Knowledge is power because it protects us against the unknown. That which we do not know, we fear. This trait has been evident in human kind since his first coming into being as homo sapiens we know now. Take, for example, the issue of the jealous boyfriend who gets very protective of his girlfriend around other men. Why is he jealous? Because he fears not knowing if he can trust his girlfriend a hundred percent. Now whether or not this is just a character trait inherent in only some individuals is irrelevant. What matters here is what we can discern as the subject of his fear. The fact that he would lose a girlfriend does not matter, for that makes the situation merely about retaining a possession. Rather, the boyfriend fears the loss, the emotional trauma that would come with losing the relationship he had. That it remains an unknown is what scares him, and thus he has an intrinsic need to know for sure, even if it only remains subconcious and renders itself in the form of a character trait.

A personal example. As a child I had a fascination with the weather, outer space, our evironment and all things natural. I often devoured information about the creation of the universe on down to the creation of human beings, soaking up the information as only a child's mind could. One such thing I could always remember was that I was completely enraptured by tornados. Whenever I could I would watch an educational program on The Learning Channel about tornados, or check out books on weather in my elementary school library. Whenever the weather grew into a storm in my town, I sometimes could recognize potential tornado activity. As much as I was fascinated by them, the sheer awe that accompanied them also caused me fear. They cannot be predicted accurately, and seated within that uncertainty the fear manifests. So too does all of mother nature and our universe place limits on our knowledge and ability to know exactly how things happen around us.

The need to know is rather remarkable in human kind, that which we strive to identify in our daily lives will consume many of us until our dying days. However, even more remarkable that despite the fact that we fear the unknown and seek to achieve mastery over it, we create deities who are absolutely riddled with unknowns, so open to interpretation that while one can claim to have achieved knowledge and mastery over it it is truly no more correct than any other person's perspective.

Perhaps then, that is the end of the equation. Knowledge is power against the unknown. The unknown is something we fear. Thus, we try to conquer the unknown. In doing so we will create a situation for ourselves where the unknown is ultimately just simply a point of view that can either be regarded as something to fear, or something to anticipate. Perspective can be manipulated, as can knowledge, and thus all power knowledge has is lost. Therefore, believing that knowledge is the key to all power is incorrect, and rather believing that the highest power for overcoming fear of the unknown is our perspective and our own willingness to believe that our knowledge is sufficient for now (until the next revelation).

Continuing a musical meme, here are a few favourite one liners from my favourite Tool albums!

Lateralus
The Grudge - "Wear your grudge like a crown, desperate to control, unable to forgive and we're sinking deeper."
The Patient - "If there were no desire to heal the damaged and broken met along this tedious path I've chosen here, I certainly would've walked away by now."
Schism - "Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion between supposed lovers."
Parabol - "This body makes me feel eternal. All this pain is an illusion."
Parabola - "Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing."
Ticks & Leeches - "You have turned my blood cold and bitter, beat my compassion black and blue!"
Lateralus - "I embrace my desire to...feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow, to feel inspired, to fathom the power, to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain, to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human."
Reflection - "So crucify the ego, before it's far too late and leave behind this place so negative and blind and cynical."


10,000 Days

Vicarious - "Credulous at best, your desire to believe in angels in the hearts of men, pull your head on out your hippy haze and give a listen."
Jambi - "Damn my eyes if they should compromise our fulcrum, (if) wants and needs divide me I might as well be gone."
Wings For Marie (Pt. 1) - "What have I done to be a son to an angel? What have I done to be worthy?"
10,000 Days (Wings Pt. 2) - "Shake your fist at the gates saying, "I have come home now...!" Fetch me the spirit, the son and the father, tell them their pillar of faith has ascended."
The Pot - "Liar, lawyer, mirror, show me, what's the difference?"
Rosetta Stoned - "Alright then, picture this if you will: 10 to 2 AM, X, Yogi DMT, and a box of Krispy Kremes, in my "need to know" pose, just outside of Area 51.
Intension - "Pure as we begin, move by will alone, leave as we come in, pure as light return to one."
Right In Two - "Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven conscious of his fleeting time here."

Did a note earlier with favourite lines from Coheed & Cambria, I figured let's get a little Canadian and go with our prog metal buddies, Protest the Hero!

