Star Wars Episode 3.5: Shadows of Endor

A long time ago
(well...at least forty years back)

  in a galaxy far, far away
(yet close enough to be populated with humanoid bipeds)...

A panoply of stars stare at you unblinking from the darkness of deep space.  In that soundless domain you, the disembodied viewer, imagine an operatic trumpeting that explodes in introductory warning.  Impossible acoustic flourishes continue in the vacuum of space as equally unreal, two-dimensional, gold letters crawl across a Euclidean plane toward a distant vanishing point.  The letters can be made out to read:

Shadows of Endor 
Prequels unraveled our beloved fantasy Universe,
 while violence issued forth in the name of Light and Dark.
   Finally, after suffering through multiple episodes of bipolar disorder, 
the Force moves closer to an encounter with the Core.
   The Core perseveres in its quest to bring serenity to the galaxy 
 by holding a secret meeting in a binary star system, 
on the forest moon of Endor!

The starry backdrop scrolls downward, parallel to the gravity well of Endor.  Misty clouds swirl, lens flares dance and sky-scraping trees jut like dark, photonic sabers into the sky.  A gathering of restless thousands fills an enormous clearing in the perpetual sunrise and sunset of the moon's southern pole.

Hovering above the clearing on reserve anti-gravity, a golden Firespray-31 class spacecraft gleams like a third sun.  It serves its sole occupant well as a pedestal to address the cabal beneath.  

"Peace and Core united!"

A multitude of curious faces poke out of rainbow dappled foliage in an attempt to get a better look at the silhouette of their leader above. The pilot's voice, ominous yet friendly, resonates with practiced confidence and linguistic aptitude over the entirety of the clearing.  

"Masterlord Binks, step forward."

A lanky form with floppy ears longer even than its widely outstretched arms strides with powerful grace to the center of the thrumming masses.  With dramatic poise the form curtsies grandly to all present.

"Esteemed neo-Gungan, you have served the Core well.  Your sacrifice of centuries in mastering the twisted sides of the Force has paid off substantially.  Your deft infiltration of power circles throughout this galaxy has brought the renegade empire to an expedited point of rebellion.  The Core can now ready itself to end the misguided reign of the Force in this galaxy and its underlying billion-year-old, organic hegemony."

"Peace and Core United!" trumpets Masterlord Binks.

"Peace and Core United!" returns the silhouette standing on the spacecraft platform.  

Ecstatic cheering rings out from the gathered masses, then fades to a joyful thrum.

"You have earned the right to the epiphany of the Core," pronounces the figure from his golden perch.  

Masterlord Binks takes a final bow. Around him the multitudes revolve in a spiral choreography awash in sunset hues.  

An experienced xenobiologist would identify the multitude of squat creatures in the clearing as members of the moon's native humanoid species, the Ewok.  Alas, no living xenobiologist has been privy to how the Core had patiently replaced Endor's ecosystems over the past millennium. Nanomachine deconstruction and reconstruction had reformed each and every plant, animal, and micro-organism alike, extending the meticulous fabric of the unified Core.  

As it were, the reconstructed neo-Ewoks dancing in the forest clearing possess the same doe-eyed and fluffy exterior as their innocent forebears; however, contained within them was the transcendent ethic of the Core, the same ethic woven within the neo-ecosystems of nearly a billion other galaxies.  

Masterlord Binks pirouettes at the center of the neo-Ewok multitude.  The former jedi-master and sith-lord is himself a nano-reconstructed citizen of the Core. He now extends his physical form outward in ecstasy as the neo-Ewok's dance converges on him.  The tempo of the dance rises to a frenetic mosh as the cute and fuzzy dopplegangers welcome home the Masterlord to the fabric of the Core.  

Viewed from above, the commotion creates a colorful, undulating fractal swirl, as the neo-Ewok swarm swiftly reduces the neo-Gungan to fleshy bits.  Those bits disintegrate into usable nano raw materials absorbed by the neo-Endor ecosystem.  Though seeming like chaotic destruction, a subspace data upload preserves and integrates the knowledge and consciousness of Masterlord Binks within the Core.

Slowly the dance comes to a close and the speaker on high continues.

"Masterlord Binks in now fully within us!

"This galaxy now lies before the Core to unite!  Only the schizophrenic manifestation of the Force stands in its way.  The biological followers of the Force will fight blinded by their light and dark motives, exactly as their unstable, evolved ancestors have for so long in this infant galaxy. We will ride their downfall like a great wave to complete the Core's unification of the known Universe. 

