication system for Rotary eClub of the Southwest, USA. It is fellowship and participation.

 A forum is the Rotary eClub way to create an area in which to make long communications and short ones. It does start back when people were trying to figure an area to meet and talk. It has a rich and successful history. "The Roman Forum (Forum Romanum, although the Romans called it more often the Forum Magnum or just the Forum) was the central area around which ancient Rome developed, in which commerce, business, prostitution, cult and the administration of justice took place. Originally it had been marshy ground, which was drained by the Tarquins with the Cloaca Maxima. Its final travertine paving, still to be seen, dates from the reign of Augustus." If we can figure out another place to meet and discuss all kinds of business (global and private), I am all for it but we do need some place to meet in virtual space. What was nice about the original Forum was that once a communication started, it was moved into the home, the business, the government, the bath houses and the social clubs. Unless we meet somewhere, how can we invite others into our special places? The problem as I see it is not the forum itself but the members lack of use of it. Probably not all Romans met in the Forum either to start some fellowship which turned into real communication. The more that one uses it, the easier it is to use. The Forum opened doors for communication and fellowship (but as Fr. John says, "It has to be used.") The Roman Empire may not have grown the way that it did all over the world without the Forum. Therefore what happens on the forum, sane or not, is important to opening the doors of conversation and communications.

Joe: After Wilder’s Our Town and television’s Smallville, I have found Weirdton (it has a population of many and a ton of weird). It is where we all live, I think. I woke this morning and read the newspaper, “Andrea Yates is innocent by reason of insanity” (I agree but a loving mother drowning her five children in my town makes me shake my head), a commercial comes on the TV before I am fully awake with a man in a Carmen Miranda fruit basket hat so I switch and get a man selling something while another in the background in a lobster outfit gets caught in a revolving door and I switch channels again. Now it is the Today Show with interviewers talking to three super heroes, “Nice Man” (in a kind of Superman outfit, made with a body-suit of Spandex and black vinyl pants, who does kind deeds like scooping up children who get too close to water fountains after their mothers tell them, “Don’t get too close to the water!”), Big Momma (who can eat and expand five times her already enormous size and threatens to eat your food if you are not nice to her) and Cell Phone Girl (who can quote all the area codes in the world, even if you don’t need or want the information). At the YMCA, on the stationary bike, dozens were trapped for a half hour with the insanity of national and world news from television sets facing the bikes and treadmills. Later we came home to Kingwood, “The Livable Forest,” a place of sanity and peace.

It is not different than what happened in the past: the rich in the 19th century with their sex clubs, depicted in The Story of O: the leading artists of Europe in the early 20th c going to Zurich to sit out the war and create Dada (a French word found randomly in the dictionary meaning two things: hobby horse and prostitute. They thought: “In a world that has gone crazy, the only sane thing to do is be crazy.”); my Beat Generation during the 1950s and 60s in San Francisco (and other places) which caught the attention of the young and the mavericks (who since have moved to Berkley as bankers and Seattle to host the nude bike parade for Summer Solstice): and now the Super Heroes of the 21^st century on television, made up of just ordinary people who think that they must have super powers. Of course, how can they help hoping to feel that way with American Idol, Survivor, Star One, the local, national and world news.

Father John: My mother always used to grumble about too much introspection. She was a college graduate (Bryn Mawr, '34), had a great intellectual curiosity and was deeply religious. She felt that personal energy should go out more than in. People who did a lot of navel gazing got weird. The common denominator, in most of the cases, is selfishness. “What can I do to make MY life easier, happier, without any thought of others. In fact, a number of cases use other people as objects to satisfy desires. Dare I say lusts? And lust can be for food or things as much as for sex.

I think there is a lot of weird, but a lot of it is very self-centered or self destructive.

Joe: Don't you think that one must love the human element in oneself before one can love outside oneself? Don't all children start self-centered until they learn to reach out and be unself-ish? Centering yourself is not, ultimately, the same as self-centered. In judo, you must be centered. Many religions like Buddhism teach centering of self. I agree that these weird examples (except for Andrea Yates) are people who consciously return to being children again because they cannot deal with the world or need a reprieve from its rigors. Is that so bad as a defense mechanism against a world gone crazy? I think that the test is if the centering is destructive or constructive. I see that difference in war and peace also. When we get in trouble with the world, our first reaction is a centering of self, those we love, and then move out. It is circling the wagons against a hostile environment. The trick, eventually, is to widen the circle of love and understanding. In a crazy world, it is not easy! After working out at the Y and sitting waiting for my wife, Anne, to finish water exercises, I went back to Fr. John's statement that weirdness was self-centered. Sometime it is and sometimes it is a statement about the world we live in. When someone is comfortable in their own skin, they move out the circles of concern. I do this with a problem: "Is it me? Is it our family? Is it the state of this nation and its leadership? Is it the world right now? Is it just the "chaos theory" operating in the universe?" Is it a means to discuss something when I have a problem to solve or something is not right? When problems happen like 9/11 we all narrow those circles to our base, self and family.

