No Stinkin' Badges

Jan Cox picked a phrase someone else had written, the movie dialogue that has become a catch phrase--"We don't need no stinking badges." This rare recycling of something another had written served the purpose of demonstrating a kind of energy, and also shows how even at the ordinary level there is an awareness that verbal labels often totally miss the point.  Not repeating others or yourself is a critical trick to making temporary escapes from the habitual life which alone allows the mass of people on this planet to function together as one unit.  In this case though, "no stinkin' badges' was so apt that it became an inside joke for his students.

Jan's Metaphor of the Fish in the Water

The students of Jan Cox will remember one way Jan used to explain the ignorance of man about himself----a person's self understanding is like a fish who CANNOT perceive that he is a water creature because water is ALL he knows. A variation of this occurred to me: scientists and those who say they seek learning are like people studying the water from an elevation----they do not see the water, the important element, they do not see the water, for the fish.
Funny how man's speech is literally wet, in his mouth. This foam though, like the edge of an ocean wave, is not where the action is.

Perpetual Motion Machinery

The ordinary flow between folks is all about dominance and submission, what Jan Cox called, your pack position. Given this universality among people, it occurred to me to wonder how come my cats exhibit dominant and submissive behavior. Cats are not pack animals, and not really even tame creatures. Yet I do have a cat who is casually dominant over the other kitties. He gets the best chair, eats first etc. The first thing that occurred to me is that seeing domsub behavior in the common house cat suggested this behavior may be a general mammalian trait--therefore very early, very deep. And such may be the case, but I got sidetracked when one at least of the reasons cats exhibit this behavior came to mind. Sex. Male cats have to be aggressive, they have to perpetuate their kittiness over as much of the planet as possible. Female cats though, can afford to wait to be noticed, a mere meow and they have all the attention they need. Perhaps it all comes down to a differential just so that motion never ceases.