joe exotic tried that same shit

I had a run in today with a bolshevik sissy, Nikolai Bukharin. Well, I guess I kind of did and I only think he's a sissy because I'm searching for context as to why I'd write his name down in a notebook years ago. He was a typical bolshevik of his time: he rode the popular wave of snitching on his comrades until he didn't have anyone left to snitch on. Then, of course, conspiracies started to swirl about him which eventually led to his imprisonment and execution.

I'm trivializing the era of upheaval in Russia from the 1917 revolution to the great purges under Stalin in the 30s. It reads a lot like a soap opera and there's some serious thinkers thrown in the mix. I'm only saying Bukharin was a sissy because he wrote letters begging a paranoid autocratic lunatic (Uncle Joe Stalin) to spare his life. It's like asking an ice cube not to be cold and then becoming increasingly crazy as it refuses to cooperate. Anyways, I got caught up in reading a series of essays Bukharin wrote to Vladimir Lenin who was kind of like the first head crazy in charge over there after the dust settled and he was one of the least crazy of the time. It's interesting and there's some stuff I need to finish reading before I can explain to myself why his name is written in a notebook of mine. 

Anyways, I took a break from that bullshit and decided to do a softball post about Viracocha, the Incan creator god. Or, kind of. "Viracocha created the universe, sun, moon, and stars, time (by commanding the sun to move over the sky) and civilization itself. Viracocha was worshipped as god of the sun and of storms. He was represented as wearing the sun for a crown, with thunderbolts in his hands, and tears descending from his eyes as rain. In accord with the Inca cosmogony, Viracocha may be assimilated to Saturn, the "old god", the maker of time or "deus faber" (god maker), corresponding to the visible planet with the longest revolution around the sun." 

I'm gonna quote again from the Wikipedia after the page break but it's only partially because I said this was a softball post. And also, sometimes softballs can be hard, like when you take one to your soft... spot. I think it's important that I present the summary unedited because I want to explore some of the similarities between other gods and the like. Not in an entirely Joseph Campbell kind of way, but somewhat, enough for me to include this sentence with that link. There are similarities between creation myths but it's pretty clear that there needs to be because we all observe what seems to be the same reality that supposedly needed created at some point. Personally, I think the issue is beyond our scope, which is just a polite way of saying it doesn't matter.

The meat and potatoes of Viracocha is as follows: "Viracocha rose from Lake Titicaca (or sometimes the cave of Paqariq Tampu) during the time of darkness to bring forth light. He made the sun, moon, and the stars. He made mankind by breathing into stones, but his first creation were brainless giants that displeased him. So, he destroyed them with a flood and made humans, beings who were better than the giants, from smaller stones. After creating them, they were scattered all over the world.

Viracocha eventually disappeared across the Pacific Ocean (by walking on the water), and never returned. He wandered the earth disguised as a beggar, teaching his new creations the basics of civilization, as well as working numerous miracles. Many, however, refused to follow his teachings, devolving into warfare and delinquency; Viracocha wept when he saw the plight of the creatures he had created. It was thought that Viracocha would re-appear in times of trouble."

Aside from the fact that potatoes are carbohydrate adjacent, I still like the idiom(?) because that's the bulk of what "legends" on Wikipedia say about simply "V", which I think is nicer to read and to type than to say his full name aloud, especially if you pronounce it wrong. Where/wire a coasha? It's all right, it looks like the name of a giant spider from a fantasy movie instead of some type of Poseidon/Uranus/Saturn type deity from South America. 

It's like that with a lot of things across the world. Is it because we all have to explain similar phenomena and it's easier to grasp with a metaphor? Things are just naturally this way or that way doesn't seem to make sense to a lot of people even though that's the most likely scenario, or is it? Are things just so complicated that literally every society across history is wrong about god or gods or is there a divinity inherent in nature that needs poetic exposition?

The similarities continue with a kind of flood myth:

"In one legend he had one son, Inti, and two daughters, Mama Killa and Pachamama. In this legend, he destroyed the people around Lake Titicaca with a Great Flood called Unu Pachakuti, lasting 60 days and 60 nights, saving two to bring civilization to the rest of the world. These two beings are Manco Cápac, the son of Inti (sometimes taken as the son of Viracocha), which name means "splendid foundation", and Mama Uqllu, which means "mother fertility". These two founded the Inca civilization carrying a golden staff, called 'tapac-yauri'."

The prevalence of the flood myth across societies has always fascinated me from the first time I realized it. Of course we're all aware of our own society's flood myths, but nearly every myth has a time of a great flood. That's something that many folks have noticed and will have a future post about because it's dripping with intrigue from the research to the implications. V (or maybe "W"?) kind of weaves around a bit of everything because he's pretty similar to what would be considered a "western" monotheistic deity with the scope of his creation powers and the bit about teaching people stuff. 

