p15, v6.21 — Opinion — Mountain Views News

Opinion

Mountain Views News Saturday, May 26, 2012

MVNews this week: Page 15

OPINION

Mountain Views News Saturday, May 26, 2012

STUART Tolchin..........On LIFE

HAIL Hamilton My Turn

Mountain
Views

News

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

CITY EDITOR

Dean Lee

EAST VALLEY EDITOR

Joan Schmidt

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737

626-818-2698

PRODUCTION

Richard Garcia

PHOTOGRAPHY

Lina Johnson

Ivonne Durant

WEBMASTER

John Aveny

CONTRIBUTORS

Jeff Brown

Pat Birdsall

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Stuart Tolchin

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills

Hail Hamilton

Rich Johnson

Chris Bertrand

Ron Carter

Rev. James Snyder

Bobby Eldridge

Mary Carney

La Quetta Shamblee

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Wellborn

Dr. John Talevich

Meaghan Allen

Sean Kayden

COMMEMORATING
MEMORIAL DAY

THE EMERGENCE
OF THE
UNCONCONSCIOUS

The other day a
Vietnam War vet
friend of mine
asked me if I’d ever written anything
about Memorial Day. I replied that I
had... but that it was back in 2007. I
sent him the editorial. That night he
called me on the phone and asked me if
I could get it reprinted this year. Below
is the piece as originally published. This
was back when The Mountain Views
News was called The Mountain Views-
Observer.

It’s hard to believe it’s been five years
since I wrote that column. During this
time there’ve been a lot of changes
made at the paper-- all of them for the
better, including its name change. I’ve
seen a black-and-white weekly with
a small readership of residents grow
into one of the largest locally published
weekly in the San Gabriel Valley with a
readership of nearly 150,000.

That’s an incredible accomplishment
for such a short time, and it is all due
to the leadership of its Publisher, Susan
Henderson, and a loyal staff dedicated
to making The Mountain Views News
the great paper it is today. So this
Memorial Day take a moment to
commemorate the fact you have such
a well-written local source of news and
commentary. Our community is truly
blessed. We should all be proud.

********************

Patriotism is everywhere on
Memorial Day. Flags fly and flowers
decorate the graves of our fallen
heroes. Red, white and blue bunting
adorn the balconies of buildings and
homes. Volunteers and Volunteer
Organizations march in patriotic
parades all across the nation. Patriotic
speeches are made by politicians and
military leaders. The President places
a wreath of flowers on the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier. There are readings
of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address. Memorial Day is also the
start of the Summer Season. For most
of us, however, Memorial Day means
attending picnics and other outdoor
activities, and consuming large
quantities of hot dogs and beer.

But what does Memorial Day really
mean? Is it only about flags, flowers,
hot dogs and beer? Or is it about
something much larger and more
powerful in the American psyche?

Unfortunately, many of us have
forgotten the true meaning of this
important national holiday.

Memorial Day was originally called
Decoration Day and was established
as a day of remembrance for those
who valiantly died in the American
Civil War. Although there is evidence
that organized women’s groups in
the South were decorating graves of
Confederate dead before the end of
the war, Waterloo N.Y. was officially
declared the birthplace of Memorial
Day by Lyndon Johnson in May 1966
a hundred years after the original
commemoration. Of course at that
time we were engaged in another civil
war—this one fought in the streets of
our nation over the war in Viet Nam.

How Memorial Day originated
is uncertain. The planned or
spontaneous gathering of people to
honor a community’s war dead in
the 1860’s tapped into the general
human need to honor all the war
dead, each gathering contributing
honorably to the growing movement
that culminated in General John
Logan’s official proclamation on May
5, 1868. Three weeks later on May
30, his General Order No. 11 was
first observed when flowers were
placed on the graves of Union and
Confederate soldiers at Arlington
National Cemetery. The first state to
officially recognize the holiday was
New York in 1873, in remembrance of
the original 1866 commemoration at
Waterloo.

