Guate Pictures » Philosophy

A Trip to the Old Store

admin — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 03:43:21 +0000

Sometimes it’s good to take a little trip down memory lane as long you don’t forget to come back and you take something useful away from your visit. It was on Saturday morning just a few weeks ago that I drove the short distance to the small shopping center near my condo to pick up a furnace filter for my heat pump. Located in a pristine neighborhood, the small hardware store occupies the end spot on the end of the shopping center. When I entered, one of the clerks asked me if I needed any help but I politely said ‘no thanks’ and headed for the shelves with all the filters. It’s funny how an image of something can trigger a memory. As I looked for the appropriate size filter, I suddenly remembered Al and Frank, from a time that seemed so long ago. I had lost track of Al and Frank in 1986 when I left home. They had been around since at least 1949. I grew up across the street from them, got through grade school, graduated from college, and yet they were still there. Nothing ever seemed to change with them, but by 1986 the neighborhood, once neatly kept, whose houses with their white marble steps were scrubbed daily, had deteriorated into a crime area. Al and Frank were the two guys who ran the corner hardware store across the street from our row house. It was a long way from today’s modern shopping centers. There it sat on the corner of a blue collar neighborhood in the middle of Baltimore. My father had bought our first fan there in 1949, a stand up Hunter model that never stopped working right through the time someone broke into the house and stole it. Two glass windows, one on each side, showcased the various items that could be purchased inside including goodies like roller skates or the latest in irons for the housewife. Al and Frank made sure the windows were kept squeaky clean. Eventually though, the glorious glass windows were replaced with bricks and mortar after the neighborhood started to deteriorate and the bad guys broke the windows to get some free samples. Time moved on yet Al and Frank remained. They were fixtures I could depend upon as icons of stability–Al, Frank and their hardware store. They really didn’t own it. They ran it for someone else, but you would think they owned it. They would arrive each morning separately and park their cars on the street in front of the row houses as close to the store as possible, then walk to the store to open it for business. Each had a wad of keys on his belt which opened the store, storage areas inside the store, and the separate garage storage area up the street. Unpretentious men, they carried lunch pails, although on some occasions their wives would stop by to leave them homemade lunches. They made keys, cut glass, repaired screen doors, sold nails, paint, hinges, plungers, piping, plaster, roller skates, clocks, small appliances and just about anything else a homeowner would need–year after year after year after year. Countless customers had gone up the two steps in front of the entrance and stepped onto the old hardwood floors to be met by Al or Frank surrounded by shelves and cabinets filled with hardware. Incandescent light fixtures hung down and an old crank cash register on a counter awaited the customers after they had selected their purchases. Nearby was an old key maker and a paint mixer, and behind them a wooden door led to a storage area in back. From the window of my row house across the street I grew up and watched neighbors walk down to the store and emerge with paint, hardware, ironing boards, rejuvenated screen doors, piping, and whatever else they needed. Customers also drove in from outside the neighborhood. There was no such thing as anonymity with Al and Frank–they knew who you were and you knew who they were. I never understood how Al and Frank kept going for all those years, never changing, and never seeming to mind about what they were doing, and most importantly, never getting tired of each other. Al was slightly outgoing but Frank was more reserved, yet they complemented each other. They were both always amiable, helpful and patient. I stayed in the house across the street from the old store until everyone I lived with had passed. Then the dank smell of the alleys and their underbellies seeped into the walls until the safety and warmth of the house faded and became something of the past. The neighbors moved out one by one and the boarded up windows served as testimony to their departure. So that time came for me to also step across the entrance I had crossed so many times, lock the front door and descend down the white marble steps, and move on. I returned some time later for one last look and to turn the house over to a real estate development firm which had bought it. The house had been emptied of its contents by then, mostly by thieves who had broken in and helped themselves to almost everything including the stained glass windows in front. They had no use for the books though which they left scattered all over the floor. It had been a hard sell, for the neighborhood was now virtually full of boarded up houses and the street corners had turned into business establishments for drug dealers. It was home no longer; I got into my car and looked across the street to the once lively hardware store which was now surrounded by iron grating tightly secured with a chain and lock. Al and Frank were finally gone and I knew an era had come to an end. I could only wonder where they were or even if they were still alive. What I felt would not never come to an end, had ended. The hardware men were gone too. With that thought, my hand moved forward, back in the present time, and pulled out the air filter I had been looking for. As I walked up to the counter I pulled out my apartment key to get a spare made. The clerk found the blank from a hanging panel behind him and as I watched him cut it on an old style key maker, I realized that Al and Frank would always be around. They had a certain permanence that would not vanish, iron grating and padlocks notwithstanding. The clerk finished cutting the key and filed off the rough edges, then manually rang up my purchases on an semi-modern register without a scanner. The drawer opened and he gave me my change and receipt and I walked out and down the two steps that led to the entrance. For some reason I liked coming to this store, choosing to stay away from places like Home Depot. Now I knew why.

