Opac

The cloud cover on planet Opac is so dense and consistent that the sun only shines once every three-hundred years. There is a large scar across the face of the planet. Presumably it is the impact that made this scar that shifted the planets axis from a horizontal to one perpendicular to the planets orbit around its sun. The planet has a lighter side and a darker side at all times. It has little seasonal change. The only light and warmth on the dark side of the planet is volcanic. All life on the dark side of the planet either feeds off of the light side or derives its energy from bacteria that thrive on the sulfur or methane released by volcanic activity. However, even on the light side of the planet, because the clouds so heavily diminish the amount of light, life is in chronically intense competition for energy.

Even the small forest in the tropical zone lacks the abundance of life that similar regions on earth usually support. These forest are dominated by bulbous blue plants. The plants are blue because they specialize in collecting infrared light for their energy. Every three hundred years, these trees absorb as much of the suns heat as possible. Other plants tend to be green or red as higher frequency light is far more likely to penetrate the thick atmosphere of planet Opac.

It is in these forests, which feast on dim or rare sources of light, that the batskinks make their home. The batskinks are intelligent but primitive. They have small wings that allow them to glide short distances and they fortify their tree top homes with entrances that are difficult to enter without some small flight ability. Most of their intelligence is applied to elaborate mating rituals, which have resulted in a great diversity in vibrant belly patterns. However, a recent threat is forcing the batskinks to think more and more about weapons.

The dark side of the planet is filled with elite predators. The factors that help predators become successful are not very different than those factors which greatly determine the success of earth’s greatest predators: specialized sensory receptors, stealth, energy conservation, speed, and of course intelligence.

The atmosphere on planet Opac is very highly charged. There is almost constant horizontal lightning which cycles in one direction across the planet’s surface and in another direction through the planet’s cloud cover. Many predators use the ions in the air to help them detect electrical changes caused by potential prey, much as sharks do in the oceans of the earth, hammerheads even more successfully than others. Smell and vision also play a vital role in determining the success of predators. There is far more bio-luminescence on the surface of Opac’s dark-side than there is anywhere on earth’s surface. In order to escape the keen eyesight of dark-side predators, creatures have evolved elaborate decoy mechanisms and hypnotizing patterns. Creatures with bio-luminescent capabilities also find safety in numbers. The largest herds on the dark-side of the planet are herds of bio-luminescent rabbit lions. These creatures are shaped something like rabbits with large ears, long tails, huge eyes, and razor sharp fangs and claws. They breed in super herds but attack in small packs that use synchronized patterns of light to confuse prey.

Even such effective predators as these have enemies, though. Rabbit lions are the favorite food of shadow foxes. These creatures are almost more like snakes or crocodiles than like foxes. They are incredibly long and have massive jaws. They can consume a meal over twice their size and digest the meal for months at a time. What they may lack in speed they make up in stealth, energy conservation, and intelligence.

The rabbit lions have migrated further from volcanic zones in order to track some of their favorite choices in prey. The have ventured into a mountainous region that is simply too cold for shadow foxes to follow, as shadow foxes lack fur in order to allow for color changing skin. Rabbit lions on the other hand, receive their bio-luminescence from bacteria that live in the hollow bristles of their thick fur. The shadow foxes have begun to venture further and further into the tropical forests, home to the batskinks.

Although shadow foxes’ cloaking ability is less effective on the light side of the planet, batskinks do not have the greatest eyesight and are vulnerable to shadow fox ambushes. The only thing keeping the batskinks from going extinct is that they possess more dexterous appendages than their aggressors do. They have collected branches and vines and made long feelers for themselves in order to detect shadow foxes before landing on any particular branch. The have also constructed daggers out of the massive thorns that surround the stems of snaggle clamp lilies, a carnivorous plant that grows up out of bodies of water onto the marshlands near the edge of the forests. Large as shadow fox jaws may be, their noses are quite vulnerable to dagger thrusts. With eyes suited only for darkness, a shadow fox without use of its nose becomes a very poor hunter. As shadow foxes are able to survive without food for long periods of time, they have developed a low tolerance for pain, unless truly near starvation.

The shadow foxes determined to loose their prey from treetop barricades, have resorted to deforestation. They use explosive rocks found adjacent to volcanic metal deposits. They insert the rocks into tooth made gashes in the trees then fling rocks at the gash from a safe distance until an explosion occurs, occasionally toppling a tree filled with batskinks and batskink babies, a very tasty meal, even for a full grown shadow fox.

Luckily for the batskinks, the rabbit lions have started to return to usual hunting grounds. The shadow foxes will soon retire to the darkness. These species will continue to evolve independently. They will only make contact three or four times until they have grown into complete civilizations. At this point they will go to war. Eventually, after millenia of conflict, they will make peace and turn to science. Through joint effort they will travel the stars until they reach planet earth.

The Netherworld Film Festival

Tonight people gather all around to see films directed by and starring the dead.

Charlie Chaplin in Space is playing on the drive-in rooftop screen. Time Enough for Love, starring James Stewart is playing downstairs in the small dome. Paul Newman is starring in Strangers with Brandy in the old dome. Humphrey Bogart and Grace Kelly can be seen in Alfred Hitchcock’s Zoetrope, in the dark dome.

You will try to see them all, but, as is often the case with film festivals, you will only make it to one or two of every tree or five. Tonight you find yourself drawn to a new take on an old classic. Tonight you will see, Akira Kurosawa’s Socrates.

The film will be filled with the timeless angst of the individual rebelling against society. It is one of his master works and will present Kurosawa’s views on the death penalty to the world in defiance of the US and Japan.

The shocker is that Socrates will be played by Socrates, himself!

There is also a fascinating casting decision in the anecdotal court scene. All of the real innocent victims of the death penalty will play themselves, individuals being sent to death row despite the testimonies of the actual deceased victims of the crimes. The entire cast of the film consists of people who have been killed in one way or another.

The scene with the most epic scale is the Valhalla scene. All the people who have ever been killed by wars or feuds act out killing each other for killing each other in an endless cycle of retaliation. The scene holds the same melancholy luster that Seven Samurai does.

There is only one scene in which killing is forgiven. It is a scene where a child is put on trial for accidentally destroying the human race. The child is forgiven on grounds that the deaths were accidental. The child’s only punishment is that it must attempt to protect or even create life in the future, to the best of its ability. The crowd of dead humans watching the trial demand satisfaction for the xenocide of humanity. They kill the child in a vigilante execution. Then all species of creatures who have been driven to extinction due to human activity demand that humanity pay for crimes of xenocide as well. At this point the film jumps to the moment at which the child originally wiped out humanity, including himself.

All the while, Socrates continues to point out humanity’s many hypocrisies until he too is killed.

There is a woman in the film. She is played by women who have been wronged, really wronged. She is a character who suffers every imaginable cruelty, many of these abominable events committed by the hands of her own government. There is a strange accident in a torture chamber that imbues her with power and gives her all the might of God Herself. she now has the ability to enact any punishment that she sees fit upon her wrongdoers. She can retaliate against them. She can restrain them. She can leave them be. The only thing that she cannot do is change who they are. She cannot purify them by magic, only hypothetically, through conversation. She says to her wrongdoers, “If I am to play God over you, I will play the God that I believe aught to exist. I will play the God who forgives, who protects, and who educates. I will not harm you, but I will not allow you to harm others. And I will talk to you. I will understand what has made you what you are and I will tell you why I think you should become something else.” She tells each wrongdoer truths about himself. She acknowledges each wrongdoer’s excuses or ideologies but does not validate these excuses nor does she hold back criticism. Some are too crazy or stubborn to change what they think or what they tell themselves. Some feel bad and attempt to kill themselves or pursue other means of self-punishment. Some try to atone for sins past with acts of compassion and selflessness. Some choose exile.

