Tsk, tsk

Pretty Lady is sorry to see that Voxy-poo is up to his self-indulgent little tricks again, and is bullying people with Asperger's. Of course, since the victims in question have Asperger's, they probably don't realize they're being bullied, but still, Voxy should know better. People who are struggling, in however dim a manner, with apparent ontological paradox, do not need someone coming at them with aggressively linear confrontation. The cognitive dissonance thus produced is likely to fuse their fragile little psyches even more determinedly shut.

Because, as Pretty Lady keep saying, over and over and over, it's a question of levels. Sometimes it seems to her that most people view the world as a fused, warty mass of physio-logo-psycho-emotiono sludge, and it is no mystery to her why they get so depressed. They persist in behaving as though any problem can be solved upon the same level at which it is created, which to her is obvious nonsense. To get perspective, one steps away. One steps away and regards the whole.

When Pretty Lady steps away from purported ontological paradigms which present her a sucker's choice, she notes a staggeringly obvious thing. That is, that the vast majority of persons who choose not to believe in God are, in fact, blazingly angry with Him. They are angry for the simple reason that evil and suffering exist. Since, on some level, they hold God responsible for this entire physio-logo-psycho-emotiono mess, they hold Him equally responsible for the evil and for the suffering. Their revenge is to decline to believe in Him. Nanny-nanny-boo-boo.

As if that helps.

Since, then, the obstacle to belief in God is, at root, an emotional one, one may argue Logos until the stars burn out, and nothing will have been achieved. One may have bolstered one's sense of ego-self, but as Pretty Lady has been explaining for quite some time now, bolstering one's ego-self is the whole entire problem.

So Pretty Lady shall, once again, put forth an ontological paradigm that eradicates the sucker's choice at the root, and see if those poor benighted souls like hers any better.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?

Right off the bat, here, we are presupposing that God is external to the equation; that there is God, and there is something outside of God to be prevented. This is unspeakably sloppy thinking. Pretty Lady dismisses this question on the basis of insufficient grounding.

Is he able, but not willing?

Pretty Lady recalls reading something about Free Will, in a document which purports to explain something of the motivations of God. She recalls that this freedom of will is allegedly bestowed by God onto those of His creation. So if we postulate that God is not separate from His creation, and has extended free will to that creation, then obviously the will of creation is equal and identical to that of God.

Thus the proper question to ask is, 'Are we able, but not willing?'

Then whence cometh evil?

Obviously, evil cometh from denying the will of God within us, which we are perfectly able to do, since our will is equal and identical to His.

So it seems to Pretty Lady that those persons who are permanently enraged with God over the question of evil are behaving in a similar way to that of Pretty Lady's former best friend, who, suddenly, out of the blue, accused Pretty Lady of 'taking pot-shots' at her. She was adamantly certain that Pretty Lady was out to undermine her, from motivations of envy and jealousy, despite a mountain of consistent evidence to the contrary. Moreover, she claimed to know Pretty Lady's motives better than Pretty Lady did herself, and declined to offer Pretty Lady an opportunity of explaining or defending her alleged 'pot-shot' behavior, but rather convicted and sentenced her without trial.

Pretty Lady's hands were tied, because there was nothing at all within Pretty Lady which could influence her friend's opinions, gleaned as they were wholly from the friend's own fantastic projections. Equally, when her friend offered to 'forgive' her for the alleged pot-shots, the offer was meaningless, because it presupposed the existence of a nonexistent offense which required forgiveness. Pretty Lady remained slandered.

Thus, Pretty Lady and her former best friend remain at outs, despite the absence of any concrete evil in their interactions. All that is required is for one of them to declare, 'But lo! I have made a mistake. I have committed an Error of Perception. You were not out to get me at all; it was only my own silly imagination.'

Pretty Lady Runs Screaming from the Room

Darlings, Pretty Lady has a confession to make. It has been a rough couple of years for her. You see, upon moving to New York City, Pretty Lady made a Stupid Mistake. She got involved with a paranoid, psychotic, abusive individual.

It has taken Pretty Lady a great deal of Quiet Time to mend the after-effects of her relationship with this person, on her sensitive psyche. She has tended toward an unwonted Reclusion. She has done a lot of yoga, and taken some road trips. She has, as you all know, blogged a lot. She is doing much better, now; thank you for asking.

One of the things that Pretty Lady has done, to distract her mind from horrors best left undescribed, is to Meet New People. She has gone seeking in Different Horizons; she figured that whatever was drawing her toward paranoia and psychosis, would be likely avoided in territories having nothing to do with Angry Atheists from New York City.

And now this.