Web Directory is the Best Way for Your Website Traffic

admin — Sun, 02 May 2010 05:16:52 +0000

Unlike search engines, web directory presents a list of sites based on categories and sub-categories. Web directory edited by humans and not pengkategoriannya system based on certain keywords, but based on the essence of a site. The site owner is allowed to submit his site to be included in the list in a directory. Any submissions will be checked manually to be entered into the database directory on the web. Each site can only be entered into one category or a maximum of only two or three categories. Therefore, current business web directory have become very popular. On the other hand the bidding web directories is very different, you just need the funds as the more you pay the more visible you become. But then new and quality web directories which don’t have too many out going links may help you get a listing on a page that actually have page rank.

If you want to dominate as most big webmasters want, just buy a top link and get the other behind. I have seen big website owners bid huge amounts to get on top of others, this helps in creating page rank, web directory, traffic and stuff like this. In addition, you can also get a free web directory and the top links get traffic also, for an example this bidding web directory jasminedirectory.com has more than two hundred unique visitors daily, and most of it is transferred in the top few bidders, and with most bidding directories traffic can always be expected.

Goethe’s Theory of Colours

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:49:07 +0000

In 1810, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe took issue with Newton and the scientific establishment. Not that Newton was not a brilliant man, but he was influenced by methods which tried too hard to define and did not stop to glance out of the corner of the eye, for this is how people are sometimes prone to do things.

Newton saw darkness as simply an absence of light, but Goethe had seen it sideways and had noticed that darkness and light work together, and only then does colour appear on the margins between the two. What is more, we have to stand back a little to see them and, in doing so, should simply observe. Anything else will be too much and the image will fade, as anyone who has enjoyed the works of Turner or Kandinsky will know.

Colours, according to Goethe, are the result of how we perceive light, which cannot exist without its opposite, much as Taoist philosophy considers that:

When beauty is abstracted
Then ugliness has been implied;
When good is abstracted
Then evil has been implied (Dao de Jing)

And, of course, the other way around. This is why the Romantic poets and the great writers of Gothic fiction, if they had grasped the point, did not try to define but only to seek words to convey the beauty and ugliness they saw working together to produce colour. This way, the image would be different depending on who was reading it, because the words would react with the light and darkness in the reader’s own mind.

In the language of Novelle in particular, Goethe brings forth this very colour from darkness and light, and herein lay his genius, though he himself did not agree. Lamentably, Goethe’s only fallibility was believing he needed to prove Newton wrong, as this was not necessary. He had already done so in his poetic works.

Social Conditioning Can Influence Our Personal Perspectives

admin — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:31:30 +0000

Fate or free will is a continuing conundrum in human society as is the philosophical rhetoric about evolution or creationism. I am going to tackle both in this article. Why? When studying a subject that has a prophetic nature, fate or free will is a central point. When studying the cosmos as your field of possibilities, it is natural to wonder how it all came about. If you have a firm belief system in one or the other of either pair of ideas under discussion, such belief system negates the possibility of examining all avenues of approach. It does not make you right, it just makes you rigid. We all come to the table with preconditioning, religious or philosophical beliefs, and experiences that have directed us in a specific manner. Since life is so varied and complex, one experience or belief system just does not cover all the possibilities. Sure, you can explain it all with a blanket statement of your personal beliefs. But again, this does not make you right and you will not convince others who lack your conditioning, beliefs or experiences.

What I have been describing is our personal perspective, that which has been produced by the influences from our society and family, our growing and becoming, the insights and realizations, the fears and frights, and the group activities that capture our beliefs. The first 31 years of my life were a valid description of my history based on what I just described. At that time I had a startling awareness, a glimpse into experience that my prior conditioning could not support or explain. A tiny hole appeared in what I had held to be absolute. Being a curious type, I asked questions. The answers slowly but surely illustrated that I was rigid but not necessarily right in some of my preconceptions. To many of the questions that were raised during that period of my life I held to my previous answers as valid. However, many other questions poked more holes in my rigidity as I discovered I was not always right, even when I fervently believed I was right. I learned not to be afraid to question. The world as I knew it would not totally fall apart just because I asked a question. I could remain healthy and still in charge of my personal world. If I could have that kind of releasing experience, anyone could, if they truly wanted to. They just have to be willing to trust themselves.

