Okay, I was innocently researching for my story...

I was reading about Thor on Wikipedia when I came upon this and started laughing out loud:

In the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, Thor is the son of Odin and the giantess Jörd (Jord, the Earth). His wife is called Sif, and little is known of her except that she has golden hair. With his mistress, the giantess Járnsaxa, Thor had a son Magni and with Sif he had his daughter Thrud.

Am I the only one who feels bad for Thrud? I've threatened to name my child some really awful things: Dagmar, Wombat, Omega Shiva Banana, Hortense the Mule Child... but Thrud? Seriously, Thor? How did that happen? Did you swear, "I shall throw my hammer Mjolnir into the earth and whatever sound it makes, that shall be the name of my child!"

X-Men Primer - Part 1

For roughly twenty years from the late seventies to the turn of the millennium, Uncanny X-Men was the number one selling comic book. Rarely was its domination even briefly contested.

Think about that for a moment. With dozens of popular superhero comics and several movies from Superman to Batman, the X-Men were by far the favorite. Here, I hope to illustrate the rise and fall of the X-Men from their humble origins to their glut of overexposure.

The Original Five

Like almost every good idea at Marvel Comics, the X-Men sprung up from the mind of Stan Lee. According to him, they were essentially a creation of laziness. Rather than having to come up with a new way to explain someone's powers every single time he created a new character, Stan decided that they were just born with powers that eventually manifested. They were mutants.

In fact, "The Mutants" was the original proposed title of the series, but editor Martin Goodman rejected it saying that children wouldn't know what a mutant is. Stan Lee has often quipped that if they didn't know what a mutant is, how would they know what an X-Man is?

As I said before, my introduction to the X-Men was with the 1992 cartoon on Fox, but possibly my first trade paperback ("large compilation comic" for you non-comic types) was Marvel Masterworks X-Men reprinting issues #1-5. Personally, I always found it thrilling to discover that something I enjoy has a long history to it, but nothing could quite prepare me for this.

The first thing that struck me was the tapered ends on the X. The jagged lines suggested something classified to me; a secret history. The first page of the first issue opens with a large empty mansion and a solitary, old, bald man sitting alone in a wheelchair as he casts out his thoughts. Immediately, all four of his students file into the room in seconds flat demonstrating their unique powers to combat tardiness. He then proceeds to instruct his students through the Danger Room, a large training area filled with rotating knives, flame throwers, and human sized hydraulic presses, where we see the X-Men display the mastery of their powers.

They were billed as "the strangest super-heroes of all" and it is easy to see why. First, they weren't adults, but teenagers and superheroes in training. This was still an incredibly new idea when teens (with the notable exception of the recently created Spider-Man) were still sidekicks. Second, this was the first time you saw superheroes training... much less in a room designed for that purpose. Seeing Professor Xavier as the task master who pushed his students to perfection really gave you the sense that the X-Men weren't just playing around with powers (although they also spent a lot of time doing that too). They were preparing for greatness.

One by one, we are introduced to the X-Men starting with playboy millionaire Warren Worthington III... known as Angel for obvious reasons. Next is the youngest member of the X-Men, the resident class clown Bobby Drake (AKA Iceman... although at the time, he looked more like Snowman). Then there was Hank McCoy whose ape-like physique gave him the name of Beast. Originally, Hank was your average blue collar tough guy (much like the Fantastic Four's Thing) swaggering his way through the first issue brandishing machismo, but by the third issue, he was reading piles of literary canon with his feet and brandishing Stan Lee's trademark verbosity. But the protagonist/entry character/boy-next-door was the shy, tall, and beanpole named Scott "Slim" Summers whose powers were also a curse forcing him to wear an awkward visor as Cyclops or ruby quartz glasses when in his civilian identity to prevent his powers from destroying everything he sees. It's an interesting twist to the Clark Kent/Superman dichotomy with Scott's glasses literally hiding his power.

One thing that the X-Men did really well is demonstrate the awkwardness of being a mutant, which was analogous to the awkwardness of being a teenager. Warren had to put on a harness to strap his wings to his back under his clothes. Hank was often complaining how difficult it was to find shoes his size... which is part of the reason he was often barefoot. And, of course, Scott was always terrified that his glasses would slip just a little... and every once in a while, they did, destroying property and leaving him blind and helpless. Only Bobby had total control of his powers, which he was constantly using to pull pranks on others.

