C.G.Ayling

Author: CGAyling

  • on Words

    Words are such powerful things.  Words can be a power for good when used well, and a power for ill when used wrong.  Something seems wrong with that last sentence, doesn’t it?  But this post isn’t about grammatical errors, it is about wrong words.  It is about how using the wrong words facilitates enormous suffering throughout the world.  This post is about the power of nuance.  It is specifically about one wrong word in particular

    One has to wonder why there is public resistance to making tobacco products illegal?  I suspect it is extremely clever public policy influencing by incredibly wealthy, incredibly immoral, and incredibly greedy corporations.  Sadly not only are pubic officials easily influenced, but outright bribery and corruption is alive, well, and officially tolerated in the form of “campaign contributions”.  An abominable lack of governmental leadership has permitted big tobacco to confuse people everywhere into thinking smoking is a matter of choice when it is really a matter of addiction.  As a result many people are keen to “stand up for their rights“, indeed many people who don’t even smoke tobacco are willing to support the rights of smokers.

    What rights, precisely, are they standing up for?

    The right to become addicted to a drug with no known benefits and a massive laundry list of detrimental effects, many of which are fatal?  The right to a significantly shorter and unhealthier life?  The right to part with a substantial amount of their income, for no benefit whatsoever?  The right of irresponsible parents to addict their children to an utterly worthless and incredibly damaging drug?  The right for individuals to adversely affect the health of everyone around them, as well as their own?

    Standing up for those individual rights is downright wrong.

    Do you still think using tobacco is a personal right?  Then let me give you some personal information that might sway you to correct your thinking.  And yes, the evidence is incontrovertible, if you still think tobacco is a personal right your thinking needs to be corrected.

    I have calculated the personal direct monetary cost of smoking in my household, where only my wife smokes.  In the thirty years we’ve been together she has spent enough money on cigarettes for us to purchase three brand new mid-range cars.  In that same time period we have only been able to afford three brand new mid-range cars.  And what have we gained from the exorbitant expense of her addiction?  We have gained the anticipation of her leaving this world years earlier than she should, unfortunately that is not a gain, it is an enormous loss.  My wife is not some weak-minded wimp, she is a wonderful person who cares enough about her family to never smoke inside our home or cars.  However she is also a hopeless addict who doesn’t even want to try and kick “the habit“.  It is well past time people everywhere changed their thinking and stopped using words like habit to describe this filthy, damaging, and disgusting addiction.

    Perhaps when we start using the right words things will finally start to change, and the right word for tobacco is not “habit“, it is “addict“.

  • on a Woman’s Wiles

    An interesting tidbit of information is how the word babies use for “father” is almost universally some form of “papa.”

    Like most tidbits, digging deeper uncovers further interesting tidbits – some of which give clues into the psychology of our most ancient ancestors.

    Pah-Pah, the universal sound babies make for father, is just such a tidbit.

    I think the reason behind this particular sound being ascribed to mean father is because the “pah” sound is one of the easiest sounds to form.  It can be visually copied and easily imitated by babies long before they control their vocal cords.   Pah-Pah it made with nothing more than the lips, an exhalation, and a repetition – all of which babies control with ease.

    What does this tell me?

    It tells me women are incredibly smart.  Women bond with their babies through holding, nurturing, and feeding them.  Men bond with babies through the baby interacting with them.  So when the woman tells the man “pah-pah”, that oh-so-easy to form sound, is the baby addressing them it makes the man feel special, which strengthens the bond between man and child.

    Of course it is extremely easy for the mother to teach her baby  “pah-pah” means that smelly hairy thing that occasionally comes around to poke and bare its teeth…  She could just as easily teach her baby “pah-pah” means “I’m hungry”, but she doesn’t.  I wonder why?

    Universally, women are not without their wiles…

    {P.S. For those who subscribe to my blog, no I haven’t forgotten about the next installment on money, I’m just not quite ready to release it.}

  • on Time

    If you’re like me you wonder about things, a lot.  You think about strange things, silly things, mundane things, and things that really matter.  One of the stranger things I’ve wondered about for years, which have become decades {no exaggeration}, is the nature of Time.

    I recently posted this comment on Twitter, in response to a question on the nature of Eternity.

    Can linear beings comprehend cycles which neither begin, nor end?

    The following are a few of my thoughts on Time, taken from an even more recent conversation in which I was asked to explain how I can believe that time does not exist.

