The fog of war

There are plenty of good reasons for reading the classics, such as the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid. One of the best I've found is that it's a pretty good description of real life.

El Cabrero doesn't spend a lot of time at the legislature of my beloved state of West Virginia, but I was there enough this time to have a little mock Homeric deja vu.

In the Iliad, the tide of battle often switches back and forth, as various humans fight away and as various gods intervene here and there. No one really knows everything that is going on. As in the Aeneid, Rumor is the swiftest of the gods.

In the case of WV, the great god Randomness seems to have a lot of clout as well. Also prominent deities are Hades, god of wealth, Hermes, god of merchants and thieves, not to mention the great god Biscuit, patron of those who oppose menu labels with calorie information and the god of the gutless whose name escapes me at the moment.

At crucial times, Zeus weighs the fates of the combatants on his golden scales, which tip one way or another.

Of the many skirmishes this time, one of the most important ones had to do with the fate of WV's unemployment compensation fund, which is heading towards emptiness in the non-Buddhist sense.

A decent version passed the state senate, which included things that neither labor nor business was all that happy with. Then things hit the house side and everything was on again. In the end, a decent bill seemed to pass after some amendments.

The tide went one way and then another and even people I usually turn to find out what is really going on wasn't all that sure what was happening.

It can be quite a show but, alas, it is an epic without a bard.

AFTER THE BUST, a boom in bankruptcies.

WHAT'S NEXT? How bout doga, or yoga with dogs? While we're at it...

BETTER THAN A DOG? That may have been a factor in Charles Darwin's decision to marry. I could think of any number of things to say but will relinquish the opportunity.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Lucky us (?)

Tibetan wheel of life and death, courtesy of wikipedia.

According to Buddhist teachings, I'm a pretty lucky guy. And if you're reading this, you probably are too, just by virtue of being human. Buddhists believe (metaphorically at least) that without attaining enlightenment, sentient beings are destined to cycle on and on in Samsara, the realm of birth and death.

Depending on karma, one can be reborn in any of six realms, which range from heavens to hells. All such states are impermanent, but some are more or less pleasant than others.

Believe it or not, being born as a human is one of the better gigs. It is believed to be the only one in which one can make progress towards waking up and escaping the endless cycle of coming into being and passing away. Those born in other realms are either too ignorant, miserable or blissed-out to make any headway.

According to some Buddhist teachings, human birth is really, really rare. As in imagine a blind tortoise at the bottom of the ocean that swims to the surface once every hundred years in an effort to put his neck in a wooden yoke floating on the surface. He's got a better chance of doing it than most beings have of being born as a human.

One doesn't have to take this literally to get the point that people do have a vast potential if they choose to develop it. Still, if we're the lucky ones, I'd hate to think what the other gigs are like...

ANOTHER NOD TO THE ODYSSEY. A few months back, there was an extended series here on the Odyssey of Homer and what it might have to say about the difficulties and dangers some combat veterans face on their homecoming. This item from the Jan. 2 New York Times is a case in point.

FROM HOMER TO VIRGIL. Speaking of the classics, in the Aeneid, Virgil speaks of the goddess Rumor (aka Fama or Ossa) as "nimble as quicksilver among evils." Here's a good AP article by the AP's Tom Breen on popular rumors and hoaxes of today.

HARD TIMES HAVE COME to the "bubble bourgeoisie."

STIMULUS. Will it be bold enough?

FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND. This weekend I attended a memorial service for William C. "Bill" Blizzard, who died in late December at the age of 92. He was the son of West Virginia labor legend Bill Blizzard, who led the historic miner's march of 1921. The march, which culminated in an armed struggle between union supporters and coal company thugs known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, was the largest workers' rebellion in American history.

An activist himself who paid the price more than once for his convictions, Blizzard was a writer and photographer and, as strange as it may sound these days, a gentleman and a scholar. In 2004, he published the result of years of research into the WV labor struggles in the book When Miners March. May light perpetual shine upon him.

My tribe diminishes...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Getting in isn't the problem

Nice puppy! William Blake's version of Cerberus, the dog that guards the realm of the dead.

Goat Rope is trailing the journey of Odysseus these days and the next stop is the underworld. If you scroll down, there are also links and comments about current events.

One of the pivotal moments of Homer's Odyssey is the visit its hero paid to the land of the dead. Only a few others in Greek and related myths were able to get there and go back again.

One such was Theseus of Minotaur fame, who went there with a buddy as part of a hare-brained scheme to capture Persephone, wife of Hades, the lord of the dead. That didn't work out so well and he was stuck in a chair there until rescued by Heracles, who visited the land of the dead when stealing Cerberus as part of his 12 labors.

The musician Orpheus visited the underworld after the death of his beloved Eurydice. His musical talents were such that Persephone allowed him to bring her back to the land of the living if he didn't look back on the way out. He did and she didn't. Another mystery cult (see yesterday's post) developed around Orpheus which also promised to provide advantages after death and seemed to include ideas of reincarnation.

Toward the end of his Republic, Plato tells the tall of Er, a soldier who dies and tours the underworld before returning to life. He saw various kinds of rewards and punishments being dispensed as well and learned about the process of reincarnation

In the Roman epic the Aeneid of Virgil, the hero Aeneas has to visit the underworld to consult the shade of his father and learn about the destiny of Rome which he is fated to found. As with Plato, souls destined for rebirth on earth had first to drink from the river of Lethe or forgetfulness so they wouldn't remember their previous lives.

Early Christian converts from paganism were fascinated with what happened to Jesus between his death and resurrection and developed charming traditions about "the harrowing of hell," in which the victorious Christ liberated the souls of Adam, Eve and other figures from the Hebrew Bible before rising on Sunday morning. According to 1 Peter 4:6,

For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, that they might be judged indeed according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

One line from the Apostle's Creed states of him that "he descended into hell," which helped to inspire speculation. The harrowing of hell was the subject of some apocryphal gospels.

Last but not least, the Italian poet Dante's Divine Comedy tells of that poets tour through Hell, Heaven and Purgatory (check Goat Rope archives for an earlier series on that).

The consensus of the ages seems to be that getting there isn't the problem for most folks--getting out again is.

ON A RELATED NOTE, a report from the World Health Organization calls social justice a matter of life and death.

WORST DAY ON WALL STREET since 2001. Let's hope tomorrow's headlines don't say 1929. Thought for the day: isn't it a good thing we didn't let President Bush privatize Social Security?

THE RIPPLE EFFECT. From the Sept. 22 print edition of Business Week:

Losing a job isn't just a career setback, it can be a permanent blow to the community, a recent study finds. Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which tracked 4,000 high school graduates over 45 years, researchers at UCLA and the University of Michigan studied the community involvement of workers aged 35 to 53. Their finding: After being laid off, employees were 35% less likely than before to participate in community or church groups, charitable organizations--even bowling teams. And few returned once they got new jobs. Instead, they focused their energies on professional and political groups--in the belief, hypothesizes UCLA sociology professor Jennie Brand, that both could have an impact on finding and keeping work

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HOLY KARMA, BATMAN! After years of lobbying--to the tune of $40 million--for tougher bankruptcy laws, lenders are now starting to feel the pain of getting what they asked for. My heart breaketh...

THIS CAN'T BE TRUE because it would be inconvenient for the coal industry. QED.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED