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The plaintive howling of the wolf
Should tell us where we are.
The distance from its end to ours
Is really not that far.
If thinking it's a selfish cry
We do not understand,
When it cries out, it cries for us,
We live on common land.
For what we now refuse to hear
We don't soon make amends,
We'll quickly learn this fact of life,
On Earth our life depends.
When living for what's after life
We put the horse behind the cart.
We should bet on the here and now
And not what's after we depart.
What's after life I do not know.
Had I the facts, I'd tell of course.
If there's someone who has been there
I want these answers from that source.
Where do we go? What do we do?
Do we look on those left behind?
Please let me see the evidence.
I do not want a faith that's blind.
There is none; thus until we're there
The afterlife remains a myth.
But still I've had some idle thoughts
About it, I've been toying with.
Suppose the agents are part right;
But afterlife just mirrors life,
So when we fly to Paradise
Our baggage is our current strife.
If 'after' is linked to 'before'
That fact another message sends.
While blowing life on 'earth' to hell
The life in 'heaven' also ends.
So just in case, it would be wise
On earth a heaven to create.
Then if there is an afterlife
We'll find it in a peaceful state.
The "war on terrorism" is
A visible activity
That fights the terror that's within,
Our common human enemy.
Our terror is of the unknown
We find when asking "Why am I?"
It's of the void which can't be filled
But war is still a way we try.
This "terrorism" is a foe
Ideally suited to our fight.
Unlike the terror in our mind,
The terrorists are in plain sight.
They could be us. We need just try
To fill the void at the extreme,
For there such terror we will cause
To keep alive a dying dream.
It keeps us all so occupied
We have no time to think about
The reason we are in this war,
And thus the why we don't want out.
But if we see we must get out
Before it leaves us all destroyed,
The war will end when we decide
There are no ways to fill the void.
When we discard them we will find
The common ideal way of life
With peace of mind we all can feel
Diminishing to none our strife.
If we decide to end the war,
The terrorists we need not fear.
Their reason is the same as ours
So terrorists will disappear.
ATTACKS: Paris and elsewhere
God's will is doctrine of the church
That harms God's credibility;
And gratefully absolves from us
All our responsibility.
Believing God decides who's rich
Then chooses those who beg for bread
Can only lead me to conclude
The church's God must be brain dead.
The view that God designed the rank
Of races that has whites on top
With darker shades then blacks below
Requires that all thinking stop.
For God to use disease to teach
Us lessons that we need to learn
Interprets life in such a way
That God, I only want to spurn.
God cannot "bless America"
Inferring God leaves out the rest
And not create in me the view
Believers failed their IQ test.
How can I possibly believe
When told that God is in control
Then see on every nightly news
More soldiers killed while on patrol.
To hear from fields of war and sport
"Almighty God was on my side"
While those opposed God helped defeat,
Is thinking my mind can't abide.
To thus believe I must suspend
The use of my intelligence.
To think we find the will of God
In things like this, does not make sense.
We're separated from what's real.
God's purpose no one understands.
We're looking up; we should look down.
The will of God is in our hands.
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Mom had a sad attack today.
I wonder not how can it be.
At 92 I am amazed
They happen so infrequently.
She can't remember days gone by;
And always when she looks ahead
She sees the pictures on the wall
Of all the people who are dead.
I hold her, wringing out the tears;
And listen for the reason why.
I do not ask when all she says,
"Great sadness is what made me cry."
Eventually the sobbing ends.
Then later when the cloud has gone
She dries my tears and says to me,
"Come on now son let's carry on."
MOTHER'S DREAM
MOTHER'S GAMES
MOTHER'S HOPE
MOTHER'S LEAVING
MOTHER'S MARKET MEMORY
MOTHER'S MEMORIAL BENCH
MOTHER'S WAR
MOTHER'S WAKE
The explanation of life and related writings.
02/02/24
INTRODUCTION
Like everyone, I inherited an existence. Mine collapsed circa 1970 while I was at McMaster U, Hamilton, ON, Canada, getting a BA(math) and B. Phys Ed, so I could teach. While sorting through the rubble of my life I noticed, though not as pervasive as it is today, a continuum of varied and increasing conflict permeating our existence. I wondered why.