    What is time… if it can be measured but cannot not be modified then can it even be?

    Life is a linear construct in a cyclic universe. Universal cycles do not have a beginning and an ending, they are perpetual.  Yet life has a beginning and an end, and our way of grasping how we transition through our beginning to our end is to measure something that does not exist.  We create numbers that are quite literally meaningless when compared to the scale of our existence.  What difference does it make if another solar system is 10 million light years away, or 100 million when such scales are compared to a lifetime of 100 years?  All 100 years is, is a measure of the life of a linear being who needs measurements to comfort itself that it means something on the cosmic scale.

    Yet why do we even need scales?  We have souls, and our souls are not bound by time.

    {P.S. In case you’re interested in some of my other thoughts on time, here are some other posts on the subject:-
    “Streams of time”
    “Perceptions, of Time”
    “on Now“}

  • on Now

    Will things ever even out, or are we trapped in perpetual imbalance? We all need a way to “unwind”, and when our only hope of such is some time in the future… well, here is the thing – the future never comes.  Please don’t rely on promises things will magically get better some time down the road.  Make them better right now, because right now is the only place we humans ever live.

    When we can’t find time for joy life becomes a convoluted mess.

    We’re told a continuous string of lies about the way things are and the way things will become.  And the lies that head the list are, “Accept your lot in life“, and “Things will get better.”  Things will not get better unless we make them get better, and the only way to make them better is to refuse to accept our “lot in life”.  There is only one time in which we can ever act, and that time is NOW.  Now.   Not some time down the road, not some time which will never come, not some distant future which never gets any closer.  This very instant is where we live, not somewhere in a future that never comes.

    It has taken me more than half a century, but I am finally learning to find joy in that which I have.  Joy in the heart is worth so much more than a promise of future joy which may never be fulfilled.  And what a wonderful joy it is to find.  Perhaps even moreso once we realize it is has always been there and it is we who never bothered to look down at the instant in which we are.  Why?  Because we’ve been taught to focus on future instants which may someday come.  Someday never comes, but now?  Now is right here.  Now is where we humans live.

    Live well, live now.

    {P.S. If you’re interested in finding moments of joy captured within a larger tale, please try my rather unusual book, Beltamar’s War.}

  • Memory

    ~ Memory ~
    ~
    When we tell things of the past
    little details come back,
    yet if we never take the time to tell,
    those tiny things fall through the cracks,
    straight down into hell…
    ~
    Might hell be where forgotten memories go
    there forever
    in misery to dwell,
    unclaimed thoughts with no Soul
    who of them
    will proudly tell?
    ~
    Immortality is naught
    save fond memory.
    And death, its silent cousin,
    is moreso naught,
    a forgotten place reserved for those
    of character so bland
    for good they never
    bothered to take a stand.
    ~

    Every day is another opportunity to secure for ourselves a piece of immortality.  We cannot accomplish this extraordinary feat with force. No amount of money is sufficient to buy a single ticket to Destiny.  Yet every single day opportunity resurrects itself again in hope it will be grasped in both hands. Opportunity awaits the willing, it is there at every turn. It is a chance for you to take a stand and do whatever good you can.

  • on Intangible Love

    Something I am fond of saying is this, “Marriage is give and take. You give a lot of love, and you take a lot of shit. And that goes equally for both parties.”

    Love is a truly magnificent thing which I believe makes life worth living. It is so much more than mere sex. It seems that love isn’t about doing things for yourself as much as it is about doing things for those you love, because by so doing you gain far more satisfaction than you ever gain by being a selfish ass.

    However…

    The essence of love is not selflessness, it is self. Only on the surface is selflessness the reason we do things for those we love.  Dig a little deeper and you soon find the real reason we are so eager to please our loved ones is that doing things for them makes us feel amazing. If we did things for them that made them feel amazing but resulted in us feeling like crap we would soon stop, wouldn’t we? And it doesn’t matter a whit if those we love are people or animals, does it? And yes, I believe wholeheartedly that animals are worthy of our love. Not just of our care, but of our caring.

    I have blogged about our dog[s] a couple of times, the root meaning of those posts is that the love of these precious creatures we call our pets is far more pure and unselfish than that of any human. Bacon, our dog, is the only person who never fails to greet me when I get home. She is always the first to sense when I’m unhappy, and she is always the first to soothe me. The therapeutic value of being able to pet her is incalculable.

