Morality

Right and Wrong
Principles to keep in mind when formulating one's own Morality:

Without God, all is permitted -Dostoevsky
Wrong!

There's no UTM (universal theistic morality), when everyone is their own God...
I have my opinion, you have yours. 
I have my family, my religion, my upbringing- you have yours.
Brain chemistry and experience differ, between individuals.
there are saints and psychopaths, sociopaths, the amoral.
Even laws differ, from one society/culture to the next.
Some "Gods" have bigger corporate bodies than others.

the law in heaven vs. the law in hell?
good morality vs. bad morality?
sets of rules- better and worse?
my opinion is better than yours: logic, rationality, truth, evidence

the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do to you.
or, stated differently, don't do to others what you don't want done to yourself. (although G.B. Shaw said don't obey the gr, because people have different tastes) (aside: the real "golden rule" is he who has the gold, makes the rules)

your freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.
self-interest vs. utilitarian most good for the most people
"all right,"  do what thou wilt
the main law being Don't Get Caught (!)
compassion and empathy, putting yourself in the shoes of the other-
the principles of equality and equal rights, justice and fairness, dictate morality
(right and wrong thinking, speech, and behavior)
the difference between illegal, criminal, unlawful
the difference between ethics and morality
 
"objective" evil: 4 cases-
1. torturing babies
(which seems to admit that there's less of an argument against the morality of torturing adults (!)
2.i would also say creating hell or 3. sending someone there, are objectively evil. 
4. and I also really really dislike nuclear weapons. 

the common denominator is pain and suffering, torment and trauma, agony misery anguish despair as bad, sinful, wicked, evil, wrong, unjust, unfair, immoral, unethical, criminal, unlawful, illegal turpitude.  Can't we all just get along?  also, premature/unnatural death

life is good! thou shalt not kill-
i think abortion is wrong.  you might disagree if you believe life has no value.  but if you, as I do, consider it killing your own baby...
a painful and premature death vs. the loving act of adoption-
a misguided, sociopathic and selfish act, needing forgiveness

Am God, Dogma

a female dog is a bitch

maintaining the dogma of being god can be a bitch, sometimes.
dog ma, get it?

my symptoms are hs/cp/v
(head shocks, chest pain, voice)
i've had these for years, experienced repeatedly daily.  f.u. 

headshocks
-i think of head shocks (aka "brain zaps") in line with "the ice" in the book Neuromancer.

chest pain
-chest pains are virtual, I believe.  it's all in my head.  i have a healthy heart, so it's not heart attack.  i don't even think it's located where my heart is.  i used to think of it like a vampire getting staked in the heart, or my heart getting "broken" (in a different sense, i.e. like breaking a code), or even as "a bleeding heart liberal."  Whatever it is, it's unpleasant, unwanted, and a daily reality.  Maybe I'm feeling others' pain (or an indication of their pain)?
cp is communist party, capital punishment, too.
h.a., no laughing matter.  (why is there ugh in laugh?)

voice
the voice is telepathy.  it's contact with my "source."  I used to think it was David Andrew Eldridge.  Much improved from what it was, quieted down significantly.   I attribute this to my meds, mainly.  But maybe David has improved, too (because of my voicing back responses? such as shut up, leave me alone, fuck off, that sort of thing)  Or I've been conditioned to where he wants me, perhaps. 

I hope and pray and strive for the day when I'm healthy, have no symptoms, and am free to be who I am, thinking whatever I want, unmonitored and free from daily psychic oppression.

anyway,
Because I mentioned to my psychiatrist that i considered my symptoms to possibly be mind control (i.e. punishment/ negative reinforcement, for specific thoughts/words/deeds), I am categorized as a Paranoid Schizophrenic.  And all this time I thought I was Schizo-affective.  Which itself I thought was having both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but apparently is something else...   I don't think of myself as paranoid at all, though.  Nobody's out to get me.  And of course, "You're not really paranoid...if they're really after you" -Nirvana lyric.  Well, the pro-choicers probably want to neutralize me, and the Republicans, too, because I'm down for helping the poor over the rich...I'm not excited about ANY of the presidential candidates, so far.  I don't like Hillary.  And Warren is pro-choice.  Generally, I'm surly recently, thinking everyone are idiots, and I just want to be left alone.   To be politically incorrect, the world is full of fucking retards. 

There's a difference between thinking my life is in danger, and considering it possible that people with varying political views from mine want to neutralize whatever power I might have to sway public opinion.  Maybe that's too subtle a distinction for my psychiatrist.   Whatever.  Doctors can be retards, too.

