rscarbonneau - Update for 10-26

Two new pages this week, since I've been a bit of a slacker lately. Updates Monday and Friday.

I attended the Windy City Comicon yesterday, and though it was small, it was full of heart. I can see it becoming a significant event in the near future. It was good to have a good old-fashioned con in Chicago, and in Boystown no less. Theatre up the hall from the con, Drag Queen pageant on the second floor, and an air of community all over.
The original plan was to attend the con then head to my buddy Patrick's studio space with Michael Peterson and work on a comic jam together, but instead we retired back to my place with colleague, friend, and writer Len Kody who skipped the after-party for some Chinese food, bourbon and grab-assing. Take that how you will.

I'm also working on a project with talented artist Jonathan Bass to be revealed in the near future.

I'm so happy for the feedback and love that The Marvel is receiving. Jack is an important figure to remember in these times of change when individuality, personal ambition, and a rebellious spirit struggle against ego, herd mentality, and complacency. It is my hope that Jack's life can be an inspiration and a lesson. He was far from perfect, but he can inspire us to reach beyond ego and the demands of society to take control of our future.
Whether you believe that change will come with the November election, or with global consciousness expansion in 2012, or you think it's aliens or revolution that will cause that change to happen, what we need to change first are ourselves. It's not enough to hope for change. We need to be the types of beings who are ready to embrace the future. Evolution on a personal scale, love, and awareness can change the world.
I'm going to leave off today with a quote from Jack from the first chapter of "Freedom Is a Two Edged Sword." It concerns tyranny, and also liberalism. I tend to agree with him. If you're interested, you can read the rest here.

For numberless centuries society accepted the proposition that certain men were created to be slaves. Their natural function was to serve priests, kings and nobles, men of substance and property who were appointed slave-masters by almighty God. This system was reinforced by the established doctrine that all men and women were owned 'in mind' by the church and 'in body' by the state. This convenient situation was supported by the authority of social morality, religion and even philosophy.

Against this doctrine, some two hundred years ago, rose the most astonishing heresy the world has yet seen; the principle of liberalism. In essence this principle stated that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights which belong to every man as his birthright. This idea appealed to certain intractable spirits -- heretics, atheists and revolutionaries -- and has since made some headway in spite of the opposition of the majority of organized society. As a slogan, however, it has become so popular that it is rendered unwilling lip-service by all the major states and yet it is still so distasteful to persons in authority that it is nowhere embodied as a fundamental law and is continually violated in letter and in spirit by every trick of bigotry and reaction. Further, absolutist and totalitarian groups of the most vicious nature use liberalism as a cloak under which they move to re-establish tyrannies and to extinguish the liberty of all who oppose them.

Thus religious groups seek to abrogate freedom of art, speech and the press; reactionaries move to suppress labor, communists to establish dictatorships -- and all in the name of 'freedom'. Because of the peculiar definitions of freedom used by some of these camouflaged tyrants, it seems necessary to redefine Freedom in the terms understood by Voltaire, Paine, Washington, Jefferson and Emerson.

Freedom is a two-edged sword of which one edge is liberty and the other, responsibility. Both edges are exceedingly sharp and the weapon is not suited to casual, cowardly or treacherous hands.

Since all tyrannies are based on dogma and since all dogmas are based on lies, it behooves us to look beyond them for truth and freedom will both be far away. And yet the Truth is that we know nothing...