Here Be Dragons

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Professor Taboo

Remember the old patina-ridden maps of the world from the Age of Exploration where the outer-limits of the seas had sailor-eating dragons? As a boy I was fascinated with their ferociousness and perplexed by their purpose. What did those evil serpents really look like if they devoured all hands on deck? Where are the few survivors? I demand to interview them if they haven’t already gone mad in some insane asylum! Imagine the fear they must have endured. My imagination forced me to squeeze my thighs together so I wouldn’t piss my pants picturing their last minutes of life! What unbelievable courage those explorers must have had…or stupidity.

First Crosstaff

Many decades later, journeys accumulated, and through my graduated intelligence I deduced that those poor victims of dragon-breath were now simply bones and dust – or fossilized dragon feces. A couple of light-bulbs above the head and years later, those maps gained new meaning.

I have traveled to and experienced many cultures on four different continents. I have been to places where the meaning of life resembles nothing like what surrounded me growing up. The many nuances of their daily lives are as familiar to me today as they were then and I thank the gods of seafaring and wing-tips I am alive and changed. But I have missed something. Something was not on the map.

I am a detailer. No not an auto-detailer and no, I have no homicidal tendencies toward tailors. I have been a detailing observer and explorer, and I have always been a cerebral observer and explorer; sometimes anal about the details. Get your mind out of the gutter for a moment; that is another blog for another time. Or better yet, go rent yourself a porn video if you can’t keep-up with me here. Refocus!

I think the title I am searching for is neo-cartographer. I have explored many places on this planet. My Captain’s Log would record not only the longitude latitude bearings, but also something significant to read about the people and their magnificent homes. Still…something was missing. I am a stickler for detail. Were my maps incomplete? Were they out dated? What?

I get a hint.

It was right under my nose. No, that is completely wrong! A great cartographer would slap me across my short-sighted face for saying that! Remarkably, my incomplete map with unimaginable treasures and deadly creatures had never really been so unreachable. Mad at myself I asked, How could you be so blind?

A New Crosstaff

My beautifully created maps were missing dragons. Everywhere I had gone and everywhere I had detailed were missing the man-eating dragons! It seemed the further I would travel, fewer dragons existed. But I have yet to reach three more continents. What if I went to the continent of Asia? Would I find the dragons there? Yes, but I’ve been told they are woven into their fine silk. What if I went to Australia? Would I find them there? As it turns out, I’ve been told they have kangaroos and koala bears. Antarctica? Nope: penguins.

This enlightenment begs the question: Where are the homicide-crazed dragons?

Ah hah! Another hint.

I have a distinct class of maps stored in a cabinet labeled “Domestic”. Excited I rummage through these stacks of maps; between 50 and 60 small, two large, and two of them as big as a 12-place dinner table. On these maps are the faces and memories of all the women I have intimately shared myself and loved. I rediscover some most profound joy and passion, and some hurt and disappointment.

The small maps dominate the shelves. No matter how well I tried to rig the outgoing vessel, no “crew” or co-captain would sign on. The maps are black and white, and very much incomplete. The two large maps have more detail, more emotions, and an array of colors, both with two distinct gold-bands tossed overboard in stormy seas. One map has a newborn boy I thought to become my first-mate, but as the tale goes he belonged to another fleet of sorts. The other vivid map has even more detail, more colors, deeper emotions, and more stormy seas. Yet this particular map, unlike the previous, has more navigational points necessary to make future explorations less hazardous. Mmm, frame this one. My two beautiful children are on it.

But as I examined the two massive maps, I realized I was not going to find any flesh-eating dragons I had been so anxiously seeking. I am hunting in the wrong place. I rolled the maps back up. My search for the beasts was over. Gone were my adolescent fears. Peacefully and with gratitude I returned every single map into my Domestic armoire. Close doors, leave key, do not lock.

