Are We Really Upside-Down?

Have you ever used a divining stick?  If not, have you seen one demonstrated?

Back in the hollers of where I grew up, diviners would be called in to help sniff out a good location to dig a water well.  Most of 'em used a forked tree limb that looked something like a petrified stethoscope.  Others'd use their common sense, walking the ground, sighting the hills and valleys and sorting out just where a good, full aquifer hid beneath your feet not too far from your house but plenty distance from your "outdoor plumbing" (what we called an outhouse).

These days, them diviners use the Internet, GIS maps and other modern technology to make sure your backhoe or other drilling equipment hits the sweet spot every time.

Now, there are still those who swear by the divining rod.  If it worked for their pappy and momma, it'll work just fine for them.

What it shows is that it's all about what you know, what you do with what you know and what you believe when you act on what you know.  Not to mention a good sense of humour, a bit of blarney in ya and an excellent sense of timing.

That's why I'm here writing for myself, recording the lives of people all over the world who believe in their ability to use the local version of the divining rod to work magic in the lives of others.  We can spend all day talking about the truth, arguing about what's really real and what's not and all that rot but the truth is only what you believe the truth to be.  We can agree about laws of the universe only because we haven't found something to dispute the current agreed-to set of universal laws (keeping in mind all the previous laws of the universe that have been disputed and refuted).

I'm just a grown-up kid from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  I think I know a lot but I don't.  I simply believe in the ability of others to carry facts in their hands or have available to them to share with me.  I know who I am and I'm glad to be who I am.

I want us, our species, to seek the higher ground of trust instead of knocking the knees out from one another because of fear and insecurity (often using cleverness as a disguise).  I expect politicians of all nations to act in the best interests of us all, both the majority and the minorities.  I know we aren't perfectly-programmed robots which act on only one principle.  We are more complex than we like to admit to ourselves so we're going to make mistakes in our actions, going against what we think we believe and what we say we believe, contradicting ourselves when we think we aren't.  We act this way as leaders and as followers at the same time.

Most of all, I know we aren't going to change who we are.  We are social beings who adapt quickly or slowly to ensure our survival.  We will thrive as individuals even when our subculture is dying.  We will fall into depressions at the peak of our game.  We are born with afflictions we can do little about.  We are born with afflictions we can do much about but don't.

When it appears the world is falling apart around you, what will you do?  Can you survive almost a month buried under rubble, hanging onto hope by the thinnest of threads?  Could you survive in a detention facility for years with almost no hope for freedom (or knowing you will never be released)?

Right now, the global enterprise named Toyota is facing a quality faux pas.  I remember when my wife and I bought a Toyota Camry years ago.  We were given an initial quality survey to fill out.  We had noticed a few defects with the car and were going to note them on the survey.  The sales manager told us that he really wanted us to check off all perfect/excellent scores on the survey and we told him we couldn't.  He asked if instead of us filling out the survey, would we be willing to give him the survey for a swap of a free carwash and oil change.  We accepted his offer.  From then on, I assumed that most automobile companies pulled the same trick and the ones who were best able to get their customers to mark all perfect scores on the survey or to hand the survey over to the salespersons were the ones getting the best scores bragged about on their adverts with initial quality awards from J.D. Power and others.  Therefore, it is no surprise to me that Toyota has fallen off the quality ladder as reality slowly separated from the false sense of security of happy, #1 survey reports, like a person who unknowingly leans too far over while painting the side of a house.  When you trust your divining rod, make sure you have the data to back it up.

Reminds me of another story.  Stop me if I've told you this one.  A friend of mine...in fact, the one I've previously mentioned whose father was in the U.S. diplomatic corps...his family lived in India for a while.  One of his older half-sisters was going to have some of her friends over for lunch.  Well, my friend told me, in India at that time, it was a matter of immense pride for a certain type of Indian gentleman to get a job as a manservant for diplomatic households (see also "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro for similar thoughts in other cultures).  In fact, a manservant expected himself to perfectly meet the demands of the household, with shame coming upon his family should he fail in his task.  Anyway, the half-sister gave instructions to the manservant about what she wanted for her get-together with her friends.  Included in her instructions was a request for six peanut butter and tuna sandwiches.  As you probably already surmised, the manservant made six, not twelve sandwiches.  Of course, the girls couldn't eat any of the sandwiches - even I, who like to mix foods from the pantry, have not tried a sandwich with both peanut butter and tuna on it.