As an astrologer and a metaphysician I have learned the value of being open to all the experience provided by the universe, employing discernment for what belongs to and with me, recognizing that I am a growing, changing, work in progress and that it is okay. Does that mean I am always open? No, but I have learned to be more open. I have learned that I am not always as smart as I think I am and that the universe has more answers than I have questions. To question one’s existence and personal place within that existence is natural. It should not be frightening, should not be termed a crime and can actually be fun. One by one I have examined many of my own points of rigidity and have learned to relax more and trust myself in my choices. Needless to say I have changed over the years and that has not pleased those around me in all instances. That is okay as well, it is my mind, my beliefs and my life.

What about fate and free will? The conditioning of our society (USA) is that we have free will. That is not necessarily true of other societies. As I studied metaphysics I learned that we have far more ability to direct our individual lives than we realize. That has added to my recognition of free will. I do feel that our free will is dependent on our awareness at any moment and that it is not ultimate for every person. If you are not aware of possibility, it is difficult to move awareness to probability.

As I have studied astrology and learned about the cycles and the timing of events in people’s lives, I have discovered there is a pattern at work, which as pattern could be considered fated. As I have experienced a long life, I have seen the concept of fate and/or destiny at work in my life and the lives of many others. Just how do you reconcile these two points of view? I believe there is room for both.

We don’t arrive on earth with an instruction manual or at least one that is identified as such (your astrology chart does help). We seem to come in with a reasonably clean slate and our experiences write on that slate as we become. What if we arrived on Earth purposefully? What if we have life to grow and become… for a purpose? If there is purpose to our existence does that not lend itself to a more fated concept? Yet, what we do with ourselves and our life is continually based in free will choices, Can you see both viewpoints operating simultaneously? Is it not possible that my life has purpose but that I get to make choices in whether or not I serve that purpose? Choice implies just that. I may have come with intent but I may choose not to serve that intent and that is my choice. The two terms are not mutually exclusive.

This is where I have come to in my thinking. Yes, there is a lot more to my thinking on this subject, but this does illustrate this one point. Reason this pair of words through your own mind to see where you personally see life. Is it fated? Is there free will? Or…is there room for both?

Our next conundrum is evolution or creationism. I am not going to get into a protracted religious discussion because to me it is not just about religion. Let us start with the big bang theory, the current favorite in the scientific community. Everything we see and that which is still invisible to us – everything – came into existence from a singularity – all at one time. It came from an indescribable nothingness and spread in every direction, but not uniformly. There are thick areas and empty areas of the cosmos. The thick areas are filled with galaxies, nebula, solar systems, and all sorts of cosmic material… and us. We are not sure if there is anything in the empty areas, they only look empty to us.

Religion believes that a deity spoke or acted in some way and everything came from nothingness, the act of creation itself. Are you seeing any similarity between the two theories because theories are what each are? If I say the cosmos exploded into being or the Creator created, the big bang concept fits both theories. I don’t see an argument here.

Belief in a creator or deity is a personal perspective. Belief in no such possibility is a personal perspective as well. Science is an intellectual frame of mind. Religion is an emotional frame of mind. Both intellect and emotion are valuable facets to human beings, probably equal in value. If you live and experience both intellectually and emotionally you will have a reasonably balanced set of experiences. If you exclude one and live totally in the other you are experiencing only half of the possibilities to life and it does not matter which is experienced and which is excluded. Both are valuable, exclusion simply halves your possibilities and this is a common practice. To practice such exclusion is a personal choice and preference, but that is all it is.

Science looks around at life and the relics of the history of our world in particular and the cosmos in general. Based on those relics and related research, science reaches conclusions as to the age of the universe, our planet and humanity. Science includes the concept of evolution based on natural selection, Based on this understanding and the archeological evidence, this is an intellectual approach.

People of a book, those that believe in a specific holy book, story or legend, or holy figure follow that book, story, legend, or holy figure as a way of life. Their conclusions come from a community of belief that naturally filters through their emotions, which are quite powerful. Who is to say which is right and which is wrong? Both have value, both are strongly felt and held, it is truly a matter of personal preference. Unfortunately these two seem to be mutually exclusive.