Lastly, all carnivores are put on trial for murder by all herbivores. The herbivores find the accused guilty but too incompetent to receive the death penalty. Being predisposed to predatory behavior becomes classified as a dangerous handicap instead of a crime waiting to happen. Appropriate preventative and precautionary actions are initiated.

Some creatures are natural murderers. Some creatures are made into murderers. Some creatures make themselves into murderers. Some creatures murder in packs. Some creatures murder alone. Some creatures murder for survival. Some creatures murder for pleasure. Some creatures murder for order. Some creatures murder for chaos. Some creatures murder for no reason at all. Some creatures do not murder at all. Are you a murderer? Why do you kill? Do you pull the switch that operates the chair? Do you stick the needle into the body of the accused? Do you sit in a chair and order the accused to their death? Do you murder for passion? Do you murder for justice? Do you murder for murder? When you kill, do you kill actively or do you kill passively?

Dream Theatre

There is a movie theatre only accessible in sleep. Every night, tens of thousands of people travel there through their dreams.

The lobby is filled with electricity and sound. There are people collecting impossibly snacks and playing absurd games. There is an energy of suspense and warm darkness that resonates from the intricate patterns on the floors and ceilings. It is hard to tell whether these patterns move and vibrate or whether this is simply a trick of the eye.

As you travel down the corridor to the main dome, you discover the wonderful sort of labyrinth that only one’s child-mind could imagine. Mirrors, windows, and inclines play cat and mouse with you. Occasionally you pass showings of films that you have not come to see. Sounds leak out from the doorways. Some films alarm you of soul chilling experiences waiting to be had. Others entice with the promise of fantastic journeys and new frontiers. The door to the main dome invites you to cross the threshold as strange opening slides are projected onto the massive main screen. They are not advertisements. They are optical puzzles. As you stare at them your mind begins to wander until it makes its way into the feature presentation.

Today an interesting twist on disaster movies and environmental documentary. You find yourself and loved ones, evading urban destruction. Your dearest companions comprise a family of eccentric scientists who are attempting to reverse, or at east curb, the strange frequency of sound that you have caused all motor vehicles to make. This sound causes buildings to tip and tumble. Entire cities can be destroyed by a single automobile. Even the honking of a horn can cause a forty story sky scraper to crumple to the ground.

You wake up before you can solve the transportation problem. Perhaps you will return to finish the tale another night. Presuming of course you can remember your way to the dream theatre. m

Gil

I never met my little brother. They never let my mother bring him home.

I was only seven or so at the time, but I can remember everything from that week so clearly.

My parents come home on a rainy night. Their clothes are soaked and I can’t tell whether it’s from the rain or from tears. They don’t say anything to me that night. They only look at me with sad, sorry eyes. They pay the sitter. She is a teenager from downstairs and down the a hall. She doesn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary about my parents.

The next morning, my dad cooks breakfast. my mom tries to tell me what happened. She says that my little brother was born differently and that he needs special care and that we should be able to see him soon. My mom starts to look like she is going somewhere else. My dad looks kind of upset. I can hear him scraping the pan with something. My mother starts to play with her breakfast. She always tells me not to things like that. I ask what was different about him. They tell me that my baby brother had trouble breathing when he was born. They tell me that he had trouble breathing the air. They tell me that he could only breath water. “My brother’s a fish!?” I burst out. My mother started to cry a little. When my dad noticed that she was crying he started to cry a lot. Just like kids at school do sometimes when Jake does something mean. He’s a butt-hole. I don’t know what to do or what I did wrong so I go to my room. I look in the mirror and make a fish face. I think I fall asleep. I’m under water with my baby brother. He’s a fish and we are exploring the ocean.

That night I can hear my parents speaking through the walls. They’re talking about how they shouldn’t have let them take my little brother. They’re talking about how the people who took him are probably doing experiments on my little brother and how they will never see him again. My mother is talking about how she hates herself and my father is trying to tell her that there wasn’t anything that they could do about it.

