A Portrait of the Dumbass as an Old Man

Delusionary Thinking

Not sure what got into me yesterday, biked 43 miles to Spring Station on the other side of Midway, 3h 18 minutes, 2 stops. Quads were talking to me at the end, but I wasn't dying like a couple of weeks ago. I think it's because it wasn't near as humid, although it was near 90 when I got back at ~12:15, and I came back on Parker's Mill, which had a lot of shade -- when I was dying I was on Delaney Ferry, which has very little shade -- and, there were some clouds.

Re the ingenuity and persistence of squirrels (last post), my oldest daughter sends this LOL video.

Music-wise, a couple of weeks ago, I found out that I could get an annual couples pass to The Woodsongs Old-time Radio Hour, which is recorded most Mondays at the Kentucky Theater downtown, for $95. Individual shows are $10 a head, seemed like a good entertainment value. Last week we saw Chris Hillman, original bass player of The Byrds, and Herb Pederson, playing mandolin and guitar, very laid back, very enjoyable. This week was 2 cajun bands, Ann Savoy, and The Red Stick Ramblers. Great Texas swing overtones, you can't go wrong with 2 fiddlers, and some really high energy rockabilly stuff. In the encore they had the setup of the Django Reinhardt Quintet (3 guitars, bass and violin) -- plus a drummer. This is a great entertainment value. The shows are archived here, you can watch them whenever you want. The host Michael Jonathan is kind of a dork, but you have to respect what he's accomplished, they get some really good, varied talent into Lexington.

Saturday we went to the Art House cinemas and saw "Once". Very interesting. It was basically a long form (~90 minute) music video. Filmed on a shoestring in Dublin -- bystanders are looking at the cameramen throughout the movie, and at one point some kids on bicycles are following them gawking. But, it was charming, it worked. My youngest daughter was with us, at one point she said "The songs aren't bad." My reply was, "Since the whole movie is about them writing and recording the songs, it would really suck if the songs were lousy." I could only find the soundtrack at amazon (no iTunes or eMusic), so it is of course on order, which I think was pretty much the point of the movie.

Lexington Blues Jam last week went OK. The end got a little rough. Some bad vocal harmony on "The Weight", and then the main guitarist and the bass player, both of whom I think probably should have played a little more and drank a little less, were clashing both in their playing, and I think in their neurotransmitters.

This week I might wind up mostly singing, with a guitar as a prop. I was cutting carrots longitudinally for grilling yesterday and cut the crap out of the tip of the ring finger on my left hand. That's a serious guitar finger -- I'll have to play leads with 2 fingers like Django Reinhardt, he had 2 of is fingers damaged in a fire. I think chords might be right out tho. We'll see, I guess.

So, re the title: I guess that the thing that is scaring me overall is that there are so many forms of delusional thinking that seem to be socially accepted, or even encouraged, in the US now. Just a few examples:

• an omnipotent, omnipresent, etc being, aka God, exists;
• we don't die when we die, i.e., there is life after death;
• the world is 6000 years old;
• driving a big SUV keeps me safer in a wreck (it doesn't).

I had some more telling ones a while ago, but they seem to have senior-momented themselves away :-(

I was thinking about the Creation Museum and it's exhibit of Noah's Ark. It's so pathethic, crying is probably more appropriate than laughing. For instance:

• Were there jaguars (south america) on the ark? How did they get there?
• Were there dire wolves (australia) on the ark?
• Were there polar bears (arctic) on the ark? Were they grumpy from being so warm?
• Were there penguins (antarctic) on the ark?
• How did they keep track of the ~350,000 species of beetles without a computer?

Sigh.

But, I think that we need to distinguish between delusions and emergent, higher-order mental entities, which share some characteristics of cognitive illusions, as explored recently by Hofstadter in "I am a Strange Loop", blogged here. So referring to a "soul" or a "self" is not delusionary -- as long as you don't think that either is immortal, or can exist without some kind of physical substrate. This was first mused on early in this blog here

On another piece of follow-up, re the jehovah "wanted" poster, I went and looked in Exodus for documentation of the actual involvement of this jehovah character in the murder of an entire generation of Egyptian children over a political squabble (the Feast of the Murdered Children, aka Passover). The evidence is inarguable, his own voice convicts him:

Exodus ch 12 v 12

For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.

Exodus ch 12 v 29,30

And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.

And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.

"For there was not a house where there was not one dead." Holy crap, what a monster. Guilty, guilty, guilty. It really is a good thing that he doesn't exist, it would be quite a job for us to track down the genocidal maniac and bring him to justice ...