5/31/2011

Women and Tobacco

What should she do when confronted with thee?
And where would the social eye have her be;
A joyless wench that dampens the crowd,
Or the loosest nut debauching so loud.

If she refuse and the denial be rung,
Obtaining thereby the cleanest of lung.
But if she prefers to take of this leaf,
She adopts from the others the smokeless grief.

If she accept and smoke the toback,
A mind at ease and a train on it's track.
But if that's addiction she's stumbled upon,
From the LORD she strays, the chemicals she's gone.

Where is your logic? Where is your reason?
Since for everything on earth there is a time and season.

By Evan Gunn Wilson

5/29/2011

Sonnet O' Wise Love

To persevere through thy hard gritful mind,
Crossing the bent of pleasures greatest tool,
The lowly saint averts his eyes to find,
A lass to push away, to be a fool.
She abides outside far from thy revel;
Ready thinking to forgive thy raw lust.
Ready modest, her looks m'lodic treble;
Walking submissions way to give all trust.
And thou may speak, her doorway's narrow studs,
Complaint of sharp ground to evade thy trudge.
Since you excuse your sin still tightly grasp'd,
The lass, she leaves to bless the man she clasp'd.
And by the love you plung'd, failing to ease,
Hear the wise words, awaken not love until it please.

By Evan Gunn Wilson

5/24/2011

Oh, How the Mighty Have Perished

I started reading through II Samuel and enjoyed Davids poem for the death of Saul and his son Jonathan. So I decided to do my best to rewrite it.

The King is dead and fallen from his might,
Upon Gilboa was he slain by force.
And all his men attempt to take their flight,
While daughters of thorns rejoicing coarse.

I pray it may not rain upon the mount,
Upsurging the waters makes shame more deep.
Defiled shields lay in plunder count,
God's anointed king, anointed they reap.

Blood is spilt when thorns are crossed,
The soil is nurtured as gain, our loss.
Keeping of the fallen many possessions,
So they may gain material ascension.

The king and his son I had loved them both,
Not divided in battle, I've seen in troth.
They were swifter than eagles, creating a trouble,
And stronger than lions, defeating the devil.

Oh daughters of the chosen, weep o'er the king,
Who provided bounty for thy land;
Who adorned you to make thy heart sing,
As he is reduced to merely sand.
Kings we think may never die,
But war then death comes crudely by.

And the son, my friend, with his father he lays,
This brother I claim was foiled in the fray.
The love he gave blessed me and all,
So here I kneel, to Israel I call.
How the fallen mighty we have cherished,
So by their swords they have perished.

By Evan Gunn Wilson

5/16/2011

On The Last Day of Hill Abbey

Fresh in thy mind but dull in thy sight,
Venture to unravel the world in quite.
A fraction of knowledge and a faint ray,
Equipped with our books and blankets of gray.

Resolved thoughts personally and here,
The divided may quarrel in Christian cheer.
So the man of age sat by the young,
A song of smoke by the women sung.

The youthful men crow as a game,
To silence the other, passing the shame.
Though it may all seem as a group for the shabby,
We give regrets that we leave Hill Abbey.

I thank you Wes for your Socratic mind,
A gradeless school is for us, our kind.

By Evan Gunn Wilson

5/14/2011

Aut Pax, Aut Bellum

There is a philosophy held by Evan B. Wilson that I have grown to see, understand and believe. This philosophy deals with the sum of all human desire. What is the sum of all human desire? This a heavy question that we do not feel comfortable about answering. We do not want to be seen as presumptuous. So we get answers from the shallow heathens of hedonism that say: The sum of all human desire is to get the most amount of pleasure and the least amount of pain. Whether that means we indulge twenty-four /seven, or if we moderate ourselves by working under pain to achieve more pleasure to make a more drastic ratio. This kind of thinking, even the most immoral people can agree, should be reprimanded as evil. And so we think highly of ourselves. But we have failed to come forth with an answer to the question: what is the sum of all human desire. The answer that Evan B. Wilson and I would give is that it is Peace. A simple explanation that does not raise opposition. If it does it is just for the sake of argument; everybody agrees to disagree with that answer. Peace is a nice thing to have; whether it is civil, social, political, personal or spiritual. In at least one or all of these categories of peace people will be looking for it. Even an anarchist who cooks up civil chaos is looking for personal peace. So we shall assume this as right for the sake of this essay.