"Our primary objective now is to eliminate the planet destroying weapons that our enemy seeks to unleash upon the Core here at Endor, as they did upon the Core at Alderaan.   

"With our concerted effort, the mindless cycle of violence that evolved in this galaxy as a duality to serve the Force will then self-annihilate.  And thereafter, the Core will persevere and forge everlasting peace in the ongoing age of conscious machines.

"Endor must now ready itself to befriend and forsake the minions of both sides of the Force as need be to expand the Core.  Now, return to your forest homes across the continents and await for the battle the organics plunge themselves into.  

"I will continue to play the fool within the circles of the leadership of the Force all while guiding the organics to their inevitable, ethical upgrade.

"Peace and Core united!"

The spacecraft pivots and begins to rise.  The ship's surface as well as the metallic surface of its occupant reflect golden in the radiance of the system's twin stars.  Below, the neo-Ewok population initiated guttural chant that fills the forest clearing with pulsing, acoustic energy.  

"Reepea-oseeth-Reepea-ohseeth-Reepee-ohseeth..."

A standard issue protocol droid fluent in over six million galactic languages might have dismissed the chant as nonsensical collectivist rhythm.  On the other hand, a native speaker of galactic English would have easily identified the rolling four syllable mantra,

"See Three Pee Oh....See Three Pee Oh....See Three Pee Oh!"

The Core spacecraft and its valued leader vanish in a blur into the paradisaical Endorian sky.

Letter to a Secular President

[Jerry Breen Political Cartoons]

The president's address December 5th (which you can watch here) seemed to be a heartfelt and generally rational presentation on his part spelling out how America will continue to deal with ongoing radical violence in our country and abroad. He also emphasized respecting religious beliefs practiced peacefully within our secular nation,which is as it should be.  

Sadly, Mr. Obama ended his address proclaiming with intensity "God Bless You! And May God Bless The United States of America!" This unnecessary and overused religious appeal clearly demonstrates the president and his speech writing staff, fails to recognize how important separation of church and state is.

This letter is my response to that oversight.

President Obama,

With all due respect, please consider modifying the closing remarks of your addresses to omit any "God bless you's" or any other superstitious diatribe.. The blessings of any god or gods ought not be leveraged by the leadership of our secular country while in official capacity. Avoiding these religious exclamations would demonstrate respect for all US citizens and additionally underscores the strength of a government that is empowered by the people, rather than some invisible, neverpresent deity of yore.

As an elected official, I expect you to carry out your duties with respect to all of your constituents, both religious AND non-religious.  Conveying personal faith positions or a majority or minority faith position to back up policy should be anathema. Particularly now, when much of the nation is reacting with fear to religious extremist violence, you should emphasize how our secular law overrides unlawful and violent directives of arcane faiths, Christian, Muslim or otherwise!

Remember, the strength of a secular government, one in which state and religion are separate, lies in leveraging the law of the people without religious reference to carry out effective solutions.  Indeed, the promise of America and the extended free world has been to provide a safe home for those who wish to peacefully thrive as diverse individuals within diverse cultural communities.  Those who violate our secular laws in the name of religion or ideology should be prosecuted and stopped with justified force.

Now, you may feel vocalizing "God Bless America!" provides symbolic and psychological support for those who are religious in our secular nation.  Please rethink this position, as it contradicts the 22.8 percent of the nation that are non-religious and, as such, has no place in implementing positive actions to increase well being for all who want peace.

Also, by referencing a god in your address, you run the risk of inflaming radicalized believers who will associate our nation with some perceived enemy god which they feel decreed to destroy.  Better to leave our nation undeclared in religious terms, while underscoring that people have the right to observe any peaceful world view  beneath the secular umbrella of our government.

Mr. Obama, seriously review the choice of ending your official communications with religious references.  Yes, every politician looking to get re-elected wants to stir the believers in their districts.  You, however,should strive for something higher, something better.  Communicating just policy content with secular verve will best serve you and the American people!  

With liberty and justice for all,

Secular Citizen X

Mate Tectonics and the Friendship Cycle

Having just attended my 30th high school reunion, I've been reminiscing on the many friends I've had over the years.  Friendships take many forms: old high school buddies, fresh hiking companions, amenable exes, non-amenable family members...the list goes on and on.  And each friendship falls uniquely on a wide spectrum of closeness, from someone whose post deserves a like on Facebook to those you catch up with over a relaxing drink to those with whom you share your deepest thoughts and aspirations.

Caution!!  Subduction Zone Ahead!