The 19th century sex clubs of the "rich and infamous" were certainly the destructive form of self-centered. The Dadaist, which became the Surrealists, were men protesting war. The Rose Revolution, without a shot being fired and no one killed, in the Republic of Georgia would not have been possible without the model of the protests of Dadaist and the "Beat Generation" in the 1960s. The three superhero "ordinary" people may have taken this kind of step to protest: rules without reason, an attack on weight without seeing the person and the craziness of touch-tone phones where you talk to no human being. Of course, they also may have just jumped on a bandwagon that had nothing to do with principle.

Here is a story about one of my protests: We lived on Guam. I worked for the University of Guam. The government who supported the university had learned the US system of triplicate forms without the meaning behind them (sometime you got the copier but was denied the paper for it). I had to renew my business license. I got a card saying that I had to pay $25 for the permit on June 25. I went to the government office and told them that I was taking students to Japan for three weeks and we were leaving on June 20th. The clerk told me that I would have to fly back and sign up for my license. I left, did not come back and protested to the government for the next six months. Christmas came and I was asked to play Santa Claus in the parade in Agana, Guam. After the parade, I went to the government office for permits again in my Santa outfit. I told them that I was Santa Claus and I was there to renew my business permit for passing out the toys to children. The clerk said, "You are not Santa Claus."

 
I asked the fifty people staying in line with me and they agreed that I was Santa Claus in my red suit and white beard. The clerk said, "I have to get my supervisor." She did. He also tried to disprove that I was Santa. The people standing in line would have no part of it, calling out, "Merry Christmas, Santa. I told him that "I was having labor problems with my elves and this was messing up my world schedule of delivering toys." He sent me to the Director of Licenses. I walked in the door and he said, "Santa, here is a list of things that my granddaughter wants for Christmas." I said, "OK, here is my $25 dollars (with penalties over the six months my bills was over $200). I get my license and you get those presents." We shook hands, and then he said, "There is one other thing though you have to go over to the tax office to make sure that you signed up all your elves." I did and they told me to leave. Sometimes, with weirdness, you find a human being in the system with a sense of humor. It worked that one time. Mostly, it does not. But I still remember that weirdness can point out crazy systems which make no sense to ordinary human beings.

On another day, I wrote: Sometimes Weirdton is delightful. Just saw again Cirque du Soleil on television. It is like ballet. It takes you into another world that has harmony, unity, comedy, wonder, magic and great, unbelievable performances. It is like the first time that I saw John Mitchell dance for the New York City Ballet. He lifted a young female dancer unto one hand over his head and walked grandly off stage. It was marvelously weird. I have never seen ballet in the same way since then and it changed in one instance my idea about what ballet was and can be. It was like rolling together Dali with Chagall with Hulk Hogan. Weird can be beautiful and moving and life-changing. Another culture can do the same thing.

Karen: I've always wished to be more educated as my Computer Science degree is more nearly training than it is education and whatever claim I have to being reasonably well-read has been on my own time. Occasionally in my very concrete, always moving life, I wish for one of those "college conversations" when you talked at extreme depth about things you can't influence in the least. The older I get, the more I miss them. While there is some point at which introspection or even extrospection becomes overdone, most Americans are in no danger of reaching it.

Joe: I really like the word, "Extrospection." Thank you, Karen. It makes one think (introspection) about the outside of things for a change. The new weird, by the way, is extrospection (beyond body piercing and tattooing). I saw one guy, named Garcia, who surgically split his tongue to be "different." Now, that for even me, who sometimes respects people who push the envelop of reality, is going beyond weird. All I ask is why? It is going back to tribal maybe, or pre-tribal. I really don't know. No education of any kind, maybe, and certainly no self understanding that difference comes from "just being human." Some of these young people who are doing this body transformation are finding that it gets in the way sometimes and they change back. One young boy could not get into doorways when he surgically had horns implanted so he removed them again. He, I guess, never figured out that we are all different. I envy your knowledge of computers, Karen. It is a tool that I barely use, not splitting anything in that statement, even verbs. How do you split, "en-vy?" Now, that is really weird to even start to think that way. It is extro-spection, right?