Kezia
No Stars Over Bethlehem - "Someone plunged a dagger deep into God's chest, and when he groaned it laid our entire civilization to rest."
Heretics & Killers - "With my faith in ruins my duty still breathes strong. I'm a parrot in a cage just singing prayers to belong to a textbook of my crying, lying, dying history."
Divinity Within - "When your crime's no longer absurd what will you, what will you say, Kezia, when we ask what are your final words?"
Bury The Hatchet - "Oh all of this ask for change (change), while I explain the hardest of bodies dulls the softest of knives."
Nautical - "And I'm still a cigarette softly smoking on the edge of a metal ashtray, I begged this place to let me burn, and it whispered, "burn away"."
Blindfolds Aside - "Pull the screaming trigger and watch your carcass bleed me dry, or drop the gun and try to shake away the blindfold from your eyes?"
She Who Mars The Skin of Gods - ""Kezia, my darling, please never forget
this world's got the substance of a frozen summer silhouette,""
Turn Soonest To The Sea - "Know we'll all wake up one day with a gun to the back of our brains, you'll be asking for your rib, and I'll smile and I'll call you brave."
The Divine Suicide of K. - "I'm walking one last mile in big steps as your alter-wine, I'm doing it in tattered shoes that aren't even mine."
A Plateful Of Our Dead - "Sometimes when fundamentals meet teenage heartbreak, some of us are all of us; half-selves that love whole hopes and hara-kiri heartbreak."


Fortress
Bloodmeat - "Tomorrow they will find us, hide the children free of sin, we will meet their blades by morning protected only by our skin."
The Dissentience - "Sitting across, telling stories, eyes unclosed like books we've read twice (So sit across the table, feed me some lies)."
Bone Marrow - "If a mortal stands before us, strike him down with sleight of hand, and if heaven rides against us, then god himself must be damned."
Sequoia Throne - "We are still-life in cold blood and we feel nothing. Hell-bent on heaven."
Palms Read - "For a million years raise your glass in cheers, we will never answer where we came from only how we got here."
Limb From Limb - "Do not beg before me, I'll not heed your appeals, with your final words be grateful you died by Irish steel."
Spoils - "Language is the heart's lament, a weak attempt to circumvent the loneliness inherent in the search for permanence."
Wretch - "On a bed bound and gagged with culture, language, myth and law, from a wounded womb where flesh is scarred and raw, our goddess gave birth to your God."
Goddess Bound - "Just as mountains live outside of rocks and time itself outside of clocks, we hope this life exists beyond our lonely bones in the pine box."
Goddess Gagged - "In the empty space between better and worse language unravels and irony hurts, in the common place between hunger and thirst, the words that define us a blessing and curse."

So I'm sitting here watching an old episode of Survivor, and after one tribe wins a reward of a BBQ feast and beer, they all cheers and many of them say "Thank you God."

I uttered aloud, "God damn it."

Funny how things go.

Today I started thinking about the Origin. What I mean by the Origin is that, in the view of a rebirth cycle, all people have at one point in their cyclical existence wherein it was their first existence. This is what is called their origin, and it is a piece of themselves that carries through each of their existences, regardless of their state of being in the cycle.

For example, a man who in his previous life was some form of hunting animal each time. The Origin of consumption is present within each of his past lives. I stopped to think about the Origin and perhaps, what might my own Origin be? Would it be something that is evident if it is meditated on enough, or is it something that, if we discovered what it was would eventually destroy us by upsetting our proper cycle? Or perhaps it is something that once we discover and master it, come to terms with it, allows us some form of release.

Something to think about, perhaps.

Dokdo, a pair of islets set in the East Sea/Sea of Japan. For the countries on either side of this channel of the Pacific, a war has been raging over the ownership of these territorial waters. Long after the last rifles were silenced in the conflict of World War II, the wounds weep openly as the constant salt of these rather useless pieces of rock are rubbed back and forth across the consciousness of the people the Republic of Korea and the country of Japan.

Both countries claim the islands, and every year there is another new perceived slight regarding the ownership of Dokdo. For the Koreans, Dokdo represents the evil inherent in Japan's colonial period, one that saw Korea brought under the heel of the then Japanese Empire and its Emperor. For the Japanese, Dokdo affirms their colonial period as necessary and, perhaps more importantly, as a period to be viewed positively in relation to the country's history.

Both countries also have placed resources into information warfare regarding the islets. Recently, in Japan, sets of textbooks have been released into the elementary school systems that confirm Dokdo as Japan's and a justification of colonialism. This has outraged Korean scholars who contend that Japan is simply brainwashing the younger generation with information that is untrue. For its own part, it's very difficult to find a Korean who will not bristle with rage if one sincerely tells them that Dokdo belongs to Japan. So much money has been spent advertising the fact that Dokdo is indeed a Korean territory, including a giant advertisement that plays in Times Square, New York which plays up Dokdo as a tourist destination.

Let's hold that kernel of thought for a moment shall we? Let's address Dokdo itself. How valuable IS Dokdo?