The next day my parents tell the newspaper about my baby brother. I hear the newspaper people laughing at my parents through the phone even though my dad is holding it on the other side of the room.

The day when my parents first went to the hospital is the last day I can remember them looking happy. They tell me, “We’ll be back soon, and we’ll bring you a little baby brother.”

I’m older now. Someday soon, I’ll find my little brother and I’ll take him to the ocean or maybe a lake if it’s big enough. We’ll live together underwater and I won’t let anyone do experiments on him.

Gravity and the Ghost

When you die, your soul doesn’t rise up to heaven. Loosed from the bond to a body, your soul does not find itself free and weightless. When you die, you find you are no longer tethered to the world on the surface. You find that even as a spirit you are effected by gravity. Then, flailing frantically, desperately, you sink. You sink down through layers of rock and sediment. You sink down past deposits of limestone and quartz. You pass from the Earth’s crust down into lakes of magma that make up Earth’s mantle. You may think that these lakes of fire are the river that will take you to the gates of hell. This is not far off.

When you arrive, you will find that the Earth’s core is filled with spirits like your own. Likely, for the rest of eternity you will remain trapped in this congested space like too many dozens of people in an elevator. You will find that the only hope that remains within the overwhelmingly dense confines of this place is the hope of new creation. Within the concentration of souls there is a concentration of energies. If you manage to form a determined collaborative effort, you will find that it is possible to change the perceived nature of your environment.

On very rare occasions, hundreds of souls may band together in such a way. When they do so, they transform the center of the Earth into the hottest place in the solar system. They transform it into a club of transcendental proportion. In this club you will have the opportunity to mingle with famous figures and the dearly departed. You have the opportunity to bond between others in ways far more intimate but far less gratifying than you could before. But most importantly, you will have the opportunity to dance. You yourself can become one with the rhythm of the cosmos. You can augment the universe with your own energies. You can unwind yourself into the heartbeat of the planet.

If you put your ears to the ground and listen very carefully, you may be able to hear the beat already, thumping and bumping deep underground.

The Ancients

There are people, of sorts, who live very far away. They have grown to be so effective in powers of mind and body that they lack any true problems of their own. These people are very nearly omniscient, so effective are their means of acquiring knowledge. They find life to be so dull, in fact, that they have invented a rather unique mode of entertainment. Humanity.

Each of these people from the far away place has a few dozen or a few hundred little threads. Each of these little threads winds through nebulae, around planets, and across vast expanses of empty space until at last they reach planet earth. There Each of these threads connects to the mind of a human being. These threads are similar to the strings on a marionette, for they, in a similar manner, influence the behavior of human beings. Most do so in a very subtle way. However, this is not true for all. Religion is a testament to strange influences that supernatural puppeteers can have on humans. Miracles, geniuses, mirages. All can be signs of outside influence.

From time to time there are human beings who exist without strings attached or even a few who manage to cut their strings at some point in their lives. These people are often very rebellious in one way or another because they are particularly sensitive to any attempts that are made to control them. This is true  whether the authoritarian threat seems to come from another creature, human or not, and even if the forces of nature themselves attempt to bar the way to absolute freedom.

There is also a tiny tiny fraction of human beings who are sensitive enough in some psychic faculty that they can directly sense the influence of people form far away places. More often than not, such people find themselves in asylums. Not all do, though. Definitely, not all do.

Window Worlds

Page was always more sensitive than other people. She would always hear things that nobody else could hear. She would always feel more deeply and see more clearly than family and friends. Hers was a world brimming with richness of experience.

When Page turned seven, she began to see things in glass and in water. As she stared at these images they would become clearer. It soon became clear to her that she was seeing real places. Places with new suns and stars. Places with strange plants and emerald skies. She desperately wanted to visit these places.

As Page grew older she grew tired of the taunting such visions committed against her. She developed the habit of breaking glass whenever she lost her temper. Only when she found herself in the deepest despair did she dare now to stare through the looking glass. At such moments she would imagine, cynically, a life with complete freedom. She would imagine that she had the power to cross over to the other side. She would imagine life without the petty concerns of making a living or meeting expectations. 

