Russell M. Middleton - Inspiration
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Sights, Sounds, Experiences and Words, that are meaningful to me.

(The list at the bottom of this page is somewhat chronological, but not in a strict sense.)

This page, in fact the whole of this website, is an attempt to share the view of the universe from inside my skull. And as unique as this view may be it may also voice a perspective shared by other human beings on this planet. We all live our lives on a host of assumptions because it's easier that way. We do not always remember what those assumptions are.

At various times in my life I have been convinced that I was adopted or an alien. The evidence is fairly conclusive that I am neither. I now believe that these feelings were simply manifestations of my attempt to ascertain my place in the cosmos.

Being born as part of the 'post WW2 baby boom' in the middle of the 20th century, for my first fifty years I had the illusion that this was a time like no other in the history of humanity. In many ways the last half of that century was extraordinary, but maybe no more extraordinary than the fifty, five hundred or five thousand years that preceded it. Advances in medicine like the discovery of antibiotics, and technological innovations like space flight had a profound effect. Especially when coupled to advances in technology from the first half of the 20th century like the machine gun, the automobile, the airplane and the atom bomb.

But technology is not the whole story, nor even the main story. The real plot is humanity and its slow adaptation to the environment (including technology) that we live in. First, there are more human beings alive today than at any other time. Second, we humans have learned to harness forms of energy beyond the wildest dreams of early man, yet we are no different. We have the same feelings and reactions that humans have had for tens, if not, hundreds of thousands of years. Our wisdom, as a species, has not advanced at the same rate as our inventiveness.

Since my birth, time has carried me forward through the years of my life, and the acquisition knowledge has carried me back into history, slowly building toward an understanding of where or if I fit in.

So continue your exploration: by first looking inward with "Journey To The Center Of The Mind" by Ted Nugent and Steve Farmer of the Amboy Dukes from 1968, then let your spirit soar on the promise that I felt about the 'space race' with "Higher And Higher" by Graeme Edge of The Moody Blues from their album To Our Children's Children's Children from 1969, and finally rebel with "BORN TO BE WILD" from the band Steppenwolf also from 1968.

Journey further if you care and/or dare with "High Flight" by Pilot Officer, John Gillespie Magee, Jr. an American teenager, who, with the help of "Canada ("the linchpin of the English-speaking world."), at the age of eighteen, rose to the defence of freedom, democracy and humanity at the cost of his own life, at the age of nineteen. Yet when I, along with hundreds of thousands of my own generation, attempted to rise to defend those selfsame ideals life went terribly wrong. The lies and deceptions that characterised the prosecution of the "Vietnam War" pale in comparison to the subsequent persecution of the 'warriors' who answered the call.

The 'American Revolution', viewed as the dawning of a new age (good) and a breaking of old (bad) ways, has evolved to create a sophisticated urban culture without either a genuine respect for the history of its diverse members or a sincere interest in the many traditions those members left behind at the cost of broken hearts, minds and dreams too numerous to measure.

I invite you to 'Carry On'.


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