Father John: Sometimes it is in the loving of another than a person learns to love himself (or herself) The child is the center of its own universe until he reaches out to touch someone else. That has always seemed to me to be one of the great developmental moments, when a child realizes that there is “other.” We spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out that relationship: what am I and how do I relate to this “other?”

Joe: Your statement about the child in all of us who finally realizes that there is an "other" in the world is a core principle to "Service Above Self." It is a major developmental stage. It is also major in Rotary clubs. Freud said something like this: "I am only trying to find the deepest strata of mankind's emotions." He saw the human being as a tree with rings around the child inside. As we mature, the rings take over and shape the tree but there is always the child deep inside. Cut off a limb and you see the core (the child). The artist is the man or woman who pushes the child to the surface at times (without cutting off limbs) so that we can learn through the practice of "play." The child does what he or she cannot do so that they learn to do it (got that from a Picasso quote).

Again, on another day, I wrote: We have been so serious about learning lately that I want to return to new information about the world that comes under the heading of "Weirdton." Here is the headline: "Pluto faces loss of planet status." I saw this and immediately started to cry. Just think, now only eight planets instead of what I learned in school, the great nine. Pluto may be relegated to the status of "one of the thousands of small, icy objects in the decidingly less glamorous Kuiper Belt, beyond Neptune." What a disaster! "This is a hot issue," wrote Steve Maran, author of Astronomy for Dummies. "They (the secret committee) never rule on things like this... There's a lot more to it than science." Some say that US pride has emerged (Pluto is the only one of the nine planets discovered by an American, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh from Kansas). God, there's the cultural argument for keeping it a "planet" (after 76 years on the list). Will we have to tell all those Kansas and other school children that through the years we have been telling them a "lie?" Some in the international committee have argued that "There used to be seven planets. People thought the sun and moon were planets and the Earth wasn't. Things change." At least they apologized to the school children. "So what!", some say, there are 15 million stars in the sky as bright or brighter than Pluto. But Tombaugh has the last laugh on this bit of nonsense. His remains are on a research spaceship hurtling toward a 2015 encounter with Pluto. In the pantheon of news, this is "real news."

I was in the mood to write again on the next day, therefore I wrote: Oh, it is so nice that the National Gallery assists this forum by opening the largest exhibition of Dadaist works of art at a time when the world has again gone "crazy". They comment: Co-curator of the National Gallery of Art Leah Dickerman says the exhibit "is the biggest American exhibition of the international Dada movement."

According to Dickerman, the Dada label was created in 1916 when two of the movement's leaders, working in Zurich, Switzerland, plucked the word out of a French-German Dictionary.

"They liked the way it sounded infantile and suggested new beginnings. But it also had meanings in different languages … it's 'there, there' in German, 'yes, yes' in Romanian and 'hobby horse' in French … So it didn't belong to any one of the languages of the nations at war," says the co-curator.

Dickerman says that during World War I, when "many new modern technologies and warfare were introduced, like airplanes, machine guns and poison gas," Dadaists began to "question whether you could talk about a rational European civilization."

The other reason that the French artists named the movement DADA was not just for the defination of "hobby horse" but also the one that defined it as "prostitute". You can take that in any direction you wish in Weirdton.

It is also interesting that on the forum there is a section on picture "association". That is a Dada invention, taken from others in the past. Maybe it is time to "guestion whether you could talk about a rational world civilization."

Father John: Keep glued to your news sources, apparently this Friday the "committee" is going to meet to review the status of Pluto as a planet.

I wonder if the Disney Corporation gets to make a statement.

Joe: Do you think that if the committee demotes Pluto from "planet status", they will rename it Minnie Crystal or Minnie Place to make Disney happy?

