By Francis Marion of Canadiangunblog.com
Last week I got a call from one of the few close, personal friends I have. He tells me he has kidney cancer. It’s a tumour the size of a baseball he says and they are slotting him in for surgery this week. They are removing his kidney; right lickety split now.
I sat with him the day before last and talked about the ordeal. Intellectually he knows he can live just fine with one kidney and it doesn’t appear the cancer has spread beyond the single tumour that has been found so he expresses confidence. But under the veneer of stalwart acceptance lingers a fear of death or worse, the possibility of a productive life whose capacity to function will be greatly curtailed.
My friend is a good man who cares about his family, community, and his country. He feels he still has a lot of work to do in this world and is not ready to step down because of cancer. I can tell that being out of the game is more frightening to him than the prospect of dying.
He makes me think.
As I get older I begin to see that human beings can be separated fairly neatly into several different intellectual categories. There are essentially three different types: Those whose minds are inquisitive and that long to be free, those whose minds are closed and long to be free from discomfort and those whose minds are made up and are happy to cause discomfort in others so that they may avoid internal or external reassessment of any kind.
The interesting part is that these mind sets are not divided by any particular physical or chronological feature.
I’ve met a lot of older people who have never grown, who rarely if ever self assess or question anything about their environment and I’ve met some younger people who, in terms of their outlook on existence, are decades ahead of their age.
IQ is not a determining factor in perspective either. I have met Bantu hunters with low IQ’s whose outlook on human life is more holistic than most people I know, and whose hospitality and manners exceed those with IQ’s twice their own. I’ve also met people with IQ’s considerably higher than mine who lack any sense of perspective, decency or ability to empathize with others.
Life and people it seems, are not always as simple as we would like them to be.
On pondering this quasi paradox and wondering how we have arrived in a place and time where we are as divided as we are now I ended up speaking with an older gentlemen who works for me about my observations and the why of it all. He is probably one of the deeper thinkers I know and he sums it up thusly:
There is no longer a core.
There is nothing left at the centre, marxism having done its job well, for the populations of the West to rally around as a whole. So we find ourselves either with blinders fully raised in an attempt to avoid the problem or at odds with one another locally because we have little in common.
For a while after returning from Africa I wondered: how can it be that I have more in common morally with the Bantu I hunted with in August than I do with the school teacher living across the street from me? I suppose it is what is at the core. Simple values, like respect for one another’s property, acknowledgement of simple elemental truths and humility and wonder in the face of the unknown.
At any rate I hope my friend pulls through his surgery this week, good friends being rare as they are, and the nucleus of what will be required to rebuild once this turning gets into full swing.
Because it’s what’s at the core that counts the most. Everything else is just window dressing.
Nonsense. The core is empire and money printing. Sure we disagree on who gets the newly printed money, but the core fully accepts empire and money printing. We worship that little pyramid on the almighty dollar. Just like the slaves who built that pyramid.
Whoosh………right over your tradition hater head, eh?
I get it, FM, I think we’re at the apathy to dependence stage, soon back into bondage. I hope your friend pulls though as well.
I have met many “older” ( as I now consider myself old) people who act as if they are never going to die. Sweating the small stuff 24/7. This never fails to amaze me, as I have keep this inenvitable outcome in my thoughts since the age of 13. Reading philosophy and religious texts to find a meaning in this experience. Never bought the idea that he who dies with the most toys wins. “The sorcerer knows that death stalks him. Look behind you, over your right shoulder, Death is there.” – Carlos Castaneda
You’re right. I work off and on with a guy who has all kinds of developmental problems, mild schizophrenia, scoliosis, very low IQ but he is humble, patient, kind and we work side by side on projects as if we’d been doing it all our lives. I’ve worked with guys that were so smart it made me seem feel like strap-hanger when they’d talk, but inside there was nothing- no values, no decency, no compassion.