As an adult, Page desperately tried to solve the puzzle of what it was she saw reflected in the various amorphous substances in the world. The only clue she would receive from countless professionals was that her brain read slightly different signals from visual phenomena than others did. It could mean that she had a sixth sense. Just as easily, it could mean that she was crazy.

In mid life, Page had a skiing accident. She said that she saw something beautiful reflected in the snow and couldn’t look away. Most of her injuries healed. Her siblings had always joked with her about her senses. After the accident, they started to think that the joke wasn’t as funny as it had been as children. They worried for Page’s safety and sanity.

In old age, Page suddenly disappeared. The police searched for her for weeks but found nothing. Her siblings held a service for her a few months later. They believed she had killed herself somehow.

A single friend, who had been in correspondence with Page during approximately this time, testified that she had been trying to escape to her window worlds. The friend provided an address. The address belonged to a recently abandoned cabin in the woods. Within the cabin, strange equipment and residue was found.

Fount of Youth

Dr. Tresper is four hundred years old.

Most people are afraid of him. Others wish to steal his secret. I and I alone know where to find it.

This much, however, I am willing to tell:

There are many long lived creatures in this world. Certain tortoises and trees. The tricks for cheating death vary, but they have some  things in common. In order to live for a very long time, an organism must be good at one of these things: keeping bad things out, replacing damaged parts of itself, or doing without damaged portions of itself.

Dr. Tresper has tried all three. The mode that he prefers is replication of damaged issues. Keeping bad things out is far harder for a human than it is for a tree, and there simply is not enough body for humans to go without any portion of it that gets damaged.

The secret is hidden in the drought that Dr. Tresper always keeps close at hand. He has created a symbiotic relationship with another organism. The organism was extracted from one of the many creatures that rely on benevolent microbes for long term survival. It really is remarkable how much energy a small colony of bacteria, for example, can produce for a larger organism to use. Entire ecosystems are built on micro-organisms. The ones that live inside Dr. Tresper are, of course, very much altered from their original state. Normally the single celled organisms would go to war with the unfamiliar cells of Dr. Tresper. Nothing a little mutation doesn’t fix, though.

These creatures help Dr. Tresper to combat foreign bodies. They also provide the desperately needed service of rejuvenating genetic decay and the other handful of problems that cause human aging and eventual death.

Nobody knows exactly how long Dr. Tresper should expect to live. I would venture that he has not even as yet reached midlife. Dr. Tresper will live for a very long time indeed.

I have shared with you all that I will. May you live a long and prosperous life. Ha ha ha.

Blue Pages Assessment

Principia College is a small Christian Science College. This is my assessment of some of its current policies in the blue pages.

 

 

House Hours

House Hours are the times when student rooms are open for coed visitation.

The House Hours policy is designed to:

1) show consideration and respect for roommates’ and housemates’ privacy

2) encourage a unified, family-like house community

3) maintain a schedule that supports Christian Science study, Sunday School and church   

    attendance, as well as academics and athletics

4) be a visible sign of the community’s sexual standard (see Code of Conduct).

 

The maximum hours are as follows:

     Sunday-Thursday     10:00 a.m. – 12:00 midnight
     Friday, Saturday       10:00 a.m. – 2:00 a.m.

Houses may choose to be open fewer hours than listed above.  House Hours apply to cottages, theme houses, and anyone living in student housing.  All houses should post their House Hours.

House living rooms, recreation rooms, and some kitchens and computer labs not on sleeping hallways are open to visitors 24 hours a day.  After-hour visitors must be accompanied by a house member.  Sleeping in the 24-hour public rooms is not permitted and is a House Hours and Fire Safety violation.  As a courtesy to others entering the room, please keep a light on whenever you have a visitor in your room or any 24-hour location.

