What I can do

 It's important these days for people to have good self-esteem. People get so beaten down by the vagaries of life. But, in reality, we have one vote out of 330 million, out of 8 billion people on a small planet on the far reaches of the galaxy, in an infinite universe. People think they can effect change by marching in protests, forming organizations, donating to food banks, etc., but in the end, one person, one vote.

Just do what you can in your community. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Use natural resources wisely. Walk and take public transport when you can.

Religion

 I've read a lot of religious texts in my time. I've gotten a lot of good ideas. The only thing I haven't been able to wrap my head around are the Eastern religions that believe in reincarnation. 

But it seems like most of the organized religions think they need pastors or theologians to interpret the writings, which always rubbed me the wrong way. Seems like the whole point in translating writings into the vernacular is so the common folk can read it and figure it out for themselves.

I'm 71 now and closer to the end than the beginning. And I'm starting to simplify and condense what I believe and what makes sense to live my life by.

And I ran across the religion of Satchel Paige again after a number of years. To put it simply: Avoid running at all times and Don't look back, something might be gaining on you.

Sports & things

 I've made a reasonable facsimile of trying to play sports and watched all kinds of sports my whole life. I even watched jai alai once back in the 70s.

This will ramble a bit but here goes. Lately I've been kind of dismayed with sports in general. It seems to be just about money. It's always been about money, but money seems to be the only thing. And it's mostly about media, leagues and gamblers making money and individual teams, players and fans get left behind. It's sort of like Boeing being totally focused on it's stock price, that safety, customers and employees were an afterthought.

Like with pro sports or politics or anything that is media driven, the whole point seems to be a consistent product. It's not about winning at all cost, it's about a consistent product. Generally every event should be a 50-50 tossup, with consistent play. Gamblers won't all make a lot but they will make enough to keep coming back because they can make informed choices. People think the country is so divided because of mean people and Russian bots, but it's really that media wants a match race on anything that is too close to call, but is data driven so that people feel like they can make informed choices. Even if info is faulty, it doesn't matter, so long as the the media and leagues keep making money. It's sort of like garbage companies and utilities, they will always make money.

So teams just look at the data and try to be consistent. And it starts in little league. The most talented and charismatic are fed up through the system. And all the teams look for the same things. Hard throwers and free swingers. Mostly I'm about baseball but in other sports it's speed and strength. And teams won't try to get their hitters to shorten their swing and hit to the opposite field or teach their pitchers to be location change-up pitchers, they'll just try to obtain another hot player at the trading deadline.

And players are never gone. They just become talking heads on media. It used to be, they'd sell insurance, open a bar or sell cars. Heck, Richie Hebner used to dig graves in the off-season. But now they could be all dead, but you could put holograms up, because they spout the same things every year and it's all pretty much meaningless. But I suppose it gives gamblers something to base their bets on.

I'm pretty much done with organized sports. I'm still enough of a stats nerd, to check on the Mariners gamecast and the family are all Seahawks fans, so probably watch that but read a book at the same time.

But I'd like to watch pick up sports. I'd like to see youth sports with no adult involvement until high school. And adult sports, with no organization or refs, just people playing in the sandlot. But no sandlots anymore. All the empty lots have either buildings or organized city ballfields where you have to schedule games. And any sandlots have chain-link fences around because owners are afraid they'd get sued if someone got hurt. I think Ted Williams grew up in San Diego and him and his buddies would play ball, sun up to sundown. Can you imagine watching those games?

There's a little ballfield I see on the bus sometimes where kids are playing ball. I wish there was a spot online where you could see a schedule for games at the field. Or instead of organized city leagues; bars, churches or workplaces or neighborhood adults would just get together for a pickup game and post it online. I wouldn't mind seeing that. Sometimes I'll go to the local pickleball courts and watch people play. 

And it could be I'm all wet. Because once I played in a "recreational" co-ed soccer league but as soon as the whistle blew recreational went out the window and everything was cutthroat. Maybe people do just care about winning and not about how you play the game.

Maybe it's just me and maybe it's because I'm older that I just like to see a good play, no matter which team makes it. Whether it's sports, politics or work, there are good plays made on all sides. And a lot of times, maybe most times there are more than two sides to any question. We just don't hear about it. Everyone is focused on the pinnacle. But there's a lot of strength and action at the base of the pyramid. It's a lot easier and sometimes more interesting to go horizontal than vertical.

Prayer & free will

I look at prayer as the bio-electric impulses emanating from your brain and combining with other people's thoughts. 

Sometimes I would think that maybe when you pray that people will get along and there will be world peace, are you trying to short-circuit people's free will. But then I was thinking that I should pray for people to see their options and look at the long-range effects of their actions. Of course the problem lies with fact that most corporate terrorists, political terrorists and drug terrorists tend to think about their short-term gains. 

And what about when you pray for ill people to get well. You have to remember that the brain energy coming out of your head is pretty low-intensity stuff and your best bet is to call, text or email the person to let them know you're thinking of them.

If you believe that God can change outcomes, that definitely seems to me that you're fooling around with free will.

This was mostly a mental exercise for me. Everyone has to figure out these philosophical conundrums for themselves.

Marcion PostScript 2

 About Marcion excising the Old Testament from his canon. I have read halfway through his canon and in his Gospel and Paul's Epistles there are numerous quotes from the Old Testament. So it's like building a house on the rock. If you move the house off the rock, it will not be very stable. The Marcionite canon should really be annotated in places where the Old Testament is quoted.

Marcion PostScript

 One thing that I forgot in the original Marcion post, is that maybe Marcion's idea of Jesus as a spirit in physical seeming form, is the reason there are no childhood or early adult info on Jesus ( except for birth narratives and as a 12 yr. old at the Temple). Maybe he appeared in adult form.

Marcion

 Marcion was a 2nd century heretic who gets a bad rap for many reasons. From what I can tell, he believed in two Gods. The vengeful God of the Old Testament, who created the world, and the good, compassionate and loving God of the New Testament who sent Jesus to rescue us from the evil of the world. Then, he left the OT out of his canon, which included just a shortened Luke's gospel and 10 of Paul's epistles. So he gets an anti-Semitic label that he hated all things Jewish. I think mostly he just couldn't see how the OT fit in with Jesus's message. But modern groups have latched on to his teachings to foment anti-Semitism. And the current Marcionite Christian Church has taken a right-wing anti-vaccine stance. And lastly, he denies the humanity of Jesus, thinking he is just a spirit in a physically appearing body. And the last rap on Marcion, that if Jesus wasn't human, he didn't really suffer on the cross.

It all sounds pretty heretical to orthodox Christianity, but I can take the basic  framework and apply it to my own thoughts.

I don't believe in a creator God. I think the universe is infinite. Some scientists theorize that even in a vacuum, there is a virtual energy field from which real particles can form. And there is the dark matter and dark energy that no one understands yet. It could be that it is really light, but we are unable to see it. And maybe on any given planet there are ways to access it. On Earth, this energy took the form of the physically appearing body of Jesus. And he taught us what we needed to do and when he was killed and buried, and then no body was found, he just went back into the energy of the universe, but left us with access to the energy, which some call the Holy Spirit. 

Now some believe in the suffering and death and resurrection of Jesus was atonement for our sins. But I look at it that the powers that be, who are only interested in their own profit instead of the universal community, who killed him, didn't get the last word, because they couldn't kill his pure energy. And aren't we all just energy. E=mc². At the partcle level, it's all energy, we just look solid because all the particles are so close together. And maybe when we die, our energy goes back into the universal, and maybe somehow our personal attributes are stamped on it somehow. 

Just some thoughts.