    If you’re a pet owner I wonder if you’ve ever asked yourself which part of that equation derives the most benefit? Your pets, for your care. Or you, for their caring? I think if you investigate it you’ll find those particular scales are balanced, and balance is itself another tangible benefit we derive from the wonderful and intangible thing called love.

    I once said this

    We are hedonists, one and all, some of the flesh, some of the soul, even the heart its love, doth wish to impart, and of another, imbibe.

    Isn’t love another form of hedonism? I think it is, and I also think if we insist on considering love selfless we close a door that leads to better understanding of ourself. Me? I need to know why I do the inexplicable things I do. You see something else I think is that very little is really inexplicable. But love? Yes, it often seems to be. But that in no way detracts from love’s wonder, indeed perhaps it adds to it.

    {P.S. This post was taken from a DM conversation on Twitter with a rather thought-provoking person, namely Cat From Nowhe®e on Twitter. I’m fairly confident they won’t mind I’ve used my side of our conversation as inspiration for this post, but I have been known to be wrong :). One of the nicest things about Twitter is that it allows us to develop relationships with people we’d never meet in our daily lives. I have no idea if @kv8 is a man or a woman, and while I have my suspicion on their gender it is actually quite liberating to be able to interact with them without any of the physical nonsense getting in the way of the conversation.  If you haven’t tried it, you should.}

  • on Money pt2

    My first post on the topic of money ended by asserting money wasn’t real even when it was manufactured from precious metal. How could this possibly true? Even to the most ignorant of us it seems obvious that when currencies were based on the Gold Standard money had some real value. You don’t know what the “Gold Standard” is? Well since lack of knowledge of such archaic concepts shouldn’t surprise either you or me, so I’ll explain it is as few words as possible.

    The “Gold Standard” was a system in which paper currency was directly backed up by Gold Reserves equal in value to the country in questions total circulating currency. In other words if a country had ten billion dollars of currency in circulation it also held ten billion dollars worth of gold at then current market value in reserve in order to cover the value of its currency. Governments worldwide abandoned the Gold Standard shortly after World War One.

    So what I’m saying is that when countries were still on the Gold Standard money was real, right? Wrong. I’m saying money has always been a lie because money has never been real.  For an explanation of what I mean, please travel with me back in history to when money was invented.

    How can it be wrong to accept the true value of money was the weight of the precious metal from which monetary coins were manufactured?

    It is wrong because the value ascribed to the allegedly precious metals from which coins were struck far exceeds their practical worth. What do I mean by that, and what evidence am I providing to back up my assertion?

    This is what I mean.

    And I hope you’ll see what I say in the following paragraphs as its own evidence.

    Essentially, nothing gains value simply because someone says it is valuable.  Money is nothing, yet we’re told it is valuable.  Our error is that we believe the lie.

    Simply because we are told rare metals have extraordinary value does not make it true. Perhaps these rare metals do have value to specific people or specific industries in specific circumstances, however the only value they have to the vast majority of living humans is the value we are told these metals have. Which means these allegedly precious metals are not really precious at all.  Allegedly is not reality.

    During the height of the Roman Empire about 2000 years ago, people were told twelve silver coins were fair pay for a month’s labor. Does that sound reasonable to you? Would you work an month for twelve silver coins?

    Before you jump in feet first and say you would, since you’d at least be getting something real for your labors, allow me to expand on the matter.  The coin in question was the Roman Denarius. A denarius contained about four and a half grams of silver.

    Numbers and measures and labor hours and values and weights!! Who cares, after all it is real silver, right?  Wrong.  Perhaps you’re beginning to sense the depth and nature of the lie money truly is.  Perhaps, but more likely not.

    The essence of the lie is that converting hours of labor into silver coins is a one sided transaction, with the scales unfairly weighted on the side of silver. What people are losing in all those conversions between alleged value, weights, measures, and hours worked is their time. Perhaps you’re more interested in the numbers? What are those 12 silver coins worth in “real money” today. Let’s do the math. Today, 26th August 2016, silver is priced at US$0.46 per gram. Therefore 12 coins, multiplied by 4.5 grams per coin, multiplied by 46 cents per gram means workers were expected to work for US$27.00 per month.

    Not such a good deal is it?