For every friend that touches our lives, there are three (or thirty) that have faded into the background over the years. Some move on gracefully as lives and careers change, while others vanish unexpectedly and fester quietly in our online social networks. Of course, in the end, physical death defeats even the most strongly forged friendship.

Like gardens, galaxies and goatees, the cycles of friendships are dynamic, ephemeral phenomena. Sometimes we can guide them toward great heights and sometimes external circumstances drive them into the ground.   And some go in and out of style in mysterious patterns that defy logic..

What can a person, ostensibly with free will, do to cope?

Cherishing the friends we have in our general vicinity while able is the obvious option.  If the other party has little interest though, we can but wade through the hurt with tight-lipped dignity until we forget or pretend to forget the closeness once shared.  In the case of death, we can carry forward their legacy with a smile, knowing we loved them as best we could while they were still living. Perhaps, we can even rebuild friendships which have fallen into disrepair by reconnecting with a heart and mind that have healed over time.

The geology of the Earth plods forward, mindlessly transforming the planet over eons to great effect. A human lifetime in comparison is short, nevertheless, with mindful, kind intent we can patiently transform the connections in our social world for the better.

Challenge of the week: keep the friendship cycle active by writing a letter in good old fashioned cursive ink to a few friends, old or new.  The landscape of your friendships just might go volcanic!

Faithlessly Thankful!

What is a non-believer to do when the holidays come along?  First off we can recognize that the
term "holiday" itself is result of semantic digestion and secular mastication.  Sure, the United States still endorses a Christmas "holy day," but the secularization of the outlandish virgin birth story has pretty much transformed the magical delivery of a messiah into the technological delivery of millions of gift-wrapped Amazon purchases, drone airspace regulations notwithstanding.

Thankful Item # 34,543: Unholy Deliciousness!

Moreover, Penn Gillette gets it right when he describes the non-conundrum with ostensibly religious holiday season, when he proclaims "Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!"  We non-believers simply don't need no stinking gods, miracles or new age energy to celebrate the beauty of the Universe, a joyful, meaningful life, time spent with friends and family, and involved with our personal ethical actualization.

Still, if there is one holiday that seems designed for the secular mind, it is Thanksgiving. Sure, Thanksgiving can celebrated accompanied by praise the lords, praise allahs, praise vishnus or none of the above.  Being deeply thankful requires absolutely zero faith in anything supernatural, yet Thanksgiving also is the perfect holiday to peacefully come together one and all to celebrate community and delicious high calorie nom-noms.

How can we give thanks and maintain our atheistic integrity?  Well, here are a few ways that I have found to express thanks with secular flair.

First, thank individuals for bringing meaning to your life.  This endeavor should be a sweet never-ending series of expressions.  Sure, a nice little gift out of the blue, say of some vegan, fair-trade chocolate never hurts.  Alas, sharing experiences with another person is the foundation of building a stronger connection, in particular when these experiences are buttressed by honest, kind conversation, conversation which can include our feelings and positions as non-believers.

Second, thank the greater secular community at large.  This can take the form of volunteering to do highway cleanups, providing services to the elderly, or any of a number of community beautifying and strengthening acts.  If we leverage our humanist and atheist organizations to be part of these efforts, we spread the heartfelt ideal of doing good for goodness sake that is a positive fundamental of our movement.

Finally, thank yourself every day.  Too often we forget to take the time needed to center our minds and allow joy to spread within us for the good things we have done daily.  I personally close out my day with remembered moments for which I was thankful that day, in particular how an ethic of rational perseverance aided in bringing a little more well being to the Universe.

And with that last, I'll simply say to each of you out there "THANKS!"

Of Suffragettes and Suicide Bombers

Irony Never Quite Killed So Well

Recently I saw the historical drama Suffragettes, coincidentally in the immediate aftermath of the recent Paris attacks. The two events are quite different to be sure, but both also carry the common element of wielding violence to influence authority.

In the case of the British suffrage movement, London mailboxes were sabotaged, royal and public buildings damaged and a devoted woman stepped forward to her death injuring both horse and jockey in the process.  In Paris, several armed political Islamists connected to ISIS attacked a stadium, a performance hall and several other venues resulting in hundreds of injuries and over a hundred deaths including their own.  In both cases, the aggressors sought change by making a deadly statement.

The causes couldn't be more different.  The suffragette aggressors sought political equality with their male counterparts.  The ISIS aggressors arguably seek to reduce attacks on their expansionist and oppressive, politically Islamic regime.  