A Newer Crosstaff with Dragon-illuminator

I have charted many rough, calm, beautiful, gloomy seas, and met a wide scope of explorers and settlers. Since 1989 I have been in the alternative lifestyles and with them come all types of explorers from all walks of life and orientations. Before ‘89, I was ten years in the vanilla or monogamous lifestyle with a later short, disastrous 4-year return to vanilla-monogamy in marriage then divorce with kids. I was raised and taught my first 26 years under the venerable roof of monogamy by my biological parents. Dignity, honor, and loyalty were three mainstays in my home. However, for the last 13 years I have not lived an ordinary life; everything but. Why?

One perspective from only the shore

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” Emerson and I would have been shipmates. Emerson had no fear of dragons because they exist in only one place: in our minds. They are creatures who feast on human will-power. They survive and flourish only when we accept their flames of “It cannot be done…it is not so.”

This is never more present than in our intimate romantic relationships. Fear of self-examination and fear of discovering our flaws, as well as our brilliance, disempower our ability to love more, love deeper, and more importantly to love several soul mates throughout life. Those disempowering dragons exist there, not on maps or out in the world.

When there is no proactive communication between lovers, here be the dragons. When there is attraction to another outside the union or relationship and there are no attempts to understand why, here be the dragons. When there is disproportionate extrospection to introspection, here be the dragons. When there is no articulation as to why monogamy may or may not work in a relationship, here be the dragons. When there is no desire to understand something unconventional, here be the dragons. When there is no patient, forgiving, and non-judgmental discussion about “uncharted seas” and embracing human imperfection as well as brilliance, here be the dragons!

The irony of my personal tale is this: in my quest to discover all things living around me and beyond, feeding my near insatiable curiosity, once on-guard to those damn elusive dragons…I have produced a worldly Captain, a rather large cartographical library, and an exceptionally fine-tuned HDD – Human Dragon-Detector – that can wale the warning…

“Here Be the Dragons!”

There have been two or three horrific dragons that I have fought in my lifetime. Some of them I created, others sent to me. The most painful dragon was also the one that had an evil twin with my name on it. For whatever reason the dragon-of-infidelity menaced me for twenty-two exhausting years, begun by my father’s suicide; another “map” I will share in a later post.

Is there anyone out there, male or female, that knows of what dragons I speak? How far have you traveled inward as well as outward? Where did you find the dragons? Are they vanquished?

(paragraph separation)

This work by Professor Taboo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://professortaboo.wordpress.com.

Masada, Texas: How Egos and History Repeat

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Professor Taboo

Most know where Texas is located. Many may also know where Masada is located. But everyone may not know where Masada, Texas is located. Try to pin-point Masada, Texas with your mapping software or GPS application and you will not find it. Why not? Was it wiped out from history? You will not find it because the play-on-words is a representation of thousands upon thousands of locations throughout history where the egos of one (or a few) uselessly waste the human lives of many.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The Masada fortress

Masada is an ancient fortress in southern Israel built by Herod the Great between 37 and 31 BCE. Today it is Israel’s most popular tourist destination. Since its fall back into the hands of the Roman 10^th Legion in 73-74 CE, the fortress has become a symbol of Jewish armed rebellion against Romanesque authority or antisemitism.

The dramatic story of Masada is generally understood today from the modern post-1948 Jewish Zionist point-of-view. In other words, because of the long immense history of Semitic exiles (Diaspora) and the sacred Jewish Torah (parts of the Catholic/Protestant Old Testament) designated parts of modern-day Palestine belongs to Israelis — even those who were not born there – Jews have the God-given right and backing by the United Nations to live there. Controversial? To put it mildly, yes. It is the very reason the area has been volatile for over 64 years or more. Trying to rewrite and “correct” centuries and millennia of victorious imperialism and colonialism is often futile; exasperating at best. Though the past cannot be changed, I would like to share briefly another perspective to the Masada story, past and recent, so that we might learn from it and not continually repeat it.