    Simply to press the point let me let me ask you a few more questions you might consider to be rhetorical, yet which I encourage you to consider practically. Have you ever tried to eat a silver coin? Have you ever tried wearing a silver coin as clothing in the middle of a cold winter? Have you ever fashioned a silver coin into a tool with which to harvest grain, or into an arrow point with which to hunt? Have you ever tried to use a silver coin to shelter yourself from a merciless sun or a bitterly cold wind?  If this allegedly precious metal we know as Silver has no practical value to every living human, then precisely who determined it is in fact precious at all?

    I’m not disputing that polished silver and gold are pretty enough. Indeed burnished gold is extraordinarily pretty. However pretty doesn’t nourish a hungry belly, pretty doesn’t slake a thirst, pretty doesn’t shelter a family from the elements, pretty encourages rather than defends against attack, and while pretty may warm a cold body the pretty that heats a heart isn’t the pretty of burnished gold.

    The point of all this is that even when monetary coins were struck from precious metal, they simply weren’t worth what people were told they were worth. Money is and has always been a lie.

    On the other hand, the following statement is an absolute and undeniable truth.

    Our time is real, it is extremely valuable, it comes in a strictly limited supply, and once spent it can never be regained.

    Yet we are foolish enough to trade our time for money…
    We are foolish enough to trade something truly precious for something truly worthless…
    Even worse, we’re foolish enough to think we’re getting a good deal…

    Money isn’t about convenience, it is about control, and money has been that way since the dawn of civilization.

    And it gets worse. Worse? How could this possibly get worse?

    Well, for that you’ll have to visit here another day.  But please don’t hold your breath, your time is far too valuable for that – all you need do is realize it.

    {P.S. I anticipate some bright spark will think they’re more than willing to work a month for 12 Denarius, provided they are genuine Roman Denarius minted around 2000 years ago.  Personally, I would be willing to work a month for a single priceless piece of history.  However the key concept of the exchange of my time for that authentic Roman Denarius is not an exchange of time for money, it is an exchange of my time for something real – namely history.  History, what a pity we don’t readily learn from it until it becomes our past…}

  • on Money

    Money is nothing, yet we are foolish enough to accept it in exchange for something.

    Preposterous!

    I wish my statement were preposterous.  Unfortunately it isn’t.  It is a simple, inescapable fact for which I’ll provide proof.  However along with the proof I have other things to say about money, questions to raise, and hopefully doubts to instill in the minds to the unwary.

    “Money has no value except in exchange.” Those aren’t my words, however they are inescapably true. Just how true I’ll try and reveal in this post and further posts to follow. Yes, to get the whole story you’ll have to come back since this topic is far too big and far too sinister to comfortably encapsulate in a single post.

    What do you think money is?

    Is money something that sets you free, or is it something that chains you?  Is money a matter of convenience, or an implement of control?

    While we’re tempted to think money is something convenient created to make our lives easier, it isn’t. The purpose of money is not convenience.  Money wasn’t invented in order to facilitate trade. Money was invented to facilitate taxation.

    Money has never been about convenience, it has always been about control.

    The proof money is worth literally nothing.

    Since two of the must influential nations on earth are the United Kingdom and the United States I’m going to use their currencies as the evidence supporting my hypothesis.  However you’ll find similar hollow, meaningless promises used to back up virtually every currency in the entire world, there are no exceptions.

    Read on and become enlightened even as you find yourself distressed.

    The English Pound.

    In the United Kingdom this messages appears upon a £5 banknote: I promise to pay the bearer on demand £5.

    What does this mean?  Well, this is how the Bank of England’s official website describes the above promise.  Their explanation appears under the Heading “What is the Bank’s “Promise to Pay?”

    The words “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of five [ten/twenty/fifty] pounds” date from long ago when our notes represented deposits of gold. At that time, a member of the public could exchange one of our banknotes for gold to the same value. For example, a £5 note could be exchanged for five gold coins, called sovereigns. But the value of the pound has not been linked to gold for many years, so the meaning of the promise to pay has changed. Exchange into gold is no longer possible and Bank of England notes can only be exchanged for other Bank of England notes of the same face value. Public trust in the pound is now maintained by the operation of monetary policy, the objective of which is price stability.

    How hollow is a promise when all that serves as legal tender for the promise is another promise?

    Such a promise is worth absolutely nothing.  To be precise, all a £5 banknote is actually worth is another £5 banknote.  If you’re still resisting this truth perhaps music will sway you, so let me quote a famous singer, “Nothing for nothing means nothing.”

