The Only Winning Move

President Biden is still being criticized for completing the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.  Here are some quotes and then some of my own passing thoughts about the last twenty years of neo-conservative hawkish foreign “action”…    —    kmab
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of discussion.
—     Plato
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.
—     Aldous Huxley
One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing;  that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.
—     Agatha Christie
Joshua / WOPR:  Greetings, Professor Falken.
Stephen Falken:  Hello, Joshua.
Joshua / WOPR:  A strange game.  The only winning move is not to play.  How about a nice game of chess?
—    A conversation between (Joshua) an A.I. system “programmed” to fight a thermonuclear war and its inventor (Falken).  The lines are from the movie:  “War Games“.
Invading Afghanistan was NOT a mistake.  The correct action should have concluded shortly after capturing / killing Bin Laden at Tora Bora, or not.  Either way, we should have withdrawn from Afghanistan within ninety days and told the the Taliban: “We don’t want to occupy or change your country, but you can be darn sure if you harbor terrorist again, we’ll be back.”  Iraq was a war of choice by the Bush / Cheney Administration.  They took advantage of the fear generated by “9/11” and manufactured reasons to invade there (Iraq).  I’m NOT saying either Saddam or the Taliban were “good” for their respective countries.  I am saying we had no business invading one and and trying to “nation build” in the other.  Both countries have a right to self-rule, no matter how poor we may view their choices.  The correct “moves” were “not to play” (in Iraq) and not to stay (in Afghanistan).  Nothing was settled in either country and it was (not) done at a tremendous cost to our military and their families.    —    kmab
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On This Day In:
2021	The Only Winning Move
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2020	I’m Guessing It’s Real
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2019	Like Smartphones And FOMO?
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2018	Nothing To Build On
2017	This One Is…
2016	Happy Is…
2015	Dare Yourself To
2014	Damned If You Do…
2013	On A Rainy Sunday
2012	Not Sure Anymore
2011	But What Does It Cost?
2009	Another Day, Another Diet…

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After Silence

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
―    Aldous Huxley
From:  “Music at Night and Other Essays“
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On This Day In:
2022	A Crucial Skill
2021	Our Fate Is Up To Us
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2020	Still Willing
2019	Another Prayer
2018	After Silence
2017	Are You Looking Forward To A Trump Presidency?
2016	Three Errors From Eureka
2015	Limiting Choices
2014	Praise The Lord And Pass The Hypocrisy
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2013	Still Waiting For Answers
2012	Informal Leadership
2011	A Little More Progress
2010	Bec’s Gone Again…

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Mr. President, About Global Warming

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
―    Aldous Huxley
From:  Complete Essays 2, 1926-29
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On This Day In:
2021	Being Constantly Great
	Hopeful Realization
2020	Sapping Joy
	Blew Out My Flip-Flop
	Really Wheelie
2019	Word Up
2018	But Much Is Worth Learning
2017	Mr. President, About Global Warming
2016	Starting To Stumble
2015	Begin Combat
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2014	Just Dig ‘N It, Why?
2013	Additions
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2012	Telling Her
2011	On Torture

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Hard Learners

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.
—    Aldous Huxley
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On This Day In:
2015	Goals
2014	Switch To Dogs…
2013	Times Change
2012	Ashes Not Dust
2011	A Handful From Saudi
	None Of This Happened
	Take Responsibility

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Wiser But Less Cocksure

But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.  He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly to comprehend.
—    Aldous Huxley
From his novel:  “The Doors Of Perception“
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On This Day In:
2022	I Learn Something New
2021	I’m Retired, I Always Have Time For It!
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2020	Decide, Support, Vote
2019	Aware Some
2018	Know Any Christians?
2017	The Only Thing I Can Give…
2016	Wiser But Less Cocksure
2015	Not Today
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2014	…Am Too
2013	Credible?
2012	Both
2011	Risking Hidden Linkage

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Alone Praying

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
—    Aldous Huxley
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On This Day In:
2021	Momentary Offering
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2020	No Crumbs
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	A New Day Is Coming
2019	Or In This Case – What’s Wrong
2018	Just Passing Through
2017	True Torture
	Happy Thanksgiving – 2017 !!
2016	Overtaken
2015	Alone Praying
2014	A Full Man
2013	Off Defending The Universe
	Taking Precautions
2012	Never, Never, Never
2011	Testing 1, 2, 3

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Little Or No Common Ground

The mind is its own place, and the places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling.  Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten.  The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience.
—    Aldous Huxley
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On This Day In:
2021	Vote NO In The California Recall
	On And On
2020	The Importance You Can Have
	Slow Dancin’
	Trump Reaffirms His Administration Is The Cause Of West Coast Wildfires
2019	A Lifestyle
	Day 16: Cheat Day
2018	The Children Are Our Future
2017	And Three
2016	Nine Parts Mystery
2015	Little Or No Common Ground
2014	Just Between Me
2013	Beyond The Strings
2012	Saving The Union
2011	Still And Too Often

