Literary flares

If any thing history witnesses to the fact that when time is segmented in to centuries, decades, years, months and weeks it is often tagged with descriptive adjective that is particularly expository of the most notable accomplishments of the period in question. Often a phrase or word either crepes up from obscurity or a new one is coined to particularly fit and describe in audacious and vivid forms what is to be highlighted of the time segment. “Literary flares” was one phrase that one phrase that was at the tip of every person notable at many television notable syndicated shows in tribute may be to some literary candle that burn it self to give some illumination to the literary penumbra that we have come to cress-cross in our daily written and spoken language. I would have cared much if the truth about the subject matter was as glittery as the celebrated literary masterpiece produced, yet I have come out to celebrate the beauty of the language and rectify the truth to mach it, for it is often the elegance and refined beauty of the language that is a turn on to search for the truth than it is the contrary. The truth shall set you free, yet a beautiful literature is an enticement to walk the long walk in the trails of jungles of the written world in the search for the truth. To stretch the imaginations of the readers and take the to the stretched horizons of his work may be in order from any of the literary candles, yet if their light surpasses them it should understood that they wouldn’t have traveled at the speed of the light they helped to generate but others after them will walk the illuminated path. It has been that way since the times, Homer, Socrates and the rest of them all notables of the past and present, many has walked the path they help illuminate to get to the truth and untruth of their literary masterpieces, even to get to the untruth it took an enticement of a literary beauty. However far from the truth and however unrealistic an event and a reality it was, that generated such a response, it has generated an admiration and an acknowledgement of mastery of a language and capability of producing a respectable literary work in the very opposition and rejection that put the word “literary flares” in the mouth and on tip of the tongue of every one who rose to speak about it. It may not have been science but thanks it sure is an art and as such it has achieved what so many could only dream, it has generated a criticism and an acknowledgement.

Comments and suggestions are well come so long as they are civil and are not obscene.

cybernat@cybernatian.biz

Whose definition of what?

In the grand relativistic world of ours, everything is what it is relative to a reference point, condition and time; as such everything is in a dynamic state of change of its relative reference according to its own newly acquired relative position. If there exists any permanence it is the permanence of change itself against all drag and resistance that often works to resist change in any form, content and direction. Grand moments of human experience create grand fixation in the memories of great number of people that it remains the grand reference point regardless of the great strides made and great relativistic positional changes, because a grand moment held with great esteem for a long time tends to becomes a tradition and a culture than a rational principled position. A culture and a tradition is to be followed, adhered to and practiced by the generations of the offspring’s of the initial practitioners of the belief and experience of the grandiose moment. Some of us care to reason out and rationalize the meaning, symbolisms, essence and content of the observance and the practice and participate in love and in reverence to what it is and it stand for while an equal part of us careless for what it really is and for what it stands for, but do it any way for that is how it has been don by generations before us and we belong to that tradition and class of people. As traditions are fixated in our calendar, they get fixated in our biological clocks and get programmed In to our genetic make up, after all what is in our genes is what is in the environment we are exposed to for a considerable time. I wonder though if what is programmed in our genes is always the rational thing with all the genetic engineering that goes on in the great labs of this nation and many others to remedy the run away genes in us and the rest us living things. In restraining my self not to go amok, I shall limit myself to tradition not science otherwise I would have accomplished nothing, but grab and let it go off everything there is to grab that would have me as very untraditional. Traditions are stronger than reason and rational they persist even when the rational and conventional wisdom dictates otherwise because they tend to be part of once identity, a birthmark of a sort that can’t be washed away. Often for going against it or break away there is a price and a debt to be paid in kind and other forms that the gravitational pull keeps one in orbit. It is in adherence to tradition and cycles of recurrence some traditionalists and some not so traditionalists flock to a city to dethrone and enthrone, to condemn and adulate, if nothing else by their intent and wish what has been, what is and what is to come in a self assured boisterousness and confident audacity. Even in the absence of refreshments, the very presence of those who have gone the path and made success stories and those that are to follow in their footsteps and the exchanges of the formers experience with the aspirations of the latter is so intoxicating that most are elated to point of hysteria with emotional out pouring of love and commitment to a cause and a course of action to maintain the tradition and take it even to the next generation and the generation after. It would be more than safe to conclude that by in large the participants are following in the footsteps of their adoring parents and they in turn intend to pass the tradition and the truth as defined by the tradition to their adorable little ones, as that is what every tradition calls for. Will the little once leave the tradition when they grow up to take the banner? Only with a debt and a price to pay!!! For a distance, and me I have observed and continue to observe the spectacle from afar from where and when one could see its beauty and its shortcomings UN obscured by emotions of belonging. Even if I wanted to belong I could hardly crack the glass ceiling with 5 ft 6” height in a place where 6ft 8” and 9”s roam. Some and most of the answers to the questions I started out have been answered and I seem to have found by whose definition of what the world revolves counterclockwise and clockwise. It seems to spin as they spin it and it sure spun counterclockwise last night and only the truth remained stationary and in its original and permanent position. I have come to realize that politics is about the make belief, the masterful illusion, and the beauty of delivery than the dry narration of numerical, historical, statistical, political, and diplomatic or any fact any thing to do with politics. I have seen some meander around all the afore mentioned facts with smoothness of a tone, beauty of linguistic art and mastery of oratory with out bumping in to any curve of resistance or opposition to sheepishly lead the flock to the point and destination they have long determined they ought go. As all is readied and prepared to enhance the make belief and illusion of the master illusionist in an effort to shift the truth to a point and position of desired co-ordinate, so it will and it might have “ as the way you look at the truth changes so will the truth.“ So by their definition of what who and where we have been conned by some as it ought to have been and we remained unmoved by others in spite of their hard tried efforts.

