MYRLN is a non-blogger friend of mine who is the guest-poster here on Mondays. It’s another MYRLN Monday.

RAMBLE TO UTTER CONFUSION

by MYRLN

Diminishing daylight hours recalls the ambivalence of the first day of summer. It’s that longest day of the year on which we celebrate reaching the peak of daylight’s supremacy. But at the same time, it’s also the day when we begin again the slide into winter’s cold, dark dreariness. Oh, some will say, what a pessimist. They will ask, is the glass half full or half empty?

Well, actually it’s both at the same time…from an holistic viewpoint. And from the same viewpoint, the first day of summer is both a beginning and an ending. No matter how much you might want to ignore the duality, it’s there: the summit of light and warmth but also the descent towards dark and cold, a pattern likely the basis for the myth of Sisyphus. Push the stone to the top of the hill only to have it roll back down and require another and endless repetition of the task, while knowing full well its eternal nature.

So the glass is always both half full and half empty. To insist on one or the other is to require factionalism, partisanship — those things that inevitably lead to disagreement and extremism (e.g. al Qaeda terrorism vs. U.S. terrorism) and often to war between the extremes. So how does the holistic viewpoint deal with such extremes? Not well, actually. Simplify the question: is murder good or bad? The holist must say it’s both. The opposite viewpoint insists it’s a moral matter; it must be one or the other. So is holism amoral? If it refuses to distinguish between good and bad, then yes, it is, the partisan would say…if not downright immoral. And if no distinction, then humanity’s response is paralyzed when it comes to extremes of behavior or event. So the glass must be either half full or half empty. No holism allowed. Partisanship required. Like the Pope recently declaring Roman Catholicism the only true path to salvation, all other aspects of Christianity and other religions, in fact, false and useless. Or like the good prez, George Dumbya’s, “I’m right and everyone else is wrong so follow me or die.”

It’s a tough world for holists. The first day of spring or fall are the best days of the year for them: days and nights are of the same length, the glass half full and half empty at the same time. The Pope and prez must hate days like those. Or maybe not so much the Pope since he recently took a nice holistic view in declaring Evolution and Creationism not to be exclusive of each other. It’s sort of like the holist pointing out the obvious truth that the human animal is and always has been good and bad in one and the same body/mind. Hasn’t it?

Although…well, remember the Garden of Eden? Remember the admonition its inhabitants were given? “…of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it….” They were not to know of good and evil. See, even God didn’t want us to differentiate, wanted to keep that knowledge away from us. Or for us to know about it and not know about it at the same time? A holist? Hmmmm….

And poor Sisyphus, that first day of summer. All he can do as that damned rock begins to roll away from him, is watch, maybe cast a “Why me?” glance heavenward, and take a swig from his half-full/half-empty water bottle before starting after the rock…again. “At least it’s all downhill from there,” the eternal optimist would say, never realizing the irony of the remark.

Confusing, ain’t it? Or is it confusing and clear at the same time?

Facebook. That’s one of those “social networking” sites, this one founded by a 23 year old and populated, at least originally, by that younger set. Yes, that’s important.
I’m not a big joiner of those online social networks, but some of my “old time” blogger friends joined and invited me to join them. Why not, I figured. Maybe getting back in touch with the old crowd will jump start my own blogging.
Meanwhile, Ronni at Time Goes By takes notice of the anti-elder hate speech that is evident in a number of Facebook discussion groups occupied by those younger members. Ronni deactivated her Facebook account in protest.
My response was to join the “oldest people on Facebook” (70 so far is the oldest) and become one of those who are standing up to be counted.
I guess it’s the old in-your-face “warrior crone” in me.

Each day I watch the local and world news from 6 to 7 p.m. I watch Countdown at 8. I know that every day someone gets shot in a drive-by. I know that every day some child dies at the hands of a violent adult. I know how corrupt too many of our government officials are. I know that the military tells lies to cover up the crimes committed by the soldiers it has brainwashed. I know that Rupert Murdoch wants to own the media of the world. I know. I know.
But what’s the point writing about it. Others are doing it far better than I ever could. Although Molly Ivins did it the best.
The Big Picture is out of my control. It often seems that it’s out of anyone’s control but the few who already control it.
Even some of the Little Picture is out of my control. It’s at the mercy of my mother’s health.
That’s why I blog about hair cuts and newly purchased cars. Those are among the very few things over which I have any control at all.
I know that my life isn’t nearly as tough as it is for millions of other people. And it’s even tougher if they’re stupid. (The following from an email I got from a relative.)
— Recently, when I went to McDonald’s I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen nuggets. “We don’t have half dozen nuggets,” said the teenager at the counter. “You don’t?” I replied. “We only have six, nine, or twelve,” was the reply. “So I can’t order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order six?” “That’s right.” So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets
— I was checking out at the local Wal-Mart with just a few items and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up one of those “dividers” that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things so they wouldn’t get mixed. After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the “divider”, looking it all over for the bar code so she could scan it. Not finding the bar code she said to me, “Do you know how much this is?” I said to her “I’ve changed my mind, I don’t think I’ll buy that today.” She said “OK,” and I paid her for the things and left. She had no clue to what had just happened.
— A lady at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM “thingy.”
— I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. “Do you need some help?” I asked. She replied, “I knew I should have replaced the battery to this remote door unlocker. Now I can’t get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery to fit this?” “Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?” I asked. “No, just this remote thingy,” she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, “Why don’t you drive over there and check about the batteries. It’s a long walk.”
— Several years ago, we had an Intern who was none too swift. One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, “I’m almost out of typing paper. What do I do?” “Just use copier machine paper,” the secretary told her. With that, the intern took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five “blank” copies.
— I was in a car dealership a while ago, when a large motor home was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of repair and the whole thing generally looked like an extra in “Twister.” I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had set the “cruise control” and then went in the back to make a sandwich.
— My neighbor works in the operations department in the central office of a large bank. Employees in the field call him when they have problems with their computers. One night he got a call from a woman in one of the branch banks who had this question: “I’ve got smoke coming from the back of my terminal. Do you guys have a fire downtown?”
— Police in Radnor, Pa., interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message “He’s lying” was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn’t telling the truth. Believing the “lie detector” was working, the suspect confessed.
— A mother calls 911 very worried asking the dispatcher if she needs to take her kid to the emergency room, the kid was eating ants. The dispatcher tells her to give the kid some Benadryl and should be fine, the mother says, I just gave him some ant killer….. Dispatcher: Rush him in to emergency.