A forge is a place where a block or chunk of rough, shiny rock that conducts electricity well is melted and molded, bent and beaten into an object of specific purpose and function such as a weapon, a tool, an object meant just for art. It's not an easy process, for the metal or the metalworker: it's hot and loud and repetitive. It's actually quite a violent process if you think about it. This chunk of special rock is put through a storm of pounding, burning, cooling, bending, shaping—it's repeatedly struck and forced to conform to the smith's creativity. Yet after all of the heating and cooling and hammers and anvils, something useful and beautiful is made, something strong and valuable.
When you encounter something you haven't seen or heard before, you test it (or at least you should). You put it through the fire to see if it stands up to the tests of life, to see if it's the stuff of Reality, the materials of Life. If this isn't your common practice, you should make it so. Test things, question things—but don't do just that because then you'll only have cynicism. No, challenge what you hear, but always be learning. Have a humble posture that will relent your biases and previous beliefs if you find something that instead is true. Always be working the hammer and bellows on something.
That's what I want this to be—or begin to be at least—a place primarily where ideas are forged: mine, yours, everyone's. A shaping furnace for ideas, beliefs, opinions, notions, thoughts. I will share what's being forged in me, that it might be forged in you too. I want this to be an arena too: not just my thoughts and your comments, but my thoughts and your thoughts smelted together in the fires of passionate pursuit of Truth. Don't worry, though, there'll be fun along the way too.
Lemme tell you one important thing: this will not be a politically correct blog. Life is not politics, so we don't need to live our lives by political principles. It's the other way around: politics should come out of life. Political principles should not contradict actual living, as good lives make good politicians. "Politically correct"—and most things labeled "political" or "diplomatic" these days—is a disguise. It's nice-sounding coverup for words and a way of speaking that are so watered down and afraid of offending anyone that they end up hurting the audience by depriving them of real facts. But it gets worse: in our society that cries for tolerance and equal opportunity, we dilute our speech to the point that it not only obscures facts, but sucks out the opinion of the speaker. We'll tolerate the people that are doing "new" and "different" things, but people following tradition are certainly to be silenced. They are crazy and should not be allowed to use "hate speech" and "lies". What about "good" and "bad" rather than "progressive" and "traditional" (more accurately "change" and "don't change")? What about doing what works, what's good, whether we've been doing it or not? "I do not agree with you (but I can still talk to you)", the slogan of postmodernism, has been twisted to mean "I'm disgusted with you (and can't talk to you rationally)". This is not the tolerance people claim. It makes no sense, so its fruitlessness will be abandoned here. Enjoy the impending thrill of actual discussion of beliefs and thoughts stated with the force of a hammer striking an anvil.
