Worldview morsels of mine

Some observations of the Olympics in Paris and sociopolitical commentary of the opening ceremonies

Don’t be attracted to my light then try to convince me to dim it!

So let me understand. The library (bibliothèque) exploration scenes didn’t do anything for the neo-christian’s (post biblical and restorationist – oriented) curated narratives but the Greek depiction of Dionysus and the portrayal of the Bacchus festival did? Ok. It has little to do with exploring knowledge , finding wisdom and constructing worldviews –

I find the advice of “Don’t ever change” to be the worst advice ever – it has been my painful lesson (L)earned the older I get – I recognize just how little I know. But the I observe myself or any other human change – the absolute of change is inevitable becomes stronger and more immutable. When shaping my worldviews – I lean into four cardinal virtues — courage, temperance, wisdom and justice — using an objective and sometimes painful exploration. I tend to navigate this space by using the following as a litmus test:

“Objective judgment despite all the other inputs. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willful or willing acceptance despite all external events.”

It IS NOT easy, but let me demonstrate a few observations. in reference to the opening ceremonies of the olympics – I find it interesting some of the most provocative elements were glossed over. For context, it was during my studies of french economics and francophone du monde and then being awarded my French degree – this is where many of my understandings and worldviews were stretched and challenged. Some were forged, changed required adaptation, discarding and replacing with more accurate known information and so much more. I will long be grateful of my intersection with French culture, becoming bilingual French. I have also become more generally accepting of just being misunderstood as I human through this world of chaos by anyone that is not me.

Examples of some of the most provocative elements were glossed over:

• Snoop Dogg was parading around Paris with the biggest blunt in the world he’s ever fired up and it was just so ‘lit’

• The bibliothèque scenes – library scenes – where they displayed that romanticism and sexuality are not necessarily the same and the usage of the contextual clue “trois”, the interplay was so succinct – but its about knowledge seeking – most just kept passing over that it seems. To be frank most folks misunderstand knowledge because most synthesize based on perception – not with objectivity outside all external events – then live and tell the story that best suits self.

• Marie Antoinette – oh that was just lovely especially the let them eat cake blood bath of red streamers – the interplay of the building with her executed headless singing head and Gojira rocking the balconies of the Concièrgerie was just brilliant!

• “Imagine” was such an elegant display of what is needed, yet cognitive dissonance and perceptions mar one’s ability to confront the worst advice ever given to most – “Never change”. Since the renaissance and the enlightenment era’s – folks like Christine de Pisan or Azouz Begag and even the Curie’s (all French gems) were discarded bc it was uncomfortable because it required effort instead of just accepting Grimm epithets curated by others – but what do I know?

Yes, it is indeed just entertainment, sprinkled with provocative thought to hopefully keep the audience engaged and present – regardless of the level of participation the observer brings to the event! This is amid the world’s wanderings of multiple genocides and apathetic acceptance of those events! And yes, even closer to home in the USA — I currently observe a deep dark side of those that lean into christianity and even the practice of stoicism. Folks sometimes come forward fanatically encouraging righteous anger/justification and and my dirty lesson learned is that often has no other destination than enmity and isolated hatred. Maybe Napoleon Bonaparte was right when he stated: “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”

Since the renaissance and the enlightenment era’s – folks like Christine de Pisan or Azouz Begag and even the Curie’s (all French gems) and many other artists brave enough to challenge the at the time de facto acceptable standards (often founded and curated by high society – that’s another rabbit hole – viva la revolucion!) were discarded because it was uncomfortable! It required effort instead of just accepting “Grimm” epithets curated by others – but what do I know? The french have a well established and reputable ability to display difficult socio political questions when royalty, or the world is looking at them, while on a world stage. The world needs a distraction – and many scenes from the e-coli filled River Seine did just that! FWIW – I hope they choose not to swim in the Seine.

