Cavemen.
My father was one of the most unwise people I ever met while simultaneously being one of the most technically smart. (He invented the clothes dryer lint screen for Whirlpool Corporation and made other other production suggestions as a manager of quality control that when he retired, the company bulletin credited him with saving the corporation as much as 17 million bucks over the course of his career. They gave him their thanks and a gold-plated wristwatch.) But one thing about Dad, he was an organizational genius. He had for many years a picture hanging above his office at home, showing a group of cavemen and cavewomen seated around a stone table playing poker with stone cards. The caption read: "One of these days, Og, we've got to get organized." Nothing, he taught me, happens without organization. True then. True now.
12 comments:
Organization takes leadership. The only person/group I see that even comes close to doing something proactive [on a national scale] toward organizing and actually standing up against federal arrogance and overreach, is Stewart Rhodes/Oath Keepers. On a small scale, the three percenter militias.
Did your old man also teach you how to be a commie as well?
"Did your old man also teach you how to be a commie as well?"
Well, funny you should mention it, but he is precisely why I became a commie. My father was a drinker, a beater and and a serial whoremonger who couldn't keep his dick in his pants. After he beat the shit out of me for wearing my hair longer than he liked, I spent the first years of my young adult life trying to figure out what he would do in any given situation and then doing the exact opposite. Which, if you think about it, is an equally insane way to live. My father, perhaps because he'd volunteered for both World War II and Korea and been turned down because he'd had tetanus when he was a kid and therefore couldn't open his mouth enough to handle army rations (in the Army's opinion) was the most patriotic guy I knew. Therefore, according to my twisted logic at the time, becoming a traitor seemed the thing to do.
It was no more intellectual than that. I swore that I would never make the same mistakes as a human being and a father that he had made and I didn't -- I made my own and some of them were real doozies.
When I recovered my sense of reality, I went to him and forgave him for all he had done. Funny thing, to the end of his days he never admitted that he had done anything that he needed to be forgiven for, by me or anyone else. But that was okay, since I understood that forgiveness was more for the forgiver than the forgiven. I, at least, was no longer carrying around that pus sac of resentment. I loved my old man, as much as he would let me love him, but I didn't like half the shit he pulled in a life lived selfishly. Later I understood that he was in his own way the kid that his parents made, both of whom were emotionally closed off as well.
But my mistakes? They are my own. Especially my Benedict Arnold period. And there isn't a day goes by that I don't try to atone for them.
Mike you are on the back nine and you will have to atone for your sins soon enough. You will not be missed by many, some I am told pray nightly for your lack of morning consciousness. Forgiveness I am afraid is a two way street, good luck at the gates when you arrive, I suspect quite the tap dance will be ensuing upon your arrival.
D6,
You can tell how well you've done in the atonement department by looking at your children, and how well they're living THEIR lives.
B Woodman
III-per
You're a real man Mr. Vanderboegh and I am encouraged. Thank you.
Anon 11:19,
Concerned Trolls just gotta "concern troll".
Please crawl back under your rock, and continue drinking your ObozoCare koolaid.
Buh-bye.
B Woodman
III-per
@ Anonymous,
Can you point out where you have not made any mistakes, caused injury to others? Bet not.
I also will bet that the attitude you are showing means that you are an agitator or paid traitor to the USA, the American people, etc; and it matters not what is causing you to agitate and belittle others.
"... you are on the back nine and you will have to atone for your sins soon enough. You will not be missed by many, some I am told pray nightly for your lack of morning consciousness."
I am not politically correct, so let me say this, I would stand with Mike any day, and that what he does today means much more to most then what was done yesterday. That if the choice was there, I would stand for him to have one more day because what he now does is more important then what I can do, even if it was only for one more day.
What do you do to atone for your actions that were less then good? Do you even take action for this nation, to defend her, and her people today?
"You can tell how well you've done in the atonement department by looking at your children, and how well they're living THEIR lives"
I disagree.
Children of the last 50 years have had more government input then family because most families were naive enough to trust those that serve, and worked to provide the corporate living for their children that - at that time - was shown as important.
A lie of course.
So between government schools and working to create a "good life" as defined by the corporations and those who were to serve the people but sold out; what children are today are what the state made them. But as adults then can then chose to start thinking for themselves and standing, or continue on as mindless idiots blaming others for their problems.
