The impact of a Flat Earth disturbs my composure little compared to the shock it exerts on many othe
The impact of a Flat Earth disturbs my composure little compared to the shock it exerts on many other people, close family members included. Perhaps it is because I am old, not venerably old, I am unpopularly old. I am a Boomer. I am so old that I remember admiring William Blake for antagonizing the Free-Masonic cabal of Isaac Newton, Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Flawed mystic he may have been but Blake knew intuitively that the Earth was an infinite plane, that the canopy of the Firmament existed and that the sun was very little different from a burnished guinea coin suspended high overhead. As a young man I found his idiosyncrasies very congenial and amusing and so when the Flat Earth community came knocking, I sat down with cups of tea and biscuits and listened to them. Gun on the table I thought to myself that this is just a good natured and hilarious student prank, not unlike Screaming Lord Sutch and his Monster Raving Loony Party, fun but ephemeral. My walls by this stage were solid and erect. Years before, groping around in the dark I had discovered Stellar Parallax with the result that Blake and Pascal were rudely de-friended. I renounced them. I shifted my chips entirely over to the Newtonian side of the board. All at once I could see deep into outer space. I was free. I was the French Revolution concentrated. All the while though, tears were splashing my precious Julius Marlows. I could never claim to have been an atheist throughout this wild detour in my life but for a long spell I was certainly an agnostic. Quietly and incessantly the tears continued to ooze and run across my chest rusting here and there filthy holes in my cheap agnostic armor. One day, with the help of friends I junked my rusty tin suit and dragged my discontented frame back to Mass and the Sacraments. -- source link