So yes, the French accomplished and brought to light many things arbitrarily, with intended purpose or by accident. Well played. To all my Monty Python loving post biblical or restorationist friends – it’s not so funny or just comedic when it’s ‘you’ being questioned. I see many supposed ‘snowflake’ callers melting in their own difficulties to reconcile their personal perceptions, as it pertains to events, and perhaps some facts that have been curated and not fully transparent – or is that too much too soon.

Thoughts because of the above thoughts

I am observing many in my circles of influence be so reactionary, in celebration or in many shades to its antithesis.  Neither of which is becoming to the values I strive to reflect and hope to ultimately achieve. I was taught to engender values that shaped me to be mindful of the actions, feelings, outcomes, histories and heritage of the past. To refer to those things for identifying values, actions, tolerances of things for today.   I try to exercise my personal choice, being mindful of what’s good/better/best for me, my immediate family, my community and circles of influence.   I try to do so expending reasonable efforts and then try to elevate beyond my own shallow self-centeredness.  I recognize that people may disagree with my selected observations and thus actions. It is my hope, the relationships I have fostered permit and inspire those in disagreement to tolerate and when prudent provide an opportunity and a venue for them to present or share or influence their points of view to me (providing context so I can explore and determine my choices). I also hope they do this understanding I may agree or disagree to their observations and feedback.  I will strive to offer the same courtesy.  

I have failed at offering courtesies and destroyed and harmed many relationships along my imperfect and flawed existence through my journey of reasonable self scrutiny. All i can do is recalibrate, adate, refine and be better – now and into the future.

I recognize life is an iterative experience.  This experience  is impacted mostly by me, and often by choices (committed and omitted) by those I may know and revere or not know at all.   I do not subscribe to a notion that I am socially programmed one way or another.  I often observe many breakdowns, failures and points of contention are fostered in fear, misunderstanding(s) and under researched or misunderstood assumptions to name a few. I am witnessing a shallowness and an overall maturities and collective immaturity I have not yet witnessed as a human being, the degradation of which is appalling but more so heartbreaking.

In the stage and theater of the world, many that revered us now question our ideals (culture of the USA). Not from one singular event (whether it is representative of the systemic failures or successes) but the sum of many . Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is my common consensus.

So, I choose to strive to be better.  I strive to be empathetic and reasonable.  I strive to civilly celebrate my successes and hopefully learn from my failures and imperfections.  My first breath of life is not identical to my last breath but the mechanics of breathing are similar.  

My plea to any beyond myself is to discover common sense.  My hope is that I will empathize and tolerate and accept others and maybe just maybe, others will do the same for me.  The self centered,  shallow over reactionary tendencies of our day are alarming and unbecoming.  In my circles and it’s immediate periphery I have many heroes, curious wild cards and many others that provide a vibrant and enriched diversity of thought, action and options to observe and reflect.   I wouldn’t trade or discard that,  most especially my wife.  Some of those folks and their worldviews, I support, some I don’t,  and my hope is I don’t abandon them in their respective successes or failures.

Understanding my imperfections,  I invite, implore and hope more than just me will choose to rise above. To be patient! To be reasonable! To be empathetic!  Many in our country look beyond marks!  We forget, neglect, or have yet to experience the process that begets wisdom.  We open our mouths when we should observe and reflect.  We react when it’s unnecessary and risk damage and disruption instead of fostering and seeking for more– rise above.  I hope that the citizenry of America and the world can rise above and not regress and ignore the great progress we have made. As the great Martin Luther King Jr once proclaimed ‘I have a dream’.  I no longer choose to wallow in the mire, as my wife states ‘I am not a victim’.   I’d like to celebrate more in the journey of myself and others.  We are sick! We are ill! We are indifferent and apathetic – collectively speaking.  We need to heal and to seek for remedy.

May I have courage to rise above.  May you do similar.  May we tolerate our journeys supporting when appropriate, wishing or empathizing as needed, providing feedback IF asked or requesting consent to do so.  May our communication improve instead of doing what Bernard Shaw observed

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” 

In the end, we share this space of the earth.  Instead of bickering, complaining and whining, let’s seek, discover and  celebrate joy. 