So this Memorial Day, after
consuming your allotment of hot
dogs and beer, take a moment to
honor the young men and women
who throughout our history have
answered the call to duty and
sacrificed their lives on the alter of
freedom. Reflect for a minute about
the price these patriots paid with their
blood, sweat and tears so we could
enjoy this Memorial Day with our
families and friends. Remember also
that honor, duty and devotion to our
nation in the defense of liberty is the
price free men must pay to guarantee
that freedom endures. As Lincoln said
so eloquently at Gettysburg 144 years
ago:

“...It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining
before us— that from these honored
dead we take increased devotion to
that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion—that
we here highly resolve that these
dead shall not have died in vain, that
this nation under God shall have
a new birth of freedom, and that
government of the people, by the
people, for the people shall not perish
from the Earth.”

My birthday was
about a month ago and both my wife and
son gave me books as presents. I am just
getting around to reading the books right
about now as I have been struggling with
another book for about 6 weeks. Hooray!
I finished that book about a week ago
and have acquired some new insights.
This now finished book is called the AGE
OF INSIGHT, The Quest To Understand
the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain
written by Eric R. Kandel.. Are you bored
already? Really, you shouldn’t be. First
of all, the book is absolutely beautiful. It
is a very large, over 600 page, book that
displays on its dust jacket a large copy of
Gustav Klimt’s captivating, gold encrusted
portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. If you are
disinterested in descriptions of portraits
and are more interested in the hard-truths
of reality please be aware that another Klimt
painting, the “Kiss,” was sold at auction in
2006 for $88,000,000. That’s right; eighty-
eight million dollars.

Perhaps this dollar quote will make this
article a little more palatable for you. The
book’s author is a Nobel Prize winning
Neuro-Biologist with whom I first became
acquainted on the Charley Rose program,
wherein he was described as one of the
smartest men in the world. Of course,
also present with Kandel was another old
scientist, James Watson, the co-discoverer
of the structure of DNA, who was similarly
described as one of the smartest men in
the world. Unfortunately, soon after his
appearance on the show Dr. Watson was
interviewed and made some truly naïve
and stupid remarks about people of African
descent. These remarks totally ruined
Watson’s career and stand as a lesson
demonstrating the incredible limitations
often demonstrated by seemingly intelligent
and respected scientists. I believe the
acceptable term used today is “domain
specific” which means that, outside of their
own narrow field of expertise, scientists
don’t know nothin’.

This limitation of contemporary scientific
knowledge is ironically appropriate to the
thesis of Kandel’s book. He asserts “that all
visual art, from the ancient cave paintings
of Lascaux to contemporary performance
pieces, have important visual, emotional
and emphatic components that we now
understand on a new level”. That level is
the presentation of material reflecting the
unconscious unfettered by the rational
constraints of the aware and socially
acculturated mind. Over forty years ago I
was very privileged to enter the now closed
caves at Lascaux in the Dordogne region
of France. These paintings of ancient
animals, painted twenty thousand years
ago on the curved rock walls of the caves
are the single-most evocative art I have ever
seen. The paintings are more than alive
and contain a frightening naturalness that
conveys the living experience of these pre-
historic painters.

Last year I saw a 3-D movie by Werner
Herzog which explored and presented
the newly discovered Chauvet cave
paintings which are thirteen thousand
years older than the Lascaux paintings.
These paintings were created by ancient
Cro-Magnon men over thirtry thousands
years ago. The creators of these paintings
arguably had no spoken language yet their
paintings are expertly and magnificently
executed. Some neuro-scientists assert
that these paintings demonstrated that
the human mind capacity had completely
evolved more than thirty thousand years
ago. Other researches postulate that
these sophisticated paintings done prior
to the time oral language evolved are a
demonstration of artistic sensitivities and
abilities, which were later lost with the
coming language. Arguably man’s creation
and utilization of language had been at the
expense of the artistic ability manifested by
ancient cave artists..