Simply a matter of semantics, perhaps?  No matter, because the manservant was horrified that he had misinterpreted what the young woman had requested.  He ignored the request of my friend's family to keep managing the household and left because he had shamed his family.  Another divining rod unreality.  We think we have all the data we need to get our job done and fall short when we draw the wrong conclusions from the plotted points.

Same for me now.  Most days, I sit here for several hours, reading books, surveying the world, or writing.  As many of you know, I watch the vehicles that go one way or the other on the road.  In my thoughts, I make up stories why some cars come and go what seem like dozens of times a day, trying to change my thoughtup stories for a variety of humourous images.  Sexual trysts between rich cougars and amateur gigolos in this down economy.  Drug redistribution networking.  Mixing exotic fuels at home and trying them out on the road.  Hypochondriacs running from one doctor to another.  Attending college courses at more than one facility, frantically running from one campus to another.  Operating a home private investigation service and spying on people in nearby neighbourhoods.  Early signs of senility/dementia.  Robots whose programs have gotten caught in a repeating loop.  Bored housewives visiting one another's homes for late breakfast, pre-lunch, lunch, post-lunch, early afternoon tea, afternoon tea, late afternoon tea, and pre-dinner.  A mixture of some of the above (bored hypochondriac cougars delivering illegal drugs while driving vehicles souped up with exotic fuels, private investigators disguised as gigolos visiting senile senior citizens whose robots are taking college courses, etc.).  I imagine the lives of the people who fit into this mixedup stories.  One person may have a facial twitch or partial facial paralysis like Bell's palsy that appeals to another person who is turned off by facial symmetry.  Another person has no preconceived negative notions or taboos about one's body and is helping another person get over frigidity.  Another neighbour is a retired scientist who's madly, frantically working on the next best thing to a perpetual motion machine that has gotten out of control and insists on taking random drives around the country all day (and yes, that refers to both the scientist and the machine (both and either/or)).  Some days, all I can see in my thoughts are other people's creative processes at work, meaning I think of books and movies about neighbourhoods like mine.

In other words, my thoughts settle into a comfort zone of a kind of zeitgeist, feeling at one with the times.  Can I divine anything out of that?  What if I step back a few trillion miles and look at our planetary system?  Which way is north?  Should we be walking on our feet, our hands or our heads?  Why do we think north is up and south is down?  What if east is up?  What if there is no such thing as up or down, just arbitrarily located spheres with gravitational attraction?  What if we found a planetary body that repelled everything, instead?

I'm a kid at heart.  I'm curious about the universe we live in, not caring about people's rules and regulations because there's so much more than us here to get to know.  Since I'm the only one who reads and writes this, I think it's time to step away from this blog and play a while.  Let the people keep being themselves, pretending to have the skills to work a divining rod.  If they need me, they'll call.  Otherwise, I assume they're perfectly happy being themselves without me, their having more knowledge and skills than me for the most part, anyway.

One last thing before I go.  Last night, before I fell asleep, I thought about a situation in this area and I wondered about the effect of mentioning a single name, a name that represents a group of people, and the ripple effect of that name and recent events tied to that name that others would give more significant meaning to, creating imaginary trends, looking at their own groups and wanting to exaggerate the divine rights of their groups over the group associated with that single name and the significant event.  I am a person responsible to all my people, all my groups, every one of us.  I could mention a name but I won't because we don't want to light dry tinder - it's a fire that will (or could) get quickly out of control, especially with so many idle minds out of work and looking for something, paid or unpaid, to occupy them.  No group is divine.  All groups could be charged with and convicted of many heinous crimes throughout history.  Remember that before you start placing sticks on the bonfire of blame.  All is rarely what it seems to be.

That's all for now, folks.  Ain't got time to check this here blog entry for spilling errors or antiquarian grammarian mistakes.  Instead, it's time to pick my teeth and whittle me a divining rod.  There's a well to be dug!