the beginning of Lenten time

I do know that the word "Lent" does not come from the Latin "lente" but rather, is related, in a round-about way to the word for "length."

You may notice that the time of this post is rather late/early in the night/morning. That is all due to a singular piece of bad planning on my part. I am taking a sick day tomorrow/today. I intended to leave all of my lesson plans at school tonight. However, after my run with Dave D., I left my school key on my desk, and proceeded home without out it. Therefore, I am going to spend the night doing all the things I was going to do tomorrow, go to school at 6:00ish ante meridiem and hope someone is already there. Then I'll work out and sleep during the day. That's the plan, at least.

Therefore, I am going to shave my beard as soon as I finish this blog post.

Which leads me to Andrew's latest post. I shall quote him briefly.

Hey: say I had been able to give a full pint of blood, and then someone received it in a transfusion. Does that mean some person has a pint of Andrew running through them? Or is blood just a “thing”, an object that’s “mine” insofar as it’s in me, but someone else’s as soon as it’s transfused? How much Andrewness does the blood that’s in me contain?

Of course, this is the kind of quandary that the ancients would have loved. If Titus Carus Lucretius were here, he'd surely have something to say to that. (It would probably be, "Ah, you sentimental fool, Andrew, your atomoi are merely only part of you for a while and then reintegrate themselves into the rest of the universe. Eschew superstition and don't fear death, because death is merely the ultimate rest of nothingness.")

However, recently on Nova, I watched a delightful introduction to the world of neutrinos. Now, I am certainly no expert, but I have always fancied myself an admirer of physics, if completely incapable of understanding the discipline myself.

If I understand anything about neutrinos I will sum it up as follows. All the physicists assumed that they had no mass, but some Japanese people made a super-high-tech hole underground that proved the opposite to be true. This allowed for two new calculations to be made. First of all, a new theory based on the massiveness of neutrinos could explain all the extra matter in the universe for which no could give account. Secondly, this could explain where ALL the matter in the universe came from after the big bang.

Strictly speaking, according to the state of the science, the big bang should have produced equal parts matter and anti-matter. Of course, as any good Trekk-ie/er knows, both should have annihilated each other in an awesome display of the destructive power of the universe. However, neutrinos, strictly speaking, neither find themselves in the matter or anti-matter camp, but rather remain neutral (hence "neutrino"), and therefore, if they had mass, would have been left behind in this incomprehensible apocalypse at the beginning of time.

Now, I know that there are some haters out there who truly believe that no moral lessons can be drawn from the laws and patterns of the physical universe. But, I would say that those haters don't believe in God. This news came to me as a revelation as if from on high.

Seriously, think about it. For instance, in the American Civil War, part of Grant and Sherman's strategy was, in a bloody war of attrition, to physically annihilate all of those rabid con-federates (anti-federals) with equal amounts of federal troops. This can be seen in almost any war. Everyone who cares about the cause for which they are fighting is generally killed until the preponderance of survivors would rather suffer the humiliation of peace than continue an insufferable war.

Then, a generation later, when people who do not have the taste of blood in their mouths come of age, the hostility is renewed. In the ancient world this often continued until one side was either totally destroyed (i.e. "Karthago delenda est"), or totally subdued (i.e. "They make a wasteland and call it peace.").

Or, for instance, take the repeated invasions of the Central Asian nomads into the more settled societies of Eurasia in the Christian Era—Germans vs. Rome, Attila vs. Rome, the Turks vs. the Arabs, the Mongols vs. the Chinese and then the Arabs. In each instance, the nomads from Central Asia rape and pillage the "civilized people" until they themselves, sated in destruction, adopt the trappings of the "civilization" which they have been destroying.

It seems that extremes always have a way of cancelling each other out. In much Modern Protestant apocalyptic fiction, "the remnant," is seen as a group of people who are able to continue their existence due to their fierce and extreme allegiance to their uncompromised principles.

However, take the Jews. The Jews have been able to preserve their religion when most of the religious practices of the pre-Christian world were violently destroyed. However, it wasn't the martyrs of Masada or rabble-rousers like Barabbas that were able to protect them. It was their moderation. Their ability to be "good citizens" and their devotion to the written word and the life of the mind.

There were few official Jewish governments to sponsor work on the Talmud, Mishnah, and Kaballah after the Maccabees. However, the rabbis kept scribbling away furiously. The Christians and Muslims could more or less tolerate their presence (Medieval Christians less than Medieval Muslims) because the Jews were "people of the book."

In fact, the one Jewish kingdom that may have existed, Khazaria, has a delightful founding myth. This kingdom, if it existed, was somewhere around the contemporary state of Kazakhstan. The king of Khazaria had decided to convert to one of three major monotheistic religions, so he invited a representative of each to debate their relative merits or demerits. After a lively and long-winded debate, the king was no closer to deciding the issue. So he asked each representative to choose which of the other two religions he would recommend that the king choose. Since neither the Christian nor Muslim representative wanted the Khazars to ally with a political enemy, they both suggested Judaism. And thus, off came the foreskins of many a Khazari man.

The Jews made it through these last two millenia through their sense of humor, adaptability, and intelligence as much as through their strong sense of cultural identity. And in the same way, I believe those left behind on this planet shall remain. After Sunni and Shi'a are finished devouring each other in an orgy of tribal and religious hatred, those who want peace more than war will be left. Those who live by the sword, shall die by the sword.

Of course, the tragedy is that this theory of annihilation can usually only provide peace for a generation. Then a generation of young people who desire a redress of their grievances will come to power. It only took twenty years for Hannibal to inherit his father, Hamilcar's, quest to destroy Rome. The blood feud between Rome and Carthage was only sated by the total annihilation of the latter by the old men of the former who had seen Hannibal sow the fields of Italy with salt.

A disillusioned foot soldier in the Kaiser's army led a resurgent Germany in a suicidal war against her former enemies. The real war, however, was won as much by the munificence of George C. Marshall, as by the armored divisions of George S. Patton.

So, in answer to Andrew's question, our particles are the survivors of untold horror, and our existence can only be sustained through the virtues of the media aurea, the path of moderation. Of course, that path is the narrow, winding road, and it is peopled by refugees made homeless by blind hatred and ignorant cruelty.