With the resident counselor’s permission, a house board may set consequences for handling violations on an informal basis for violations discovered by house members.  Otherwise, violations discovered by or formally reported to the resident counselor are subject to the following consequences:

–  Up to 30 minutes after the house closes, a warning is given. 

–  More than 30 minutes after the house closes, the room is closed for one week.

 – Spending the night is a two-week room closure and an interview with the house board. 

–  If a student has received a warning and breaks house hours a second time in twelve months, 

    his/her room will be closed for one week, unless the violation is for spending the night.

–  If a student’s room has been closed in the last twelve months for either one or two weeks, the next 

    violation will go to Restorative Justice or Community Board.

The house board, resident counselor, residence director or dean may also close a house if House Hours are widely disrespected.

 

On house hours and sex:

House hours should not be about sex, at all! The issues of privacy, sleep, and house unity are the relevant criteria. By relating house hours to sexuality, presumptions about gender are made that are damaging. Men and women must have sex at night. Men and women are inconsiderate when they are together at night. Men and women can’t manage their own sleep schedules when they are together. These presumptions are all bullshit, but they are also the only reasons for including sexuality in house hours.

 

On house hours and unity:

House hours cannot unify a house unless the house has a say in establishing house hours for itself. The proper way to establish house hours would be to have houses take anonymous votes from every member in the house until consensus can be reached. There is no reason for a higher authority to micromanage when houses close and become quiet. Houses can learn how to meet the needs of all by themselves.

 

On house hours and privacy:

It is not gender or sex that should be the issue primarily of concern in regards to privacy. True privacy is when an individual has the right to be alone without intrusion. At present this is never possible, because there are no locks on doors. If people wish to have privacy for things like showering, they already have the restroom. They should not need the hallway. If individual houses wish to reserve a period of time every night to run around the house naked, they should decide that on their own. It should not be handed down by administrators.

 

On house hours and CS activity:

We should not have to separate men from women at night in order for them to be able to wake up when they wish. We should be able to have house quiet so that people can sleep without making it into an issue of gender or sex.

 

On house hours in general:

House hours is not a moral issue, it is a courtesy issue. It should be treated as such. Deciding when to go to bed and who to allow into the house, should be decided by the house, not by an administration. We should not make negative assumptions about the sexes because it damages gender in general.

 

On coed housing:

We currently have coed freshmen housing and one coed upperclassmen house. coed housing, in my opinion, has substantially improved gender relations at Principia. We should have more coed upperclassmen housing and should expand that which we already have.

On abroads and even on breaks, precedent has been set for coed halls. Men and women can live in close proximity and still get along. If we put locks on individual rooms, there will no longer be any problems to worry about. Restrooms do not need to be coed simply because the halls that they are on are. Rooms do not need to be coed either.

 

Locks

Women’s dorms or sleeping halls in coed dorms are locked in the evening and reopened in the morning in accordance with legal expectations of residential schools.  Women must check out keys and may come and go at their own discretion.  If accompanied by a house member at all times, visitors may be in the 24-hour public rooms of houses.

 

On locks and protection:

If there are any actual legal expectations behind this they NEED to be stated as well. At present this policy is sexist at best. The idea that women need to be protected by locks but men don’t is not okay. Men have actually been assaulted more than women have. Men have also been watched in their sleep by uninvited guests.

 

On locks and privacy:

If this is an issue of privacy, then it is appropriate for locks to be on doors–all doors. It is not okay to say that women need privacy but men don’t. It doesn’t matter whether people are okay with this sexism or not, it is still sexism. If locks are on doors, then individuals may decide whether they wish to remain private or not simply by opening or closing their doors. We should respect the right to privacy for individuals, not merely groups.

 

Cohabitation

Sleeping overnight together in the same bed or bag, even with no sexual activity, is considered “cohabitation” and will be treated as a Code of Conduct violation.  Living together off-campus, while involved in a romantic relationship, is also cohabitation.