    The United States Dollar.

    In the United States this messages appears upon all paper USA currency:- This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.

    The following question and explanation of this utterly meaningless promise appears on the US Treasury’s official website.

    “I thought that United States currency was legal tender for all debts. Some businesses or governmental agencies say that they will only accept checks, money orders or credit cards as payment, and others will only accept currency notes in denominations of $20 or smaller. Isn’t this illegal?”

    Answer:-
    “The pertinent portion of law that applies to your question is the Coinage Act of 1965, specifically Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled “Legal tender,” which states: “United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.”

    This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a matter of policy.”

    What does this flowery verbiage mean?

    Pay particular attention to the line “There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services.”

    With the line above the US Treasury actually acknowledges there are no Federal laws which mandate that any private party must accept currency or coins as payment for goods and/or services.

    In such realizations doth freedom dwell…

    Essentially the Treasury of the United States of America has reduced the inscription “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private” to a hollow promise that is not even backed up by Federal authority.

    That US $50 bill you grasp so tight and hold in such esteem?  It is worth nothing, not even that paper it is printed on.

    But how did this happen?

    How did matters come to this? Surely something must back money up?  Well, yes, and no.

    In the ever more distant past money pretended to have value by being struck or minted from a valuable metal.  Gold and Silver are metals of such limited supply their very scarcity apparently grants them some unique, universal, and intrinsic value.  Therefore when money was manufactured out of valuable metals the weight of metal within the coin was itself the value of the money the coin represented.

    So way back when money was made of precious metal it was real, right?  Wrong.

    But to find out why that assumption is wrong you’re going to have to think about its ramifications, then come back and let me think about them with you. But how will you know when I’ll revisit this topic again? See that subscribe button in the top tight pane?  That’s the only way.

    {P.S. If you can’t conceive of a world in which money doesn’t exist then I encourage you to visit Malmaxa. Will you find Malmaxa to be a place of paradise or anarchy? I’m not telling, you’ll have to find that out for yourself.

    P.P.S. If you’re interested in reading the the next part of this post you ma do so here.}

  • on Perfect Imperfections

    Perfect Imperfections
    Perfect Imperfections

    Nature gives us wonders, people give us art.

    Beauty overwhelms. It is literally everywhere, all we need do is take the time to look. The image of imperfect perfection above is one of the early Althea blossoms on a shrub we planted a couple of years ago.

    What is the nature of perfection?  Is it symmetry? Is it flow? Is it meaning we cannot comprehend? Within Nature beauty is abundant, and though imperfect it is beauty no less.

    Can we ever hope to create something as imperfectly beautiful as the blossom depicted above? Though I think not, artists provide us things that are beautiful.  I strongly feel things which are beautiful should never be taken for granted, whether from nature or from an artist’s hand.  And I’m slowly realizing that every one of us is an artist capable of producing beauty.  Don’t despair if you think you’re not, it has taken me fifty-five year to come to that realization so there may still be time for you.

    So if I am an artist, what it my medium? Why, it is words. Words… words hidden within other words, words hidden between lines, words which encourage us to question, words that reveal, words of doubts, and ultimately words of truth as I perceive it. Words which you’re reading right now, that hopefully make you think.  Words, that might make you want to find further words which aren’t the same, yet within which you might find substance to satisfy.

    Such words, you may find right here.

    I hope you’re tempted to try them, but to do so I’m afraid you must buy them. {Well, not necessarily… If you wish to read more before you decide, you may. Words there are aplenty on my blog, even the first few chapters of my work, accessible for free in your browser, right now, right here. However, be warned – these words are not what they might at first seem.}

    P.S.  Please don’t steal my words. Why?  Well I can’t afford to lose them, but also because if there is one thing nobody should ever steal it is another’s soul, and that is what my words are.

  • my Ocean

    ~ my Ocean ~
    ~
    You are my Ocean,
    and within that ocean,
    the waves.
    You are the Ocean
    formed from my tears
    that fall into you
    as rain.
    You are the Ocean
    and I from your vapor
    reform as
    me again.
    You are the Ocean
    whose waves wash away
    my pain.
    You are the Ocean
    into which I fall
    and am once more
    reborn.
    You are the Ocean
    you are me
    and I am you
    and who we are
    is
    one.
    ~