Stephen Alfred Gutknecht

Long-form scratch pad / dumping ground.

Much of this content is extremely raw product of brain damage attempting to express ideas. Not edited, not spell checked, serious problems with language brain issues.

Thank you. Love to all.

 

• "Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one."
• • A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, page 37

 

"Being illiterate in the processes of any medium (language) leaves one at the mercy of those who control it. The new media — these new languages — then are among the most important "subjects" to be studied in the interests of survival." - Neil Postman on media ecology

 

… 𝄞 🎸 Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died? … "One day in 1986 his supervisor asked him to resolve an accounting error of 75 cents in the computer usage accounts. Stoll traced the error to an unauthorized user who had apparently used nine seconds of computer time" … "I was lecturing once at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington on Hindu mythology, sociology, and politics. There’s a saying in the Hindu book of politics that the ruler must hold in one hand the weapon of war, the big stick, and in the other the peaceful sound of the song of cooperative action. And there I was, standing with my two hands like this, and everybody in the room laughed. I couldn’t understand. And then they began pointing. I looked back, and here was this picture of the eagle (bird) hanging on the wall behind my head in just the same posture that I was in." - summer of 1987, age 83, Joseph Campbell, Skywalker Ranch. … RoundSparrow … "the father doesn’t want to feed a mere bird, so he kills it. And the legend says the man killed the bird, and with the bird he killed the song, and with the song, himself. He dropped dead, completely dead, and was dead forever." … "it’s not the mythology of a special revelation. The Hindus, for example, don’t believe in special revelation. They speak of a state in which the ears (Earwicker) have opened to the song of the universe. Here the eye has opened to the radiance of the mind of God. And that’s a fundamental deist idea. Once you reject the idea of the Fall in the Garden, man is not cut off from his source. Now back to the Great Seal."

 

“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” — Omar El Akkad who was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States of America.

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.” ― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow