Welcome to my morning's hour-long core-dump. Halfway through, I realize it is 9/11 today. While this is not as polished as I would like, I am trying to put more stuff up on this site! Comments welcomed.

I don't really believe in omens, but I do pay attention to signs that might indicate a coming trend or which choice to make in difficult circumstances. Calling an event an "omen" is just a matter of perspective. A "bad omen" implies a threat, and so it's a difficult attitude to maintain when you believe that there is a positive aspect to any experience, no matter how dire.

Accidentally breaking a dish is, after all, just an accident. Even if it's a valuable dish, the dish only has whatever value we ascribe to it.

That said, there's something immensely satisfying about killing the mosquito that bit me twice just before I got out of bed today. (The bites still itch, but fortunately, they are Hawaiian mosquito bites, which means they'll be gone before midday.) Perhaps ending this suffering before I even left the bed was a good omen. While I would rather not kill mosquitoes at all, I must recognize and accept that if I do not, they will continue to cause me pain. Maybe I'm violating some fundamental tenet of Eastern philosophy by killing living things, or perhaps Schweitzer's simple dictum, "Reverence for Life," but I guess I will find out eventually whether it matters in the greater scheme. Hawaii has plenty of mosquitoes, so on a materialistic level, certainly not.

I do a good job of freeing anything I can. Since we have moved into this house in April, I have liberated geckos, chameleons, crickets, moths, flies, and who knows what else. My basic rule is, if it can't attack me, eat our food, or proliferate within these walls to the point of significant irritation, I will try to contain it and set it free.

Our culture nowadays has a strong judgment against anyone taking "victim status," which is supposed to indicate a less emotionally developed consciousness than the culture deems balanced or socially acceptable. We used to call such an attitude "playing the martyr." It's weird, because the law of the jungle states that there must be victims and victors in order for life to continue: Eat or be eaten. (And, yes, I do consider a mosquito bite a form of being eaten.) In the great cosmic scheme, of course, there can be no victims or victors because all of this victim and victor stuff is for the singular purpose of perpetuating life. Only Man can claim a victim "just for the hell of it," such as bullies do. Maybe I'm unaware of animals that pick on other animals simply for the sport of it, but wouldn't that violate Kepler's observation that nature uses as little as possible of anything? It seems like any such animals would be aberrant by nature's general standards. Yet again, "aberrant" is another one of those loaded human terms, like "victim," Well, maybe, then, such creatures would be the exception rather than the rule.

The main difference between Man and the other animals, I believe, is that only Man has a conscience. Yes, that opposable digits thing is important too, but let's focus today on behavior. No other animal can make a moral judgment. If we lived according to the Law of the Jungle, there would be no organizing principles possible to establish societies, and Man is if nothing else a socially oriented animal. Even the most hidebound misanthrope yearns for some kind of meaningful contact with others. Perhaps some of them choose animal companions rather than human ones. Yet an animal can't offer the intellectual companionship of another human. I think that most if not all of us have a strong urge to hear our thoughts and feelings projected into the world and reflected back to us by others. Why would the alien fantasy be so popular if it did not speak to this need in a significant way?

Well, I just realized it is September 11, and here I am, thinking about attackers and victims. I guess that martyrs and victims acknowledge tragedy a bit more stringently than others feel comfortable with hearing about. This, along with the profit motive, helps explain why a political celebrity such as Ann Coulter is permitted to publish a statement as cynical as her claim that the widows of 911 are profiting enormously from their victim status. This statement indicates many things to me. First, that she understands the value of stating the outrageous, blasphemous, and aberrant as a way to make a buck – you cannot publish a statement as socially unacceptable as that without calculating its impact on others, unless perhaps you are drunk or on drugs. Second, if you subscribe to the belief that anything you decry is really pointing back to some deficiency or flaw within yourself, you could say that Ann Coulter is jealous of the attention these women get. She would be jealous of both the quantity and the quality of that attention. Maybe, then, at the end of the day, all Ms. Coulter really wants is to be loved by us all, and her books are merely a lucrative way to ensure that this will never occur. I guess she can cry all the way to the bank, then!

Omens are useful, then, as a rough guide to increasing consciousness. In the case of 911, we seem to have reacted in many ill-advised ways, most of them involving blowing this event out of proportion with regard to its actual significance in the greater scheme. All that has really changed is that some terrorists invented a new way to terrorize, albeit at the ultimate personal cost. And humankind is at such a sorry pass right now that we are breeding people so alienated that they are willing to sacrifice their lives to impose untold distress and suffering upon "aliens" who are actually fellow humans. Yet aren't all wars about this kind of tragedy? Most of the world is unimpressed with the American claim to victim status simply because they have seen so many bombardments up close and personal that the Americans' tragedy seems like just another example of war reflecting Man's inner horror.

Neither a bad omen, nor a good omen. Just business as usual.