Under the rule of the Roman Empire, Jewish Apocalyptic fervor in the province of Judaea was not uncommon. Not only did this hyped-up belief preach a coming Messiah to free and lead all Jews from Rome, but it also fanned the fire of the End times, or last battle/conflict between good and evil, where the “righteous” prevail with their Messianic Savior and Almighty God. Within all religions there are groups of zealots; those who are radical, active (even militant), and impatient for global change. Their impatience gluts their manipulation of prophetic scriptural passages. The Jewish Sacarii of Masada were just such a group. Interestingly enough, one historical description of Sacarii are those Jewish zealots who wield concealed daggers (today assault weapons?) against authority.

The Roman historian Josephus wrote about the siege of Masada and the Jewish Zealots like the Sacarii. Most contemporary historical scholars blame the second destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE on the militant Jewish zealots like the Sacarii. Within the sovereignty of Rome, all Jews at that time were allowed their freedom to worship and gather peacefully. But to some extremist their interpretation of Holy Scripture was all or nothing. Despite several moderate Jewish groups living peaceably in and around Jerusalem, Roman taxation and apocalyptic fanaticism were made into the proverbial straws that sparked the Sacarii rebellion. Finally, in 73 CE after decades of repressed rebellions and fatalities on both sides, Rome’s patience had worn beyond thin. Extermination was the only Roman or Jewish alternative. Or was it?

“Welcome to Masada, Texas”

Ironically, Masada sits atop a mountain plateau in Israel called Mount Carmel. With the upcoming 20^th anniversary of the Waco tragedy at the Branch Davidian Compound, it should be the umpteenth exponential reminder of how over-zealous, apocalyptic, militant, religious fanaticism uselessly killed 54 adults and 28 children. In a country that sufficiently protects the constitutional right to freedom of religion, how did this tragedy take place inside the United States?

Dick Reavis, author of “The Ashes of Waco”, gives superb objective verifiable answers to how the events of April 19, 1993 and the Branch Davidian leader Vernon Howell’s (aka David Koresh) childhood, rise within the church, Messianic lure, and manipulation probably showed the stand-off could not have ended much differently.

There are many reasons why self-proclaimed prophets of God fulfill their death-wishes and put their followers at great risk, but in David Koresh’s case two primary reasons stand out: 1) accumulation and trafficking of assault weapons, and 2) years of sexual intercourse with several female minors allowed and supported by all the adult Branch Davidian members.

There is no need to spend any time writing about the high-risk dangers and ownership of assault weapons, much less trafficking assault weapons. Newtown, Connecticut 2012, Aurora, Colorado 2012, Stockton, California 1989 and several other massacres all speak clearly on the purchase of or accumulation of assault weapons. Purchase one you will draw attention. Accumulate many and beyond doubt you deserve federal and state law enforcement monitoring or seizure; it is at that point one is not much different from Al-Qaeda. David Koresh and his Branch Davidians absolutely deserved the hyper-concerned ATF initiatives. But this was not the only issue with Koresh’s radical ideology.

Regarding sexual relations with minors, with very good reasons the federal and state laws prohibit adults engaging in intercourse, or behavior of a sexual nature, with anyone younger than 18 years of age. But aside from a legal standpoint, what moral or ethical reasons ever prove sexual intercourse or behavior (let alone births) with minors? Where, David Koresh, in your bible did it tell you it was permissible to have sex with 13, 14, and 15-year-old girls, or permissible to have sex with your male church member’s wives?

Branch Davidian children who followed Koresh to death

Read this disturbing report in the Chicago Tribune, “Branch Davidian Children Tell Of Abuse At Waco Compound“.

Aside from all the other absurdities reflected by Koresh, Branch Davidians, and all other fanatical religious groups (including Christian, Jewish, and Islamic), these two primary reasons demonstrate the applied definition of occult and egocentric. Worse still, twenty-eight young children (most of them fathered by Koresh) paid the ultimate price for one man’s delusional abuse and the naïve scared member parents and adults that let it happen.

