Space and Time

Thomas Paine -- with a brief Xmas comment.

"It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time."
Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Part First, Section 7.

Two brief comments.

First, if you haven’t read Paine’s Age of Reason, you really owe it to yourself AT LEAST once in this life. It was written at a time and place — France during the French Revolution — when Paine thought he was about to be executed. And he had good reason to think so. Paine just managed to complete and hand off the draft of Age of Reason Pt. 1 to Joel Barlow the American poet, businessman, and diplomat as French officers arrested and led him away to imprisonment. Part II was completed in prison, where he narrowly escaped death, and during his recovery from an illness that beset him there.

Second, most of you know that Christmas has little to do with the birth of Jesus. Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th or any date near it that we know of. At some period the birth of the Christ was associated with the Winter Solstice, the day of the “birth” or rebirth of the Sun. Some believe the entire Gospel narrative was an allegory of the Sun. How this happened is a complex and contested tale and too long for our purposes here today. Note, however, that virtually all Christmas customs are non-Christian in origin [the tree, holly, mistletoe, yule log, Father Christmas himself] or were celebrated on the solstice before the superimposition of the Christ-myth [gift-giving, feasting, frollick, forgiveness of debts, the conical cap pilieus that was originally colored white and now pointy red and worn by elves and others, etc.]. So I celebrate the “re-birth” of the Sun and the lengthening of days … and don’t care a figgy pudding what you call it.

All of which to say, my friends: this is somehow not the happiest of Christmases I can remember. America is mired in MULTIPLE wars, notably Ukraine where we are supposed to rejoice because we are supplying the guns and money to enable Ukrainians to kill Russians FOR us. Yay! Meanwhile we see all around us growing homelessness and poverty, a collapsing educational system, and rankerous division. Now JUST in time for the holidays we’ve gifted an extra subsidy to underwrite Israel’s latest “mow the lawn” with a vengeance in Palestine. There is too much slaughter to ignore. Surely everyone must understand this by now.

So no smarmy holiday wishes … unless it is my own profound wish for “peace on Earth and goodwill to all mankind.” But I won’t HEAR it from the lips those who won’t act on it.

!! HUMBUG !!