The entire Age of Insight book is
an exposition of the influence of the
unconscious upon behavior. We may
all think we are making decisions and
exercising our volition, when actually the
decisions to act have been made in our
unconscious and have generally begun a
full second before we have any awareness
of our intention. Our experience of
authorship is an illusion linked to our
utilization of language, which fools us into
thinking we are exercising free will.

In my May/June issue of Ode Magazine in
an article entitled “Exploring the Promise
and Perils of the New Unconscious” it is
stated in big red letters:

“This reality is very hard for people to
accept. People try to control their behavior
by conscious decisions, but really it is only
the illusion of control”

Okay, so what do we do; or better, what
can we do? First we should maintain an
awareness that we have been mislead by
science. Our educational system, which
mainly emphasizes language abilities like
reading, has deprived us of an awareness
of the unconscious forces that are actually
calling the shots. I’m afraid that over-
reliance upon limited scientists like James
Watson has disempowered mankind
and prevented us from making decisions
with any real understanding of the way
we function and how we have survived
over the millennia. I believe it is the
unconscious which links us all together and
creates a community engendering mutual
survival rather than a continuing state of
war and destruction. Let’s hope we can get
it together and then have the time to enjoy
the presents we give to one another.

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OUT TO PASTOR

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder

MAN SUES GOD, GOD
COUNTER-SUES

RICH Johnson

DUMB THINGS

Have any weird relatives? My list of my weird
relatives would take several pages. A shorter list
would be my unweird relatives. Furthermore,
I am sure I’m on every one of my relative’s weird
relatives list. Remember, we are not alone in this
phenomenon.

In a related cultural uniqueness, let me ask
you if you have ever said anything really dumb? As any regular reader of my
column can attest, I have with relative frequency. We all do. Dumb statements are
everywhere. Of course politics is a hotbed for dumb statements. Here are some
of my favorites:

“We’ve got a strong candidate. I’m trying to think of his name.” Senator
Christopher Dodd

“China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.” Charles de Gaulle

“People who like this sort of thing will find this is the sort of thing they like.”
Abraham Lincoln

“We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur.” Al Gore

“I don’t intend for this to take on a political tone. I’m just here for the drugs.”
Nancy Reagan (at a anti-drug rally)

“The streets are safe in Philadelphia; it’s only the people who make them unsafe.”
Frank Rizzo, mayor of Philadelphia (special nod to a very dangerous woman I know
from Philadelphia)

Sports is another part of our society wherein the occasional faux pas rears its
often humorous head:

“He must have made that {movie} before he died.” Yogi Berra (referring to Steve
McQueen)

“The doctors X-rayed my head and found nothing.” Dizzy Dean (famous pitcher
in the 1930s and 40s)

“I want to rush for 1,000 or 1,500 yards, whichever comes first.” George Rogers,
New Orleans running back

“I’ve won at every level, except college and pro.” Shaquille O’Neal

“It’s almost like we have ESPN.” Magic Johnson on how well he and James Worthy
play together

Technology and industry have their fair share of blunders:

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” Ken Olson
(Founder of Digital Equipment Corp. 1971)

“We went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with
some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us?’ They said no. So
then we went to HP, and they said, ‘we don’t need you. You haven’t got though
college yet.’” Steve Jobs (Apple Computer founder)

“$100,000,000 is way too much to pay for Microsoft.” Unidentified IBM executive
in 1982 (Btw, As of February 2012, Microsoft was worth $285,000,000,000. That’s
billion folks)

And finally, does the name Dick Rowe mean anything to you? It probably won’t
but his quote certainly will go down in history as one of the dumbest.

Re: the Beatles in 1962: “We don’t like their sound and ‘guitar music’ is on the
way out.” Dick Rowe (Decca Records executive)

In a follow up, Mr. Rowe was judging a talent contest along side George Harrison
when George told him he should have a listen to these guys called the Rolling
Stones. Without hesitation Mr. Rowe signed Mick Jagger and company.