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Things Known And Unknown

Today I completed reading “The Doors Of Perception” (1954©), by Aldous Huxley.  This is a “classic” because it was written by a famous / distinguished author.  It is a very short work of less than eighty pages;  well written and easy to zip through.  This is my second reading of the book.  I guess I first read the book back in the mid to late 1970’s, but it may have been as late as the early 1980’s – certainly before I reached thirty years old.  I have remembered almost nothing of the book, so it didn’t leave much of an early impression the first time through.  I had previously underlined a few excerpts to be included in my journal at some point.  I found many more interesting statements this second time through.
The book is essentially about a day spent “high” on peyote / mescaline.  The author read about the drug being used to treat some forms of mental illness and decided to try it under supervision (a doctor and his – Huxley’s – wife).  The book is a record of the experience and his thoughts immediately after the experiment.  At the time of the experiment, the drug was not illegal or on the controlled substance list.
Full disclosure:  although I had a misspent youth experiencing multiple controlled substances, “magic” mushrooms / peyote / mescaline was not one of them, so I have no direct experience to personally compare with Huxley’s.  I would say generally, Huxley’s description of “altered” states seems accurate, perceptive and well written.  Perhaps, too well written, as erudite writers sometimes beat you over the head with their education and sophistication.  Huxley is borderline here.
I believe I actually found Huxley’s after-the-fact comments and observations more interesting than his in-the-moment ones.  Huxley offered me a number of insights into human nature and the role of drugs in society and religion, which I confess gave me pause for thought.  You’ll read some of these in the next few months.  I haven’t decided whether I’ll comment on them or simply post them as written.
Final recommendation:  highly recommended reading!   The book is short, well written and offers interesting comments on the nature of man’s experience in the universe.
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On This Day In:
2021	Losing One’s Edge
	Can I Get An Up Front Seat?
2020	Are You Sure?
	Who Could It Be?
2019	Living Art
	Day 7: Week 1 – Mathematics
2018	Hey, #45: Are We Sick Of Winning, Yet?
	Day 40: Wrists
2017	Heart Vision
2016	A Labor Day / Pre-Election Hope
	Trust Me, Too
2015	Without Hope
	Things Known And Unknown
2014	A Wall Too High, A Bridge Too Far
2013	Glory = Danger
	Chicago Magic
	Feelin’ It
2012	How Did We Get Here?
2011	Labor Day Weekend Mishmash
	More, More, More

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Two Thoughts On Thinking

The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.
—    Dr. C. D. Broad
…Each one of us is potentially Mind at large.  But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive.  To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system.  What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.  To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages.  Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born — the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people’s experiences, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.
—    Aldous Huxley
From his book:  “The Doors of Perception“
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On This Day In:
2014	From The Top, Please…
2013	You Are The Stars
2012	Just One??
2011	Anything But

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Maybe Sooner Than You Think

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another;  but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves.  The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena;  they are crucified alone.  Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence;  in vain.  By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude.  Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies – all these are private and, at second hand, incommunicable.  We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves.
—    Aldous Huxley
From his book:  “The Doors of Perception“
[To which I can only respond:  “Yet.”    —    KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2014	The Path Of Mastery
2013	Love’s Ignorance
2012	Here’s To Enjoyment
2011	Not Just The Facts, Ma’am

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Exposed Spirits

I followed along Aldous Huxley’s path and started to develop what I jokingly called my Unified Field Theory of Religion.  My working hypothesis was that the cosmos was made up of spirit and matter, heaven and earth, and that humans consisted of both elements, a body and a soul, dust and divinity.  The mystical experience was what happened when the divine or God or Allah or whatever name you prefer breaks through the mundane in a particular soul and exposes it to the universal spirit.
—    Matthew Polly
From his book:  “American Shaolin“
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Lectio Auget Existentiae Meae

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.
—    Aldous Huxley
[And for those of you not quite up to speed on Latin:  “Reading increases my existence“.     —    kmab]
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On This Day In:
2021	Still Building
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2020	Books And Blogs
	You Don’t Know What I Got
2019	#45 Is The Inverse
2018	A Message To The White House Press Corps
2017	Eeny Meeny Miny Moe
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2016	Feeling Warm Yet?
	Four Documentaries
2015	Just Like All The Others
2014	In My Own Vanity
2013	Filled With Words
2012	Lectio Auget Existentiae Meae
2011	Lied Lately?
2010	Born To Work At Faux News
	Lost Again (Uh, Make That Still)
	Qui Genus Humanum Ingenio Superavit
	They’re Back… (Part 1)

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One View Of Man

The whole of modern civilization is based on the idea that the specialized function which gives a man his place in society is more important than the whole man, or rather is the whole man, all the rest being irrelevant or even positively harmful and detestable.  The low-brow of our modern industrialized society has all the defects of the intellectual and none of his redeeming qualities.
—   Aldous. L. Huxley
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