About Zarathustra
Zarathustra is a pen name and a virtual web person loosely based on the fictionalized protagonist, Zarathustra, found in Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Zarathustra Speaks Again! is an artful play on words. The Avestan Zara?uštra of the eleventh or tenth century BCE was a mover zarat of camels uštra. The Greek Zoroástres of the mid fifth century BCE appears to have risen from an association with camels, to an association with stars ástra. Nietzsche's Zarathustra of 1883 would have concerned himself with goats and the virtual Zarathustra with sheep. Camels, goats and sheep have, in their times and places, each symbolized the common people who live and are moved about herd-fashion. Stars symbolize those people who live in the sky and from whom light is given, the so-called enlightened ones. Zarathustra's audience must decide for themselves whether or not they are the sheep or the stars, there is a message here for each.
The real world identity of Zarathustra is confidential, but he lives in southeast Michigan in the United States with his wife and six children. He grew up in rural, west-central Michigan where in High School he was an Honor Roll student, the Honorary Science Student and Senior Class President. He enlisted in the United States Air Force while still seventeen years of age with a specialty in medical laboratory technology. While serving in the military he earned an Associates Degree in Medical Laboratory Technology and a Bachelor's Degree in Business Management graduating Magna Cum Laude. He received an honorable discharge after almost fourteen years of service and was decorated with Commendation, Meritorious Service and National Defense medals.
He then moved to rural Nebraska where he managed diagnostic services in a small rural hospital performing general laboratory procedures, limited scope radiography and basic EKG services. While there he completed a limited scope radiography course and seminars in management development.
He grew up loosely associated with the Free Methodist Church where he was taken to church many Sundays by his grandmother or various church members. After entering military service he joined himself to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints where he was an active member for the next twenty-two years. His wife joined the church shortly before their marriage and they were latter sealed in the temple. Like most Mormons, he was in the priesthood and progressed to the offices of Elder and High Priest. He served in many capacities from clerk and executive secretary to the Bishopric, to Young Men's President (a youth pastor and scouting leader or sorts), to Elder's Quorum President (men's group leadership) and Ward Mission Leader to counselor to the Bishopric.
He also had many other assignments like teaching members, missionary work, technical support with computers and facility management. He was trusted with church materials, financial and membership records and building keys. He regularly attended the temple throughout most of his years of membership and was a qualified vale worker. He blessed his children with names and baptized them each as they arrived at age. He performed ordinances, ordinations and blessings. He was, in every way, a faithful and active member of his church throughout all of the years that he was a member.
His life took a turn in 2000 with a change in vocations and a move to north Dallas, Texas. With the help of a friend he became employed in software sales. He was always interested in both computer technology and business. While still young, he purchased one the earliest models of personal computers (PCs), a VIC-20. The system was loaded with 16KB of RAM expansion and a Datasette recorder for more dependable program and data storage using old fashioned audio cassettes. He taught himself BASIC programming and later took college courses in program design and BASIC for microcomputers. Even after upgrading to the Commodore 64 with a string of single-side floppy disc drives, his dream of doing more than gaming, a little word processing and writing very simple programs for fun wasn't progressing to a career change.
During those early years there were some entrepreneurial urges that began to grow in him. For a short while he sold real estate part-time, then he became an Amway independent business owner. In spite of a lot of enthusiasm and hard work the Amway years slipped by unprofitably. He later joined other network marketing companies including Espiol, Soaring Eagle, Nikken and others. The network marketing experience left him disillusioned and financially broken. There must be a serious flaw in his mental programming because even after all of those unprofitable experiences he still has moments when he thinks network marketing can work.
During the last few years in Nebraska he began to bring his interest in computer technology and business together. A friend helped him learn how to assemble and upgrade PCs, how to install drivers and software, how to manage an operating system and how to build web sites. They started a small business partnership, he sold books and food storage supplies over the web, they built, upgraded and installed personal computers for homes and offices and they flirted with several other adventures in sales including bottled water and something called photochromics; he even sold health and life insurance part-time for a while. These further entrepreneurial adventures moved him beyond financially broken to undeclared bankruptcy.
Finally with the move to north Dallas, he entered a career phase that could be described as professional sales and professional computer technology. He received training in solution selling, managed data transfer and data transformation. He learned about file transfer protocols, operating systems and electronic data interface (EDI) standards; things that were so much bigger than PCs and home-based business. He was paid well, he worked regular hours when he wasn't traveling and he stayed and nice hotels and ate good food when he did travel; he worked out in the company gym and was in great physical shape; he had his own small office with a hardwood desk and a laptop computer; he had a company card; and he had the respect of associates and managers alike. Life was finally good!
A big corporate buyout unsettled his new comfortable world as his division was dismantled. First his division vice president went, then a few sales executives went, and a sales manager, and then his manger. It wasn't going to be long until the whole division was gone, so he found a job with a small competitor and moved from a sales support role to a sales executive role. He worked remotely from his home in north-Dallas and enjoyed a lot of independence. He got additional professional training is strategic selling and sales call planning. And, he brought together a few really big sales and a few not-so big sales before this company started downsizing its division in anticipation of selling it.