Sometimes you see a big tree just go down in a storm and when you look at it the only part that was still alive was the bark and the branches, the wood all rotten and soft from decay and that was all it took, a good wind and some rain. You can’t tell from the outside what’s going on beneath the surface but if you look really hard the truth is there. You’ll see.
Great piece and a perfect photo to go with it.
The core of the people is the core of the country. If one is rotten the other soon follows and the whole thing falls apart.
When I think about it that’s the reason it’s important to keep people with a solid core near us. It’s what will be needed to rebuild one day, there being no magic dirt.
I have seen you write “I wish you were my neighbor” once or twice to myself and others. The feeling is mutual and is extended to many who post here. Would that it were…
Francis, I lost a friend last week, blew his brains out with a shotgun in a police standoff. Over probably nothing. Known him since middle school, we played baseball in high school, great dude. We lost track about ten years ago, but he was living a different life than it seems he was now, married, kids, had a little tile business he inherited from his dad. No idea what happened to him, I’d guess divorce, maybe drinking or drugs, who knows. We’re mortal. I think most people on this blog are stronger types, but things happen, and the obongo years weren’t kind to small business.
http://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/2017/11/09/nightmare-resident-says-after-standoff/847804001/
I think our lives have become too artificial and chaotic. We are no longer living the way God or the Universe or however you’d like to see it meant us to. It wears on the soul. People sink into despair. Once you’re there it’s very difficult to climb back out.
The worm has always been at the core. When consciousness revealed it, the shitfest began.
Our Aussie shepherd had to go in for emergency hysterectomy recently. Defending her intactness had been my stance, but infection forced a change in footwork. She isn’t conscious, so far as I can tell, of the worm. She doesn’t shitfest.
Friends are exceedingly rare. (I have extra, uncounted, fingers on one hand.)
Dogs, which don’t shitfest the nature of the fiesta, the coming siesta, are famous friends. There just might be a connection.
Good, because true, to see IQ lose some points. The integrity quotient is far more important. And what fear does to integrity, all too often. “No atheists in foxholes,” for example.
I forget – is Hunter S. Thompson back from the dead
Is that a compliment, or is HST above your pay grade? Are you a usual, or unusual, suspect?
I think the comparison is inappropriate.
i forget is not a druggie.
i forget is not writing gonzo journalism
i forget decorates his comments with free association.
hst let his imagination run wild but it was never suggestive, it was flat out paranoid.
I’ve read all I care to read from KeisterSauced. Even his straight prose is pointless. Fuck.
Danka, El C. It’s true: Just cuz you see drugs doesn’t mean there is drugs. Or schizophrenia. Or even paranoia – which also still doesn’t mean they ain’t after you.
Maybe “she had the sightless eyes telling me no lies” applies. Ac? Dc? Both? Neither? Lightning is static E. & maybe ecstasy, in a bottle. Friction – sexual\asexual? Prolific, anyway. & close to fiction. Like fondling father Ben’s key to the lockbox republic, “if you can keep it.” Zeus friction founding fertile ground, for sure. & the fiction that leaves it to readers to fill in the blank…slate…that ain’t. Often, the slate-plate is so full already there’s no room for any more. Blessings of forgetting – unchalking some slate estate, opening up the space for better uses. Just so long as it’s via free market & not eminent domain.
Comparisons are often odious. & dubious. Similes & metaphors & such are ok, in any mixture.
But I like HST. Ralph Steadman, too. Artist brothers of different medium mothers of inventions that’ll really zappa ya’. Possibly. They’re not for everybody. But what or who, is?
Steadman’s admission-characterization of the mystery whence art reveals itself is deflating & inflating simultaneously. I like it. Some Ralph quotes
http://www.azquotes.com/author/14037-Ralph_Steadman
I do not know who said this but I like it. “God is a comedian who is playing to an audience who is afraid to laugh”
Search engine spits it was that coffee-fiend Voltaire that said it.
