posted April 02, 2008 at 9:09 p.m. MDTThis is a test of Writely and so that's how it goes.
Affect and Quality of Consciousness
posted December 11, 2007 at 12:17 a.m. MDT*reprise* hfx_ben: If folk act as stunned as I say they do .... This post to LiveJournal, citing "'Thirst for knowledge' may be opium craving", reads in part:
Maybe I get upset. Maybe too upset, and maybe too often. And maybe angry, and then depressed. But at least I'm thinking. So what? *D'uh!* is the appropriate answer to that pseuco-clever trash.The post concludes and wraps with another reference:
[...]
But hey, go ahead ... coast ... the planet will die and you'll be riding along stunne ... don't let me mess you up ... you've got a handle on things and I'm just a fuckup. Yaaaaaaaa right.
"DANGER: valid thoughts ahead!"Phenomenals world's vividness can be quashed; there is nothing inevitable about bliss, any more than peace and prosperity and health.Origins of Peace and Violence; Deprivation of Physical Affection as a Main Cause of Depression, Aggression and Drug Abuse
What politic is entailed by slothful thinking? Given that the situation is, as the poet wrote, "The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with a fiery intensity", how do those individual dynamics ramify up to the level of social and societal?
Grist for the yuppies' mills!
Too simple to understand (a thought in the moment)
posted October 20, 2007 at 1:34 p.m. MDTIt comes down to this: not only what we do, but how we do it. Ultimately, "why" becomes the point. (Which is another way of saying that in the end our actual motive manifests ... it comes to be ... it creates karma.)
The number of "errancy modes" is beyond estimation. Either our motive is some variation of "for the good of all sentient beings" or it's in error. Necessarily. Inexorably. Like physics. You can fly, for a while, in any number of ways, but you will come down at some point.
Gain, or resentment ... passion or aggression ... both entail solidifying concepts, and that puts a spin on things that works out badly because it's out of synch with ?what? ... heh ... the ultimate nature of reality.
If I humble myself and act as a modestly self-interested drone then, well, I end up empowering and enabling the worst oligarch. My web of denial and willful ignorance fosters the worst lies and shelters the worst psychopaths. If, otherwise, I act more assertively and drive for my own fortune and wealth with all the creativity that ambition gives rise to ... well, what then?
Prajna is our very natural intuition concerning what's not "right" ... it can be honed and tuned and nurtured, or it can be muted and dumbed down. When I act deceptively, or act as though unaware of some deception, I detune myself. And more: I encourage others to become as though objects. And in the end my activity obstructs those with the best of intentions. Step by step, day in and day out, I make myself into an agent of entropy. How can I expect any sense of well-being from that? That mode of being is simply unwholesome; it creates conditions quite opposite to "profound relaxation".
It's bodhicitta or it's dis-ease ... there is no way of escaping reality.
Do not choose a coward's explanation That hides behind the cause and the effect. -- Leonard Cohen*thanks to LJUser barrygraham for the quote*
hfx_ben: Actual mysticism - 1 of a continuing series
posted March 10, 2007 at 9:36 p.m. MDThfx_ben: Actual mysticism - 1 of a continuing series
I finally had my say:
Okay fine, I'll say it: the 1 thing I've been witholding from everyone, everywhere, everybody, all this time, is just that I've been training to be a shaman since I had my vision at age 5.
That's why the unconventional life-style and personal history ... from having a scholarship to Banff School of Fine Arts to dropping out of high-school and joining electronic espionage in the army.
All of it: the deep-background radicalism, the raising 5 kids in the highlands, the hi-tech hot-shot at 19, the monasticism, the pool-hustling beer-guzzling street musician, the project-spouting academic, the djembe-playing trance-dancing... just field research.
Those who care to know could have figured it out. I know some have had their intuitions; they've helped me some. The rest are either as though brain-damaged or they intentionally talk themselves out of their authentic intuition ... as they always do ... likely coming up with a whole set of ways to demean and dismiss me; most antagonism is a smoke-screen for evasion and denial. That's how it works: no point my trying to convince folk since if they need to be convinced it's likely for the worst of reasons.)
How does it work? Simple. (No, not easy ... I wrote "simple" cuz I meant "simple"; thinking at the level of a 3 year old is one of the many ways you avoid understanding.) ... I go "there" and come back with an un-typical experience, is all. The classical "heroes' quest".
An example:
Ultimate View ... either you are intentionally for others or you are against others, however "un-intentionally" ... deniability is key to the BluePill. And the BluePill view is all about gaining by others' loss.There. That's how it works.
No big deal? Major big deal.
There are something like 600,000,000 psychopaths and sociopaths in the world; most are clumsy and ignorant (cuz most folk are, actually, clumsy and ignorant) but a few have the benefits of rich society: education, position, credibility. So let's say there are something like 60,000,000 of thos.