The Dot.com bubble burst and he was unemployed in north Dallas with thousands of more experienced professionals looking for the few jobs that remained in the field. But something else happened at about the same time; Zarathustra suffered a crisis in faith!
It happened that he had regular online exchanges with a young friend in the Pacific northwest who had been an active Latter-Day Saint in her childhood but had become inactive in adult years. He had known her since she was thirteen and was quit pleased when she asked him a question about the church. The door was never really open for gospel related exchanges so this crack in the door was very welcome and Zarathustra thought the time to teach finally his.
"Where are the papyrus scrolls that Joseph Smith translated into the book of Abraham and other latter-day scriptures?" was the question. "A friend has asked and I don't know where they are," she quickly added.
He agreed to find out. After just twenty minutes of research, he knew that Joseph Smith's so-called translations were nothing more than fabrications.
She sent him another message, "So, what have you found out?"
His reply was simple, "This is disturbing."
Her next message, "What do you know about the DNA of North American Indians and the descendants of Abraham that Joseph Smith said they were?"
He was unemployed and had time, so he did a lot more research over the next few days before deciding to leave the church. He did everything that he had counseled others to do before leaving. he researched issues from the both points of view, he wrote a letter, he met with the bishop and he returned his church materials including his temple recommend and the building keys. For his part, he left the church on good terms. He still calls himself a friend of the church and he misses it, but he can't pretend to believe it.
Zarathustra went through the phase of non-denominational Christian, then on to the Deist phase, and considered New Age spiritualism before moving on to call himself an Agnostic. Finally he had to admit that he was am atheist. The transition was amazing and took just a few months. The more he researched the more obvious it was that reason-based beliefs are the only beliefs worth having and faith-based beliefs are, at best, a waste and, at worst, destructive.
He found work in his old vocation, not as a medical technologist, but as a field service engineer. The best part of this transition is that it involved moving back to his home state of Michigan. But stable employment wasn't in his future. He enjoyed his work and was good at it but just less than one year with the company he was terminated. Finding meaningful and lucrative employment proved difficult and when unemployment ran out he took temporary work on an assembly line. When that job evaporated he took work as a security guard. And when that job disappeared he took work in route sales.
It is a fact that every person that was his manager or their manager when he took employment from the time he left work as a diagnostic service manager until now has either been terminated or has moved on to another company. Zarathustra is again unemployed!
Zarathustra's wife is employed in a deli and while she works 40 hours most every week and has employment benefits, she is technically part-time. She is a corporate slave: insecure, frequently mistreated by her supervisor, working hard irregular hours, and earning less than subsistence wages. She has worked there for five years now and will qualify for a minimal retirement someday if they don't find a reason to fire her in the next year.
He home educates his children. Three of his six children adults. The eldest daughter recently completed a Bachelor's of Science program in Journalism at Eastern Michigan University graduating Laude. A decade ago she would have had no problem finding meaningful employment. She is now doing seasonal work on Mackinaw Island at minimum wage and will be back in November.
The eldest son has not done well with college due to a mild learning disability. The State of Michigan thought it would be a good idea if the taxpayers sent him to technical school to learn retail sales. Every time I see a grey-haired, over the hill man or woman working at a grocery store or big box mart I think of how tiny his chances are of every finding work, even in retail.
The next, another daughter, has completed an Associates of Science in Graphic Art and is going to junior college one more year to round out her degree with programming. The next two, daughters again, are teens. One is head-strong and aching to be an adult; she is into Dagorhir live action role play, web stuff and is learning to sew so she can make authentic period clothing. The other is more laid back and is a lot of help with cooking. My youngest, a boy, is just nine and enjoying life as a boy should.
It is ironic that the several periods of unemployment that have plagued the last decade of his life, have also been periods when he has had time for research and introspection and have resulted in unexpected intellectual growth and explorations in philosophy.
Zarathustra has never lost his interest in religion and continues to research the Bible and Christianity, although from a decidedly different perspective than his past self ever expected. In the great debate between belief and disbelief, the most common obstacles are the misuse of words to make what is not true appear to be true followed closely by a lack of historical knowledge and ignorance of natural science.
Zarathustra is obsessed with words and their etymology and with placing everything relevant to modern Christian belief into context with history and science. This obsession goes beyond religion and into politics as he examines the law and social issues.
Zarathustra has become a Secular Humanist. He believes that if the human condition is to be improved, it will be up to humans to improve it because there are no deities with power or compassion to do so for us.
Beyond this, Zarathustra is concerned about the future; his future, his children's future and the future of his yet to be born grand children. He is concerned about global overpopulation; the depletion of resources such as coal, oil, metals and minerals; food supplies; debt-based money systems that enslave populations; the destructive growth economy paradigm; corporatism; pollution; climate change; and social reversals.
Zarathustra Speaks Again! is his small effort to influence the human condition in a positive way. Black and White episodes are for issues where the facts are preeminent and Color episodes are more personal opinion and experience. Zictionary is his way of providing readers and viewers with definitions are contextually correct by eliminating vagueness and excessive alterations to accommodate modern ignorance of etymology and metaphorical abstractions designed to obscure rather than reveal the truth.
