New daze a-coming

Do we blog to give news to those we never write? If so, Mom better learn to get online, because I always call her and I never write.

I'm reading "The Brain that Changes Itself", a very interesting idea which is being confirmed regularly by researchers. Seems our environment, including our thoughts, can modify the structure of our brains. It should have been obvious, they've been writing about this since the 1700's but it's been set aside primarily because the arrogance of the medical profession knows no bounds. They decided that the brain is a machine, later a computer, and we all know that machines don't change themselves. (But then neither do babies, although they do change). Trouble is the brain is a fluid, a thick fluid in motion and that implies change, even serious change. So if they remove part of your brain due to injury you will retrain parts of the brain to do what used to be done in the missing part. In theory you can learn to see with your skin and there are experiments proving this idea. Yup, blind people getting around with missing or damaged eyes by seeing with their skin.

Now, if the sense and brain function are mutable and can be changed by thoughts over time, then it should be obvious where I'm going with this. My son has been sitting in his chair or sleeping in his bed, with no training, no help and surrounded by doctors who have given up. He's a vegetable to them and they say so out loud. He hears and reacts internally by no healing. Way to go, docs, talk about self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, I have heard about a system called patterning wherein brain damaged people are held up in an all-fours stance and people move their arms and legs to emulate a baby crawling. Seems this deep memory is first in, last out. So the brain then builds on this (again) and begins to reprogram neurons, build new ones and eventually the body knows how to crawl on it's own. Like the first time we crawled they build on this skill set to learn other things lost by the injury. It works and is controversial because most doctors work within their own skill set and dislike acquiring new ones. The brain is a machine, they say and cannnot be rebuilt. Lucky for them they are wrong.

To do this therapy you need several strong workers and Jon's doctors have few. You need a doctor who understands and cares about the situation and Jon has none. You need time and space. Jon has those but it's not enough. With minimal help and no therapies Jon's destination is early death, most likely from pneumonia. They predict it and they cause it, very convenient.

Why would you place a brain injury facility in a factory town hours away from a medical research facility? Because the building was cheap. Why would you fund it so low they could not hire trained help? Because you are a politician running on a small government platform. Why would a family place their son there? Because it was the only place in the United States willing to take him. Why would you not show up every day to do the work yourself? Because your back is broken in several places and the pain is too much to bear. Your self confidence is slipping away as you see your son decline. What can save your sanity? Faith.

I have seen quiet miracles and they all involved energies traditionally associated with the feminine divinity. It fits my paradigm. What is it about this faith that keeps you sane? Well, for one thing there is the Great Circle which affirms that all life is part of Life and although it can be changed into a new form it can never be destroyed. So Jon is immortal, even though he might cease to be my son. In fact, over time he could become my father or mother! So we cannot change some things by force of desire, we need certain physical things to be in place, and in Jon's case they are not now, nor will they be in place before his death. It would require people to care
about others and looking around I don't see that happening soon. America cares about moving lots of wealth into the hands of a few wealthy people. We identify with these "figures of earth" and believe in them the same way the Romans believed in the divinity of their emperors. We think of them as the localized manifestations of our nation. If they are rich, America is rich. If they are strong, then we are strong. It's a pathetic way to look at life, not an evil one. It's a way born from ignorance and it leads to a funny, awkward arrogance.

How can we be so confused and arrogant? We are trained to be submissive, arrogant and ignorant, like an illiterate butler or scullery maid. We know what we know and we know what we are told. It's enough for most of us to browse at the malls and be milked at the polls. It might be kinder to leave the masses in the meadow and look to our own lives. We need electricity to run the computers so we can shop, listen to music, learn international news and write our blogs. We need email to understand that we are not alone in our thoughts and we have friends we never knew. But we also learn that we are stranded on an island of reason in an ocean of ignorance. We learn that millions think that welfare recipients are lazy and devious. We learn that millions are homeless because our noble aristocracy have sucked up so much money there's none left for the poor. We learn that our born-again administration has murdered hundreds of thousands of women and children to get access to foreign oil. We learn that the effort was not only a fraud, but it failed, so gas prices will remain high, but the people who caused this price hike are the people who started the wars and the people who have oil tankers named after them. We learn that like a dog with ticks it takes outside help for us to rid ourselves of these greedy, evil people. We also learn that our masters have told the world that we have done this to ourselves, we elected these leaders and told them to do what they do best, cheat and steal and murder. If we live in a democracy then we are co-defendants. But of course we live in an autocracy, not a democracy and that is where the system breaks down.

