When I was young, I looked forward to a life as a Navy aviator, scientist and educator in an essentially stable culture that, despite change, would endure long past my life. Science, literature and art seemed, in themselves, of enduring value - a refuge for subtle perceptions and subversive ideas that could influence the broader culture over time. Like most people, I accepted the concrete solidity of modern civilization and believed its institutions would remain in place. I no longer have that perspective. Mulling over the facts, and considering our situation over time, I concluded, sadly, that our current civilization is not a machine built to last..

The cultural critic and mystic: William Irwin Thompson thinks we are approaching an iminent "catastrophic bifurication" of the species, " the hominid movement is not a state that can be perfected, it is a process, and to arrest that process is probably not possible. Once we were prokaryotic bacteria then we were dinosaurs and now we are human about to become through a catastrophic bifurication, subhuman or posthuman,... From the greenhouse effect to the ozone hole, or from sex, drugs and rock and roll to fundamentalist purifications, or from genetic engineering to artificial intelligence, everything we like to call human and, even the planet as we know it, are being taken away from us by our own actions whether conscious or unconscious".

A former humanities professor at MIT and practicing yogi, Thompson is one of a small number of originial thinkers who not only understand our present impasse but realizes that it is not the whole story. That something else is taking place as well - a movement of consciousness returning us to a level of awareness denied and repressed by the materialistic thrust of our current civilization. Essential to that process is a change in our understanding of myth.

The physcists Heisenberg wrote, " natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between us and nature". It is an interesting paradox that science has studied the world, attaining deeper levels of understanding, the technology produced by our scientific knowledge has simultaneously torn it apart. The bio-spheric crisis we have unleashed is entirely man made.

Myth based civilizations and traditional cultures believe that human beings are inseparable from natural laws and cosmic cycles. The pattern of the growth of human societies might be viewed as an aspect or expression of nature. Even the development of our individual capacities and the evolution of self awareness unfold from the capacities contained within the potential of the natural world.

Often I have felt less like a person than the convenient intersection for ideas to meet and mesh, a magnet or strange attractor, compelled or fated - perhaps tragically misguided. None the less, my friends and life partner have bugged me for some time to write something down, rather than just poo pooing them. So this is the start of a crude attempt on my part to do that. I hope to lift the veils in order that you might see what I see. That what is coming is not "the end of the world" but rather the end of a world and the begginning of the next

more to follow

I am and always have been a paradox, to be honest, a real pain in the ass. To anyone who is or has been close to me that would be the generally accepted opinion, but no one can point at me and talk about my faults without acknowledging the fact that as with everyone, my greatest weaknesses are paradoxically my strengths. Both are just a wee bit more obvious than with most people.

An example might be the first two books I bought, not read but purchased as the start of my personal collection. At the age of nine I purchased two books, "Principia" by Newton and "Dicta Bolecke" by Bolecke. The first is Newtons great work, the second a bit more obscure, is the first attempt to establish the tactics of acm or what he first called a dogfight.

In the same year I announced to my parents that I was renouncing their religion, and the one I was being raised in, as "not supported by the facts" and instead was adopting the Code of Bushido. My butt stung for a period but after a year they quit trying to get me off the floor and into the bed for the night.

These are just a couple of examples of what I call personal dragons but certainly affected those around me, and my reputation and effect have only increased. My journey and the effect on those around me has exceeded even my capacity to justify my presence among others.

For four years my journey has played out in a manner in which caused great sacrifice and great pain on the one that would my last choice to suffer thus. "Have you ever had the feeling that you wanted to go and the feeling that you wanted to stay?"

This little play on words points out a paradox that I face everyday. I am not really complaining about that reality of my life, I'm comfortable with paradox. It is the lady journeying with me that has the right to complain.

The hardest thing for her is to have been a witness to what has happened to me, how it has changed me so that the question of leaving or staying would even be part of the thinking. The changes she has endured have been considerable and not without grief and sacrifice.

I love and admire her greatly. I am greatly impressed with her sacrifices even though she is plagued with the question, WHY? and the paradox that drives her crazy is that I don't, ask WHY?

I'm more concerned with the seeming inevitable, not that I'm going to die soon but rather a disgust with myself that it is not going to be with my "boots on".

lo, there do I see my father

lo, there do I see my mother, my sisters and my brothers

there do I see the line of my people extending to the beginning

they do call to me from the halls of Valhalla

where the brave shall live forever

I'm like this and she loves me anyway, go figure.