In a great tradition unheard in most countries the world over the acceptance and the reverence to the verdict of the ballot box was exhibited by the willingness of the vanquished to secede claims and endorse the winner and the winner’s willingness to accommodate the legitimate concerns raised and reiterated by those who lost. This American tradition to let the winner take all and accommodate and inculcate the issues of all the rivals and opponents on one side of the great divide have maintained above anything else the dual party system to the abetment of the formation of ineffective coalition governments that often break before their term is up. It is not, I feel, to be far from the truth to assume and assert that the dual party system and the stability and effectiveness in governance stems from the flexibility and malleability instilled in the two party system to be susceptible and embrace a wide range and spectrum of variant socio economic outlooks and interests un heard of any where else in the world. This attests to the fact that whether we move west ward or east ward whether we rotate clockwise or anti clockwise to get to a point established in a spherical universe there are but two and only two opposed ways and the 3^rd and forth or any other could not at least be the shortest paths and indeed we live in and on a spherical universe. The acceptance of the trophy of winning and cessation of it at a defeat with humility and knowledge of the availability and chance of a next time around makes both a defeat and a win so much of a sweet and sour event. In general and in conclusion these are the lessons I learned and these are the lessons I teach about this quadrennial event of the great American tradition.

cybernat@cybernatian.biz

What went wrong? &Where are we headed?

Since the beginning the formation of the modern national state and for some and for other since the beginning human social activity and social division of labor, nations and national states have been building and forming social institutions and mechanisms by which they co-ordinate, plan and execute their inter and intra national activities and interests that transcended generations and consecutive political governments that were and are subservient to varied ideological outlooks and forms in formal and informal ways. Partly or in most cases by far the biggest problem that plagues some of the most problem nations in the world seems to steam from the fact that at one point or another all and every remnants of their past social and political institutions have been destroyed by either a political turmoil social upheaval or foreign intervention and occupation. In any modern or semi-modern society how ever crude there are semblances and real differences between the government at any time and the rest of the social institutions and the bureaucracy the latter being subservient to the former. This relationship has been proved time and again by many governments that come and went on the scenes of political arenas of many of both the advanced worlds and developing countries. The institutions of social governance, political rule and social security and welfare are not things that could be manufactured with a specification, custom or otherwise they are rather works of years of deliberate design and evolutionary and incremental growth. Overwhelmingly today and in the yester years the difference with those countries and nation states that were spared of such disastrous destruction and the rest in managing and moving their society forward is and was as clear as a day and night. It would be rather foolish to assume that there is no real or minimal separation of purpose and duty between government and the national institutions of governance and social welfare in any modern and semi-modern nation or nation state and guide an attack or support with some thing equally punitive, destructive or helpful and supporting of both will have severed a country or nation from itself and the rest of the world. In every nation and nation state the national bureaucracy is both malleable to those who come to power and a grinding and refining machine to them as well that any one who comes to power as much as he changes it will have been changed and refined at the end. In that it becomes the essence and measure of a nation and the best and the worst face of it. Within these duality lies from the national Ethos, culture, belief, know how, and the binding identity. These of coarse are not things that could be gained or shaped overnight or over decades, but are built over millennia and are custodians of all that is national and of a nation. It shall be born in mind that often all of them or part of them as they often are forced to serve political masters in manners and forms incompatible to all or some of the ideals of their formation and existence. Even when they are mastered and managed top to bottom by those who are at odds with the interest to whom they are endowed to serve they remain indispensable for they are the treads that hold the nation as an entity or the set will crumble to the elements, and often did we witness that. In the examination of the Iraq the much talked about winning the war and losing the peace might have its roots in the inability to have distinguished between the long standing institutions of state government and the government and the party that governed the country. The Iraqi state machine was the same state machine that served the kings and queens if there were any, that predated the Bazz party and its chieftain Saddam Hussein and it would have served who ever came to power after him with some fine tuning and some weeding of none malleable elements form amongst its ranks and files. There are ample examples that that malleability is in abundance among many of the state machines and institutions that were under brutal dictators in spite of the very hard efforts of the dictators to have shaped and filled its ranks with petit images of himself or themselves. That being one grand opportunity lost to have weeded out from the top down and maintain a working state machine subservient to the new masters, it did not take long I feel to realize that members of the past state had the know how, wisdom and skill that was passed on down from generations before them that is important enough to be recalled in for duty in an effort to sew the past to the future. After all, all the efforts of the present are nothing more than an effort to bringing the past and the future to the present and live it. Every human stride forward to me is a stride to the past and to the future, to the beginning and to the end, a dual directed journey of a sort learning history, making history.

Note

These are as usual comments and observations of a layman subject to criticism, correction and rejection by those who are learned and non-alike.

cybernat@cybernatian.biz

Morality, Mortality, Self Regeneration, Self Replication, Cloning and Embryonic stem cell research:-