Guess what, life has, comes with problems and the idea is to overcome them while creating / developing, maintaining, and building a foundation on honor and forgiveness. Mistakes happen, it is a part of life, it is how we learn.
Some never get beyond the "blame game" they are taught to never stand on their own. But what we are is the sum of what we once were, what we learned from those actions, and what we ourselves then make of our lives and mistakes once we become adult enough to understand that we create our own lives; choose honor, good, etc or do not choose them, or worse, never choose at all.
Some of us learn this as an early teen, some never learn it, some learn it later in life.
Never lie to yourself, it is a good motto to have. Figure out what honor really is, what respect really is - hint it is not found in gangs, government, etc - then cultivate it, use it to create your own foundation. It never is what you do when others are around that counts, it is what you do when the only witness is yourself.
God will welcome those that come to him in Jesus name, whatever the bad things were in life. He will welcome those most who overcame and created a better life for themselves and those around them overall. D6 will be welcomed, because God can forgive/has forgiven him that which he does not forgive himself for.
Cal
God Bless!
"I suspect quite the tap dance will be ensuing upon your arrival."
I know quoting scripture gets some people all squirrely but this is one even a devout (snark, snark) atheist can believe in:
Matthew 7:1-3 King James Version (KJV)
7 1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Mike, I had a similar asshole for a sperm donor. As a toddler, mom was holding me, dad tried to bust her in the lip but hit me instead. Just like that I was raised by a single mother. Absence of a father led me to the same choice - be BETTER than my sperm donor. To get to that point, I too did things I try to this day to atone for.
Those who taunt about that time in our lives, yeah, they do so because they fear THIS TIME in our lives. They fear the standing up and truth telling we do NOW. Trying to point to the distant past is the best tool they have trying to avoid the present. If ya think about it, its what the race baiters do religiously. You nailed it squarely in that speech you gave to the council -some seek to endlessly tear things down rather than build them up - warts and all.
Now, some say "don't feed the trolls". I suppose that has merit sometimes, but other times that is a profound mistake. Sometimes, its right and proper to feed them until their stomachs explode. That is what you did there. You shoved truth right up a trolls ass.....detonating his stomach. Well Done.
B Woodman, I certainly hope that is a true and accurate measure, as I am just a couple weeks away from attending my eldest's graduation from boot camp, my middle child about to go past me in height and is physically fitter than I have ever been and my youngest was two B+'s shy of a year of straight A's. I'm trying brother, to teach em right in SPITE of public skool!
It is heartening to read on these pages daily, and fulfilling to write and converse. I am thankful for every day this place still pushes forward and thank God that he has given Mike V the strength to tell the truth - if even for just one more day. There is a special place awaiting that man called Mike V, no doubt about it.
Mike
III
I honestly don't know why anyone would even troll this site. Although I'm only a few years into the 3% mindset I've yet to find a more steadfast group of people with unshakable beliefs. People who are mature enough to admit if they were wrong and big enough to set things right. Trolling here will not start any internal divisions or petty arguments. But that's something one would expect from people with real life experience to draw from and not the virtual reality of a troll living off the tit of parents, holed up in the basement while mom fixes them a sandwich ( at 35 years old)...
Dutchman, you damned near cost me a keyboard with your remark to that brave anonymous asshat. I thought you handled that piece of snark brilliantly. Talk about heaping coals of fire on the idiot's head.
Years ago I attended a lecture where the speaker made much the same point as you did about squaring things with your Father (or Mother). The way it was explained to us, if you harbor resentment towards a parent you are setting yourself up for hurt. No matter how bad they were, your parents are part of you and part of what you are. Harboring resentment for them sets up conflicting value sets in your subconscious because, deep down inside, part of you KNOWS that your parents are part of you and negative feelings toward either of them is tantamount to the same feelings towards yourSELF! It produces what the psych types call (or at least USED to call, can't say about today) "cognitive dissonance. The lecturer advised us to hash things out with the parent towards whom we harbored those feelings - even if they're already "gone to their reward". If they're no longer with you, the speaker told us to go into a room with a chair, mentally sit them down in that chair, and - literally as well as figuratively - unburden yourself. Finish up by forgiving them. I just wish I could get my Daughter (adopted at 8 days of age) to do something like that vis a vis her birth mother (whom she believes just threw her away). I believe she would be happier for it.
As regards the Woodman's advice, it's sound. The only way you ever know how well you did as a parent is by how your children turn out.
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