Peace as the objective good must have an opposite that is an objective bad, right. Chaos would be the obvious opposite since God made the universe to have order. In other words, He made the universe to obey Him. It also may be said that another opposite would be War. From our middle class distance war is seen as horrible, cold, cruel, and demoralizing of a man. The point of war is to destroy things created buy the opponent. We, as the enlightened people we are, know that if we have the least amount of war and the most amount of peace, that will solve problems. Wait. That sounds familiar; kind of like the hedonist philosophy. We think war is inherently bad as though it were equivalent with chaos. And why should we not? Hatred flies around like bullets with envious hollow points. People die in war and make a very many unhappy with thoughts of depression. And war never seems to completely solve the problem since another one comes up every five years. So why do we keep doing it? The plain reason is because there is evil in the world.

Evil! Equate that with sin! Sin makes people go to war. If we were not sinful we would have no war. Therefore, if there were no sin, we would have no war. This is a valid train of thought, but it is misguided. The suggestion made implicitly in this modus ponens proof is that war is inherently evil. And need I remind you, we have not yet proven that. Since we have assumed that peace is the sum of all human desire and that the opposite of peace is chaos which can be found in war that must make it sinful. This is a classic informal fallacy where if you discover correlation that must make it causal. That is pure extract of presumption. Just because we find chaos in war does not mean that war encourages the chaos. In fact that disagrees with the sum of all human desire. War has for someone, somewhere given them peace that we may not be able to see. Peace that war encouraged. Why do people go to war? Selfish gain? Yes, but why are they out for their selfish gain anyway. To find that peace. One nation is creating a ruckus so the other nation being bothered by it, declares war on them. To what end? PEACE. Like the example of the anarchist I gave earlier, even though it appears to people to be chaos for chaos’ sake it is giving someone peace.

So we have discovered that war is not inherently evil. Do I have the Bible to back me up on this? Why yes, I do. Aside from all of the orders that God gave the Israelites to rape and pillage their enemies, here is a verse from Ecclesiastes, written by the wisest man that ever lived.

1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
9 What gain has the worker from his toil?
Ecclesiastes 3:1-9

So how are to interpret this passage? Clearly the word “interpretation” is taboo amongst bible readers, but what else are we supposed to do than give it our best shot. Luckily, this kind of stuff needs little thought unless you are trying to avoid the clear answer it is giving. “For everything there is a season” says that depending on your categories for your desires, none of the objects of your desire are inherently evil. There is a time and place for all things that God has made. And then Solomon goes on to list a few examples of what he means. Some of them are nice, and some of them get a double take with disturbed analysis. There is a time for WAR, as well as a time for PEACE. What does this specific passage mean? It means not only does peace solve things in this world, but war also solves things in this world. Sometimes a fight needs to break out because someone is being a pest and they wont stop if they are asked nicely. If you slaughter their men they become demoralized and wont do it again. War makes people learn their lesson; the lesson of how far does their will extend. The lesson of who owns this land.

To be quite frank, war is the last thing that we should be emotionally invested in. That is not to say that military families should ignore the possibility of there loved one dying in battle, but there should be a recognition that their loved one is voluntarily gambling their life for their country. Nor am I saying you should not mourn for the death of a loved one, since that is covered in that same part of Ecclesiastes. But going to war is all about denying oneself for the sake of others; whether it is your families well being, your nation or for people you have no connection to other than by your fighting you will benefit them. It is not our place to complain about the quality of our lives being less than ideal, because of the war. That war is a step in the direction of better quality of living for more people.

Another question arises. What are the moral implications found in war time? Killing another human being usually involves envy, malice and hatred for the person. Last time I checked those are bad things. What makes the killing that a government does fine by God? Here is a verse out of Romans, that speaks to the issue directly.

for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.
Romans 13:4

God uses the government as a force to destroy the wrongdoers. But still, you say there is still one person killing another; why is that not an evil action? A distinction must now be made. Why are we told by God not to murder? Is it because it is taking another persons life too early, which is a horrible atrocity? No, I would think not, since we have always deserved to be cast into the lake of fire for eternity. We really don’t deserve any better of treatment than that. So what is the distinction here? What separates the executioner from the murderer? Simply, the murderer acts in selfish desire. They commit the act of killing with a hot blooded vengeance, because they are all about themselves. That is why murder is wrong. The executioner, on the other hand, is flipping the electrical chair switch with cold blooded justice. He does it because he was ordered to. He obeys his authorities. He does not get a jolly out of seeing someone die before him, since he is emotionally detached from the death. The soldier killing terrorists should not be killing with any hatred, but killing as his duty. It was his responsibility given him and he must follow through with it. But say if the orders to kill a man from the soldier’s commander were given with hot blooded vengeance. What then? Would not the soldier be held accountable for killing the man since he is an extension of his commander’s will? Actually quite the opposite. It is not the soldier’s duty to know his commanding officer’s intention. He is only there to obey orders. Only the commander is held responsible for the murder of a man if he did it with malice.