Dr. Charles Strozier, Psychoanalyst and Professor of History at The City University of New York, has researched and taught classes on new religious movements for over twenty years. In a recent interview regarding modern new religious movements, Strozier pointed out what type of followers and leader typically form a cult versus popular movements-for-change such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s, or Mahatma Gandhi’s. Strozier states that these groups see themselves as a spiritual movement or spiritual reform outside of established traditional religion. The followers of these movements, he says is based on their “sense of dismay with traditional institutions” or traditional churches. Often fed up with institutional corruption, these followers are consoled by a rebirth of perceived purity which panders greatly to their pain, suffering, or frustration. A lot of the followers are social outcasts due to their lack of social-graces, economic level, and/or level of education to invoke their perceived urgency in change. The system or institutions appear to them as against them; i.e. a ‘my movement is right and good, yours is corrupt and bad’ mentality. It is a distressed human coping mechanism. Dr. Strozier continues:

“I would define a cult as a malevolent — usually with a paranoid delusional leader — that is totalistic, that is ingrown and completely absorbed in its own practices and functions that has the potential to become malevolent, coercive, and absolutist in the way it treats those within the group. People joining these groups are persons who are vulnerable and needy, confused, often very troubled, but who are seekers drawn to the leader because the leader offers certainty about what life is all about and [more importantly] what it should be all about. That gives a wholeness and completeness to their lives.”

When asked the question why people stay in these cults, Strozier explains:

“People are not stupid and they are not going to stay in a community that they do not find some significant rewards from being in and continuing to be in. With that said, there are sometimes those cults which can become really coercive and force people to stay. There’s a dark side because of the pervasive paranoia and the kind of mindset that governs the thinking within the community… there is the potential to move toward malevolence and violence.”

And with that final description, Dr. Strozier hits the nail on the head. If the group and leader become increasingly detached from normal society, and do not or cannot find civil methods of negotiation and compromise, history has shown time and again events usually snow-ball out of control until violence breaks out. What needs to be recognized then and in the future is to strive diligently to avoid ultimatum-absolutist language, for ALL parties concerned.

At some point, because of ultimatum-absolutist language — which unfortunately is biblically based from current apocryphal Judean-Christian passages and testaments — our protected freedom of religion must have functional limits and safety checks, or history shows that “Masada, Texas” will continue to repeat in the future. Is it no wonder so many American moderates have no real issues with removing prayer from public schools, or having “In God We Trust” removed from our coins and bills? Fanatical religion is lethal!

What Money Can Buy

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Professor Taboo

(paragraph separation)

A wonderful perspective inside a society fueled by and often obsessed with consumerism.

(paragraph separation)

The Road Less Traveled

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Professor Taboo

As part of the Alternative Lifestyles blog-posts migration over to the new blog The Professor’s Lifestyles Memoirs, this post has been moved there. To read this post please click the link to the blog.

Your patience is appreciated. Thank you!

Toss the 2-D Glasses

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Professor Taboo

(paragraph separation)

Simply put “Things are not always as they appear.” Some would say they never are. Still others claim there are always the black-and-white and they never change. My experience has taught me one profound thing: A violent storm brings down the greatest oak, but a reed stands by moving to and fro.

Marty Feldman

For many centuries, perhaps even two or three millennia, there has been a two-dimensional ideology assumed, proliferated, defended, and in some cases subjugated with little more basis than ego. Sexual-orientation or sexual-matching has increasingly been shown by science and nature not to be binary, or black-and-white, but instead as varied as the full color spectrum wheel. To be more accurate, nature has been hinting to us all along: appearances can be deceiving.

The Holy Nature of Embryology

There is a widespread misnomer out there which states or implies that human beings are born only one of two ways: male or female. This misnomer subsequently implies or states that according to Sears Craftsman Tool-amics a bolt does not connect, or join with another bolt. A nut does not join with or connect with another nut; they cannot fit together. The only way the bolt and nut are happy and causing the world to be happy is if the bolt is joined with the nut. Or is it the nut joined with the bolt? Nevertheless, it would seem that nature (or Craftsman Tools) supports this binary system, right? Nope, hang on Marty Feldman! It seems you do not get out to nature much.

