Chamblee54

This is a repost from 2012. “Supremacy is the habit of believing or acting as if your life, your love, your culture has more intrinsic worth than those of people who differ from you. Supremacy can be about race, but it doesn’t have to be. Supremacy and hate aren’t identical, but they often go together. Some people turn supremacy into an over-arching philosophy. For most, it’s just a habit of mind. As a habit of mind, supremacist ideas can spring up in anyone. Being liberal doesn’t make you immune. Being gay doesn’t make you immune. Being a minority doesn’t make you immune.”
There is more, but this is enough for our morning discussion. Supreme, Supremacy, Supremacist. Flo, Mary, Diana. It is not just for white people. The whole business of thinking that you are somehow better than your neighbor is part of being a human being. Think about it, aren’t there some people that you think you are better than? Of course there are. You are a competitive animal, and you have to win sometimes. You, and your tribe, are just better than that other tribe.
PG saw a sign over a desk once. I have never met a snob who was not a born liar. Above this sign was a plastic case. In the plastic case was a white dress shirt, with an ink stain in the front pocket. Like telling the truth and lying, no one wants to admit to being a snob. Still, almost everyone plays the game. Maybe the sign should have read “I have never met a human being who was not a born liar.“ Many of those lies begin with “I am not a ___.”
There is a concept, mythos over logos. The idea is, when you present people with information that contradicts a long held belief, the person will ignore the information and stick to the belief. This is related to the concept of supremacy. What happens when you think you are better than a person, and you get evidence that the person is better than you? You will ignore that evidence, and continue to believe the person is inferior to you. It helps when your magic book agrees with you.
Is Anti-Racism a form of supremacy? PG associates with a so called “radical community”. There has recently been a rabid discussion about racism. Now, this is a pretty enlightened bunch. The type of virulent racism that PG saw growing up in Georgia simply is not there. This does not stop the Anti Racist Supremacist Egophile (ARSE) from looking for racism to combat. The ARSE will expand the definition of racism to include every PWOC, except him them, and his their immediate tribe.

Walking the labyrinth is a practice in many traditions. “The labyrinth is a tool for personal, psychological and spiritual transformation. … It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path from the edge to the center and back out again. A labyrinth is unicursal – it is only one path. The way in is the way out. The path leads you on a circuitous path to the center and out again.” Last Saturday, I walked into, and out of, a labyrinth.
There are similarities between the labyrinth, and her sister, the maze. Both labyrinth, and maze, have four parts. There is the path you walk on. The path has several layers. The largest layer is on the outside, and the smallest one in the center. Most, though not all, labyrinths are circular.
The layers of path are separated by a wall, which is the second part. There is an opening in this wall, which enables you to go from one layer, of path, to another one. Finally, there is a barrier across the path, which does not allow you to go any further. This is a section of wall, which crosses the path at a ninety degree angle.
Both the labyrinth and the maze consist of these four parts. The difference is the way that the openings, and the barriers, are used. In the labyrinth, you walk the entire length of the course, in an orderly manner. In the maze, you must make choices. If you make the correct choice, you can move on to the next level. If you make the wrong choice, you will come to a dead end.
Saturday’s labyrinth walk was led by a man, who we will call the Guide. He talked to the group before walking the labyrinth. I got a late start, and missed most of his comments.
Later, I spoke to the Guide, and mentioned some of the similarities between the labyrinth and the maze. The Guide became angry at my observation. He said something about sacred geometry. The Guide also mentioned that most labyrinths are on the ground only, where the maze often has walls that physically prevent you from walking over.
”Labyrinths and mazes have often been confused. When most people hear of a labyrinth they think of a maze. A labyrinth is not a maze. A maze is like a puzzle to be solved. It has twists, turns, and blind alleys. It is a left brain task that requires logical, sequential, analytical activity to find the correct path into the maze and out.”
“A labyrinth has only one path. It is unicursal. The way in is the way out. There are no blind alleys. The path leads you on a circuitous path to the center and out again. A labyrinth is a right brain task. It involves intuition, creativity, and imagery. With a maze many choices must be made and an active mind is needed to solve the problem of finding the center. With a labyrinth there is only one choice to be made. The choice is to enter or not. A more passive, receptive mindset is needed. The choice is whether or not to walk a spiritual path.”
Is it possible to change a labyrinth into a maze, or a maze into a labyrinth? You would leave the basic path, and walls, in place. You would then re-arrange the openings, and barriers, so that the walls and path become either a labyrinth, or a maze. It is a binary choice. Your course is a labyrinth, with a logical unicursal direction. Or, it is a maze, with both correct choices, and dead ends.
The labyrinth walk is a well established spiritual tradition. There is also the possibility of using the maze as a alternative. In the labyrinth, there are no choices, and you are free to focus on your spirit.
In the maze, you will need to make choices. You will not have any clue about which choice is correct, and which one will lead to a dead end. You will have to maintain your enlightened state, while dealing with adversity. This is life … dealing with incorrect choices, while maintaining a level of grace.
There are many labyrinths available. The labyrinth locator can direct you to one, with information about how much public access is available.
Old Men is a portable labyrinth, which frequently appears at Burning Man events. It is made of tent stakes, and fabric walls. “The labyrinth is a modification of a 15th century design. It is octagonal, with four entrances leading to the center. Each path splits and rejoins twice before reaching the center. The participant can then choose which of the four paths to exit from.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.

PG is running out of things to say. Never mind having something good to say about anyone, he doesn’t have anything to say, good or bad. Fortunately, archives are forever, as Richard Grenell found out. PG found this list in his archives. It is based on 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Death, at Discover Magazine. This is a repost. These statements have not been verified, and may contain inaccuracies. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
1) The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as evidenced by a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with the fossils of 27 hominids of the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.
2) There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including “to be in Abraham’s bosom,” “just add maggots,” and “sleep with the Tribbles” (a Star Trek favorite).
3) No American has died of old age since 1951. That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates.
4) The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its decline may prompt muscle spasms, or the “agonal phase,” from the Greek word agon, or contest.
5) Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to eat you. Ruptured cells become food for living bacteria in the gut, which release enough noxious gas to bloat the body and force the eyes to bulge outward.
6) Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid—formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol—into the soil each year. Cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air.
7) Eighty percent of people in the United States die in a hospital.
8) More people commit suicide in New York City than are murdered.
9) It is estimated that 100 billion people have died since humans began.
10) A Swedish company, Promessa, will freeze-dry your body in liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency vibrations, and seal the resulting powder in a cornstarch coffin. They claim this “ecological burial” will decompose in 6 to 12 months.
11) Zoroastrians in India leave out the bodies of the dead to be consumed by vultures. The vultures are now dying off after eating cattle carcasses dosed with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory used to relieve fever in livestock.
12) Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her long-dead husband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his hand.
13) In Madagascar, families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called famadihana. The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a newly married, childless couple to cover the connubial bed.
14) During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, construction companies unearthed so many mummies that they used them as fuel for locomotives.
15) English philosopher Francis Bacon, a founder of the scientific method, died in 1626 of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken with snow to see if cold would preserve it.
16) For organs to form during embryonic development, some cells must commit suicide. Without such programmed cell death, we would all be born with webbed feet, like ducks.
17) Waiting to exhale: In 1907 a Massachusetts doctor conducted an experiment with a specially designed deathbed and reported that the human body lost 21 grams upon dying. This has been widely held as fact ever since. It’s not.
18) Buried alive: In 19th-century Europe there was so much anecdotal evidence that living people were mistakenly declared dead that cadavers were laid out in “hospitals for the dead” while attendants awaited signs of putrefaction.