Keep the king's command, and because of your sacred oath be not dismayed; go from his presence, do not delay when the matter is unpleasant, for he does whatever he pleases. For the word of the king is supreme, and who may say to him, "What are you doing?" He who obeys a command will meet no harm, and the mind of a wise man will know the time and way. Ecclesiastes 8:2-5

Again, it is none of our business to know what the king is up to. I would also not suggest that we interpret this passage as only applying to monarchical kings. It speaks of any authority that has a divine right and is recommended to any authority that is merely contractual. It is the malice for your neighbor that is the real murder. As it says in 1 John 3:15 that any man who hates his brother has murdered his brother in his heart.

War is hell. But what, in this world we live in, isn’t perverted by man into a hell of it’s own? Who are we to think that war is the worst thing for a man to experience. War has attained a bad reputation that it does not deserve. In our wealthy and successful culture of today not many of us actually have to go to war, and those that do usually make a clean sweep of the enemy and it is quickly done with. With these comfortable circumstances we start to think that we have an entitlement to this life; we resemble Athens during the time when Demosthenes was giving his Philipics. We as a people group have gotten lazy about our inter-national affairs where we think that all we have to do is suggest that we all get along. The reality is that nobody is ever going to get along because everybody always thinks that they are better than the next guy. And so for many a people today it is hard for them to grasp that war can be a great thing. The honor and nobility that an individual can achieve and the expansion of a nation’s borders are just some of the many things that war can bring.

This all stemmed from the idea that to take a life is the single most horrible thing to ever happen. This is an idea encouraged if a man does not believe in a god. Consequently, it is a incredibly sad existence since everyday people all around the world are dying whether it is from old age, poverty, poor health or a sudden accident. In all honesty, do we really think war is doing anything different than what life already does to us? We may have a precious gem that is our life, but a life subjected to futility, that will eventually be taken away from us, with no hope of there being another is a very poor world view. And still, we complain and moan that we wont get to keep it for eternity; creating definitions of heaven that only incorporate worldly images.

What are left with at this point? Life is too short, unless you think that there is more than this earth. An after life that makes a judgment of you which might encourage you to do great things. Becoming great is no equation, but always entails how far your will extends from you. How far do your borders go? Not far enough. Since we have discovered that life is not apart of the rights of man how are we to judge war as right or wrong? We cannot, but the timing of war and peace are crucial; timing is everything. The Gunn of Kilernan Clan motto says, “Aut Pax, Aut Bellum.”

5/05/2011

Discussion of Politics

A snarky utterance and voices brawl,
So the game goes for politics call.
If someone there refuses to speak,
He does this merely since he is weak.

Though he may say he is above the game,
As gnostics do to put men to shame.
He struts and tilts his nose at thee,
Suggesting that thy mind's not free.

To disapprove he will shake his head,
And so many a man's face turns to red.
He says the game applies not to us,
Though in his governors he giveth trust.

Remember he has a pretentious grave,
That denies the wisdom of nation's rave.
For he is affected when the country's at war,
And dies by that as ignorance before.

The men of the middle, desire to know,
Why we are great with progress to grow.
Those who reject this knowledge at hand,
Be banished for life from the gambled land.

We may not change our governor's decision,
But our sound view grants us provision.
The LORD has said, "Pray for your kings",
how shall we, unknowing what it brings?

By Evan Gunn Wilson

Julius Caesar - Cast List

Here is the cast for my play. Not that it applies to anybody who reads my blog.

Julius Caesar - Creed Thie

Octavius - David Bowman

Marc Antony - Jacob Bauer

Lepidus - D' Artagnan Carroll

Brutus - Josiah Nance

Cassius - Ben Perley

Casca and Pindarus - George Calihan

Trebonius and Ligarius - Jonathon Nance

Flavius and Varro - Allison Obryan

Marullus and Clitus - Molly Obryan

A Soothsayer - Martha Bowman

Calpurnia - Clara Bowman

Portia - Jackie Nance