I’m in the nation’s heartland deep freeze with my wife and ancient dog. We drove from the mud hut to eastern Nebraska for a brief familial visit.
I’m reminded of a previous trip to America’s breadbasket. Thoreau’s classic words came to mind as I stood in a kitchen slightly larger than the house I occupy. A sign on the wall read, “Simplify.” I nearly recommended, as a decent start, throwing away the nearby sign reading, “Simplify: Throw Everything Out.”
On the current adventure, which began six days ago, we drove across the plains of San Augustin, home of the Very Large Array (VLA). The VLA brings to mind how much time, energy, and fiat currency we spend looking for answers out there. As if our problems and predicaments can be solved if we just look long enough into deep space (hence into deep time). Maybe the aliens will save us, if we behave.
Or maybe not. Perhaps we could have spent all that time, energy, and fiat currency looking inward instead. I suspect the costs would have been lower in every case, and the rewards greater.
We spent the night in Dodge City, Kansas and reached our destination the following day. As such, we were able to get the hell out of Dodge and also proclaim we’re not in Kansas any more, all in the same day. Obviously, the twin proclamations made the trip worthwhile.
Turning my own thoughts inward in the wake of the solstice, I wrote the following ode to the living planet. Channeling Nero, I share it here, and ask for yours in return.
Winter solstice
I thought my darkest day was me, running to you,
forsaking the life I loved.That hopeful day, so long ago, was challenging,
but not nearly as difficult as this.The only thing worse than me running way
is this society pushing Nature away.When I ran away I had hope for the living planet
and I got along fine.When we push Nature away, we’re deep in a well
and we’ve destroyed all that matters on this lonely planet.This pain is greater than I could have imagined,
perhaps worse than I can bear.My heart’s been shattered, ripped out,
and is lying in pieces on the indifferent ground.I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what I want
but I know I don’t want this.It’s not just that I’m in love with the living planet,
although that alone would be profound.It’s that I love her madly, deeply, uncontrollably,
which causes entirely too much pain.I miss her so, so badly.
I yearn for signs of her wit.I miss her so, so badly.
I long to gaze into her wild places.I miss her so, so badly.
I think about her every waking minute.During the rare moments of fitful sleep
she fills my dreams.I want to see her and hear her and smell her and feel her
and touch her and taste her.I want to share what we used to share
and know what we used to know
when we were human animals,
not believing we were gods.More than she could ever know,
I miss her, as she fades away.More than she could ever know,
I love her, as she is pummeled to oblivion.More than she could ever know,
I need her — we need her — as we collectively commit ecocide.I’ve long recognized the need to protect what we love.
Either I have little company or we hate Nature.Maybe both.
The days grow longer now
but not brighter.
____________________
My 18 December 2012 radio interview on the Enviro show in Florence, Massachusetts was archived here yesterday.
Last month’s presentation in Louisville has been the subject of considerable online babble. A recent essay, linked here, provides a compelling overview.
December 26th, 2012 at 3:17 pm
You’re really coming into focus, Guy. Nice to see.
December 26th, 2012 at 3:25 pm
So sad, but even worse for those who don’t understand what is happening. Just sad.
December 26th, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Here’s my contribution:
The Failure of Science Fiction
We were all going to fly to work every day in our little atomic ships
There were entire worlds to conquer and terraform to our bidding
The finest fruits of agricultural planets would be flown to every home
And people of every race would staff the exploration of other galaxies
Glorious battles would be fought by men and women equal in every way
Against noble aliens who followed all the rules of war and tested our strength
But lost in the end as we graciously granted them dominion over their worlds
And settled down to study them in hopes of finding the secret of Dog
Unlimited energy would be ours for the taking and bent to our mastery
Physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, and medicine would hold no mysteries
To people who could crush knowledge out of the smallest particles of the universe
And teach children to scan the skies with the most powerful of instruments
Almighty technology would solve all problems, both the big and the small
And wondrous toys would delight and amuse and teach without learning
Uncounted generations would tame the Biggest Bang and even learn to forget
The little blue planet that gave them birth and sent them out to the edge of forever
Empires would come and go, civilizations would rise and fall, in upward march
All forward, ever forward, facing only easily surmountable barriers and always
Led by brave and inspiring leaders, men and women who saw further than others
And led us through the difficult times with their eyes on vision of future victories
Sex is easy and free, and the unlimited universe can support all with rich resources
With only a few dark years the future seems uncannily like the past, with spaceships
Today’s problems solved, they wrote about the problems of the future
That had to be solved by the end of the book or readers angry and authors starve
Human nature had to be left exactly as we know it now in this vision of the future
Because if it wasn’t, we couldn’t enjoy the stories, identify with some character
Wish for the hero to get the girl, root for the villain, feel sorry for the sidekick
And dream of a time when we would scan the heavens for new planets to pillage
Now here we are in someone’s unbidden future with only a few of those toys
They were written about so often that we all know what a ray gun looks like
And what happened when we got this far along the bright path to the future?
We worked feverishly on the technologies and forgot about human nature
Human nature has always used every new tool for personal short term ends
And not to the benefit of the species from whom the breath was given life
So when the end of the world was in the hands of a primate in a suit
He looked at his neighbour, stuck out his tongue, and pressed the button
He saw that there were few fish, but remembered how good they tasted
And kept on fishing until the sea was empty and then blamed his neighbour
He bombed his neighbours back to the Stone Age to unearth more drugs
To feed the unceasing useless motion that passed as purposeful living
He saw that the little girls were pretty and no one could stop any man
From taking every one he pleased and using them as his fantasies said he could
All fantasies were his reality and the future would take care of itself
Because the liquid black drug had given him riches and would do so forever
He had the wits to stop the heat that burned up the land and the plants
But there was no money in such thinking, so he kept the technology from being used
Big tools in big hands with small minds and petty thoughts don’t reach the stars
They die in their own filth and take everyone else with them, screaming
Once upon a time there were so many rats that fleas multiplied exponentially
And sucked the rich blood of fat rodents until they nearly exploded
In hedonistic revelry and ecstatic rituals of blood worship and orgiastic release
Until the rat population crashed and the warmth, blood and fur were gone
And the fleas were wiped out.
December 26th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
It is extraordinary how our strongest peak experience in life is actually lived in the deepest trough.
You’ve spoken so bravely to my gravest intellectual experience, Guy. Now you have taken my heart along into the trough with yours.
December 26th, 2012 at 4:48 pm
could it have really gone any other way?
from the beginning of totalitarian agriculture
what we call civilization
the advent of ‘owning’ property, space, tangible things above and below the ground
this appears to have been the path we we’re meant to go down.
many things could have been handled differently, but there was only ever a few that saw that would be the wise choice.
so they were either outnumbered or didn’t try hard enough to stop it all
or they bought into a system, believing they could exist within it and actually effect true change
but the end result is the same
it’s here, it’s happening and it just really looks like it couldn’t have gone any other way.
December 26th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Watching those negotiate with nature will at the very least give me a moment to smile.
December 26th, 2012 at 5:57 pm
I Am The Forest
written and recorded by Willie Nelson
[3/4 time]
C F C
I’ll always be with you for as long as you please
G7 C
For I am the forest but you are the trees
F C
I’m empty without you so come grow within me
G7 C
For I am the forest and you are the trees
G7 C
And the heavens need ro-mance so love never dies
D7 G7
You’ll be the stars dear and I’ll be the sky
C F C
And should any of this find us let them all be forewarned
G7 C
That you are the thunder and I am the storm
F C
And I’ll always be with you for as long as you please
G7 C
For I am the forest and you are the trees
F C
I’ll always be with you for as long as you please
G7 C
For I am the forest but you are the trees
December 26th, 2012 at 6:16 pm
What would be the terms for this life of a newborn now.
Only Titans for parents could save the infant from the end, just now begun.
No cloister suffices now, nor citadel remains,
That will abate the coming tempest and the rain.
Now is the moment to be…
For the waiting is all done.
Rise your heart and lower your gaze,
Take aim at the moment and find no solace in that rain,
Refresh you, yes, but drive you forth it must,
Feel the thumping of your ancestors, just beneath your skin,
They scream a deadly chorus:
“Get on! Ho, get on and live the universal terms we all agreed!
Take your Heart to the world and square it fully with the challenge of your time.
Grant no quarter to the illusion of foe, for we got to now by the warp and woof of each others giving.
Grow your Heart in the refusal, and bind your hands to hold the line, For no one of us, who ever lived and gave our essence for your birth can remain silent with the carnage on the road you face ahead.
Honour us, and your future kin.
Give it all, NOW, and never stop,
Or all we ever lived for is the shame.”
So found I the receiver of the message,
Mercury nowhere to be found,
When I looked he slipped by me whispered and darted beyond a cloud.
The message?… is the terms we have now.
The terms of why we live on this great staging ground,
The coil of embodied light,
We must rise to realise now.
I still hear them calling, those ancients, just an echo now,
Voices from the edge of eternity….
“Get on! Ho, get on and live the universal terms we all agreed!
Your body is the contract, go now and honour the terms, for life is all,
Into the night of unknown outcome,
Into the moment, that is all.
We will be calling across time,
Yet unbroken chains of life you must uphold ….
No one but you, now, is left for the growing,
Get on, and live the universal terms we all agreed!”
December 26th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Wow!!!
Not only is 2012 the hottest year on record in the US, it beat the previous record (1998) by almost a full degree!!!!
FYI, there is only a four degree difference between the hottest and coldest years ever recorded.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/hurricane-sandy-tops-list-of-2012-extreme-weather-and-climate-events-15405/P4
December 26th, 2012 at 6:54 pm
According to NASA, we may not want to depend on benevolent ETs to save us from ourselves. ETs may be more inclined to eliminate mankind in order to prevent the mass extinction of all other life. NASA’s Planetary Sciences Division issued a report warning that ETs might be compelled to exterminate human beings in order to prevent the destruction of Earth’s life support system.
Excerpts taken from The Guardian:
“Rising greenhouse emissions may tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report for Nasa
It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.
Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth’s atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilization growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.
The authors warn that extraterrestrials may be wary of civilizations that expand very rapidly, as these may be prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have pushed species to extinction on Earth. In the most extreme scenario, aliens might choose to destroy humanity to protect the Earth’s biodiversity.
“A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilization may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand. Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilisational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions,” the report states.
“Green” aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. “These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets,” the authors write.”
December 26th, 2012 at 9:57 pm
Radio EcoShock’s latest podcast
Annual Ecoshock Green Music Festival 2012
December 26th, 2012 at 10:59 pm
Interstellar human travel at realistic (not Star Trek) speeds will require taking along and successfully maintaining closed biospheric ecosystems for many centuries to millennia. And interstellar travel would be de rigueur to find sufficiently compatible exoplanets to meet our needs for habitability.
However the closed biosphere experiments to date have lasted only a year or two before running into trouble. On the other hand, the real biosphere seems more and more like an unplanned experiment gone very – nay fatally – awry.
December 26th, 2012 at 11:52 pm
Being a realist has become very depressing but I suppose that was actually a result maturing enough to be able to see the man behind the mask and the charade of “society” in America. As a child of the 60′s and 70′s I too was “born in captivity” (what a perfect phrase). It’s no wonder this society has become so sick. Imagine what it was like to live in a world reminiscent of “The Hobbit” although I agreee there were always variations of “wargs” and “orcs” during earlier times but that was all part of the true human experience right? Someone else said that humans now live incredibly trivial and meaningless lives. Our society has given us the non-chemical version of Prozac, no fear, no risk, no reward and no pleasure. As an engineer I think it’s time to reinvent myself as an “Un-gineer” as in…“Un-gineer”…An individual trained, skilled and experienced in the art and science of deconstruction. One who can safely disassemble the infrastructure of a complex but dying civilization in order to restore the land to natural habitat thereby allowing a return to a balanced ecology wherein humanity plays but a small part. Thanks for all you do Guy and when are you next coming to Michigan again? There is a big interest in urban gardening in Detroit as the people here have realized that industry is NEVER coming back (thank goodness). Do you know Dave Foreman from the rewilding institute? http://rewilding.org/rewildit/
Lastly…a link to the best and most truthful video that incorporates Guy’s data into its content for your review. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2em1x2j9-o
I think I need to watch “The Road” again. Fred in Michigan
December 27th, 2012 at 1:52 am
Frank
What Aliens?
Where are these damn Aliens we keep hearing and speaking about?
You seem to be channelling the storline of the 1951 science fiction film, ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’.
Remember the second term in the phrase ‘Science FICTION’ is fiction.
Not many people really get the Alien movies. They reveal what WE become when we decide to give in to the robotic replicating of ourselves without thought of why and the consequences of industrial civilisation.
The only aliens are US, or at least when ego prevails.
Note the birth of the Alien ensures the explosion of the host’s heart -no humanity left there – just a emotionless, highly tuned survival organism.
We are the Aliens, no need to look very far.
December 27th, 2012 at 2:05 am
Fer 9/11 conspiracy nutz:
http://youtu.be/n_fp5kaVYhk
December 27th, 2012 at 3:16 am
Robin Datta
Interesting how not one mention in the entire video of D_ck Ch__ey?
DC was at the time in an office somewhere below the Wh_te H__se situation r__m, with a computer terminal that overrode all simulation and control structures that were in use that morning, or so many other sources have said.
Great video BTW, and will anything be done?
December 27th, 2012 at 3:50 am
We love this beautiful planet. It is made beautiful (to us) because of life. It is not stark like the moon, or Mars. It is covered with a myriad of colors, shapes, forms, movement, interconnections. As Raffi so beautifully sings Its a Big Beautiful Planet in the Sky http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk9aCy7vXs0
Life comes with a terrible cost. Life means death. Without life there is no death. Bacteria engulf other bacteria. The fox rips the baby rabbit apart and the rabbit screams. The lion stalks the antelope and the whole herd becomes unsettled and afraid. The chimpanzee tribe attacks another tribe and kills or runs off the other tribe taking over its territory. The human finds all this both beautiful and horrifying because this one species knows early on it must die. This is the forbidden knowledge. This is the angst that drives the human to conquer all and so extinct itself.
Perhaps it could go no other way. We are the creatures who knew too much. The beauty will go. The creatures that loved it will exit the stage. Possibly all life will end. But so too then will death at least on this planet.
Knowing that we humans are the author of so much evil I can’t really mourn our passing. Children are sold or stolen into lives of sexual slavery. Humans starve to death. Humans are tortured. Humans have been burned alive, made into slaves, been mutilated for even such things as keeping a males voice high. Children have been forced to become soldiers.
It looks like in the end we will defeat death, the only way death can be defeated, by ending life. Perhaps in this world made beautiful by life, but cursed by the inevitable consequence of life, suffering and death, we evolved to end the suffering.
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.
Charles Darwin
December 27th, 2012 at 4:20 am
I’ve been digging through various Sandy Hook related stuff. I agree with what this guy says I call bullshit on this entire Sandy Hook shooting hoax. We are being fed a pack of carefully scripted lies by evil people with a pre-determined agenda. They manufacture our reality, targeting our emotions and gullible nature, in order to advance their political and social agenda. Don’t be deceived. Trouble is, of the many theories on offer, i have yet to be convinced who ‘they’ are, and what the ‘political and social agenda’ really is… I still have an open mind on those questions.
http://johnfriendsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/calling-bullshit-on-sandy-hook-hoax.html
Thanks for the 9/11 video Robin, an interesting update.
December 27th, 2012 at 5:55 am
Here’s a less anti jewish blog making a similar point.
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/how-the-newtown-massacre-became-a-mind-control-television-event/
I must say, the videos of the happy smiley families who have supposedly just had a child murdered do freak me out. I’ve never seen anything like that in whole my life. I mean, real bereaved people in real life are not like that, are they ? At least, not in my experience. So totally weird, beyond my comprehension.
December 27th, 2012 at 6:52 am
The “heart”land is showing signs of arrhythmia [digression from normal rhythms of food production from normal rhythms of climate to abnormal rhythms like droughts due to climate arrhythmia] and it is starting to affect the rest of the body [food price increases in the pipeline]. Doctors are thinking of addressing this problem with the help of geo-engineers.
December 27th, 2012 at 8:32 am
The idea of a “God” in Darwin’s or any other similar sense continues fraught with the same problems.
The concept of “the One without a second” in the nontheistic nondual traditions, (also in the Kabbalah) excludes any”thing” (a second) from existing concomitantly. The diverse universe, analogous to a movie projected on a screen, contains both good and evil, while the screen itself carries neither.
December 27th, 2012 at 9:14 am
I quoted Darwin, not because of the God part, but because Darwin could see that the natural world is rife with horrific ways for each species to try to perpetuate itself. Nature is full of horror. It is also full of wonder. Is the horror worth the wonder? If not the passing of this world of life perhaps is OK. No more sharks gulping down fleeing fish. No more wasps laying their eggs on living caterpillars. No more hawks eating chickens alive. No more humans making slaves of other humans. No more tetanus bacteria delivering a painful end. All this beauty we don’t want to end is also built on each one eat one in some way or other.
After total extinction disease and death will finally be defeated.
Maybe it is just my way of coping with NTE but one cannot deny that the beautiful natural world we mourn is full of one creature eating another day after day
In a single year, a family of barn owls will eat 20,000 mice along with large insects, she said. And that’s with just one clutch. She added organic growers can eliminate rodent and large insect controls on their crops when barn owls do their job
http://www.lakechelanmirror.com/print.asp?ArticleID=2368&SectionID=5&SubSectionID=5
From our perspective that is good, we don’t like mice eating our food, and we find owls beautiful, majestic, mice less so. But how does it feel to the mouse when those talon crash into its body????
So much pain….
December 27th, 2012 at 9:36 am
Ffs, I sometimes begin to think that the whole idea of America is fake, a hoax, a simulacrum… turns out that the ‘families’, whatever, in tv interviews, with Obama, etc, don’t actually need to be the genuine item at all, because, it was decided, sometime ago, that it would be stressful to ask actual real people to endure tv interviews, so there’s now agencies which supply trained actors to crisis scenes, like mall shootings, fully prepared to make statements to the press, whatever, as necessary, so no wonder these youtube clips of ‘grieving bereaved parents’ look like tv commercials for breakfast cereal, that’s what they fucking well are… so how long has this been going on ? 9/11 ? and how far is it going to go ? Hahahaha, I suppose you could argue it started with Regan pretending to be a President, – but it means NOTHING that appears on video can ever be trusted as genuine, can it….
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/active-shooter-crisis-actors-target-110421683.html
December 27th, 2012 at 9:54 am
ulvfugl, I’ve been struggling with the question about who “THEY” are for quite some time. It seems clear that there are shadowy elements inside/behind the US government/corporate establishment. There is also indisputable evidence that Anglo-Amerikan intelligence sector (and probably other groups we are unable to identify) have been researching mind-control for the last 60 years. It is unlikely that they would have invested some much time and energy on mind-control, psyops et cetera, and not used them. The young Lanza, who is an empty cipher on which the media can project any image it likes, smells like a classic mind-puppet patsy.
TPTB know that the current system and inflated levels of prosperity in the West are unsustainable due to resource depletion and an economic ponzi scheme that is on its last leg. Since they can’t grow the economy due to physical limits, they cannot keep creating more debt based on the prospect of future growth. I think that this much is clear to them, regardless of whether they understand the lethality of climate change.
The agenda, imo, is to begin the process of disarming, disempowering, and discouraging the Amerikan masses so that when the bottom falls out and the black shirts take to the streets, the majority will become docile and accept their new servile status in the coming feudal system. They have already installed a legal structure that gives the president dictatorial powers in the event of a “crisis”; so we are at least half way to a formal police state.
Unfortunately, many of the people who understand that a totalitarian system is being constructed behind the scenes are anti-semitic wack jobs who blame everyone from Jews to hyperdimensional lizards for our problems. For the last 10 thousand years “civilized” humans have been living in hierarchical authoritarian societies. I think we are experiencing the logical and exponential expansion of this logic which will only become more extreme as the bio-physical foundations of the hive are eroded.
It’s hard to feel bad about the unraveling of a system which has been an ominicidal monster so that a small minority of humans could live in an artificial cocoon of hedonistic delusions.
December 27th, 2012 at 10:12 am
Peak oil did not occur soon enough to ward off catastrophic climate change. It now seems to have made the situation worse by causing a shift towards dirtier unconventional fossil fuels. There is no end to the insanity. T
… studies show that when methane leakages are incorporated into an assessment of shale gas’ CO2 emissions, natural gas could even surpass coal in terms of overall climate impact. As for tar sands and oil shales, emissions are 1.2 to 1.75 times higher than for conventional oil. No wonder the IEA’s chief economist Fatih Birol remarked pessimistically that “the world is going in the wrong direction in terms of climate change.”
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-12-21/the-great-oil-swindle-why-the-new-black-gold-rush-leads-off-a-fiscal-cliff
December 27th, 2012 at 10:19 am
I have always found the idea that we could repopulate other planets quite laughable. For one, 90% of our cellular recyling involves terrestrial organisms which have evolved on planet earth. How are we going to remain human without 90% of our cells?
December 27th, 2012 at 10:36 am
Kathy C Says: Knowing that we humans are the author of so much evil I can’t really mourn our passing.
Rationalizing Extinction
Sometimes, oppression I see
Punctures superficiality:
Overwhelming rage
No one can assuage
Helps make it O.K. with me.
December 27th, 2012 at 10:38 am
Since a poetic inward look–traveling into the land of the heart–is invited by this post, as a comment, a contribution: http://home.roadrunner.com/~robie/opento/Poems/freedom.html
These are the lyrics of two songs about freedom written a day apart and suggest, to me, that the inward, given what is valued within CapitalismFail (and withstanding motivated reasoning functioning as both a savior and sycophant), is costly.
And another set of lyrics about our choices and motivated reasoning have allowed us to make that can be sung to the tune of Joni Mitchell’s “Urge For Goin’”. Early this past March a flock of geese headed north became the muse.
suffer’n's settl’n in
I woke up today and found, frost gone from the ground
And also in the frozen north, the summer’s ice not found
And when the traitor sun does warm
Where ‘fore it’s lows did hold the cold—not this new norm
I get that we are dying, and all we do is lie
And I get that we are lying, when the greenhouse gas is on the rise,
Wintertime reduced in size, suffer’n's settl’n in.
And in my summertime I dreamed, a summer colored lie
And all my friends and I agreed, of warnings, not to spy.
But when up north the change afoot,
Comes stomping down to trample all my best laid plans
I get that we are dying, and all we do is lie
And I get that we are lying, when the greenhouse gas is on the rise,
Wintertime reduced in size, suffer’n's settl’n in.
And the ‘warriors’—the climatehawks—are wishing for the past
‘Cause all that lives is dying, for death its life we fast.
See the geese in chevron flight, headed north a month before they used to go
For them there is no lying, the warmth is on the rise
They don’t get that we are dying, of the greenhouse gas no means apprise,
Nor wintertime’s new reduced size, nor suffer’n's settl’n in.
But I’ll power up my ‘lectric car, made from burning coal
Or just use a ‘better’ one—to prove I’ve got no soul
I like to go back to the days
When self-restraint was seen within a purple haze
But I get that I was dying, and all I do is lie
And I get that I aint trying, while the greenhouse gas is on the rise,
Empire’s reach is oversized, suffer’n ‘s settl’n in.