Silence

pondering stillness

3 forms:
in your environment
in your head
in others' heads

the voice in your head could be:
you, your conscience, your subconscious, or telepathy...

i dislike tv noise in the background,
and i really abhor (most) commercials.
i dislike having to suffer fools
i prefer a quiet library
i want to get better at reading without vocalizing,  in my head
i take meds to silence The Voice (tv!)
meditation works
putting thoughts on paper/blog, externalizing them
taking a nap

(medication, meditation, and the mediterranean!)

mental anxiety:
change what you're doing, get out of your head, such as
take a shower, listen to music, go for a walk, exercise,
or tell tv to shut up and leave you alone, take meds...
maybe pray? (a socially acceptable way of talking to yourself)
(i don't: if god exists, he doesn't want to hear you, he knows already)
talk to another actual person

Jest

jester, that's me, Jesse T!
Jesse L, jealousy
je suis, I am

teshara, t' share..

and, weirdly:
Sara: necessarily, ceremony
Greg: gregarious
Larry: hilarious (Larry T, hilarity), Mr. T, in his lair
    BHS, black hole son.  pop, you Larry T.  (popularity!)
Ellen T: excellent

am I a necessarily excellent gregarious hilarious jester?

some other name-related thoughts:

vicki, v- icky
jim, gym
erin, ireland
peggy t, egypt*
pat h, path, p at h, pa trick
rose, aunty christ, a rose by any other name!
(St. Stephen, with a rose, in and out of the garden he goes! -GD*)
tom, uncle tom.  tomorrow, tom are O.
jeannine, jean's in her name, and 9, too. (is there a 9th gene?)
LT, lake tahoe ->Steve Teshara
baby Bibi (Benjamin; I hope you like jammin' too!)
debbie, little debbie snack cakes
stephanie, step up, funny
annette, a net riddle (trippy name, no? fish, internet, rid)
(a trip to eugene OR, eugene and eugenics, lidder/leader)
dangerous dan!
elizabeth, el/liza/beth (I know an Ellen, and an Izzy (pron. i-z))
     (and there's a jewish synagogue in berkeley called beth-el)
    "Jacob named the place where God had spoken with him Bethel "
-it has 'hel iz a bet' in it, which prompts me to think of Pascal's wager, too.

*Grateful Dead (lyric)

*more than just egypt-
also, my mom is Margaret (prefers Peggy)
which evokes PG&E, PT cruiser, PT boats
ack cross- :-P  tTt (!)
Marge Simpson, Peggy Hill, Peggy Bundy...
margaret: m art rage, r great ma!!

funny thought

if God is everywhere

you could worship anything, to the same effect!

all hail my comfy chair!
praise be unto my alarm clock!
go out to love and serve Joe Pesci!
may my left big toe be with you!
:-)

we worship you, we praise you, we give you thanks, oh my ipad mini!
allelujiah, amen, hosannah unto the highest, oh Berkeley YMCA!
and, of course, don't forget eucharistic sushi!

sweet tooth

my weakness: junk food-
diabetes, obesity, tooth decay! (but yummy)

refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup (the evil shit)
candy, ice cream
(e.g. it's its, ben and jerrys, cinnamon/gummy bears, swedish fish)
cookies, cake, pastry, donuts, baklava
soda, chips

less is more (for the budget, and for health)
be sure to brush and floss!
may the force be with you.  (willpower -just say no!)

the cafe at the san leandro library has amazing $2 chocolate chip cookies.
me gustan las paletas, tambien.

current reading, and update

RIP, Terry Pratchett (as of 3/12th)

I was reading him, when he died (!)
I have, checked out from the library, 3 TP books:
-Thief of Time (finished yesterday)
-Lords and Ladies
-Reaper Man

and 2 war books:
-Redeployment, by Phil Klay
-Generation Kill, by Evan Wright

update:
(my life of late, by Jesse L Teshara)
(my dad used to say "my day, by Larry Teshara" every evening at the dinner table)

both babies in my life (A and B) are crawling now
(Augustus and Benjamin)
my rent, I worked out, is almost a dollar/hour
(but it doesn't work that way)
am applying for low-income housing in the east bay
(but I like where I am)
thurs kaiser group met outside, for a change, in the sun, which was nice
i'm having dinner tomorrow night with SPAM in Oakland
(i.e. Sara Pierre Augustus Marcel)
still playing the lottery, against all odds (!) (maybe i shouldn't)
am living within my budget (by virtue of mostly free food)
am mostly vegetarian (although i still eat meat when served it)
i saw the movies:
Big Eyes, Hobbit 5 armies, American Sniper, Birdman, Kingsmen
(Birdman kind of deals with schizophrenia, in a funny way)
(Big Eyes with Brooks, Kingsmen with Theresa)
i have a dental appt on 3/25th
gloria's 29th birthday is on the 29th
my blog just hit 12,000 viewers yesterday!
(all comments are always welcome, and encouraged)
folks, i must ask, do i have a cult forming  in Redmond?