Going strictly by primary education or the family’s birds-and-bees story, one would probably know that gender is determined by the father’s sperm, correct? Of those 14-million hyper-fluid target-seekers, the winner will either have the pointy-arrow or the downward cross chromosome and SHAZAAM it’s done! The embryo grows into a heterosexual boy or girl. Simple, right? Nope, strike two Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.

For a quick introduction into the commonly unknown, overlooked, or ignored phenomena of inter-sexed births, read my post Sexual & Gender Ambiguity: My Once Gross Ignorance.

Gomer Pyle, USMC

Even though at fertilization the male sperm carries the DNA gender-identifier, decades prior to conception there are many variables that took place throughout the parents’ hormonal-development that factor into their reproductive systems. Concurrently there are also variables still remaining to be developed over the following embryonic weeks that hinge on the mother’s hormonal and embryonic condition. Yes, the embryo begins to change during the first several days, but there is still much to be sorted out.

Ultimate Ambiguity: The Chicken or the Egg?

Every living organism has inherited traits, or a blueprint passed down to them from previous generations known as genetic code. During reproduction living cells follow two subset codes called the genotype and phenotype. For about the first 21 days the embryo’s development is directly controlled by the mother’s genotype. This coding controls everything developing internally and inherited. After 21 days further development begins according to the phenotype coding that tells the cells how to construct all the external (physical) features of the eventual fetus. This includes the development of our hormonal or endocrine system. Amazingly at 56 days the observable fetus is neither male nor female. More amazingly, however, is that the baby’s hormonal-system and sexual development, is an extremely complex transcription and translation of inherited RNA. And who did the parent’s inherit their RNA from? What of those four grandparents? Where did they inherit their RNA from? Are you beginning to glimpse the exponential complexity of embryonic-fetal cell development which programs the prenatal hormonal (sexual) system?

Anterior hypothalamus and INAH3

And yet, we are only beginning to scratch the surface of human development from embryo to full grown adult. Genetic coding of the embryo and fetus is only one part of the entire blueprint. Hold on, it gets bigger and more definitive.

The Rising Reality of Sexual Orientation and Attraction

Modern neuroscience and genoscience have clearly found over the last several decades that simple physical-sexual genitalia DOES NOT wholly determine a person’s sexual attractions. For the last twenty-odd years the accumulating molecular and neurological data (nature) are showing that sexual attraction and behavior are a product of a combination of genes, hormones, and evolving cells which likely determine future sexual preference from before birth.

In 1990 Harvard Medical School neuroscientist Dr. Simon LeVay began researching the origins of sexual orientation. It began when he reviewed a study done in the late 1980’s at UCLA which found that an area of the human brain, known medically as INAH3, was larger in men than in women. From this evidence it was deduced sexual behavior is in part due to biological differences in the brain. Therefore, when he concluded his 1990 study he indeed found that there were structural differences (again nature) in the brains of homosexual men compared to heterosexual men.

A fascinating landmark finding in his 1990 research showed that the INAH3 region of the brain in heterosexual men was over twice as large as the same region in women and homosexual men. This definitive evidence establishes that there is a natural biological difference between gay and heterosexual men. However, LeVay is quick to point out that this fact does not prove there is a specific homosexual gene. To date, neuroscience and genoscience studies haven’t made that determination. In his October 2012 lecture to Elmhurst College, LeVay cautions of a potential Gattaca nightmare (eugenics and genetic discrimination) and what biased parents or people may do to their prenatal child if it is determined they possess “the gay gene”. Personally, I too find that horrifying and no different than sexual or racial hate crimes.

What has become increasingly clear from the neurological, biological, genetic, and behavioral-psychological data regarding sexual development and orientation is that none of the components can be singled out as autonomous or non-relational to its other “siblings” if you will. It is a multi-spectrum micro and macroscopic epigenesis (formation) with no permanent walls, laws or lines. Our human brain registers love as love, despite gender.