The X-Men's Danger Room training comes to an end when a taxi pulls up to the mansion, we are introduced to the new student, Jean "Marvel Girl" Grey, and her abilities of telekinesis. In the sixties, very few women in comics had direct powers like strength or energy blasts, but would instead have less invasive powers like telekinesis or invisibility. Subsequently, there were a lot of images of these women fainting dramatically when their powers were taxed while the men were engaged in fisticuffs. Still, in his own old fashioned way, Stan was something of a pioneering feminist. When any man started getting too friendly with Jean, she was quick to spin him around the room with her mind.

From the first issue, all of the X-Men are enamored with Jean, but I always figured that's because she was the only girl on the team. Bobby was always too immature and Hank might have had a chance, if he hadn't gotten off on bad first impression, but Warren was the most persistent and often managed to team up with Jean. But for those of us who could read their thought bubbles, Scott and Jean shared an unrequited love. Scott thought that compared to Warren's dashing charm, Hank's intellect, and Bobby's sense of humor, he was the one X-Man with nothing to offer. If I had to guess what made this attraction so irresistible, I would say it was a combination of Scott's dedication to his work and friends along with Jean's strength and self-resiliency. To me, Scott and Jean always embodied Xavier's dream because when you get down to it, all dreams are just a means to an end and that end is to find love and live happily ever after.

Also in this issue, we are introduced to Magneto thereby setting up the status quo for the series. Magneto believes that mutants, as the next stage in evolution, should naturally inherit the world, but just as naturally, the humans do not want to give it up. Professor Xavier explains to us that the role of the X-Men is to stand between the mutants and the humans to advocate peace. I love this idea because they are on neither side of the conflict. They fight other mutants and are called race traitors. They fight humans and they are lumped in with the "evil mutants."

You got to love the underdog... and nobody was ever kind to the X-Men.

This also helped me understand why Professor Xavier trained them harder than any superhero team had trained before (and since, probably). He made sure that the X-Men not only were tougher than their opponents, but that they had a degree of precision so great that they would not accidentally hurt anyone even in the most stressful situation. To maintain the peace, they had to fight, but to stay respectable, they had to have self-control.

What impresses me so much about X-Men #1 is that all of the elements that make the X-Men great (with the arguable exception of Wolverine) are there from the start. I would even argue that the complete X-Men story, boiled down to the essentials, is about four people: Professor Xavier (the dreamer), Scott (the prodigal son), Jean Grey (the heart), and Magneto (the dream distorted).

What I love about Magneto (despite the stupid name and silly helmet) is that you can't say he is one hundred percent wrong. He is a radical and a terrorist to be sure, but if I was born a freak with powers and everyone was trying to kill me, I sure as hell would try to take over the world. Hell, I'm a freak without powers who thinks everyone is out to get him, and I still want to take over the world.

Magneto had his own analog to the X-Men with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutant (renamed The Brotherhood of Mutants when later writers decided that someone who believes that he is doing good would not call his cause "evil"). The original members included the sycophantic Toad, the scheming illusionist Mastermind, the super-speedster Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch, possessing hex powers (these were said to "alter probability" but these powers were so difficult to represent in a visually interesting and understandable way that creators have futzed with them ever since; currently she is an all-powerful sorceress). These latter two were reluctant villains who served Magneto as gratitude for his protection. Later, they quit the Brotherhood, joined the Avengers, were revealed to be Magneto's twin children, and despite their strong connection to X-Men history, they rarely showed up in X-Men again, appearing mostly in Avengers comics.

In X-Men #7, we got to find out how the X-Men manage to find other mutants: Professor Xavier's own real-life thinking cap -- Cerebro.


Another element I loved in early X-Men comics was introduced in X-Men #10, the Savage Land. This was a hidden world in the Antarctic populated by dinosaurs, prehistoric man, and at least one saber-toothed tiger. I've always thought it was appropriate that the X-Men, figures of human evolution, were so closely established with the Savage Land, a world where evolution had stopped. Strangely, however, I never felt that this symbolism was ever expressed. It was always just a place to see X-Men fight dinosaurs... which is a good enough purpose, I suppose.

This X-Men comic revamped a character from the golden age of comics: Ka-Zar. Originally, he was just a stock "jungle man" character in the vein of Tarzan living in the wilds of Africa raised by a lion. This new Ka-Zar, however, was more or less the same, raised in the hidden Savage Land by his companion, the saber-toothed tiger, Zabu.

