It was enough that we won the spermozoa trout race to fertilize our mother’s egg to get born into this world. Some of us have to go through shit to get to the gold, some just get shit and that’s it.

It’s said that by the time you’re 4 years old, you already decide what you’re going to be. I fell in love with music about that age and I ended up being a damn good guitar player, that’s done a few things that a lot don’t necessicarily do, having experience in all types of music. I live in Orlando Fl. and by a silly course of events last weekend I had an opportunity to sit in with a very well known recording act that was in town to promote their lastest c.d. with an unplugged concert set. These guys are young and here I am in my 50′s “on paper” playing with these young hot guns. ..ALL BY CHANCE.

If I never get any closer to “the big time” it’ll be all right, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve lived the life of a “rock star” the only difference between me and them is the money and that, in the end, you can’t take with you. You gotta love your life and stay true to yourself, and that’s it, because it’s a big enough job being a sucessful human being.

Heard this morning that Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique and founder of the National Organization of Women (NOW), died yesterday at 85.

NPR interviewed Eleanor Smeal who worked with Friedan to start NOW. Smeal of course eulogized Friedan. She praised Friedan’s legacy and lauded her as (I quote from memory) “a giant of the twentieth century.”

Yes, like Joseph Stalin.

And the comparison is not histrionic. Since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared open season on the unborn by making abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy, 42 million unborn American children have been stifled—with their mothers’ consent. Friedan was one of the voices who helped enable this maternal self-immolation and mass murder.1 While there is more than likely some silver lining to Friedan’s influence (as with almost anything), what can redeem the deaths of so many innocent lives—not to mention the social disintergration accompanying the dissolution of the family?2

I wasn’t surprised when Ms Smeal mentioned Friedan’s support for “gay rights” from 1978. If women are equivalent to men and if sexual differences are exploitative, then why not let men exploit other men sexually? As Marx’s friend Engels said so many years ago: it’s all about power anyway.3

As we all must, Ms Friedan has passed from this earth to her eternal reward. I’ll resist the urge to lead a chorus of “Ding dong! The Witch Is Dead,” but I can’t help observing that her passing inspires hope that her baneful influence will similarly recede into the past, laid to rest among the antiquated ideologies that made the twentieth century such a nightmare.
Notes

1. Friedan wasn’t initially pro-abortion (she had to be persuaded by the founders of NARAL of the consistency of abortion with her anti-feminine positions), but she did so early enough in the abortion “rights” movement to have made a substantial difference. The first feminists, who valued the truly feminine, were naturally pro-life.

2. More on Fredan and on the tremendous importance of motherhood: Mothers Know Best.

3. The natural question to ask Engels then is “what power do you hope to gain by this observation?” Logically, the ideology is self-defeating.

When we find and answer a previous unknown it is almost always (at least in part) an unexpected possibility, and an incomplete answer that produces more questions than answers. There is no reason to think this is any less so with the answers we do not have. The Musashi “no-style” style of reacting to the reality rather than any preconception or plan (though not without planning and deep understanding)is a difficult path but the one I am trying to favor.

Your Philosophical long view is its own irrelevancy, the moments stack upon each other, but the memories and results in you and others last far beyond their place in the stack. When the earth is gone, no one aware then (another species or planet) will likely know or care. But in the much nearer term there are many who could be affected for good or not.

In a much nearer political reality the democracy we knew (such as it was) has been overthrown. Many liberals are thinking that the next elections will be a slam dunk, the corruption is out in the open, the polls are setting new records.

Just like the last three elections the next will go supprisingly Republican even though the exit polls will again likely go heavily Democrat. THe MSM will tut tut about the inaccuracy of polls and how they should be abandonded. But what are real Patriots to do?

Where elections reflect exit polls, third party ideas are worse than futile, not because the Democrats are good enough, but because the two party system is like the laws of thermodynamics, untill there is not a winner take all, the math is unassailable. Even if the third party got 80% of votes that would be Democrat, both would be split enough to lose. The only option is to become the Democrats, and that means a long fight to reclaim the party. but that is the first step to changing the rules so that such is not necessary.

THe Bigger quandry is when the exit polls are not similar to any vote count. Then there are only two bad options. Both are ruinous for all. The Iraqi way is the way expected by the Bushists and the way they are prepared for.

The Velvet way will be very long against a propaganda drowning of the reality. Both King and Gandi were supported by a free press that was eager to announce the conflict and take pictures. Also now there are technologies Hitler would have wet dreams about.

In short we are truly F**Ked, and will take a long fight by really creative people ready to endure much horror before it turns around. It is small wonder so many Democrats quale in the breech.

Is it any coincidence that one such as yourself who has such a stubborn and powerful interest in the problems of war and peace should compose such a beautiful and thoughtful essay on the challenge of being human? I am naturally reminded of my favorite author, Erich Fromm, who wrote: “today there is only one concern: the question of war and peace…. If we should all perish… it will not be because man was not capable of becoming human, or that he was inherently evil; it would be because the consensus of stupidity has prevented him from seeing reality and acting upon the truth.”

And what is the truth? Possibly a dimension beyond our mental grasp– a function all the great minds have sought — some perhaps coming closer to it than others? (E.F. Schumacher had some interesting things to say about that).

Yet Fromm believed that truth is primarily a matter of character, not intelligence: “the courage to say /no/, to disobey the commands of power and public opinion, to cease being asleep and to become human; to wake up and lose the sense of helplessness and futility.”

To have hope rid of illusions. As one commentator here wrote, hope arrived from Pandora’s box with all the plagues.

Fromm wrote c. 1962: “reason cannot be effective unless man has hope and belief. Goethe was right when he said that the deepest distinction between various historical periods is that between belief and disbelief, and when he added that all epochs in which belief dominates are brilliant, uplifting and fruitful, while those in which disbelief dominates vanish because nobody cares to devote himself to the unfruitful.” A little dense, perhaps, but do you see where that is going?

Fromm is a very important writer to me. I wish his books were more popular than they are. After 9/11, his book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness took on an added significance for me– it has helped me to feel my way through this benighted and confusing period of time in which we now find ourselves. I would go further to say, that Fromm’s influence on my thinking has steered me to writers such as yourself. (Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that candles burn brightest in the dark.)

Sincerely,

Robert B. Livingston
San Francisco
(referenced: Fromm, Erich. “Credo,” Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud. Continuum. pp. 174 – 182.)