This is how I choose to be optimistic about this,  this is where I hope to remind myself is my starting point. May I look back to identify progress and maturity despite my imperfect journey.  I hope to not get caught up nor lost in disruptive noise. I hope good friends and associates will try to do similar.  I hope my closest friends such as my wife will shake me when needed,  in a manner that I will awaken and listen to when not asking (transformation Tuesday post).  I hope to a future that is better than today.  I feel too many are out of focus and need to recalibrate and rise above the disruptions.  We won’t all agree, but maybe just maybe, we will become better and stop this painful and recursive regression. Rise above,  focus, concentrate and push beyond the noise.  Unplug!  It’s time. Just do it!

More general morsels of my struggles of mine of late

Maybe this will be a rant maybe it will be perplexing thoughts. Perhaps none of the above or something else entirely. I have recently finished reading Mark Manson’s work. Both of them, the subtle art and also everything is – and it’s certainly a pejorative: F*cked.

https://a.co/d/0iStRIob

https://a.co/d/0czW6pDW

And you know, it was interesting, just some background context for me. I’ve always been off-put by the titles. Admittedly, I have to eat crow. Recently, I was talking to some colleagues. They happened to be part of my immediate team. They are both female, it’s significant to a degree – their gender. One of the colleagues is quite interesting. Since meeting, I have really always admired and appreciated her work. Including her abilities and skill sets. She reminds me a lot of Liz’s approach, my wife, to different things. It’s nice to have a professional, sharp as a whip, and pretty quick. I hope she’s compensated fairly. It’s just nice to create a professional working relationship of trust. In this remote model it is nice because being remote helps allow that. Without other difficulties that sometimes cause or creates confusions that sometimes do arise from being in the same place or otherwise. There is none of that while remote and that is what I’m talking about.

It was interesting because I brought up the book titles. And she said, “Oh, I wouldn’t read it just because of the title.” And I mentioned, “Oh, hey, do either of you watch Bridgerton?” The one I am referring to above mentioned she does. She said, “Oh, yeah.” I then said, “Well think of the books a bit like Bridgerton. Even though the book titles are off-putting, the content is similar to what you encounter in that show.” I think it may have sparked an interest merely in sharing context and not trying to convince them. I then relayed some important points to me:

• His book correlates to conditions of today – although that was not his intended target at time of writing
• COVID was just becoming real
• A.I. was just coming on the scene
• Manson’s usage and highlights and pros and the cons of situations that he likened to Newton’s Laws
• Manson’s usage and highlights Kant and his formula for humanity

It all just kind of hits in a different way. And again, I don’t think that was his target. But bravo to him for writing a very interesting and compelling book.

I recently posted on my blog a more personal post about kind of like my faith complex and my worldviews. In a lot of different ways, it’s still meandering whatever course it’s taking. Somebody asked me at a local community picnic the other day. It was at a Fourth of July breakfast. It’s our faith-based area, community, and our neighborhood combined – effectively all are invited, but it stems from the faith-based unit in the neighborhood. The person asked – “You got to tell me,” because I brought up Project 2025 and it’s rebranding to Agenda 47 – I responded saying “Well, you know, it’s something I would hope you would seek to inform yourself about.”

Some context: My wife and I are really, really hot on helping people become aware of Project 2025 and that it is a big deal. It’s not just a hoax. It’s there’s so much more. And it’s not just a conspiracy theory. This is what a certain group of psychotic sociopaths want to achieve through means of government and persuasion. And so anyways, this person asked me,

“You got to tell me where you guys are. “

Neighborhood Acquaintance

Well, I’m always kind of like, so I don’t know that I really have. So I’m really more an artist and the kind of like when I was explaining to my friend Lance a few weeks ago, the other guy in the neighborhood. He posed a very good question. But what do you do? I said, I do plenty. But I just lean more into my Bukowski and think you got to do it on a one by one.