 

On cohabitation:

This is a policy about sexuality. There is already a policy about sexuality. This policy is overkill. We should not dictate how people live so long as they are meeting moral standards. There is nothing immoral about living with someone. We should not assume that people are breaking Principia’s sexual standards simply because they are living together. Furthermore, people should be meeting such standards because they wish too, not because others are welcome to intrude upon their private lives. We should respect the right to privacy, even when it comes to sexuality. There have been cases in which resident councilors have barged in on couples having sex. This is not okay. Principia can reserve the right of search and seizure if it likes, but it should not reserve the right of unwanted intrusion. This sort of activity should be classified as sexual harassment and is another reason why individuals should have locks on rooms.

We should know whether individuals are having sex by asking them and allowing them to answer honestly, not because we barge in on them or because we assume that they are if they are living together. We must respect a right to privacy.

Bottom line: There is nothing morally wrong about men and women sleeping together. Spooning is not a crime just because forking can be dangerous.

 

 

Sex

Contrary to popular culture, at Principia, oral sex is included in what constitutes pre-marital and extra-marital sexual relations.  Homosexual activity includes dating, public displays of affection, and sexual relations.  It also includes promoting, through organized events or materials, a change to Prin’s policy on homosexuality.

On sexual misconduct:

Frankly, I don’t think vaginal or oral sex are great ideas. People can get pregnant from coitus and can get (if you believe in such things) STDs from coitus or oral sex. However, I don’t think that it is ever necessary to kick people out for their sexual preferences. There was a time when masturbation was still considered a perversion. Most people on campus by this standard are perverts. We need to be having conversations about why sex is a bad idea, not simply demonizing it and then going on witch hunts.

As far as homosexuality goes, I see no reason to discriminate between gay sex and strait sex. It doesn’t seem to me that one is better or worse than the other. They can both be hedonistic or loving. They can both result in orgasms. One can’t result in children fine, but let’s face it, not everyone wants to do it to make children. We either have to demonize both strait sex for pleasure and gay sex for pleasure, or demonize neither.

Gay relationships, however, should not be demonized, regardless. If there are higher ways and lower ways for us to be attracted to each other, those ways can not be wrapped up in biological sex. To say that there is a spiritual crime being committed because two people care about each other who don’t biologically, reproductively align is paradoxical. It is what people express that can be translated into spiritual terms, not what people’s bodies look like.

The last bit about advocacy is, quite obviously, a catch twenty-two. I expect it to go away soon. It isn’t even written well. “You are gay if you try to change the policy against gays.” Really? What grade are we in?

 

 

On change in general:

Anyone who is interested is welcome to help me change community perspective on: House Hours, Cohabitation, Locks, Coed Housing, Coed Halls, and Homosexuality.

I will be spending much of my last quarter at Principia with these aims in mind.

Playthings

There once was a child. this child was all alone in the universe. It made toys for itself to play with. It made toys of all shapes and sizes.

One of the toys that the child made was a doll of sorts. One day, while the child was out, the doll came to life. It noticed that none of the other toys were self-aware as it was. It began to wonder why it had come to be. It began to wonder what purpose it had been created for. It imagined many grand reasons why it should come to be in the world. The doll began to love itself and to value itself above all other things.

Soon, the child returned. It was not surprised to discover that the doll had come to life. “I am glad that you are alive,” said the child to the doll, “Now I will no longer have to play by myself.”

“Are you God?” The doll asked in a quivering voice.

“What is God?” responded the child.

“God is the one who made me,” the doll said to the child, “God has made me so that I may fulfill a great purpose.”

“That is silly,” said the child, “I am the one who made you, not God. I made you so that I would have someone to play with me. You are my plaything.”

“If God did not make me for some special purpose, why am I alive?” said the doll with hurt feelings.

“It was an accident that you came to life and that you came to know yourself. All life is accidental.” said the child.

The doll did not like what the child was saying. The doll ran away and hid. While the doll was away, other toys awakened. When the doll returned, the child had forgotten all about him. There were many other toys to play with.