sep7,2002

It has more than any time in our written and spoken history we are directly confronted with real equivalencies and none equivalencies in none equivalencies of trends principles and practices in our effort to remedy the ills and short comings that has necessitated the very acts, practices forms and entities that we hold so sacred and intend to protect with our deer life to save our soul and our life. The struggle here is a struggle to preserve continuity. What is held in high esteem and regard no matter how and in how many ways and terms said, is nothing more than continuity itself. The Irony is that continuity has never been a product or even maintained by continuity but rather discontinuity. It has always been perpetrated by the mere fact and realty of discontinuity. It was the inability to do away with terminality that imposed on us and everything else the sacred act and ability to initiate. It is it seems that rather this convergence of termination and initiation are causes for the big bang in our thought and in what we are accustomed to and have lived with the entire known human and any other living forms. A truth that have shaped and perpetrated our entire universe of living beings seems under treat by this unlikely convergence of what has otherwise been and believed to be always divergent a process. It is the confusion that has emerged and is emerging out to the ability to prolong a life indefinitely and recycling of what is, independently of the changing conditions and the always forward moving dreadful time on the one hand and the need of course renew the genetic pool by the combination and recombination of what is at hand and of what is to be; to cop with the changing times and conditions on the second hand: and yet still the need to curb and limit the total number as to sufficiently allocate the ever dwindling resources on the third front. These are the balances that cry to be kept and that seems to be offset. Every living not limited to humans have thus far reproduced and regenerated it self to cop up with changing times and conditions and resources available to it. The essence of life to any living being is and always been the continuation of its survival and ever survival in its present form or in different, yet the guarantee of its survival has been the ever driving engine. Morality is nothing more than the justification for the survival and ever survival of human being and other species as they are and as they will come to be. It is the convergence of how they have known to preserve their survival and how they will continue this tradition, obligation and duty that is at X roads as we discuss cloning stem cell research and morality. None of the afore mentioned process and acquired knowledge have negated in their intent rather are all attempts to better serve or compliment what have been long ever true of human, animal and plant reproduction and regeneration except that some have only equated self duplication to self regeneration or self reproduction. It is important to note that the equivalencies are rather discrepancies and big ones too. Self-duplication is too linear to be equated to self-reproduction. In parallel it has been a while now since the merits and demerits of stem cell research has been on the minds of many and most who tried in the past and present to make sense and justification of the ethics of medical and other scientific advances. The issue of stem cell research has been revolving wrongly or rightly around the time of the beginning of life than the beginning the human being. If we were to discuss the beginning of life it is to take us and everything else a long way and an unreachable distance too. Yet for our practical, and if we even wish theoretical purposes life exists in descript forms and time segments. Thus I feel it is rather appropriate to discus when did a human become a human being than discus when did a human being’s life began and start an endless journey of a sort. A human being became human when he break away from his ancestral primate and assumed the rudimentary functions of a modern human being according to the evolutionist theory and a human being became in to existence when Adam was first made by God. What is important here is not whether the first human was made of an already existent living creature or whether he was made out of clay for both can’t escape the fact that they ultimately are earthen organic and inorganic materials, but what made him human and different from every other living thing and animal. It is my firm belief that resolving this issue helps pave the way for resolving the dilemma whether stem cells are humans and whether stem cells should enjoy the legal protection of the state and whether doctors should be burdened with the moral dilemma of experimenting with stem cells. It seems rather clear that a human being is so because he has specialized organs the work in coordination with each other, a brain as a coordinating organ and above all a mind, a cognitive ability, a feeling and an emotion that comes about from a joint and combined function and interaction of these specialized organs and parts. Until such time that the stem cells divide and form the specialized functions and coordinate their function to create an emotional and cognitive ability they remain to me would be humans, but till then just life forms deserving of may be the protection of any and all life forms, but not of humans. After all that cord that bind us to life forms is endlessly long if we were in pursuit, it will take us to the egg, the sperm and the proteins and compounds that led to their formation and the food eaten etc. etc. each stage with its own descript form and content in its life. It is there fore important to take in to account the time it assumed its form and content to the time it looses its form and content by virtue of growth, association, assimilation, integration disintegration and decay, it was not what is before then and it will not be what it is after.

CONNECTING THE DOTS.