Western Man has loss the ability to make sound judgements because he has rejected our first founding document ,the Bible .Here in America our once core common religion is now Ban from the public square and our schools .Now powerful forces are trying to ban Christianity from society.Our once core beliefs are now mocked .This with mass Third world immigration has caused divisions which has resulted in no Common culture , language ,Traditions or past history.We have no common anything with many people we come into contact with.We are a nation of strangers.
You may never understand
How the stranger is inspired
But he isn’t always evil
And he isn’t always wrong
Though you drown in good intentions
You will never quench the fire
You’ll give in to your desire
When the stranger comes along.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WACqMspX8I
TPB have replaced Christian Values with Cultural Communist Values and that is why so many people have become mass murders. We have always had guns cars but not such crime until the leftist ZOG took over in the 1960s. It is not Christians shooting up churches, schools, bars, and crowds or using aircraft & automobiles as WMD. PS: BB, you are right to become outraged but I’m sure your Righteous Anger will be constructive.
The older gentleman who works for you is a wise man, and you are a wise man to have him in your employ. Very well written, FM. Best wishes for your friend and his health.
While driving this morning, I saw a young 20-something girl, wearing rainbow-colored yoga-pants, egress from a car with a Bernie Sanders sticker proudly posted on its trunk. She seemed very happy and content in her My Little Pony world and it just pissed me off even more than I was before (didn’t think it was possible).
Most days I just try to get out of my own way. When I look at the barn smoldering, my anger burns bright. When I look at the moon, I realize it is all WAY bigger than me. I have weather-proof boots, clothes on my back, a vehicle with a full tank of gas, and a warm place to sleep tonight. That will do.
Although I regret your friend’s health issues, he is fortunate to have your friendship. What you say is correct, that is what counts the most. Thank you, FM.
So agreed. You both are in
My Incantation
Thy Moon Shines
Through A Lens Aberrant
Chromatic Deviation Apparent
Lunar Machination
Quiet Divination
My Incantation…
“There is no longer a core.”
What an extremely powerful six word summary.
I will remember that for a very long time.
Thx, and best wishes to your friend.
Not fearing death is how you live in peace in a chaotic world. It is also how you live with a cancer diagnosis.
Living with pain is a whole nuther story.
The clueless people you speak of, Uncola, I don’t let them bother me. It is the people who think they know better what is good for us than we do, that bother me.
The core is surely rotten.
“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
Unpacking that chestnut, “we” make chests, put people into them, & pound “our” own. “We” laugh at honor alright, from gitgo to gitmo, & are shorted•shocked by the nervous – very – systems in “our” midst.
Paging Dr. Milgram…& charging *him* with all that voltage. Just following orders, peers, fears, smear the queers…what’s a castrated bovine to do? CAFOperate, of course.
And wend Temple Grandin’s – autism spectrum’r par exellence – spiral chute to the abattoir. Maybe with speakers piping in Abba. Ah, free wil•t. Again & again, Fernando•c•d.
Greetings,
I tend to think of it more as a hub where all the spokes are attached. The hub is where we all agree and if the hub is missing then there can be no wheel to turn and there can be no progress. In so far as I can tell, the Social Contract is the hub but that has been destroyed by the State because it refuses to apply the law equally and its never ending redistribution of wealth projects that reward people that refuse to adhere to the Contract.
Without government to save them from their own ignorance/criminality, many people would be forced to act like decent citizens again.