A day later: It gets weirder everyday. Just as Fr. John evokes the name of Disney (in conjunction with the loss of Pluto's planet status), the International Astronomical Union, meeting in Prague, came to a "miracle" decision. Pluto will be a planet (they still have to vote but the recommendation is unanimous). Oh, happy day, when Pluto stays a planet. The problem is that the same committee is asking to add three more planets: Ceres, in the asteroid belt that is between Mars and Jupiter; Charon, once considered Pluto's moon; and 2003 UB313, far beyond the orbit of all the other planets. The new definition of a planet is: 1) the object must orbit a star and 2) must be large enough that its own gravity pulls it into a nearly spherical shape. There will be eight "classical" planets (not Pluto) and others (smaller in size than Mars). Oh happy day, that means that in the future we might have two dozen or more planets. Jamie Scott, an 8th grade science teacher at Houston's Pine Oak Middle School, said he welcomed the changes, "even if they make the solar system a little sloppier." I can now dry my tears over the fate of Pluto and get on to more serious weird things: like hearing over the radio that one woman loves to have long lashes some day. In fact, that woman stated publicly: "I would die for long lashes." Logically, if she gets them, she will not be able to show them since she will have died. At least one problem in the world is solved. If we can't define a planet, what can we define? And if the definition does not fit, expand it to fit the scientific and historical past. We can even get rid of war; redefine it!

Father John: Alice through the Looking Glass - I can make words mean whatever I choose. We saw it with Hitler, through the days of the Soviet Union and certainly the tradition continues with many politicians today.

One of the things for which Jesuits are most known is our concern with definitions. You can't get into the meat of a conversation until you know what the words mean and that everyone is using the words in the same way.

Is 2 + 2 = 4 a hard fact? Well, only in a base ten number system.

Jono: Victory
Disney has clout!
Pluto will be around for another few years.

Joe: The sun cannot show its face again. The moon has vanished in the ocean. All birds have lost their ability to fly. Songs have stopped in open throats. Children's dreams are dashed on the rocks of history. And Pluto has been demoted to a dwarf. No, not one of Snow White's friends, the astronomical kind. I reported that the International Astronomical Union's Conference in Prague was going to take in additional planets and therefore Pluto would be saved. But no! They voted against it. Pluto is no more in the science books as one of the nine major planets. Now, there are only eight. This morning when I heard, the world stopped for a time and everything moved suddenly backwards. Is there no justice in the world for a 75 year old "planet" that is no more? Even Mickey Moose shed tears this morning and Minnie was bed ridden for a time. No one could save Pluto. Without that small neighbor to our north, or is it east, west or south, hmmm, anyway, how can we bring order back to the world since it it changing all the time? How do I explain this to my granddaughter, 7, and grandson, 3? How do I explain this to Tombaugh? It was accurately reported, I believe, that the ground over his partial remains turned a little this morning. At least the other remains of that unlucky astronomer Tombaugh will be seeing his "planet-who-was" again in 2015 when the space ship lands on that dwarf, Pluto. Don't shed any tears. Tombaugh will cry for us all. Maybe Pluto has gone to a better place.

Oh, Father John, 2+ 2 is now 8, or 22 or a parable for Noah's Ark or.... Jono, Disney has no clout in the celestial power ball game! What is left? Maybe, Stephen, as our elected president, might have the ability to restore Pluto. Our US president gives pardons. We could make him, or her, or it, a new, honorary member of RECSWUSA. be around for another few years.

Father John: Ah, my Rotarian brother, sorrow not. Remember, 2 + 2 = 4 only in a base 10 number system. You have to define your universe of discourse before you can make a statement of fact within that universe.

And so the astronomers have re-defined their universe. Not necessarily mine. I am interested in what they decide to call a planet - but it does not necessarily mean that I put flowers on the symbolic grave.

It's not that Pluto no longer exists, merely that some people have decided to call it something else. And certainly, more people have thought about, talked about, written about that little special speck in the last weeks than in the last years.

Probably time to move on to another exciting intergalactic event.

Joe: Oh "sblood," in honor of the loss of Shakespearian language, and as a cry of Vox Clamatis En Deserto. It is calming, my Rotarian, Jesuit pragmatist, to know that scientists and priests are clarifying their language and its roots. I went back and read again Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance racing to see if I was one of those who read the instructions or just reeved up the engine again. This is a triumph, I agree, for clarity and definition. My children tell me "less is more" ("Dad, keep it simple. That is clarity.") and yet I go to F.L. Wright's statement that "Less is more only when more is not better." I too like to have a universe where all my terms are defined and when we use words we all know what they mean. My classmates at Dartmouth College, in the distant past, were Daniel Webster and Dr. Zeuss. So I am torn between these two learned men for definitions. But, at least, I have heeded the advice, from now on I will let Pluto exist as it is, redefined but immortalized. I will say no more in lament of status. By the way, I hear that certain "saints" are redefined from time to time too. Now, that is not on a scientific basis, is it? I must go now to the Houston Museum of Natural Science and see their exhibit of bodies, BodyWorld3, before they too go away to another venue. 