And I get that we aren’t trying, while the greenhouse gas is on the rise,
Wintertime reduced in size, suffer’n's settl’n in, suffer’n's settl’n in.
lyrics cc 2012 greg robie
December 27th, 2012 at 10:38 am
BtD – yeah that is what I meant to say
December 27th, 2012 at 10:38 am
I can understand that it’s useful to train emergency services by simulating disaster situations of all sorts, I’m sure it’s very helpful to work through procedures and foresee problems and so forth… no problem. But something seems to have gone wrong, when fact and fiction get blended. Can’t find the link, but there was mention of a simulated atrocity training exercise at SH, that ended on the day of the real atrocity… kinda weird… anyway… surely, if the tv is interviewing actors, not real people, that should be made clear, on the screen, otherwise it’s deceit and deception.
“Visionbox Crisis Actors are trained in criminal and victim behavior, and bring intense realism to simulated mass casualty incidents in public places.”
So, you’re in ‘a public place’, and you walk around the corner, and there’s dead bodies and blood and people running around screaming and guns…. and it’s all fake ? or not ? What could possibly go wrong ? What if you are armed and pull a gun ? and who is paying for this crap ? … and these guys doing this think that they are “…contributing to the complexity and meaning of the human condition…” yeah, fer sure, like, um, performance art, except that, when the 7/7 London tube bombings happened, there was a training exercise going on, to check out procedures for… yes, tube train terrorist bombing… likewise, 9/11, NORAD simulation, 10 plus training exercises, so ‘training’ can be used as cover and smokescreen for the real thing…
…and they have video from Aurora theatre shooting, advertising their service, ffs…
December 27th, 2012 at 10:57 am
Here’s the link I couldn’t find, re the ‘training exercise’ that ended on the day of the massacre. Seems odd.
http://www.ithacaindy.com/2012/12/19/sandy-hook-ithaca-police.html
December 27th, 2012 at 11:05 am
This video is on youtube as from Associated Press, under the heading ‘The search for Colo. theatre shooting victims’, with the note Family and friends gather at Gateway High School in Aurora, Colo. in search of news about loved ones missing after a shooting a movie theater. Those with family members not listed as being at hospitals filed a missing persons report.
But Crisis Actors have it on their website as an example of their work !
Those people in the video are THEIR EMPLOYEES, they are actors, nothing to do with ‘family of the victims’….
http://youtu.be/7z_bmkrUt7c
December 27th, 2012 at 11:27 am
Released FBI documents reveal plans to assassinate OWS activists
December 27th, 2012 at 11:50 am
Kathy C: What do you make of this?
http://earthsky.org/earth/gift-giving-wild-dolphins-to-humans-in-australia
(this is the conclusion of the interesting short article)
Bottom line: On 23 occasions over the past several years, wild dolphins were observed giving gifts to humans at the Tangalooma Island Resort in Australia. The gifts included eels, tuna, squid, an octopus and an assortment of many other types of different fin fish. A report describing this rare food sharing behavior in wild dolphins was published on December 4, 2012 in the journal Anthrozoös: A Multidisciplinary Journal of the Interactions of People & Animals.
Greg: check this out (though i’m sure you know this, it was news to me)
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2012/12/on-origin-of-bully-religion.html
Regular readers who have read those posts know that Dredd Blog equates the religions of any military empire with Mithraism, which to most observers, including young cadets, is indistinguishable from what the military calls Christianity.
“Mithraism was quite often noted by many historians for its many astonishing similarities to Christianity” (Mithraism – Univ. of Chicago).
and this re-write of some of Jesus’s speeches for today’s consumer @ HP:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-james-martin-sj/more-parables-for-our-times_b_2352090.html
(like this one, that opens the article)
The Smart Samaritan
1. Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 2. Jesus said to him, “What is written in the Law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” 3. And Jesus said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” 4. But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
5. Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers. Fortunately, the man from Jerusalem was no fool and was carrying a big wooden club. So he beat the robbers senseless. Just then, a Samaritan came by to help him. 6. The man said to the Samaritan, “Don’t worry. They got what they deserved.” Later, though, the robbers’ friends waylaid the man. Together they had four clubs, so they beat up the man from Jerusalem. 7. Immediately the Samaritan, who had now learned a lesson, ran away, and sold his field, and with the money he purchased ten clubs. 8. The Samaritan armed his entire family, including his wives, his sons, his slaves and all his cattle and sheep. Among his heavily armed family was his elder son, who was angry at his father for not treating him as well his younger brother, who had spent all his money on loose living and had returned and was given a feast.” 9. “Lord, I’m getting confused,” said the lawyer. “Weren’t we talking about being a good neighbor?”
10. “Let me finish,” said Jesus. “The father knew that his son was angry, and potentially dangerous, so the father purchased an even bigger club that he hid under his bed. 11. That night, when father was asleep, the son came to father to apologize for being envious. The father, thinking it was a robber, hit him over the head. 12. Now which of these three, do you think, was a wise person?” said Jesus. 13. The lawyer said, “Actually, none of them. If the father hadn’t brought those weapons into his house, then no one would have gotten hurt.” Jesus was grieved at the lawyer’s blindness. 14. “You’re missing the point.” Jesus said. “It’s a violent world out there, and my advice is to purchase as many clubs as you can.” The lawyer was sad, for he was a peaceful man. 15. “Lord,” he said, “are you saying I should be like the Samaritan who has a houseful of weapons?” “Yes,” said Jesus. “Go and do likewise. And while you’re at it, buy me a club too.”
December 27th, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Here in Maine, alarmingly warm water in Gulf of Maine bringing changes. “Temperatures close to shore remain about 10 degrees warmer than they were last winter.”
However, since we are getting our first snowstorm of the season today everyone will forget about the scary warm temps in the water column until lobsters start shedding two months early and/or some other unprecedented and rapid change occurs. Most will shrug even then.
December 27th, 2012 at 12:28 pm
did we at NBL see this before? (maybe I missed it) http://media.smh.com.au/news/environment-news/arctic-permafrost-3815996.html
December 27th, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Urge for goin’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0_RZZoREC4
December 27th, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Depressive Lucidity, I like the cut of your jib. With respect to some of your insights, you’re close, but perhaps still a touch too emotionally engaged to fully understand current events.
The first mistake many people make when beginning their journey down the rabbit hole is to assume that somehow conditions today are in someway different than that which has governed mankind since the first proto-humans stood upright eons ago.
To state that the PTB **know** the current resource consumption model is unworkable, and that the financial ponzi scheme which is constructed upon this framework is unsustainable, is to miss the main point: they could hardly give a sh!t.
You see, playing the game itself is the game, not any particular outcome measured conventionally as ‘good’ and/or ‘bad’. IOW, they are completely agnostic as to any relative measure of a “favorable” result. The essence of the game is control; Marx was correct when he stated class conflict is the basis for societal tension.
His only problem is that he identified the culprits of his era as absolutes ie capitalists, without considering that psychopaths aka “leaders” can come in many different shapes & sizes depending on the particular circumstances.
To bitch & moan about how things are is to relegate one to a constant state of unhappiness. The security state needs a vast ocean of resources at its disposal in order to function at even a modest level. Gamesters are already actively betting on the inevitable end-of-empire – if you’re going down, why be depressed when you can party till the end?
December 27th, 2012 at 1:34 pm
depressive lucidity Says: It’s hard to feel bad about the unraveling of a system which has been an ominicidal monster so that a small minority of humans could live in an artificial cocoon of hedonistic delusions.
The life of a king or a czar
Beats out the average by far,
But the poor daily spar
For lives way below par—
It depends a lot who you are.
December 27th, 2012 at 2:29 pm
I Am The Mercury
For my heart belongs to the one on the mountain
Where doves build their nests in the sun-ripened glade
For I am the Mercury, the light of the morning,
Looking for shelter in this thunder and this rain
And you, like some windmill, weave light where it’s storming
And love like a potion for the hunger and the pain
Let it rain
I have been bought, I’ve been sold in the city
I’ve dined with the demons and I drank of their fear
But you, you have watched and waited in silence
Come cradle my heart with a homecoming tear
And we are the Mercury, the light of the morning,
Looking for shelter in this thunder and this rain
And we, like some windmill, weave light where it’s storming
And love like a potion for the hunger and the pain
Let it rain
-Jimmie Spheeris
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpJ3feEbSv4
Thanks to all of you for what you share. I have been reading & learning. The sadness is overwhelming at times. Peace & love to my invisible friends (and to Guy, who is less invisible!).
December 27th, 2012 at 2:39 pm
B9K9 The first mistake many people make when beginning their journey down the rabbit hole is to assume that somehow conditions today are in someway different than that which has governed mankind since the first proto-humans stood upright eons ago.
That’s a very deep point and I completely agree. I also agree that the majority of elites (controllers, call them what you will) are only concerned with the present and the maintenance of their privilege and power. My only disagreement is that the notion that life is a party and that we should just party until the roof caves in is a trivialization of human existence. Perhaps the concept of moral enlightenment may seem idiotic to some, but “enlightened” sentient beings (i.e. wisdom, the wise, sensitivity to Being) strive to create a community which is compassionate towards life (including the life of nonhuman Others) and seeks to live in a way that is responsible and sustainable. The idea that life is a big o’l wing ding is a modern capitalist construct which ended up destroying the biosphere and robbing others of a future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VspC88cPNtc
December 27th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
@ depressive lucidity
I’ve been struggling with the question about who “THEY” are for quite some time. It seems clear that there are shadowy elements inside/behind the US government/corporate establishment. There is also indisputable evidence that Anglo-Amerikan intelligence sector (and probably other groups we are unable to identify) have been researching mind-control for the last 60 years. It is unlikely that they would have invested some much time and energy on mind-control, psyops et cetera, and not used them. The young Lanza, who is an empty cipher on which the media can project any image it likes, smells like a classic mind-puppet patsy.
Yes, I agree thus far.
TPTB know that the current system and inflated levels of prosperity in the West are unsustainable due to resource depletion and an economic ponzi scheme that is on its last leg. Since they can’t grow the economy due to physical limits, they cannot keep creating more debt based on the prospect of future growth. I think that this much is clear to them, regardless of whether they understand the lethality of climate change.
Not so certain of that. Maybe they live in a bubble of their own ? Just insane power mad mafia gang bosses ? or occult secret soceities ? I keep an open mind…
The agenda, imo, is to begin the process of disarming, disempowering, and discouraging the Amerikan masses so that when the bottom falls out and the black shirts take to the streets, the majority will become docile and accept their new servile status in the coming feudal system. They have already installed a legal structure that gives the president dictatorial powers in the event of a “crisis”; so we are at least half way to a formal police state.
Possibly so. Many take that view, although there are also other theories. Again, I leave it open myself. I don’t pay that much attention to the guns issue, as it doesn’t really effect me in UK, just seems fairly standard US hysteria. Today brings this :
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/alert-legislation-details-senate-to-ban-hundreds-of-semiautomatic-rifles-handguns-shotguns-magazines-includes-fingerprint-registration-requirements_12272012
Unfortunately, many of the people who understand that a totalitarian system is being constructed behind the scenes are anti-semitic wack jobs who blame everyone from Jews to hyperdimensional lizards for our problems. For the last 10 thousand years “civilized” humans have been living in hierarchical authoritarian societies. I think we are experiencing the logical and exponential expansion of this logic which will only become more extreme as the bio-physical foundations of the hive are eroded.
Yeah, protestant Elizabethan England was classic, paranoia re Spain, catholics, witches, jews, etc…. same patterns repeat, ad nauseam…
December 27th, 2012 at 4:40 pm
Interesting long talk re NSA surveillance of everyone
http://youtu.be/Wl5OQz0Ko8c
December 27th, 2012 at 4:43 pm
“Unfortunately, many of the people who understand that a totalitarian system is being constructed behind the scenes are anti-semitic wack jobs who blame everyone from Jews to hyperdimensional lizards for our problems.”
And thus a comment I made elsewhere that I do not trust 90% of the people that are specifically anti government. And lets not forget, most of the libertarians and ‘everyone do your own thing’ without accountability crowd, are also mostly anti environmentalists.
December 27th, 2012 at 5:59 pm
Kathy C once again you have staggered me with your brilliance and relevance:
“Kathy C Says:
December 27th, 2012 at 9:14 am
I quoted Darwin, not because of the God part, but because Darwin could see that the natural world is rife with horrific ways for each species to try to perpetuate itself. Nature is full of horror. It is also full of wonder. Is the horror worth the wonder?”
What an excellent question, that is to my knowledge unique in all the debate about ecocide and human extinction. Maybe our extinction is a mercy – what a way to view it. I am forever torn between the wishful notion that our species “progresses” away from barbarism and the notion that we merely develop more sophisticated methods of disguising it.
Also thanks to ogardener for the Tom Rush song – it’s been so many years since it first brought me to tears that I had completely forgotten about it.
Another pounding question worthy of examination was posed in a poem I borrowed and linked here:
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-did-you-do-once-you-knew.html
December 27th, 2012 at 6:13 pm
…I do not trust 90% of the people…
I think it it rather like amongst the the environmentalist and doomer fringe, everyone seems to have their particular blind spot ( including me, no doubt, in some people’s view ) but I think some of the loony wack jobs are very good at digging up info, and even if they do seem to live in strange paranoid fantasies, that doesn’t mean everything that they say is incorrect, it just means it’s a lot of work sifting through all the junk…. bit like watching what comes out of the back of a garbage truck at the landfill site…
Thing is, as soon as you decide that ‘you know’, the mind stops questioning, and I think that’s dangerous. Same with stupid slogans like ‘conspiracy theory’, which just block intelligent analysis. Certainly, looking at a lot of wacky blogs, forums, comments, there’s a lot of extremely crazy people out there, for sure… it’s hard work…
On the previous thread, Turboguy mentioned Occam’s Razor. It’s not a fixed law, it’s just a useful guide, which says look for the simplest theory which explains the observed phenomena, rather than add unnecessary elaboration. Parsimony. But that’s for science and nature. What we’re dealing with here is humans and crime.
If there’s a guy in a chair in a room, who is dead with a pistol in his hand, the detective, by Occam’s Razor, concludes it must be suicide. But, by going for the simplest explanation, he’s excluding the actual event, which was that the guy was asleep, a murderer entered the room, shot him in the head, wiped the prints off the pistol, and placed it in his hand, to make it appear like suicide… Simplest doesn’t always guarantee truth, does it.
December 27th, 2012 at 7:27 pm
ulvfugl Says: On the previous thread, Turboguy mentioned Occam’s Razor. It’s not a fixed law, it’s just a useful guide, which says look for the simplest theory which explains the observed phenomena, rather than add unnecessary elaboration. Parsimony. But that’s for science and nature. What we’re dealing with here is humans and crime.
Ulvfugl, the reason I said what I did is simply: Why?
I’m not looking to argue with you, I was simply asking a question.
In your view what is gained from a classroom full of dead children? As much as I try to look at things from your point of view I am simply unable to deduce a concrete reason. As you and I are able to maintain some semblance of sanity, we’re unable to put ourselves in the frame of mind to murder children, and thus the confusion.
It leads me to simply state: Crazy people do crazy things, Occam’s Razor. Mental illness being what it is, especially when paired with the poison they fill those deemed “Mentally Ill” is quite literally a recipe for disaster when we add firearms to the mix.
Is the endgame gun control? A duly appointed government employee in every school/classroom? I don’t know, and you seem to be an expert.
Tom: On your last comment to me about a cop in every gunstore, I AGREE!
That said, David Gregory and Obama send their children to an elite school where not counting the unbelievably well armed Secret Service agents in the midst, (Who have a truck right outside which has actual machine guns inside) have no fewer than eleven armed security guards. Obama himself joked about how he loves that heavily armed guys protect his daughters. Does that make him crazy too?
Please explain why it’s perfectly okay for the uber rich to have their children well protected by rough men ready to bestow instant violence to those who might threaten them, while your status doesn’t afford those protections? I thought this site, after it’s transformation, was all about equality?
December 27th, 2012 at 7:27 pm
Kathy, haha, I hear you.
==
Kathy C Says: Is the horror worth the wonder? If not the passing of this world of life perhaps is OK….Maybe it is just my way of coping with NTE but one cannot deny that the beautiful natural world we mourn is full of one creature eating another day after day….So much pain….
“Is it worth it?” The question is key;
For some few, it sure seems to be,
But probably for most,
Properly diagnosed,
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
December 27th, 2012 at 8:41 pm
FYI : http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Ozone-Problem-is-Back–And-Worse-Than-Ever-180011891.html
December 27th, 2012 at 9:05 pm
Thanks Guy,
And thanks contributing folks for openly tossing about questions about the fundamental constructs of our existence, like killing, and eating and dominating and owning and destroying, and trying to be here for the benefits and gone for the consequences.
John
December 27th, 2012 at 9:27 pm
I appreciate your work. Please, keep it up.
Here’s a one chord song I wrote for the solstice:
Son of the Sun:
i’m son of the sun
love to everyone
electrified eyes
charmed
and then some
heart on fire
mind on fun
enjoying all the blessings
from my old man, sun
enjoying all the blessings
from my old man, sun
i’m son of the sun
love to everyone
heat in my hand
charmed
and then some
heart on fire
mind on fun
enjoying all the blessings
from my old man, sun
people talk story
confidence come undone
lost sight
of the light
in the darkness
of the shadows
of the people
without connection to the sun
without connection to the sun
sun keeps on shining
giving love to everyone
reminding all here
we’re all children of the sun
we’re all children of the sun
we’re all children of the sun
heart on fire
mind on fun
enjoy all the blessings
from your old man, sun
enjoy all the blessings
from your old man, sun
heart on fire
mind on fun
enjoy all the blessings
from your old man, sun
from your old man, sun
December 28th, 2012 at 2:01 am
What did you do once you knew?
Once you know, the doing ceases, even though the chopping wood and carrying water continues.
December 28th, 2012 at 2:14 am
In your view what is gained from a classroom full of dead children?
That sage advice was ignored:
“When seconds count, the cops are just minutes away”. – John Steinbeck
December 28th, 2012 at 2:19 am
A duly appointed government employee in every school/classroom?
In other words, a public school teacher.
December 28th, 2012 at 2:30 am
Medical personnel are not exempted from weapons qualification in the Arny, even though they are medical personnel.
December 28th, 2012 at 2:43 am
Is the horror worth the wonder?
It is a futile yet common desire to eradicate one of a pair of opposites in a realm of opposites.
December 28th, 2012 at 2:51 am
I turned 60 this year. I actually started to go over my past, looking for meaning… looking for threads and connections, not out of want or fear, just decided to look for flavors, currents, directions. Looking thru photographs, reading old
correspondence, even going thru my internet favorites…exploring.
The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of
dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
-H.P. Lovecraft
I ran across this quote that I had filed in my documents folder for later consideration. Since that day, I’ve come upon Nature Bat’s Last, watched Guy’s two most recent lectures and read all of the comments from his 4 most recent posts. I’ve also followed links thoughtfully provided by you folks to help me situate this new (to me) perspective. I watched the german Professor’s two-part presentation, read many old and current posts about artic ice, permafrost methane release, and looked up and studied links on the 8 feedback loops of doom. It’s been an eventful December in my education…unfortunately.
Being struck by Lovecraft’s quote, by what I considered its prescience, I put it aside not wanting, right then, to really think about The Road scenario it brought to mind. Now I’m realizing that McCarthy’s scenario is an optimist’s pipe dream compared to the obvious truth staring back at us from the coming darkness. I also realize that the horror of discovery in Lovecraft’s quote may never come to pass for most people of this world. Something much worse seems to be in store. Obliviousness, sudden surprise, lots of pain, The End.
Is life a learning experience? Is this a lesson for us from our creator? Can what’s coming be ennobled in some way on that basis?
I’m afraid I don’t think so, I just can’t see it… self serving to the very end, we’d love to mythologize our self-deportation from corporeality. We are just another toxic mutation played out over time and space.
The jig is about up and we might as well dance our way out.
Buddha. Bucky Fuller. Gurdjieff. Darwin. Galileo. The Beatles. Richard Simmons (and many others).
They tried to help, but couldn’t. Some of us tried to listen and act. Most didn’t.
At this point, what’s the use of worrying? Certainly no point in anger or retaliation.
We did this. And we’ll all go down together. Just like Billy Joel said.
I guess I’ll head back to memory lane now.
b.phillips
December 28th, 2012 at 3:36 am
Robin
I wrote -Is the horror worth the wonder?
You – wrote It is a futile yet common desire to eradicate one of a pair of opposites in a realm of opposites.
No I am not trying to eliminate anything. But the pain of being prey doesn’t exist because it is the opposite of the beauty of nature. It exists because evolution creates what works, not necessarily what it nice. The pain of being a victim of the Inquisition or Guantanamo exists not because they are the opposites of being nice, but because humans evolved to be the top predator with little left to prey on but its own species.
I am suggesting that since it is true that on this world the horror comes inextricably tied to the wonder (survival of what works), that the passing of life on this planet perhaps is not something to be mourned at all.
If in fact the evil in inextricably tied to the good by some law of opposites (given by whom?), if in fact the joy of sex is somehow tied to the rape of children, if the joy of an excellent meal is tied to starvation, if in fact the beauty of a fox comes from the shredding apart of baby bunnies, perhaps we don’t have to find the end of this realm of opposites such a thing to mourn.
Either by what I meant (evolution is not what is good, but what works) or your way – some inexplicable law of opposites – is it worth it to keep it going. Ask the mouse as the talons pierce his body, ask the child as her impoverish mother sells her into slavery. Explain to them how this law of opposites makes their suffering OK somehow.
December 28th, 2012 at 3:49 am
Gail “Maybe our extinction is a mercy – what a way to view it. I am forever torn between the wishful notion that our species “progresses” away from barbarism and the notion that we merely develop more sophisticated methods of disguising it.”
Yes. I know that some say the numbers say that hunter-gatherers kill more other humans than modern humans. I however have never seen what goes into that. Does that include for instance only the number we say we killed in wars (like Iraq) or the numbers that really have been killed. Does it include only the homicides in cities but not the early death of those who take drugs because they can’t take it. Does it include collateral damage, the suicides after every war, the conditions created by war that cause early death through disease and famine, the people killed in factory fires where the doors were locked, the people killed by pollution. We disguise the deaths that are caused by our way of life that never killed a single hunter gatherer. No hunter-gatherer died in a nuclear accident eh? We can’t see the horror in the statistics can we?
December 28th, 2012 at 3:53 am
@ Turboguy
the reason I said what I did is simply: Why?
I’m not looking to argue with you, I was simply asking a question.
In your view what is gained from a classroom full of dead children?
As much as I try to look at things from your point of view I am simply unable to deduce a concrete reason. As you and I are able to maintain some semblance of sanity, we’re unable to put ourselves in the frame of mind to murder children, and thus the confusion.
It leads me to simply state: Crazy people do crazy things, Occam’s Razor. Mental illness being what it is, especially when paired with the poison they fill those deemed “Mentally Ill” is quite literally a recipe for disaster when we add firearms to the mix.
Is the endgame gun control? A duly appointed government employee in every school/classroom? I don’t know, and you seem to be an expert.
