...strange goings on kind of sneaking up behind you...

Meandering through Facebook and Twitter, the sense I get is that the turmoil and morass that's seeping into everyone's life isn't hitting home, I guess. Perhaps it isn't - then we are lucky for it. The world is (and has been) on the edge for a few years and we're only hoping a panacea is found that cures it. Problem is, these issues are to the core - it will take some serious self-reflection on everyone's part to turn it around. Hard decisions are going to have to be made or anarchy is a possibility. Scary, but either we change the system or the inevitability is going to stare us in the face - and I'm going to guess it isn't going to assume the form of the Stay Pufft Marshmallow Man. Something scarier - like ABBA.

In other 'end of world' chatter, two stories, a month apart, caught my eye. The first is that Philip K Dick's personal bible is up on ebay: http://io9.com/5828459/philip-k-dicks-bible-is-on-ebay-for-6500?comment=41637724#comments and http://cgi.ebay.com/PHILIP-K-DICKS-BIBLE-HOLOGRAPH-NOTES-/230653765080?pt=Antiquarian_Collectible&hash=item35b40925d8 . The comments on io9 are interesting in that it's seems far-fetched that a sane, science fiction writer can become Christian. Many of the great works of fantasy and sci-fi come from self-avowed lovers of Christ. Great Scott!

The real question is why do secularists find it so ponderous; that genre writing somehow has to be written by pure agnostics? Are PKD's novels less worthy because he found God?

For me, who has a haphazard Faith at best (I try) and only recently 'religious', even when I was not a believer, it never entered my worldview not to read C.S. Lewis, Dick, Tolkein, Stevenson, Shakespeare, Einstein, Burgess, et. al. Nor did I feel the need to put away Twain or Heller or stop listening to George Carlin. If my worldview were to change simply because I read or heard a diatribe in either direction, then my self-knowledge is deeply and irrevocably harmed. I hope that my opinion is based on a handsome experience of introspection and hate of fashion.

Before the PKD Bible, this article was early from last month: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110714103828.htm. A scientific study that determined we are predisposed to faith and a belief in god. I'll not dive into my own theories, but remark on my mind's first blush upon reading it: "we believe we know so much now, and, perhaps, we really don't know everything yet." A more recent article found that 20% of atheists have spiritual leanings.

Either way, as the world seems to burn around us, let's be humble, either for God or for Science and eat a bit of dust, tear at our clothes and remember that we don't know shit. Maybe a little humility is in order, all of ye. The other poem stuck in my head the last couple of days is from Shelley:

'Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".'