Now thing is, sociopaths are hell-bent on wrecking other folk and they very usually bring their palaces down upon themselves, through strife or war or criminality. But psychopaths aren't that way: they don't mind wrecking folk, causing suffering, but they aren't sadistic ... for them other people are just objects to manipulate. Empower them with the trappings of power, and you got Problems with a capital P and Trouble with a capital T. So let's say they're half and half, sociopaths and psychopahts. Let's say of the 6 billion creatures on the gods' good earth there are 30,000,000 psychopaths in positions to do pretty much what they will. (See my venerable old "Fallen Angels", created in 1996.) And prolly gender neutral, so 15,000,000 men. (Hey, get off the pot ... it's still a chauvinistic world.)
Do I really think I can work through the forest of psychopaths? No. There's little to be done with them.
But what about the 5 billion people who are neither psychopaths nor sociopaths?
Guess what: if you aren't intentionally for others then you will easily cut a deal with the psychos ... with the bullies and his helpers ... left wing or right wing, corporate suits or drug-lord peasant-leaders, commie or fascist ... deniably, of course, professing that evil was never your intention ... and that's how it works: I'm like against an army of vampires, carrying a light, and you all are the scorpions and bushes and crawling bugs and biting snakes that swarm me as I stumble through the out-back.
When you are truly for yourself you are truly and intentionally for others. That's Ultimate View ... how we are not seperated by self-interest.
This after yet again delving authentically into actual desperation. (75c left and 3 weeks before my cheque comes; will I magnetize another brain-killing job in hi-tech?)
May all beings realize the root of happiness free from suffering.
"Compliance in the face of threats" - CBC Radio | The Current
posted February 21, 2007 at 9:41 a.m. MDTIn the February 21 episode of CBC Radio's "The Current" there was an item about harassment of opinions that were anything other than hard-line, the persecution of whatever might be painted as "liberal".
One spokesperson who in effect defended thugism by minimizing it and rationalizing it had a lot to say about "respect" and the need for "speaking softly".
It's the classic bully-boy tactic.
"If they are truly trying to convince they shouldn't be creating a storm. And that's actually what's happening." Do you see the tactic?
Okay: in SEP03 I was stationed at CFS Gander, doing "communications research" *nudge-nudge wink-wink*. Allende got dumped. I am a Pearson-era hippie ... my brain broke. I reasoned this way: there is no way for an honest person to prevail in the face of corruption.
Fast forward decades. writing on the subject of bullying in the work-place and online I have written, "Whatever ideology is put into place is straw-man type argument, serving merely as pretext. Typically the aggressor will be reactive, causing controversy, acting with impunity."
The point is that those who are /individually and subjectively disposed to imposition, to judgement and fault-finding, to condemnation and punishment/ will be over-reactive: so long as they "up the ante" they a) create the specious argument of having been wounded while b) issuing warning by making it clear that dissidence or difference will not be indulged.
It's epidemic.
Solution? Authenticity, integrity, solidarity, and community. heh
"Millennium Development Goals Symposium - Transcript
posted February 11, 2007 at 11:46 a.m. MDTMillennium Development Goals Symposium - Transcript - Panel Discussion on Eliminating Poverty - Welcome by Lisa Anderson; Webcasts and Transcripts; The U.N. Millennium Project: Practical Action Plan to Combat Poverty at Columbia's "Earth Institute"; Columbia's "Center for Environmental Research and Conservation" (CERC)
UN Millenium Project - Project Publications
ZeroCarbonCity, by British Council; Globalization and Climate Change Debate at OpenDemocracy
In case you think "Matrix" is nothing but a movie concept:
posted September 12, 2006 at 11:15 a.m. MDTGoogle Groups: alt.gathering.rainbow
"another MySpace.com trend: the social networking site now lets users make "friends" with fictional characters supplied by marketing companies pushing movies and new TV shows and who pay for a chance to form relationships with the nearly 45.7 million unique visitors MySpace logged last month. -- "The real counterculture: Music can make a difference"
A friend just wrote to alt.gathering.rainbow with an interesting question:
"Fast forward 40 years and rebellion has been institutionalized, corporatized in the sense that popular culture has celebrated it for so long, made money from it for so long, that it begs the question: Isn't it more rebellious to be non-rebellious?."
I mumbled about not getting sucked into either/or thinking:
"Willing to be an empoverished siddha I can't say I shudda lived my life differently, but I can't say I've experienced glorious success. And I think that's in large part cuz of either/or logic. I don't have the personal charisma required to be a solo act ... I'm not "the great leader" type. (Actually I think that whole concept sucks the big one.) For me affinity groups are the way to be. But I'm pretty sure choosing B cuz A sucks subjects us to even more manipulation. Should we become mindless drones because hyper-narcissism profits the fascists? Seems to me creative alternatives is what it's all about. Dialectical thinking, yuh know? Responding to the "thesis" with an "anti-thesis" is part of the drill, but the benefit comes from the syn-thesis at the end, yaa?"