9/11 was minor in comparison to biological/nuclear terrorism. If, instead of a couple of buildings collapsing, a tactical nuclear device were to be detonated in New York harbor, rendering all of Manhattan and depending upon wind direction, all of Long Island instantly uninhabitable for a period of up to 30-60 days and hazardous for decades afterward? If instead of a single city, this was multiplied by tactical nukes going off in multiple coastal cities, and add in an EMP burst, launched from a container ship in the Gulf which takes out most of the electric grid and all communications systems?

Desert Cat, you are channelling the Angry Atheist. This text is ripped verbatim from a typical Angry Atheist rant.

Crom, you too. And even Boysmom is in on it.

Pretty Lady is feeling faint. She is Reeling. She feels as though the world is collapsing down to one diseased, paranoid psyche, with her in it. There is no escape. None! Do you hear? Pretty Lady has gas in her Pathfinder! She has the zero degree down bag, she has bolt-holes both North and South, she's got a good pair of boots, a big box of safety matches, a tent and knowledge of basic woodscraft!

BUT THIS WILL NOT SAVE HER. She sees that now. Nothing can save her from the voices in her head. The voices of Doom, of Stasis, of Fatalism; the dirty bomb that is forever about to hit Manhattan, the reason all optimistic and healing endeavors are pointless, the reason Pretty Lady's affection and joy is never the center of anyone's heart, but merely a pleasant and temporary distraction.

Desert Cat, it is too late to save Pretty Lady's sanity. She is, and has always been, a Marked Woman.

Pretty Little Isms

In order to forestall any potential controversy which may arise from Pretty Lady's idle musings, let it be stated up-front that Pretty Lady is exceedingly racist. She is also elitist, classist, sexist, and homophobic. This said, she is not particularly prejudiced in favor of White Male Patriarchs, either; she is disposed to regard most complete strangers with a hefty dose of jingoistic suspicion. Pretty Lady, in fact, is a veritable monolithic amalgamation of stereotyping, pigeonholing, bigotry, and ignorance. She admits these facts freely and without shame.

Horribly, it is also true that Pretty Lady rather likes herself. She rather likes other people, too. The other people she likes tend to be a colorful lot. They Run The Gamut, in fact. Pretty Lady likes extremists, moderates, left-wingers, right-wingers, gay people, straight people, confused people, religious people, atheists, agnostics, liberals, conservatives, black people, white people, brown people, men, women, children, bigots, racists, sinners and saints. As a partial and highly incomplete list.

The people she doesn't like--if she may get confessional about it--fall into two rough categories. The first, of course, is Evil People, whom are not the topic under discussion today--the Alpha cat had a nasty attack of diarrhea this morning, and it reminded Pretty Lady all too clearly of her look down a festering sewer of...well, let us leave that alone.

The second category was inspired by a lengthy and poetic diatribe by La Belle Dame. Althought Pretty Lady did not understand many of the references, not being one to embroil herself in endless, circular bouts of name-calling (owning up to all the Names herself), she extracted a nugget of wisdom which perfectly expressed her ongoing feelings upon a certain issue.

What I can't stand is incuriosity.

Because if you're not even interested in the Other Person, then how can you possibly expect to be genuinely empathetic? You can't. Instead, you end up playing "let's pretend."

Ah! Pretty Lady was astounded. There it is! So clearly articulated! So simple! The source of the vast majority of her Extreme Discomfort around certain individuals.

Now, darlings, let it be known that if you are reading this, Pretty Lady is not speaking to you. Indeed, she feels profoundly fortunate to know so many deep, fascinating, wondrously Engaged persons. Not for Pretty Lady's friends, the endless, solipsistic spinnings, the hurling of ill-considered epithets, the knee-jerk defensiveness, the unexamined inner conviction that it's All About Them. No, Pretty Lady's elite group of associates will have none of that. They go in for ruminative fireside chats, perspicacious observations, whimsical asides, and a rather conspicuous lack of interest in deciding Who is Racist, Sexist, Elitist, Homophobic, or a Bad Person.

Because Pretty Lady's elite, wise friends know, from wry experience, that all of us are a bit like that. It is part of our fallen nature. We have resigned ourselves to being the incomplete and imperfect souls that we are, and, in awakened curiosity and humility, we go forth to remedy a small portion of our ignorance.

The Angry Atheist

Of course you darlings were too polite to ask. But she can hear you wondering.