I’m not an expert, Turboguy, just try to understand what’s really going on.
Yes, the question is ‘Why ?’. But you seemed to accept the ‘simple’ MSM account, the mentally ill young guy, for reasons unknown, slaughters children, contrasted with my ‘complex conspiracy’, that it was an engineered event designed by others also for reasons unknown.
Both are valid, and I don’t reject either, a priori. We should list all possibilities, excluding nothing, not even the most unlikely, if we want truth, because there is good reason to be suspicious. It’s a crime scene. Criminals don’t tell the truth, sometimes they even dress as cops, sometimes the tv doesn’t tell the truth, sometimes events are staged to deceive the public, we cannot assume that any authorities are trustworthy and acting in good faith. At the same time, we don’t want to get sucked into total insanity ourselves. This is hard ! It really is.
Don’t know if anybody here watched the film about scopolamine in Colombia. It can be given as fine powder, inhaled without knowing, and then you’ll do whatever someone tells you ‘Hey, howabout we go to your bank and withdraw all your money ?’ and afterwards there’s no recollection… the dark agencies have known about that for many decades, they are bound to have refined and weaponized it, in the light of modern chemistry and neuroscience, I think it’s easy for them to set up ANY suitable vulnerable individual as a Manchurian Candidate/Sirhan/Ruby type to do whatever, just part of their tool kit, like drones and computer hacking and all the rest of the crap.
Any theory about what happened has to explain all the anomalies, like who were the two guys in ski masks ( one dressed as a nun ?!) in the purple van with the rear windows smashed leaving, the area… and so many other strange pieces of information that simply don’t fit the MSM story.
When I say this is hard, it’s not just this particular thing re SH that’s hard, if you really deeply question any issue about soceity, beliefs, etc, you hit that self-doubt place, ‘Is it me that’s crazy, or is it everyone else ?’ which is a painful, lonely place to be…
December 28th, 2012 at 3:54 am
On the shooting issue and the NRA stance. What looks more like a police state?
a law introduced by Diane Feinstein banning assault weapons with 900 exemptions.
NRA proposal of armed guards in every school in the country
Seems to me the NRA proposal moves us much closer to a police state. In fact recent shootings were in a movie theater and a mall – lets put the police there as well. In fact so that everyone can buy a gun lets put the police everywhere.
December 28th, 2012 at 4:00 am
A bit off topic…
Many here may know as I do that surveilence technology is going into hyperdrive in the USA particularly, but I can’t see how it isn’t going in the same direction wherever there are GPS enabled mobile phones and screen thingamys.
Stumbled onto this little tidbit that seems to confirm what we sort of knew.
‘Precrime creeps closer to reality, with predictive smartphone location tracking’
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/134422-precrime-creeps-closer-to-reality-with-predictive-smartphone-location-tracking
Some sobering quotes:
“A British research group has developed software that can predict, within 20 meters, where you will be 24 hours from now.
It’s actually surprisingly easy to predict your general, routine movements — home, car, office, lunch, car, home — but it has always been nigh impossible to predict breaks in routine, such as a trip to the cinema or a holiday abroad.
The researchers, Mirco Musolesi, Manlio Domenico, and Antonio Lima of the University of Birmingham, cracked this problem by factoring in the location of your friends and your social interactions with those friends (phone calls, meet-ups, etc.) By simply analyzing how many calls you make to a friend, and by correlating your movement patterns, the researchers can predict your movements over the next 24 hours — even if you deviate dramatically from routine….
On the nefarious end of the spectrum, though, this algorithm could be the cornerstone of a Precrime Police Division, a la Minority Report. Precrime would track the location of known criminals via their smartphones, and put a tap on their calls to correlate their movements with their friends/known associates. Very quickly, the Precrime Police could create a map of where every criminal will be in the next 24 hours. It would probably be difficult to predict actual crimes, but at least you’d know where to station your cops.
It’s worth noting that some police departments are already doing something similar, but on a much broader scale: They’re collating all of the reports and arrests in their database, and then plotting them on a map to see where crime is most likely to occur on any given day. In regions where police forces are being downsized, technology will become increasingly important as a force amplifier — and eventually, I wouldn’t be surprised if a real, per-criminal precrime system is deployed.”
I’m going to chuck my mobile phone, back to the old days….
Not that I’ve done anything wrong…er…not yet.
December 28th, 2012 at 5:21 am
@Robin
“What did you do once you knew?
Once you know, the doing ceases, even though the chopping wood and carrying water continues.”
Doing ceases with death–if you discount feeding microbes; if you discount what your mirror neurons have programmed into those they have helped pattern and who might, after your death, not yet be dead. Isn’t it what one does differently (that is statistically significant) once NTE is grasped, a more pertinent framing of the question? To the degree doing, as life, never ceases–even in an extinction event–isn’t knowing, motivated reasoning withstanding, only observable when the doing is statistically significantly different?
Consider, and to the degree the blogosphere functions as an echo chamber for trusted iterations of motivated reasoning, to what degree what is being done within the NBL network/community functioning as a pursuit of homeostasis among similarly-minded individuals living out Pogo’s truth: “we have met the enemy and he is us.” Systemically, how are “we” the feared “they”?
December 28th, 2012 at 8:29 am
Doing ceases with death
The “doing” ceases with the death of the “I”. The “happening” is not dependent on the “I”: it continues as long as the body-mind continues. The Great Death, the death of the “I” may occur well before the death of the body-mind. In that case the “doing” ceases but the “happening” continues. The Great Death may also occur at the moment of the death of the body-mind. In any case the “happening” does not cease until the moment of the body-mind death. What is commonly referred to as “death” is the little death.
The Great Death
December 28th, 2012 at 9:14 am
At stake:
http://vimeo.com/54269169#
December 28th, 2012 at 9:17 am
Good and evil, beautiful and ugly (and such) are not inextricably linked. They are both necessarily aspects of conditional reality. The contrasts are addressed in various ways, but reference to an non-conditionable reality is not an option within conditioned reality.
December 28th, 2012 at 9:27 am
Guy, thank you for sharing your ode with us. I must confess that I’ve never written an ode before, but I am happy to provide my attempt for your perusal.
Ode to the Natural World
Oh the wondrous beauty of the natural world,
The trees, the grasses, the birds, and the squirrels,
They all beckon to me like a banner with its colors unfurled.
For countless eons life has thrived and filled
Every niche on the mountains, the oceans, and the fields untilled.
While beautiful, true, life can be severe.
For everything dies, some at peace, while others in great fear.
Nature continually tries to find a new way,
Some lives doesn’t last, while others for a longer time stay.
Occasionally, nature’s various and sundry potions
Creates a situation which starts the wheels in motion
To clean the planet of all life from the skies to the oceans.
Such great angst is created for those who are aware
Of what’s happening to life everywhere.
But, the observer too one day will be gone,
And after a while, life will start again and go on.
Will the beauty of the world still be so wondrous
When new life has been created long after us?
There can be no doubt, whether hotter or colder,
Beauty most certainly there will be in the eyes of the beholder.
December 28th, 2012 at 9:29 am
Well Robin are we then stuck in this conditioned reality with no escape.
Given that so much evil goes on, so much pain, again I ask, is the conditioned reality worth it? Should we mourn the end of it (assuming extinction would end it).
December 28th, 2012 at 9:34 am
Daniel,
Thanks for the link on 2012 temperature. Did you notice that it’s starting to look like a hockey stick? Once again we see that pattern.
If the hockey stick pattern holds true for temperature, then NTE is a certainty within our near future. Just project that graph out a little bit and a 6 to 10 degree increase in average temperature is less than a decade away.
If that trend continues, we almost certainly will be facing major food shortages, if not this year, then next.
December 28th, 2012 at 10:17 am
Links to videos of space travel, real or sci-fi are beautiful, as may be movies (I have not watched movies in over two decades). But any “sustainability” outside our biosphere will mandate taking along a chunk of the biosphere. Until we find another planet habitable to us in another star system.
The critical issue in interstellar human travel would be the ability to maintain closed biospheric ecosystems for millennia. And secondly the ability to recycle everything. For all those millennia, all maintenance and all repairs will have to be done with the materials and (remanufactured when they wear out) tools at hand. Recycling to the ultimate degree.
Life in another habitable world may be based not on DNA, but on nucleic acid analogues or on something else altogether: there is no telling how it would interact with a biosphere imported from Earth.
However such speculation is moot now.
December 28th, 2012 at 10:18 am
TOO LATE I SPEAK WITH MANY VOICES…
A FEW VOICES OF MONEY AND POWER
LEADING TO MUCH GREED AND DESTRUCTION…
AND MANY VOICES OF IGNORANCE
LEADING TO WOBBLING TOWERS OF BABBLE…
And what can be done about it?
Nuthin…
Bipedal army ants built a road over the Andes…
Using real life Tonka toys…
From Pacific port deep into my beloved heart…
An artery pulsing with diesel fuel combusted…
Slicing at my dirt until the dirty deed was done…
So their friends the chainsaw termites…
And their friends the helicopter flying beavers…
Relieve their friends the World Bunco Maggots…
And International Monetary Ferrets…
Of their misplaced concern over unpaid debts…
Foreign debt could be repudiated like Hitler and Tojo did…
But instead of having them kill each other in wars…
They put my sons and daughters on board ships like slaves…
Pack them in like the ever lesser sardines…
My sons and daughters could float on their own but instead…
They separate them from their roots and family…
Lift them out of their villages using hot air and jet fuel…
And float them to their technological islands…
Strip off their skins to use as plywood…
Render their bones to make furniture…
Upon which their new masters sit…
While supping on succulent whale meat slaughtered helplessly…
After having their eardrums blasted to deafness…
Measuring my ocean’s temperature uselessly…
Greater chunks of my meat are missing now…
The size of France every five years…
I speak from patchwork quilt-lesser cloth…
Nobody can come to my aid…
I have acquired some deficiencies…
I am not immune to feeling loss…
While my dwindling jewels are still being plucked from their settings…
My few precious crowns are pried from my many mouths…
Melted down chopped up reformed…
Made into ingots and false idols…
Such great chunks of my meat are missing now…
I cannot hold my water, I cannot hold my earth…
My thinning soil falls out, I pee way out over the ocean…
Instead of on Africa where I used to like to pee…
After my splendid hardwood erections are pillaged and taken…
I am given like chattel to grateful ignorants who burn me…
They think they are getting something of value…
If they only knew…
I feel so useless…
They think I am just rocks and dirt…
They think I am just plants…
They think I am just insects…
They think I am just animals…
They think I am just air and water…
They think I am just electrons spinning around protons and neutrons…
They really don’t know what to think…
They just know they have to think something…
They look for a physical grand unification theory…
It is right in front of their nose…
Any direction they point their nose…
It is right in front of it…
Can’t they smell the stench?
It is not a theory.
In that place called America alone…
There are 100 million of my poor displaced and inbred cousins…
Imprisoned in relocation camps…
Strict vegetarians being fed ground up parts of each other…
And offal ground up parts from other more wooly cousins…
Waiting to have their heads chopped off their muscles sliced…
Their organs ground by a race of hairless idiot monkeys…
The same hairless idiot monkeys that use the skins…
Of the prisoners for shoes coats and branded lampshades with no light…
The same hairless idiot monkeys that use their hairy cousins…
For experiments opening their brain pans and putting in probes…
Dancing around in glee when they press a button…
And the hairy cousins jerk and vomit in disgust…
They think I am just animals…
So they eat me…
This is a mistake…
I am the progenitor of rocks, dirt, plants, animals, air and water…
Atoms and electrons matter and antimatter…
I have informed my animal offspring to make themselves sick…
When the hairless idiot monkeys put them in concentration camps…
To ready them for slaughter they get the jitterbug brain rot…
Ollie Ollie Oxen free free free and all fall down…
Now they put my sweet innocent cannon fodder…
Into ovens in droves and incinerate them…
So they wont infect the others with their addled thoughts of rebellion…
Briefly reminiscent of memories we are supposed to be ashamed of…
Putting them in ovens like cattle…
Until the hairless idiot monkeys do the jitterbug and all fall down…
Ollie Ollie Ebola-Monkey Free Free Free…
Better being quietly euthanized than eaten or experimented with…
They think I am just air and water…
So they drink me and breathe me…
This is a mistake…
I have informed the air and water to seek their own level of toxicity…
So if hairless idiot monkeys put poisons into air and water…
Cancer is all they will get back out…
They think I am just plants so they hybridize me…
Make it so I cannot have babies…
This is a mistake…
Make it so the poor farmers that plant me have to beg for seed…
From the same hybridizing companies year after year or they starve…
Make it so the poor countries have to borrow money…
From World Bunco Maggots who direct where to buy the seed…
And International Monetary Ferrets who squeal and rub their paws…
And direct from whom to buy the chemical poison fertilizer insecticide…
They plant us in sameness all together in huge collective camps…
Make it so the insects that eat me call all their friends to the feast…
It is a celebration of death…
They spray me with poison to kill the insects…
Then they eat me…
This is a mistake…
They think I am just insects…
They think I am a pest…
There is a lot more of me than them…
I bite them…
I make like a buzz saw in their ear…
They try to poison me…
There is not enough poison in the Universe to poison me…
This is a mistake…
They think I am just rocks and dirt…
If they have time they think in amazement about abundant life…
Springing from just rocks and dirt…
But they won’t just leave me alone…
They mess with me…
They think there are things inside of me…
They crush me and refine me…
They try to psychoanalyze me…
Send me to factory schools where they try to make me fit in…
The school counselors redefine me as ore…
They make me a resource upon which they depend…
I have become valuable to them…
They have killed many many hairless idiot monkeys over me…
To get me, protect me and yell battle profanities in my name…
Wherever I am they call me the “land that they love”…
They think that they can possess me…
This is a mistake…
They think I am just electrons spinning around protons and neutrons…
They think I am even smaller and name me colors of quarks…
I joust with them and their thought…
The instant they think I am something I become that…
I am willow-the-wisp I am the magician…
They begin to think I am metaphysical…
I am…
They collide one part of me with another part of me and I am still me…
The hairless idiot monkeys jump around when the collision occurs…
They think of a new name for me…
They don’t have the slightest idea who I am…
They made me fly apart with my gigantic power and kill for them…
So I made them hideous deranged and even more hairless…
And skin peel off and fingernails fallout and death was cheap…
But death is more expensive now…
They try to enslave my power so I can only maim and injure…
Bolting antique steam engines together with the Sun…
To make power for their hair dryers…
This is a mistake…
Since they do not love me…
They cannot hold me…
I am too big for their britches…
No suspenders can hold me up…
Since they do not love me…
They only think of using me and then leaving me…
Piercing me gouging me poisoning me damning me…
They think of going back to heaven where they think they came from…
So they think they act in my name…
Some of these hairless idiot monkeys even think they are me…
Where do they get the audacity to think that they are everything?
They think I have legs and sit on a throne…
They think I have self esteem…
This is a mistake…
They really don’t know what to think…
They just know they have to think something…
I am not taking this sitting down…
I take this spinning around…
Twisting and turning on the shiskabob spit…
If I turn just right I can throw them off…
If I jiggle just a little and take a jog real quick…
Whirl like a dervish…
Tsunamis will do their work…
Oceans will slosh back and forth in their basins…
And quickfreeze these unnatural mammoths at the poles…
With Big Macs stuffed in their mouths…
Humans to me are like a fungus gone awry…
Fed too much sugar and fermented…
In a darkened dank earthen hallway with tunnel vision…
December 28th, 2012 at 10:39 am
Kathy C. ..we then stuck in this conditioned reality with no escape…
YOU are, Kathy, because of your egocentric/anthropocentric viewpoint, that sees the the whole Universe as having its purpose in being required to conform to your personal likes and dislikes. Why the heck should it ? What’s so important about what what you find pleasant or unpleasant ?
Not everyone sees it that way, not all cultures see it that way, it’s a peculiarity of the Christian belief system, ‘God created the world for people’.
You complain about the horror of foxies eating cuddly bunnies, but that’s as absurd as for a bacterium in your gut to complain about the horrible conditions it has to endure, where cells live and die. It’s just a part of the system that permits you to exist. Foxes and rabbits are part of the system that allows foxes and rabbits.
Your identification with your own self as being the centre of all which passes judgement upon all, is what causes you difficulty.
“This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean ‘waves,’ the universe ‘peoples.’ Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated ‘egos’ inside bags of skin [but] the cat has already been let out of the bag. The inside information is that yourself as ‘just little me’ who ‘came into this world’ and lives temporarily in a bag of skin is a hoax and a fake. The fact is that because no one thing or feature of this universe is separable from the whole, the only real You, or Self, is the whole.” -Alan Watts, “The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”
December 28th, 2012 at 10:40 am
I ask, is the conditioned reality worth it?
Two and a half millennia ago a gent said “Hell no!”
But to (mis)appropriate TRDH’s line Beauty most certainly there will be in the eyes of the beholder
- Beauty most certainly there will be in the eyes of the beerholder.
December 28th, 2012 at 10:48 am
Guy,
My heart ached as I read your ode as I too so Love this earth. The smell of new mown grass. The caress of air molecules kissing my skin. The sigh of the trees. The symphony of life.
Out of dodge and not in Kansas. As droll as it gets…great humor in the face of despair.
Have been looking for ways to make you wrong but, as yet, to no avail.
Safe travels my friend.
Edward
December 28th, 2012 at 11:05 am
Gosh, an American Senator gets it… good talk.
http://youtu.be/dv80w4z0LXo
December 28th, 2012 at 11:42 am
Brad Smith: Jaw-droppingly astonishing. Thank you.
December 28th, 2012 at 12:10 pm
@Robin
As far as I know, the geo-political construct within which Zen evolved was that of a social meme in which an elite held unquestioned power over the lower classes. In Western democratic republics, are not the people the comprobable elite (if irresponsibly so)? If so, then isn’t it our doing that rules? With NTE, isn’t that what our doing/ruling choose? I accept that extinction, as karmic justice, is ‘good’. For me it’s a way of seeing how ‘they’ are ‘us’ (…and we are all together…).
Anyway, the referenced detachment might be another ‘synomym’ for ‘homeostasis’. Your reply has me wondering what it’s iteration of motivated reasoning might be: enlightened non-doing as good? I may not have communicated as I intended, but doesn’t even that, whether it is motivated reasoning or not, function, systemically, as I posited? Or we’re you agreeing and I’ve missed that?
December 28th, 2012 at 12:36 pm
[i}“What did you do once you knew?[/i]
Some friends and I bought a ’64 Dodge van in a junkyard for $25.00, fixed it up, drove it to BC, Canada and joined a commune.
Chopping wood and carrying water works for me.
December 28th, 2012 at 12:43 pm
Doing requires agency. There has to be an “I”, which hosts the sense of “I” am doing. Without the “I” there can be “happening”, but that is not “doing”. Even an inanimate robot that is “doing” has an agency in the controller behind it, otherwise it is only functioning, and events are happening.
Zen, Chan, and the precursors as well as the Theravada and Vajrayana traditions are at home with these concepts, which arise from and are consonant with their roots in Vedic traditions.
Those from dualistic religions have a substantial conceptual distance to traverse to “no soul”, “no god” and “The Void”.
Without the “I”, one may act, but the actions no longer constitute “doing” because there is no longer an “I” to host the agency of “I” “am doing”.
December 28th, 2012 at 12:58 pm
ulvfugl “What’s so important about what what you find pleasant or unpleasant ?”
You will note that I am always talking about what others find unpleasant. I talk about children taken into sex slavery. I can imagine they find that unpleasant. I hear the screech of a chicken nailed by a hawk. I see the other chickens cowering. How can I not believe that is unpleasant. My life is pretty damn good. I have held my own babies, fat with my milk, and that was good. I have held starving babies in Haiti and listened to them scream when I put them down. How can I not believe that that is NOT good. How is this about ME when I keep talking about others???
you wrote “Foxes and rabbits are part of the system that allows foxes and rabbits.” Did you know that the call they make for hunters to attract foxes mimics the bleat of a baby rabbit, the sound of fear. Sure if you step back it is a system that works, but step into the skin of the baby rabbit. How does it feel? Cannot you not put yourself anywhere other than inside your own self. Can you not imagine a wild animal’s fear of the wolf that is about to cull it from the herd. Or does that antelope just say, oh well that is the way it goes, keeps the herd strong. NO it just fears and hurts when the teeth cut into its flesh.
You have told us of your headaches and your attempts to eliminate them. Why not just accept that as part of a system that gives some people bodies without headaches and some headaches? Just the way it is….your pain is real to you. Do you care about anyone else’s pain? The fear and pain of a 5 year old child just raped for the first time by an adult, orfices torn, body shamed, and no mother or father to hold and comfort them. Put yourself there and tell me that is OK.
So death happens, extinction happens, just the way it goes. Extinctions have been happening ever since life began. I am OK with that. I am OK with all of it going including myself and kin. How is that putting myself at the center. I am just accepting the world as it is and saying, maybe it is not really something worth mourning. After all it is just going early by the hand of one of the species that happened to evolve and be a bit too good at what it does. Few billion years early. No big deal.
Deep down, Ulvfugl I think you are afraid of death and the fact that I am not is what threatens you, not all the other stuff you pick at.
December 28th, 2012 at 1:06 pm
White slavery
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/forgottenslaves.html
December 28th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
ulvfugl; Regarding ocean acidification, the senator starts out very strong but ends up sounding like an economist/politician. I doubt anyone was overly impressed.
My wife said the local TV news had a climatologist on explaining warming and weather changes. Whatever. Folks like warmer weather.
December 28th, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Yeah, the politician at least mentions some of the threats, but couches them too much in the context of economy – while not delving into the true seriousness of the situation.
December 28th, 2012 at 2:58 pm
Kathy C. what you are saying seems to me to be typical example egocentrism and anthropocentrism, as exemplified by the Christian cultural tradition.
When the going was good, use and exploit everything, because ‘God gave the world to people to use as they wish’.
Now that it’s wrecked, ‘Oh, well, nature was always horrible, so it doesn’t really matter’. As so often, I find your attitude abhorrent.
Deep down, Ulvfugl I think you are afraid of death and the fact that I am not is what threatens you, not all the other stuff you pick at.
I don’t think anything about you or what you believe threatens me, Kathy C. I really don’t care what your attitude towards death is. Why should I ? It’s your own private affair, doesn’t effect me in any way whatsoever. I comment on what you say when I think it is wrong and misleading because I like truth and honesty.
December 28th, 2012 at 3:14 pm
@Bailey, dairymandave …the senator starts out very strong but ends up sounding like an economist/politician. I doubt anyone was overly impressed.
Crikey, ffs, he IS a POLITICIAN. Have you never heard of rhetoric ? He’s trying to persuade people, and considering the rubbish that usually comes out from the US Gvt, that’s a pleasant change….
December 28th, 2012 at 3:25 pm
Fukuoka talks about the end of life on Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft0ylk4sU5M
December 28th, 2012 at 3:27 pm
Well Robin are we then stuck in this conditioned reality with no escape.
My apologies for butting into a fine discussion between Robin and Kathy C, but doesn’t the escape from conditioned reality occur when enlightenment is achieved? Breaking free from the cycle of birth-death-rebirth fueled by suffering?
