Incidentally, if you’re interested in Ghost Rider, but don’t have the time for a tome of this size, you might also take a look at Vapor Trails by Rush. While reading the book, you can see hints of songs yet to be written, and reading the book makes the CD make a lot more sense. The play list meshes very well with the progress of the book, and each serves to illuminate the other. Also, you might like to read the lyrics.

I don’t often wax philosophical here. And I don’t often talk about my personal life, since, if it was any of your business, I would have already told you about it in person. Or on IRC, which is sort of the same thing.

But I thought I’d share the following, from “Ghost Rider”, by Neil Peart, because it makes more sense to me than all the books I’ve ever read about grief and dealing with horrible situations in your life. I tend to have a great deal of contempt for psychologists, because they think that life is formulaic, and, worse yet, they seem to think that if you know the formulas, your problems will go away. Yes, this is a grossly unfair generalization, but it seems that so many “counsellors” have completely lost touch with what it means to suffer, and so they offer formulas to “fix” things. This is profoundly disingenuous.

Anyways, I gain more comfort from Neil’s book than from a dozen counselors, because he does not offer solutions. He just talks about himself, and what he’s going through. He offers a few insights, but does not insist that things are the same for everyone in the world.

Anyways, the following is rather lengthy, but it is covered under Fair Use, and so I’m not violting any copyright laws. But you really should buy this book, if this passage resonates with you.

I have found that it is meaningless to talk in terms of “dealing with it,” or of “working through it.” No. This particular it is not something to be dealt with or worked through. This kind of It simply changes everything, and there’s no coming to terms with it. No deal to be made, no compromise. (I think Ayn Rand once wrote “You can’t compromise with evil.”)

Here and now it’s about starting all over again, from the ground up, and as Darwinian organisms, we are expected to adapt to these new circumstances. Adapt, or perish. We can’t change what is, or its effects on us and our view of life. That is all done. If we truly want to carry on from this dark crossroads, we can only try to guide the inevitable changes in ourselves. We would not be who we are if this was something we could “get over,” or simply carry on from where we left off. Once I expressed the way I see my future this way, “I know I’m scarred by these experiences, I just don’t want to be too crippled by them.”

If there is any point in carrying on, it is not in simply existing, in cluttering up the world with another bitter and nasty old man, or a joyless hermit, or a suffering martyr forever living in the pas, and punishing everyone else for what life has done to me.

I don’t like the feel of the word “Acceptance,” the technical term which is applied by the “griefologists” to the state of the process in which I presently find myself. I found on my return from the Healing Road that after all that time and distance I had at least transcented “denial.” But to me, knowing that these things are true doesn’t mean that I accept the truth. Far from it. As far as I can see, I will never accept that life is supposed to turn out this way. Especially our lives. It’s not the way I lived, or Jackie lived, or the way we taught Selena.

This is not at all the way I thought the world worked, and after all, it is not “acceptable” that Selena and Jackie had to die. No way. Not in my world. So that world, or our world-view, is gone. Some well-meaning people have tried to offer me what they perceive to be a “comforting” thought of the “everything must happen for a reason” kind, but I shut them up right away (as politely as I can). Somehow they don’t see that it’s absolutely no consolation to look at it that way, and more, it brings up some terrible questions in your head: “There’s some kind of reason? What? They deserved to die? I deserved to lose them? The world didn’t need people like Jackie and Selena?”

Bullshit.

…

So, those of us on the “inside,” like you and me, are left trying to “accept the unacceptable.” We’re expected to pull ourselves together and carry on (expectations sometimes from others, sometimes just from an unextinguishable part of ourselves), but we face a pretty desperate battle, after all, for there’s nothing to pull together!

Everything that we were, everything that we based our lives upon, everything that we believe is gone. … No way we can hold onto what we used to believe, and no way we can forget what has actually happened in our lives, and in our worlds. We will never trust Life again.

However, once again, we’ve got to adapt, even to that unbearable reality, or one way or another, we will perish. Period.

I won’t inflict my deep thoughts on you very often, but perhaps this passage will help someone get a useful perspective on things, as Peart’s writings have been doing for me.

In the northeastern town of Bunia (northeastern DRCongo, that is) 400 or so people have been killed because of the terrible crime of being in the wrong tribe. (Yes, “tribe”, not “ethnic group.” I’ll try not to get sidetracked.) Meanwhile, 1000 UN troops, under the somewhat absurd name of “peacekeepers”, are there. Apparently they are watching. This is the bit that’s unclear to me. They are peacekeepers, but they are not authorized to intervene. Exactly how does one keep the peace without intervening?

Meanwhile, in the hallowed halls of the UN, France is recommending that we send more peacekeepers, who will presumably keep the peace just as effectively as the ones that are there. They think that it will take these additional troops more than 2 months to get to Bunia. Yes, it is difficult to get to Bunia, I’ll gladly grant that. But 2 months? Are they planning to drive from Paris?

I’m becoming increasingly unclear why I used to think that the UN is a good idea. I suppose it could be, if the veto was not quite so frequently used, and if the UN actually did the things that it said it was going to do, rather than standing around meekly hoping that their presence is enough. Seems that the US spends billions of dollars each year to support an organization that is ineffective, and, to a large extent, works against our interests.

The cause of keeping global peace is a noble one, and I’m all for that. But if keeping the peace means that 1000 well armed men (with shiny white tanks even!) stand around while 400+ civilians are brutally raped and hacked to pieces, then I’m not real sure that we have the same notions of what peace looks like.

CNN.com – U.S. rejects Amnesty charge – May. 29, 2003

The U.S. has rejected an accusation from Amnesty International that the U.S.-led war against terror is sowing fear and danger in the name of global security.

OK, so I haven’t read the 311-page document, but, yes, it is clear to me that the US is sowing fear and danger in the name of national security. Oh, did they mean in other countries? I must have misunderstood. I thought they meant here in the good old USA.

Apparently some other folks think so too. I’m glad I’m not the only one.

Of course, I’m being flippant – the abuses going on in the USA are paltry in comparison to the sorts of things that go on in other countries. But, in a nation that was founded on the notion of freedom from tyrany, it is a profoundly troubling trend. Stuff like the Alien and Sedition … um … I mean the Patriot Act really makes me wonder if certain people have paid any attention at all to the lessons that history is supposed to be teaching us.

Well, as The Brain said, when Pinky asked why Brain had hit him on the head, “Time will tell, Pinky, Time will tell.”