Hit a sore spot with me FM. Born 1950- front row seat for the second half of the twentieth century. Madelin Murry O’hare forced prayer out of public schools about second or third grade for me. Raised in a small town(1200) , Had a paper route with 2 brothers at 9-10 years old. Only 1 divorced person in town. Mom told me,” throw the paper on her porch and RUN. Assholes like to deride the 50’s as a fantasy Ozzie &Harriet illusion. Not for me. We played from early till dark all over.Somebody’s mom made sure we got lunch. It was safe and idyllic.I have chronicled the marginalization of the Christian worldview with anger and trepidation. BB is right. Nature abhors a vacuum…. The anarchy that has emerged is foolish and dangerous. I am white. I am a man. I am a Christian. I have 1 wife of 49 years. Two sons and 5 grandchildren I am trying to live up to the image of Christ. Have poured out my life for family and will to my last breath. The speed with which Western civilizati0n has repudiated Christianity is matched only by the degradation and misery that has emerged. The Bible is a tremendous guidebook for a life of love, joy,goodness, kindness, patience,faithfullnes, and self control. I will never understand the casual rejection of it. May God bless and heal your friend.
I was born in 73 and can say that my experience was similar. The technology and the music was different but the principle was the same. It’s different for my kids now, they have to grapple with things I never did. My daughter told me yesterday that she was a writing a report for social studies and taking the stance that there are only two genders. I said good for you honey, let me know if you have any trouble at school because of it. In thinking about it that conversation would have been unthinkable when I was a kid and seen for what it is – absurd.
A sign of the times. It’s all absurd.
Yes Francis, I was born in 59. I feel so sorry and fearful for my children (19 and 23) they are surrounded by fucking idiots, shitty music, and mind-fucking technology, and they would be the first ones to admit it.
Dance Macabre Group,
Diogenes
Hate to date myself but started in one room school in rural upstate NY. Pledge of allegence everyday, teacher told Bible stories. We sang Star-Spangled Banner. In the local Church grave yard there were tarnished, copper flag stands with initials GAR. Later after the one-room school was consolidated, we went to a central school. One teacher whose grandfather served in the Union Army used to lead us in singing While we were Marching through Georgia and the Battle Cry of Freedom. Principal read verses from Bible every morning. At assemblies we recited Lords Prayer and usually sang Battle Hymn of the Republic. Then a pretty young music teacher showed up; she was from Maryland and added Dixie to our public selections without dropping others, no one objected. Sad to say the grade teachers. music teacher and Principal would be in jail today.
FM, this is in the same class as HSF work. That puts you in pretty tall company.
Forget, integrity quotient, I like it.
Thanks – that’s high priase around this joint.
The core is where the seed lies, the future, the hope of the next generation. Destroy the seed destroy the future. The truth used to be the core value of our civilization. Without it we have no morality, justice, judgement, empathy, virtue, courage, etc. What good is law without truth.
Take away right and wrong, what remains, even anarchy has standards. People that live by a set of standards, can relate to the same, even if societies differ.
The desire of a man is his kindness, and a poor man is better than a liar.
Being out of the game is more frightening than dying. I find this intriguing. The game to me is always changing, once everything is stripped away, what remains. What is the one thing I would like to be remembered for? The Truth, and my relationship to it. This the best that I can do, and if I did well, I hope my children could do the same.
This world is in a sad state. Evil reigns and rules, and has been at it long enough, not many see it.
I pray your friend has a speedy recovery, and gets a chance to appreciate the joy that is , smell the roses, and counts his blessings, because life is so much more than work. Great read FM thought provoking.
Foxy,
Good article and good luck to your buddy.
I agree with what you and many others say about the lack of a core or rottenness of the core but I also believe that in many cases these people have such an inferiority complex that they simply do not have the self confidence to be introspective enough to examine themselves and their beliefs.
Here’s something that could go as well here as on Maggie’s thread about trans kids.
Hunting question.
If Someone shoots a buck, but they only have a doe tag, can they claim that the buck wasn’t really a buck?
I mean … maybe he’d always wanted to be a doe, but with no choice of his own he was born with the physical attributes of a male.
And yet … on the inside he’d always known he was truly a female.
I’m just wondering if he could get the game warden to buy that bullshit, because society and the Supreme Court does.?
There are many many documented cases of does with antlers. Scientific fact.
That doe walks like a buck, and that buck keeps chekn out that other bucks antlers. They musta been born that way