Given that so much evil goes on, so much pain, again I ask, is the conditioned reality worth it? Should we mourn the end of it (assuming extinction would end it).
In eastern religion/philosophy, extinction of life here will not end conditioned reality (at least if my understanding of it is correct). Those of us, human and non-human alike, who did not achieve enlightenment here will simply be reborn as an alien life form on another planet in this universe, or as an entity in one of the other four realms of existence.
That wheel just keeps rolling on and on…
December 28th, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Re white slavery, excellent free book online, Gangs of America, Ted Nace, the origins in England, of the Corporations and American colonies :
Edward Hakluyt, who spent twenty years promoting the ideas that led to the Virginia Company, was quite frank in calling it a “prison without walls.” In 1609 the company applied to the city of London “to ease the city and suburbs of a swarme of unnecessary inmates, as a continual cause of death and famine, and the verey originall cause of all the plagues that happen in this kingdome.”
At the request of the company, Parliament in 1618 passed a bill allowing the Virginia Company to capture English and Scottish children as young as eight years of age. John Donne, one of the leaders of the company, promised in 1622 that the Virginia Company “shall sweep your streets, and wash your dores, from idele persons, and the children of idle persons, and imploy them.”
Historian John Van der Zee describes children “driven in flocks through the town and confined for shipment in barns.” Those who survived the Atlantic passage encountered regimentation and institutionalized cruelty as routine aspects of everyday life. Each person, including children, received a military rank, and those who violated the detailed rules were tied “neck and heels” for the first offense, whipped for the second, and forced to work on a convict galley for the third. Such methods of discipline had been devised by Maurice of Orange for training Dutch soldiers; they were introduced to the Virginia colony by Sir Thomas Gates and Sir Thomas Gale. Even petty crimes were harshly punished. Stealing an ear of corn or a bunch of grapes while weeding a garden was punishable by death. For stealing two or three pints of oatmeal, one worker had a needle thrust through his tongue and was then chained to a tree until he died of starvation.
Speaking out against the leadership of the company earned even worse punishment. For making “base and detracting” statements against the governor, the Company managers ordered one servant to have his arms broken, his tongue pierced with an awl, and finally to be beaten by a gauntlet of 40 men before being banished from the settlement. For complaining that the Company’s system of justice was unfair, a man named Thomas Hatch was whipped, placed in the pillory, had an ear cut off, and sentenced to an additional seven years of servitude.
http://www.gangsofamerica.com/3.html
December 28th, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Music for the Apocalypse
They say
the revolution
will not be televised
we know now
that it will be
on the Net
no trumpet blast
is necessary
we were
forewarned
by Dylan
and now
the chatter
of the keyboard
is the accompaniment
to Decay…
December 28th, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Conspiracy2Riot, Fred Kaluza, amanda, B9K9, islandraider, ryerro, Brad Phillips, brad smith, ogardener, and John Matthews, thanks for your first-time comments in this space. And thanks to everybody else, too, for continued fine contributions.
December 28th, 2012 at 4:05 pm
@ Arthur Johnson
You can go down that buddhist/hindu line of thinking, which, IMO, is mythos, not logos, because nobody ever came back with any substantive evidence to support the thesis, afaik…. but there is an alternative route… which can be supported by science
Ecocentrism recognizes that the Ecosphere, rather than organisms, is the source of life, of creativity, of evolutionary design, and of all meaning.
http://www.ecospherics.net/index.html
December 28th, 2012 at 4:05 pm
Ulvfugl, so attributing fear and pain to animals is anthropomorphism? The Guys at the Feed Lots will love you. The guys that drop make up into rabbit eyes will love you. Watch out for the PETA folks tho.
When did I ever say we should use and exploit everything on the planet? You totally misunderstand. Its just that despite the efforts to warn people, despite the efforts of those who have gone to jail to try to save the planet, it seems that we are at Near Term Extinction. So the question arises how do we feel? I suggest that perhaps we admit that we lose the good when life exits stage left, but we also lose the bad. For some that might help ease the mourning.
I have done many things to make life for people better – took in foster children, spent years visiting nursing homes to bring some comfort, did Hospice for 10 years. Worked 7 years volunteering at Habitat for Humanity to help people have a home. Spent many years volunteering at homeless shelters. I have tried to garden well, restoring soil to some of its natural fertility and encouraging rich life in the soil, sparing the hoe and shovel where I could to keep from disturbing the life in the soil. I have lived simply, sometimes by necessity, mostly by choice. My chickens are healthy and have about as good a life as a domestic animal could hope for. I could just live it up for whatever remaining time we have on the planet, but its not even something I want much less intend to do.
But all of that doesn’t matter does it. If I have different ideas about the nature of the world and life, and dare to challenge your ideas, I become to you some sort of evil incarnate.
Here is some truth for you. Species go extinct. Sometimes lots and lots of species go extinct (end permian for example). This has happened before humans even existed. Scientists believe our sun will go nova and whatever life is left on the planet will be incinerated and our whole solar system will cease to be. Predators eat prey, lots of prey. Whether or not the prey that are non-human feel any pain we can’t know, but we know that the more advanced have a nervous system similar to ours. We know that when they are hurt they respond as we do with limping, cries, howls etc. We know we don’t want to be hunted or eaten alive. We have good reason to believe the lion will never lay down with the lamb and begin to eat grass. The deck is stacked, we live on a planet that is finite so if reproducing creatures don’t die the planet will overfill. We know that animals have programs to avoid death and yet they cannot in the end avoid death. We know that humans KNOW they have to die and most cannot stand the thought of that.
Please tell me what in that is not true. Please tell me why saying such things is dishonest.
December 28th, 2012 at 4:13 pm
Arthur “but doesn’t the escape from conditioned reality occur when enlightenment is achieved? Breaking free from the cycle of birth-death-rebirth fueled by suffering?”
I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if I did I would say that the enlightenment, if fueled by suffering is not worth it. I cannot find anything that would be worth a child being sold by her parents into sex slavery. However if you think it is worth it, go find a child that has had that life and ask them if eventual enlightenment is going to be worth it to them.
I have a similar argument with people who are Christian – they tell me that free will is so wonderful a gift, and the creator has to give it to all or none apparently, that it is worth it for a child to be experimented on fully awake by a Nazi Dr. because Hitler and the Dr. cannot be deprived of their free will. At any rate can you imagine asking a child if they mind the pain of an anesthetic free experiment so Hitler can have free will. I expect they would gladly give up their own free will to have the pain stop.
December 28th, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Kathy C. Not for the first time, you appear to have absolutely no idea what I am talking about and go off onto a totally unrelated diversion. Is it deliberate, or are you unable to follow ?
I have NEVER mentioned anthropomorphism. Do please try and read what I write before you reply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocentrism
December 28th, 2012 at 4:49 pm
Kathy C. Deep down, Ulvfugl I think you are afraid of death and the fact that I am not is what threatens you
Robin D. understands this. You do not. This is what I practice.
Students of the Way, let go of body and mind and enter completely into the buddha-dharma. An ancient said, “At the top of a hundred foot pole, how do you advance one step further?” In such a situation, we think that we would die if we were to let go of the pole and so we cling firmly to it.
Saying “advance one step further” means the same as having resolved that death would not be bad and therefore one lets go of bodily life. We should give up worrying about everything from the art of living to our livelihood.
Unless we give up worrying about such things it will be impossible to attain the Way even if we seem to be practicing earnestly as though trying to extinguish a fire enveloping our heads. Just let go of body and mind in a decisive manner (Shobogenzo Zuimonki, Book 3, Chapter 1). – Dogen
December 28th, 2012 at 6:19 pm
ulvfugl
oops I’m about to go rogue.
Here’s my impression though.
You are an egomaniacal jerk.
KathyC is a thoughtful, conflicted, deeply caring person who is honestly trying to examine all the painful issues that migrate around our human, inextricable dilemma.
You, are simply trying to garner attention.
Bah. Stop please.
Sorry to be so opinionated. But I would really like to discuss here in the forum so kindly and generously provided us at NBL by Guy McPherson for the unabashed and honest confrontation of ecocide – human generated suicide – without the bullshit.
December 28th, 2012 at 7:54 pm
I’m grateful to read all these poems.
I have also written a poem.
http://scintillatingspeck.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/a-poem-is-wrenched-out-of-me/
December 28th, 2012 at 8:15 pm
Kathy C Says:
December 27th, 2012 at 3:50 am
We love this beautiful planet
i love lots about life, maybe hates lots more. it is certainly beautiful but it’s also harsh and cruel. it’s a mixed bag.
as long as the hates don’t overwhelm the loves, i’m addicted to life in spite of awareness that such addiction is at the root of our predicament. in spite of awareness that i’m part of the problem, and that my death could be, eventually will be, part of the ‘solution’. it must be part of the solution. there’s far too many sheeple in the world feeling entitled to life and certain ‘rights’ that makes survival in the short term a much brighter prospect. too many like me sucking off the teat of empire, of industrialism.
i suspect that ‘greed’ is another manifestation of life addiction, an insatiable drive for ‘power’, a sense of dominion over an environment that can be harsh and dangerous. genes doing everything they can to survive now and into the next generation.
in nature there’s no such thing as rights, no right to live or ‘life’. in nature there’s limits and consequences. i’m preaching to the choir.
‘It’s hard to feel bad about the unraveling of a system which has been an ominicidal monster so that a small minority of humans could live in an artificial cocoon of hedonistic delusions’ -dep. luc.
not a small minority surreally, imo. simply feeding off the crumbs of a dominant peak oil empire affords a life addict like me a rather comfortable existence with many passing pleasures. can’t blame everything on those wicked shadowy ‘elites’.
btd, your poem ‘rationalizing extinction’ i totally get. along with kathy c.’s parallel observations re. the mixed bag that is life and death, pain and pleasure. any rationalization reduces the anguish.
December 29th, 2012 at 3:15 am
This one is for OzMan & ulvfugi:
(Hindu sermons, perhaps, but as different from “sermons” as one branch of science can be from another)
http://sfvedanta.org/category/lecture-audio/“>Vedanta Society of Northern California: Lectures Audio
December 29th, 2012 at 4:21 am
Ulvfugl apologies you did write anthropocentrism not anthropromorphism – my bad.
Anthropocentrism is the position that human beings are the central or most significant species (more so than animal species), or the assessment of reality through an exclusively human perspective
Maybe I have had it all wrong. Just because I don’t want to be eaten by a lion, and just because some animals have nervous systems like ours and just because they act afraid and act hurt, its just antroprocentrism to see that as fear and pain. No doubt they are just fine with being killed and eaten even though I wouldn’t be. No doubt they are glad to offer up their bodies to be part of the glorious circle of life. What do I know? I can only evaluate their pain and fear based on them being wired like us and exhibiting behavior like humans exhibit when they are afraid or hurting. I plead guilty. I do see their pain from a purely human perspective. I will try to think of baby rabbits as welcoming the use of their bodies to feed the fox. And the mother rabbit as being glad to offer up her babies for the coyote. No pain, no fear, no sorrow, those are the emotions of humans alone. Just pleasure at being eaten.
No I am still looking at it like a human. Maybe they just are, just part of the cycle of eat and be eaten. No pain, no pleasure, just robotically living out their part in the never ending cycle. But if that is the case why would it matter to them if they go extinct. If that is the case wouldn’t caring about their extinction be an example of anthropocentrism.
In fact I think creatures with a central nervous system do hurt and do have fear and pain and are programmed to avoid dying but don’t fear death or have a single thought about extinction. It is only from the human centered point of view that extinction becomes a sorrow. The universe just is, it just runs its mindless course. Asteroids miss, asteroids hit and species go extinct. The Siberian traps stay silent and life goes on. The Siberian traps erupt and almost all of life dies. It has happened before with no help or caring from us. What does it matter whether we who are a part of nature or the asteroid which is a part of nature does it? Isn’t that egocentric to think that it matters more when we do it?
Have I got it right now? Did I stay on topic “because of your egocentric/anthropocentric viewpoint, that sees the the whole Universe as having its purpose in being required to conform to your personal likes and dislikes.”
Seems to me that you in fact want the whole universe to conform to your personal world view. If the cycle of life is holy then you seem to have to discount the pain individual animals feel in playing out their part in all that. You cannot get into the rabbits pain and fear because you are are stuck in your view that the whole is good.
December 29th, 2012 at 4:22 am
Gail, thanks for understanding what I am trying to say.
December 29th, 2012 at 4:47 am
@ Gail
I have not said that Kathy C. is not a..thoughtful, conflicted, deeply caring person who is honestly trying to examine all the painful issues that migrate around our human, inextricable dilemma.
I am pointing out that the beliefs and ideas that Kathy C. writes in the comments are not uniquely her own, something she has just invented, they have roots, going back hundreds, sometimes many thousands of years, being what various cultures have come up with to give existence meaning.
In the Christian tradition, if you throw out God, Jesus, soul, what are you left with ? A nihilistic materialism, devoid of any spirituality, pretty much exactly as Kathy C. has often described. The result is a meaningless world. And added it to that, now, an over-sentimentalised Disney view of nature, cute fluffy bunnies, mean nasty foxes, again a vestige of Christian ideas of ‘kindness and charity’ drawn from the human social sphere, and so on and so on.
All of this within the context that the person’s ego (in this case Kathy C.) is the important vantage point from which to pass judgement, another inheritance from the Christian tradition, which taught that the world was created for people to have dominion over. Egocentrism. Anthropocentrism, or as some term it, homocentrism.
Seeing one’s self, or human beings, as the pinnacle of creation, the reason the Universe, the Earth, exists.
Not everyone sees existence this way. Not all cultures have seen existence this way. There are radically different ways of seeing our place in the scheme of things.
(Kathy C. is not the first Christian to have rejected Christianity and faced that experience and raised those questions, it’s been happening ever since the Enlightenment, at least, increasingly since Darwin, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Sartre, etc, etc. it’s a very well-worn path by now.)
As for you wanting to discuss, go ahead, discuss. Your personal insults towards me seem an odd way to begin.
December 29th, 2012 at 5:01 am
@Kathy C.
What you say above seems to me peevish and nothing to do with the original point, to which I shall attempt to return.
Seems to me that you in fact want the whole universe to conform to your personal world view. If the cycle of life is holy then you seem to have to discount the pain individual animals feel in playing out their part in all that. You cannot get into the rabbits pain and fear because you are are stuck in your view that the whole is good.
In so far as it is possible, I don’t have ‘a personal world view’. I favour zen, because it is the only teaching that I know of, that eats world views.
I don’t know what you mean by the word ‘holy’.
I certainly don’t discount pain. Pain is absolutely awful. I know it. You know it. Everything and everyone that experiences it, knows it is horrible, and when it becomes extreme, what is there that is worse ? Hard to think if anything worse.
Physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain.
I have never said that ‘the whole is GOOD’. Or that it is bad. That’s a human, anthropocentric, value judgement.
What I have said is that ‘it’, the biosphere that is, is a system which permits life. Everything is eating everything else, all the time. Life and death, living and dying, all the time, around and around, is what allows all life.
December 29th, 2012 at 5:37 am
Perhaps you have no right to identify with the deer that gets eaten by the tiger, and to indulge yourself in ‘feeling it’s pain’. Perhaps this is a sort of masochism, a vicarious means of exploring sensation, like going to horror movies ?
Perhaps it is the business of the tiger, and the business of the deer, and not yours.
The tiger, as I understand it from the zoologists, on avarage, fails in all but one of twenty attempts to catch a meal. The tiger has to be very, very good at what it does, or it will starve.
The deer has to be very, very good at evading the tiger, or else there would be no deer.
They go together, in a sort of dance of life and death, matching their wits and skill and agility and keen senses for a million years. I can identify with the fear and pain of the deer as it is caught and dies, for sure, but it is usually brief, in shock.
If God had asked me to design the Universe, I’d have probably struggled with this pain thing, and seen it as a flaw, why does it need to be that way ? But whatever this ‘thing’ is, it is awesome measure, and I respect that. The ferocity of the lion, of the orca, of the wolf, is obviously an essential ingredient, it has deep meaning, it resonates, we all understand it.
I don’t know why the system is as it is. I puzzle over it, as Darwin did, the discipline of the foodchains that end up creating ecological balance that appears to benefit the whole, is something quite astonishing. That word homeostasis, that Greg keeps mentioning, incredible complex feedback loops, oscillations, blooms, a wet summer means zillions of locusts means a bonanza for some other species, a disaster for another, and over many millions of years it achieves a sort of stability, and we appear, and we witness it, for a brief moment, before we now wreck the whole thing…
The cruelty of nature is nothing like as cruel as the brutal unrelenting cruelty inflicted by humans upon animals, and upon other humans.
December 29th, 2012 at 5:41 am
Temperature of Reactor 5 jumped up by 3.4 ℃ within 24 hours
Posted by Mochizuki on December 28th, 2012 · 1 Comment
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According to Tepco’s plant parameter published on 12/28/2012, the water temperature of RPV in reactor5 jumped from 33.1℃ to 36.5℃ within one day.
It was 33.1℃ at 11:00 12/27/2012, but jumped up to 36.5℃ at 11:00 12/28/2012.
http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/12/temperature-of-reactor-5-jumped-up-by-3-4-%E2%84%83-within-24-hours/
Source
December 29th, 2012 at 5:56 am
Psychopathy’s Bright Side: Kevin Dutton on the Benefits of Being a Bit Psychopathic (Part 1)
December 29th, 2012 at 6:01 am
Psychopathy’s Bright Side: Kevin Dutton on the Benefits of Being a Bit Psychopathic (Part 2)
December 29th, 2012 at 6:17 am
I do see their pain from a purely human perspective.
- just robotically living out their part in the never ending cycle.
The same can be extended to all human beings. They are all conglomerations of subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells. Those conglomerations each have certain properties that can be explained scientifically. They are all complex robots. The concept that they – animals and human animals – all also have feelings, emotions and subjectivity is just a projection based on one’s experience, and is not needed in a purely scientific paradigm.
December 29th, 2012 at 6:22 am
@ lvfugl
“December 29th, 2012 at 5:37 am
Perhaps you have no right to identify with the deer that gets eaten by the tiger, and to indulge yourself in ‘feeling it’s pain’. Perhaps this is a sort of masochism, a vicarious means of exploring sensation, like going to horror movies ?
Perhaps it is the business of the tiger, and the business of the deer, and not yours.”
lvfugl, how can you so flippantly turn your head away from suffering in this world? Is this the attitude you would take towards a stray, starving pet that showed up at your doorstep? How about the mistreatment of ‘factory farm’ animals or the often unnecessary abuses of medical experiments on animals? Do you also just magically philospize these away into some imaginary space? Personally, I struggle deeply with these things.
December 29th, 2012 at 6:34 am
If God had asked me to design the Universe, I’d have probably struggled with this pain thing, and seen it as a flaw, why does it need to be that way ?
The moment there is a “God”, there is also a “not-God” and one is in a realm of duality with all its pairs of opposites, from which neither the “God” nor the “non-God” can escape. Even the attempt to point to something outside this realm by resorting to “the One without a second” is but another concept within this realm.
December 29th, 2012 at 6:45 am
@Bailey
lvfugl, how can you so flippantly turn your head away from suffering in this world? Is this the attitude you would take towards a stray, starving pet that showed up at your doorstep? How about the mistreatment of ‘factory farm’ animals or the often unnecessary abuses of medical experiments on animals? Do you also just magically philospize these away into some imaginary space? Personally, I struggle deeply with these things.
Nothing flippant about me or my responses, Bailey, a starving pet at my doorstep is in no way comparable to the deer/tiger, you are comparing two completely different thing. A starving pet is not wild nature, the deer/tiger is beyond my control, not my responsibility, is part of the natural order which humans have wrecked.
You obviously did not read what I said The cruelty of nature is nothing like as cruel as the brutal unrelenting cruelty inflicted by humans upon animals, and upon other humans.
December 29th, 2012 at 7:06 am
Robin, the ‘If God had asked me…’ was meant more as a sort of figure of speech, than a theological proposition… I don’t ‘believe in’ any such ‘Creator-type’ deity. Sorry if my usage caused confusion.
What I meant was, if I’d been given responsibility to design a world, me being a relatively kind sort of fellow, I’d have hard a hard time coming up with the model we have, where large sentient creatures get torn to pieces to keep other creatures alive, sort of thing…
The pain and suffering involved is so horrible. I agree with Kathy C. and Darwin on that.
But we have what we have. Whole galaxies get devoured and shredded by other galaxies. For all we know, there might be millions of planets with life, that get obliterated and sucked into black holes. My point would be, for any human to question this, from the scale of petty human vanity and values, is kinda like a bacterium in the gut of an elephant thinking that the purpose of the elephant is to carry the bacterium around. Kinda ridiculous self-aggrandising conceit, IMO.
December 29th, 2012 at 7:16 am
@Robin
The concept that they – animals and human animals – all also have feelings, emotions and subjectivity is just a projection based on one’s experience, and is not needed in a purely scientific paradigm.
But I’d argue that it is only one scientific paradigm, and one which is very seriously flawed – that derived from Descartes, reductionist, materialist, physicalist – and obsolete, and that there are much better, more accurate, more sophisticated, scientific paradigms available.
But this is a complex and difficult argument, better not to pursue it here, I think.
December 29th, 2012 at 7:46 am
ulvfugl
You’ve argued your case as well and as thoroughly as anywhere I’ve seen. Well done!
December 29th, 2012 at 7:54 am
Have I, Ripley ? Has anyone really understood what I’m trying to convey ?
Bailey seems to have got the impression I’m against compassion, Gail seems to have got the wrong idea altogether, I seem to repeat the same misunderstanding with Kathy C. and so on…
December 29th, 2012 at 8:06 am
.
Winter Solstice
It’s quiet today on the ‘stead—
Yet and still, when looking ahead,
Not as much, we’ll agree,
As it’s going to be
When everything living is dead.
December 29th, 2012 at 8:42 am
Guy has added to the opening entry of the OST workshop “Homeostasis,and the role of motivated reasoning” what would have been my next comments as its facilitator (http://guymcpherson.com/2012/12/homeostasis-and-the-role-of-motivated-reasoning/). Is Gail’s “going rogue” a ‘synonym’ for ‘moderator’ as discussed there? In addition, is what she labels, both in the vernacular and the pejorative, the BS thing, apply to both lists of ‘synonyms’ for terms homeostasis and motivated reasoning?
Since this thread is outside the framework of the ‘OST conference’, I’ve no authority here. Even posting, as I am, can be another iteration of irrelevant BS. I could have control issues and/or hidden agendas. And/or I could be thinking I am being helpful because of what I feel as a consequence of composing and contributing comments. Am I pursuing authenticity? Homeostasis definitely includes that feeling for me. And within the non-rational social meme of CapitalismFail, seeing and talking about NTE tends to easily garners one numerous pejorative labels, so seeking to be seen otherwise would likely be a motivation.