So, if you ever say anything dumb ever again, just remember you are in good
company.

Just when you
think you have all
of the idiots in the
world organized
and in their proper place, someone comes
forth to challenge the number one position
there might an epidemic of idiots in
our world because there sure is a large
amount and it seems to be growing every
day.

They come in a variety of sizes and shapes
and dispositions. There are political idiots,
religious idiots, celebrity idiots and just
plain downright stupid idiots. Of course,
the stupid idiots have somehow crossbred
with all the other idiots.

I am not exactly sure what category the
person is that I am about to tell you about
because he could fit into many categories.
A few years ago, a former senator from Nebraska
(if you are from Nebraska you have
my sympathy) announced that he was suing
God. It really does not matter why he is
doing God, I think it had something to do
with terrorism in this world, but the fact
that he is suing God for anything caught
my attention.

I know what my mother used to tell me,
that I should not call people names. However,
I do not think my mother was including
people such as I am talking about
today. If it walks like an idiot, and thinks
like an idiot, and talks like an idiot, it must
be an idiot.

One of the first things that came to mind
as I heard this story about suing God was,
which God did this person have in mind?

Did he have in mind the popular conception
of God? By that, I mean the God most
people think of when they think of God.
This God is a combination of Abraham
Lincoln, good old Aunt Eloise who would
not hurt a flea (much to the aggravation of
her dog) and a series of fairytale characters
that all end in "and they all lived happily
ever after."

I would not mind suing this God myself.
The philosophy of this God is "do
nice things and you will feel better about
yourself."

Or maybe he is thinking of the God of
his own imagination. This may be closer
to the truth. Most people make up an image
of God in their own mind, which has
nothing to do with reality. Most of these
people if reality ever had the occasion
to enter their mind the shock would kill
them.

Of course, if he is suing the God of his own
imagination, isn't he really suing himself?

I am just wondering if this former senator
from Nebraska has ever heard of a book
called the Bible. And, has he ever read it?

It amazes me how many people form an
idea about God and have never read the
Bible. Consequently, they have no real
conception of God, only what they heard
other people say.

For example, when things go bad people
always blame God but when things go
right they congratulate themselves on a
job well done. If you want to blame God
for the bad, then give Him credit for the
good. It only makes sense, however when
we are dealing with idiots common sense
and sound reasoning are out the window.

As I was thinking more about this matter
of suing God another thought hit me. How
do you swear God in?

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, so help
you...aaah... so help you...aaah... so help
you, Yourself."

If somehow we can get past the swearing
in, what idiot would accuse God of some
atrocity and then want God to tell "the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth?"

I have known many idiots in my day and I
cannot think of any one that really want to
hear "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth." What they want to hear
is what they want to hear, and they do not
want facts to get in the way.

The other side of the matter is what if God
would counter-sue? I mean, turnabout is
fair play.

"Your Honor, I have checked My records
and I did give this man brains. What he
did with it only man knows. As far as My
records are concerned he hasn't used his
brain since the second grade."

God continues His argument, "I also gave
this man other talents and abilities along
with an instruction manual so he would
know how to use them. According to My
records, he has never read the instruction
manual. As far as I can see he has used his
talents and abilities for selfish purposes
and not to glorify Me."

The question I want to pose to this former
senator is, does he really want God to tell
"the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth"? Is he sure his closet is absolutely
free of skeletons?

There must be something more idiotic
than suing God, but at the moment, I cannot
think of anything. No man ever born
of woman will ever judge God, but God
will judge every one.

Jesus said, "But I say unto you, That every
idle word that men shall speak, they shall
give account thereof in the day of judgment."
(Matthew 12:36 KJV).

Then the apostle Paul made this observation,
"So then every one of us shall give account
of himself to God." (Romans 14:12
KJV).

I'm not too concerned about what people
think about God, I want to know what
God thinks about me.

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