Devil Lit

(from wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_in_popular_culture#Literature

Many writers have incorporated the character of Satan into their works. Among them are, in chronological order:

• Dante Alighieri's Inferno (1321)
• Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1604)
• Joost van den Vondel's Lucifer (1654)
• John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667)
• Alain-René Lesage's The Devil on Two Sticks (1707) ^[29]
• Jacques Cazotte's The Devil in Love (Le Diable amoureux) (1772) ^[29]
• William Beckford's Vathek ^[30]
• William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793)
• Matthew Lewis' "The Monk" (1796)
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust (Part 1, 1808; Part 2, 1832)
• James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
• Alexander Pushkin's A scene from Faust (1830)
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Asmodeus At Large (1833)^[29]
• Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown (1835)
• Mikhail Lermontov's The Devil (1842)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850)
• Charles Baudelaire's Litanies of Satan (1857)
• Imre Madách's The Tragedy of Man (1862)
• Jules Michelet's Satanism and Witchcraft (1862)
• Giosuè Carducci's Hymn to Satan (1865)
• Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1867)
• Gustave Flaubert's The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874)
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
• Robert Louis Stevenson's Markheim (1885)
• Mark Twain's A Pen Warmed Up in Hell (1889)
• Joris-Karl Huysmans's Là-bas (1891)
• Marie Corelli's The Sorrows of Satan (1896)
• Robert Buchanan's The Devil's Case (1896)
• George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple (1901)
• George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman (1903)
• Ferenc Molnár's The Devil (play) (1907) ^[29]
• Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth (1909)
• Aleister Crowley's Hymn to Satan (1913)
• Anatole France's The Revolt of the Angels (1914)
• Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger (1916)
• James Branch Cabell's Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice (1919) ^[31]
• Aleister Crowley's Hymn to Lucifer (1919)
• Aleister Crowley's Liber Samekh
• E. Hoffmann Price's "The Stranger From Kurdistan (1925) ^[31]
• Frederic Arnold Kummer's Ladies in Hades (1928) ^[31]
• Carl Heinrich's Orphan of Eternity (1929) ^[29]
• Theodora Du Bois' The Devil's Spoon (1930) ^[32]
• Sherard Vines' Return, Belphegor! (1932) ^[29]
• William Gerhardie' Memoirs of Satan (1932, reprint edition by Faber and Faber, 2011. ISBN 978-0-5712-4719-6) ^[29]
• John Collier's The Devil and All (1934) ^[31]
• "Murray Constantine's" (Katharine Burdekin) The Devil, Poor Devil! (1934) ^[29]
• Stephen Vincent Benét's The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)
• C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters (1942)
• Alfred Bester's "Hell is Forever" (1942) ^[33]
• Lord Dunsany's, "A Deal With the Devil" (1946) ^[31]
• Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus (1947)
• James Branch Cabell's The Devil's Own Dear Son (1949) ^[31]
• David H. Keller's The Devil and the Doctor (1949) ^[31]
• George Ivanovich (Ivanovitch)Gurdjieff's An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man or Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: volume one of the All and Everything trilogy (1950)
• Robert Nathan's The Innocent Eve 1951 ^[29]
• William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954)
• Douglass Wallop's The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (1954) -- source of the musical and film Damn Yankees
• Alfred Noyes' The Devil Takes a Holiday (1955)
• Basil Davenport, Deals With the Devil (anthology) (1958)
• Robert Bloch's That Hell-Bound Train (1959)
• Arthur Calder-Marshall's The Fair to Middling (1959) ^[29]
• Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (1966)
• William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist (1971)
• Harlan Ellison's The Deathbird (1974)
• Natalie Babbitt's The Devil's Storybook (1974) ^[29]
• Michael Moorcock's The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981)
• Jeremy Leven's Satan (1982) ^[29]
• Margit Sandemo's The Legend of the Ice People series (1982-1989)
• Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series (1983–1990)
• Robert A. Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984)
• Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (1985)
• Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy #8: Devils, an anthology of 18 fantasy short stories edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin Greenburg, and Charles Waugh (1987)
• Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens (1990)
• Stephen King's "The Man in the Black Suit" (1994)
• Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (1995)
• Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins's Left Behind series (1995–present)
• Anne Rice's Memnoch the Devil (1996)
• Michael Swanwick's Jack Faust (1997) ^[31]
• Andrew W. Marlowe's The End of Days (1999)
• Steven Brust's To Reign in Hell: A Novel (2000)
• Eoin Colfer's The Wish List (2000)
• Jeri Smith-Ready's Requiem for the Devil (2001)
• David Weber and John Ringo's Empire of Man (2001–2005)
• John A. De Vito's The Devil's Apocrypha (2002)
• Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter series (2002–present)
• Anne Bishop's The Black Jewels (2003)
• Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer (2003)
• Catherine Webb's Waywalkers (2003) ^[29]
• Thomas E. Sniegoski's The Fallen (2003-2004)
• Bryan Davis' Dragons In Our Midst (2004-2005)
• Bryan Davis' Oracles of Fire (2006-2009)
• Melissa De La Cruz's Blue Bloods series (2006-2013)
• Sean Vincent Lehosit's Lucifer and Lacious (2007)
• Jeff Rovin's Conversations with the Devil (2007)
• Robert Seger's The Father of All Lies (2009)
• Lauren Kate's Fallen series (2009-2012)
• Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim (2009) and the sequel Kill the Dead (2010)
• Joe Hill's Horns (2010)
• Aiden Truss's Gape (2013)
• Kat Daemon's "Taming Darkness" (2014)