Regardless, my intent, to the degree my affect is experienced as ‘beating-a-dead-horse’, is to facilitate both thinking and feeling that relates to mature behavior in the context of NTE. I’m posting this to fullfil–post-conference responsibilities–the “promise” that Lidia heard in my assertion of what the conference construct and process “will” do in terms of what can be done differently. And such is, at least relative to the majority of the male gender’s neurology, immune system, and endocrine system sensibilities (as I commented here and sought female responses to: http://guymcpherson.com/2012/12/the-role-of-motivated-reasoning-in-an-apostate-church-relative-to-environmental-social-and-economic-justice/#comment-56365), my answer/offering.
With Robin restating her experience of what is mature in a response to my questions/critiques, and to the degree I am hearing her as intended, I do feel that her and my interchange may be an example of our gender-different experiences of homeostasis and function as an opportunity to feel differently about this. As Lidia asked in the ‘conference’s’ original blog post inquiring, out of curiosity, why the conference format, most of the labels that have been listed for motivated reasoning in the workshop of homeostasis are, in the vernacular, pejorative. Given that this negative framing would apply to what someone else holds dear/trusts/gets them through the night, this is a systemic linguistic logjam in terms of our maturing as a species. Without consciously choosing to be disciplined to do differently (be herded), motivated reasoning will rationalize flame wars/’delete key strokes’/extra-constitutional covert and military violence under the auspices of the War Powers Resolution. The capacity to conceive ourselves as individuals with limited responsibility within a shared social construct of self-governance, tends to define our best behavior–our as-good-as-it-gets–with a bar that is set very low. Within a paradigm defined by the authenticity and authority that broadcast media informs, doesn’t this allow self-broadcasting to affect homeostasis? Motivated reasoning withstanding, our actions are the manifestation of the four sensibilities OzMan shared: “Feeling, Thinking, Sensation and Intuition.” Therefore, and including action, theses five forces are inter-dynamic. The social paradigm dictates whether the resulting dynamics nurture personal and social maturation–sustainability–or not.
Guy’s appeal to logic relative to NTE is rational with perhaps 10% of humanity’s psyches. To the degree this is a statistical reality, this does not imply that such an appeal is wrong, rather, it suggests that more is needed (to the degree nurturing non-violence is a shared value and personally and socially effects homeostasis); an answer to Guy’s “I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what I want / but I know I don’t want this.”?
For me nurturing non-violence is the role an authentic/sustainable religion holds within society. As I defined it within the construct of the workshop “The role of motivated reasoning in an apostate church relative to environmental, social, and economic justice”, what is religious is that which tends to effect motivated reasoning. Within our economic meme of CapitalismFail, overt and covert violence, and commercial trade via enabling limited liability laws as violence, are trusted. (Tom, I found the link to Mithraism interesting, and I did not know about it. Thx.) To the degree “nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong”, and one cannot not be religious (engage in motivated reasoning), what new ways of seeing our condition are possible? How might trusted feelings be able to be changed?
Our social trust in CapitalsimFail’s multifaceted violence has garnered us, as is just, NTE. For me this means that what is logical relative to NTE is a personal and social shift in the conversation about what is religious and acting on the conclusions. To the degree our language is rich in pejorative terms for engaging in such discussions, both personally and socially, and such will trigger our unconscious processes of motivated reasoning, aren’t we either screwed, or in a situation that requires maturation: thinking and feeling differently? Isn’t a shared unconscious experience of what has authority–broadcast media–something to consciously revisit?
In terms of nurturing non-violence within the death-of-a-god experience the collapse of the economic meme constitutes, isn’t such a discipled approach to social intercourse and best effected, to the degree non-violence is valued, through compassion and humility? Isn’t such a disciplined living of that which constitutes, in the human experience, that which is mature; evolved? And isn’t such sustainable, no matter what the outcome one might be tempted to be attached to in the process? Isn’t what is religious both our problem and our solution; a sycophant and, paradoxically, a savior?
Especially among liberals, such disciplined living tends to be the herding that cats avoid and which conservative ones excel at putting into action. To the degree this is so, what, if not engaging in disciplined living in our social groupings with compassion and humility, and doing so across the spectrum of purple that defines our voluntary segregation, and doing so in ones geo-political local, has a prayer of being other than motivated reasoning (a trusted sense of homeostasis, withstanding–of course!).
PS: ulvfugl, my youngest daughter _had_ a debilitating experience with migraines that might offer some insights for you. If you are interested, my emai address is associated with the workshop listings at my guest blog post.
December 29th, 2012 at 8:46 am
The rabbit is happy to die
So the fox can stay alive
So why does she run
I suppose just for fun
Afraid – no, that must be a lie
Meanwhile As the Earth Burns
The doomers over at arctic news tell of the multiple ways that feedbacks in a warming arctic will warm us even more.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/albedo-changes-in-the-arctic.html
Albedo changes in the Arctic
How global warming and feedbacks are causing huge albedo changes in the Arctic. – rest at the link
December 29th, 2012 at 8:59 am
ulvfugl, to be clear, what I object to is the personal invective towards KathyC, in your comments at 10:39 am, 2:58 pm, and several others, in which you say things like
“As so often, I find your attitude abhorrent.”
“What you say above seems to me peevish…”
Observations like that go beyond a discussion of ideas and are insulting whether you intend them to be or not. There was an overwhelming number of such debates a while ago on NBL, which is why I read but never wrote – until most of the authors were banned or otherwise discouraged from dominating the thread, and people could speak freely without fear of being ridiculed.
I would hate to see that start up again because NBL is one of the very rare places even on the vast interwebs where most of the participants start with the understanding that we have passed tipping points leading most likely inevitably to extinction of most if not all life on earth.
December 29th, 2012 at 9:03 am
Kathy C, I see you as kwanyin, goddess of compassion and empathy.
It must be a female thing, because I totally get what you are saying.
December 29th, 2012 at 9:07 am
ulvfugl: When i was in college i enrolled in a philosophy of language seminar during my senior year and, as a class, we came to the conclusion that no communication ever takes place really. We only “think” we “know” what another says (while all the meaning is personal and dependent on circumstances unknown to the listener – and would take forever to tease out all the nuances involved) or get a mere glimpse of the statement before moving on to more babble. In short, miscommunication is the norm everywhere at all times and like the set of real numbers (reality) and say the primes or even the integers (language) – we exist on the thinnest plane with respect to the whole of it. It’s the same for our other senses (dogs sense of smell and hearing compared to ours; birds sense of sight and ours, etc. – they all indicate we’re “missing” a huge amount of information that’s actually “there”).
Isn’t it great that we get to “try to make sense” of the world around us and the universe we live in from our various perspectives? There isn’t any right or wrong here – we’re just attempting to communicate and, as i pointed out, it’s practically impossible. Every conversation can devolve into a rabbit hole of particular meaning, word association, jargon, texture, nuance, world-view, paradigm, logic and emotion (and on and on) so that all we can do is make sounds from our place in the entirety and hope some of the meaning is transferred.
Even simple statements like “The house is on fire” doesn’t convey the extent, location, or even which house (in other words the context of hearing this statement has a lot to do with it’s meaning).
Everyone:
i thought this was kinda interesting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw552g5hYVg&feature=player_embedded
A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 – by Isao Hashimoto .
December 29th, 2012 at 9:11 am
The notion that animals have an emotional life and have their own form of sentience has been scientifically established.
See, e.g. the work of Dr. Marc Bekoff:
http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Lives-Animals-Scientist-Explores/dp/1577316290
This idea that animals are just nonfeeling, biological machines is traceable to Descartes. It also coincides with the disastrous western illusion that humans are separate from nature and thus free to endlessly exploit it.
“Before humans shifted into rational thinking, we saw our world as reflections of us; we knew we existed as a part of the great web of existence. And we therefore understood that non-human animals are different from us in degree only. We did not see ourselves as distinct, as a completely separate species. We knew that other animals operate with awareness, understand the world in different, sometimes superior ways, and respond consciously to the world. We saw them with compassion.”
by Don Hamilton
http://www.dharmacafe.com/gaia/descartes-and-animals-what-if-they-also-think/full/
The reductive materialists are the ones who are projecting their own soulless emptiness on the world.
December 29th, 2012 at 9:25 am
Kathy C.
The rabbit is happy to die
So the fox can stay alive
So why does she run
I suppose just for fun
Afraid – no, that must be a lie
That’s a ludicrous parody of nature, and has nothing to do with anything I have said here. You claim to be such a sincere person seriously searching for answers, so why do you come up with such nonsense ?
Killer whales, orcas, have been doing what they do for around ten million years, long before they were humans. They’ve been killing and eating seals and penguins. You object to that because it is cruel ?
I think you are completely out of order. If you object to that, then you have to object to zooplankton eating phytoplankton, and abolish the entire food chain, the entire global ecology, and humans would never have come into existence.
To apply human cultural values – or rather, one particular odd subset, as exemplified by your own – of what is kind, happy, right, wrong, good, bad, etc, etc, to wild nature, is, to my mind, totally ridiculous. It’s as daft as imagining motorcars and chainsaws and fridges have moods and need therapy.
Wild nature got along fine without us. Sure, there’s that bloody, savage aspect, which makes us shudder, because we evolved amidst that, on the African plains with the hyaenas and the roaring lions, and we can imagine what it might feel like to torn by teeth and claws. But wild nature is not just that, is it. It’s far, far more complex. There’s all kinds of tenderness, cooperation, reciprocity, symbiosis, commensalism.
What happens when one of the fiercest predators on the planet meets a human for the first time ?
http://youtu.be/Zxa6P73Awcg
December 29th, 2012 at 9:53 am
Evidence of the (let me call it) disrespect of humans regarding other species:
http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/12/27/4507782/clemson-students-turtle-project.html
December 29th, 2012 at 9:58 am
@ Gail
“As so often, I find your attitude abhorrent.”
I say it because it is true, I find certain ideas and attitudes offensive and abhorrent.
@wildwoman
…kwanyin…
The fox is only doing to the rabbit what Kathy C. does to her chickens, when she chops off their heads.
@ Greg
re migraines, thanks, I suffer from chronic Cluster Headache, different cause from migraine, after many months and many different chemicals, now under control again with topimarate and zolmitriptan.
December 29th, 2012 at 10:30 am
@ depressive lucidity The reductive materialists are the ones who are projecting their own soulless emptiness on the world.
Thanks, exactly right, imo, can be traced how this stuff has evolved over the centuries, in the Middle Ages, when animals were tried in court for crimes for example, as if they had agency like people, to the opposite extreme, where they are treated as machines without sentience, like sows chained in stalls unable to move…
In Western culture, meaning was supplied by mainly biblical tradition, with a lot of pagan, folklore, Greek, Roman, whatnot, all intermingled, and then since the Enlightenment, French Revolution, rise of science, Darwin, etc, people start throwing out God, throwing out religion altogether, turning to humanism, atheism, all kinds of New Age beliefs, consumerism, techno-utopianism, etc, all attempting to find meaning and purpose to existence… who am I ? what’s the point ? people turn to drugs, booze, movies, sex, chase money, try to ‘do good’, the same questions get raised over and over again…
But meanwhile, other parts of the world, they never had Christianity, they never heard of a monotheistic Big Daddy in the Sky who gave them Dominion to rule over everything and exploit everything, the buddhists had a completely different view, as did the taoists, as did innumerable other minorities whose voices have been drowned out of the mainstream, who saw themselves as part of nature, not separate at all, who never had any lust to control and dominate, the wildlife and the animals and plants and people are one thing, e.g. the 40,000 remaining Nenets.
http://youtu.be/nJHxUEgxzfY
December 29th, 2012 at 10:33 am
With Robin restating her experience
Actually it’s just another dangling Richard.
December 29th, 2012 at 11:05 am
The rest of Paul Nicklen’s TED Talk
December 29th, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Ulvfugl “The fox is only doing to the rabbit what Kathy C. does to her chickens, when she chops off their heads.”
Yes exactly you get my point. Humans hurt other living creatures just like wild animals do. The wild is not better on that score than us. I did find a hawk eating one of my chickens while the bird surprisingly was still alive despite the flesh being torn from her neck bite by awful bite. I use a dedicated axe so that it is always in top notch shape for a clean and quick kill. I have never started eating on an animal while it is still alive (unlike the zombie face eater http://gothamist.com/2012/08/09/miami_zombie_victim_recalls_face-ea.php )
So glad you finally got my point. The natural world is beautiful, yet also red of tooth and claw. Total extinction will remove both. Is the wonder worth the pain is my question.
December 29th, 2012 at 12:14 pm
shared social construct of self-governance
Society is a structure of vertical hierarchical coercive control. The constructs purporting to provide self-governance are a façade to legitimise the hierarchy.
This is to be distinguished from community that coheres through horizontal voluntary interactions where the legitimacy is innate to the voluntary nature of the interactions.
no communication ever takes place really
“He who speaks, does not know; he who knows, does not speak.” – Lao Tse
we’re “missing” a huge amount of information that’s actually “there”
The presumption is that we are receiving information. When we go out on a sunny day, all that comes into our eyes are photons/light waves (take your pick
) that left the sun about eight and a half minutes before. Depending on how they are selectively redirected, they are interpreted as various objects in various locations around us. Interactions of the electron shells of atoms outside out skin with the electron shells of atoms in our skin is interpreted as the solidity of a rock or the blowing of a breeze. Because these myriad constructs cohere so consistently, they form the basis of the perception of a world in a framework of space and time. The concept of “information” presumes the validity of those constructs.
The notion that animals have an emotional life and have their own form of sentience has been scientifically established.
Science shows that certain causes have certain effects. Certain types of interactions are followed by changes in a meat robot (animal or human animal) that are called cheerful or happy, other types of interactions are followed by changes (perhaps even the shedding of tears) that are called sad or unhappy. There are even associated changes on brain scans. Making certain sounds that are called questions are followed by human meat robots making certain sounds that are called answers. None of these prove that meat robots (animal or human animal) feel anything as the observer does. Science only shows stimulus and response. Just because the observer has feelings, it does not follow that the responses in other meat robots are associated with feelings. That presumption is not based on science.
December 29th, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Ulvfugl “Killer whales, orcas, have been doing what they do for around ten million years, long before they were humans. They’ve been killing and eating seals and penguins. You object to that because it is cruel ?”
Don’t ask me, ask the seals and penguins.
December 29th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
ulvfugl; regarding the leopard seal, my opinion is the seal “sees” the man as either a friend or foe, one of us or not one of us, but in this case, due to the behavior of the man, he was seen as an injured offspring. The man didn’t fight back, apparently. Maybe the seal had just lost an offspring. Most animals are very nurturing towards their offspring. But it is instinct; they don’t know what they do like we do. The man was lucky.
December 29th, 2012 at 12:43 pm
Aibo the plastic robotic dog vs flesh and blood dog – video from the nursing home at the link
http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218393112
When you call his name, he wags his tail, yelps, and slowly maneuvers his squeaky, plastic legs to waddle over your way. If his battery is low, don’t hold your breath. There’s no forgetting that Aibo is a robot pup, but he makes a good companion for nursing home residents, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.
William Banks, a physician and author of the new study, says that playtime with Aibo reduces loneliness in nursing homes as much as visits from a real-live drooling and shedding animal. “We thought there would be a difference in loneliness between the two,” says Banks. “What we found basically was that the living dog and Aibo were equally effective in decreasing loneliness.”
For their study, the researchers randomly assigned residents of NHC Healthcare in Maryland Heights, Missouri to one of three groups: some folks had weekly one-on-one visits with Aibo, some played with a real dog named Sparky and others played with no pooch at all. Banks and colleagues used the UCLA loneliness scale to track their subjects’ feelings, and they used another questionnaire, the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale, to gauge how attached people felt to the canine companions. In both measures — loneliness and attachment — Aibo and Sparky tied.
December 29th, 2012 at 12:53 pm
Killer Whale Playing With Seals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuUFjvBnu9g
December 29th, 2012 at 1:10 pm
ulvfugl, Thank you for your comments. I think the distinction you made earlier between mythos and logis is extremely helpful in understanding the spectrum of religious experiences. I will borrow it next time I have a discussion with my friendly neighborhood Dawkins wannabe.
Part of the problem is that many people in this culture think that materialism and religion pose an either/or. Either one is a reductive materialist nihilist (RMN) or one is a deluded, irrational religionist. As you have observed many times in the past at NBL, this is a false dichotomy. It seems to me that the RMN are existential and epistemological imperialists (perhaps unconsciously) who insist on imposing their psychological boundaries on others. They cannot accept that there are different authentic ways of being-in-the-world and knowing-in-the-world that do not coincide with their narrow, historically contingent paradigm. What is most disturbing is that RMN is precisely what has driven this culture’s omnicidal behavior. They don’t seem to integrate the realization that if existence is nothing more than bits of nothingness and chaotic forces, then our destruction of the biosphere is meaningless. If life has no soul, and thus no transcendent meaning, then why shouldn’t we just kill everything for the sake of our temporary pleasures?
December 29th, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Datta
Science shows that there is no such thing as the experience of eating a blueberry pie, only chemical and electrical exchanges in the brain while a meat machine consumes and processes a collection of cooked fruit, sugars, etc…
That’s pretty much all there is, right? Nothing more. And you and SCIENCE have spoken so there’s nothing left to say on the matter.
See David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind for a scholarly refutation of the materialist’s claims to have reduced consciousness to brain states.
December 29th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
I’m right with you, depressive lucidity. I usually agree with Robin, but although I think he correctly reports on a particular version of science, I’d call it a perversion. Funnily enough, it’s the same version that Kathy C. promotes so often.
Yes, I think you’ve grasped the nub of the problem. People are generally under-educated and incapable of thinking about anything except in the crudest binary terms.
So, if you’re not an atheist who believes, like Dawkins, that biology can be reduced to numbers, then you must be an old fashioned bible-basher who believes the world is 6000 years old, as if those were the only available options.
December 29th, 2012 at 1:52 pm
The concepts of a meat robot’s joys and sufferings are constructs created from observations of their responses. The responses can be scientifically catalogued, but the constructs on which the concepts of other’s joys and sufferings rest lie outside science. There is no need to postulate consciousness in science. It is real only to an observer in the process of observing. It is it not scientifically demonstrable in the observed.
December 29th, 2012 at 2:14 pm
Brain states are brain states. They are the basis for the reception of stimuli and the production of responses. That is the domain of science, and does not need the postulation of consciousness. The only evidence for consciousness – which happens to be irrefutable evidence – is from one’s own direct experience. It needs no scientific demonstrability or confirmation, and indeed there is none.
December 29th, 2012 at 2:32 pm
Robin : The concepts of a meat robot’s joys and sufferings are constructs created from observations of their responses.
You see, your bleak materialism has already reduced and diminished us, as humans. You’ve stripped us of dignity, with this horrible descriptor, ‘meat robot’. Your characterisation will do the same to every other living organism. It’s a mechanistic metaphor with a direct genealogy back to Pavlov and to Descartes.
Your sentence above is straight out of Skinner’s Behaviourism, isn’t it, one of the ugliest notions ever to come out of America, destroyed by Chomsky, (which is what made him famous), and yet you still promote that idea ?
I think you are completely wrong here. It’s not an argument about consciousness as such, which I’d maintain is distributed throughout, as the background, the basis, of all that exists, a factor related to quantum non-locality, ( e.g. Tom Campbell ), this would be an argument about sentience, what it means to be a sentient organism.
Professor Raymond Tallis: Brain Science and Human Nature: A Critique of Neuromythology
http://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/events/thematic/figuringthehuman/tallis/
December 29th, 2012 at 2:56 pm
In other words, Robin, not Anthony Damasio, but B. Allan Wallace
Towards a First Revolution in Mind Science
http://youtu.be/9p7Y1JFOUok
December 29th, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Science – “mind science” or otherwise – needs no postulate of consciousness. Science can do just fine without consciousness. The attempt to scientifically grapple with it is motivated by the incontestable experience of it and the desire to reduce all experience to scientifically explained phenomena. But science is directed towards objectivity. Consciousness is not an object, and is therefore not in the domain of science.
December 29th, 2012 at 3:20 pm
Sorry, Robin, I don’t accept that logic, but this is such a vast subject, it could go on for hours, I’m happy to drop it.
December 29th, 2012 at 3:22 pm
Consciousness is not an object. The concept of consciousness is a concept. Concepts are objects.
December 29th, 2012 at 3:26 pm
dairymandave : ….But it is instinct; they don’t know what they do like we do….
A contrived tale to try and maintain the illusion of human superiority and exceptionalism, pure self-aggrandising speciesism really, a Martian could say just the same about us.
Daughter : ‘Dad, what’s an instinct ?’
Gregory Bateson : ‘It’s an explanatory principle’
Daughter : ‘What does it explain ?’
Bateson : ‘Absolutely nothing ‘.
Daughter : ‘So what good is it ?’
Bateson : ‘It conceals our ignorance’.
December 29th, 2012 at 3:37 pm
The only consciousness that one experiences is its manifestation as one’s own consciousness. Any manifestation of the consciousness in another can only be experienced by the other; the only awareness one can have of it is a concept of consciousness in the other.
December 29th, 2012 at 3:45 pm
Sigh, do you really need to get into this, Robin
December 29th, 2012 at 3:51 pm
Instinct is non-learned behaviour. The lesser murrelet nests in the crowns of large trees in old-growth forests of the Northwest at the Pacific coast, upto twenty miles inland, often well out of sight of the coast. The young do not leave the nest until they are fully grown, and the very first time they leave the nest they fly directly to the ocean and feed on fish, and do not return to that nest.
December 29th, 2012 at 4:05 pm
Instinct is non-learned behaviour.
A description, a category. Explains nothing.
December 29th, 2012 at 4:28 pm
How did this thread become a pissing match between the purveyors of non-existence vs. the champions of illusion? Oh well…
December 29th, 2012 at 4:40 pm
In the light of Tom’s rather depressing philosophical conclusion, that people cannot communicate… I’ll have a go at untangling what I see as wrong here…
Consciousness is not an object. The concept of consciousness is a concept. Concepts are objects.
How can a concept be an object ? Something does not have to be an object for science to be able to study it. A lot of the stuff that quantum physics considers can barely be considered as existing at all, in any form that we can think of in ‘normal’ terms that we recognise at the human scale.
Let’s look at something simpler, the concept of sky, that stuff you point to, when you look up, that’s blue, on a nice day.
There’s two alternative routes one can go down. The poetic, mythos route. You lay on your back and gaze at it. By direct perception, it’s just vast blueness. ‘The sky is as blue as it is sky’. Phenomenology. Subjective perception.
Or, you can go the logos route, in which case, science tells you that something completely different is happening. What appears to be ‘out there’ as ‘sky’ is nothing of the kind. It’s all ‘in here’, as brain activity. Light entering the eye triggers chemical reactions in the retina; these produce electro-chemical impulses which travel along nerve fibers to the brain. The brain analyses the data it receives, and then creates its own picture of what is out there. I then have the experience of seeing sky.
I don’t ‘know’ any of this myself, as direct knowing, direct perception it’s stuff I’ve learned, intellectually, second-hand, from those who have researched the detail by experiment.
I accept both these accounts, mythos and logos, as valid and useful, in their ways. They both take place within that larger thing, whatever it is, called ‘consciousness’. It’s a very tricky term. Nobody yet has found a satisfactory definition.