"Of all the colorful characters in Pretty Lady's shadowy past," you think, "why is it that the one we have not heard about is the Angry Atheist? Surely this one is the most colorful of all. Surely she could mine this character to the fullest extent, in her cautionary tales of Tolerance Gone Mad. Surely there is infinite fodder here for wry, picaresque and illustrative self-mockery, for Adventures on the Edge, for voyages into the absurd that one can only dream of. Why is Pretty Lady so uncharacteristically reticent on the subject?"

The truth is, friends, that the Angry Atheist was the one who sobered her up. It was no laughing matter, this relationship. The Angry Atheist is the reason that Pretty Lady leads the all but monastic life she leads today. And for that, she supposes she must thank him.

You see, darlings, Atheism, despite its pretense to strict rationalism, is anything but. It is a philosophy rife with superstition, fanaticism, evangelism and irrationality. In the hands of a person with formidable intellect (as indeed, intellect has always been one of Pretty Lady's primary requirements in a consort, however these gentlemen may be lacking in other respects), it can become a dangerous weapon. The shell-shock incurred by experiencing the side-effects of this destructive philosophy, up close and personal, for a period of years, veritably smelted Pretty Lady. It rent her to her foundations, and she has spent the subsequent years painstakingly constructing her soul anew.

Superstition? you say. How so?

One of the hallmarks of Atheism, as Pretty Lady experienced it, is a wholly irrational trust in the efficacy of Transference. That is, the belief that one can solve a perceived problem by focussing one's energies on something that is not the problem at all. This human intellectual failing can be summed up in that hoary old joke, "What are you doing?" "Looking for my car keys." "Are you sure this is where you dropped them?" "No, I lost them in the other block. But there's more light over here."

The doings of the Angry Atheist were almost wholly dictated by this unexamined philosophy. It manifested in the manner in which he dealt with his chronic, simmering, unappeasable rage; in order to avoid showering his nearest and dearest with such (this included Pretty Lady, up until the bitter end), he would habitually pick fights with persons he believed to be both peripheral and deserving targets. Such as cops.

Of course, the laws of Karma being what they are, not to mention the nature of cops, this habit had some not inconsiderable side effects. The Angry Atheist would frequently complain, "I'm always getting guns pointed at me. Even when I'm not doing anything. Especially when I'm not doing anything. Cops have it out for me."

"That is because you look like Bernhard Goetz, darling," Pretty Lady would reply. The A.A. did not find this amusing, but it was true. Cops, both good ones and bad ones, have a certain intuitive sense for sensing dangerous auras in random persons; the combination of high intellect and smouldering rage creates a particularly palpable field. Ergo the stories.

"All I was doing was riding my bicycle in the rain alongside the Billyburg Bridge," he stormed. "This cop car came up behind me and forced me onto the sidewalk. Then he gave me a ticket for reckless endangerment, because I was riding on the sidewalk. I gave that asshole a piece of my mind, all right; I went as far as humanly possible without getting arrested."

This story occurred very late in the relationship, so Pretty Lady was not quite as sympathetic as she might have been hitherto.

"I'm sensing two distinct elements in this story," Pretty Lady replied, tersely. "One is gross injustice, certainly; but the other one is YOU." The A.A. cut short the conversation.

Now, the Real Reason for the Atheist's chronic rage was, of course, a set of absolutely vile progenitors. There is no doubt in Pretty Lady's mind that this man was raised by abusive creepazolas. His anger was, then, completely understandable. It was also completely pointless, because 1) the abusive creepazolas were thoroughly, physically dead by the time she met the Atheist, and 2) he was committedly perpetuating the effects of their abuse upon himself, by choosing to remain in his state of impotent, humorless ire against them.

Of course, the Atheist's philosophy of choice made any other methodology of rage-management impossible, because the notion of healing and forgiveness was a ridiculous fairy tale, in his opinion. He subscribed entirely to a mechanistic vision of psychology, as well as every other science; if one generates Rage, the only thing to do is to Vent it. Like ammonia, or fluorocarbons, or ozone.

Pretty Lady, at the time she met the Atheist, was firmly entrenched in a state of undiagnosed co-dependency. Her idealistic notion was, that if she just loved the Atheist enough, if she understood that the root of his outbursts was his own deep woundedness, if she accepted him for himself, that this would Heal him. So she proceeded to do so. She tolerated all manner of egregious, offensive outbursts, in the name of Divine Love. She was a total idiot.

For tolerating the Atheist's chronic venting of spiritual poison did HIM no good at all, and very nearly killed Pretty Lady. Since the violent demise of this relationship, Pretty Lady has had no tolerance left over, whatsoever. She is a wee bit Hypersensitive, in fact. That is why, when any person at all vents his Spleen in her direction, she has developed a habit of intolerantly calling him on his toxicity, and in the event of failure to apologize, she cuts the connection. Any other practice is wantonly self-destructive.