I've read Good Omens, The Master and Margarita, The Lord of the flies, The Scarlet Letter, Young Goodman Brown, Faust, and Paradise Lost.
All, very good!

"The Nature of Existence"

2 things I learned from this library movie:
www.TheNatureOfExistence.com

1)"Particles in fact don't exist.  And so...at some level we don't exist"
-Dr. Steve Biller, Physicist
(electrons, for example, are "bumps" in a "field" of spacetime)
huh?  more explanation required!! mind-blowing, if true.
this quote was on the dvd jacket, one reason I checked it out.

2)Religion is a product of the "security of infancy"
This is a Freudian idea:  The adult belief in God is a result of programming of the unconscious while we are babies.   It works like this:  We cry for attention, and our mom or dad appears, to comfort us and give us love.  This happens thousands of times: someone"magically" appears to help us when we cry out in need.  So when we're older, we do the same thing, but now through prayer, usually.  It's just conditioning.  So religious adults are basically big babies, it sounds like he's saying.
-makes a lot of sense to me

a few other ideas i took from it:
g.o.d.: "good orderly direction" (god sounds like 'guide')
also
"don't inflict your path on others."
and
"joy is one's nature, you just need to de-husk."
and
you can look outward for meaning and purpose, or inward.
and
the same area of the brain that lights up during sex or cocaine (neurotransmitters), also brings happiness when you do something good for someone else.
and
Compassion and Honesty are at the root of all other virtues.

I've Got Religion!

(sort of)

I've come to understand religion on my own terms:

-a way to have community, centered around Goodness 
-a way to make good of evil
-another method of social control (conformity with the morality of the priest, the church hierarchy (the pope, especially), or "submission" to an imam or whatever, dogma repetition for sheeple)
another layer of value inculcation, besides parents, law, peers:  sin and confession, work ethic
-a way to make sense of our minds, explained simply
 (such as in terms of souls and prayer, rather than telepathy or schizophrenia)
-a reassurance that someone is in charge, knows what they're doing, bears responsibility.

Justice, karma, reward/punishment:
-Your sins are forgiven.  Go, and sin no more. 
 (the perfect criminal justice system, in my view)
-a hope for life after death, immortality, utopia (heaven)
-a promise of justice, when the legal system doesn't seem to work, or be enough. (e.g. circles of hell)

unfortunately, it's usually another instance of
in group/out group, superiority/inferiority, truth/delusion, (if not understood as a dichotomy between outright good/evil)

My understanding of God is just goodness, in the aggregate: the goodwill and love in the entire human community, across place (and some would say time), which is wrongly defined (but more easily understood) as a single being.   God is an easy way to understand the goodwill, charity, and love of (mostly) strangers. 

Also, there's the Most Powerful person (or perhaps Entity/space alien) in the world/universe, who may or may not be moral, and that changes, like an alpha male gorilla.  This is where Death enters the picture, because the power to kill is the most powerful act.  I suspect very few people actually believe in an afterlife, or in anything but oblivion.  But it's a good story for the kiddies, I guess.

Mostly, God is a word and a meme, that -like Santa Claus- seems real and has real effects.  The belief in ghosts and souls gives hope and something to look forward to at death, and the belief in prayer makes the schizophrenic normal, as well as erodes the concept of privacy, when your dreams come from a Source, and when your thoughts and behavior are being monitored, so be good for goodness sake (because whoever's in your head may have the power to make your life better/worse)!