You can have a concept of it, just as you can have a concept of sky, or bucket, or zero, or anything else you want to think about. As I see it, a concept is just an idea, a piece of mental data. I don’t know how you, Robin, can think of it as an object. For me, an object requires some form, some identity, some substance. X is a concept. It can be attached to anything, as a temporary label of convenience. X doesn’t thereby become an object, it doesn’t exist at all, it’s an imagined phantom, unless you want to apply it to something like a bucket or a planet or a rock or whatever.
Concepts exist only in the mind, as some sort of neurochemical electrical activity, although they have social analogs, words, numbers, signs, that allow us to share and communicate. I see them as an overlay upon ‘reality’, the map and the territory.
Incidentally, I think one can substitute ‘gravity’ for ‘instinct’ in the exchange between Bateson and daughter above, and with equal truth, substitute ‘consciousness’.
December 29th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
How did this thread become a pissing match between the purveyors of non-existence vs. the champions of illusion? Oh well…
Perhaps we’re just bored. Anyone else can say whatever they want about anything whatsoever, rather than complain…
December 29th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Thanks, ulvfugl,
I’ve been a reader and occasional poster over at Real Climate since it’s inception, and find that their method of dealing with wandering threads works very well. They have an open thread system where anything goes (within reason). The open thread is available to read and post to alongside the topical threads and act as a place to go for cross-topic discussions, diversions, arguments, brain farts and whatnot. The topical threads are kept on-topic by moderators.
I was drawn to contribute for the first time here by the anecdotal and informal, by the poetry, jokes and gentility. I don’t really have a complaint about the intrusion of intellectual hubris that took over this thread. I just think it should go somewhere else where I am not forced to slalom thru it in my search for more gentle humanity.
Maybe I’m wrong, it happens now and then, I get from this site and it’s makers a basic quality of respect and openness that is very comforting considering the topic at hand. When I run across something so straining and het up about nothing as the majority of the last 50 posts it feels like walking on broken glass and seems to have no purpose other than to drive away gentle souls.
And thank you again, I will post when and how I feel.
December 29th, 2012 at 5:22 pm
Well, Brad, IMHO, RealClimate is very different, for one thing they do have a very formal topic to focus upon, even on the open threads.
Seems to me, that in recent months, for a lot of people here, we’re a lot like a mixed bunch standing on the beach watching the tsunami coming in from the far distant horizon, with nowhere much to run to.
So what’s the appropriate topic of conversation under such circumstances ?
December 29th, 2012 at 5:35 pm
Thanks ulfugl,
That’s a good question. I have one quick idea (I have to go to the grocery in a minute). Remember The Whole Earth Catalog? Stewart Brand et al from the 1960′s?
Why not re-tool that concept for the end-time scenario? Where do we want to be? What tools will allow us best to control our coming demise as we see fit? What can we do in the time left to lessen the impact of our folly on other species and the world in general?
How do we talk to and care for others who have a hard time with this knowledge? How do we go about realigning our personal lives and relationships as we move forward?
I really have to go to the store now…sorry. That’s my humble idea for starts.
thanks again.
December 29th, 2012 at 5:38 pm
When I discovered that we were at peak oil, I realized a big dieoff was coming. I mourned for a bit then remembered that everyone dies anyway, it is only a matter of timing, method of death and whether you left any offspring. Now it looks like everybody and most if not all of the rest of life on this planet is going to die off without leaving any more offspring. Well it is a matter of timing, manner of death and whether any species leaves any offspring at all. The sun was going to go one day anyway. Nothing is going to happen that wouldn’t have happened in the end. The good people will go, and so will the bad and no human will suffer again. The species will go, predator and prey and no creature will die again after it happens. No seal will ever be tossed in the air by a playful orca until it decides to stop playing and eat. No wasp will lay its eggs in a caterpillars back, even as no flower will open its lovely petals to the sun.
I love this world, I hate what we have done, but mass extinction have happened before without our input.
It is good to mourn what didn’t have to happen now. We mourn the death of a child more than that of an old person. We feel not only the loss of the child, but also the loss of the life they could have had. It is good to put feelings of sorrow out in the open. But at some point don’t we have to go on? I suggest that one way to go on is to realize that while we lose the good we also lose the bad, and what is happening would have happened eventually anyway. That is the way the universe works, unless someone can stop stars from dying.
December 29th, 2012 at 5:39 pm
Kathy C Says: Is the wonder worth the pain is my question.
YMMV
“It’s not worth it” is misunderstood
As to say something one never should;
Never having been born
And having to mourn
Would have been at least as good.
December 29th, 2012 at 5:51 pm
I wouldn’t characterize the discussion about consciousness as “a pissing match.” I also don’t think that it’s fair to accuse those of us who have informed opinions about the metaphysical status of mind as engaging in displays of “intellectual hubris.” There are some on this digital beach that like to keep the discussion limited to nuts and bolts issues regarding climate change, etc… But seeing as the planet is in the midst of a transformation which may wipe civilization, humans, as well as a lot of other organisms off the stage, I don’t see why it’s so unreasonable (or irrelevant) to discuss what this event means. The conversation about the meaning of existence usually involves topics such as theology, metaphysics, humanism, philosophy and so forth. In other words, the many forms of thinking and expression that we have developed over more than three millennia to try to talk about the transcendent (even when that involves denying the transcendent).
December 29th, 2012 at 6:27 pm
Two ants were walking across a TV screen. One said to the other “why do you think these pixels keep changing colors?” “I don’t know”, said the other ant, “but tomorrow I will get a microscope and take a closer look. We’ll figure out what is going on.”
December 29th, 2012 at 6:52 pm
James Taylor – Gaia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psYgLYq0nB8
December 29th, 2012 at 6:54 pm
I don’t really have much problem with wasps laying eggs inside caterpillars, so that wasp larvae can eat the inside of the caterpillar, anymore than the caterpillar eating the plant, I don’t think caterpillars have very highly developed nervous systems, although I can only guess at how they experience their existence, but in any case, they pupate, and more or less completely dissolve and reassemble to become butterflies or moths, which has got to be almost as traumatic and radical a transformation as becoming a wasp, hasn’t it ?
In general, the suffering for most of the lower order simpler life forms doesn’t trouble me so much, but once you get up to octopus and reptiles, they certainly experience fear and pain and have all kinds of sophisticated nervous responses, and then when you consider the wild mammals, there is, as Kathy has noted, for us humans, this troubling aspect to the natural system and it’s inherent suffering.
I think that if you let go of the narrow human perspective, and see that it is the same ‘life’, that circulates, throughout the system, that it’s the biosphere that ‘lives’, and that all living organisms are components of the larger whole, that makes more sense.
The orca throws the seal, because that’s what orcas do, it’s their nature. How could they be different ? For ten million years, that’s been their way. It’s awesome and terrible. For the seal, it must be a dreadful ordeal. We don’t like it, because most of us don’t like wanton cruelty. But it’s obviously absurd to judge orcas by human values. The orca isn’t being wantonly cruel, anymore than an an orca could be rude or tell lies or commit theft.
There may be exceptions, but typically, death in nature is rather quick. Any creature that gets ill, soon gets finished off. In that sense, it is humane. I think the moose killing by wolves can be quite prolonged, a negotiated standoff, which if it results in an attack leads to death mostly by loss of blood.
If you contrast wild nature with what gets done to lab rats, cats, monkeys, chickens, pigs, and so on, in labs and on factory farms, or even on ordinary farms and in some zoos, and what happens to some ‘pets’, wild animals at least ‘get a life’ before they die.
December 29th, 2012 at 7:12 pm
@ Brad Phillips That’s my humble idea for starts.
No need for thanks, I haven’t done anything, except try to be moderately civil.
I don’t have any answers. i don’t think there are any, anymore. I have responsibility for a small area of land. I think the best I can do is let it go wild, in the sense that, the natural ecology will attempt to adjust to the climatic changes, and the species that live here know better than I do, I try to provide a haven for as many as possible, as many niches as possible, as much variety as possible.
December 29th, 2012 at 7:51 pm
Greg Robie
I just want to clarify the four functions thing.
Thinking, Feeling, Sensation, Intiuition, are functions of perception. They are discrete ways to ascertain if something exists, and are polarised in pairs to an imature mind, which still needs to use one or two trusted functions, and usually dis-credits the perceptive evidence of the other ‘inferior function(s)’. Thinking and feeling are opposed, and Intuition and Sensation also are opposed.
Typically they are like coloured glasses, but early in life or in an immature state, the mind is unaware there is any glasses on.
A good metaphore from popular culture is the original series of Star Trek.
The four main characters are Captain James Tiberius Kirk, Mr Spock(Science Officer), Dr MaCoy(Bones), and Mongommery Scott(Engineer).
The engineer represents Sensation and Scotty got fatter as he got older, as they all did, but he was the only one whose character type was suited to it. Senses – think food, practical skullduggery like plasma drives and all that down to earth sensual scottish highland life.Seeing and tasting is believing to a Sensation type.
Dr MaCoy is the medical man and represents the Feeling function of the crew. Even though he is a wizz with cures and such and must be well versed in science, he is always motivated in the series by the feelings of humanitarian care and compassion, saving lives, races from tyrany,(as they all are to an extent).
Mr Spock, undoubtedly one of the most memorable characters in any modern fiction scenario is half human half Vulcan. Due to this situation, and the fact that he was raised as a Vulcan, he is exceptionally logical and represents the Thinking function, but refuses to acknowledge his human side, which is not so logical. How many times did he say to the camera or as a finishing aside in a scene, “It is only logical Captain.” As Science officer Spock uses cool logic and reasoning to dispassionately bring out unseen variables and options, almost always conflicting with Dr MaCoy’s assessment, based on feeling.
Then there is Captain Kirk, the one representing Intuition. Generally neutral in stance, in keeping with an ‘Exploratory’ mission, even though their Starship is a battle cruiser, (WTF) armed to the teeth, Kirk often takes soundings from all his subordinate crew and officers, and more often than not chooses a course of action based on a hunch.
Indeed Kirk is known throughout Starfleet as the only officer to have beaten the toughest battle simulation test there was ever devised(by Spock mind you), the Kobayashi Maru scenario.
Kirk reprogrammed the computer so he could win, and when found out and brought to courtmarshal pleaded that the program is designed to make it impossible for a ship’s captain to win. The council reply was that it is made that way so a starfleet captain would know the feeling of defeat, and loss of crew. They reasoned that it was of primary importance that a Starfleet Captain have this humility. Kirk vehemently disagreed and claimed there is always a way to win in real time engagements, and thus proves he is a true Intuitive, ever energised to live off his wits, even with the stakes so high as battle with the deadly Klingon Empire….
Kirk is the Captain IMO because this is what plays best to the United States gallery, and it is because the Intuitive function is the Inferior function of most of the developed Industrialised world.
However, the business entrepreneur if successful is typically one who has hunches and has followed them to some success.
Kirk and Scotty are friendly, and not so typically at odds as Spock and Bones, and it is perhaps a stroke of scriptwriting genius that really gives Scotty a separate domain to deal with, ‘nuts and bolts’ of engineering, while Kirk gets the diplomacy and action.
Spock has the Feeling/Thinking duality and conflict embedded in his multi species makeup, and rarely does an episode see him being anything other than logical.
Anyway, you seem to have added a fifth element, one of action to this mix. I am simply pointing out that this quaternity is about perception, or what individuals and groups, dominated by one or two functions, decide is ‘real’or by extention ‘reality’.
I brought this up some months ago, at NBL, and indeed I began to comment here not to invalidate Science as a process, or a sound measurement and reporting method on the biosphere data Guy and others were, IMO discussing with a very high degree of maturity.
I brought this up, and still do, simply to say that Thinking and Sensation, pretty well replaced Feeling and Intuition as dominant functions in the Western European setting, and indeed these functions have allowed the Industrial Economy, and its civilisation to destroy and dominate the biosphere, to such an extent that unless you use the two opposite functions to Feel and Experience what has been lost, you are not getting the point of having those functions.
I also was pointing out that, like many others outside of this forum, that this ‘place’, this ‘locus’ we inhabit, and indeed ourselves, is/are a psycho-physical domain, and goes far beyond the set parameters of present Scientific reckoning.
Without attempting to prove this case here again, I would simply ask if you feel love, or suffer grief and loss where is that accounted for in Science? It isn’t and therefore subjective consciousness, as a real focus for life, and our being, is also lost to culture.
Scales of ‘feeling affect’ and ‘rubricks’ aside, to Science any subjective perception of consciousness is not ‘real’.
That has been my point here for quite some time.
Only a culture dominated by Sensation and Thinking which has divested itself historically of the devotional and life affirming roots of living in a biosphere, as many indigenous cultures never attempted to do, could develop a way of existance and ‘growth’ that consumed the very living world upon which it depends.
I subsequently put up personal experiences, like precognitive dreams and visions, and extrememly rare and even mythical ‘chance’ occurrences, like calling a 52 card deck for red and black, unseen and fully randomised, and scoring 52 correct from 52. All red were red, all black were black, no error!
All those examples I can attest as subjective experience, and none of it is made up, or a subjective ‘delusion’.
So I am unsure why you have chosen to put ‘Action’ in there as a function of consciousness. Perhaps you were unaware that that quaternity was meant to describe perception.
Action is a whole different arena, excepting to say, perhaps, that if one does not perceive the reality of something like catastrophic climate change, because ‘one’s’ world is devoid of feeling and intuition, and therefore, one cannot evaluate the losses, to all, even when it is in front of ‘one’, (coal seam gas) then one will deny all the evidence untill the weather anomoly suited to one’s region devastates one’s house.
So the exclamation will come, “Oh, that catastrophic Climate Change”… all too late.
The important issue to me has always been how do we mature quickly, so we can see these things.
It is sometimes just left to the idiosincracies of our lives – who were our parents, or Aunts and Uncles, or teachers and what atypical events drew us beyond the ‘consumption ethic’ in early life. Who woke us to the bigger picture? I say you have to be wanting to wake up to begin with, “the readiness is all”.
Perhaps you might explain the ‘Action’ thing when you can.
December 29th, 2012 at 8:12 pm
How can a concept be an object ? Something does not have to be an object for science to be able to study it. A lot of the stuff that quantum physics considers can barely be considered as existing at all,
Quantum physics does not “consider”. Some person considers. Anything considered is an object of thought.
Let’s look at something simpler, the concept of sky, that stuff you point to, when you look up, that’s blue, on a nice day.
One cannot point to a concept (with a finger – one may allude to it with words), nor can it be “seen” by looking up. In fact, one can be aware of a concept without looking or any of the senses.
Concepts exist only in the mind,
Only when that becomes clear, the thinking might become less muddled.
I see them as an overlay upon ‘reality’
They are the bricks and mortar laid down by the mind its creating an it edifice it calls reality. They are the edifice, not an overlay.
By direct perception, it’s just vast blueness.</i?
That, incidentally, is due to Rayleigh scattering.
They both take place within that larger thing, whatever it is, called ‘consciousness’
In some schools based on the Vedic traditions, including some schools of Vedanta, everything takes place – or more precisely, appears to take place – within consciousness. Hence one of the five World – Views, the allegory to a Divine Cosmic Dream. In this Dream, the Dreamer identifies separately with each and every character in the Dream: this differs from the human dream where the dreamer identifies with only one character. Just as lucid dreaming is awareness that one is in a dream, “enlightenment” is awareness that one is in the Divine Cosmic Dream, and awareness of one s identity with the Dreamer.
December 29th, 2012 at 8:25 pm
Thanks, depressive lucidity,
I didn’t mean to annoy anyone. Ken Wilber, abidharma, madyamikha, Wittgenstein,dzogchen, Krishnamurti, Castaneda, Pinchbeck, Huxley, R.A. Wilson, Tinkerbell, etc., whatever. Once we have named the elephant what do we do with it? If boddhicitta and/or ethics pertain, we do the best we can…we keep it simple and in the here and now, the meaning that’s left to find is only here and now.
I understand that some may want to polish the mental mirror here. That’s why I suggested the idea of open threads. I think it’s a good idea. Why not make it easier for people to follow a topic? You can always link to a new thread, if you want.
I’m going to look in on the Edge website after I make dinner and see if Mr. Brand or his friends have anything to say about all this.
December 29th, 2012 at 8:31 pm
Thinking, Feeling, Sensation, Intiuition
These have correspondences in four of the five koshas. (Nothing to do with Kosher
)
December 29th, 2012 at 9:34 pm
Action occurring with a sense of one’s agency (“I” am doing ….) is doing. Without that sense of agency (in the absence of an “I”) even if the action proceeds from a person, it is not “doing”. This is what is referred to in “chopping wood and carrying water” after “enlightenment”.
December 29th, 2012 at 11:07 pm
Great discussion.
Maybe the religious/spiritual outlook of the Nenets that ulvfugl was kind enough to point us to was where we should have been looking all along. If nature (Nature) is that which actually “created” us, then maybe spiritual or religious meaning can only be found through and in nature.
I don’t know for sure yet, but I’m just saying…
December 30th, 2012 at 1:15 am
Bubbly broken out!
December 30th, 2012 at 1:49 am
Robin Datta
some useful links for me thanks. I listened to the one about the “Steps to God Realisation”, but it kept dropping out last night. I had to give up and go to bed.
All
Look, it seems that there are a lot of differing points of view coming and going here at NBL, some long timers too. I don’t find it a problem. I enjoy this forum. The differences make it very worthwhile.
When it is not too personal with nit picking it works well.
In recent comments I think Kathy C has said it is like many at NBL are standing on the beach looking out to sea waiting for the Tsunami approaching. Someone also I think Kathy C asked, ‘what do you do when you have seen it? or been made aware?”
IMO this is the point of all this communication…
To live in awareness of the moment.
Yes, I am fighting 6 battles a day with family members sometimes, yes, I am part prepper, on a tiny budget, yes I am scrounger of useful materials, and yes, with minimal knowhow I am attempting to grow some vegetables for food, which my 13 year old thinks is crazy when the supermarket and vege shop has plenty, and yes, I stand on the beach, tsunami somewhere lurking.
But what if there is only the beach, and never was any higher ground? That’s the kind of situation I can cope with.
It is often said that in hard times people return to the religion and ‘churches’, and some say it is as a crutch to tide them over until life is better, for they seek only support and refuge. That may be true for some proportion, how many I can’t know.
However, others have pointed out it is only in the hard times that people focus on why they suffer, because the ardinary placations, the hopium and soma and take out dunners and two hour fantasy delusion stories called movies are not within reach to most.
Food, the biggest addiction we have save Oxygen, is the hardest to deny when it is poor quality, and you also DON’T have a smart phone that works. It is when these distractions, if they were indulged are not available do populations ask themselves what is the origin of their deeper suffering.
Older civilisations, for example India, and Hinduism has some considderable bodies of knowledge that have some points of view on those issues, suffering etc. Others are there too, and there are all the local indigenous cultures too.
But in the case of India, the older customs are no doubt maintained socially but the deeper insights of the spiritual understandings are rightly falling away to materialism.
I say ‘rightly’ because in my view no one ever realised the self beginning from a civilisation wide dogma, no matter how well it describes much of this domain and reality. That is because it all comes from the Heart, and an individuals bloodthirsty yearning to awaken. It is a sort of oversight that people believe that any advanced realiser is not self interested. It is just that they are not self interested for selfish reasons…Ha Ha.
So to me knowing the tsunami is a distinct possibility any moment, and having managed to wriggle my form to the beach, and stand up and see the horizon, that is a great freedom and privelage, and something to suck into one’s marrow.
I think to let fear pass without holing it for any substantial period is the first step to Self-Realisation.
If one is not in mortal fear, one can see the world and love it. I once had a dream where I was able to watch fear manifest as I attempted to shield my self from something threatening. as I relaxed the fear was gone and the threat passed right through me. The normal situation is that the fear and the bondage to the illusory defence and the threat all takes place below the threshold of awareness. Fear is a key, and this dream was one step to understanding how to let go of that response.
No matter what is said IMO it is still a great act to remain on the beach and learn a bit about those nearby.
So my long answer to those questions is to remain there and keep seeing.
Now where did I leave my towel? And why is the water receeding so far back…?
December 30th, 2012 at 2:30 am
@ Robin
Me : How can a concept be an object ? Something does not have to be an object for science to be able to study it. A lot of the stuff that quantum physics considers can barely be considered as existing at all,
Robin : Quantum physics does not “consider”. Some person considers. Anything considered is an object of thought.
Okay, I should have phrased it more clearly. The collective of humans who call themselves quantum physicists who study the ‘stuff’ called quarks, leptons, etc. which can hardly be called ‘objects’, in the traditional dictionary meaning of the word. Does that make my meaning clear to you ?
Yes, you could say ‘anything considered is an object of thought’, it makes grammatical sense, but it still doesn’t follow that ‘a concept becomes an object’. A concept, such as ‘blue-ness’ can be entirely abstract and is in no sense an object. It would make just as much grammatical sense to call it the ‘subject of thought’.
Me : Let’s look at something simpler, the concept of sky, that stuff you point to, when you look up, that’s blue, on a nice day.
Robin : One cannot point to a concept (with a finger – one may allude to it with words), nor can it be “seen” by looking up. In fact, one can be aware of a concept without looking or any of the senses.
Concepts exist only in the mind,
Only when that becomes clear, the thinking might become less muddled.
That is what I said. You repeated what I said. The finger points at the ‘blue stuff up there’. Concepts exist in the mind.
Me : I see them as an overlay upon ‘reality’
Robin : They are the bricks and mortar laid down by the mind its creating an it edifice it calls reality. They are the edifice, not an overlay.
Well, neither edifice, nor overlay, are strictly true, both are metaphors, analogies, trying to convey a concept.
December 30th, 2012 at 2:34 am
@ Arthur Johnson
If nature (Nature) is that which actually “created” us, then maybe spiritual or religious meaning can only be found through and in nature.
Are you not acquainted with Deep Ecology ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology
December 30th, 2012 at 2:41 am
@ Arthur Johnson
Arne Naess http://youtu.be/llvnEaLUOac
December 30th, 2012 at 3:28 am
but it kept dropping out last nigh
Perhaps because you are so far away. Or it might be the government’s firewalls. You could download the mp3 files: that way http downloads have autoresume for dropped connections and you can have the whole file before you open it.
If you use iPhone/iPod/iPad try the free iDoenloads app from the apps store:
(remove all the spaces in all the links that follow)
https : // itunes . apple . com/us/app/idownloads-plus-download-manager!/id429648406?mt=8
If you are using Internet Explorer on Windoze, you should be able to right-click on a link and select “Save target as” from the drop-down menu.
An ancient but still functional download manager for Windoze is the Orbit Downloader:
http : // www . orbitdownloader . com /
And the smplayer is (or was, before I got addicted to the iPhone) a far superior application to the native Windoze Media Player. You should select it as your default application for all media types from the control panel after downloading and installation.
http : // smplayer . sourceforge . net/
But in the case of India, the older customs are no doubt maintained socially
That system has absorbed the most ancient animism, fire worship, and all the intervening stages in the evolution of religion. As recently as the first half of the twentieth century, Ramana Maharishi composed hymns in worship of a local mountain.
Animism, fire worship, etc. are to this day accepted practices in the larger tradition.
