Previous William Thomas Sherman Info Page postings, quotes, observations, etc.
["Cathedral de Santa Marķa la Menor, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic"]
One of the weightiest ramifications implicit in adopting the conclusion that spirit people do physically exist (and that such can be known and proven empirically) is the relation of such spirit persons to our ideas and understanding of cause and effect, and in addition, the role and relation of spirit people (at least criminal spirit people) with respect to ethical and or legal questions of guilt or blame. Time and again I find in reading a history or biography a historian quick to provide an explanation of some historical event(s) in which, given the author's understandable ignorance on the subject of spirit people, no consideration is made at all regarding what role spirit people might have played in what took place. For example, one historian urges that, after the discovery of the New World by Columbus, Spanish policy deemed it was necessary for the indigenous natives of the Caribbean to be enslaved; both for the purposes of mining gold and to use such slave natives as an inducement to settlers to come to America. However, if we factor in the possibility of spirit people influencing what was going on, it may have been meddling spirit people who were in the forefront of advocating slavery (for reasons and motives on their part I will here, in the interest of brevity, leave aside from enumerating or exploring), and that providing mine workers and an incentive to European colonists were, by comparison, not nearly so forceful or compelling as concerns. Or to give you another illustration, Edgar Allen Poe is characterized by one otherwise meticulous and erudite literary critic as a sot and something of a reprobate, and the mysterious difficulties he is reported to have encountered in the course of his career were entirely or almost entirely due to his failings as a human being. And yet if, and as I myself strongly suspect, Poe was someone being systematically harassed and tormented by spirit people, it is much easier to make sense of the mishaps and misfortunes that befell and afflicted him.
And notice in both of these cases -- spirit people may have been the most guilty party involved, and yet they do not even come up in the discussion; while at the same time, even if (for the sake of argument) they were involved in what transpired, some regular (flesh and blood) person or persons must be made culpable in their place and stead! If what I suggest is correct (and there are, as well, innumerable other examples, historical and contemporary, we could draw on for the purpose), then what gross distortion and outrageous injustice are the inevitable result of the historians, scholars or reporters efforts!
If then you would know the truth -- there are in point of fact clever, bullying, and manipulative spirit person who can drive a multitude of regular people like cattle to where they want them to go; all the more so as those regular people are lacking in rationality and a firm adherence to honesty and basic morals. But unlike cattle, such regular people under the influence will be the ones blamed for being so driven or what ever ends up happening, and not the drovers.
Here's an ensemble you don't get to see that often (and if you watch you'll also catch Steve Winwood and "Derek and the Dominoes" in addition to the rest listed.) Lower the YT volume also.
["Layla - Eric Clapton, The Stones, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page"]
There's not an emotion or feeling in all the world music cannot inspire, realize, or recreate in some significant measure and authentic degree -- such is its universal applicability and relevance to all life and all life experience.
Auguries, or predictions and decision making by means of augury, work on the basis of three principles:
1. You can always take them or leave them.
2. They never of themselves resolve a decision but merely support the one chosen.
3. They can or do inspire a confidence and resolve that is palpable, effective, and useful; even if the basis of such confidence is only wishful thinking or superstition.
In the somebody had to say something category...Man -- look how many great Washington state businesses taken over, re-located, were immensely downsized, or otherwise vanished within the past 20 years (due arguably to a concomitant rise in mobsters, gambling, and serial killers!) Here's a list just off the top of my head (can you think of others in addition to these?)
Boeing
Ranier Brewing
Farman's Pickles
Adams Peanut Butter
Frederick and Nelsons
Bon Marche
Friedlander & Sons
Microsoft (it now being a hollow shell of its former self.)
SeaFirst
Washington Mutual
A.C.T. (A Contemporary Theater)
Seattle Sonics
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Police Dept.
... not to mention quite number of high class restaurants and historical or long standing taverns in Seattle alone.
While I don't know they were Washington based -- what happened as well to Pay n Save, Pay n Pack, Ernst, House of Values -- all great stores? And though they're from out of state, we do still miss Shakeys and Farrells!
Later Note. I posted the above at my FaceBook page, and where I added further (and in response to someone else's comment):
"Part of the point I am and would be making and argue is that much of these economic and social changes are not merely a result of market forces following what would otherwise be their natural course, but that there is a distinctly and unabashed criminal element in big business that has risen to unparalleled prominence in recent decades and who do not play by the rules, and yet who also get away with acting as they do partly because they are so violent, dishonest, and unscrupulous, and in ways most ordinary folk don't expect and therefore are not prepared to deal with. And if you do protest what they do, you yourself can or will be come a potential target of their violence and extortion and no lawyer or police can or will help you if the pressure placed on you is sufficiently brutal and acute."
The Moody Blues album "Octave" had some stupendous and durable songs, and this is one of them.
["The Moody Blues - Had to fall in Love"]
Our own guilt and hypocrisy not unusually cause us to blame and find fault with others more than we otherwise would, and probably the most frequent and overriding reason for the very worst evil and injustice are someone's punishing someone else's alleged misconduct and or seeming lack of morals; and invariably accompanied (to some degree) by the persecuting perpetrator's consciousness of their own guilt; since all agree greatest grief is intended for the greatest guilt.