I don’t know that you can do it in mass scale because most people that try to do things in mass scale really are romantics or, you know, they’re just preachers of politics aka politicians. So anyways, so this neighbor, asked the question, I said, you know, “first of all, I am not into either either religion, whether it’s Team Blue or Team Red”. She looked at me and said, “they’ve really become religions”. It is my observation that they both have their own savior or hero complex. I also asserted the context that they both want your donations, and truly these different ideologies land at the same outcome – believe me and do this – and we’ll call it the rule of law to disguise the curated power scheme.

And she’s just like, “Oh my goodness”.

I said, “I have a hard time. So from the faith based perspective, I said, you know, I’ve always had a hard time. Like you’re supposed to subscribe to a singular kind of faith.” And I said, “I struggle with it every day. Not a struggle of like, oh, poor me, blah, blah, blah. It’s just, it’s a struggle. It’s a fight. It’s trying to understand and determine what is the most right thing. You know, absent of all external events.”

And very similar to how Marcus Aurelius says it in his meditations, ‘objective judgment right now outside of all external factors.’ I further told her, “look, you know, I kind of look at all those things kind of like a buffet. I’m always trying to grab the best of whatever’s offered. And then I bring, whatever my worldview of faith based understanding is at the time. And generally, I pair it with stoicism. Faith based is really intellectual and the stoicism is the acting part. I feel in faith based culture, we really have become intellects that don’t take action”.

I continued sharing “That’s the only way I can understand. The people that are running project 2025, they are Neo-Christian fascists. These are people that claim to be Christian. I also identify as Christian. However, I do not identify at all with their version of Christianity. That’s the problem! Of all the kind of worldviews and religions, I’m pretty much in that camp of, really? You want to choose Christianity? There’s so many different versions of Christianity. And none of us can actually agree on kind of one general formula there.”

I didn’t say this to her, but to me it’s curiously ironic because nobody sees it – especially as I observe it in my brain. But let’s jump over to gender for a second. Whether it is identity, sex, biology, whatever. I’m sitting here going, there’s so many different flavors of Christianity. One would think the people that should have the capability to understand a non-binary system a little more easy than others are Christians. Because there isn’t a this or that or the other (depending on categorization concept there are 4, 8 or 16 versions and many sects regardless of classification used). While many constitute some form of dualism it isn’t how it happens in execution. It’s just a cute irony! So, I was just briefly explaining to her, I’m like,

“There isn’t really a side for me. I kind of look at it like, you know, there’s a point on a circle. We can see anywhere from three to six percent, if we’re lucky, of those 360 degrees. I am ore and more convinced that it’s not just a circle, it’s an infinity loop on a relative axis that is perhaps multi-dimensional.

And there’s more like a thousand and eighty degrees. And so if you really think about it, and if all you can see is one to six percent. How limited is that? But yet we’re so convinced of absolutes. So, I just I take the best of everything that I can and I do my best with it. And I am willing to understand that I make plenty of mistakes. That’s why in my faith based concept, it’s nice to have, you know, an atonement and a savior. But at the same time, like, is that reality? Is it a good story? Is it something we just tell ourselves? I’ve got plenty of plenty of supporting evidence that there is, in fact, some form of deity or deities. There’s also the opposite. But what does that all mean?”

And so anyways, I’ll pick something up and start switching over to what’s next.

Noise – Chaos – Peace

This one really hit different the other day. Flags have become idols or Gods! Humans are property again! If that! It’s more about who can be the douchiest and that is often more important than the simplified version of the big 10 commandments/directives (Abrahamic deity-based), not mention seeing folks asking who is this guy that offered the beatitudes. Well, that would be Jesus. No we can’t go replay Birth of a Nation. But you might want to go back and not just accept what good and well meaning and intention folks do , and share perceptions as facts. I recall fondly hearing a curated phrase from my youth – “if all your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you follow them?” I was often quick to quip – well is Jesus there? Well , whether I would or wouldn’t jump is irrelevant but of this bridge whatever side you choose, let me be clear – Jesus still is not there. You are following what you follow not because of Jesus, it’s called perception. Politics, spirituality, and religion can be and are often mutually exclusive of one another another. What connects these three things is you as the actor, the apples and oranges claims of many within the walls of sociopolitical religions don’t go too far without the actor. As a faith based spiritualist that is an anarchist and a stoic – who believes it’s ok to not have an opinion (thanks Marcus Aurelius) – there is also a quote from Ryan holiday that trolls my mind this week

