Marriage – or Forward to the Past

Marriage – or Forward to the Past – by P.K. Odendaal – December 2015

 

Whether it is forward to the past or back the future, I do not really know or care, because what is important is that we do not want to go here – a place we call today. I mean with regard to marriage, the family, education and cultural and social affairs. We have seen enough and we have had enough. Who will save us from ourselves?

When I wrote A Parody on Marriage, there were just too many questions, idiosyncrasies, pretension and contradictions to keep a rational person sane in the dichotomies which developed from the conclusions. So, I had to rethink and relive the whole thing. What was clear, however, was that the way of choosing a spouse today was just not working anymore and was leading us nowhere, if such a destination could be found at all. In fact, the remedies we are applying to save our marriages are exactly those which destroy it.

The Market

The Market – by P.K. Odendaal - November 2015.

If there is one which interests me immensely, it is the Market, but for totally different reasons that you might think – and it is totally non-market related.

I was inspired to write this article after my excursion, in my previous article, into the realms of Cause and Effect, which led me to apply it to the Market and Economics and their offspring called Supply and Demand.

Cause and Effect

Cause and Effect – by P.K.Odendaal - November 2015.

Up until now I have broadly written about cause and effect as if everybody knew exactly what it was, but on reflection I realise that I have buttered over its more serious and subtle aspects and paid lip service to its own cause and effect.

As a start we all know that every cause has an effect and some causes have a multitude of effects called ramifications, but I have not yet stood still to consider who or what causes these causes. We should also realise that many or most effects are again causes in themselves, if they are not corrected or relegated. They can in fact be managed and altered quite successfully, and the earlier you start, the easier it gets to change them.

Finding ourselves

Finding ourselves – by P.K.Odendaal – November 2015

I have heard many people say that they want to calm down their lifestyle to find themselves and I have also in the distant past made this remark, but what bothers me really is that none of those have ever told me that they have indeed found themselves. This was rekindled in my mind a few days ago when someone repeated that desire in my presence, to which I replied: Forget it, nobody has ever found them self.

Or have they?

The Gift of Flight - Part 5 - Learning to fly

The Gift of Flight - Part 5 - Learning to fly – by P.K. Odendaal – October 2015.

Twelve years later …

I have a Consulting Engineering practice and I work on diverse sites spread all over the province I live in. A simple building foundation inspection takes me thirty minutes, but I have to drive there for five hours and back for five hours. It cannot go on like this for long.

And then I had a dream ...

The Gift of Flight - Part 4 - I learned to fly

The Gift of Flight  - Part 4 - The I learned to fly – by P.K.Odendaal – August 2015.

Last night I came back from a flight to Zimbabwe where we were for the annual church conference of our congregation there, having had to fly the President of the Mission to attend it. It is the last leg of our journey and I take off from Polokwane, where we went through immigration and customs and where we refuelled. It has just become dark and the lights of the city are so beautiful when I climb out after take-off and turn left onto my course for Witbank where I live. It has been some time since my last night flight and I have to concentrate to fly on instruments, because the night and country is quite dark as we leave the ambits of the city.

The root of suffering

The root of suffering – by P.K.Odendaal – August 2015

 

I think we have lost the thread somewhere or we got blindfolded by the biblical axiom.

The biblical axiom says that the love of money is the root of all evil. If that is so then we are exempt from the injunction that we are the sinners – money really is; so that cannot be, as we know too well. Giving money the blame for all our sins will just not fly. I think we read that axiom incorrectly or our deduction of the relationship between sin, evil and suffering is wrong.

Doubt and Fear

Doubt and Fear – by P.K.Odendaal – July 2015.

I have, like everybody else, my doubts about many things and I find that I know and believe what other people doubt, and I doubt what other people know and believe. I also know that doubt, like fear, pervades our whole existence and none of them should, as they should only be present to protect us from our own folly.

As for fear, I have largely learned how to fight it and to use it as a protection, and I might have made some progress in fighting doubt and using it for my protection.

Love and Marriage – Part 2 – Here comes the Bribe

Love and Marriage – Part 2 – Here comes the Bribe – by P.K.Odendaal – July 2015.

I have written quite a few articles on marriage and although, when I start, I am adamant to write seriously about it, I always end up in satire. Why this is so I do not know, but I would think that a healthy dose of satire and humour is an essential ingredient to making marriages work.

Secondly, I am always uncertain from which viewpoint I must write about it. From my own viewpoint it would be quite farcical, emotional and chauvinistic, but this article is not a farce and neither should it be emotionally loaded and it should also be a balance between the sexes, because a successful marriage is a very delicately balanced institution.

Wholism, Synergy and Symbiosis

Wholism, Synergy and Symbiosis - by P.K.Odendaal - July 2015.