December 30th, 2012 at 3:49 am
All you wanted to know about farcical radiation monitoring in Japan
December 30th, 2012 at 3:54 am
Arthur “If nature (Nature) is that which actually “created” us, then maybe spiritual or religious meaning can only be found through and in nature.”
There is also the possibility that there is no meaning. Being creatures that seem to be programmed to seek meaning may not mean that there is some deep meaning to be found. It may just be a program that increased our chances at passing on our genes.
If it is true that we are meaning seeking creatures in a meaningless universe, we can create whatever meaning we want. Having rejected MEANING I can still find meaning. My husband covered the plants to protect them from frost last night to let me continue to nap. That has huge meaning to me even if my existence has no larger meaning.
December 30th, 2012 at 3:56 am
A concept, such as ‘blue-ness’ can be entirely abstract and is in no sense an object.
It is an object of the mind, just as the concept of a tree is an object of the mind.
The concept of “a tree in the backyard” is an object in the mind, a brick in the edifice called “reality”. After a storm, one may look out a window to check on the tree. The impressions from the sense of sight are constructed into a concept “the tree is standing”, another brick. This is compared to the prior concept of the “tree in the backyard” creating yet another brick “the tree survived the storm”. Even what is projected as the most concrete “object” is a concept in the mind.
Even such a concept as “brain states are affected by concepts” is another brick in that edifice.
Looking into one’s mind is very difficult, since sensory perception and cognition are directed away from it. That is why many will continue to project concepts outwards and insist on their independent “reality” rather than recognise “reality” as an internal construct.
December 30th, 2012 at 4:15 am
object:
Main Entry: 1ob·ject
Pronunciation: \ˈäb-jikt, -(ˌ)jekt\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Medieval Latin objectum, from Latin, neuter of objectus, past participle of obicere to throw in the way, present, hinder, from ob- in the way + jacere to throw — more at ob-, jet
Date: 14th century
1 a : something material that may be perceived by the senses b : something that when viewed stirs a particular emotion (as pity)
2 a : something mental or physical toward which thought, feeling, or action is directed
4 : a thing that forms an element of or constitutes the subject matter of an investigation or science
December 30th, 2012 at 4:26 am
BtD – had to look up YMMV. To anyone wondering, most such acronyms reveal their meaning by just typing them into a google (or other) search. There is also the acronym dictionary which gives four meanings for YMMV http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/ymmv I presume you meant Your Mileage May Vary not You make me vomit
“It’s not worth it” is misunderstood
As to say something one never should;
Never having been born
And having to mourn
Would have been at least as good.
In Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, David Benatar comes to the same conclusion but he takes a whole shitload of reasoning to prove something that should be obvious and can be easily stated in a well crafted limerick.
The fact that it is not obvious to most is probably a trick of our denial system and thus to state it really roils the waters.
The only way to avoid death is not to be born
The only way to avoid extinction is not to evolve as a species
Life is the ultimate cause of death and extinction. The unborn don’t die.
So I suppose how could we not create religion and spirituality. How could we stand the forbidden knowledge without it. But actually it turns out that in fact one can stand this knowledge and not slit their throat.
December 30th, 2012 at 4:57 am
@OzMan
The picture of the radio telescope array Guy included in this post, recalled for me the movie “Contact”. In it its Spock-like character (though way too passionate), when being “whisked away to visit to dear old dad”, exclaimed, “they should have sent a poet.” To the degree lyrics are poetry, here is a song that encompasses what I feel I mean regarding how action is integral to the four functions you’ve shared, the five sheaths Robin has contributed (and not intending to discount the models and what can be learned from them as insights).
http://home.roadrunner.com/~robie/opento/SpirtualMetanoiaHP.html#song
In “Contact”, another insight was shared about evolving, complexity and language. Using the math of factorials, with each added variable, the complexity of what is encompassed increases (24 becomes 120 becomes 720). This growing complexity, as the “RedPill” reality is moved toward, logically does call for an intuitive Captin to decide courses of action. My bias is that we can be more sapient together than apart, and that the tools we create, use, and engage in should help, not hinder this discipled and difficult work . . . and that this, paradoxically, includes that which science tends to discount/dismiss: what is religious; motivated reasoning.
A little bit of consciousness on top of a lot of unconsciousness is, for this species–homo sapiens sapiens–a fear filled condition. Since too much fear collapses the immune system, our action, first, foremost, and in retrospect–and as feedback mechanisms–inform our perceptions and choices, both individually and socially. Given the insight you experienced regarding fear, is that enough to be a satisfactory response to the inquiry? If not, email me (my address is listed with the workshop title list at the guest blog entry on motivated reasoning).
December 30th, 2012 at 5:24 am
@ Robin
Okay, the quibble over words is tedious. Grammatically, it’s just as common to say ‘the subject’, or ‘the object’ ( of my thoughts, talk, inquiry, reflections, whatever…) but if you prefer your definition and usage of ‘object’, let’s settle for that.
Looking into one’s mind is very difficult, since sensory perception and cognition are directed away from it. That is why many will continue to project concepts outwards and insist on their independent “reality” rather than recognise “reality” as an internal construct.
Yes, but no more difficult than learning many other skills, like riding a bicycle or learning to play an instrument, it takes some dedication and practice.
But I would say it is both outward and external reality, and internal construct. The way we experience it, phenomenologically, as direct perception, when we are awake, is primarily, as the tangible, tactile, sensual world, out there. That’s undeniable.
I recognise that external reality as existing in its own right, something infinitely marvellous and mysterious, absolutely the most tremendous, miraculous, wondrous thing, beyond all words. The conceptual description of it, what you are terming ‘the edifice’, is a pitiful, shabby, miserable, piece of toilet paper, by comparison.
Then there are gradations, towards introspection, where we can become progressively less aware of that exterior, and more absorbed in the interior, as when lost in thought, or asleep and dreaming, or in various stages of meditation, and so forth. As I recall, Qi Gong masters recommend something like 40% attention directed externally, 60% internally, during normal activity. They place greater weight on internal information sources than external.
If you want to take it further, referring back to your comments re consciousness, etc, I’d say that my practice involves emptying the mind of all concepts. In your terminology, I think that would mean, no edifice.
December 30th, 2012 at 5:24 am
@ Robin
Okay, the quibble over words is tedious. Grammatically, it’s just as common to say ‘the subject’, or ‘the object’ ( of my thoughts, talk, inquiry, reflections, whatever…) but if you prefer your definition and usage of ‘object’, let’s settle for that.
Looking into one’s mind is very difficult, since sensory perception and cognition are directed away from it. That is why many will continue to project concepts outwards and insist on their independent “reality” rather than recognise “reality” as an internal construct.
Yes, but no more difficult than learning many other skills, like riding a bicycle or learning to play an instrument, it takes some dedication and practice.
But I would say it is both outward and external reality, and internal construct. The way we experience it, phenomenologically, as direct perception, when we are awake, is primarily, as the tangible, tactile, sensual world, out there. That’s undeniable.
I recognise that external reality as existing in its own right, something infinitely marvellous and mysterious, absolutely the most tremendous, miraculous, wondrous thing, beyond all words. The conceptual description of it, what you are terming ‘the edifice’, is a pitiful, shabby, miserable, piece of toilet paper, by comparison.
Then there are gradations, towards introspection, where we can become progressively less aware of that exterior, and more absorbed in the interior, as when lost in thought, or asleep and dreaming, or in various stages of meditation, and so forth. As I recall, Qi Gong masters recommend something like 40% attention directed externally, 60% internally, during normal activity. They place greater weight on internal information sources than external.
If you want to take it further, referring back to your comments re consciousness, etc, I’d say that my practice involves emptying the mind of all concepts. In your terminology, I think that would mean, no edifice.
December 30th, 2012 at 5:37 am
THE BOOK
The words on the page remain unread
The ink run dry by misunderstandings
A chapter in neglect,
Torn Pages words abused
Never ending points of conflict
dissolve the unsaid
words of the artist not said not known.
So who is able to turn the page
to untangle the phonetic key
and release the hidden language
Who? Not me…. You?
The book of life stands alone
the future’s care sealed within the empty page.
wendy
December 30th, 2012 at 5:44 am
Brad smith that was AMAZING.
December 30th, 2012 at 5:51 am
Robin Datta
I feel very close to Ramana Maharishi, he seemed to have a lot of the nurturing energy in his profound transmission.
He helped me see the undoing of or unlearning of present identity is a beginning to realisation. His mantra was , “Who am I?”.
And if you ask this question over and over it will begin to override the fear bound ego bondage, and lead to an initial moment of really not knowing who you are. Then it all rolls from there. Identification, differentiation and desire. They follow like one, two, three.
What a great sage he was. I admire Michael Jackson and Arnold Swartznegger for some things, but Ramana Maharishi is a real hero to me.
Devotion and worship, now not widely used cultural concepts in the West, unlock the feeling side of life and restablish slow realtime connections with the living world.
Thanks for your comments Robin, always stimulating, if not getting me to reach for the encyclopaedia.
December 30th, 2012 at 6:05 am
Kathy C
I think you stated you are not a believer in reincarnation, so I don’t suppose you will entertain these ideas very long but…
We are attracted here to this embodied state, and many believe, we are reattracted after death again and again and again. The purpose is to take advantage of the state of being that has free attention. We can have free attention if we train ouselves, and that free attention is all it takes to begin a transformation. ‘You become what you give your attention to, or what you contemplate.’
I don’t see the logic in refusing the opportunity to be alive just because there is pain and suffering.
I take your arguments about many many lives lived in almost constant suffering, especially avoidable travesties like slavery, sexual abuse and violence etc. There can be no moralising the suffering this body and mind and heart experience can turn up for anyone. Why do we try to sum this up in some wize saying or other? It is just so, and stands as a testament for how much human work is still to be done to grow a sane existance for everyone.
It is obvious if the biosphere can sustain human life, WE WILL KEEP COMING through the portls to be born. No question.
I would rather get a shot at experiencing existance than not. We all waited such a long ‘time’ to get this go, it is a pitty to waste it or downplay the opportunities it has for love and light. Just sayin…
December 30th, 2012 at 6:35 am
@ Kathy C
“There is also the possibility that there is no meaning. Being creatures that seem to be programmed to seek meaning may not mean that there is some deep meaning to be found. It may just be a program that increased our chances at passing on our genes.”
I wrestle with this same question…BUT, what is the ‘program’ which is so industrious and creative about passing on our genes? A meaning of sorts perhaps even in that?
I have wrestled with questions of ontology and any possible teleological implications for years. If there is one thing I have observed, it is the creative life force which seeks to express itself in any manner possible by a myriad of manifestations, and to fill every niche. Perhaps even our own protecting of our plants in the cold is a stitch in the tapestry of some larger gestalt.
December 30th, 2012 at 7:43 am
Bailey, it sure does seem like a creative force. But once self reproducing cells evolved in a world of limited resources wouldn’t what is or something like it naturally evolve with no creative force. So science has taken the question farther back (as it has been doing for a long time) and asking how self reproduction could have started without a creative force. They have been making some progress there as well. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128251.300-first-life-the-search-for-the-first-replicator.html
and of course science has pushed the existence of the universe back to the big bang or whatever got us going. So you can posit a creative force (or God) back at that point, but then you have to wrestle with where did the creative force come from – the turtles all the way down argument.
December 30th, 2012 at 7:45 am
OzMan Says:
December 30th, 2012 at 6:05 am
We can have free attention if we train ourselves, and that free attention is all it takes to begin a transformation.
‘You become what you give your attention to, or what you contemplate.’
I don’t see the logic in refusing the opportunity to be alive just because there is pain and suffering.
————————————–
Brilliantly said, thanks for that.
December 30th, 2012 at 7:56 am
It’s interesting Kathy, as I am not a strict Darwinist and even have many problems with many of the suppositions. However, I do not believe in an ‘outside God’ and so I am also not a theist. I am a neutral monist and feel that there is an intelligence within nature (Mind if you wish) and that this ‘life force’ (for want of a better word) gropes forward via evolution in a learning pattern of sorts. I view random mutations leading to change not as an endless flip of the coin, but as ‘experiments’ toward design and creativity towards changing niches. It’s not unlike the human enterprise of repeated ‘experiment’ failures in moving towards innovation.
I have had this view for some time, but recently read a great book by philosopher Thomas Nagel which resonates.
Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356878848&sr=8-1&keywords=mind+and+cosmos
December 30th, 2012 at 8:00 am
Adding to the above, at any rate, it certainly seems that the ‘human experiment’ of the creative life force has been a failure.
December 30th, 2012 at 8:47 am
Bailey, have you considered Tom Campbell’s position on this stuff ?
http://youtu.be/fT8LaMrn_MM
December 30th, 2012 at 9:04 am
Oz man, oh my dog I hope you are wrong. I don’t want to be reincarnated. If there is reincarnation, where/how do you opt out? Stop the wheel of existence I want to get off.
December 30th, 2012 at 9:08 am
Kathy C Says: Is the wonder worth the pain is my question.
That’s a toughie.
For me, I’d say no, but as seer:
Till now we did not disappear
Because joy outweighed cares
For enough breeding pairs
Or else we wouldn’t be here.
(Yes, “Your Mileage May Vary.”)
==
Are imaginary things real? “South Park” explores the question for an hour and a half:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s11e10-imaginationland
December 30th, 2012 at 9:14 am
Bailey, my reading tends towards philosopher neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio, who don’t just dabble in thinking about things, but try to figure out how we come to be us out of our brain and body, often using the deficits created by brain damage to understand how the brain works when it is whole. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=damasio&sprefix=damasi%2Cstripbooks&rh=n:283155%2Ck%3Adamasio
contrary to the description of the book “The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology.” many neuroscientists are in fact are making significant inroads in explaining just those things.
Antonio Damasio
V. S. Ramachandran
Daniel Wegner
to mention a few
Damasio’s new book which I haven’t read yet (waiting for the used book price to drop) Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain
is described this way A leading neuroscientist explores with authority, with imagination, and with unparalleled mastery how the brain constructs the mind and how the brain makes that mind conscious.
December 30th, 2012 at 9:27 am
depressive lucidity Says:
December 27th, 2012 at 9:54 am
For the last 10 thousand years “civilized” humans have been living in hierarchical authoritarian societies. I think we are experiencing the logical and exponential expansion of this logic which will only become more extreme as the biophysical foundations of the hive are eroded.
It’s hard to feel bad about the unraveling of a system which has been an omnicidal monster so that a small minority of humans could live in an artificial cocoon of hedonistic delusions.
December 27th, 2012 at 2:39 pm
I also agree that the majority of elites (controllers, call them what you will) are only concerned with the present and the maintenance of their privilege and power. My only disagreement is that the notion that life is a party and that we should just party until the roof caves in is a trivialization of human existence. Perhaps the concept of moral enlightenment may seem idiotic to some, but “enlightened” sentient beings (i.e. wisdom, the wise, sensitivity to Being) strive to create a community which is compassionate towards life (including the life of nonhuman Others) and seeks to live in a way that is responsible and sustainable. The idea that life is a big ol wing ding is a modern capitalist construct which ended up destroying the biosphere and robbing others of a future.
———————————————————————–
These statements that DL made earlier, are well worth remembering. Thanks for making them.
December 30th, 2012 at 10:05 am
Endorse that. Great comments.
December 30th, 2012 at 10:58 am
Kathy wrote: There is also the possibility that there is no meaning. Being creatures that seem to be programmed to seek meaning may not mean that there is some deep meaning to be found. It may just be a program that increased our chances at passing on our genes.
If it is true that we are meaning seeking creatures in a meaningless universe, we can create whatever meaning we want. Having rejected MEANING I can still find meaning. My husband covered the plants to protect them from frost last night to let me continue to nap. That has huge meaning to me even if my existence has no larger meaning.
Very well put. I agree that we may be living in a nihilistic universe. One of the reasons I question the nihilistic viewpoint is that when we claim that meaning is something that exists only in our heads and is then projected onto the external world, we are positing a self/object dualism that has been seriously challenged (by both philosophyy and physics) in the last 100 years. In other words, the “meaning is only in our heads” concept is stuck in a Cartesian model of the self which conceptualized the self as a kind of floating eye which was separate and apart from the world upon which it cast its gaze. We are not beings who are separate from the world, we are part of the world, we are being-in-the-world … as such, meaning is not something that just happens inside of me, meaning is a phenomenon (or field, or matrix??) in which I reside … meaning is as much a part of the world as trees and rocks. I participate in meaning, I don’t create it from scratch and then drape it over a plane of empty, physical ciphers.
Imo, the existential dualism inherent in the nihilist’s position is a product of alienation which, according to Marx, came to dominate western culture with the rise of capitalism … i.e., when we became dependent on a system that commodifies and colonizes almost every aspect of our lives.
December 30th, 2012 at 11:07 am
Guy, I’ve listened to several of your presentations now via YouTube and am concerned you are omitting something important and will admit that at this point, audience Q&A holds the most interest for me. I look forward to interacting with you at Jay Hanson’s “America 2.0″ Yahoo group in the weeks ahead but my point of omission is that you espouse the “total collapse of the industrialized economy” and most people probably assume you are talking globally and maybe you are. Universal equity in living arrangements may fit the equation for a utopian society but evolutionary biology precludes such a possibility. There will always be some that choose to work harder than others, even in a commune setting and others have posited that a future of mud-huts holds no interest for those already living a western lifestyle. Back to my point…I think it’s more correct to state that the planet cannot support a western lifestyle for seven billion humans, and what is one western lifestyle equal to (damage wise) in hunter-gatherer or subsistence farmer terms…some 20 or 30? I’ll go you one better and suggest we are never going to get seven billion humans to give-up their current lifestyle (or the hope of having a western lifestyle) to go back to the way things were. What you fail to mention is that if we could cut the human population back to one fiftieth of present numbers, we would still have 140 million humans on earth and each could live a lifestyle even MORE LAVISH and MORE OPPULENT than our present best AND THE ENVIRONMENT WOULD STILL BEGIN TO HEAL. I submit that the capitalistic powers that exist are already moving in a direction that will cull the human population to the extent required rather than expect seven billion to all go back to hunting-gathering or subsistence farming. Now that we have achieved the knowledge and labor of seven billion, maintaining that number is no longer needed nor desired. Those that remain “with the knowledge and tools of those that have been” are enough to move forward. There will be more pressure and success in reducing the world population of humans than there will be in getting people to give up their Humvees and hot tubs. There is a plague on the way for sure, natural or otherwise. Although it’s about the total numbers and the demand that each human puts on the planet, it’s going to be easier to cut the numbers than it will be to get people to give up what they’ve got or the dream of getting more than they have. Please make the population problem the biggest part of your presentations going forward unless of course you actually support a planet of seven billion living in self sustaining enclaves. Assuming humanity survives, we need to begin determining just what number of humans would be “sustainable” since that number has a direct bearing on the quality of life for all. I agree with you about the steady decline year-over-year to all the things that matter to me for my 52 years but you and I are in the minority. A planet full of nothing but humans, their gardens and their pets is no world where I would want to live either. The world really HAS BEEN getting better for the vast majority of humanity now on the planet when looked at from the individual perspective. Our sin is that we still remember (or have heard in other ways) about how it used to be much longer ago. We are the statistical minority. Stay well for as long as you can. Fred in Michigan
December 30th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Reincarnation, Agrajag, and Arthur Dent in the words of the late great Doug Adams
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/tomsnyder/hg-3-18.html
December 30th, 2012 at 12:36 pm
@ ulvfugl
Bailey, have you considered Tom Campbell’s position on this stuff ?
Yes, I am familiar with Campbell and listened to an conversation with him and Dean Radin (The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds)on yourtube just recently. Radin has done a lot of experiments and inquiry into the evidence of Psi. I am on the fence with a lot of this stuff, because I am a very empirical and analytically oriented thinker. However, I also acknowledge that there are some unexplainable elements to the universe (such as the effects of intent on the Young Slit experiment and others). There is one element in particular that gets my attention in this area, but I won’t go there because it’s quite a bit off of the subject
December 30th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Depressive – interesting. I don’t accept dualism in the sense of my having a self that is only connected to my body at the pineal gland per Descartes or any other version of a self or soul that is not a part of my physical brain/body. I consider myself just as much a part of nature as birds and bees. I consider that like them I am mortal and the only reincarnation I will have will be chemically to become part of the soil and whatever grows from the soil, and whatever eats what grows from the soil.
I think in fact our search for meaning is what drives some people to destroy the world, for I think that for some the search for meaning comes as a form of gaining immortality via some part of you that lives on, whether it be a form of government, a piece of music, a child. Hitler thought the world had meaning and that it was meant to be a pure world with the finest of humans only. His goal was to bring the world to the way it was meant to be by eliminating the “unfit”.
OTOH If you don’t require the world to have some overall meaning, then it can just be what it is. I can return to the soil and get recycled if life persists or just become dust. Not searching for meaning, I don’t need to build monuments, become famous, go to church, build cathedrals, carry out wars of purification, etc.
See you can write it both ways. You can see no meaning and yet be a person who leaves trees uncut (despite the promises of wealth we get weekly if we would log our property. We have one of the few unlogged properties in the county these days.) But you can also be a person who sees no meaning and cuts every tree down for profit. I don’t agree that seeing no meaning equates to seeing the natural world as commodities since that isn’t true of me.
Again as I noted elsewhere there is MEANING and there is meaning. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends upon what the meaning means.
A tree can have small meaning – I love them – I love variety – I love the critters that live in them. You can find small meaning without having to see an overall MEANING. In fact perhaps it is easier that way.
December 30th, 2012 at 1:40 pm
@ Fred
I think that Guy has made it clear that it is the fossil fuel(ed) industrial economy which has created the huge population in the first place. There is no way that x billion people would have ever arisen without the luxuries, medicines, transportation, fossil fertilizers, yada yada as per the industrial economies.
December 30th, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Get sunshine. That’s what life boils down to. All living things, above and below ground, need energy and the sun is the source. We all know this. There are many different ways to get this energy. Plants just soak it up when the sun shines but non-plants, like us, need to eat plants or better yet find, catch and eat those other concentrated bundles of energy; other non-plants, animals, our biological neighbors. Selection favors those who do this best, the highest EROEI. What ever works is what is selected for, not always nice. This whole process went off the track when we found oil. We have for the most part forgotten how hard it is to get enough energy in what has been, for 99.99999% of the time of life on earth, an energy scarce world. This has been a flash in the pan, a party.
David
December 30th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
What is there left to give
When everything’s been taken?
How is one to live
In a world that’s been forsaken?
What is there left to feel
But heartache and despair?
Surrounded by the beauty
Of a world beyond repair?
As life on Earth is silenced
In oceans,on land,above
An the shame is all Humanity’s
Tell me,
Who is there left to love?
December 30th, 2012 at 5:51 pm
P. Kingsnorth, Dark Ecology essay :
What does the near future look like? I’d put my bets on a strange and unworldly combination of ongoing collapse, which will continue to fragment both nature and culture, and a new wave of techno-green “solutions” being unveiled in a doomed attempt to prevent it. I don’t believe now that anything can break this cycle, barring some kind of reset: the kind that we have seen many times before in human history. Some kind of fall back down to a lower level of civilizational complexity. Something like the storm that is now visibly brewing all around us.