Upon returning from their prehistoric adventure, the X-Men were gathered by Xavier to defend against the unstoppable Juggernaut. They spend half the issue setting up automated defenses designed to hold off an army (Xavier is very serious about security... and with good reason) and the other half in flashback. Here we learn Xavier's origin, how his father was an atomic scientist who died in a blast, leaving Charles to be adopted by his father's friend and colleague Dr. Marko (way to move in on your best friend's woman, dick). As his mental powers developed, Charles was picked on by his older half-brother Cain (by all accounts, not a good name for a brother). When they grew up, both men ended up serving together in Korea. One day, Cain ran for cover in a cave only to find a magic gem just sitting their with magic words transcribed to English (how convenient!). As Cain reads the words, the power is unleashed and the cave collapses on top of him leaving him a human Juggernaut... as well as burried for years under tons of rock. I guess it took a couple years to get a full charge because Juggernaut lives up to his unstoppable title. Even Cyclops' eyes which can blast through a mountain only slow Juggy down. Juggernaut's only weakness, if you can remove his helmut, Xavier can control his mind.

If you can't tell by my demeanor, I was never a big fan of Juggernaut's mystical powers or irrational desire for fratricide, but I have to admit that there is something cool about a guy who is a walking tank... but maybe that's just too many years of He-Man talking.

The conflict between humans and mutants became even more pronounce with the introduction of the Sentinels in X-Men #14. Up until this point, the X-Men were operating in secret. Although the public knew about them, they didn't really know about mutants... and they didn't take well to the idea that they were an endangered species; particularly Bolivar Trask inventor of the Sentinels and writer of speculative fiction, apparently (sort of Asimov meets Hitler). These man-made machines were designed to hunt down and destroy all mutants, but like every other machine in science fiction, it gradually turned against its master when it realized that they only way to effectively eliminate mutants is to eliminate humanity. Symbolically, they represent the mindless, mob mentality brought about by fear of something different. Inevitably that kind of hatred becomes self-destructive.

Over the course of the series, Jean Grey had developed minor powers of telepathy after the momentary death of Professor Xavier (it's not worth doing into detail). It was latter explained that her telepathy first manifested as a child when she had witnessed the death of her best friend, Annie, who was hit by a car. Jean's mind instinctively reached out and experienced her death in a way a living person never should. The experience scarred her deeply. Charles Xavier was brought in to help her. Realizing her potential, he shut down her telepathic powers to allow her to cope and develop normally. Later, her telekinetic powers manifested, she joined the X-Men, and, later still, Xavier restored her telepathic abilities.

Eventually, the X-Men lost their yellow and gold uniforms (although these would continue to return in various incarnations including the recent films) and adopted new costumes that expressed their individually... sort of. Aside from this truly garish red tights and suspenders number on Angel (millions of dollars and he can't find a tailor who isn't color blind?), these costumes are some of my favorite and set the standard for these characters for years to come. Even when Marvel Girl became Phoenix, she kept the same color scheme. (Fortunately, Angel was the first one to get a new costume and it was a huge improvement.)

Speaking objectively, most of these comics weren't that good. The characters were hardly complex and (like most comics at the time) they spent as much time fighting monsters, aliens, and an empire of underground humanoids as they did fighting mutants or anti-mutant crusaders. In the later years, we were introduced to Scott's previously unmentioned little brother Alex, who would soon become the energy-wielding mutant known as Havok. Not long after, they were joined by the green-haired "mistress of magnetism" known as Polaris (AKA Lorna Dane). Both Alex and Bobby had a crush on Lorna, but ultimately the Summers genes won and these two have been starcrossed lovers ever since.

Sales dwindled, but just as the X-Men were headed for the chopping block, they saw a massive increase in sales due in no small part to the incredible artwork of Neal Adams. Although brief, this run had a few highlights including the return of the Sentinels; Sauron, the hypnotic, energy vampire, pteradactyl/mutant who took his name from Lord of the Rings; and Magneto's artificially-created mutants (called "mutates") in the Savage Land. Unfortunately, the sales figures took so long to get that the editors didn't realize the book had become successful until after it had been canceled so issues #67-93 were all reprints of earlier comics. Although Neal Adams only drew nine issues, if it weren't for him, the X-Men would definitely have been canceled and likely never recovered... and certainly not to the extent that it did.