There's details that differ greatly and this is just a Wikipedia explanation I lazily copied and pasted so there will be many more, but it's essentially an old testament story. I assume any readers would be at least a bit familiar but there was a flood with two survivors and some kids and animals and a lot of implications in the Old Testament of the Judeo-Christian mythology. 

When you look at all this and start to think about it, you might raise an eye brow. Lake Titicaca is in the mountains between modern day Peru and Bolivia. What in the high holy fuck kind of flood would swamp out the mountains? Maybe, just maybe, the kind of flood they're talking about in their myth in South America is something to consider when you think about the kind of flood that would justify a boat big enough to put two of every animal on earth. And, I have to say it here, why wouldn't you construct a fleet? You could outsource some of the work and not have to explain why you need to build the world's biggest fuck all boat in your backyard and fill it with every critter you can find. Joe Exotic tried that same shit and look how that turned out for him. Maybe he got too hard for the tigers, but you get my comparison. For every great man there's a Carol Baskins to foil his efforts, so I just feel like this is a bit of a stretch. 

Hopefully, this brief exploration into just one example of another creation myth has helped you nuance up your own. There's plenty of valid beliefs you can have about where we or the world came from. If you like the big bang, great. That has a lot of supporters. If the divinity of a wrathful and vengeful god creating the heavens and earth in 6 days and taking a break seems reasonable, that's all right too, I guess. There are some in between options here as well, some think of a divine clock maker who created everything and then just sits back and admires his beautifully crafted "clock" that is reality. There's the option that many once thought cool, which was that maybe god has died. Maybe the Incas were right and monotheism is a bit much, it doesn't seem reasonable that one entity could be responsible for the possibility of both women and most of the continent island of Australia. Women are infinitely fascinating and beautiful in unique ways, a platypus is a half duck/half poisonous beaver from hell ... which, I guess is kind of similar to some Tinder profiles I've seen.

My point, with that inflammatory paragraph, is that maybe they're all kind of right. If you see divinity in nature, who am I to say that's wrong? Is it true? There's something that happens when you get down to the quantum level of everything, which is essentially what we're talking about here. There's a ton of "no one knows for sure" and craziness about knowing a lot of stuff that's beyond our scope. Atheists in the crowd may flinch because they see a possible attempt at comparing the issues and surprising implications of quantum entanglement to the whole god question. Not today, maybe some other time.

I spent years of my life looking into the questions above about god. Well, what is it and what it has to do with me and all kinds of stuff like that. There was a time where I actually had official Catholic teachings and repeatedly got into trouble for asking the wrong questions and making fun of the wrong things. One I remember quite lucidly because it led me eventually to the principal's office, was the comparison I made between the conception of Jesus Christ and the famous football reception made by Franco Harris. Both of which happened before my time so they were both equally mysterious to me, not so to the instructors. That didn't last long though and it was only one day a week anyways, turns out they only need you to stick around long enough so you can tell everyone you'll keep going to church for the rest of your life and eat some snacks with a suit on. You don't actually have to go to church after that but you are allowed to eat snacks in church any time you're offered when you do go, like at weddings or funerals, basically.

I really need to go back and tag some of these posts to include the themes they have. I will get into some more of this stuff in later posts, but to appease your curious mind now, dios es no me importa o tal vez, no me importa de dios. I like learning other languages because they can sometimes express ideas or thoughts better than English. It's not that I don't care about god, it's just that the whole thing isn't important to me. It's important to some folks and I can respect that but it's just not important to me. You could say that I don't care, as well, but that's "god does not matter to me or perhaps, I don't care about god" but I prefer "god is not important to me or perhaps, not important to me of god." 

If I said that to my great-grandmother she'd say "shame on you," and then we'd move on in conversation. If I said that to my grandfather, another religious relative, he'd look at me quietly for a few moments before saying something knowing like "he wouldn't be to you now," and then we'd move on in conversation. However, they're both dead and I will never know for sure what they'd have to say. I do know it's not so important to most folks that they care about others' beliefs but it's sometimes important to know someone's views when they're sharing nonsense like the above. I spent a lot of time on this subject over the years to eventually be comfortable saying "I don't give a fuck". However, intellectually, god and myth and all this stuff is fascinating and I feel like I'm uniquely suited to talk about it because I'm so objective. I'm interested in the topic now but I have no interest in the topic. Hm, that might be confusing. I'm like a park ranger here to guide folks around the forest of myths and history and make sure no one fucks anything up or burns it down. If anyone's burning down a forest, it'll be me. Just not this one, and not now.