So I am again delving deeply into things sinister and profound. What do these three things have in common and how does it affect us? Superficially I think that they are all important to us, but somehow this generation has sold them down the river, when in fact they are crucial to our survival - individually or as a race.
There are at least three definitions of Wholism or Holism and the one that I will be using here is the philosophical and political one which states that the whole is stronger or better than the sum of its parts. The extra strength is not in this case because the parts are just fitted strongly together, but rather the notion that the whole takes on a life of its own as it applies to groups because of synergy. In a group almost all the individuals are stronger than what they are individually because of the synergy which can easily develop in such groups.

Killing me softly

Killing me softly – by P.K.Odendaal _ June 2015.

The only thing a man ever needs to fear is himself - from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

No, this is not about the song by that name but a siren song of humans. It is about killing ourselves in a subtle way and is a continuation of my previous article on self-destruction.

Reception, Deception and Rejection

Father’s day 2015 and self-destruction – by P.K.Odendaal – June 2015.

For Father’s day 2015

Go ask the rolling river (a living thing)
Why it flows in ceaseless motion (from where it originated in the mountain)
To the all-absorbing ocean, (its grave)
Finding there the final goal. (its death)
It will say, I’m driven onward
By a force beyond control. (gravity)
From The Elixir of Love by Donizetti

The cause of rejection in ourselves is mainly from a mistaken identity. We have not identified or found ourselves or our place in this world, or we have not fashioned our identity at youth to someone we admire and respect, mainly for not having such a person on our radar, and the effects of this is devastating in our lives.

Love and Marriage - Part 1

Love and Marriage - Part 1

By P.K.Odendaal - 6 May 2015.

PATIENCE: Lady Angela, tell me two things. Firstly, what on earth is this love that upsets everybody; and, secondly, how is it to be distinguished from insanity?

(from Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan)
 

A well-known song goes like this:

Love and marriage goes together like a horse and carriage.

Pondering Chance ... or what you lose on the swing

Pondering Chance ... or what you lose on the swing - by P.K.Odendaal - April 2015

If you know what the meaning of this heading and even the rest of this article is, then you know much more than I do, which is not very difficult, I have to admit, especially for my readers.

In fact, one of the reasons I write these articles is that I know so little about these subjects I write about, and that prompts me to think and rethink them from all possible angles and viewpoints so that I might come up with some flimsy untested hypothesis based on a new perspective and some logic in which I can believe - much like the great scientists of our day do.

A God for all seasons - a secular view

A God for all seasons - a secular view - by P.K.Odendaal - April 2015.

 

We had joy, we had fun,

We had seasons in the sun,

But the stars that we could reach,

Were just starfish on the beach.

(by Rod Mc Kuen and Terry Jacks)

 

As we all know, the subject of my article is an aberration of the famous play and later film named 'A man of all seasons' by Robert Bolt which depicts the life of Sir Thomas More, the Chancellor of the Exchequer during the reign of King Henry VIII. The plot is based on the true story of Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century Chancellor of England, who refused to endorse King Henry VIII's wish to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon, who did not bear him a son, so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, the sister of his former mistress. The play portrays More as a man of principle, envied by rivals such as Thomas Cromwell and loved by the common people and by his family.

I should have known better - a satire

I should have known better - a satire by P.K.Odendaal - April 2015.

I have heard this being said many times too often and I have said it myself many times too often - and yet, it is a lie that we repeat again and again. We must mean something else when we say it because it is patently false.

If we should have known everything better, then we would have to know everything perfectly in advance - before the event, and that would be impossible and boring and frightening. If we pretend or liked to have known everything perfectly, then we would have had perfect vision which is called hindsight - and that is the perfect science.

The essence of slavery

The essence of slavery - by P.K.Odendaal - March 2015.

So we say slavery is an abominable thing, a crime against humanity, a thing of centuries past and the only slavery of any import today is in the trading of humans and of sex. Or is it?

Similar to my views on sanity are my views on slavery, and it is not by any co-incidence that I worked on an article named 'Playing sane', when this one pleaded for precedence. This article may well have had the name of 'Playing free' or 'Playing normal'.

Hello government, goodbye human rights

Hello government, goodbye human rights - by P.K.Odendaal - March 2015

 

I have written a few articles on democracy, and in that you must have sensed my scepticism of democracy. In my mind it just cannot work. It is like freedom - such a noble thought - but it kills in the end.

However, today I wish to look a bit broader to other state forms and even more local to local governments, municipalities and push the idea to clubs. All these have the same philosophy in common. In each of them you would vote for a representative who is supposed to look after your interests - and they do that well for the first few months, but as soon as nobody is watching, they start embezzling funds, abuse power and follow their own agenda.

Making fools of ourselves

Making fools of ourselves - by P.K.Odendaal - January 2015

 

I think appropriately civilized and appropriately educated people's most enjoyable and even coveted activity is fooling themselves. Mea culpa.

I was inspired to pursue this line of thought when I discovered traces of denial, hypocritical, misleading and neurotic syndromes in my life on one of my regular self-shrinking expeditions. And coming to think of it, I have written a few articles about how things are not what they seem to be, without gaining the perspective then that I should have. I have also written an article on 'What kind of fool am I' which should also have warned me of imminent danger then already.