It is time again to take a note draw some conclusions and ask questions of what we have heard, seen and witnessed of our political leadership from the right isle as we have don when it was time for the political world and Universe rotated counterclockwise and to the left some time back collectively and individually. We have been presented with choices and the differences of the choices and what brought them about with such mastery of oratory and principled content delivery to the point almost where it made our choices as difficult and hard whether to revolve clockwise or counterclockwise with party of the left or the right, for there was no ill intent on either side as we were able to learn from many distinguished speakers of the week time and again as to what our final product ought be, but differences only in the production methodology. Though we know that both GM and Ford produce cars, one produces Lincolns and the other Cadillacs, it is a choice we can live with and be proud that we have, We more than any time in the past were able to see the fundamental contrasts of the methodologies and beliefs of getting to a point and place in time for a better end product with a more efficient and expedient ways. We were able to witness the motives and intentions of the other party not questioned, but its beliefs and the methodology it employees in its attempt to attain our well being a common objective deeply held at heart. Politics have been refined, fine tuned and polished to clearly reflect the choices and the differences between the choices not empirically as it was customary, but as a formulated unified theory that encompass every venue of political life according to which every stride forward, sideways and back has to be measured against and conformed to. It has been made more than ever that we can hold the theory and the formula and insert the variables and write our elected officials right and wrong on everything one of their move every step of the way from election day to convention day, for they have given us the rules they play by not where they stand on what and when. Suffice it to say that there were and there will be special circumstances that override the formula and the theory, as exceptions and aberrations are part of nature that we all are tolerant of limited deviance from the norm in the interest of accommodation and greater common good. That politics was not the same classical Darwinian game of survival of the fittest in the acknowledgment of the not only of the importance of the opposite, but the intertwining entanglements them for the viability one for the other and the overall intricate thread that bind the different elements of this entity and many others near and far by destiny, essence and purpose. That there is no island of ill or righteous intent anywhere that will remain un affected or without effect on others by its mere reality of existence, actions and deeds, that the age of reason and rational has put a damper on the harsh reality of evolutionary and revolutionary Darwinism by way of human ingenuity discovery and environmental consciousness both to alter it and preserve it. We were able to determine and learn, Yes, like then now again we were conned and spun to the right and clockwise out of which we have become real stable and symmetrical and say we are indeed standing on our two feet, unmovable and unshakable with out our intent and consent. As we are standing on our two feet on issues of war and peace prosperity and freedom both our left and right feet have been hurting over the war in Iraqi the necessity and legitimacy of it at all. As much as we have heard from able and knowledgeable people of the justifications and the counter agreements that ensue, we wondered if all the questions were asked and if all the explanations were given, it could have been asked and it could also have been answered, but since our knowledge is limited as to what has been and hasn’t been asked and answered, we would ask one rhetorical question and conclude this note. Knowing that the Iraqi has been in a state of war since the Gulf war and bombs were falling in the streets of Baghdad periodically in response to the on going defiance of the inhibitions and sanctions imposed on the then dictator, would there be and should there be any doubt at all that in the world of, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and “the friend of my enemy is my enemy” that enemy you are at war with, will not broadly smile at the offensive the other enemy and would not want to coordinate his efforts with the new friend in action ? Would it have been prudent to disengage from the battle at hand and go on a sporadic chase of the emergent enemy? Or finish up with the job at hand in co-ordination with the new? Or perhaps it would have been better wait till we have seen the inevitable marriage of the two known enemies consummate and act? We have no answers, but question, and question we ask, so we did and we will; only hopping that we will find the answers some where in the archives, soon in some one’s work or in the long run .