Fetching the Dictionary

Pretty Lady is delighted that her fan base tends to be Persons of Quality. She feels that she must be doing something right, to attract such a number of earnest ladies and gentlemen, desiring to become better ones. Thus, perhaps, she is preaching to the choir when she hauls out the dictionary, for a precise definition of one of the most under-considered words (in her opinion) of both the current and previous centuries.

integrity n 1: an unimpaired condition: SOUNDNESS 2: firm adherence to a code of esp. moral or artistic values: INCORRUPTIBILITY 3: the quality or state of being complete or undivided: COMPLETENESS syn 1 see HONEST ant duplicity 2 see UNITY

Pretty Lady's extensive personal experience has led her to the empirical observation that if you haven't got this, you're screwed. Pretty much.

The important thing to observe, as you are contemplating the three sub-definitions of this deep and mysterious word, is that all three of them apply equally, in consideration of character. One must be, at the same time, sound, incorruptible, and complete. Also honest. Do not forget honest. One must first be honest with oneself, before one can be so with others.

But hang all of this philosophical exploration. What you really want to hear is the juicy details of why Pretty Lady didn't marry any of those jerks.

Much has been made of Pretty Lady's Terrible Taste in Men, but little consideration has been paid to the details of this terribility. Pretty Lady has one Achilles flaw--she can't STAND being bored. She requires a partner who keeps her on her toes. She prefers the company of one curly-headed anarchist who traipses the hills of Mexico with random blonde women, airily spinning theories of psychology and social philosophy off the top of his head, to a truckload of Wealthy and Upstanding Echo Chambers. This is NOT because she has an abiding interest in anarchy, or hiking, or compulsive womanizing; she just needs to be intellectually challenged. To be Predictable, with Pretty Lady, is to be Toast.

So Pretty Lady went from the Social Activist S/M Bondage addict, to the Emotionally Abusive Buddhist Monk, to the Curly Headed Womanizer, to the Angry Atheist. All these men had three things in common--enormously high intelligence, a habit of thinking outside the box, and a fractured psyche. The third element was what torched the relationship. One cannot relate wholly to another person when one is busy avoiding oneself.

This does not have to be so.

You see, friends, the true personality of an individual never adheres to stereotype. The nature of a human is to be deep and contradictory. The difficulty comes in when one attempts to rigidly adhere to a code, any code, while roughly suppressing most of one's psyche, or ignoring it, and letting it atrophy. This is the true reason for those hordes of automatons who parrot the party line ad nauseam, whatever party it might be--Democrat, Republican, Fundamentalist, or "yes, dear." These people are simply too lazy and frightened to think, and Pretty Lady despises them all.

None of these are in present company, she trusts.

No, the trap Pretty Lady has consistently fallen into is to get engrossed, not in the complications of a smart fellow earnestly trying to understand himself, but those of a smart fellow, seriously messed up. Avoidance of one's own deep mental fractures can provide, roughly, a year and a half's worth of fascinating and labyrinthine tangles, before the tape starts its repeat loop. It is not a coincidence that a year and a half is roughly the half-life of Pretty Lady's relationships.

So what to do? How do you tell which complicated, striving young man is worth the effort, and which is a bright but avoidant loser?

Pretty Lady postulates the Occam's Razor:

petty adj 1: having secondary rank or importance: MINOR, SUBORDINATE 2: having little or no importance or significance 3: marked by or reflective of narrow interests and sympathies: SMALL-MINDED

When Pretty Lady looks back over her life, the first Red Flag has always been when somebody got petty with her. When the Angry Atheist refused to visit her apartment because parking might be difficult, despite the fact that parking was equally difficult (and earlier) in his neighborhood. When the Curly Headed Womanizer walked too fast on the way to the theatre. When the Pretty Narcissist barked at her for folding back the last page of an ancient science magazine. When the Psychotic Ex threw a tantrum because her friends talked about something that didn't interest him.

Pettiness is a sign of avoidance. Because when someone goes nuts over which movie to see, a stain on their clothing, an aversion to feathers, it is never about that. It's about some huge gap in their mental landscape which they are desperately trying to conceal. It's about a deep-seated fear of commitment, an unwillingness to assume responsibility, low self-esteem, poisonous envy, or existential terror. Petty people are dangerous. They will throw you into the jaws of their dragons, in order to avoid slaying them themselves.

Which is unutterably foolish, because then they are left with the dragon and without Pretty Lady, who makes a profession out of coaching people through the basics of dragon handling and slaughter. But one must never equate "intelligent" with "rational."