If you don’t like any of this, but you know you can’t stop it, where does it leave you? The answer is that it leaves you with an obligation to be honest about where you are in history’s great cycle, and what you have the power to do and what you don’t. If you think you can magic us out of the progress trap with new ideas or new technologies, you are wasting your time. If you think that the usual “campaigning” behavior is going to work today where it didn’t work yesterday, you will be wasting your time. If you think the machine can be reformed, tamed, or defanged, you will be wasting your time. If you draw up a great big plan for a better world based on science and rational argument, you will be wasting your time. If you try to live in the past, you will be wasting your time. If you romanticize hunting and gathering or send bombs to computer store owners, you will be wasting your time.
And so I ask myself: what, at this moment in history, would not be a waste of my time? And I arrive at five tentative answers:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7277/
December 30th, 2012 at 6:17 pm
http://lakeweb.com/images/gad.gif
December 30th, 2012 at 7:45 pm
ulvfugl,
I am familiar with Deep Ecology in a general sense, but I don’t know all of the specifics. I agree that I need to read Naess more thoroughly than I have in the past.
December 30th, 2012 at 7:50 pm
Someone mentioned humans as being programmed to do this or that.
Look, I won’t deny we can have some very thorough programming, especially about significant issues in childhood.
Surely the salient point is that Humans are capable of being without any programming, and therefore, we are not all walking off the cliff. The herd may be, but we need to mature fast if we are to retrieve the herd, and begin the deprogramming…no?
I just watched one of the Terminator movies, no 3 I think, it was a Christmas gift from my 13 y/o son, some kind of ironic jibe there I think from him, but it is so clear when one sees these movies that we are acting like machines, and it is John Connor who rejects the ways of the machine. The machine is only executing a program, or a suite of programs, and while we do use this aspect of our abilities to semi-consciously navigate when we walk home, for example, when are we truly awake?
Well, some shock to the system will suffice, but we seem to prefer to dream on. We can no longer give in to the machine aspects of our nature,
Consciousness is the exact opposite of programming and machine nature.
It is all we have left, and all we ever had, but we need to exercise it strenuously now to have any chance of making it through the bottlenecks ahead.
How do you generate conscious awareness in your local zone? By being conscious, and reject the machines.
December 30th, 2012 at 8:11 pm
A little bit of consciousness on top of a lot of unconsciousness is, for this species–homo sapiens sapiens–a fear filled condition.
No little bit on top, it’s the whole shebang. The seer, the seeing and the seen, the doer, the doing and the deed. Sentient beings that grok this are but few.
Yes, but no more difficult than learning many other skills
Many are the waystations mistaken for the goal.
I recognise that external reality as existing in its own right,
So will all so many sentient beings at the beginning, throughout, and to the end of their lifetimes. Much company.
I feel very close to Ramana Maharishi
As tradition has it, one of his predecessors, the Sakhyamuni Buddha said that even a member of his own household that ignored his advice and guidance was in effect far removed in time and space, while someone from faraway and later by ages who received and practiced the teachings would be in effect a member of the household.
The Kabbalah recognises “Who am I” as a most powerful and safe meditation. Many other powerful practices bring danger with power. Pursued to its terminus, it is all the practice that is needed.
Oz man, oh my dog I hope you are wrong. I don’t want to be reincarnated.
Not to worry, “you” won’t be.
December 30th, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Re meaning and alienation… following from depressive lucidity’s comment.
I think that to think about meaning can become rather absurd. What is the meaning of having a foot ? What does it mean, to have a mother ? What is the meaning of stars ? What does the ocean mean ? These are nonsense questions. They might make good zen koans, but they show that logos, logic, reason, isn’t a lot of use, sometimes.
Once, in England, people’s lives had intrinsic meaning. They never had to think about it at all. I’m sure there were unhappy, frustrated, dissatisfied individuals, but for many centuries, in rural England, there was an order to life which everyone could comprehend, which gave existence meaning and structure. It centred around farming and the cycle of the seasons, and the parish church and God, and the social hierarchy, and all kinds of stuff ( which I personally don’t find especially attractive ) which meant that everyone knew what their life was about. Women did this, men did that, market days, weddings, funerals, Mayday there was a maypole and everyone got drunk, etc, etc, etc.
Then it all got smashed, by the enclosures, when rich powerful people, usually illegally, grabbed the common land and stole it from the people, and industrialisation, which completely changed the countries economy, so that people who had been independent, such as loom weavers, lost their livelihoods to factories. The rise of capitalism.
The meaning of people’s lives was destroyed, their communities, their expectations. You can hear it, in the voice of John Clare who suffered the agony of the loss and had a nervous breakdown. More mythos than logos.
I AM! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am—I live—though I am toss’d
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
And all that’s dear. Even those I loved the best
Are strange—nay, they are stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod—
For scenes where woman never smiled or wept—
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,—
The grass below; above, the vaulted sky.
December 30th, 2012 at 8:54 pm
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness,
An approach based in science defines meat robots. Even morals, ethics and aesthetics are programming features of the meat robots. There is no need for consciousness. The observing meat robot may be aware of one’s own consciousness, but there is neither reason nor proof of it in any of the other meat robots.
December 30th, 2012 at 9:14 pm
Humans are capable of being without any programming,
Without genetic and epigenetic programming, one will croak promptly in a manner reminiscent of acute radiation sickness. Without the acquired programming of language, interpersonal and social skills, one will regress as into the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s or Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.
Even the “enlightened” may continue
chopping wood and carrying water.
December 30th, 2012 at 9:20 pm
Ulvfugl, thank you for your call and explanation. I’ll be giving it some serious thought in the next couple days.
Kathy C Said:
“On the shooting issue and the NRA stance. What looks more like a police state?
a law introduced by Diane Feinstein banning assault weapons with 900 exemptions.
NRA proposal of armed guards in every school in the country
Seems to me the NRA proposal moves us much closer to a police state. In fact recent shootings were in a movie theater and a mall – lets put the police there as well. In fact so that everyone can buy a gun lets put the police everywhere.”
Read what Robin responded with. When seconds count the police are minutes away.
Dianne Feinstein’s law isn’t even a serious attempt at preventing firearm violence as criminals by their very nature break laws. You could pile a thousand other laws against doing what these nut cases did and you wouldn’t prevent a thing. Furthermore, to date, crimes committed by assault weapons make up only one percent of all aggravated crime. Most crimes with firearm involve revolvers. (Remember my old job, I have an insight into crime)
And lastly, I’ve always wondered where the dichotomous nature of guns with anti government people such as yourself come from. If the police and military are pure, refined bad, or wrong… (Lets call it “Badong”) because they’ve got force on their side, aka guns, why is it worse if civilians have a means of resisting? At the heart of the Second Amendment, resistance to government tyranny is central. Make no mistake, Feinstein’s bill is but a first step down the road to even more tyranny than you see now. Those exemptions are only temporary as far as she is concerned. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Remember, Mao Tse Tung said: “All power comes from the barrel of a gun.” I am absolutely astounded that you’d offer to have a governmental monopoly of power. When the government has all the guns, you have a police state.
It’s nice to see you’re still accusing people of being afraid of death.
keep up the good work. I personally won’t confuse enthusiasm with ability.
Uvufugl and Kathy, the reason that the deer or antelope or whatever tigers eat, run because they’re programmed to. Instinct says “Don’t get eaten!” Hell, that same instinct lives in every one of us. Go to an ocean beach and yell “Shark!” sometime and see how fast the ocean is empty of humans.
They want to avoid damage because if they’re hurt, I.e. pain, many times they’ll die from infection preventing them from making the next generation. From a purely evolutional standpoint, trying to stay alive will ensure they aren’t all eaten or killed. Lions dream of slow antelope, and if they were successful every time, or all the antelope were slow, there wouldn’t be any left.
They fear because getting eaten hurts and dying, contrary to whatever Kathy believes, sucks. There’s just no easy way off this mortal coil and getting eaten is up there in the top hundred ways you don’t want to check out.
December 30th, 2012 at 9:26 pm
Consciousness is the exact opposite of programming and machine nature.
It is beyond all opposites and intrinsic to all of them.
It is all we have left, and all we ever had,
“We” do not “have” it, and it was never “left”.
December 30th, 2012 at 10:02 pm
What is the meaning of having a foot ?
How about a leg?
December 30th, 2012 at 10:47 pm
““We” do not “have” it, and it was never “left”.”
Robin, this is an extreme statement, while true.
To convince the average American or European or even Asian that they “have nothing”, is somewhat of a fool’s errand these days. Modern people generally want “things” and their happiness increases once they “have” something. “Being” comes a far second.
The path of encouraging people that “having” is inferior to “being” is now an uphill one, completely apart from the obvious physical impediments to future having vs. being.
See Fromm on having/being (which I have only skimmed some time ago, but am anxious to re-visit).
December 30th, 2012 at 11:00 pm
Those who seek to find an explanation and/or confirmation for consciousness in science have no faith in their own effing selves. Then there are academics invested in such a career and soothsayers seeking credibility for their wares.
December 31st, 2012 at 1:21 am
Lest any misconceptions arise, the sane way of dealing with the phenomenal world is through the scientific approach. Applied to the material world it strips it of pseudoscientific hocus-pocus. Likewise, applied to religion, it strips it of superstition.
December 31st, 2012 at 2:56 am
I believe you have made a mistake, Robin.
You arrive at a cold, empty, heartless, mechanistic, materialism, stripped of magic, stripped of mystery, stripped of spirituality and compassion and human dignity.
What you are calling ‘the scientific approach’, is actually only one scientific approach.
I see your position as a sort of blend of Vedanta, Behaviourism, and Dawkin’s Neo-darwinism, plus Kathy C.’s version of neuroscience, where ‘consciousness’ is ‘explained’ by brain chemistry.
Is that a fair criticism ?
December 31st, 2012 at 3:38 am
Turbo you wrote “They fear because getting eaten hurts and dying, contrary to whatever Kathy believes, sucks.”
I never ever said dying is fine. In fact I have often said it sucks much more explicitly than that word does. In fact I have said it over and over that rabbits hurt when they are torn apart as far as we can tell because they have a similar nervous system.
Death is what comes after dying – nothingness. I have said over and over that I fear dying since most dying is quite painful, I don’t fear being dead.
December 31st, 2012 at 3:43 am
I am not anti-science, but what you say here, Robin, …Applied to the material world it strips it of pseudoscientific hocus-pocus. Likewise, applied to religion, it strips it of superstition… sounds to me like scientism, which is an ideology, a belief-system, akin to a religion, which maintains that the only valid way of knowing the world is via science.
It’s been tried. Auguste Comte, for one, had those sort of ideas, which turned out to be basically fascistic, but later on, both USSR and USA all through the 20thC had notions of ‘organising soceity according to scientific principles’. See Adam Curtis’s documentary on that subject. It has been a complete catastrophe.
Human beings are human beings, NOT effing ‘meat robots’. Every time some cunning schemer like B.F. Skinner has come up with a plan to ‘improve’ things, by manipulating human behaviour ‘according to scientific principles’, the result has been very much like Monsanto’s junk science, all kinds of ‘unintended consequences’, because it’s never been pure science ( in the best sense of the word ) but always ‘science in the service of money and power’, that actually happens, such as Westinghouse and GE’s nuclear power station program, and so much else beside.
Science is political. It’s never neutral. The question becomes ‘whose science ?’ Divorced from ethics and social values and democratic control, and as it is now, in the service of corporations, who use commercial nanotech in totally irresponsible ways, and in the service of the military, to develop ever more horrendous weaponry, science is very far from being ‘the sane way of dealing with the world’.
December 31st, 2012 at 3:45 am
Turbo “At the heart of the Second Amendment, resistance to government tyranny is central.”
You have been (so you say) a cop and a soldier. You are part of the government. How can we best resist people like you?
Diane Feinsteins bill won’t disarm the public any more than it will disarm the criminals. Nor will it help the public resist cops and soldiers like you. You cops and soldiers now have drones at your disposal. Sound weapons to disperse crowds, and who knows what else. You shoot tear gas cans at the heads of peaceful demonstrators.
I can’t figure you out. You have at least in the past reveled in your part as a soldier and cop and then you want the public to be armed so we can defend ourselves from the government that will attack us with soldiers and cops.
December 31st, 2012 at 4:04 am
OK lets suppose we all get future lives. Lets suppose this world of pain is worth it. Lets also suppose that Guy’s past view is the correct one, we are not at Near Term Extinction, just close. Lets suppose he is right that the only way to save this beautiful ecosystem and a remnant of life on it is to crash the industrial economy.
Since dying doesn’t matter because we will live again, and pain and suffering are worth it for life, why are we gabbing around here. All those who believe in reincarnation, act on that belief and do something. Find out what dams Derrick Jensen thinks should be removed first. Those who think the pain of humans and the pain of creatures in the natural world is just fine, join the ones who think they will be reincarnated and do something. Come on you know the truth, we don’t want to end up in the man’s jail. We might think the pain of the seal tossed by the Orca is worth it but we don’t think it is worth it enough to spend our last days in prison. Isn’t that right. Hell we all skirt around what Guy said for so long because we fear that even writing it might alert someone and they would pick us up. Well feds, go somewhere else. All wimps here. Willing to let the rabbit run in fear so the fox can eat, but not willing to end civ because the only skin we really care about is ours. Admit it, in some way weren’t we all glad when Guy said all over, nothing can save us now, NTE and no way out, because then we could stop feeling guilty
Turbo you can report back to your bosses that it is not worth your time to try entrap anyone here, we are just full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
December 31st, 2012 at 4:32 am
The Adam Curtis documentary, Pandora’s Box — A fable from the age of science, is a six part series examining the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism, tying together communism in the Soviet Union, systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War, economy in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the insecticide DDT, Kwame Nkrumah’s leadership in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s and the history of nuclear power.
http://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/
December 31st, 2012 at 5:55 am
For those interested, cryptogon went looking for guaranteed radiation-free Japanese tea and found a brand:
http://o-cha.com/
If i don’t get a chance to get back here in time:
Happy New Year to all!
Although i expect this year to be dramatically worse than last in many respects, as Carl Spagler said to Bishop Pickerig in Caddy Shack, in the midst of a torrential downpour, “i’d keep playing. i don’t think the heavy stuff will come down for a while.”
December 31st, 2012 at 6:03 am
thestormcrow:
bravo. bears repeating:
thestormcrow Says:
December 30th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
What is there left to give
When everything’s been taken?
How is one to live
In a world that’s been forsaken?
What is there left to feel
But heartache and despair?
Surrounded by the beauty
Of a world beyond repair?
As life on Earth is silenced
In oceans,on land,above
An the shame is all Humanity’s
Tell me,
Who is there left to love?
December 31st, 2012 at 7:14 am
Happy New Year to all
from down under….ladies and gentlemen,
it has been a privilege.
December 31st, 2012 at 7:18 am
Well it is already 1:18am 1/1/2013 here, so hope you guys make the cross over.
Cheers.
December 31st, 2012 at 8:07 am
I’ve posted a guest essay, Aleigha’s second essay in this space. It’s here.
December 31st, 2012 at 8:33 am
I see your position as a sort of blend of Vedanta, Behaviourism, and Dawkin’s Neo-darwinism, plus Kathy C.’s version of neuroscience, where ‘consciousness’ is ‘explained’ by brain chemistry.
Is that a fair criticism ?
Neuroscience will show more details on how meat robots work. It does not need to have consciousness, not is consciousness is explicable by science. As long as the material world is thought to exist outside of and independent of consciousness, science will strive to find a material explanation for the concept of “consciousness”.
The concept “consciousness” is an object; consciousness is never an object. Its only laboratory is the self.
Human beings are human beings, NOT effing ‘meat robots’
Yes, but not if they are analysed scientifically.
December 31st, 2012 at 10:48 am
Robin,
At some point, though, all of your experiments with science must give way for something else…
December 31st, 2012 at 5:00 pm
RD’s position is just a negative fundamentalism. RD believes that western science is the only valid framework by which anything can be properly understood. It also defines the bounds of reality. Any phenomenon which is not subject to the practices of the physical sciences (e.g. repeatability) simply does not exist and is relegated to the trash bin of superstition, delusion and irrationality. We are all just thinking sides of beef striving to prove that we are nothing more than thinking sides of beef. What an inspiring journey!
Science, however, is not value-neutral, or apolitical. The problem is not with science’s actual, particular positive claims; but rather with its pretensions to universality, its need to deny the validity of all claims and practices other than its own and the blindness of many of its shamans to their social and historical circumstances. Science has acted like a war machine, which can only make its positive claims by destroying all other discourses and points of view. Science serves the military-corporate state which funds its research programs thereby determining the direction of scientific “progress”. It’s not that scientific findings and theories lack objectivity in terms of describing certain aspects of the world, it’s that science is not the only valid way of knowing and relating to the world.
Humans are open to different dimensions of Being such that we can inchoately discern nonphysical realities. Mathematics, for example, is not reducible to physical processes, although it is the language of the so called hard sciences. But numbers aren’t made of stuff … so how is it that pieces of meat can intuit mathematical objects?
Perhaps mystical experiences, the experiences of other intelligences (dare I say, gods, angels, etc) are other nonphysical members of the world that human minds can very imperfectly know (or at least detect). Does anyone think that human beings are the only game in the universe when it comes to intelligence? You don’t think it’s likely that there are far greater forms of intelligence running around, not only in this universe, but in the multiverse? Forms of intelligence that are not limited to this space-time fishbowl, which folks like Hawking now believe might be a hologram (i.e. a simulation).
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/11/physicists-may-have-evide_n_1957777.html
Other cultures (present and past) experience the world as alive and teeming with intelligence. I suppose that for RD anyone who doesn’t embrace western materialism is just loopy and most of humanity has been clueless and insane for at least 10 thousand years.
December 31st, 2012 at 5:20 pm
I have to admit that a have a rather low opinion of humans, myself, and people often accuse me of being arrogant, etc, when I refer to them as ‘the walking dead’, ‘hungry ghosts’, etc, which is possibly worse than RD’s ‘meat robots’, which, I believe, originates as a phrase thrown at Dawkins by his detractors.
However, I do try to treat each encounter I have with an individual, as a unique event, and find whatever positive potential it may contain.
I find a strange contradiction. On the one hand, in a sense, I think we are whatever we think we are, so I would wish people to elevate themselves, conceive of themselves as buddhas, rather than meat robots or machines or worse, so many have such low self-esteem and such a dismal conception of what a person is. On the other hand, there is so much appalling egotism and hubris, humans think they are masters of everything, superior to everything, look down on everything, have contempt for other species and the Earth, and that’s even worse…
Anyway, yes, I see the problem with science alright. But then what culture or ethical dimension could restrain or inform it ? Traditional religions have their own serious flaws. I used to hope that Deep Ecology would be a sort of distillation of wisdom, which could perform that role, but it is far too weak, in the face of global capitalism and science and technology driven by profit and power.
I think, as Kingsnorth says on his essay, although we may know the answers, there’s really no hope of putting them into effect, the mega-machine will keep devouring the world until it cannot, and by then there won’t be much left.
I agree with most of Vandana Shiva’s analysis here, it’s old, but prescient and relevant.
http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu05se/uu05se0i.htm
January 1st, 2013 at 2:16 am
Science is a set of concepts within consciousness, as is everything else.
January 1st, 2013 at 5:59 am
Robin Science is a set of concepts within consciousness, as is everything else.
Yes, I can accept that. However, ‘consciousness’ then becomes a synonym for any similar universal containment term, you could substitute God, Universe, Life, Cosmos, Everything, Mind, Brain, whatever, according to your philosophical or conceptual or religious or ideological preferences.
To quote from my earlier comment :
Let’s look at something simpler, the concept of sky, that stuff you point to, when you look up, that’s blue, on a nice day.
There’s two alternative routes one can go down. The poetic, mythos route. You lay on your back and gaze at it. By direct perception, it’s just vast blueness. ‘The sky is as blue as it is sky’. Phenomenology. Subjective perception.
Or, you can go the logos route, in which case, science tells you that something completely different is happening. What appears to be ‘out there’ as ‘sky’ is nothing of the kind. It’s all ‘in here’, as brain activity. Light entering the eye triggers chemical reactions in the retina; these produce electro-chemical impulses which travel along nerve fibers to the brain. The brain analyses the data it receives, and then creates its own picture of what is out there. I then have the experience of seeing sky.
I don’t ‘know’ any of this myself, as direct knowing, direct perception it’s stuff I’ve learned, intellectually, second-hand, from those who have researched the detail by experiment.
I accept both these accounts, mythos and logos, as valid and useful, in their ways. They both take place within that larger thing, whatever it is, called ‘consciousness’. It’s a very tricky term. Nobody yet has found a satisfactory definition.
As far as I can tell, both you and Kathy C., agreeing with Antonio Damasio, want to take the line that all this can be ‘explained’ by electro-chemistry and that eventually, as research fills in the details, neuroscience will portray ‘consciousness’ as an emergent property of the complexity of the brain. It’s possible I’ve misjudged your positions, because there is no consensus, and there are hundreds of different positions amongst the specialists, some subtly different, some dramatically different.
Whatever. My point here would be, that if one follows the logos route, reasoning supported by evidence, as outlined above, photons reaching the retina, etc. that, somewhere in that procedure there has to be taken into account the established physics.
How is it possible to maintain that ‘mind’ is confined to ‘brain’, when well-established and accepted experiments in physics show that this is NOT SO ?
Where, precisely, does the collapse of the probability wave occur ? Does it make sense to ask that question ?
The photons are located ( sort of ? ) the observer is located ( in Einstein’s space-time ? ). The observer’s mind/brain/consciousness, has some sort of relationship, or inter-relationship, with the photons.
http://whatmeditationreallyis.com/index.php/lang-en/home-blog/item/318-the-rol-of-consciousness-in-quantum-physics–do-photons-know-our-mind.html
This stuff is extraordinarily hard to think about. But that doesn’t mean it is impossible to think about. When you, Robin, say that consciousness is not an object, and is, therefore, beyond the real of scientific enquiry, I don’t quite accept that. Sure, it is profoundly mysterious, perhaps the ultimate mystery. Like trying to get a mental concept of ‘what is infinity’ or ‘what is eternity’, or ‘why is there anything’, is quite hard.
The traditional route, over the last several thousand years, has been mythos, via meditation. Direct observation of the mind, by subjective experience. That has given (IMO) the solution that, if you clear out all the concepts ( Robin’s ‘edifice’) you get ‘consciousness aware of consciousness’, as a feedback loop, excluding all ‘objects’, ( and synonyms for this experience could be sunyata, God, Ein Sof, cosmic consciousness, Supreme Ultimate, and so forth, there are hundreds, doesn’t matter what you call it ).
So now it would be interesting to approach the same experience via the avenue of logos. And imo, we have some clues. Quantum entanglement, quantum non-locality, and so forth. That’s what Tom Campbell is getting at, with his TOE, although I’m not entirely convinced about all of it.
January 1st, 2013 at 5:00 pm
World-renowned choreographer William Forsythe and cognitive scientist Alva Noë, author of Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, examine consciousness as a kind of dance. Together they will explore Noës assertion that consciousness is not something that happens inside of us, in our brains, or anywhere else. It is something we do, in our active engagement with the world.
http://www.nypl.org/audiovideo/william-forsythe-alva-noë