Monday, June 27, 2005

Where is the Life we have lost in Living?

Moslems do have valid points of criticism of the modern world, and so do the feared and hated fundamentalist Christian. We would do well to consider those objections when we think of our positions as anti-fascists and anti-jihadis.

Below is a truncated version of a Victorian poem by Francis Thompson, followed by a news article from the Internet. There's more than a gulf of nearly 100 years between the two pieces: There's a gulf between us today in our own settlement of mind, as T.S. Elliot writes above. What is better? What is the Good Deed we wish to do?
***

"The Hound of Heaven."

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

***

Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields

Be dunged with rotten death?

Now of that long pursuit

Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
"And is thy earth so marred,

Shattered in shard on shard?

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing,
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught," He said,

"And human love needs human meriting,

How hast thou merited--
Of all man's clotted clay rhe dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee

Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms.
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.

All which thy child's mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for the at home;
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"

Halts by me that footfall;
Is my gloom, after all,

Shade of His hand, outstreched caressingly?

"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."

Francis Thompson (1859-1907)

***

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15739502-13762,00.html

News Home | Story
Boffins create zombie dogs
By Nick Buchan of NEWS.com.au
June 27, 2005
From:

SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans. US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.

Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.

The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.

But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.

Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre.

However rather than sending people to sleep for years, then bringing them back to life to benefit from medical advances, the boffins would be happy to keep people in this state for just a few hours,

But even a this should be enough to save lives such as battlefield casualties and victims of stabbings or gunshot wounds, who have suffered huge blood loss.

Duing the procedure blood is replaced with saline solution at a few degrees above zero. The dogs' body temperature drops to only 7C, compared with the usual 37C, inducing a state of hypothermia before death.

Although the animals are clinically dead, their tissues and organs are perfectly preserved.

Damaged blood vessels and tissues can then be repaired via surgery. The dogs are brought back to life by returning the blood to their bodies,giving them 100 per cent oxygen and applying electric shocks to restart their hearts.

Tests show they are perfectly normal, with no brain damage.

"The results are stunning. I think in 10 years we will be able to prevent death in a certain segment of those using this technology," said one US battlefield doctor.
***

Fascism offers some answers to the questions of life that we Moderns cannot answer with facility. We have to unravel our responses to these dilemmas to know where we stand so we can effectivley combat fascist Islam. There's more to this problem than deportation of Europe's and America's Moslem masses and melting Mecca. What kind of people are we, and what kind of people do we wish to become in our quest for universal revolutionary modernity?

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