(add the following to Kagle Peace Essays, Out of the Box, the essay on…”conversation on the forum…it should come after Fr. John's statement: “Well, only in a base ten number system.”)

Jono: Alas, Pluto has been downgraded by modern Technology. I am not sure if that is good or bad.
I suppose change is not all bad, it is just a change!
Sad, but it also means that new things will also be discovered.

Joe: Yes, Jono and Fr. John, I am glad to move on to other "intergalactic events" but first I need to comment on definitions. I guess that I would call this Finding the Uncertainty by Defining Paths. Also maybe it is time for a new international conference. I start with a story:

One day in the studio, I was looking out the window at the landscape. I knew from my art history books that all the world could be defined for centuries as landscape, still-life and portrait, with historical, mythological and everyday scenes thrown in. (Those crazy guys Picasso and Einstein threw in time as an element in my definition of "what is".) On that day, I made an observation. There was dust in the air between what I saw and my eye, with the patterns constantly shifting. Also because of our Renaissance education in perspective, I was trained to see on a flat surface yet I knew that the back of my eyes were curved and the image that I saw was projected upside down and my mind turned it around the “right way”. Afterwards, I read all that I could about the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty (which states that one cannot measure values of certain “conjugate quantities” which are pairs of observables of a single elementary particle). Therefore on that day, I made up the patterns for the dust in the air as I saw fit, blending it with the observed scene. In science, that is called the Observer Effect which refers to several things in different situations, though they are similar. In physics, it is that one cannot see the size and speed of an electron because the tools that you are using to observe it changes the size and speed of the element that you are trying to observe. In Information Technology, that has the same potential impact of observing a process output while the process is running. It is trying to see life while you are still living maybe. In Social Science, it is changing human behavior while you are observing human behavior because you are observing human behavior.

It hurts my head to think of all this. Anyway, the question is: Is it possible to see anything, define anything, know anything because of the tools that we are using for observation: our senses, our education, our culture, our human condition, our religions, etc? How can we define a term when the observer changes the circumstances of the observation in the act of defining the term? In the song How Can We Keep The Music Playing, there is the line: "And since we are always changing, how can it be the same?" (which refers to love, of course). I am sure that song writer didn't even study the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty.

This does not bother me at all (I sing the song anyway) since I figured out long ago that I am a reasoned observer who is a romantic also. The one colors the other and sometimes leads me into weird places. Naming the unknown has always been fun. Rainy, misty days are my time and place. The fog in the early morning is my friend. Therefore, just for fun and the romance of thought, I propose a conference of human beings, similar to the one just held in Prague for the astronomers. It would be called the International Homo Erectus Convention and would attempt to define certain words: God, Truth, Culture, Love, Friendship, Fellowship, Goodwill, Peace, Time, Space, Death, Life and a list of others that will come with the participants. We would have referees who would make sure that our context for definition was always appropriate (whatever that might mean since we will have to define the rules too.) It will be held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia because it is a safe place to discuss heady things, or the Marshall Islands, or certain shrines, temples, churches and forums around the world. I know nothing would come of it but it would be “a joy to behold”.

OK, let's move on. I will not comment again on defining things (well, maybe). But I can't resist one last question: "How many legs does a horse have?" Answer as of August 27th., 2006, 6:50 am, Central Standard time, "It depends on the shutter speed."

Joe: What is interesting about this overlapping conversation on a Forum for a Rotary eClub is that this is unique for Rotary. It is pure play which is the first fun action between individuals who are trying to relax and find peace. People who can laugh together can work together. It is mental improvisation which takes hold of the whole person, leaving no room for hostility or destructive thinking. It is what a forum in a Rotary eClub can do (not everything but one thing).

And so the conversation goes on and on, switching channels of the mind, conjuring little idea tricks with each other, finding new weird things to bring to light and just playing with thoughts, feelings in virtual time and space. It is the beginning to any kind of peace with YOU. You must find a comfort zone to let loose and explore things. It is playing on the highest and lowest levels at the same time. It is fun and if you can get people to laugh together, you can find a secret place where peace is possible.