Carnality

 

I learn things listening to Eric Metaxas. He had a guest who spoke about being a dope dealer and skirt chaser as a teenager, then he broke down sobbing and found Jesus, who wasn't far away because his father was a Baptist preacher. I was never tempted to break down and follow my father's faith. He was an obsequious insurance agent who dealt with factory fires and hail damage, a job he inherited from my grandfather, who was a more interesting person. Grandpa created big industrial projects by optioning land and investing the savings of a Luxemburger farmer. When I visited Luxembourg, I spotted that farmer's family name in a church cemetery. George Patton was buried nearby.

 

Travel is carnal. Spiritual travel is essentially hooey, playing deuces wild. Excuse me. The dog wants to move to his longer chain, and I have to eject a stick insect from my open doorway. I live in the carnal world. Forest. Gravel road. Patches of overgrown weeds that I have to whack when I feel like being athletic, swinging a powerful trimmer. When I load the reel, it has to be the right length, seated properly and wound carefully, so it won't jam. More carnal reality. I have to eat sensibly. When I'm busy writing, carnal expression of carnal thoughts, I end up with a cold mug of coffee. It used to happen routinely in video production, and I came to think of it as "TV coffee" — always cold when I had a moment of rest to sip a formerly hot fresh cup. Carnal life exists in a time and place, not in some cloud cuckoo land with infinite or ultimate perspectives. I like philosophy as much as the next fellow, but it's useless without existential referent. The Old Testament is full of battles, chariots and swordsmen who fought with their neighbors for a thousand years. Zionists are still fighting their neighbors with highly carnal fighter jets and bombs. The millions trapped in Gaza, Damascus, and Beirut struggle with carnal survival, mentally crippled by allegedly holy men and religious doctrine. Their carnal incompetence killed hundreds and wrecked big chunks of Beirut because a mountain of fertilizer was seized and stored improperly in a dockside warehouse. Carnal reality routinely punishes incompetent holy men and their captive helots. Like Jezebel, the carnal princess from Phoenicia, I'm often tempted to attack holy prophets, but I have better things to do than screw with incompetents.

 

Spirituality? Plenty of spiritual virtues in production, distribution, and retail. Competition is nonstop discovery, a sharp impetus to see deeper and farther. New ideas are the holy grail. Our lives are filled by knowledge and carnal wisdom, the truth of birth and death. It doesn't matter whether God created the Singularity and shook his Finger at Judah. I'm not Jewish, just a regular guy tapping the keyboard of a laptop. A real laptop. It doesn't matter whether the New York publishing kibbutzim have a spiritual writ. Remember Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of Goldman Sachs? He told a reporter that Goldman was doing God's work — the most ruthlessly carnal outfit in history, co-located with the NYSE and front running it with supercomputing robots. That's how the Dow zoomed from 8,500 to 35,000, nose bleed P/E ratios for legacy shares and tech "unicorns" that have never made a dime of profit.