Thursday, March 5, 2009

Bozeman Explosion

Bozeman, Montana is one of those places I visited through the pages of a book before being there physically. I walked through the campus of Montana State University in my mind's eye while reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which would become the first book along my travels down the rabbit hole of heady material. For those who have read it Robert Pirsig's descriptions of this collegiate mountain town give the place an electric but dissonant feel. It was here the author began his personal demolition into a being of more than one simultaneous opinion.

Today there was an explosion in the real Bozeman. It is not clear at this point what the cause of this conflagration was but the video seen below scares me. This was recorded only a few blocks away from the incident only a few months ago. I am not claiming these are the culprits but merely suggesting that the alibis of this group be collected and assessed. Displayed here is exactly the type of deleterious reprogramming the human brain can undergo; fervent righteousness - the enemy of reason - certainty.

PZ Myers on his blog Pharyngula describes this phenomenon in more detail while discussing points made by Richard Dawkins at a recent lecture.

"He talked quite a bit about the flexibility of the human brain, a property that was the product of selection, yet that same flexibility means it can be reprogrammed into deleterious byways, such as religion or fanaticism or unthinking patriotism."

I truly believe the most effective way to battle fanatically driven domestic terrorism (Waco, Oklahoma city, 9/11 etc. etc.) is not by building bigger prisons but by building larger libraries, and larger universities.




Regardless if this incident was accidental or intentional may the families affected by the explosion find solace in knowing that people all around the world are thinking about them and wishing that they do not suffer.

...I heard about this story on Twitter and though some may call this new form of media silly I think it the ultimate bypass of the corporate gatekeepers.

5 comments:

Mat Lee said...

thats crazy, i live in kalispell, and i saw that on the news the morning it happened. Simply mind blowing what people do in the name of fairytales. I noticed your following me on twitter too, welcome :)

tompainesghost said...

Hey Mat,
Yeah I wanted to make the point about people becoming mal-programmed. The people in the video are probably innocent and this most likely was an accident, but you are totally right that people flying planes into buildings because they think virgins will greet them in heaven, or people thinking they are the messiah, cause suffering in the real world while living in fairytale land. Thanks for following TPG. We are definitely in a growth phase right now. If you are interesting in contributing to the blog shoot me and email kristopherhite@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

Imagine if the words in the video were spoken by a group of Muslims. we would have a national uproar. There is a special protection provided to Christian crazy talk in the U.S. of A.

Anonymous said...

Indeed, it will talk a sustained national effort consisting of baby deprogramming steps, spanning generations to counteract christian crazy talk... on that note, let's stop lying to our kids about santa claus.

Anonymous said...

Malprogrammed? Don't let Uncle Scam fool you this time, but oddly, I'd been venting about bad old Montana on my antimercury website and specifically mentioned this hotel where the old doc used to run whores and sell drugs. I graduated from BSHS there, also MS in Soils at MSU. There were some good profs at MSU, but the country's gone to Hell, Montana is Xtra bad. This, then Whitehall, the Butte plane crash, kharmic vibrations... if you like old scandals, choose Mercury poisoning on left, then Dead Sheep on the bottom - it'll keep you busy for a while... Yours truly, http://mercuryxxpoisoned.com