Next
The X-Men reach their creative peak with an "All-New, All-Different" line-up and Chris Claremont begins his fifteen year stint as the quintessential X-Men writer.

LINKS

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8 (coming soon)

Thinking About Internet/Media Power

I keep having the most interesting thoughts about using The Daily Show and Colbert Report to act social change.

I'm thinking about starting a website to petition Jon Stewart to invite Grant Morrison on The Daily Show to promote All-Star Superman. I have several reasons for this.

1. To promote comic books in a high profile intellectual environment.
2. To use Grant Morrison's amazing charisma and rockstar attitude to create a comic book ambassador forcing people to question their preconceptions about comic books and comic book people.
3. To introduce people to comics through a very easy to read, intelligent, and positive story featuring a character they all know and love.
4. To use Jon Stewart's own literary intellectualism to give credit to the book.
5. To help influence the next Superman movie. If there was just enough buzz on the book to insure that anyone who made the next movie had to read that, it would undoubtably influence the film for the better.

I had been thinking about the fact that while there has been a lot of interest lately in superhero movies, there has been little interest in comic books. It occurred to me then that it really is just a matter of time before they start interesting people. And it's not like people have to go to a comic store when they can just order it on Amazon.

Sure, Joe Quesada has been on The Colbert Report and in a few Kevin Smith movies... and Kevin Smith has done a lot to make comics seem cool, but neither of them really challenge the stereotype. (Neither do comic fans, but I'm trying to change the minority. Don't tell anyone.)

Grant Morrison would.

Grant Morrison

My other idea was "Why doesn't Stephen Colbert ask his audience to petition their elected representatives to be interviewed by him?" Basically just to help finish his Better Know A District series. His audience really seems to follow his lead every other time he suggests something to them. They crashed Wikipedia at least once, petitioned to get a bridge in Holland named after him, and made numerous Star Wars videos of him. I think it would work, at least in some of the more liberal areas of the country.

Or did he already get all of those?

The great thing about this series is how people are taken off guard and you get to see them as human instead of politicians. Sometimes they use the footage in connection to a news article. Understanding the type of person he or she is gives us a better sense of the person and makes the news more meaningful... at least I think so.

The way that those shows are connecting with and responding to the online community is a possible way to make social change. Interesting.

There is a fine line between enigmatic and creepy...

... and I walk this line every day.

In a very real way, I strive to be more unusual every day. I think it's a method of combating boredom, but it's tied in with ideas of self-improvement and an attempt to understand everything.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle states that nothing can be observed without effecting the object in some way. I think that the reverse is true as well; nothing can be observed without effecting the observer. Or as Nietzsche so negatively put it, "if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you." I've always thought that quote represented a conservative fear of knowledge as a means of maintaining a weak ideology. Sort of the equivalent to "idle hands are the devil's playthings" the underlying message being "Work hard all of your life and don't think about things so you can die and go to Heaven."

I hope if Christians are right, we at least get to talk to God before going to Hell. If I'm going to be damned to eternal soul shattering torment for eternity, I want to at least tell him that he is an asshole for hiding the right religion in a bunch of fucked up, self-repressed dimwits and a book that has been rewritten more times than A Christmas Carol.

What's he going to do? Damn me even more?

Try as you might, it's hard to reconcile a loving God with one that condemns non-believers to eternal torment, and yet makes his Bible so unbelievable... not to mention unreadable. Occasionally I worry that I'm being a little too intolerant of this particular religion, but then I remember that those who believe in it worship a God (whom they believe is perfect) who believes that me, my family, and pretty much everyone I love deserve to suffer for all eternity for not believing that which I have overwhelming evidence not to believe in.

And consider Hell in terms of Christianity's obsession with absolutes; absolute torture for eternity. Not a lot of torture for a long time, but absolute torture forever. And I assume this is not just physical torture, but psychological torture as well like being ass raped by a water buffalo while razors slice into your pupils and rats chew off your arms, legs, and genitals. Not just for fifteen minutes... forever... with no break. So after doing this for a lifetime, you still have an eternity to go.

Just for not believing something that doesn't make much sense.

Try as I might, I can't consider Christianity to be a moral religion. I know Christians who are moral, wonderful people. I even know Christian denominations (i.e. Gnosticism) that I could believe in, but these are so far away from mainstream Christianity that most Christians would consider it no better than atheism or Satanism.