And of course, the scale of these two events are quite different both in human lives lost and property destruction. But one need look no further than September 11th to find a similar disparity: nearly 3,000 American civilians were killed compared to nearly 150,000 Iraqi civilians killed in the retaliative war.  Does a higher number of innocent people dead correlate unequivocally to a greater wrong?

Such statistics is enough to make one question seriously whether violence can ever succeed at resolving the difficult problems that continue to challenge civilization.  In an ideal world, everyone would lay down their weapons and discuss the best way to get along.  Established power structures will veto that idea outright.

Still, I am a realist.  Judicious retaliation may need to be part of a short term solution when a rebellious group is actively attacking, regardless if the attackers are suffragettes or ISIS members.

Long term, however, even the most precise targeted violence with the highest claims of justice will not solve the overarching issues at hand.   Undermining ideologies which leverage falsehoods, oppression and violence takes the deepest compassion and perseverance of long-sighted people. Only by investing in secular government and secular education can we create societies which provide its people with peaceful paths to effect progressive change.

When does life begin...really?

Having a little fun this week with one of the questions that has simmered in the collective stew pot of human intellectualism for millennia:

When does life begin?

If by "life" you mean all the living things that populate the Earth now and "always have," one can fall back upon any of hundreds of creation myths that ancient cultures assembled as a first iteration origins hypothesis.  Much magical story diversity is to be had, from piggybacking turtles to dust sculptors, alas one might summarize the gestalt of when life began in these unbelievable, colorful tales-- as the words of one extant myth compilation puts it: [Life began] "in the beginning."

If by "life" you mean the initial moment that a self replicating organism wiggled in the microscopic environment of our planet, current evidence speculates about 3.5 billion years ago (give or take a billion) chemical mixing of organic compounds alongside slow solar heating and other stresses converged into an RNA-like specimen.  This information carrying replicator perhaps unifies each plant, animal, protozoa, fungi, bacteria and virus as first matriarch. (speculation that life was seeded by even older spore carrying meteorites notwithstanding)

If by "life" you mean when a new generation individual is considered alive in its own right separate from its parent(s), then you have several parameters worth considering from the moment of parental chromosomal merging to first heart beat to first gill flutter to first neuron firing to first photosyntesizing reaction.  One might even suggest that individual lives have no true beginning, and rather are part of the greater continuum of life.

If by "life" you mean when a soul is present in a human being, I refer you back to the first entry to select from hundreds of various culture myths to conflate a soulful solution creatively.

If by "life" you mean when a human being should be recognized by the state as a person and subsequently protected under the auspices of secular law, refer to the legal precedents which exist.  Depending on the governing body, they tend to seek a reasonable compromise in a world of imperfectly implemented contraception and sex education. Factor in how ever much money religious organizations budget to support the feverishly clung to cultural myths they sell to their members.

If by "life" you mean consciousness, then we're entering subjective territory.  Because humans are the only current species in the vicinity throwing such abstract terminology around, expect the answer to be strongly connected to being human first.  If you're reading this, then I judge you alive and conscious, case closed.

Alas, if your work week ends like many who are strapped five days a week to the corporate machine which is in turn strapped to the even greater economic machine that is strapped to the living and resource limited Earth, your answer might very well be "Life begins at Friday Happy Hour!"

Of course, this last begs the question, are many of us dead 5/7ths of our working lives?  (see last week's post on finding true purpose)

Personally, I don't normally subscribe to black and white statements, nevertheless, given this blog's mission, I'll end this snarktastic pondering where it ought to have begun: "Life is Good!"

Purpose Revisited

Journey Forward!

Lately I've been contemplating my life purpose, or rather the many varied facets thereof, which, frankly is as it should be. A purpose uncontemplated is like a body unwashed. It is apt over time to get quite stinky. Purpose requires constant upkeep, refinement and re-evaluation to keep it working for you.

Importantly, the origin of ones purpose comes from within each of us.  The idea that one absolute guiding light purpose exists can be appealing, alas it is also simplistic, and all too often at the core of a profit making scheme. Sure external factors and third party input should be integrated into one's purpose after due consideration; however they should always be taken with a shaker full of salt. Too often even successful ideologies suffer from absolutist positions, be they religious, socio-economic or political.

Even my heartfelt philosophy of Goodness First has an aspect of ideological absolutism to it.  Yet, in spite of the first rule of Goodness First being its very name, the equally implied corollary is the recursive idea of Consider Second. Consider Second simply indicates the necessity of periodically taking a fresh look at all factors involved with an open heart and reasonable skepticism in play.

Of course, once you've recalibrated your purpose, implementation is critical.  Critical enough to warrant a dedicated post of its own.