It has no natural resources in the form of fossil fuels. It has no arable land in which to grow produce or farm animals. It contains no sufficient area for large scale ships to dock. In fact, nobody even lives there.

So, why all the fuss? Should this not be a case of "Well, there are two islands, shall I take one and you take the other?" Of course not, for to do that would oversimplify a problem that has grown to be far larger than it's inciting incident. What we have in the form of the Dokdo discussion is a case study in the nature of nations and humans when it comes to world conflicts. For Dokdo to have remained such a bone of contention for so long must mean that there is something that keeps it in the forefront of the discussion.

Is it a simple matter of saving face? I do not think so. It is a far more base human instinct. It might behoove us to take a quick look at a few other examples where two nations or opposing sides took issue with one another over lands which were apparently of use to nobody outside of the prestige (or a perceived resource) that came with a larger border.
The first example that came to mind, and perhaps most telling, is that of Kashmir. India and Pakistan nearly set off what would have been World War III over a mountainous region where 90% of the land is inhospitable to most forms of human civilization. Of course, that statement oversimplifies the conflict (as China was also involved in the conflict, claiming lands it said were part of Tibet). The point of importance underneath is in the claims of the other two countries. India claims that the Kashmir area belongs to the Indian landmass and it governs it as such, whilst Pakistan states that Kashmir is a disputed area whose destiny must be decided by the local population. To cast aside the complicated nature of the situation for a moment let’s look at something that makes itself fairly clear.

One country claims official status of ownership, while the other country openly refutes the claim, and the land in question is mostly of no use for resource development or wealth (aside from the headwaters of the rivers which feed the Indus River valley and lands below). The difference in the Kashmir case is that there is a local population of people to think about. However, the striking resemblances to the official stances regarding Dokdo are there.

The point that is trying to be made is that situations like these leave festering sores on the psyche of a population, and of a nationality. In the case of Kashmir, there were genuine wars fought over the region and a valid claim staked in the initial conflict. However, it is in the justification that the roots of nationalism rear their ugly heads and cry out that, at the end of the day, the conflict is simply a “who shot whom first” argument.

In the case of Kashmir, it could have precipitated a much larger war, and though the Dokdo conflict seems relatively benign in comparison, it points to a facet of human nature that countries cannot seem to escape: What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is mine. In these situations there is little room accorded for forgiveness, and neither side wants to make that first step. It’s to live with, or without, and both parties would seemingly at this point die before choosing to live without.

One side must forgive first, but sadly, I think the capacity to forgive on such a large scale is lost on the human race.

Gwangyang Sunshine

It's eight in the morning and that same sky haze
Reminds me of where I spend my days
Living in a heartless home
Sleeping in a bed that's not my own

I can feel the pulse of this old steel town
It's the beat of a man that won't back down
The steam that stretches out to the sky
Is the soul of a man that refuses to die

Its a familiar feeling this time of year
And as I wait for snow it's painfully clear
The sky tries to say that everything's fine
But I know for sure that this town is not mine

Sunshine...it's no town of mine

It's a surrogate mother
It's a foster dad
It's an adopted family
And it's driving me mad

In the sunshine I drown
In the sunshine, my town
It's like a snowglobe broken down
The sunshine in which I drown.

Neon Crosses

It's getting dark as the clouds kiss the mountaintops goodnight,
the last drops of rain break to the evening's delight
and I can see them part the sky across the land,
neon crosses where guilty Christians stand.

In the name of the father they tend the soil,
In the name of the son they burn for oil,
In the name of the spirit their minds are sure to spoil.

Amen, amen, their elders cry for the broken
And it is impossible for righteous words to be spoken
They stand divided, a deck of cards all,
Their own original sin sets them up for the Fall.

Been watching that series, Jericho.



A Deadly Garden

And 'lo they lay beneath the mighty plume,
entrenched in their homes, trapped in their tombs.
And silence sickly sweet stalked the land,
felling those wanderers she graced with her hand.
That flash of hot light twisted day out of night,
and for many was the last thing burned into their sight.

What shadows grip and claw the hearts of man
to construct, conceive, to create such a plan.
To leap without looking can be noble indeed,
but to act without thinking and not taking heed?
Just is not justice and after the flower's fire dies,
a snow of gray death will crowd the night sky.

Once a brilliant gem burning brighter than the stars
is now a wasteland of rubble and discarded husks of cars.
And Augustine's wisdom is put to the test
as those who remained seethed with unrest.
Man's city of gold has now become earth,
and things of small value attain greater worth.

As fear sinks it's claws into those who remain,
the mob will point fingers, they will place the blame.
Reason overrun and panic sunk in,
as the cold winter falls, the real terror will begin.