And speaking of denominations, I once asked my Born Again friend (now an atheist, but that's beside the point) about Catholics to which he suggested that the idolatry and Mary-worship of Catholicism distracts from the glory of Jesus and thus would prevent a Catholic from crossing those pearly gates.

This horrified me. That God would be so petty to decide that there were those who believed, but not enough so they too get sent to the water buffalo ass-raping table. Not to mention all of the Jews and Muslims who worship the same God, but not through Jesus. How can anyone justify that such a God is perfect?

Living a half hour's drive from anything that vaguely resembled a town, I grew up in a social group where Christianity and conservativism was the default cultural value. Although I went to a fairly good public school, socialization determined the dominant ideologies. God was real, white, and male. Guns were good. Queers were bad (most of us didn't know what they were, just that we didn't want to be one). Christopher Columbus discovered our country and made peace with the Indians.

Although I always felt that I was learning half-truths in life, it didn't really start to get to me until fifth grade when I realized that my complaints fell on deaf ears. Until this point, I had viewed school mostly as a game... which is the way you are supposed to think of it at that age. It evolves from memorization games and challenges into... work. So I started to do my work in advance so I could finish the game early and not worry about deadlines. Consequently, I ended up with old math homework shoved in the back of my desk but never turned in. I never really got why that was a bad thing. I did the work. In fact, I did it early and learned all about it.

I soon felt like a rat in a maze. It became clear to me that more than being taught, I was being conditioned... prepared for the rest of the world. But from what I saw of "the rest of the world," I had very little interest in it. Every adult I knew was somewhat dead inside. Their lives were full of unhappy compromises demanding absolute dedication.

This is when my depression started.

I couldn't do my class work. Try as I might, I couldn't see the point. It wasn't laziness, although I'm certain that helped. I just didn't care. If I enjoyed the class, I generally got pretty good grades, but I didn't enjoy most of my classes. When I took tests, I found that most of the answers I got wrong were because either I misunderstood the question or it wasn't very important information. Consequently, my only means of self-improvement on tests were exercises in memory retention... because you can't completely eliminate misunderstanding no matter how many times you double-check your answers. Essay questions were my favorite because sometimes I could just blather on about something I knew even if it didn't answer the question. Usually teachers were impressed enough that it worked.

You know, people say that teenagers think they know everything. That saying always bothered me as a teenager because I was acutely aware of how little I knew. It didn't occur to me until recently when talking to a friend of mine who is a seventh grade teacher that they don't think they know everything, they are just beginning to realize that they have questions that adults don't have an answer for... and that is truly frightening.

As Bertrand Russell observed, "Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position." Christianity does the same thing through the blind acceptance of a perfectly moral being despite his questionable actions. This is the kind of modeling behavior that leads to tyranny.

This is also why I slipped into depression and why I have yet to escape from it. Around that age, we lose our childish comfort that we are taken care of by just, intelligent adults. We learn that the confusion and fear that we are feeling is something that the adults have learned to deal with, but it never goes away. The older we get, the more we are told that we just have to play the game and not think about the things that are wrong, but how do you look at a child without thinking about the needless bullshit that they will have to go through because so many of us have just ignored or justified the problems of life?

I resigned myself to the idea that adults knew nothing of any value with regards to these problems, so I set out to discover them for myself. Unfortunately, with no guidance, a limited twelve-year-old vocabulary, and a fledgling internet, it was very difficult to find anything that explained these problems. I soon found that I had a love of debate and would seek out people who weren't afraid to argue. It didn't matter if they agreed or not. Some of my favorite debaters were staunch Republican Christians... possibly because they didn't care if they offended me.

The Tao Te Ching was of enormous help to me. If you haven't read it, it only takes about fifteen minutes. Unlike the Bible and other religious texts, the Tao keeps to the essentials by being as clear, direct, simple, and unambiguous as possible... but no more so, thereby obeying the rule of Occam's Razor, which I believe is one of the best tests for wisdom. It also conforms exactly to Sir Isaac Newton's Laws of Motion, which not only suggests a link between the physical world and the metaphysical, but shows you the underlying principles that unites them.

I'm not sure if I've strayed from the point. Lately, I've just been feeling very lonely and trying to make conversation with people makes me feel even lonelier. Consequently, most of my conversation involves me waiting to make a witty remark or offering an amusing non-sequitor. I suppose this makes me feel enigmatic and clever, but often I seem to fall into the category of creepy... or at least I think I do.

Bertrand Russell also said, "One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways." This is a sentiment that I am trying very hard to live up to.