Though wondering for myself I thought I should find the reason for conflict before a student I might teach asked me. I couldn’t deduce the reason with math; nor did I think I found it in the 5 major religions and their thousands of offspring, or in the 11 volume history of philosophy I skimmed for electives.
So besides my formal degrees, I graduated with a major degree of motivation to find before I taught, the reason for conflict. I never taught. By the time I discovered the answer to why increasing conflict pervades our existence, I’d become, with the help of my brother, a self-employed carpenter.
I tried and failed to share the answer at least three times and each time I vowed to quit trying. The last was in 1998 when a friend of a friend, a philosophy professor, wished me good luck on other projects. To help keep my last vow I started an addition to my house. I received even more help in 2000 when I began caring for my parents.
But then, when my father died in 2004 I was motivated to try sharing my analysis one more time before I died. I was still thinking of a hard copy when a friend suggested I publish on a website. I’d never heard of websites nor could I type but with more help from my Mother I bought a computer, learned to type, and with expert help, created a website.
I first thought I’d bury the reason for conflict in an essay. But having already experienced web attention deficit disorder I decided to highlight the essence of it in my website logo and add context with blog posts.
Since there is no answer to “Why am I?”, attempts to answer it, such as the myriad religions and philosophies I skimmed, and a variety of other responses I found, are tries to fill the void. Though we can mix them, some may be similar and even have identical names, because we direct them to the void within us, our tries are all opposed and so cause conflict to the extent of our belief in them.
But, conflict is not inevitable. We can diminish it and resulting death to the degree we empty the void. Now, if we choose to empty the void, our lives are not then devoid of activity, on the contrary! Because it is essential, we each possess some remnant of “reaching out to the limits of our capacities, to others and to Nature’s God”, the natural activity that creates and tries to maintain all life.
So, even though in the 200k years since the birth of humanity we have replaced almost all our inherited natural activity with the human made unnatural, self-destructive activity of trying to fill the void, if we choose to empty the void, the remnants of our natural, self-creative activity will at least refill our lives and possibly answer “Why am I?”
I have been trying share these basic facts of life for a few years by advertising. Last year (2023) I bought 8 million page views with half the value of my home, without effect; but this time I won’t quit. The warnings about fatal climate change by hundreds of climate scientists over many more years have also been ignored.
However, I do have to reduce my advertising. If it is too late to prevent it, I’ll need a place to live where I can watch the increasing conflict within us, between us and with Nature, causing at least the death of us and maybe all of Nature, possibly even before I’d have died in peace.
If you feel moved to help me share these facts you can by using the share icon at the end of any post, notably my most recent piece of rhymed reason, “Analyzing Conflict”, or any other way of sharing. If you also click on the like icon you will see an explosion of hearts, an expression of my gratitude. 🙏 Doug E Barr.
Part 1.Nature’s ideal diet: It was designed to maintain our immune/ maintenance system at its optimum operating condition to protect us from both pathogenic and autoimmune diseases. It protected our predecessors from conception to the birth of humanity when they realized the mental capacity to choose. It can still protect us but over the millennia increasing numbers of us chose to ignore ’Her’ ideal, and thus our increasing disease. Specifically, ignoring the overlap causes, it could save the $34 billion cost of weight loss drugs, about $800 billion cost for treating type II diabetes, and many billions more in other healthcare costs.
Part 2. Nature’s ideal life: It protected our predecessors from conflict until the birth of humanity. It can still protect us but over the millennia increasing numbers of individuals chose to ignore ‘Her’ ideal and thus, our increasing conflict.
Part 3. The integration of parts 1 and 2
Part 4. Existential risks: They are the result of our ancestors increasingly choosing to ignore Nature’s nutritional ideal. They may be reduced by expanding our mental capacity beyond what was realized at the birth of humanity. It would only take an instant, but the time we have to make the necessary choice is quickly running out.
Part 5. Appendix: Mostly diet related math that may have caused the mathematically challenged to quit reading in the middle of Part 1.