I have been around a long time. In my long and busy life experience I have never found a spot where the creative principle that formed this cosmos (whatever it is) left a message carved in stone and signed to dissolve any doubt. I have room in my consciousness for both evolution and deity. I am not limited. I like feeling my emotions and I enjoy the exercise of my intellect. I prefer to experience all of life that is possible to me, emotional and intellectual, scientific and inspiring, evolutionary and creative. I prefer to live a life that is not just rigid or with selected parts based on conclusions that are really not my own. This is my personal perspective and you have a personal perspective of your own. Enjoy your journey.

Marilyn Muir, author, “Presidents of Hope and Change: Bringing Hope to our Future by Reaching into our Astrological Past.”
How astrology predicts our nation’s future by reaching into our past.

Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy, Obama… The Lineage of Hope
Using the influential and interwoven cycles of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus and Pluto to predict issues and trends up to 2012 and even beyond to 2025, Ms Muir leaves us with the clear message of hope as she depicts the future of President Obama at the helm of the USA ship of state.

The Book of Understanding the Devil

admin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:09:25 +0000

Book Six

(or the Mischievous Spirits)

Part One

Understanding the Devil

The Devil in Greek translates to “The Accuser,” also it can be translated to “A Traducer,” or slander, a false accuser. The Devil and Satan is one of the same entities. Other names-and this entity have many: the temper (Matt 4); “The Evil One” (Matt. 13); “The Great Dragon and Serpent of old” (Rev 12). I think he has more names than the United States has states.

“…like a roaring lion” 1 Peter 5, and he has angels (Rev 12), and he has powers, signs and can do false wonders (11 Thes. 2); some Christians turn and follow Satan (I Tim 5).

The ‘tares’ they are the sons of the evil one (Matt 13). The seed is the word of God (Luke and the devil takes the word of God away so they cannot be saved.

The Devil got into the heart of Judas Iscariot, to betray him (John 13).

There is a lot of testimony in the New Testament that points to the Devil’s existence.

And we also see it in the Old Testament.

Moses, in his fifty book called Deuteronomy, Chapter 32, recognizes Israel was known in pre-existence that they although forgot the rock of their salvation…was God, Himself, and turned to other gods, at this juncture, Moses mentions the sons of Adam, and separating them, thus the Lord God was leading Israel through Adam and his pure blood line, which would have been Seth (third son), but we see in time idolatry with strange gods…”They sacrificed unto devils…”

The point, we see as well in the Old Testament, as in the New Testament, the Devil at work.

In Psalms 106, he is called Baal-peor (in Hebrew, the false gods) and of course Satan is the leader of the false gods.

Part Two

Ruler of the South

Seth (or Set), was one of the ancient Egypt’s earliest gods, notorious for chaos, and storms and wind and so forth. One of he Osiris legends, he was considered the God of Evil ((no connection to Seth the righteous one, the third son of Adam, who had 56-children, 33-sons and 23-daughters as indicated in Gen. 4) (Seth being the ancestor to Noah, and considered by some to be the father to all mankind)).

This Seth is the demon of death; depicted as a man with a head of a ’sut animal’ also as a hippopotamus, pig and the donkey, crocodiles (he refers back to Typhon, iron bones), this god is deep in humankind’s past, referred to in “The Book of the Dead,” CXXV.

Referring back to the French Scholar of Egypt, Mairette: 4100 BC, Egypt changed the old religion, the justified soul; doctrine of the ritual of the dead came into existence. Here he is god, then replaced by other gods, perhaps because of the justified soul concept.

So evil was incarnate, recognized at this point, within a man, superhuman being, the equal or near equal to Satan, and at one point you could replace him with Satan. The story of Seth really is pre-history. When we look at it from that angel, we see Set or Seth an ancient strong god of the past, converted into Satan, then with the rise of Osiris, we see Seth killing Osiris, as night is to day, but then Hor conquers Set. Satan gives us just enough confusion to blind us sometimes, but the theme is, evil incarnate is walking, and was waling at the dawn of history, and dates to an unknown pre-historic date.

Part Three

The Nature of Evil

It is foolish to think man can live in a state of undisturbed happiness, at least not on this side of the grave. If we were all walking in good faith, on the good path, perhaps we’d not understand its worth. Pointing fingers world be pointless. In the absence of evil, perhaps it would be like Marxism, no higher goals to seek, worthwhile seeking anyhow. Thus, how would God measure us?

If there was no monsters of the deep there would be no show to give you an idea about…Jews call this monster Satan, Christians call him the Devil, and those nonbelievers call him Godzilla or King Kong.