Recommendation: Maus

To my knowledge, only one comic book (or graphic novel, if you prefer) has ever been awarded the Pulitzer prize. It is called Maus by Art Spiegelman, and it is the biographical story of the artist's father, Vladek, who was a Polish Jew sent to Dachau during the Holocaust. The book chronicles his life from the rise of the Nazi party to the closing of the camps by US soldiers.

There are really two stories here. The primary story is the story of Vladek in Poland, but the framing device centers around Art as he is interviewing his father for the book.

Now, to be honest, I haven't read Maus since I was in high school. There are only so many times you want to read about the Holocaust, but what I remember very clearly was the loving, but antogonistic relationship between Art and Vladek and how courageous it was of the writer to expose the flaws in their relationship. In one scene, Vladek talks about a time of infidelity with his former wife (whether he cheated or she did, I don't recall, but clearly, it is a painful memory). Vladek pleads with Art not to include it... and he agrees... yet there it is... complete with his father's plea.

It left an impression.

As you may have noticed, the book uses animals to represent different ethnicities. Jews are represented by mice, Germans are cats, Poles are pigs, French are frogs... I don't really think any of this is racist, but rather uses the child-like iconic qualities as shown in anthropomorphized animals to impart the clear morality of children's tales on a real life atrocity.

There is little else I could say about this book that hasn't been said better by others, but if you want a comic book experience that feels like a classic piece of non-fiction canon, you can't do better than Maus. It is available in two volumes from Amazon.com (I and II) for $10.17 each. I know that violates my "one cheap volume" rule, but I make exceptions for Pulitzer Prize winners. It's also available in one complete edition as well as a two-volume box set, but you will have to search for those on your own.

Exercises in Optimism

Occasionally I realize that I tend to assume things are more difficult and sinister than they really are. For example, I was lamenting over the fact that I can get ridiculous amounts of news on comic books (much more than I want), video games, movies, television, and what have you, but I can't find a site that has interesting news and opinions on philosophy.

"Well, have you really looked?" a voice whispered in the back of my head... so I shrugged and googled "philosophy." Good place to start, right?

This is the first thing that came up: http://www.philosophy.com/

We are doomed. Absolutely doomed.

Memory Dump

It occurs to me that a lot of the reason why I write is to get things off of my mind. I tend to get stuck in a repetitive loop. For instance, I kept talking about my Daredevil TV show until I wrote a blog about it. I was also blathering on about how sucktastic Superman movies in the past have been when they have the potential to be inspiring. Some day soon I need to write down my ideas for a GTA-style Batman game (until then, take a look at this: http://comics.ign.com/articles/899/899026p1.html). I also have an idea for a campy Batman platformer game based on the old TV series.

On the other hand, I'm working on my sister blog (not to be confused with my sister's blog) and hope to get it up and running in the next couple weeks. It's called The Socialist Agenda and the goal is to be about not only social observations, but suggestions. I'm currently looking at education as I believe it is the single most important element to maintaining a moral and intelligent democracy. In the future, I hope to talk about numerous other things including the legal system, economy, advertising, immigration, religion, drugs, sex, the media, and all of those huge monstrous institutions that we feel insignificant compared to.

Too often we have to just accept the bullshit of life, but too often in order to deal with that acceptance, we justify the acceptance and encourage others to do the same. How often have you had a conversation with someone about sweatshops and they say "Well, every thing you buy promotes some sort of evil." This isn't really true. Like people, there are good companies and bad ones. We all make compromises and give money to businesses that go against our interests, but we should at least be aware of when we are doing that so we can find alternatives. For example, I shop at Target which makes large contributions to the Republican party. I could go to K-Mart, but they support the Republican party too and they are crap. I have proudly never even been in a Wal-Mart and refuse to shop there because they make much larger donations to the Republican party, actively work to discourage unionization, and use the more sweatshop labor than any single business.

Getting back to sweatshops, why are we so blazé about these things? We say "sweatshop" casually as if it were synonymous with "crappy job" but the working conditions are dangerous, often employ women and children, employees have no rights, and no matter how much they work, they are still poor. Now, some people tell me that it's better that they have low wages than no wages. What they don't seem to get is that we are instituting sustained poverty, a method that has little difference from slavery. Unlike the Mexican immigrants that are picking our oranges (and underming our way of life, or whatever), the workers we legally pay do not make enough money to take care of their families.

