Sermon

Today at my wife's family village, I think about the "wisdom of the ancients": Taoism, those who 'domesticated' food sources, Heraclitus, Herodotus, Pythagorus, Archimedes, Aristophanes, Euclid, Ankenaten (Amenhotep IV), the builders of Macchu Picu, Peter Abelard, the Mahabarata...
and our goals, our linguistic constraints, limitations to the theory of number, limits to resources and wisdom, overpopulation and limits to opportunity...
Liberalism as open-hearted generosity, perhaps irresponsible, perhaps not, Conservatism as hard-hearted, mean-spirited, closed-minded selfishness, rigorous in its demsnds or not...
How we so much want to win, but like money and things, you don't really get to take victory with you when you go from here, although love, maybe you do; and how love, somewhat unfortunately, seems esier for the victorious to attain, but can be hollow too...
How the Thai post office says it delivers everywhere, to anyone, but doesn't deliver here; how Thai police can't possibly live on their tiny pay, and so must also be criminals, and that that kind of hypocricy is almost part and parcel of and with the modern human condition...
And how no-one seems to like how I write, or what I write, even, very much, that I write. How I sense more resentment than appreciation in my readers (anyway). And how tough it is to be satisfied. How readily those with anything "going for them", as opposed to those with very little, express dissatisfaction. Why, I wonder, are those mostmost attractive to us often also the most short-sighted, selfish and demanding? And the sensibilities of animals so much wiser, and more mature even, than those of ourselves? For our successes do often seem quite counterproductive, our "best" our most dangerous and destructive, and our words too often contradictory and hollow.
Perhaps the paucity of messages from the deceased need not seem hard to explain.