History teaches me that every republic breaks down into a fascist state, followed by dictatorship, followed by collapse and regrouping. In a fascist state the elections are rigged to support the ruling party, thus we never see a viable "3rd party candidate". That's about where we are now. But with rigged elections it's just about who is in power within the party. Eventually one is "elected" who doesn't want just 8 years and decides to rule on. Instead of a rotating dictatorship we get the old fashioned dictatorship. We are very close to this stage now. But as we are bankrupted we can find backers. China can buy large parts of the United States with the blessings of those in charge of the country. They get the interest or a commission and China gets Freddie Mac. Saves China a heck of a lot of money in the long run and China is famous for thinking about the long run. So now China owns most of America. Thousands of mortgages, homes, businesses are about to be owned by China, India and Britain. Maybe Japan. America is broken up in de-facto regions controlled by who owns the money. Corporate rule becomes the norm. Where will the poor go? To work camps and factories, working for the middle class Chinese. "Made in America" will at first be like the old "made in Japan" label: crude, cheap and easy. We make great Adirondack chairs but the Thai people can do anything with wood. We make gadgets and widgets and beef steaks and the Japanese like the beef, so we are partly there.

If you talk about the collapse of the American empire you get many reactions from the Americans. They claim we can't collapse because the world "needs us". How exactly are we needed by the world? We consume vast amounts of goods. Suppose consumerism is shown to be a major cause of global climate change? Then our "attribute" because a severe deficit! What else can we do? We innovate and the Japanese fine tune, is one claim. Well, that's absurd in the face of it, but even if we did it is a skill set easily transported and taught. Witness that a French designer has developed cars and machines which run on compressed air and can run for 150 miles between charges. We can get our cars to develop less than 30 MPG and still pollute and run on gas. We can't seem to think beyond what we know already. It might just be that our culture is anti-intellect. Could that be? Well, fascists don't like innovation. They like Norse legends, big spectacles, parades of tanks and a single party system. So America no longer is set up for innovation. We're set up for economic and cultural collapse. But that's a good thing. The closer we get to total collapse the closer we get to removing the shackles which connect us to a failed political system. If we were a country of communes, co-ops, credit unions and small schools we could be a country of organic farmers, wind power farms, bicycles and trolleys. We would have no huge army to support, no Federal government, just regional supervisors and coordinators. If we saw the advantage in small homes and lawn-less communities we would not try to export our way of life. We could not select a "world leader" to lead us to a great destiny. We'd be able to put food on the tables and insure that sick people got well. We would have enough people to work with the tens of thousands of brain injured combat vets and get them walking and working again. We could save people like my son. But all of this will happen after Jon dies.

Politics as usual means the death of a nation so deep in debt it cannot feed its hungry, house its homeless and heal its sick. But nothing dies, it merely is reborn as something else says the Great Mother. So we can expect great things from what is left of this nation, and our grandchildren will find work somewhere in the world and have children of their own. They may not call themselves "Americans" but what's in a name? My son is called "vegetative" but his mind works like a mans and his thoughts are not of photosynthesis but of bathing in warm springs, kissing soft lips and driving to Alaska in his old VW Van. Hopefully in his dreams he installs seat belts and wears them, but maybe in his dreams there is no black ice, no out of control trucks.

I've seen Jon smile, so I now know he can think of happiness. I've seen him cry, so I know he misses me when I am not there. It's not a lot to hang your hat on, but it allows me my faith in the way things are, the Great Circle which carries us all around again and again, in one form and out of another. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth and see the life all around you.

Every father says goodbye to his child in time. Goodbye does not mean forever, it's a form of "Good Night".