Someone once said that if the law isn't moral, it isn't any good. I think that applies here.

Anyway, getting back to my original point, I need a place to put all of these sorts of ideas so they don't just sit in my head making me depressed. I can't help but feel that this is a form of evolution. My consciousness is extending outside my brain and onto the internet, spilling out of its confines. Of course, language (particularly the written word) has long allowed us to do this, but this is the age of information and a personal experience to boot.

A primary idea in philosophy is "Who or what am I?" The natural answers are "I am my body" (pragmatic atheism), "I am my mind" (modern intellectualism), or "I am my soul" (Platonic spiritualism).

"I am my body" is the oldest conception of self because it is so definable and physical. It is a definition based on observation. "I live, I act, I speak, I eat, I am." However, when the physical limitations of the body is challenged, the identity of self is changed. For example, if someone loses an arm, are they less than they were before? Politely, we say no. Rationally, we probably say yes. Interestingly, though, the mind often compensates for loss of body, hence the "phantom limb" phenomenon.

But more interesting to me is the driver phenomenon whereby driving a car, we are prone to think of the car as an extension of the body. Recall learning how to drive. If you were anything like me, it was awkward to operate the controls... much like a baby learning to walk, but now I do it instinctively. If I'm driving and I get into an accident, I'm libel to say "He hit me!" instead of the more accurate "His car hit my car!" It seems to me that the relationship between the self and the body is more like a vehicle... although whether or not we are dependent upon it for the continuation of our consciousness, I don't know.

The idea of a soul is based in Platonic philosophy. One of Plato's major theories was the Theory of Forms, which I think has held back Western development more than it has done otherwise. The essential concept is that every object or idea has a divinely perfect form (presumably contained in the ether), but when these forms manifest in our imperfect world, they take on an imperfect shape. Therefore, there is a perfect form of man and woman and we are all imperfect reflections of that form. He extended this concept to good and evil and even man-made objects like chairs. The Buddhist tradition holds that a chair is merely a chair because that is how we define it. If we break it, is it any less a chair? They would reply that it is no more or less a chair than it was before. It is only our relationship with the object which has changed.

This subtle difference of definition is relevent because Plato proposes a reality whereby there are perfect goals to be achieved, but these goals are not perceptible because they do not exist in our imperfect world. Therefore, Plato ascribed definition to the intangible based on observation, i.e. "Good is being nice to people," but is it still good if you are nice to Hitler?

Plato's problem was trying to make reality conform to words instead of the other way around. If "table" was to have meaning to Plato, there would have to be essential "tableness" by which he could define what is and is not a table. However, what his student Aristotle believed is that language is a product of function.

Plato was mathematician and physicist grounded in the rules of cause and effect as well as precision of thought. Aristotle was a biologist, trained in function. If you think about biology, one organ has a particular function in the operation of the whole organism. It is dependent upon other organs and other organs are dependent upon it. In Aristotilian philosophy, the table is a product of human need and function. It's definition is active and impermanent, not absolute.

Historically, philosophy and science are not fond of impermanence, but with the mainstream acceptance of quantum physics, we've had to learn to accept it.

But to make a long story short (too late), the transcendental form (or soul) assumes an absolute, which it cannot produce any evidence of, based on a need for consciousness to overcome physical reality. Naturally, a philosopher would have a conceit for preferring his intellectual constructs to the complexity of reality. However, this idea is at the foundation of the human conception of a soul.

"I am my mind" is the fall back position for the atheist or pragmatic agnostic. It's the best of both worlds between spiritualism and rationalism. However, the mind is always in a state of flux. It is influenced by the biological processes of the body and numerous mood manipulators both known and unknown. It is also subject to distortion and information loss. Therefore, if it is the real you, when is it the real you? If you are on a drug, is it still the real you? Could it possibly more you than you are while sober?

In the end, I decided that self is the point at which one views the universe and the extent of the individual's ability to effect the universe around them. If it can be argued that the self is the body, then why can't the self also be the car? If the computer becomes a place where I store my ideas, is it not an extension of my mind and therefore an extension of my self? And by using the computer to access information, it becomes an extension of my senses. As I begin to produce more creative material (even a blog), I influence people (albeit currently a few people in small ways) which changes the way they behave in the world, therefore I have extended a piece of myself further out into the world than it would normally go.

So here's to the continuation of the expansion of individual consciousness without which I would feel like I was wasting my time a lot more than I currently am.