Many Moons

Per Bloom who taught at Yale, there were about 1200 religions in the US (United Faiths). More splintered groups, cults and conspiracies (Qanon Shaman got 41 months in jail for J6).

Who to believe? Too many moons (Son of Moon took over the franchise. Franklin Graham his Dad’s , so did the Lynchburg guy who recently resigned – rightly so- not to mention Don Jr in partner with the pillow guy).

Eternity and immortality. prolong pleasure while avoiding pain. Our universal longing. Yet, our time and timing always suck.

Delayed gratification…until when? Immediate gratification (started with sucking mom’s nipple) always trumps delaying. Wired that way. A sideways glance (at Woodstock) finds nude people back to nature.

Or when we unfold a newspapers on commute to the city, as in Revolutionary Road ( today’s equivalent of engrossing with the screen).

Conformity does provide security. Just another boxed-in commuter: hat, tie, watch, pen, handkerchief, New York Times (above the fold) and to their unknown regrets, no I-phone in the 50’s.

Commuting today means sweats and shirt on Zoom. A while ago, in Silicon Valley, a billboard featuring a man working from home…facing the screen, his back to drivers on a California freeway, completely naked. Quite prescient!

Still, the need to engage and interact with others lays dormant. David Brooks had a piece last Thursday about sadness that has grown globally. pandemic? Yes. But also, because the bottom 20 percent are squeezed to bare subsistence.

A recipe for disaster. Not direct link, nor causality, but in co-relationship with the rise of strongman states. The return of Three Kingdoms, or something like it: Putin-Xi and ROW. The return of Yalta and Potsdam, when the fate of the world is at stake.

Strangely, with more I-phones, we still end up with less friends. Not Facebook recommended friends. But true friends.

Two days ago, I was privy to attend a webinar, whose main speaker was a successful engineer/entrepreneur. He helped develop Satellite-to-satellite communication. Then went on to develop optical connections for Cloud and Data centers. With all the fibers underground, Musk’s and Google satellites and optical links at AWS still the news about sadness in the world. No wonder young searchers flock to Hari Krishna at the airport, to Moonies at Mass weddings, to Hubbard in Hollywood.

When people trade in their individuality/independence for group and goal larger than themselves, we see troubles (as of this edit, S Korea’s Halloween has gone hollow w/ death tolls rising even as the sun has yet come up).

The lonely crowd, per Reisman. Or ask the Shaman. currently a few months into his prison term. Are you lonesome tonight. Join the Moonies. Get married on its next Mass Wedding (if not, join mourners in Mass funerals in S Korea next week ).