Reflected in a Clouded Sky: July 2012

Friday, July 6, 2012

A Little Drama

From a young woman just outside the Pierce County Courthouse in Tacoma:

"I just got divorced! Woohoo! It's been too long!"

I'm starting to really like that place.

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The silence

The universe does not declare itself on issues of right and wrong. It, by itself, neither inherently punishes the wicked nor rewards the good. It communicates, if at all, only through consequence. We may believe that actions, good or bad, come back around in this life (despite the evidence of our senses), or we may believe that actions in this life echo in the next, whether through the judgment of heaven or of karma.

Alternatively, we may believe that the flow of consequences in our own lives is all the judgment our actions will ever receive-- that justice exists in the minds of humankind, and not in the eye of God or some underlying, metaphysical architecture.

Whatever we may choose to believe, our choices are reflected in a clouded sky. It is up to us to decide the world we want for ourselves, and the borders we set for our behavior are what we enshrine as "law."

This is a blog on the challenge of civilization, the ambiguities and difficulties we face as a family of apes trying to find ways to get along with ourselves and with the universe. It is about the places where principle meets practice and where philosophy meets reality.

Most of all, it is about the beacons we set out for ourselves, and whether those beacons reflect the landscape underlying the fog, or whether they defy it.

Welcome.