“There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.” – Ryan Holiday

In my lifetime we have turned a symbol – the American flag, into the golden calf and perhaps more often than not, something even more important than a human or worse a deity. The ideal of democracy has bitterly turned into a shield of capitalism that uses righteous anger as a path to anger, then indignation, then hatred and ultimately enmity – murder is murder and multiple war engine justified genocides are paraded in front of many that don’t even know the beatitudes are or who delivered them. You know, Jesus!

Some interesting TikTok’s (gasp I know)

One last thought

Instead of saying, “I know what it feels like”, let’s say “I cannot imagine your heartbreak”.

Instead of saying, “You’re strong, you’ll get through this, let’s say ” You’ll hurt, and I’ll be here.

Instead of saying, “You look like you’re doing well, Let’s say, “How are you holding up today?”

Instead of saying, “Healing takes time”, let’s say “Healing has no timeline”.

Instead of saying, “Everything happens for a reason, let’s say “This must feel so terribly senseless right now”.

And when there are no words to say at all, you don’t need to try and find some. Love speaks in silences too.

Words’ By : Ullie Kaye Poetry

Noise around the Scene on the Seine

Jan Hermansz. van Bijlert – Dutch, 1597/1598–1671.

— Le Festin des Dieux (The Feast of the Gods )

Musée Magnin – Dijon, France

Dearest Gentle Reader,

I’m about to step on some toes in regard to the Opening Ceremony at the Paris Olympics.
The headless woman was Marie Antoinette. She ruled over France and was found guilty of treason, conspiracy, and stealing from the country.
Sound familiar?
Also, it was not the Last Supper. It was a depiction of an ancient Greek Bacchanal… because, you know, the Olympics are ancient and Greek. Surprise!
And if you didn’t know, a Bacchanalia is an uncontrollably promiscuous, extravagant, and loud party. The parties often spanned several days which honored the god of wine, Bacchus (the blue guy covered in grape vine). He is also known as Dionysus, the Greek god of fertility, later known as the god of wine and pleasure.
And finally, it was not Death on a pale horse. It was Sequana, Goddess of the Seine, the River in which the boat precession took place. She was meant to be the representation of the Olympic spirit and of Sequana.
If some of you weren’t so busy trying to end the Dept. of Education, you might know this.
Loosen the clutch on your pearls.
Yours truly,
Lady Francis
••••••
“Paris is back on its feet, jubilant, flamboyant, creative and open. Free,” – Thomas Jolly, the artistic director.
••••••
EDIT
Art is free thinking. You’re allowed to interpret it differently from others. Art is expressive in nature, it involves creativity and imagination. Art evokes emotion.
I never thought my post, or views on what I had researched for myself, would go viral.
I hope that if you’re reading this, that you do your own research. You do not have to agree with me. What a boring world this would be if we all thought the same! In America, we have the freedom to share our views and opinions- but they are not without consequences. All I ask, is that you’re kind to one another.
You can share your information without threatening remarks, death threats, and crude candor.
Please read the following article translated from French to English.
Link to referenced article

TLDR –

Trying to avoid potholes and rabbit holes, but this source was quite interesting – https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages

What I find quite intriguing about the whole “Last Supper” – but really a Bacchanalia festival/party distraction is how many are still chasing genitals while murder, genocides and war engines and power paradigms reign free.

Back to my immediate circles of influence and improving me and providing context and encouragement to those most close to me to do similar. Grateful for folks like Marcus Aurelius, Christine de Pisan, Azouz Begag, Epictetus, Socrates, Bill and Ted’s, Seneca. The four cardinal virtues of Courage, wisdom, temperance and justice. Folks like Plotit that despite persecution, elitism and hypocrisy helped the broken even if she was ultimately burned at the stake.

What a great distraction tho, Epstein is giggling from the grave.