The most stable structure

Created by Ayele Teklemariam

9/16/2004

. It only dawned on me very recently that every landscape is very much shrouded with secrecy and clandestine activities even when the outcome and the process has nothing to do with national interests or safety of the public but personal, social, political, economic or academic even, spiritual fulfillments. I wonder if this world has become a place of secret societies where one have to exchange secret bows and oath in the alleyways, conference halls, hotels rec-room, boardrooms and dark corners in the name of art, science, academics, commerce, politics religion and culture contrary to the open, transparent and democratic approaches to all the named and others that are so often proudly claimed and wanted to be the Global character traits. It is given that undue secrecy is a prescription to the corrosion of confidence, destruction of public trust and the unleashment of untold sacrifice of individual sacrificial lambs that won’t cleanse national sins or enhance democracy. We might agree with the intents of actions, yet all the good intents in the world could hardly do to tidy the untidiness left along the path to the finish line only to get back in an effort of rectification and re adjustment some time latter. Two steps forward and three back or may be three forward and two back if a little tidier path had been tried in the first place. It is after all the path that is not the destination, that is not the point rather the segmen,t that is of contention, for at the point even all paradigms converge to a total singularity to make any difference. In this spherical universe we can disperse in as many directions to get ultimately at a pre determined point, yet the paths of our travel as different, as various in degrees of difficulties, directions and distance lengths. Though we have often agree on the formulas of quantification and qualification of the different paths for the sake of choice and decision, we often come up with different sets of values for the variables and our own individual constants relative to our individual positions to justify our individual preferences. Thus it becomes very important to seek and find an absolute reference point instead of our individual relative positions, though that itself an object of contention and consternation, very much less varied that it helps form larger chunks out of the individuals, sets out of individual elements and grand sets out smaller sub sets, like the pyramids and cones that disperse down wards and build up wards, from the single to the many and from the many to the single, in a bi-directional flow of material, ideas and deeds, forming a truly representative democracy and transparent one, Centralized and democratic, and democratic and centralized. If in any case, it is centralized and not democratic, it forms no cone or pyramid and there fore it is fragile. If it is democratic and not centralized, it forms no cone or pyramid there fore not stable again. Particularly the obsession with the pyramid both in the ancients and relative recent past ancestors could have been both in the stability of the structure and the symbolism it gave to centralism and democracy. From many to one and from one to many, from the infinitely small and simple (infinite singularity & simplicity) to the infinitely large and complex. (Infinite complexity and multiplicity) and vise versa. From the appearance out of smallness of nowhere to the disappearance in to the vastness of everywhere such is the tip and such is the base of a pyramid, a diamond and a cone, unshakeable and un moveable, That is very much in line with the emergence growth and final disintegration of the universal matter as observed in the four common and other paradigms, may be this synchrony has by enlarge to do with stability realized by these structures or may it is simply what mimics nature as it emerged and as it will self destruct. I leave it to any and everyone’s imagination and intuition to figure out and see how the same structure have been very much applied in politics, sports, economics, business and money other organizations and institutions to create stability and strength, centralism and democracy.

“The shortest path to the heart is through the stomach”.

Created by Ayele Teklemariam

9/17/2004

Many have tried to approach it through the head and often had little or no success; unlike many it was too late a realization for me, but a realization important enough to take a note and a notice nonetheless. I was naïve enough not to have known that the energy that drives both the head and the heart has to be first and foremost fed in to the stomach and off course the lubricants that oil the joints for a smooth movement as a by product wouldn’t have come from any other source. One might as well call it the gateway to the heart, mind and body. Thus over the years what has gone in through the stomach has swayed thoughts changed minds and smoothened movements and even made friends out of enemies and enemies out of friends. The rich and the rich, the poor and the poor, the rich and the poor often dined and wined literally and figuratively together to find compromise and accommodation and smoothen the tensions between and amongst them. What coronation was a coronation with out a lavish party, what wedding was a wedding party that does not culminate in an extravagance of drinks and eatery, what party is and was a party of social, political or religious significance that did not and does not satisfy the human appetite for drinks and delicatessen to bring about happiness, jubilation harmony and celebration all at once by the power of the consumption through the stomach. As it is often a culmination of an upward movement in the social ladder, a change of status in an individuals or group political, social, economic or religious standing or an accomplishment of significance that instigates a party as an occasion to assert and get the acknowledgement from the others and smoothen the relation ship there off, that could have been roughened on the path to the climax, by reaching to the heart and mind of each other through the stomach. It has always been and it still remains the most direct path to the minds of many and all. If there remains to exist causes to accomplish and celebrate parties would be inevitable, and at parties while dining and winning the plasticity of the arms would change in to flexibility and the rigidity of the mind changes to elasticity and could stretch beyond what it normally reaches. What is discussed over dinner or lunch makes it to the heart and mind while what is discussed in the office or conference room often remains at the ears unless it is of particular importance and significance not to the narrator but to the audience. May be some body wise have said it long ago and the ‘shortest path to the heart is through the stomach “ may be then the heart will pump it to the head whatever it is that has to get there. To be candid enough about it, formally and informally, overtly and covertly, with intent and with out intent, deliberately and inadvertently that has been how business is done over centuries and that is and remains how for a foreseeable future. Call me a late bloomer, I just got the realization if it could do me any good and hope it serves as a lesson to some who needed an early awakening.

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       ON THE LANGUAGE INSTICT
BY

Ayele Teklemariam